Ghosts of Manila (22 page)

The fighters trained at the Manila Folk Arts Center, facing the
bay and built “for the people” by Imelda. Building was a huge part of her collectomania, as clinical as kleptocracy, and she was an overseer with merciless schedules. One of her hotels, now as numerous as the frangipani trees, was put up so hurriedly that it collapsed on workers. She would later build, in an effort to make Manila the equal of Cannes as a magnet to the stars, the Manila Film Center. With a twenty-four-hour breakneck schedule, it too descended on tired workers, killing hundreds, many with ghostly limbs dangling out of the concrete. Not enough to stop Imelda; she had them chainsawed, then had the place exorcised. Her most splendid creation was for a visit by the Pope, the Coconut Palace (made of 100,000 coconuts), filled with ivory and jade. The Pope refused to take up residence there. “Quite a place,” Ali said of his training site. “There must be a lot of money here.”

The Marcoses’ attitude must have been contagious. That thin line that separated Ali’s usual burlesque from insufferable ego seemed to disappear. It crossed over, without doubt, into a disturbing sense of his own power, not dissimilar to what the Marcoses had come to believe of themselves. After running, he’d sit in the predawn on the Hilton steps and say to the hundreds of Filipinos who had run with him: “Don’t judge us by ugly Joe Frazier. He’s the black who’s gone. Watch me! How pretty and smart. There’s a new black man in America! All of them like me.” At his workouts, he castigated Filipinos for working at menial jobs for a few pesos, while praising President Marcos, the source of all their misery in a brutal web of oligarchy. One day, he abused a shy little Filipino reporter who asked a perfectly clear question. “You don’t speak very good English,” he chastened him. Ali as Pygmalion? Ali slowly repeated the question (visibly shrinking the fellow into a little nut of shame) with his own brand of fractured syntax. Conspicuously supporting Ali at all times was his brother Rudy, now known as Rahman, a surly presence. His habit was to flick beads
of sweat from Ali’s shoulders, or wail: “Preach! Preach!” When he saw no pencils wiggling, he shouted with a glower: “Take it down, do ya hear? Write down everything he says!”

His brother was one of thirty eight in Ali’s entourage for this trip, about six or seven who could qualify as workers, and they all could write his room number with confident flourish on checks. He had picked up a new addition, a body servant from Malaysia named Bala, his latest favorite. “He’s so obedient,” Ali said. “Always saying ‘yes sir, no sir.’ He’ll go fetch anything for you. Even take your shoes off for you. I pay people who won’t do that. He’s civilized.” Otherwise, there were the all too familiar faces: Gene Kilroy, the chief of logistics; a couple of quack doctors worthy of being defrocked; Luis Sarria, the meditative masseur; the Texan Lloyd Wells, who got the women and had no other job until he was put in charge of hotel bills and rooms. “These are professional hangers-on,” Lloyd said, in admiration of the staggering bills. “We got the best in the business.” Jeremiah Shabazz, Herbert’s muscle and spy; the decent Wali Youngblood, the taster of Ali’s sweat from which he believed he could divine conditioning; the inimitable and garish Cash, who liked to say: “Without me, there ain’t no Ali.” Throw in assorted boyhood friends, groupies, and grifters, and you had a floating Casbah around the world.

It was astonishing how unsubtly some of them seemed to live through him,
become
him. Out of the ring, the struggle for Ali’s favor went on like one of those old European wars, and no one was spared. “Look at the big trainer, Angelo,” one said. “He doesn’t know a cue tip from a bucket.” Youngblood, an assistant trainer, used to moan: “I build Ali up to condition, and Wells tears him down,” a comment that hinted that Wells was in charge of more than accounting. Ed Hughes, who was in charge of massaging Ali’s scalp, said: “Man, I’m not like the rest of these crabs in a can.” In Munich later, when he fought
Richard Dunn, sand started to dribble from Ali’s heavy bag. Two workers, like wild insects, dove to clean it up, elbowing each other, with one saying: “Get away from me, boy. I’m handlin’ this mess.”

In Japan, some of them would be thrown in jail for shooting pictures of nudity in a gender-neutral bathhouse, a sacramental ritual to the Japanese. A crisis point would evolve in Munich. Ali was weary of the bills, gathered them together. He picked on Bundini first. “You, Bundini!” he shouted. “How many phone calls can you make in a day? How many meals can you eat?” Shabazz, munching on a sandwich, shouted: “Amen!” Youngblood, a Muslim, complained: “Too many sausage eaters around here.” Ali asked: “Who you mean?” Wali didn’t speak. “You make a statement,” Ali said, “then don’t tell me what you mean. What kind of friend are you?” Youngblood was furious, took off his jacket.

