Pandora's Ark

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I’ll do it.” The three words were spoken with little conviction as Kimball stood before Louie’s desk in a quaint little office whose walls were covered with corkboards, pushpins and memos that overlapped each other. The blunt of a cigar burned in an ashtray that read WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS, sending a corkscrew ribbon of blue smoke ceilingward.

“You’ll fight?”

“I need the money.”

“We all need money,” he said, smiling. Louie immediately went to the phone and tapped in numbers on the keypad and fell back into his seat. There was a look about him, thought Kimball, of victory due to the way his mouth tilted with smugness, how the arch of one eye was raised higher than the other.

“Yo, Mario, set me up for the undercard on Friday’s fight. I got my boy wonder here to go a few with whomever you have available.” There was a long pause as Louie nodded his head, imbibing every word Mario had to say. And then: “Is he any good?” There was another pause. “Six fights and six wins, five of them by knock out. Well, it seems that my boy here has his work cut out for him then… What?… Yeah, Friday night… All right then.” He placed the phone gingerly onto its cradle, grabbed the stub of his cigar, and set it at the corner of his mouth while surveying Kimball with a steady gaze. “Why the change of heart?” he asked.

“Like I said, I need the money.”

Louie shook his head. “I ain’t buying it.”

“I’m not trying to sell you anything. So either you believe me or you don’t. I don’t care. If you want a fighter, then here I am.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, his smile growing into a wide arc. “I got me a fighter, don’t I?”

“So I take it that I’m on the undercard on Friday night?”

Louie nodded. “You’ll be fighting a guy named Tank Russo — a big mother from back east. New York, New Jersey — they’re all the same. But he’s good, J.J. Five knockouts in six fights. And I mean flat out, star-seeing knockouts that sent three to the hospital. This guy is up and coming,” he added. “Another ten fights, he should be seeing rock-solid numbers from the purse.”

“And how much will I get?’

“With my fifty percent—”

“Twenty-five,” he corrected.

“Thirty-three?”

“Twenty.”

“Twenty? You’re going the wrong way, J.J. When you negotiate, you’re supposed to come to a happy medium. How about twenty-five percent?”

“Twenty. You’re not the one going into that ring against a wrecking machine.”

The smile washed away from Louie’s face, which had become as sullen as stone. “All right twenty. But you better win, J.J. The purse for this fight is one thousand for the winner and five hundred for the loser. If you lose, I only get a C-note.”

“That’s not bad for a phone call.”

Louie fell back into his chair. “No, I guess not. But if you lose, J.J., you won’t climb, especially coming out of the gate with a losing record.”

“I won’t lose.”

“You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

“Sure enough,” he answered. And then: “How many fights will it take to get to the top?”

“I’d say about fifteen, maybe twenty if you have a loss. It all depends upon how exciting of a fighter you are. If you’re good, you move. If not, then you’ll be trolling for trash as long as you work for this casino.”

“And the purses?”

“They grow as you do. Once you hit mainstream, once the TV’s focus on you as a supreme fighter, then you’re easily looking at five to six figures.”

Kimball couldn’t afford the television networks to reveal his true identity. Should a government constituent recognize him, then his life would be in jeopardy and he’d become the target of indigenous forces sent to silence him for the black ops he once performed for them and the dirty little secrets he held, including the sanctioned assassination of a United States senator.

No, he told himself. He would only bankroll enough money and leave Las Vegas before he made any type of impression with the network brass. Perhaps to Montana and buy a small spread to get started, and then grow from there. He would live a quiet life, alone, under a new name, a new identity, and pay taxes. He would wake up to the colorful streamers of light at dawn, then sit on the porch at dusk in a rocker watching the day’s light fade to an obsidian darkness where the night sky sparkled with countless pinprick lights as stars glowered against a most gorgeous canopy. A soft wind would blow through the trees, the leaves singing in concert. It was all quite simple, he thought. Ten fights, maybe twelve. Just enough to get him started.

And then he would once again try to escape from his true nature.

“I knew you’d come around,” said Louie. “You can’t run away from who you really are. I always told you that, didn’t I? I always said that you were a fighter, J.J. I could see it in your baby blues.”

Kimball nodded. You’re right, Louie. I really can’t escape from who I really am, can I? A fighter… A warrior… And don’t forget killer.

“Take the rest of the day off,” said Louie, standing, the cigar hanging precariously at the corner of his mouth. “Tomorrow, too. I’ll tell the bosses you went home sick. But I need you rested. This fight ain’t gonna be a cakewalk.”

Kimball left without a spoken word and kept to his ritual as much as he could. He went and bought his parfait glass of shrimp and walked beneath the overhang of the Freemont Experience. But it was still light and the overhead was not activated. So he walked to his apartment passing the homeless, the addicted, the forlorn and the wasted. He walked without a hitch in his step and his head held low.

The homeless begged him for money, their bony hands greased and caked with dirt held out for meager wages — a penny, a nickel, or perhaps the jackpot of a dollar bill. But Kimball ignored them the same way he ignored the lifeless looking nymphs who were ready to pleasure him for enough money to buy a bindle of meth.

Montana was looking better with every stride.

When he got home he went to the bathroom and gazed upon his features. He looked deep into his cerulean blue eyes, wondering what it was that Louie saw. Did they have a certain look about them? Something that gave insight to what he truly was? Were they the telltale signs of a killer in dormancy?

He raised the tips of his fingers and brushed them against the reflected images of his eyes — the blue eyes, so beautiful in their color, so deadly in their meaning.

Kimball then went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of vodka from the freezer, sat on the edge of the bed, popped the cap, and took a long swallow.

This is how he geared up for the fight, by first taking on his own demons.