I was beginning to get the picture. Malloy said, “It was your idea, counselor. You tell him.”
Loew said, “I’m laying dollars to doughnuts we can pass the proposal in the ‘47 Special. But we need to drum up enthusiasm for the Department to do it. We need to build up morale within the Department, and we need to impress the voters with the quality of our men. Wholesome white boxers are a big draw, Bleichert. You know that.”
I looked at Blanchard. “You and me, huh?”
Blanchard winked. “Fire and Ice. Tell him the rest of it, Ellis.”
Loew winced at his first name, then continued. “A ten-round bout three weeks from now at the Academy gym. Braven Dyer is a close personal friend of mine, and he’ll be building it up in his column. Tickets will go for two dollars apiece, with half allotted for policemen and their families, half for civilians. The gate goes to the police charity program. From there we build up an interdivisional boxing team. All good wholesome white boys. The team members get one duty day off a week to teach underprivileged kids the art of self-defense. Publicity all the way, straight to the ‘47 Special Election.”
All eyes were on me now. I held my breath, waiting for the offer of the Warrants spot. When no one said a word, I glanced sidelong at Blanchard. His upper body looked brutally powerful, but his stomach had gone to flab and I was younger, taller and probably a whole lot faster. Before I could give myself reasons to back down, I said, “I’m in.”
The brass gave my decision a round of applause; Ellis Loew smiled, exposing teeth that looked like they belonged on a baby shark. “The date is October 29, a week before the election,” he said. “And both of you will have unlimited use of the Academy gym for training. Ten rounds is a lot to ask of men as inactive as you two have been, but anything else would look sissy. Don’t you agree?”
Blanchard snorted, “Or communistic” Loew shot him a shark-tooth grimace. I said, “Yes, sir,” and Inspector Malloy raised a camera, chirping, “Watch the birdy, son.”
I stood up and smiled without parting my lips; a flashbulb popped. I saw stars and got a back pounding, and when the camaraderie stopped and my vision cleared, Ellis Loew was standing in front of me, saying, “I’m betting on great things from you. And if I don’t miss my bet, I expect we’ll be colleagues soon.”
I thought, You’re a subtle bastard, but said, “Yes, sir.” Loew gave me a limp handshake and walked away. I rubbed the last of the stars out of my eyes and saw that the room was empty.
I took the elevator down to street level, thinking of tasty ways to regain the weight I had lost. Blanchard probably weighed 200, and if I came in at my safe old 175 against him he would wear me down every time he managed to get inside. I was trying to decide between the Pantry and Little Joe’s when I hit the parking lot and saw my adversary in the flesh—talking to a woman blowing smoke rings up at a picture postcard sky.
I went over. Blanchard was leaning against an unmarked cruiser, gesturing at the woman, still intent on her rings, putting them out three and four at a time. She was in profile as I approached, head tilted up, back arched, one hand on the cruiser’s door for support. Auburn hair in a pageboy cut brushed her shoulders and long, thin neck; the fit of her Eisenhower jacket and wool skirt told me she was thin all over.
Blanchard caught sight of me and nudged her. Letting out a lungful of smoke, she turned. Up close, I saw a strong-pretty face, all mismatched parts: high forehead that made her hairdo look incongruous, crooked nose, full lips and big black-brown eyes.
Blanchard made the introductions. “Kay, this is Bucky Bleichert. Bucky, Kay Lake.”
The woman ground out her cigarette. I said, “Hello,” wondering if this was the girlfriend that Blanchard met at the Boulevard-Citizens robbery trial. She didn’t play as a heister’s quail, even if she had been shacking with a cop for years.
Her voice had a slight prairie twang. “I saw you box several times. You won.”
“I always won. Are you a fight fan?”
Kay Lake shook her head. “Lee used to drag me. I was taking art classes back before the war, so I brought my sketch pad and drew the boxers.”
Blanchard put an arm around her shoulders. “Made me quit fighting smokers. Said she didn’t want me doing the vegetable shuffle.” He went into an imitation of a punch-drunk fighter sparring, and Kay Lake flinched away from him. Blanchard shot a quick look at her, then fired off some left jabs and right crosses at the air. The punches were telegraphed, and in my mind I countered a one-two at his jaw and midsection.
