“Jordan?” Miss Patterson’s voice fluttered, then faltered.
“Yeah,” I said as I stepped in front of her, waving my hand in front of her eyes, which seemed to have lost focus. “Jordan Marsh—you know the guy I mean—tall, graying temples, killer smile, great ass?”
“No.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “No? You don’t know him?”
Stepping out of my way, she looked flustered. “I mean, no, I haven’t seen him.”
“I guess you wouldn’t be this cool, calm, and collected if you had?” I asked, biting back a smile. “He was supposed to stop by for his VIP passes.”
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me all about him,” she said, as she followed me to the outer door.
My hand on the knob, I paused. “Not a chance,” I shot back. “I’m saving all my Hollywood scuttlebutt for that tell-all book I’m going to write.” That, of course, was a lie, but it sounded good. I made a mental note to use it again at the first opportunity. “I’m headed to the Arena,” I added. “I’ll leave the passes here. If he comes before you go, fine. If not, lock up anyway—he knows how to find me.”
* * *
MUSIC pulsed from the beehive of speakers hanging above the ring where Tortilla Padilla would rendezvous with his destiny in less than two hours. The technical crew made final adjustments, not only to the sound system, but to the lights and the projected screen images as well. Television cameras covering every angle were each manned by a cameraman shooting background shots. A few patrons dressed in evening finery with drinks in hand mingled in the ringside section—lesser VIPs who were most likely representatives of some of the sponsors. The real celebrities waited until they had an audience before making their entrance.
Jerry, a microphone hooked over one ear and extending to his lips, spoke rapidly as he gestured to his team of in-arena security people who had gathered at the side of the ring. He’d traded his informal attire for a dark suit, white shirt, and understated tie.
I made my way down to the floor, then waited until he finished his briefing and had dismissed his people before I stepped in beside him. “How’s it shaping up?” I asked.
“A few surprises, but nothing major. We knew one senator was coming and had his security detail in place when another senator got wind of it and demanded to be front and center as well.” Jerry ran a hand over his bare pate. “We’ve been scrambling half the afternoon negotiating with his muscle and PR people.”
“The spin doctors are really my burden,” I said, as I scanned the arena. “Why didn’t you get my office involved?” On my second pass I saw Jordan and Rudy as they paused in one of the doorways. Waving, I caught their attention then motioned for them to join me.
“Fool that I am, I decided to take it myself,” Jerry remarked with a chuckle. “I couldn’t imagine the PR people could be that bad. After one particularly odious witch took a couple of bites out of my ass, I almost bailed and called you.”
“Being barracudas is part of their job description,” I said. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
“Scars to prove what?” asked Jordan, as he and Rudy joined us. The two of them looked delicious, all spit-and-polished in their tailored suits and broad smiles.
“Scars on my heart to prove men can’t be trusted,” I replied as Jordan shook hands with Jerry, then introduced Rudy.
“You got to kiss a lot of frogs . . .” Jordan said, as he bussed my cheek, then grabbed my hand and hooked it through his elbow.
“To find your prince, I know,” I said. “But nobody warned me about the toads.”
Jordan gave me a knowing look. “Sweetheart, they come as a shock to all of us.”
“How’s our boy doing tonight?” Rudy asked.
I assumed he meant Tortilla Padilla. Rudy was his lawyer and had negotiated all the contracts for the fight. “Why don’t we go see?” I said.
Rudy hooked my free hand through his arm. After saying goodbye to Jerry, like Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow, we charged off three abreast through the tunnel to find our main event. I hummed a few bars of “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” which earned grins from my two escorts.
Crash, his feet spread, his hands on his hips, blocked the entrance to the dressing rooms. “Hey Ms. O’Toole, Mr. Gillespi, Mr. Marsh.”
“Crash.” Jordan extended his hand, which was dwarfed in the big mans. “How’s our boy doing?”
“He’s doin’ good. Real good.” Crash glanced around then lowered his voice. “But between you and me, he’s a bit jumpier than usual.”
