Blood Relations

But now, on the other end of Sam's phone line, came another voice from New York, an old friend. James needed a place to bunk for a few days, a new gym--perhaps trainer Freddie Roach's place, not far from Sam's--and a new start. Sam already had a guest in his cramped apartment, an aspiring actress from New York named Beatriz Quiñones. But he'd just written a column for foxsports.com asking the world to give the Hammer another chance, so how could he not?

James arrived and sacked out on Sam's couch. A few days became a few weeks. James grew jumpy. He didn't like L.A. He wanted to go home and hold the newborn son that he hadn't seen in five weeks, the one he couldn't bear to see grow up without a dad, as he had. One moment James seemed depressed; the next, so excited that the words tumbled from his mouth. But he wouldn't take his medication, which had made it so hard to train. He sat in front of the TV, making it hard for Sam to write. They began arguing over little things. Beatriz felt the tension growing, packed up and cleared out.

Sam called Max on Oct. 6. Maybe it was only to argue Kobe-Shaq. Maybe it was just to dissect the Yankees-Twins playoff game that night. Max will never know. He was at Yankee Stadium, and the crowd's thunder drowned out Sam's voice. "I can't hear you, Sam!" shouted Max. "Talk to you later!" But he got home late and didn't call back.

Five nights later another young actress, Claudia Salinas, went to dinner with Sam and returned with him to his apartment. James was watching TV again. "I need to watch a game for the column I'm writing," Claudia remembered Sam saying. "Can I change the channel?"

"No," said James.

"Yo, I've got to work," said Sam. "I've got to see who wins so I can finish this story."

"Wait till the commercials," growled the Hammer. It almost seemed as if he needed to know whether even Sam would push him away.

"Let's take a walk," Sam said to Claudia. He was in Kellerman quicksand: trying to help a victim who was making him feel like a victim in his own home. "It's like this all the time," he told Claudia. It was time, Sam decided, to say no, to ask James to leave.

Sam, according to police, was sitting at his computer the next day when the Hammer struck. He'd once told a friend that if a larger man ever attacked him, the man had better be ready to fight to the death. Was that why Butler's hammer struck 31 more times? Or was that just the mathematics of rage and disease?

A $300 postal money order to pay for James's flight back to Florida--sent by his boxing manager, David Berlin--arrived in Sam's mailbox that day.