Robert J. Randisi
It Was a Very Bad Year
‘But now the days grow short,
I’m in the autumn of the year. .’
PROLOGUE
Las Vegas, May 12, 2006
Let me tell you about being an octogenarian.
You can’t do the things you used to do, at the ripe old age of eighty. You can’t eat the things you like, because now it’s all bad for you. And what you can eat that is good for you is either grey or green.
The other thing is, you read the newspaper. Specifically, the obituaries. It’s always a good news/bad news thing. Good when your own name isn’t there, bad seeing all the familiar names.
One name that caught my attention was Floyd Patterson. At twenty-one, Patterson was the youngest heavyweight title holder in history. At seventy-one, he had succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease and prostate cancer.
‘What’s the matter? You look like you just lost your last friend.’
I looked up at Mark Hancock. Mark held in The Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino the job I once held in the Sands. The Venetian now stood where the Sands had existed until its implosion in 1996. That was one of the reasons I liked to take my breakfast there. It wasn’t the same place, but it was in the same place. If you get my meaning. I can’t explain it, but it was a comfort to me.
Mark sat down across from me. He ran his hand over his black hair, shot through with grey. It was a habit he had acquired since turning fifty a couple of years ago. Mark had started to feel old. Maybe that’s why he liked having breakfast with me.
What I wouldn’t give to be fifty again.
‘That’s not something you want to say to someone my age, Mark,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ He signaled to the waitress for coffee, and snatched a menu from the table.
‘As a matter of fact, I have lost a friend,’ I said. ‘Floyd Patterson died.’
‘Yeah, I heard that on the news,’ he said. Then: ‘Wait. You knew Floyd Patterson?’
‘You haven’t been listening to me,’ I said. ‘I knew everybody.’
‘Well, I know you knew everybody in the entertainment field,’ Mark said. ‘Frank, Dino, Sammy, and like that. But I didn’t know you knew sports figures.’
‘Sports isn’t entertainment?’ I asked.
‘Well, maybe now. .’
He was right. Back then sports — especially boxing — was not considered part of the entertainment field. Although Muhammad Ali — who I first met when he was Cassius Clay — was doing his best to change that.
Mark ordered his breakfast from the fresh-faced waitress, watched her walk away and then turned back to me.
‘So did you know Mike Tyson?’ he asked.
‘I met him,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t say I knew him.’
‘But you knew Floyd Patterson?’
‘Very well,’ I said.
‘You goin’ to his funeral?’
‘I don’t travel much these days, Mark,’ I said. ‘I especially don’t fly.’
‘Can’t say I blame you for that,’ he said, nodding. ‘You could get trampled in an airport.’
Or a mall, I thought. Especially when your feet are numb from diabetes. No, I pretty much stayed close to home, these days.
‘I hadn’t seen Floyd in a long time,’ I explained. ‘We lost touch. I’m sorry he died the way he did, and too soon.’
To somebody my age, seventy-one was too soon.
Mark’s bacon-and-eggs breakfast came. I looked down at my bran cereal and fruit. If I ate what Mark was eating my sugar would soar sky high. Luckily, I could still drink coffee, but no more orange juice for me. I remembered the days I used to watch my buddy Jerry Epstein pack away a couple of stacks of pancakes. Now he was recovering from prostate cancer. As soon as he was well enough he said he was going to visit me. I was afraid when he got off the plane I’d see a shadow of what Jerry once was. That was certainly what he would see when he looked at me. But Jerry was in his seventies, and if he kicked the cancer he’d still be as healthy as a horse.
Floyd Patterson was beyond that, though. He was gone. In his prime he was small for a heavyweight, about a hundred-and-eighty pounds, but he was fast and strong. The only times he lost was when he came up against somebody faster, and stronger. Ingemar Johansson, Muhammad Ali, and Sonny Liston came to mind.
‘Hey, didn’t Patterson fight Liston in Las Vegas years ago?’ Mark asked.
‘He did,’ I said. ‘It was the rematch.’
‘OK, now wait,’ Mark said. ‘Tell me you were there that night.’
‘I was there that night,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Oh, man!’ Mark said. ‘What I wouldn’t have given to see that fight.’
‘It wasn’t much of a fight, as I remember,’ I said. There were other things I remembered about that night, though. And other people. . lots of other people. .
‘That was nineteen-sixty three. I was a bigger stud then than you are now, kid. .’
ONE
Las Vegas Convention Center, July 22, 1963
‘Hang on to your hat,’ Nick Conte said. ‘This isn’t gonna take long.’
Richard Conte — a tough-guy actor whose close friends all called him ‘Nick’ for the simple reason that it was his real first name — was seated to my right, Frank Sinatra to my left.
‘You’re crazy,’ Frank said. ‘That first fight was a fluke. Liston’s way too slow for Floyd.’
Conte leaned forward to look past me at Frank.
‘Wanna double the bet?’ he asked.
‘You’re on, pally,’ Frank said. ‘Floyd takes his title back tonight.’
Nick looked at me. ‘You want a piece?’
‘I’m not gamblin’ on this fight,’ I said. ‘My heart is with Floyd, but. . I don’t know. Liston looks tough.’
‘See?’ Nick said to Frank. ‘Even Eddie says Liston wins.’
‘He didn’t say that,’ Frank said. ‘He just said Liston looks tough. Well, he ain’t gonna scare Floyd to death.’
‘Well, he scared him enough to KO him in two minutes the first time,’ Conte said. ‘I don’t see it goin’ too much longer than that this time.’
‘You’re crazy. .’ Frank said, but I didn’t hear the rest.
I had to admit, Sonny Liston was sorta scaring me to death, and I wasn’t even in the ring with him. The knockout in the first fight — which actually came at two minutes six seconds into the first round — had been devastating to Floyd. I wasn’t sure he was fully recovered yet, psychologically. And he did look less than confident to me in the ring.
‘What the hell-’ I heard Frank say.
‘What?’ I asked, turning around.
He was looking not at the ring, but across it.
‘What’s that bum doin’ here?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘Across the ring.’ He pointed. ‘That fella’s name is Amsler, Joe Amsler.’
I tried to see who he was pointing at.
‘Which one?’
‘The young guy,’ Frank said, ‘right across from us. He went to high school with my Nancy.’
I saw an animated young man talking earnestly with another man about the same age. It looked to me like they weren’t looking at the ring either, but past it to us — at Frank.
‘I take it you don’t like him?’
Frank looked at me and said, ‘I never like any boy who hangs around Nancy. Keep that in mind, Eddie.’
‘Hey,’ I said, referring to my one close encounter with Frank’s daughter, ‘she flirted with me.’
‘Just remember, pally,’ he said, poking me in the chest with his forefinger.
After that we ignored Amsler and went back to watching the action in the ring.
Richard Conte nudged me and asked, ‘Would it be bad taste for me to light up a victory cigar now?’
‘I don’t think Floyd’s camp would appreciate it.’
‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll hold off. Floyd may not be able to beat Liston, but he could kick my ass with no trouble.’