“There’s a lot riding on tonight,” I added. I saw the worry in Crash’s eyes as he nodded at me, then stepped aside and opened the door.
“Go on in. He’s expecting you guys.” As I passed, Crash grabbed my arm momentarily and whispered in my ear. “Make him smile—it’ll calm him down.”
People invite me to parties as the comic relief, so I’m pretty confident of my talents in that department. However, when I got my first glimpse of Tortilla Padilla, his face drawn, his eyes worried, his posture stiff, I knew I needed to conjure championship-level flippancy.
The normally effervescent fighter sat on a training table, his feet dangling, his hands wrapped and bound into his gloves, his personality absent. Like a wooden puppet whose strings had been cut, he slouched, drawing in on himself. He looked up and managed a weak smile when we entered the small room, which smelled of Bengay, rubbing alcohol, sweat... and a whiff of fear.
If we didn’t loosen up our man, I doubted he could stand up, much less throw a punch. Mother always said it takes two to make a good fight—although I don’t think she was referring to prizefights, the reference applied. And right now the fighter in Tortilla Padilla was MIA.
Jordan and Rudy, their smiles on the highest candlepower setting, rushed to greet Torti. With back slaps and high fives, they did their best to boost his mood. After a few minutes of the cocky-banter thing, I could see the stiffness in his posture ease a bit.
I shouldered in between Jordan and Rudy. ‘T don’t follow the fight game too closely,” I said to Tortilla Padilla, as three sets of eyes turned my direction. “But there’s something I always wondered about.”
“Do I worry about getting hurt?” the fighter asked, anticipating my question.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ve always wondered, with your hands laced into those gloves—you can’t take them off by yourself, right?”
A serious expression on his face, he looked at me with troubled eyes and shook his head.
Keeping my face blank, I said, “Who holds your peter when you need to pee?”
A moment passed as the three men looked at me; nobody said anything. Then, almost in unison, they burst out laughing. In that instant, the tension fled, and the Tortilla Padilla I knew reappeared.
He leapt off the table, and grabbed me in a bear hug. Stepping back, his eyes dancing, he said, “That lady is called the peter-holder, and we check her credentials very carefully.”
Since I couldn’t grab his hand, I gave Torti’s face a pat. “Knock ‘em out, Champ.”
* * *
PATRONS were streaming into the arena when Jordan, Rudy, and I left the locker room. Music thumped from the speakers at a decibel or two under my pain threshold. Spotlights played on the ring, amplifying the darkness in the rest of the cavernous space. Clad in the requisite tux, the MC for the evening prowled the ropes, waiting for his cue.
The energy of the crowd rose as Glinda Lovato, in her tiny orange bikini and heels, ducked through the ropes and sashayed around the ring. Several in the crowd signaled their approval with ear-splitting wolf whistles.
When she passed by me, our eyes locked and, for the briefest moment, her smile vanished. Then, she looked away, cranked her smile back to full wattage, and moved on.
That woman was angling for a fight, and she was going to get it. My Taser comment to Jeremy had been a joke, but now, as I watched Glinda’s rippling phy
sique, her feral grace as she moved around the ring, I wished I’d actually followed through. Of course, getting one of the stun guns past Security would have been a trick.
Glinda’s sidekick, a younger, softer blonde in a hot-pink bikini and heels, stepped through the ropes and did her turn around the ring, eliciting more enthusiastic whistles. The two women apparently were going to tag team as the Round Card Girls for tonight’s fight.
Jordan ducked out the side entrance so he could make his grand arrival when the timing was right. Rudy headed for the bar in the VIP section, and I made my way to the foot of the steps to greet the Big Boss and his party, who were descending from the entrance level.
After I said my hellos to all of his guests, my father pulled me aside. “Where’s Teddie? Is everything good between you two?”
“Sure,” I said, keeping my eyes on Glinda Lovato as she again paraded for the crowd. “He’s running the show tonight at Babel, so he’s staying up there, going through final preparations and all of that.”
“I see.” He gave me a piercing look as if trying to blast through my bullshit. He could try, but he was up against the master.
