“What’s the matter?”
“Just tired, from writing.”
“You should go home and rest, you haven’t looked good for a while.”
“Is Tom back?”
“Vacation.”
“Still?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“This is like the longest vacation ever. What about his case? The woman torched her kid. I’m supposed to be working on it with him and he hasn’t talked to me in weeks.”
“He got relieved on that.”
“What?”
“Sure, a while back. You didn’t know?”
“Why?”
“It was right before he went on vacation as I recall.”
“Not when, why?”
“No one knows really.”
“What the fuck is going on here exactly?”
No one knew, I went home.
I did feel better when I thought of Jalen being safe for at least a few more months, couldn’t wait to write him with the good news. I supposed Toomberg was right about the respect thing too, especially if the nine were going to rule the way he thought they would.
When I saw Assado sitting in the hallway just to the side of my apartment door it took all my restraint to keep from kicking him in the face. “Who are you?” I said. “Can I help you?”
“I thought you might want to let me take a look around your apartment,” he said and he pointed at my door.
“Why would you think that exactly?”
“Well I know you want to cooperate so I thought you would save me the trouble of getting a warrant.”
“A warrant, really? A warrant based on what Assado?”
“Detective.”
“I’m curious Mondongo, what evidence, if any, you would present in support of that warrant.”
“Are you saying I cannot enter your apartment?”
“That’s right. Now I’ve answered all your questions, answer my single one. What would you say to get that warrant?”
“Remember before, I told you how I think most of the people I arrest actually feel relief? For whatever the reason, I have observed a need to confess among the guilty, a need to purge so to speak. What do you think about that?”
“I think this is as good a time as any to end this conversation as well as any future contact.”
“You think? Because frankly I feel like we’re just getting started. Have you ever been to confession?”
“No.”
“You sure? Because I’m told the person confessing really does feel a lot better afterwards. More to the point, have you heard of a show called Clerical Confessions?”
“A show?”
“Yeah on TV. Well actually it’s not TV it’s HBO. Heard of it?”
“No.”
“You sure? Anyway I guess what happens is they secretly videotape people confessing. As in to a priest, you understand?”
“I think so.”
“When I first heard about the show, it’s in pre-production now, I didn’t give it much thought. But now I picture all sorts of law enforcement possibilities attaching to it. Are you catching my drift? I mean can’t you imagine a videotape showing an individual confessing his sensational crime to a priest? Sure there’s all sorts of clergy privilege issues but imagine the priest willingly providing the tape apparently in some sort of retaliation for the confessor having destroyed his little cubicle or whatever they call it. Can you imagine all that? What would you make of it?”
“Once again I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about?”
“Not the slightest?”
“Not.”
“Okay well since you won’t let me in I guess I’ll be leaving. Of course if you haven’t figured it out by now we’ll probably be seeing each other fairly soon. Unless there’s something you want to say to me now.”
“There is.”
“Shoot.”
“You have change for a dollar?”
He did and after he left I went outside and used it to call Dane from a pay phone.
chapter 29
Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te fibula narrator.
—Horace
The Benitez/Hearns fight would not be the last between members of The Quintet. Incredibly, the year 1983 would belong to Roberto Duran. The same fighter everyone wrote off as washed-up following his loss to Laing was reborn that year, cementing his status as one of history’s truly great fighters in the process.
First, in January of that year, Duran fought Pipino Cuevas. The fight featured two former welterweight champions each trying to register a much-needed significant win. At twenty-six, Cuevas was five years younger than Duran and, having followed the Hearns disaster with two impressive knockout victories and a close decision loss, certainly appeared to have more left than the seemingly spent Duran who had lost two of his last three fights and who had failed to score a knockout victory in eight fights and almost three years. Cuevas appeared to have the clear advantage is what I’m saying. Instead, Duran began his latest series of surprises by stopping Cuevas in the fourth round.
