The Devil and Sonny Liston (18 page)

"Don't turn aroun', nigger."

"What you want, man? I got a couple hundred. That what you want?"

"You made a fool out of Roy in there tonight. Oh, you're a bad nigger, aren't you?"

"Just a fight, man. Me or him. No more 'n that."

"I got one bullet in this here Colt. I'm gonna pull this trigger till you tell me to stop."

"I ain't done nothin'. You crazy."

"I stop when you tell me you're a no-good, yeller nigger."

"Shee-it, git lost. You ain't got no bullet in there."

From behind, came the quite loud sound in silence of revolving chambers and their load.

"Now, just say you're a no-good yeller nigger."

"Fuck you."

There was that sound again. "You scared, nigger? Let's-"

"Wait. I'm a no-good nigger."

"A yeller nigger. Say it."

"Yeah, a yeller one."

"Don't turn aroun'."

He could hear the gun being uncocked, the creaking leather footsteps receding from him.

And when Sonny told Mark Kram this little tale, he kept on telling. "I’ve heard that creak ever since," he said. "Folks are violent. It got to be torture for me, bein' public. Like bein' the only chicken in a bag full of cats."

I don't think that Mark made up this story, but I wonder if Sonny did. I wonder if it filled some need to create a sense of himself as a victim of blind hatred. Those white cops in St. Louis, hell, man, that was no good a tale; wasn't just setting in no easy chair when they took to sweating him. Yeah, they were white, all right. But that other son-of-a-bitch cop, that one that wanted to baptize his ass with lead, well, hell, he was black. Maybe that creaking up behind him that he made up was not so much made up as the man that went with it. Maybe that creaking up behind him was a creeping up inside him from those places he did not want to look, and maybe he could only express fear in terms of something for which he had no fear, that is to say another man. Or maybe it just happened. Or maybe he was just drunk and running in it.

Sonny's niece Ezraline, the daughter of his half-brother E.B. Ward, remembered Uncle Sonny coming down to visit his kin in Forrest City when she was a teenager. He had a fine big Cadillac convertible and a fine big white woman.

"He came down here with that white woman, and they was telling him that he had to leave, they didn't allow that down here." It was in 1961, "before King did the Civil Rights March." Ezraline never forgot her Uncle Sonny's "sharp car" or that "nice-looking white lady." She could still picture it, still recall the scent of it, many years later. "Convertible, honey. Yeah. He was lookin' good, smellin' good. A
whole
lotta money. Mmm. Givin' everybody money. White lady friend." But Ezraline was not sure about what they said: that the white woman "was supposed to have been in love with him." Uncle Sonny, she said, was getting famous and "really making that money" at that time. "You know how womens be all over you then."

In their travels with Sonny's dick, Geraldine Liston was not a part of the picture. "Sonny respected his wife," said Foneda, who was a bachelor in those days. "And he did not abuse Geraldine." But he rarely took her with him when he traveled.

"We talked about a lot of things, me and Geri," said Foneda. "Geri was a sweet person. She knew within her heart that Sonny was going out and messing around with other women. But I would try to tone it down. I would never tell her the straight truth of what was happening. And Sonny wouldn't. I would be trying to build him up in her eyesight. I told her, I said, you know, a lot of times Sonny just wants to be around different girls, different people. I said he wouldn't do anything, they don't mean nothing to him; he just wants to be seen with pretty girls. She would say, 'Well, I'm gonna leave judgment up to you.' And I would not tell her the whole picture at no time. I never told her once that Sonny had a relationship with any woman." Yes, he concluded, "Geraldine was all right."

Sonny loved children. They brought out the best in him, which is what he saw in them: the spirit of the loving child in himself, which had been extracted from him and butchered in the throes of his own miserable and stillborn childhood. If Sonny pretended to be good in the company of priests, he sincerely was good in the company of children, especially those in whom he discerned an echo of the loneliness and loss that had haunted his own boyhood. He wanted to give them something of friendship, goodness, and kindness - those same things that yet eluded him - and in giving them these things, in wanting to give them these things, he came closest to feeling and to having them himself. His compassion and the pangs of his own soul were one.

Yet Sonny's marriage to Geraldine was childless, and, while he was a paternal provider for Geraldine's daughter, Arletha, who was thirteen when Sonny and Geraldine married, he neither acknowledged nor knew the whereabouts of a daughter that he himself had fathered in the lost days before his penitentiary time. Her name was Eleanor, and only years later would he seek her out.

Yeah, that "L." How could a woman remember a goddamn "L" and not the goddamn name that went with it? A woman who had even less truck with the goddamn alphabet than him? How could she remember the "L" and not the goddamn day that she bore the child that got stuck to that "L"? And, knowing her, why in hell wouldn't she just make up something to go with that "L" instead of it leaving it by like some holy privy thing that came out the sky on a pentecostal tongue? It was a goddamn wonder she recalled that the other "L" stood for Liston. "
And in this corner ... Lonesome Charles Liston
." Yeah. That had a chime to it, sure enough. And what was that other one he had a mind of that time, before that prison tattoo of a nickname stuck. Yeah, that was it: "
and in this corner-
"

"Where were you born, Mr. Liston?"

"Little Rock."

"Would you mind telling us how old you are?"

"Twenty-seven."

"How much education did you get?"

"I didn't get any."

"Do you know Frank Palermo?"

"Yes, sir. I know him."

"Do you know John Vitale?"

"Yes, I know him."

Senator Everett Dirksen stepped in to share questioning with Senator Kefauver.

"You have a family?"

"I have a wife."

"Children?"

"No, sir."

