“You don’t want a ride home?” he protested.
“Nah. I’m at the Park Sheraton. I’ll walk. I think I’m gonna go to Charley’s for a bite.”
“Come home, Benny. No reason to spend money on digs when you can sleep in your own bed.”
“I’ve outgrown that bed, Pop.”
He stared at me for a moment, stuck a cigar in his mouth but didn’t light it, and turned toward La Vita. “I bought you a new one. Come home. And next time you’re in town, don’t make me hear it from Sal. It embarrasses me.”
I didn’t apologize, and I wouldn’t go home. Not tonight. My skin felt hot, and my chest ached. I was getting sick. Elvis sang about it. About his hands shaking and his knees being weak.
“Well, damn,” I said again. Pop was gone. No one was listening. All shook up or not, I would probably be back at Shimmy’s tomorrow night to hear Esther Mine sing.
I didn’t go to Charley’s. I wasn’t very hungry. I walked instead. There’s a freedom afforded a big man in an expensive suit that allows him to aimlessly walk without worrying about the lateness of the hour or the part of town. I kept thinking of another big man, a man I hadn’t thought of in years. Bo “the Bomb” Johnson. It was the oddest thing, but the rumble of his voice wouldn’t leave my head. I’d heard an itty-bitty Negro singer belt into a microphone, and Bo Johnson rose from the dead—or wherever he’d ended up—to walk with me through Manhattan.
My grandfather, Eugenio Lomento, emigrated from Sicily at the turn of the century and taught my father to box by beating him to a pulp every night after dinner. My father figured he might as well get paid to get the shit knocked out of him and was only sixteen when he fought his first sanctioned bout. He was so good nobody even questioned his age. In the ring he was Jack “Lament” Lomento, and the biggest name in East Harlem.
He was the heavyweight champ for a decade and never lost a fight until Bo “the Bomb” Johnson knocked him out so cold he didn’t wake up for a week. He didn’t fight after that. At least not in the ring. He started working for Sal Vitale at his club in Harlem, a bouncer instead of a boxer, a fixer instead of a fighter. That’s when he met my mother, Sal’s sister. My father said Bo Johnson did him a favor taking his title the way he did.
“Bo knocked some sense into me,” he said. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have ever stopped. No Giuliana. No Benny. Just boxing.”
The first time I saw Bo Johnson, I didn’t know how my father ever survived that fight.
Bo Johnson was the biggest, strongest man I’d ever laid eyes on, even bigger than my father, and his voice was like the pipe organ at Mass—rich, deep, and resonant. I tried to hum the pitch, but it existed below my register.
A few months after my mother died, I awoke to that voice seeping, along with the light, beneath my bedroom door. I leaped from my bed, thinking I’d found heaven, and God was in the other room. God and my mother. The voices were a mixture of familiar and strange, high and low, and a cat was yowling. I threw open the door and stood, blinking at the light, my hands shaking as they shaded my gaze.
But my mother was not there.
God was not there either, though the stranger in my living room could have been a destroying angel. No beams of light engulfed him, but he radiated power. He didn’t have wings, but his arms and shoulders bulged with muscle, and his neck was as thick as his shiny, bald head. He was sitting with his back bent, and his head was bowed between his big knees. When he raised his head and met my gaze, my feet melted into the floor.
“Bo Johnson,” I stammered and rubbed my fists into my eyes, certain that I was dreaming.
“He knows who I am?” Bo rumbled.
“He knows the stories,” my father replied.
“I know all the stories,” I said, nodding. “I know you’re the best fighter in the world. Even better than Pop. Everyone’s afraid of you.”
“Everyone?” he asked.
“Everyone,” I said, nodding emphatically.
“I shouldn’t have come. He’ll talk,” Bo said, turning to my father. He looked so tired. A thick blanket was folded beside him on the couch, like maybe Pop had offered him a place to sleep. As I watched, the blanket moved. A soft mewling emanated from the folds; the crying-cat sound explained.
“Go back to bed, Benny,” my father said, pointing at my bedroom door.
“I won’t talk, Pop. I won’t talk, Mr. Johnson,” I said.
“Benny. Bed.”
I obeyed, shutting the door behind me, but I stretched out on the floor so I could hear them through the crack beneath the door. They were quiet—even the cat—but big men have big voices and children have good ears. I strained to hear every word, though I didn’t understand any of it.
“Did you do it, Bo?”
“I didn’t touch a hair on her head. But they’ll blame me. They’ll say it was my fault.”
Silence filled the living room, and I was sure they knew I was listening and lowered their voices. But a few minutes later my father asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Take her to Gloria. Give her the cash and the letter. Tell her there will be more. I’ll come back when I can. In Harlem, she’ll just be another mouth to feed. Nobody will look twice.”
“Will they be searching for her?” my father asked. “Maude’s family?”
“I don’t think so. They wanted nothing to do with her before. Why now? They’ll be glad she’s gone.”
I heard someone leave the apartment and ran back to my bed, terrified. Pop never left me all by myself. Mrs. Costiera watched me when he worked. Seconds later, Bo Johnson pushed open the door to my room. I pulled the blankets up over my head and pretended to be asleep.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me. I don’t hurt kids,” he said. “I don’t hurt women or kids.” His voice broke, like he was trying not to cry.
“You hurt my dad,” I argued softly, peeping over the top of my blankets.
“That was different. We agreed to hurt each other. We were fighting for money. But your dad’s my friend. He’s my only friend.” His voice cracked again.
“Where did he go?”
“He’s helping me. But he’ll come back. I’ll stay until he does. I’m tired. I’m going to sleep out there. You don’t need to be afraid.”
“Mr. Johnson?”
“Yeah?”
“I won’t talk,” I promised.
“I believe you, Benny,” he whispered. “I got no choice, I guess. But if you do talk . . . it won’t hurt me. No one can hurt me no more. If you talk, it’ll hurt your dad.”
“Will you knock him out cold again?”
“No. Not me. Not me.”
“Who?”
He didn’t tell me who. He just looked at me with his big, dark eyes.
“Do you know why they call your daddy Lament?” he asked.
“It sounds like Lomento. His name is Jack Lomento. Lament is a nickname.”
“Yeah. But do you know what a lament is?”
“No.”
“Lament means to cry. To wail. To mourn. When your daddy was boxing, his fists made grown men cry.”