The impressive victory removed some of the taint of the Laing loss and as a result Duran was given a shot at the WBA junior-middleweight title held by Davey Moore. Moore, a good fighter with impeccable amateur credentials, was one of Boxing’s rising young stars having won his title in just his ninth professional fight and having made three defenses, two of which were highly impressive knockouts of very good fighters. He was far bigger than Duran with a sculpted body and legitimate punching power and he was favored by a clear most. The fight was held on June 16 in Madison Square Garden before a decidedly pro-Duran crowd.
The stage was set for the young champion to finish what Laing had started by convincingly defeating Duran and thereby hastening the end of his career. Of course by the time the fight was stopped by his corner in the eighth round, Moore had lost every round, his eye was grotesquely swollen, he had visited the canvas ass first, his mother had fainted in the audience, and he lay against the ropes with seemingly little clue to where he was or what he should do next. Improbably, Roberto Duran was again a Champion of the World. The arrogant Duran surveyed the boxing landscape and saw no one he wouldn’t fight.
That included Undisputed Middleweight Champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler who had gone to court to make the part starting with Marvelous his legal name. Hagler had all the looks of a dominant champion and I’m not just referring to the bald head, chiseled body, and menacing beard. During his three year reign he had made seven successful defenses all by impressive knockout and overall he hadn’t lost a fight in eight years. As a natural middleweight he was another opponent who was considerably bigger than the five-foot-seven Duran and, unlike Duran, he was in his prime as a fighter. Duran signed to fight him on November 10, 1983, in Vegas, in what would be Hagler’s first superfight. Given the extreme unlikelihood that Duran would fight cautiously by either grabbing or moving and Hagler’s obvious punching power, the potential for Duran’s first conclusive knockout loss loomed large.
But once again the greatness of Duran was undeniable. Although he lost a close decision there was no question who the more impressive fighter in that ring was. Against a far bigger and stronger opponent who many suspected, correctly it turns out, would ultimately prove to be one of the greatest middleweights in history, Duran, years removed from his prime and fighting a full twenty-five pounds higher than his ideal weight, was very effective, as expected rarely taking a backwards step but more importantly also boxing brilliantly at times and never really being in trouble. In many ways the loss was his most impressive fight. Throughout the Hispanic community Duran was back, the disgrace against Leonard forgotten based on the way he had engaged and defanged the perceived monster Hagler. Everywhere, that community’s Boxing-mad fathers bought their sons a papa rellena and told them Roberto Duran was our greatest fighter and again a true Man.
Boxing being a zero-sum deal, Duran’s gain in prestige was Hagler’s loss. For all the reasons state
d, his failure to stop the older, smaller man reflected poorly on him. While Hagler waited for his chance at redemption, Duran decided to keep making big money and signed to fight Thomas Hearns for his WBC junior-middleweight title.
Meanwhile Sugar Ray Leonard watched the Duran/Hagler fight, saw Hagler’s apparent vulnerability, and decided he should unretire and fight Hagler after all, despite the risk to his eye. The plan called for him to first fight a tuneup bout against someone named Kevin Howard. On May 11,1984, Leonard fought Howard and he didn’t look good, even hitting the canvas for the first time in his career before winning by ninth-round knockout. Discouraged by his performance and what it seemingly bode for a fight against Hagler, Leonard immediately retired again.
The Hearns/Duran fight took place about one month later on June 15, 1984 and it was one of those rare boxing events that actually inspires nothing short of awe-filled fear. With thirty seconds left in the first round Hearns landed a clean right cross (what else?) to Duran’s jaw and Duran went straight down. He got up, not overly well, and survived the following flurry as the bell sounded. This is where the fear part came in because between rounds Duran, who had over seventy professional fights at the time, mistakenly went to a neutral corner where his trainers had to go and fetch him. In other words, this was a punch he wouldn’t be recovering from but you also knew his corner wouldn’t stop the fight. At the start of the second Hearns swarmed Duran against the ropes, mostly missing, until he seemed to step back to give himself room to throw his signature punch. The right landed squarely to the side of Duran’s face and his reaction was instantaneous. His gloved hands dropped like an abandoned marionette’s and he slowly crashed face-first to the canvas, unable to break his fall in any way. The referee immediately stopped the fight, probably thinking a casket needed to be ordered. Duran’s cornermen rushed into the ring to stand him up. After some time Duran pushed them away and seemed to ask what was happening.
