Страница 114 из 194
He went up to his room and lay down on his bed. That was one way to save money. He had to figure how to get from today to Friday on ten bucks. The skin under his eyes smarted where Quayles had peppered him. The air conditioning in the room was almost useless and the desert heat made him sweat.
He closed his eyes and slept uneasily, dreaming. He dreamt of France. It had been the best time of his life and he often dreamt about the moment on the shore of the Mediterranean, although it had been almost five years ago now, and the dreams were losing their intensity.
He woke, remembering the dream, sighed as the sea and the white buildings disappeared and he was surrounded once more by the cracked Las Vegas walls.
He had gone down to the Côte d’Azur after wi
The Frenchman had taken something out of him and nobody was writing that he should be considered for a shot at the title anymore. The time between bouts became greater and greater and the purses smaller and smaller. Twice he had to take a dive for walking-around money and Teresa closed him off entirely and if it hadn’t been for the kid he’d have just gotten up and left.
Lying in the heat on the wrinkled bed, he thought of all these things and remembered what his brother had told him that day at the Hotel Warwick. He wondered if Rudolph had followed his career and was saying, to his snooty sister, “I told him it would happen.”
Screw his brother.
Well, maybe on Friday night, there’d be some of the old juice in him and he’d score spectacularly. People could start hanging around him again and he’d made a comeback. Plenty of fighters—older than he—had made comebacks. Look at Jimmy Braddock, down to being a day laborer and then beating Max Baer for the heavy weight championship of the world. Schultzy just had to pick his opponents for him more carefully—keep him away from the dancers, give him somebody who came to fight. He’d have to have a talk with Schultzy. And not only about that. He had to get some money in advance, before Friday, to keep alive in this lousy town.
Two, three good wins and he could forget all this. Two, three good wins and they’d be asking for him in Paris again and he’d be down on the Côte sitting at a sidewalk café, drinking vin rosé and looking out at the masts of the boats anchored in the harbor. With real luck he might even get to rent one of them, sail around, out of reach of everybody. Maybe only two, three fights a year just to keep the bank balance comfortable.
Just thinking about it made him cheerful again and he was just about to go downstairs and put his ten bucks on the come at the crap table when the phone rang.
It was Cora, Quayles’s wife and she sounded demented, screaming and crying into the phone. “He’s found out, he’s found out,” she kept saying. “Some lousy bellboy got to him. He nearly killed me just now. I think he broke my nose, I’m going to be a cripple the rest of my life …”
“Go easy now,” Thomas said. “What has he found out?”
“You know what he found out. He’s on his way right now to …”
“Wait a minute. What did you tell him?”
“What the hell do you think I told him?” she screamed. “I told him no. Then he clouted me across the face. I’m blood all over. He doesn’t believe me. That lousy bellboy in your hotel must’ve had a telescope or something. You’d better get out of town. This minute. He’s on his way over to see you, I tell you. Christ knows what he’ll do to you. And later on, to me. Only I’m not waiting. I’m going to the airport right now. I’m not even packing a bag. And I advise you to do the same. Only stay away from me. You don’t know him. He’s a murderer. Just get on something and get out of town. Fast.”
Thomas hung up on the terrified, high-pitched babble. He looked at his one valise in a corner of the room, then stood up and went to the window and peered out through the Venetian blinds. The street was empty in the four o’clock afternoon desert glare. Thomas went over to the door and made sure it was unlocked. Then he moved the one chair to a corner. He didn’t want to get charged and sent backward over the chair in the first rush.
He sat on the bed, smiling a little. He had never run away from a fight and he wasn’t going to run away from this one. And this one might be the most enjoyable fight of his entire career. The small hotel room was no place for jabbers and dancers.
He got up and went over to the closet and took out a leather windjacket and put it on, zipping it up high and turning the collar up to protect his throat. Then he sat on the edge of the bed again, waiting placidly, hunched over a little, his hands hanging loose between his legs. He heard a car screech to a halt in front of the hotel, but he didn’t move. One minute later there were steps outside in the hall and then the door was flung open and Quayles came into the room, stopping just inside the doorway.
“Hi,” Thomas said. He stood up slowly.
Quayles closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock.
“I know all about it, Jordache,” Quayles said.
“About what?” Thomas asked mildly, keeping his eyes on Quayles’s feet for the first hint of movement.
“About you and my wife.”
“Oh, yes,” Thomas said. “I’ve been screwing her. Did I forget to mention it?”
He was ready for the leap and almost laughed when he saw Quayles, that dandy and stylist of the ring, lead with a blind long right, a sucker’s punch if ever there was one. Because he was ready, Thomas went inside it easily, tied Quayles up, held onto him, with no referee to part them, and clubbed at Quayles’s body, with delicious, pent-up ferocity. Then, old street fighter with all the tricks, he rushed Quayles to the wall, ignoring the man’s attempt to writhe out of his grasp, stepped back just far enough to savage Quayles with an uppercut, then closed, wrestled, hit, held, used his elbows, his knee, butted Quayles’s forehead with his head, wouldn’t let him drop, but kept him up against the wall with his left hand around Quayles’s throat, and pounded at his face with one brutal right hand after another. When he stepped back, Quayles crumpled onto the blood-stained rug and lay there on his face, out cold.
There was a frantic knocking on the door and he heard Schultzy’s voice in the hall. He unlocked the door and let Schultzy in.
Schultzy took the whole thing in with one glance.
“You stupid bastard,” he said, “I saw that bird-brained wife of his and she told me. I thought I’d get here in time. You’re a great indoor fighter, aren’t you, Tommy? You can’t beat your grandmother for dough, but when it comes to fighting for nothing you’re the all-time beauty.” He knelt beside Quayles, motionless on the rug. Schultzy turned him over, examined the cut on Quayles’s forehead, ran his hand alongside Quayles’s jaw. “I think you broke his jaw. Idiots. He won’t be able to fight this Friday or a month of Fridays. The boys’re going to like that. They’re going to like it a lot. They’ve got a big investment tied up in this horse’s ass—” He prodded the inert Quayles fiercely. “They’re going to be just overjoyed you took him apart. If I was you I’d start going right now, before I get this—this husband out of the room and into a hospital. And I’d keep on going until I got to an ocean and then I’d cross the ocean and if I wanted to stay alive I wouldn’t come back for ten years. And don’t go by plane. By the time the plane comes down anywhere, they’ll be waiting for you and they won’t be waiting for you with roses in their hands.”