Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (71 page)

And why not?

I was, after all, the undisputed heavyweight Gonzo champion of the world—and this giggling yoyo in the bed across the room from me was no longer the champion of
anything
, or at least nothing he could get a notary public to vouch for ... So I sat back on the bureau with my head against the mirror and I thought, Well, shit—here I am, and it’s definitely a weird place to be; but not
really
, and not half as weird as a lot of other places I’ve been ... Nice view, decent company, and no
real
worries at all in this tight group of friends who were obviously having a good time with each other as the conversation recovered from my flakey entrance and got back on the fast-break, bump-and-run track they were used to . . .

Conrad was sitting on the floor with his back to the big window that looks out on the savage, snow-covered wasteland of Central Park—and one look at his face told me that he was
finished working
for the night; he had worked a major miracle, smuggling a hyena into the house of mirrors, and now he was content to sit back and see what happened . . .

Conrad was as happy as a serious smoker without a serious smoke could have been right then ... And so was I, for that matter, despite
the crossfire of abuse and bent humor that I found myself caught in, between Bundini and the bed.

Ali was doing most of the talking: his mind seemed to be sort of wandering around and every once in a while taking a quick bite out of anything that caught his interest, like a good-humored wolverine ... There was no talk about boxing, as I recall: we’d agreed to save that for the “formal interview” tomorrow morning, so this midnight gig was a bit like a warmup for what Conrad described as “the
serious
bullshit.”

There was a lot of talk about “drunkards,” the sacred nature of “unsweetened grapefruit,” and the madness of handling money—a subject I told him I’d long since mastered: “How many acres do you own?” I kept asking him whenever he started getting too high on his own riffs. “Not as many as me,” I assured him. “I’m richer than Midas, and nine times as shrewd—whole valleys and mountains of acres,” I continued, keeping a very straight face: “Thousands of cattle, stallions, peacocks, wild boar, sloats . . .” And then the final twist: “You and Frazier just never learned how to handle money—but for twenty percent of the nut I can make you almost as rich as I am.”

I could see that he didn’t believe me. Ali is a hard man to con—but when he got on the subject of his tragic loss of “all privacy,” I figured it was time for the drill.

“You really want a cure for your privacy problem?” I asked him, ripping the top out of another Ballantine Ale.

He smiled wickedly. “Sure, boss—what you got?”

I slid off the bureau and moved toward the door. “Hang on,” I told him. “I’ll be right back.”

Conrad was suddenly alert. “Where the hell are you going?” he snapped.

“To my room,” I said. “I have the ultimate cure for Muhammad’s privacy problem.”

“
What
room?” he asked. “You don’t even know where it is, do you?”

More laughter.

“It’s 1011,” Conrad said, “right upstairs—but hurry back,” he added. “And if you run into Pat, we never heard of you.”

Pat Patterson, Ali’s fearfully diligent bodyguard, was known to be
prowling the halls and putting a swift arm on anything human or otherwise that might disturb Ali’s sleep. The rematch with Spinks was already getting cranked up, and it was Patterson’s job to make sure The Champ stayed deadly serious about his new training schedule.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I just want to go up to the room and put on my pantyhose. I’ll be a lot more comfortable.”

The sound of raucous laughter followed me down the hall as I sprinted off toward the fire exit, knowing I would have to be fast or I’d never get back in that room—tonight
or
tomorrow.

But I knew what I wanted, and I knew where it was in my parachute bag: yes, a spectacularly hideous full-head, real-hair, $75 movie-style red devil mask—a thing so fiendishly
real
and ugly that I still wonder, in moments like these, what sort of twisted impulse caused me to even pack the goddamn thing, much less wear it through the halls of the Park Lane Hotel and back into Muhammad Ali’s suite at this unholy hour of the night.

Three minutes later I was back at the door, with the mask zipped over my head and the neck-flap tucked into my shirt. I knocked twice, then leaped into the room when Bundini opened the door, screaming some brainless slogan like
“Death to the weird!”

For a second or two there was no sound at all in the room—then the whole place exploded in wild laughter as I pranced around, smoking and drinking through the molded rubber mouth and raving about whatever came into my head.

The moment I saw the expression on Muhammad’s face, I knew my mask would never get back to Woody Creek. His eyes lit up like he’d just seen the one toy he’d wanted all his life, and he almost came out of the bed after me . . .

“Okay,” I said, lifting it off my head and tossing it across the room to the bed. “It’s yours, my man—but let me warn you that not
everybody
thinks this thing is real funny.”

(“Especially
black
people,” Conrad told me later. “Jesus,” he said, “I just about flipped when you jumped into the room with that goddamn mask on your head. That
was
really pushing your luck.”)

Ali put the mask on immediately and was just starting to enjoy himself
in the mirror, when we all went stiff to the sound of harsh knocking through the door, along with the voice of Pat Patterson. “Open up,” he was shouting. “What the hell is going on in there?”

I rushed for the bathroom, but Bundini was two steps ahead of me ... Ali, still wearing the hideous mask, ducked under the covers, and Conrad went to open the door.

It all happened so fast that we all simply
froze
in position as Patterson came in like Dick Butkus on a blood scent ... and that was when Muhammad came out of the bed with a wild cry and a mushroom cloud of flying sheets, pointing one long brown arm and a finger like Satan’s own cattle prod straight into Pat Patterson’s face.

And that, folks, was a moment that I’d just as soon not have to live through again. We were all lucky, I think, that Patterson didn’t go for his gun and blow Muhammad away in that moment of madness before he recognized the body under the mask.