Hearns’s scary victory and Leonard’s latest retirement made the next big fight an obvious one. After posting two more knockout victories each, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas “Hitman” Hearns fought on April 15, 1985. It was one of the greatest, most violent fights in boxing history and it lasted only three rounds.
The first round, which usually involves little action and is almost always characterized by a cautious feeling out process, was especially extreme. Hagler, perhaps still stinging from criticism that he was too passive against Duran and probably also realizing that, despite his considerable boxing skills, he could not outbox from a distance the man who had outboxed Leonard and Benitez, came out intent on creating the kind of war that would negate Hearns’s height and reach advantage. Hearns reacted to Hagler’s aggressive bombs in the only manner befitting his greatness. He didn’t hold Hagler or move away in the hopes of weathering the early storm until he could follow his gameplan that called for sticking and moving. No, he planted his feet and unleashed hell right back on Hagler. One of the very greatest offensive fighters ever let loose with everything at his disposal in service of attempted murder.
The first savage right cross went practically through Hagler’s hairless pate. The same punch that had iced so many, that had paralyzed Cuevas and Duran, now tested one of history’s greatest shock-absorbing chins. Hagler was hurt like never before or since but he didn’t go down. The force of the punch went through to his legs and straightened them but he took it and covered up. He recovered and started throwing again prompting a still more furious response from Hearns and so on. They traded punches like in no first round ever seen and somewhere in there Hagler adjusted to the inhuman power of Hearns, Hearns broke his right hand on Hagler’s head, and Hagler’s punches started to increasingly affect Hearns. At the end of the round the crowd seemed to be in a state of delirious exhaustion.
In the second round, Hearns began to box from the outside at his corner’s urging but now his legs didn’t look so great and despite guarded success in that round the option of doing that for an entire fight seemed irretrievably lost. In the third, Hearns cut Hagler above the eye, an angry cut that the ref had the ring doctor look at. A desperate Hagler, fearful that the fight would be stopped on cuts, began waging full-scale war again. Shortly thereafter he landed a looping right that wasn’t particularly vicious but that functioned like the final drop of water that causes a flood. Hearns’s legs were now completely gone. He stumbled across the ring with Hagler in pursuit. The ensuing punches from Hagler were really window dressing and Hearns slumped to the canvas giving Hagler his greatest victory and leaving Hearns to rebuild from another devastating defeat.
Blood streaming down his face, his heavily-muscled arms raised, Hagler looked invincibly evil. Leonard gave no indication that he would end his latest retirement. But the following year, when Hagler again looked beatable in defending his title with an eleventh-round knockout of John “The Beast” Mugabi, Leonard announced he would again unretire for the purpose of fighting Hagler, this time without any tune-up fights beforehand. The boxing world would finally get the fight it had longed for.
On April 6, 1987, the fight took place in Las Vegas. Both in their thirties, neither fighter was what he once was and the fight, though highly dramatic, was truthfully only a slightly-above-average affair. Hagler started slowly, showing his age and giving away a lot of early rounds. Then Leonard tired and Hagler came on strong. In the end, Leonard received a disputed decision. Hagler sought an immediate rematch but about a month after the fight Leonard announced he was again retiring. Seeing that the Leonard rematch would never happen, Hagler retired as well and never fought again. He was rich and healthy and wherever he goes today someone tells him he won the fight, that he was robbed. The retirement of Leonard, who had shown little interest in defending any of his newly-won middleweight titles, created multiple championship vacancies in that storied division. One of the vacancies was filled when, in October of 1987, Hearns smoked the Argentinian Juan Roldan to take one of the middleweight titles and become the first boxer to win titles in four different weight classes. Leonard then announced he was ending his latest retirement with the goal of winning his fourth and fifth titles; no one really mentioned the eye anymore. He accomplished his goal on November 7, 1988, when he knocked out someone named Donnie Lalonde to somehow simultaneously win titles in both the super-middleweight and light-heavyweight divisions, bringing his career total to five. (The thing with the titles was becoming more ridiculous with each passing day as seemingly every other second a new weight class was created complete with about thirteen different organizations ready to declare their “champion.”)
