The Devil and Sonny Liston (30 page)

I look back to a sentence that I wrote over a year ago, a sentence that appears in the earliest of these pages:
Only he and the men who killed him knew the date of his death.
Looking at it, I realize that it can be easily and cleanly deleted, plucked from the page, with no effect on the words or meaning that surround it. But I choose to leave it there, because it expressed my feeling at that time, and because, unlike a statement proven untrue, it very well might express not only my past feelings, but also the truth, which, in this matter, will never be known. And since it was in the winding passage from that sentence to this - the passage through the unseen sediment, detritus, and sludge beneath the course of this book, and through the articulation of that course as well - that my feeling, for no specific reason, evolved and changed, I think it would render inorganic what has been organic. As the phantom narco, Agent Nobody, said: Exposita without logic, it makes the world go round.

If someone wanted to kill Sonny, he or she could far more easily and with far less risk have put a bullet through his skull in the street any night of the week.

I think he took too much dope and died. The fact that no gimmick was found means nothing. He could have shot up elsewhere, then been overcome by the overdose at home. Maybe he did not even bang the shit. And no one knows how long he had been dead when they cut those dead-tissue samples from him. How could the measurement of lingering traces of dispersing morphine and codeine reveal the amount of heroin present in a body at a time of death that was unknown?

Sonny's friends did not want to admit that he was doing dope. There was never an indication that he was. What sort of an indication was to be expected from one who might not even be addicted?

"No, he doesn't trust me on food and things; he gets his little Kentucky Frieds and things."

As Sonny had said, he wanted to model himself after Joe Louis, "who I think was the greatest champion of all and my idol. He did everything I want to do." Maybe they were shooting more than craps together.

The mystery of a death serves only to distract us comfortably from the mysteries inside ourselves. Ultimately, the true cause of Sonny Liston's death was the mystery in him. He rode a fast dark train from nowhere, and it dumped him at that falling-off place at the end of the line.

The only true mystery is one without an answer. That we should be put here for a sigh then blown to nothingness like a harl in an idle wind - that is mystery enough. Sonny Liston was an embodiment of that fatal mystery, which claims us all and leaves no track marks in so doing.

Call it Shango, call it Syndrome X. There is only one real cause of death, and that is death.

"He's dead, that's all," as Davey Pearl said. And, like the man said, he was born that way.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As the worn phrase has it, this is a dark tale. It could not be otherwise, as I knew when I took its first breath into me. It was a tale untold whose telling long had beckoned me. And while the nature of that beckoning is to be found early in the pages of this book, it should also here be said an acknowledgment of another sort -that given the choice between the sunny side of the street and the umbrous, I have perhaps more often than not chosen the latter.

In my work on this book, I encountered those who cleared the shadows with light, and those who overcast light with shadow. Enlightenment, enshadowment. Which leads to which? And, in the end, are they one and the same?

I don't know where, or with whom, to begin to express my thanks for those encountered, casters of shadows and of light; where, or with whom, to begin to express my thanks for those who helped in so many ways. There are those, characters in the tale of Liston's life itself, who opened to me. These were the men and women who took me to where I never could have gotten, for to descend into a lost and secret underworld without the guidance of the souls who knew it is to be a stranger to the soul of that lost and secret place itself. As serendipity has it, in my alphabetical log, the first of these guides of my descent is a Virgil - the welterweight champion Virgil Akins, who came up with Sonny in the old days in St. Louis. Others spanned the time and places of Sonny's fatal astrology: Lem Banker; Ben Bentley; Jesse Bowdry; Doc Broadus; Foneda Cox; Sam Eveland; Larry Gazall; Truman Gibson; Joel Glickman; David Herleth; Gene Kilroy; Jim Lubbock; Claude E. Lyles, Jr.; Tom Lynch; Bob Martin; Ezraline Lynn Mable; George Morledge. Jr.; Davey Pearl; Lowell Powell; the Reverend Edward B. Schlattman; Dean Shendal; Myrl Taylor; Ezra Baskin Ward; Mattie Ward; and Chuck Wepner. Many of these - renowned and obscure alike - are deserving of books unto themselves, such have been their lives, which I have sought in the course of this tale to glean and convey, sometimes in glimpse, sometimes in depth.