“Come on over here, sucker,” Ali yelled. “Come here and I’ll throw you out the window.”

They all stood there frozen like blind men in Calcutta, sensing that their tin cups were about to be smashed. Ali then calmed down after a long silence and said: “Look, fellas. I don’t mind you eating. You want three steaks, get three steaks.” He started to get riled again. “I feed you niggers,” he said. “I take you all over the world. You see places. You learn things. Never been anywhere in your life. You treat me like this?” But he could never be the constable for long in his little town. “Look, just call long distance once a day, not every minute. Stay on the phone five minutes, okay? I understand. I get homesick myself.” He was very sensitive to his gang, patiently adjudicated their quarrels, played them off against each other, and it gave rise to the thought that he might need them more than they could ever suspect. “Nobody,” he liked to say, “has ever had a crowd around him like me. Not John Wayne, or Frank Sinatra, or Elvis Presley.”

Two figures of perverse fascination were Bundini and Herbert,
one for his histrionics and the other for his louche presence. Nominally an assistant trainer, Bundini was a pinwheel of character colors, a three-card monte dealer who could no doubt work the short con (like the pigeon drop); a piano player (usually lit up) in an old whorehouse; a stump preacher to whom the birds would listen; a philosopher manqué; whoever you wanted to see or pay for (he was adroit at getting reporters to go into pocket). His dossier was expansive and romantic—con man, merchant marine, entrepreneur of backroom crap games, close friend of God (he called Him “Shorty”), prodigious drinker, and now for years Ali’s emotional witch doctor, who supplied him with verbal dexterity and in a wink could go into a clairvoyant swoon as if the locusts were an instant away from darkening the sky.

Bundini could rev Ali up into a zooming state of indignation, or make him laugh uncontrollably. His was the loudest voice in a ring corner often heavy with pandemonium, his words often drowning out any wisdom Dundee might convey. When Ali was cross, he could reduce Bundini to choking sobs; he had the fastest cry in the West. He felt one with Ali, and he had the peculiar habit of licking the champ’s mouthpiece. If Ali had ever seen that example of bonding, he would have surely slapped him—once again. Out of the blue, he would bust him for no apparent reason, except maybe he grew tired of the noise beating in his ear. In Africa, there was a tiff over a robe that Bundini, proudly, had commissioned for him. Ali didn’t like the robe and slapped him for his impertinence. To the Muslims, he was the infidel, the transparent opportunist (some nervy critique there), and fouler of the holy air. Years back in Miami, they spread a tale about him when he married a white woman. He went to the marriage bureau with his intended, and the clerk looked up and asked: “What kind of license? Hunting or fishing?” Herbert was now looking at Bundini by his T-shirt stand in the Hilton lobby. “I find it all
rather regrettable,” he said, frowning at the peon trying to turn a buck.

Herbert had little use for Ali’s entourage. “You don’t have to be brilliant to hustle Ali,” he said. “He’s a setup.” Who would know that better than he and the Muslims? Over the years, Herbert turned out to be the most proficient harvester of Ali’s sweat and pain. He got 50 percent of Ali’s earnings, and cut Don King, the promoter of many of his fights, 50 percent. King, no soft touch himself or stranger to the bent deal, gave it up to stay in business. He’d go anthropomorphic about Herbert, sometimes with a crazed look in his eyes, and likened him to every overfed animal in the kingdom; out of breath, he settled on Herbert being the king of wayward swag—everyone else’s.

Herbert was a subatomic particle in Ali’s life, a certain lethal kind that cannot be seen even under a powerful microscope, their existence known only by their effects. With Herbert, sometimes you thought you saw something, but look back and all you had was a three-piece suit, a hat, brim up and down over his eyes. Others thought of him as a pudgy member of the old
Our Gang
cast, and still others viewed him as an insatiable King Farouk. Far too jolly company for a description of the son of Elijah. He fancied white women and rich cuisine. He was the hatchet man for his father and was in New York, perhaps only a coincidence, when Malcolm X was killed. The entourage gave him a wide berth.

Ali paid obsequious homage to him, the body in constant bow to the grave digger. Herbert held up the publication of Ali’s autobiography, not content with his subdued role in it; he was forever caught between wanting recognition—and invisibility. He was the architect of the book, and Richard Durham, the Muslim propagandist, was the writer; the editor was Toni Morrison, who it was rumored fingered the pages wearing gloves. I was doing a profile of Herbert in Munich. He wanted no part of it, with punctuated emphasis from Durham
while we shared a taxi to a workout. “Stay away from Herbert,” he said. “Do yourself a favor.” Why? “You want some bad-ass trouble?” Durham asked.

