Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (69 page)

So the fat was in the fire: a second loss to Spinks would be even worse than the first—the end of the line for Ali, The Family, and, in fact, the whole Ali industry. No more paydays, no more limousines, no more suites and crab cocktails from room service in the world’s most expensive hotels. For Pat Patterson and a lot of other people, another defeat by Spinks would mean the end of a whole way of life ... And, worse yet, the first wave of public reaction to Ali’s “comeback” announcement
had been anything but reassuring. An otherwise sympathetic story in the
Los Angeles Times
described the almost universal reaction of the sporting press:

“There were smiles and a shaking of hands all around when the thirty-six-year-old ex-champion said after the fight last Wednesday night: ‘I’ll be back. I’ll be the first man to win the heavyweight title three times.’ But no one laughed out loud.”

A touch of this doomsday thinking had even showed up in The Family. Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, who had been in The Champ’s corner for every fight since he first won the title from Liston—except the last one—had gone on the Tom Snyder show and said that Muhammad was finished as a fighter, that he was a shadow of his former self, and that he (Pacheco) had done everything but beg Ali to retire even
before
the Spinks fight.

Pacheco had already been expelled from The Family for this heresy, but it had planted a seed of doubt that was hard to ignore. “The Doc” was no quack, and he was also a personal friend: did he know something the others didn’t? Was it even
possible
that The Champ was “washed up”? There was no way to think that by looking at him, or listening to him either. He looked sharp, talked sharp, and there was a calmness, a kind of muted intensity, in his confidence that made it sound almost understated.

Pat Patterson believed—or if he didn’t, there was no way that even The Champ could guess it. The loyalty of those close to Muhammad Ali is so profound that it sometimes clouds their own vision ... But Leon Spinks had swept those clouds away, and now it was time to get serious. No more show business, no more clowning. Now they had come to the crunch.

Pat Patterson had tried not to brood on these things, but every newspaper rack he’d come close to in Chicago, New York, or anywhere else seemed to echo the baying of hounds on a blood scent. Every media voice in the country was poised for ultimate revenge on this Uppity Nigger who had laughed in their faces for so long that a whole generation of sportswriters had grown up in the shadow of a mocking, dancing presence that most of them had never half understood until now, when it seemed almost gone.

Even the rematch with Spinks was bogged down in the arcane politics of big-money boxing—and Pat Patterson, like all the others who had geared their lives to the fortunes of Muhammad Ali, understood that the rematch would have to be
soon.
Very soon. And The Champ would have to be
ready
this time—as he had not been ready in Vegas. There was no avoiding the memory of Sonny Liston’s grim fate, after losing
again
to Ali in a fight that convinced even the “experts.”

These things were among the dark shadows that Pat Patterson would rather not have been thinking about on that night in Manhattan as he walked down the corridor to his room in the Park Lane Hotel. The Champ had already convinced him that he would indeed be the first man to win the first Triple Crown in the history of heavyweight boxing—and Pat Patterson was far from alone in his conviction that Leon Spinks would be easy prey, next time, for a Muhammad Ali in top condition both mentally and physically. Spinks was vulnerable: the same crazy/mean style that made him dangerous also made him easy to hit. His hands were surprisingly fast, but his feet were as slow as Joe Frazier’s, and it was only the crafty coaching of his trainer, the ancient Sam Solomon, that had given him the early five-round edge in Las Vegas that Ali had refused to understand until he was so far behind that his only hope was a blazing last-minute assault and a knockout or at least a few knockdowns that he was too tired, in the end, to deliver.

Leon was dead on his feet in that savage fifteenth round—but so was Muhammad Ali, and that’s why Spinks won the fight . . .

Yes ... but that is no special secret, and there will be plenty of time to deal with those questions of ego and strategy later on in this saga, if in fact we ever get there. The sun is up, the peacocks are screaming with lust, and this story is so far off the game plan that no hope of salvage exists at this time—or at least nothing less than a sweeping, all-points injunction by Judge Crater, who maintains an unlisted number so private that not even Bob Arum can reach him on short notice.

So we are left with the unhurried vision of Pat Patterson finally reaching the door of his room, number 905 in the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan—and just as he pulls the room key out of his pocket on the way to a good night’s sleep, his body goes suddenly stiff as he picks up the sound of raucous laughter and strange voices in room number 904.

Weird sounds from The Champ’s suite ... Impossible, but Pat Patterson
knows
he’s stone sober and nowhere near deaf, so he drops his key back in his pocket and moves one step down the hallway, listening carefully now to these sounds he hopes are not really there ... Hallucinations, bad nerves, almost anything but the sound of a totally unknown voice—and the voice of a “white devil,” no doubt about that—from the room where Ali and Veronica are supposed to be sleeping peacefully. Bundini and Conrad had both promised to be gone at least an hour ago ... But, no! Not this: not Bundini and Conrad and
the voice of some stranger, too
; along with the unmistakable sound of laughter from both The Champ and his wife . . . Not
now
, just when things were getting close to intolerably serious.