I said, “I’ll try not to hurt you.”
Kay smoldered at the remark; Blanchard grinned. “It took weeks to talk her into letting me do it. I promised her a new car if she didn’t pout too much.”
“Don’t make any bets you can’t cover.”
Blanchard laughed, then moved into a side-by-side drape with Kay. I said, “Who thought this thing up?”
“Ellis Loew. He got me Warrants, then my partner put in his papers and Loew started thinking about you to replace him. He got Braven Dyer to write that Fire and Ice horseshit, then he took the whole pie to Horrall. He never would have gone for it, but all the polls said the bond issue was heading for the deep six, so he said okay.”
“And he’s got money on me? And if I win I get Warrants?”
“Something like that. The DA himself don’t like the idea, thinks the two of us wouldn’t work as partners. But he’s going along—Horrall and Thad Green convinced him. Personally, I almost hope you do win. If you don’t, I get Johnny Vogel. He’s fat, he farts, his breath stinks and his daddy’s the biggest nosebleed in Central dicks, always running errands for the Jewboy. Besides—”
I tapped Blanchard’s chest with a soft forefinger. “What’s in it for you?”
“Betting works both ways. My girl’s got a taste for nice things, and I can’t afford to let her down. Right, babe?”
Kay said, “Keep talking about me in the third person. It sends me.”
Blanchard put up his hands in mock surrender; Kay’s dark eyes burned. Curious about the woman, I said, “What do you think about the whole thing, Miss Lake?”
Now her eyes danced. “For aesthetic reasons, I hope you both look good with your shirts off. For moral reasons, I hope the Los Angeles Police Department gets ridiculed for perpetrating this farce. For financial reasons, I hope Lee wins.”
Blanchard laughed and slapped the hood of the cruiser; I forgot vanity and smiled with my mouth open. Kay Lake stared me straight in the eye, and for the first time—strangely but surely—I sensed that Mr. Fire and I were becoming friends. Sticking out my hand, I said, “Luck short of winning” Lee grabbed it and said, “The same.”
Kay took in the two of us with a look that said we were idiot children. I tipped my hat to her, then started to walk away. Kay called out “Dwight,” and I wondered how she knew my real name. When I turned around, she said, “You’d be very handsome if you got your teeth fixed.”
Three
The fight became the rage of the Department, then LA, and the Academy gym was sold out within twenty-four hours of Braven Dyer’s announcement of it in the Times sports page. The 77th Street lieutenant tapped as official LAPD oddsmaker installed Blanchard as an early 3 to 1 favorite, while the real bookie line had Mr. Fire favored by knockout at 21/2 to 1 and decision by 5 to 3. Interdepartmental betting was rampant, and wager pools were set up at all station houses. Dyer and Morrie Ryskind of the Mirror fed the craze in their columns, and a KMPC disc jockey composed a ditty called the “Fire and Ice Tango.” Backed by a jazz combo, a sultry soprano warbled, “Fire and Ice ain’t sugar and spice; four hundred pounds tradin’ leather, that sure ain’t nice. But Mr. Fire light my torch and Mr. Ice cool my brow, to me that’s all-night service with a capital wow!”
I was a local celebrity again.
At roll call I watched betting markers change hands and got attaboys from cops I had never met before; Fat Johnny Vogel gave me the evil eye every time he passed me in the locker
room. Sidwell, ever the rumor monger, said that two night-watch blues had bet their cars, and the station commander, Captain Harwell, was holding the pink slips until after the fight. The dicks in Administrative Vice had suspended their bookie shakedowns because Mickey Cohen was taking in ten grand a day in markers and was kicking back 5 percent to the advertising agency employed by the city in its effort to pass the bond issue. Harry Cohn, Mr. Big at Columbia Pictures, had put down a bundle on me to win by decision, and if I delivered I got a hot weekend with Rita Hayworth.
None of it made sense, but all of it felt good, and I kept myself from going crazy by training harder than I ever had before.