Subcommittee counsel John G. Bonomi stepped in to share questioning with Dirksen and Kefauver. He asked Liston if he remembered being arrested in St. Louis on August 12, 1959.

On that date, a week after the Valdes fight in Chicago, Sonny had been picked up and nominally booked on suspicion of gambling. Such had been his visitor's welcome as a hometown hero - one more sausage pinch. When the cops searched him, they found in his possession slips of paper bearing names and numbers - for John Vitale, Blinky Palermo, Barney Baker - that subsequently had been passed on to the investigators of the Kefauver Committee. "I couldn't recall the date," Sonny told him. "I don't carry around a pencil to see how many times I was picked up."

"At the time that you were arrested in St. Louis in 1959, you apparently had in your possession a slip reading 'J.V. CO14972.' Do you recall having a slip in your possession?"

"No, sir. I didn't have no such slip."

He was shown a photostatic copy of the slip in question, asked again if he recalled it.

"Maybe yes or maybe no. I don't remember. I can't remember now."

"What would JV stand for?"

"John Vitale, is that correct? You know that John Vitale's home number is Colfax 14972, do you not?"

"That's right."

Dirksen wanted to know why he had been arrested in the first place.

"Why?" Liston said. "That's the question I would like to know."

"That is what I would like to know also," Dirksen said.

"Well." said Sonny. "I imagine he got the records - why did they arrest me?"

"We will go into that next, Mr. Liston." Bonomi said.

"Because they never told me anything. They just picked me up and put me in the can and questioned me."

"That is a form of arrest, of course." Bonomi said.

"Yes." Liston sighed.

"Do you know whether or not Frank Palermo has been your undercover manager in the period of March of 1958 to the present, or one of your undercover managers?"

"I only know what I got on paper."

The investigating committee had something on paper too - something besides those slips. It was a letter that Sonny had "written," through Geraldine's hand, to Ike Williams, the former lightweight champ who had testified here before the subcommittee only yesterday. The letter had been written seven months ago, in mid
-
May.

"
'Dear Ike
,'" Bonomi read aloud:

"I received your letter and I was happy to hear from you. I had not seen you in a long time. I was wondering what had become of you. Thanks for writing me. It give you a happy feeling to know that people are thinking of you. I hope I can get a chance at the title, and if I win, I hope I can be a good champ, as Joe was. He was a great guy. Frank and Pep are-"

Here Bonomi stopped, and Liston was asked if he remembered dictating the letter.

"No, I don't remember dictating it."

"Is that your wife's handwriting?" Kefauver asked.

"I couldn't say."

"Do you read at all?" Dirksen asked.

"No, sir, I don't."

"He says he has no memory of dictating such a letter," interjected Sonny's counsel, Jacob Kossman, as if operating on a slight time delay. (Later Sonny would explain how he had chosen his attorney: "Well," as he put it, "I was downtown and I see him with Blinky.")

"Nothing whatsoever?"

"He can't read," Kossman spoke again.

Bonomi resumed reading aloud from the letter:

"-are great fellows and I hope they will do all they can to get me a shot at the title. Well, I will close. Hope to hear from you soon. Oh, yes, I have moved out of the hotel. My wife and mother said hello."

Bonomi asked, "Weren't you referring there to Frank 'Blinky' Palermo?"

"If I was referring to him, I would have said him."

"Do you know of any other Franks that are interested in your management outside of perhaps Frank 'Blinky' Palermo?"

"Besides what?"

"What is that?"

"Besides what? There is a whole lots of people interested."

"Who else named Frank, in April or May of 1960, could get you a crack at the title?"

"Frank Kerr. I know a million Franks."

"Who is Frank Kerr?"

"Some guy in Philadelphia."

"Was he a manager?"

"Not that I recall."

"What is his occupation?"

"I couldn't say. I don't know."

"How could he get you a crack at the title?"

"Through friends."

"Through friends. What friends did this man have?"

"I don't know what friends do he have."

"What other Franks do you know, outside of this man Frank Kerr, who can supposedly get you a crack at the title?"

"Patterson," Liston said dryly.

"Frank Patterson? What is his occupation?" Bonomi demanded, as if swept by a strange, sudden belief that all men named Frank were guilty until proven innocent.

"You said what other man."

Finally Kefauver interrupted: "It could be Frank Carbo?"

"Yes," Sonny said, "it could be Frank Carbo."

"Did you mean Frank Carbo?" Bonomi pursued.

"I didn't write that, and I couldn't tell." said Liston.

"Who were you referring to?" Kefauver implored. "Do you know?"

"No, I don't know."

"Do you want to tell us," Bonomi said, "in light of that letter, whether or not Frank Palermo acts as an undercover manager for you?"

"Not that I know of."

Sonny was asked if he had seen Pep Barone lately. Two or three weeks ago, Sonny said.

"Did he say anything about coming down here?" Kefauver asked, referring to Barone's subpoena.

"Well, he said he had to come down."

"He didn't come."

"Yes."

"Did you see him in the hospital since he has been there?"

"He is getting badder and badder."

"He is getting bad?"

"He is getting badder and badder."

"I don't believe Mr. Barone is licensed in Pennsylvania anymore, is he?"

"No, sir, he isn't."

"So you don't have any licensed manager now?"

"It don't look like it."

"Who is making your fights for you now?"

"No one."

No one.
Outis
. The baddest motherfucker of them all. Badder than a million Frankies.

And that was just about the truth of it - no one.

Carbo himself was hauled down from Riker's to appear before the Senate subcommittee the day after Blinky and Sonny appeared. "This is not a trial, this is not a court," Kefauver entreated. "Do you understand what I have said, Mr.Carbo?"