What was the meaning?

Pat Patterson knew what he had to do: he planted both feet in the rug in front of 904 and
knocked
. Whatever was going on would have to be cut short at once, and it was his job to do the cutting—even if he had to get rude with Bundini and Conrad.

Well ... this next scene is so strange that not even the people who were part of it can recount exactly what happened ... but it went more or less like this: Bundini and I had just emerged from a strategy conference in the bathroom when we heard the sudden sound of knocking on the door. Bundini waved us all into silence as Conrad slouched nervously against the wall below the big window that looked out on the snow-covered wasteland of Central Park; Veronica was sitting fully clothed on the king-size bed right next to Ali, who was stretched out and relaxed with the covers pulled up to his waist, wearing nothing at all except ... Well, let’s take it again from Pat Patterson’s view from the doorway, when Bundini answered his knock:

The first thing he saw when the door opened was a white stranger with a can of beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, sitting cross-legged on the bureau that faced The Champ’s bed—a bad omen for sure and a thing to be dealt with at once at this ominous point in time; but the next thing Pat Patterson saw turned his face into spastic wax and caused his body to leap straight back toward the doorway like he’d just been struck by lightning.

His professional bodyguard’s eyes had fixed on me just long enough to be sure I was passive and with both hands harmlessly occupied for at least the few seconds it would take him to sweep the rest of the room and see what was wrong with his $5-million-an-hour responsibility ... and I could tell by the way he moved into the room and the look on his face that I was suddenly back at that point where any movement at all or even the blink of an eye could change my life forever. But I also knew what was coming, and I recall a split second of real fear as Pat Patterson’s drop-forged glance swept past me and over to the bed to Veronica and the inert lump that lay under the sheets right beside her.

For an instant that frightened us all, the room was electric with absolute silence—and then the bed seemed to literally explode as the sheets flew away and a huge body with the hairy red face of the Devil himself leaped up like some jack-in-the-box out of hell and uttered a wild cry that jolted us all and sent such an obvious shock through Pat Patterson that he leaped backward and shot out both elbows like Kareem coming down with a rebound . . .

I waited until I was sure the Muhammad Ali party was well off the plane and up the ramp before I finally stood and moved up the aisle, fixing the stewardess at the door with a blind stare from behind two mirror lenses so dark that I could barely see to walk—but not so dark that I failed to notice a touch of mockery in her smile as I nodded and stepped past her. “Good-bye, sir,” she chirped. “I hope you got an interesting story.”

You nasty little bitch! I hope your next flight crashes in a cannibal country ... But I kept this thought to myself as I laughed bitterly and stomped up the empty tunnel to a bank of pay phones in the concourse. It was New York’s La Guardia Airport, around eight thirty on a warm Sunday night in the first week of March, and I had just flown in from Chicago—supposedly “with the Muhammad Ali party.” But things had not worked out that way, and my temper was hovering dangerously on the far edge of control as I listened to the sound of nobody answering the phone in Hal Conrad’s West Side apartment ... That swine! That treacherous lying bastard!

We were almost to the ten-ring limit, that point where I knew I’d start pounding on things unless I hung up very quickly before we got to
eleven ... when suddenly a voice sounding almost as angry as I felt came booming over the line. “Yeah, yeah, what
is
it?” Conrad snapped. “I’m in a hell of a hurry. Jesus! I was just about into the elevator when I had to come back and answer this goddamn—”

“You crazy bastard!”
I screamed, cutting into his gravelly mumbling as I slammed my hand down on the tin counter and saw a woman using the phone next to me jump like a rat had just run up her leg.

“It’s
me
, Harold!” I shouted. “I’m out here at La Guardia and my whole story’s fucked and just as soon as I find all my baggage I’m going to get a cab and track you down and slit your goddamn throat!”

“
Wait
a minute!” he said. “What the hell is wrong? Where’s Ali? Not with
you?
”

“Are you kidding?” I snarled. “That crazy bastard didn’t even know who I
was
when I met him in Chicago. I made a
goddamn fool of myself
, Harold! He looked at me like I was some kind of
autograph hound
!”

“No!” said Conrad. “I told him all about you—that you were a good friend of mine and you’d be on the flight with him from Chicago. He was
expecting
you.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled. “You told me he’d be traveling alone, too ... So I stayed up all night and busted my ass to get a first-class seat on that Continental flight that I knew he’d be catching at O’Hare; then I got everything arranged with the flight crew between Denver and Chicago, making sure they blocked off the first two seats so we could sit together ... Jesus, Harold,” I muttered, suddenly feeling very tired, “what kind of sick instinct would cause you to do a thing like this to me?”