Joe Frazier looked upon Ali’s group as an expensive, distracting grotesquerie. He was a parsimonious caretaker of his money, watched every centime, and had no need for subjects or paid validation. He knew how to sit alone in an empty room. As much as he could, he kept his space from Ali. Except for one time near the fight when Ali—where did he get the energy for such juvenalia?—waited for him to take the air, such as it was, on his hotel balcony. Down below, Ali grabbed the security guard’s gun and clicked off several rounds up at Frazier; hotel guards didn’t carry live ammo. He raved at Joe: “Go back in your hole, Gorilla! You gonna scare the people! Come out again, and I’m gonna kill ya before time!” Joe turned lazily into his room. He just shook his head toward his visitors. He then looked into a mirror. “Am I a gorilla?” he asked. “Am I? He don’t know how this hurts my kids.”

Eddie Futch confronted Don King over the selection of the referee. But King would rather face public and media jeers than the wrath of Herbert for a bungle; Herbert, through King, wanted every edge. He had three refs and some judges waiting as guests for Futch’s choice. Marcos had invited members from each camp to visit. Right off, Eddie could see the president was proud of this fight and that he wanted no hitches. Afterward, Futch collared the principal administrator of the fight and said: “Look, this event puts the Philippines in the world spotlight. You need a ref who can control the fight, or else the world will laugh at you.” He told him how Tony Perez had marred the second fight. He got a Filipino referee and judges, while King argued that Filipinos were too small to handle big men, not the best line of attack. Futch extracted even more: Ali’s trunks, per ring specifications, had to be worn below his belly button, and the ropes
tightened (so Ali would have no mobility on them). “I want that belly button in plain sight,” Eddie warned again. Chalk up King’s defeat to inexperience, for he was not yet the Satan of loopholes. “Eddie fucked me,” King would moan at ringside.

T
he sun doesn’t just rise in the Philippines. It shoots up with discouraging abruptness, sends hot spears to the eye. The old man had declared a national holiday for the fight that was to be at 10
A.M
. The streets had a disorienting emptiness, where usually there were masses of brightly colored umbrellas and tourists going to Intramuros to photograph the old Spanish fort, still nicked by bullet pings and shell fragments from World War II. It was so quiet that, through imagination, you could hear the cocks crowing on the hot breath from Tondo, home to a half million squatters whose hungry kids often foraged through garbage; could hear the beaten trudge of long gone troops across the bay at Corregidor and Bataan; the murmur of servants at the airy oligarch mansions in Forbes Park; the baby hookers giving up the night at the scented bars of Ermita.

Near fight time, bells rang out from the great and ornate cathedrals of Manila, where inside one of them the stentorian Cardinal Sin must have been meditating on the degeneracy of modern taste and the flamboyance shown with the fiscal purse by that slip of an egoist in Malacanang. Without a quiver of breeze from the South China Sea and in the glazing, jiggling heat, thousands were moving toward the Araneta Colosseum with buckets of sweet and sour
adobo
(chicken, pork, and rice) and containers of iced San Miguel beer. They came by tinny but dogged jeepneys (decorative, converted American jeeps from the war), known to careen the streets like Ping-Pong balls, they came by
kalesa,
worn, ribbed small horses and creaking wagons, and by sparkling limos. Those who didn’t have the price (two dollars to
two hundred) would sit by the millions in front of old TV sets with drunken pixels. A half hour before the fight, the clamp of eerie silence fell again on the streets.

Packed tightly and sweating, the crowd of 28,000 seemed to vacuum all the air out of the arena, a rather scholarly swarm who recognized breeding in fighting cocks (the sporting preference) as well as in heavyweights. Manilans, so buried in American culture, leaped to the jazzy, insolent Ali, then slowly, perhaps remembering old Spain, swerved to their dolorous roots of the underdog, and half of them concluded that the much put-upon Frazier was more deserving. I oozed into a good seat in the second row, below Ali’s corner, and right behind the sparse pate of Herbert, who had a bottle of mineral water in front of him and a concealed flask of gin. In tropical haberdashery he was ready for the safari distance. But were the fighters? What would the malarial heat and cubits of human sweat that stuck to the wet patch of light like goo do to their power plants of adrenaline? Ferdinand and Imelda, the mother of “my little brown people,” looking a trifle upstaged, took their seats in roomy, studded (no, not with diamonds) monarchial chairs. Ali leaned on the ropes, looked down at Herbert, and said: “Watcha got there, Herbert? Gin! You don’t need any of that. I’m gonna put a whuppin’ on this niggah’s head.” The bell snapped Ali to attention, and he swirled to the center of the ring, his unerring launching zone.