Finally it hit me that the Big Boss had no Mona on his arm. “Where’s Mother?”
“Still pouting, I guess. I haven’t talked to her.” He put on a brave face. “You women.”
“We are strange creatures, indeed.” I said, as I took his arm. “Come on, we ‘ve got guests to entertain.”
With Bakker Rutan, the stunning actress who insisted Las Vegas was too depressing to be seen in the daylight, on his arm, Jordan made his entrance to the roar of the crowd. As the spotlights captured them, they waved from the entrance, then made their way down to our little corner of the universe.
At the bottom of the steps, Jordan peeled away from Ms. Rutan, leaving her to fend for herself.
I gave him a dirty look as I went to rescue the actress from the embarrassment of not having a fawning fan near.
When I passed by Jordan, he whispered in my ear, “Be careful of that one. She’s pretty, but she’s poisonous. A real bloodsucker.”
“With her aversion to daylight, I did wonder,” I snapped, and was rewarded with a grin.
Ms. Rutan was tall and, in the current Hollywood mold, painfully thin. Her skin, pale to the point of translucence, pooled in her hollows, accentuating each bone. She wore a simple flowing sheath of the palest pink silk, which hung on her gaunt frame as if from a hanger—her body having no form underneath it. When she turned her eyes to me, they were cold, lifeless, and the palest blue—as if she’d been drained of blood and preserved in ice. Her face showed no welcome or hint of interest as I approached.
Introducing myself to our actress, I steered her toward the Big Boss’s group. Pawning her off on him, I dove in and did the meet-and-mingle thing. Spying a couple of our corporate investors from New York that I actually liked, I joined them while the MC got the evening’s undercard bouts under way.
Wetting my whistle with a glass of Bordeaux, I played my part, taking little interest in the fights until the bell sounded and the arena quieted as the announcer began his pitch for the title bout. My heart leapt into my throat. A giant hand squeezed my stomach.
A nervous hush fell over the crowd as the announcer turned the MC duties to renowned ring maestro, Winston Wiler. Dark hair giving way to silver, trim and handsome in his tuxedo, he bounced onto the stage. A spotlight followed him as he stoked the fires.
“Are you ready?” he shouted.
The crowd rewarded him with an anemic yell that barely elevated the underlying noise level.
“Are you ready?” he shouted again, much louder this time.
Now the crowd responded with a resounding, “Yes!”
“Tonight for the thousands of you watching, and the millions tuning in worldwide, the title of Undisputed Middleweight Champion of the World hangs in the balance.” Mr. Wiler gestured toward a corner of the Arena. The spotlights immediately congregated there. “From the Ukraine, undefeated in his first forty-six professional bouts, holding the title of Middleweight Champion as well as a PhD in Romance Languages, Mr. Yvegny Kutz, also known as Doctor Demolition!”
Dressed in white, the current champion bounded down the aisle and stepped through the ropes. From the neck down, he looked every inch one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world. Above the neck, he had mousy brown hair that stuck out in uneven tufts—as if he’d put his head in a blender—a flat face, and a sullen expression. All rather pedestrian if you overlooked that angry, streetwise, chip-on-his-shoulder sneer. Doctor Demolition looked ready, willing, and able to fight—facts that knotted the worry in my stomach.
The crowd vigorously shouted, “Booooooo.”
“And now . . .” Mr. Wiler shouted over the derision of the crowd, as fanfare trumpeted from the speakers.
The crowd stood, clapping and cheering. Feet stomped until I thought the roof would fall. The noise, the excitement, the release that came from yelling and booing, all combined into a heady rush, carrying me along.
“From the United States of America . . .”
The crowd let out a whoop. One particularly vocal guy in the stands above us shouted, “Knock the shit out of Kutz the Putz!”
While it was not resoundingly original, I seconded that emotion. Caught up in the frenzy, I felt like shouting something obscene, but I stifled myself. The Big Boss would be horrified. Come to think of it, I would be, too. What was it with me lately? Somewhere along the way I had started losing my grasp on me.
