“No. I walked a bit. Wanted to play. Ended up back at La Vita. When I got back to my hotel she was waiting for me. She’d been waiting a long time.”
“Huh.” He set down his fork and sat back in his chair.
“Pop, you don’t look good,” I said again.
“You come into my house and insult me like that?” he muttered, feigning anger. “I look fantastic.” He flexed his arms and stuck out his chest, but I didn’t laugh, and he waved me off like I was no fun at all.
“I’m getting old, Benito. You just haven’t been here to see it. I feel good. I feel good,” he said, thumping his chest. “No complaints. Now tell me about Esther.”
“No, you tell me about her. I get the feeling you know a little more than you’re saying.”
“She . . . was waiting for you?” he asked, ignoring me. “At your hotel?” He frowned. “That ain’t safe.”
“In the lobby, Pop. Apparently, Ralph told her who I was and how to find me.”
“Ralph, huh?” My dad scowled.
“Ralph and Pete or whoever was working the door.”
“So you gonna tell me what happened or what?” he said, cutting into his steak.
“She wants me to help her.”
“Write her a song?”
“Manage her.”
He stopped carving. “What does that mean?”
“It means she wants me to handle her career. Find her work.”
“Well. Whaddaya know. Did you like her?”
“Yeah. But . . . Pop, what in the hell is going on? Who is this girl? And don’t tell me you don’t know. ’Cause this all just feels a little crazy to me.”
“Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?” Pop asked.
I sighed and shoved a piece of meat in my mouth. I hadn’t ever known my father to lie to me, but he would do what he damn well pleased until he was good and ready, and he had a meandering way of getting ready.
“Yeah. You did. You met Mom when you started working for Sal,” I said.
“Yeah. But she already knew who I was.”
“Because she saw you fight.” I answered the way I knew he expected me to.
“That’s right. She saw me fight. On the street. We used to stage our own bouts, right out in the open. People would throw down their bets, we’d whale on each other until the cops came, and then split the winnings. She saw me lose in spectacular fashion.”
I frowned. This part was new.
“I thought you only lost to Bo Johnson.”
“I did. But he beat me on the street before he beat me in the ring. I beat him sometimes too in the early days. He was quicker than I was, but I knew how to take a punch and keep going. I wasn’t afraid of him. He wasn’t afraid of me. We tried killing each other before we figured out we could work the crowds together. Make some good money. Hone our skills.”
“I didn’t know that. I thought you met after the war. After you were already the champ.”
“No. No. I knew Bo Johnson long before that. We were both born and raised in Harlem. We kind of looked out for each other. Oh, he had his gang, and I had mine. The Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Negros. Different neighborhoods run by different groups. Not much has changed, I guess. But some streets run together, neighborhoods overlap, and that’s what happened to us. You meet in the middle. Or you kill each other. We got along, me and Bo. Not sure why. But we did. He was my friend. And I loved him.”
I stared at him, my fork hovering over my plate. I wasn’t surprised by his sentiment; I was surprised he was sharing it. Pop loved hard, but he loved selectively. And he loved quietly. He was a man of action, not of expression.
“The war started,” Pop continued, ignoring my stare. “I went to France. He went to Texas. Didn’t see him again for a long time. He signed on with a promoter, and I managed to stay alive and come back home. We met up again in Harlem when he took my title. You know the rest.” Pop sighed, slow and heavy, and pushed his plate away. He’d only eaten a few bites.
“I really don’t know the rest, Pop. We haven’t talked about Bo Johnson since Mom died.”
“But you still remember?”
“I do. How could I forget?”
He sighed again and rubbed the bump on his nose. I had a bump just like it, and I rubbed at it just the same.
“You know . . . it’s funny,” I said. “Bo Johnson’s been on my mind since last night. And here we are . . . talking about him for the first time in twenty years.”
“Nobody ever talks about Bo Johnson anymore,” Pop muttered. “They should. He was the best.”
“What ever happened to him, Pop? Why did he come here that night? He told me not to talk . . . and I never did. I never, ever did. There were stories about him. About Sal. About a woman. But I didn’t understand most of it. I just knew I’d made a promise to not tell, and I kept it. I forgot all about him. When I listened to Esther sing . . . all that low, rumbly power. I thought of him. He had a voice like God.”
“Yeah. He did.” My father laughed like he was hearing that voice in his head. “He had a voice like God, and an ego to match. Bo got involved with a woman he shoulda left alone. Her name was Maude Alexander.”
I kept eating, hoping he’d go on. After a minute he did, though I could tell he was giving me the bare bones and leaving off the meat.
“You ever heard of Maude Alexander?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Her grandfather, Thaddeus Morley—her mother’s father—was one of this country’s first millionaires. He made his money building bridges and railroads. He built his fortune right alongside Cornelius Vanderbilt. He even built his mansion next door, on Fifth Avenue. That was a long time ago. The mansion is gone now . . . most of the Morleys are gone too. Maude’s father, Rudolf Alexander, was a bootlegger. He took the Morley money and used their railroads to move his booze. He made a killing during Prohibition and even more money during the second war. If you control the movement of goods, you control the world. He got involved with the labor unions too. He has a law degree that he waves around, and he’s smart enough to make the little man think he is on his side. He even ran for president a couple times as ‘the voice of the common man.’” He laughed, mirthlessly. “He wasn’t ever one of the little guys.”
“So what happened to Maude?”
“She was what they call a socialite. Rich. Beautiful. One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Name always in the papers. But she didn’t just go to parties and make the fashion pages. She was a trained opera singer. Giuliana loved her voice. We used to listen to her on the Sunday Night Showcase on WOR. We took you to hear her sing once. You mighta been too young to remember. We were going to leave you with Nonna, but your mother said she wanted you to hear. Giuliana was sick and going out was hard, but it was a concert in the park, a little more family friendly. So we brought you along. Sal and Aunt Theresa came too.
“You and your mother were transfixed. You hardly moved. You sat in her lap, and you wore the same expression. Pure happiness. Peace. It was beautiful. The woman had a voice. She was really something.”
“I think I remember her name . . . now that you mention it.”