It was only a split second, but it could easily have been a hell of a lot longer for all of us if Ali hadn’t dissolved in a fit of whooping laughter at the sight of Pat Patterson’s face ... And although Pat recovered instantly, the smile he finally showed us was uncomfortably thin.

The problem, I think, was not so much the mask itself and the shock it had caused him—but
why
The Champ was wearing the goddamn thing at all; where had it come from? And why? These were serious times, but a scene like this could have ominous implications for the future—particularly with Ali so pleased with his new toy that he kept it on his head for the next ten or fifteen minutes, staring around the room and saying with no hint of a smile in his voice that he would definitely wear it for his appearance on the Dick Cavett show the next day. “This is the new
me
,” he told us. “I’ll wear it on TV tomorrow and tell Cavett that I promised Veronica that I won’t take it off until I win my title back. I’m gonna wear this ugly thing everywhere I go—even when I get into the ring with Spinks next time.” He laughed wildly and jabbed at himself in the mirror. “Yes indeed!” he chuckled. “They thought I was crazy
before
, but they ain’t seen
nothin’
yet.”

I was feeling a little on the crazy side myself, at that point—and Patterson’s accusing presence soon told us it was time to go.

“Okay, boss,” Ali said to me on the way out. “Tomorrow we get serious,
right? Nine o’clock in the morning. We’ll have breakfast, and get
real
serious.”

I agreed, and went upstairs to my room for a bit of the good smoke.

I was up at eight thirty the next day, but when I called Ali’s suite, Veronica said he’d been up since seven and “was wandering around downstairs somewhere.”

I found him in the restaurant, sitting at one end of a table full of cut glass and silver, dressed almost as formally as the maitre d’ in a dark blue pin-striped suit and talking very seriously with a group of friends and very earnest black businessmen types who were all dressed the same way he was. It was a completely different man from the one I’d been sparring and laughing with the night before. The conversation around the table ranged from what to do about a just-received invitation to visit some new country in Africa, to a bewildering variety of endorsement offers, to book contracts, real estate, and the molecular structure of crabmeat.

It was midmorning before we finally went upstairs to his suite “to get serious.” ... And what follows is a 99 percent verbatim transcript of our conversation for almost the next two hours. Muhammad was stretched out on the bed, still wearing his “senator’s suit,” and balancing my tape recorder on his stomach while he talked. I was sitting cross-legged right next to him on the bed, with a bottle of Heineken in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and my shoes on the floor beside me.

The room was alive with the constant comings and goings of people bearing messages, luggage, warnings about getting to the Cavett show on time ... and also a very alert curiosity about
me
and what I was up to. The mask was nowhere in sight, but Pat Patterson
was
—along with three or four other very serious-looking black gentlemen who listened to every word we said. One of them actually kneeled on the floor right next to the bed, with his ear about thirteen inches away from the tape recorder, the whole time we talked.

Okay, we might as well get back to what we were talking about downstairs. You said you’re definitely going to fight Spinks again, right?

I can’t say I’m definitely going to fight Spinks again. I think we are.
I’m sure we are—but I might die, he might die.

But as far as you’re concerned, you want to, you’re counting on it.

Yeah, he plans to fight me. I gave him a chance, and he will give me a shot back at it. The people won’t believe he’s a true champion until he beats me twice. See, I had to beat Liston twice, [Ingemar] Johansson had to beat Patterson twice, but he didn’t. Randy Turpin had to beat Sugar Ray [Robinson] twice, but he didn’t. If he can beat me twice, then people will really believe that he might possibly be the greatest.

Okay, let me ask you . . . at what point, at what time—I was in Vegas for the fight—when did you realize that things were getting real serious?

Round twelve.

Up to then you still thought you had control.

I was told that I was probably losing, but maybe I was even. I had to win the last three, and I was too
tired
to win the last three, then I knew I was in trouble.

But you figured you could pull it off . . . up until round twelve.

Yeah, but I couldn’t, ’cause he is confident, ’cause he is winning, and I had to pull it off and he was 197 and I’m 228, and that’s too heavy.

Didn’t you tell me downstairs at breakfast that you’re going to come in at 205 next time?

I don’t know what I’m going to come in at; 205 is really impossible. If I get to 220 I’ll be happy. Just be eight pounds lighter ... I’ll be happy. I did pretty good at that weight, to be in condition around 220, even if it’s 225, 223, I could do better.

Well, on a scale of one hundred, what kind of condition were you in for Spinks?

Scale of one hundred? I was eighty.

Where should you have been?

Should have been . . . ninety-eight.

Why didn’t you know him better? You didn’t seem ready . . .

Why didn’t anybody know him? He slipped up on the press, a
ten-to-one underdog, they called him. He hadn’t gone over ten rounds and only seven pro fights. What can you know about him?

Okay, let’s get to another point:

This may be an odd question, but I want to ask you anyway. At the press conference after the fight I remember Leon saying, “I just wanted to beat this nigger.” And it seems to me it was done with a smile, but when I heard that I felt the whole room get tense.

No, that’s okay. I say the same things. We black people talk about each other that way, in a humorous way. “Ah, niggah, be quiet.” “Ah—ahh. I can whop that niggah.” “Niggah, you crazy.” Those are our expressions. If you say it, I’ll slap you. The white man can’t call me nigger like they do.

So it was a joke? It struck me as a very raw note, but . . .

I can’t blame you. When I beat Sonny Liston, I didn’t say those words, but I was glad to win, so I can’t take nothing from Spinks—he’s good, he’s a lot better fighter than people thought he was.