Without men such as Foneda Cox, Truman Gibson, Davey Pearl, Lowell Powell, Ezra Baskin Ward, and Chuck Wepner, this book could not have been what it is; and. while their importance is. I hope, manifest in the pages of this book. I should like here, in thanking them, to reiterate both that importance and my gratitude for their generosity. It was an honor to come to know them, as it was to know others, also of considerable importance, whose request for anonymity I have respected.

I write this on a cold night as one millennium, a dead wisp in that supernal breeze that we call time, becomes another. It is black outside, a little after half past four, when the joints too are dead. In the back ground - fuck the neighbors -the melancholy violin and viola, the mean self threnody of Iggy Pop's "No Shit." from his brutal, beautiful, and courageous Avenue B. I remember a night a few months back, at Manitoba's, a joint on Avenue B. I was there to read poetry, and Chuck Wepner, one of the last of the stand up guys - a guy who fought not only both Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali, but also, for charity, a Kodiak bear - had come in to introduce me. "This guy," he said, "writes like Sonny Liston hit." That night, this night, the blackness and the cold and the threnody of feeling one's own death and declaring that the only godly prayer in the face of that death is the decision to not to take any more shit, not from anybody - this fills me now, at this moment, as the long night, black and cold, of the book that follows still lingers, the la bor ending even as it did, with a laugh in a crowded, smoke filled room on Avenue B; ending, like all else, with a death that never comes because it is always here. And so here's to Chuck Wepner -water glasses raised high, as I think as I write this we're both still on probation, he in one state, I in another - Chuck Wepner, who took the blows; Chuck Wepner, who wouldn't rat out the Devil to God Himself, and who therefore is closer to God than any fucking asshole who believes that the laws of man are but filth compared to those of the soul.

What language, for shame, with which to precede my thanks to more genteel souls - then again, who knows, they might be killers and rapists by night - those underpaid, unlaureled heroes of that filigree of wisdom that is knowledge: Claudia Anderson, senior archivist of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library; the staff of the Arkansas Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics; members of the Arkansas State Historical Society; Mary Barns of the St. Francis County Circuit Court clerk's office; Margaret Booker, librarian at the Missouri Department of Corrections. Jefferson City; Tedi Burris of the Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery; workers at Carson City Vital Records; Richard Cawthorn of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Mary L. Eldridge of the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census; Don Cline, the superintendent of operations, Missouri Department of Corrections. Jefferson City; the Cross County Library; Jimmie James of the Cross County Historical Society; Evelyn Bell Crouch; the Forrest County Public Library; Jessie Hemphill Golden; Talmage Golden and Pauline Hall of the Montgomery County chancery clerk's office; Noel Holobeck of the History and Genealogy Department of the St. Louis City Library; Sarah Johnson of the Montgomery County Tax Assessor's Office; the Little Rock Central Library System; Tim Kniest, director of public relations, Missouri Department of Corrections, Jefferson City; Frank McEwan of the records division of the St. Louis Police Department; the Mississippi Department of Archives and History; the Mississippi Department of Health. Division of Vital Statistics; the Mississippi Historical Societ y; the workers of the National Archives in New York and Washington. D.C.; the Nevada Office of Vital Statistics; the New York Public Library; Christy Relyea of the office of the Clark County Assessor; Tina Rose of the Circuit Clerk's Office, Montgomery County, Mississippi; Neal Rudnick of the Las Vegas Library; the St. Francis County Courthouse; the St. Francis County Museum: Kathy Smith and the staff of the St. Louis City Library; Linda Seelke, archivist of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library; members of the Wynne, Arkansas, Historical Society.

Several prominent figures in law enforcement - all of them of that most old and rare school: good cops in every sense of the word good - took me not only into their confidence, but often selflessly aided me in my search, leading me to people, places, and truths that I likely would not have found without them. Among these men are William Anderson and James Hackett of St. Louis, and Matt Rodriguez of Chicago. In Jim Hackett, whom I met on the verge of his retirement from high office after a long and distinguished career in the force, I found a rare, kindred spirit of kindred sensibilities. It was as if we were from the same neighborhood - in a way we were, though thousands of miles apart - and as we became friends, we were never really aware of becoming friends, for it was as if we had always been such. It was my impression that Jim, longing for the old down and dirty, hands on detective work of his early years, took up the Liston case as an invigorating opportunity to return to those days of digging and searching in the light and the dark and shaded copses between them, where he knew that the emanations of human nature often lay. Whether the impression I here convey is right or not, one thing is sure: my thanks to Jim Hackett are considerable, as are my thanks to fortune for bringing me to know him. He is another stand up guy, who, in his own way, like Chuck Wepner, faced forces and took blows that many of us cannot imagine.