In the meantime Hearns was slipping fast. Defending his middleweight title against Iran Barkley on June 6, 1988, he was of course dominating when suddenly, in the third round, he got hit with a wild right hand that left him out on his feet and barely upright; upright, that is, until Barkley landed another right that finished the job, knocking Hearns down and out. When in his next fight he again visited the canvas in posting an unimpressive decision victory over James Kinchen, the consensus was that the shopworn Hearns was truly finished. On the bright side, Sugar Ray was, not coincidentally, finally willing to give Hearns that rematch he had ached for for so long. The fight was scheduled for June 12, 1989, and Leonard was the heavy favorite.
Roberto Duran meanwhile had fought no one of note following his loss to Hearns, winning seven fights but also losing a decision to someone named Robbie Sims. Yet so electric was the Duran name that he nevertheless received a title shot against the new champion Iran Barkley. Duran was thirty-seven, hadn’t fought a significant fight in five years, and was fighting a strong middleweight in his prime who was coming off an impressive knockout victory over an all-time great. Naturally Duran dominated Barkley, dropping him in the eleventh round and winning his fourth title by decision.
When Leonard/Hearns II took place four months later it was billed as The War. From the very start it became apparent that Hearns wasn’t the only one who had lost a lot as Leonard l
ooked slow and hesitant to pull the trigger on his punches. That said, both men appeared to be at similar stages in their deterioration making for an exciting evenly-matched fight. But whereas their first fight eight years earlier had featured consummate skill, this one was more about two great men unwilling to surrender their ghosts. Hearns in particular—after admitting he was so haunted by the 1981 defeat that he thought more about Leonard than his woman—fought like he would rather die than lose again. He also fought better than he had in years, twice dropping Leonard with rights and generally controlling the fight throughout despite ultimately settling for a controversial draw in what was a scintillating, dramatic, great fight that featured ringside commentator Marvelous Marvin Hagler openly rooting for “Tommy.”
That should’ve been it really if there was any kind of warm rhythm to these things. Instead Leonard and Duran inexplicably mixed it up a third time on December 7, 1989, a mere nine years after the infamous no mas fight. The predictably tepid fight went to Leonard and a few weeks later the boxing decade these five men had dominated came to a close. Except for Hagler, they would all fight in the nineties but never against each other and never with anything like the former hoopla attaching.
On the decided periphery of all this interstitial fistic mayhem that characterized the mid-to-late-eighties stood Wilfred Benitez. Five months after losing to Hearns, Benitez fought Tony Cerda. Cerda was not a bad little fighter and an expert at kissing his cousin, having fought to a draw in four of his last five bouts. Benitez won an easy ten-round decision. It was his forty-eighth professional fight of which he had lost only two and each of those to a fellow great. There was no shame in that. He was twenty-four and still a premier fighter.
But insensate Time is nothing if not cruel and heartless. It corrodes then destroys, so that the man you literally and figuratively looked up to with your chubby face, who scooped you up to cross the street and patted you on the head to laughter, will later look through you from a crooked hospital bed then blindly up at you while wearing makeup in a bargain casket. The people who now surround you generating warmth will disappear leaving only an empty chill; the body you own and the brain it houses will malfunction. And sometimes, especially in Boxing, even a twenty-four-year-old can become an old man overnight.
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 73