“... the former undisputed, undefeated Middleweight Champion of the Universe, Tiny Tortilla Padilla!” Mr. Wiler had to shout into the microphone to be heard as the crowd went wild.
Pumping his fists and dressed in his signature red, white, and blue, Torti Padilla bounded down the aisle, through the ropes, and around the ring, his megawatt smile at full intensity. He pranced and preened. Throwing jabs and shadowboxing, he milked the crowd, working them into a frenzy.
While the boxers danced and flexed, the MC introduced the Nevada Athletic Commission, the sanctioning body for the fight. Each member made his way into the ring, slapped first one fighter, then the other on the shoulder, and basked in his one minute of fame.
On his way to the bar, Jordan stopped and said in my ear, “That European won’t know what hit him—he’s never faced a scrapper like Torti. The fastest hands and reflexes I’ve ever seen. And a wily fighter, to boot.”
“Let’s hope Dr. Demolition doesn’t flatten our Tortilla,” I said, in a feeble attempt at levity that fell flat. Both Jordan and I knew, if this fight was one fight too many, Torti could end up with scrambled eggs for brains.
“Mex retired with the titles,” Jordan said, as he eyed the fighters in the ring. “After tonight, they’ll be his again.”
I clung to his confidence the way a swimmer caught in a riptide clung to a rope tethered to shore.
Jordan continued his search for a fresh drink and I turned my attention back to the ring, where the MC was now introducing any and all boxing luminaries in the crowd. One by one, they waved to the crowd as they made their way into the ring. There, they greeted each fighter.
The buzz of the crowd grew with each former fighter introduced, with each obscure official taking his place in the ring, with each senator who insisted on mingling with the important people.
Anticipation ignited the crowd like a torch to tinder. They clapped. They jeered.
The bottled-up energy and emotion shot my blood pressure through the roof.
“And now,” Mr. Wiler shouted, his voice tinged with excitement. “One last man who needs no introduction. An Olympic champion, as a professional this fighter defeated seventeen world champions, won ten world titles in six different weight classes . . .” The MC fell silent, and stepped aside.
Oscar de la Hoya stepped through the ropes.
The crowd exploded.
Oscar greeted the fighters, lingering with Torti Padilla. He waved to the crowd and
flashed a smile, then stepped out of the spotlight.
With the introductions made and the ring clearing, Mr. Wiler added his trademark, “Are you ready to rrrrrumble?”
The crowd went berserk. If I’d been in the stands, I’d probably be wearing more beer right now than I could drink in a month.
Crash, his face a mask, eased through the ropes and settled into Torti’s corner, his bucket at the ready.
With relatively little fanfare, the referee for the evening took over as the fighters stepped to their corners to shrug off their capes. When ready, their trainers stuffed in their mouthpieces, whispered last words in their ears, then sent their charges to the center of the ring. Bouncing on their toes, shaking their arms at their sides, the fighters glared at each other as the referee laid out the rules.
They hadn’t thrown a punch and I was already a wreck as I watched Torti return to sit on the small stool in his corner. His hair glistened with styling gel, but his face was wet with sweat. His dark eyes were two holes of intensity, windows to the soul of a champion. His face, drawn tight with concentration, showed no fear.
Did he have one more valiant fight in him?
The Big Boss stepped in by my side. I’ve got a hundred Gs on our man,” he said.
“Last I heard, the line had Dr. Demolition eight to five.” I said, as I sipped my wine, my eyes never leaving Torti. He might not be showing any fear, but I wasn’t so lucky—my hand shook, my heart pounded.
The bell rang and the fighters shot off their stools, springing to the middle of the ring where they touched gloves and separated. Dancing around each other, they threw tentative jabs, testing, teasing. Torti saw an opening and pounced in a flurry of jabs. Several landed with meaty thunks against the champion’s midsection.
So close, I could hear Dr. Demolition’s grunts of pain as he absorbed Torti’s blows.
Desperate for first blood, the crowd roared, urging the fighters on.
Lucky Stiff (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Book 2) Page 31