Of inestimable value was the devoted help of another scattered crew of great characters. I want here in particular to express my most heartfelt thanks to Chris Dickinson and John McGuire. Heartfelt. What a dainty, moribund, and demure sounding word. Fuck heartfelt. These people are as good as they come, and I can't type their names without seeing them smiling, and without my sitting like a fool smiling back.

Jules Feiler went far beyond the bonds of friendship to serve as a catalyst in so many ways. Alan Katz, in an act of great kindness, shared with me copies of the Federal Bureau of Investigation files on Liston; and knowing of his intense and dedicated interest in Liston. I hope I have returned that act of kindness in part with this book.

There are so many, for the writing of this book was a maze, an endless Latin sentence of a puzzle pieced together only by the decipherment of inflections. A litany of names does no one justice, but if people are willing to sit and stare at stone slabs bearing the countless names of countless dead fucks, I hope that you, who have bought your ticket to what follows, will pause to consider those others whom I here cannot forget:

Jim Agnew; Frank Barbarotta; Irl Baris; Jerry Blavat; Chris Calhoun: Steve Calt; Timothy Chanaud: Tim Channell: Dave Cohen: Pat Daily: Lisa Derrick:Gary Dretzka; Gerry Feltmann:Heather Fink:Frank For tunato; Terry Friedland: Shecky Greene; Charles Greller; some guy named Gus; Paul Hempil: Ted Hemphill; Nick Ippolito; Eddie Jaffe: Sarah Jumpner; Hank Kaplin: Ed Kelly; Greg Kot; Mark Kram; Irv Kupcinet; Art Laurie; Frank Liston; Roger Lee Liston; William Liston; Mike Manetti; Joe Mazzola; Jake McCarthy; the Reverend Jack McGuire; Mickey McTague; Richard Meltzer; William Nack; Tim O'Connor; Michael Ochs; Monsignor Artie Peet; Sarann Knight Preddy: Mark Ratner; Tony Romano; David Roter; Jim Schwenke:Hu bert Selby. Jr.; Dr. Allen Spivack; Laren Stover; Kenn Thomas; Mike Tocco; Paul Venti and the guys at the club; Cliff Van Langen; Sarkis Webbe. Jr.; David Zinsser.

As a companion journeyer through the labyrinths of all matters arcane, Jeff Roth, as always, is to be thanked.

Dr. Allen S. Yanoff, one of the most distinguished physicians in New York, examined for me the conundrum of Liston's autopsy report. Through the years. I have been thankful for this fine man and fine doctor many times for many things, and for this beneficence I am thankful once again.

Throughout my work on this book, and especially in its early stages. I was blessed to be assisted by Carrie Knoblock, a master of the research sciences whose resourcefulness, expertise, thoroughness, and diligence exceed any simple statement of gratitude and praise, no matter how superlative.

This book had its origin as a story written for Vanity Fair, and, regarding that origin, I want to acknowledge Graydon Carter for allowing me the freedom to write it, George Hodgman for not editing what I wrote, and Sara Switzer for taking care of business. Abby Royle, who transcribed the interviews conducted for that story, went on to transcribe the many, many more that followed.

In the final stages of the book, I was fortunate to work with an exceptional copyeditor, Jay Boggis, and master reader, Greg Rahal, astutely chosen by Peggy Freudenthal, the copyediting manager of Little, Brown; and was fortunate, too, to have been aided by the sharp eyes and keen classical literary sensibilities of Catherine McRae.

Above all, I want to thank Michael Pietsch and Sarah Crichton of Little, Brown; and along with them, as always, my agent, friend, and conspirator, Russell Galen. As for my assistant, Sarah Fabbricatore, I pause here to summon words. But this is no time for artful metaphor, and there are no words to be summoned, only the words that come freely forth. She is my right arm. She is my protectress from what keeps the breezes from entering me. Is that metaphor? It feels not to be. In any case, enough. Let's just do it, as that eminent litterateur Chuck Wepner would have it. Let's just write like Sonny Liston hit. She's the best. After me, anyway.

These are my last acknowledgments. Never again. Too much trouble.

Let that be a warning. Don't ever help me, because it won't get your name in a goddamn book.

Now, here's to Sonny.