At end of watch each day I headed straight for the gym and worked. Ignoring Blanchard and his brownnosing entourage and the off-duty cops who hovered around me, I hit the heavy bag, left jab—right cross—left hook, five minutes at a crack, on my toes the whole time; I sparred with my old pal Pete Lukins and rolled sets at the speed bag until sweat blinded me and my arms turned to rubber. I skipped rope and ran through the Elysian Park hills with two-pound weights strapped to my ankles, jabbing at tree limbs and bushes, outracing the trash can dogs who prowled there. At home, I gorged myself on liver, porterhouse steak and spinach and fell asleep before I could get out of my clothes.
Then, with the fight nine days away, I saw the old man and decided to take a dive for the money.
The occasion was my once-a-month visit, and I drove out to Lincoln Heights feeling guilty that I hadn’t shown up since I got the word that he was acting crazy again. I brought gifts to assuage that guilt: canned goodies scrounged from the markets on my beat and confiscated girlie mags. Pulling up in front of the house, I saw that they wouldn’t be enough.
The old man was sitting on the porch, swigging from a bottle of cough syrup. He had his BB pistol in one hand, absently taking shots at a formation of balsa wood airplanes lined up on the lawn. I parked, then walked over to him. His clothes were flecked with vomit and his bones protruded underneath them, poking out like they were joined to him at all the wrong angles. His breath stank, his eyes were yellow and filmy and the skin I could see underneath his crusty white beard was flush with broken veins. I reached down to help him to his feet; he swatted my hands, jabbering, “Scheisskopf! Kleine Scheisskopf!”
I pulled the old man up into a standing position. He dropped the BB pistol and Expectolar pint and said, “Guten Tag, Dwight,” like he had just seen me the day before.
I brushed tears from my eyes. “Speak English, Papa.”
The old man grabbed the crook of his right elbow and shook his fist at me in a slapdash fungoo. “Englisch Scheisser! Churchill Scheisser! Amerikanisch Juden Scheisser!”
I left him on the porch and checked out the house. The living room was littered with model airplane parts and open cans of beans with flies buzzing around them; the bedroom was wallpapered with cheesecake pics, most of them upside down. The bathroom stank of stale urine and the kitchen featured three cats snouting around in half-empty tunafish cans. They hissed at me as I approached; I threw a chair at them and went back to my father.
He was leaning on the porch rail, fingering his beard. Afraid he would topple over, I held his arm; afraid I would start to cry for real, I said, “Say something, Papa. Make me mad. Tell me how you managed to fuck up the house so bad in a month.”
My father tried to pull free. I held on tighter, then loosened my grip, afraid of snapping the bone like a twig. He said, “Du, Dwight? Du?” and I knew he’d had another stroke and lost his memory of English again. I searched my own memory for phrases in German and came up empty. As a boy I’d hated the man so much that I made myself forget the language he’d taught me.
“Wo ist Greta? Wo, mutti?”
I put my arms around the old man. “Mama’s dead. You were too cheap to buy her bootleg, so she got some raisinjack from the niggers in the Flats. It was rubbing alcohol, Papa. She went blind. You put her in the hospital, and she jumped off the roof.”
“Greta!”
I held him harder. “Ssssh. It was fourteen years ago, Papa. A long time.”
The old man tried to push me away; I shoved him into the porch stanchion and pinned him there. His lips curled to shout invective, then his face went blank, and I knew he couldn’t come up with the words. I shut my eyes and found words for him: “Do you know what you cost me, you fuck? I could have gone to the cops clean, but they found out my father was a fucking subversive. They made me snitch off Sammy and Ashidas, and Sammy died at Manzanar. I know you only joined the Bund to bullshit and chase snatch, but you should have known better, because I didn’t.”
I opened my eyes and found them dry; my father’s eyes were expressionless. I eased off his shoulders and said, “You couldn’t have known better, and the snitch jacket’s all on me. But you were a cheap stingy fuck. You killed Mama, and that’s yours.”
I got an idea how to end the whole mess. “You go rest now, Papa. I’ll take care of you.”
That afternoon I watched Lee Blanchard train. His regimen was four-minute rounds with lanky light heavys borrowed from the Main Street Gym, and his style was total assault. He crouched when he moved forward, always feinting with his upper body; his jab was surprisingly good. He wasn’t the headhunter or sitting duck I expected, and when he hooked to the breadbasket I could feel the punches twenty yards away. For the money he was no sure thing, and money was the fight now.
So money made it a tank job.
I drove home and called up the retired postman who kept an eye on my father, offering him a C-note if he cleaned up the house and stuck to the old man like glue until after the fight. He agreed, and I called an old Academy classmate working Hollywood Vice and asked him for the names of some bookies. Thinking I wanted to bet on myself, he gave me the numbers of two independents, one with Mickey Cohen and one with the Jack Dragna mob. The indies and the Cohen book had Blanchard a straight two to one favorite, but the Dragna line was even money, Bleichert or Blanchard, the new odds coming from scouting reports that said I looked fast and strong. I could double every dollar I put in.
In the morning I called in sick, and the daywatch boss bought it because I was a local celebrity and Captain Harwell wouldn’t want him rattling my cage. With work out of the way, I liquidated my savings account, cashed in my Treasury bonds and took out a bank loan for two grand, using my almost new ‘46 Chevy ragtop as collateral. From the bank, it was just a short ride out to Lincoln Heights and a talk with Pete Lukins. He agreed to do what I wanted, and two hours later he called me with the results.
The Dragna bookie I had sent him to had taken his money on Blanchard by late-round knockout, offering him two to one odds against. If I took my dive in rounds eight through ten, my net would be $8,640—enough to maintain the old man in a class rest home for at least two or three years. I had traded Warrants for a close-out on bad old debts, with the late-round stipulation just enough of a risk to keep me from feeling too much like a coward. It was a tradeoff that someone was going to help me pay for, and that someone was Lee Blanchard.
With seven days left before the fight, I ate myself up to 192, increased the distance on my roadwork and upped my heavy bag stints to six minutes. Duane Fisk, the officer assigned as my trainer and second, warned me about overtraining, but I ignored him and kept pushing up until forty-eight hours before the bout. Then I decelerated to light calisthenics and studied my opponent.
From the back of the gym I watched Blanchard spar in the center ring. I looked for flaws in his basic attack and gauged his reactions when his sparring partners got cute. I saw that in clinches his elbows were tucked in to deflect body shots, leaving him open for jarring little uppercuts that would bring up his guard and set him up for counter hooks to the ribs. I saw that his best punch, the right cross, was always telegraphed with two half steps to the left and a head feint. I saw that on the ropes he was deadly, that he could keep lighter opponents pinned there with elbow steers alternated with short body blows. Moving closer, I
saw eyebrow scar tissue that I would have to avoid in order to prevent a stoppage on cuts. That rankled, but a long scar running down the left side of his ribcage looked like a juicy place to throw him a lot of hurt.
“At least he looks good with his shirt off.”
I turned to face the words. Kay Lake was staring at me; out of the corner of my eye I saw Blanchard, resting on his stool, staring at us. “Where’s your sketch pad?” I asked.
Kay waved at Blanchard; he blew her a kiss with two gloved hands. The bell rang, and he and his partner moved toward each other popping jabs. “I gave that up,” Kay said. “I wasn’t very good, so I changed my major.”
“To what?”
“To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history.”
“I like a woman who knows what she wants.”
Kay smiled. “So do I, but I don’t know any. What do you want?”
I eyeballed the gym. Thirty or forty spectators were seated in folding chairs around the center ring, most of them off-duty cops and reporters, most of them smoking. A dissipating haze hung over the ring, and the spotlight shining down from the ceiling gave it a sulfurous glow. All eyes were on Blanchard and his punchy, and all the shouts and catcalls were for him— but without me getting ready to avenge old business none of it meant a thing. “I’m part of this. That’s what I want.”
Kay shook her head. “You quit boxing five years ago. It’s not your life anymore.”
The woman’s aggressiveness was making me itchy. I blurted, “And your boyfriend’s a never-was just like me, and you were some sort of gang skirt before he picked you up. You—”