Pandora's Ark

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Friday night in Las Vegas is a night of anarchy in most cities, a place with no discipline and no sense of order. Although Sin City is a city cast in liberal shadows, it is also a city of tough laws. Prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas, although most casinos have their own stables hidden away and usually for high rollers; alcohol is never allowed while driving, although open containers are acceptable while walking the Strip; and the perception of lawlessness or unrestrained actions would likely guarantee a criminal charge and several days in the Clark County Detention Center, most likely ruining a vacation by spending it in a facility that always smelled like dirty laundry.

But certain venues held the Thunderdome likeness of Ultimate Fighting. The cages were surrounded by fanatical fans bent on brutality rather than boxing. Their screams and cries erupting as the contestants entered the cage knowing that only one would leave, and the other would lie as a broken tangle.

In the undercard bout at Caesar’s Palace, Kimball and Tank Russo, a huge man with broad shoulders and pile-driving arms, entered the ring. Tank regarded Kimball with a warrior’s glare, that straight-on look of a champion who was not afraid with his chin raised in defiance; and a prognathous brow scarred from past combats with every crooked line a badge of honor. And then he rolled his shoulders and neck to loosen up, the large bands of muscles writhing.

Kimball stood idle, staring at the 4-ounce gloves on his hands and flexing his fingers, these types of gloves alien to him.

“He’s a big dude, J.J.” Louie called out from the first row. “Be careful!”

Kimball turned to him and saw the concern on Louie’s face — could read the scripted lines of his features openly, the man having little faith in Kimball after seeing the size of Tank Russo.

And then he looked into the stands, at the scores of people who wanted to witness unbridled violence. Their faces masks of hungry rage.

Welcome to my world.

Tank moved closer to the ring’s center, throwing jabs into open air. Kimball, with all the ease of a man taking a leisurely stroll, moved forward when the ref beckoned him to the center.

Whereas Kimball appeared uncaring, his opponent appeared bull-like; a man who wanted nothing more than to beat him down to paste simply because he could.

After the ref gave the final directions both men parted, Tank Russo taking a defensive stance, hands up, knees bent, eyes focused, whereas Kimball stood straight with his arms by his side and a smile on his face as if saying “what’s this all about?”

When the ref gave the signal Tank closed in. And Kimball could see in Tank’s eyes that he thought this was going to be an easy victory, the opponent in Kimball too green.

In a sweeping motion so quick, so fluid, Kimball swung his leg out and then up until his leg was straight up in the air, and came straight down with an axe kick, the heel of his foot coming down on Tank’s head, the force behind the blow snapping Tank’s head viciously to the side, his eyes then rolling into slivers of white before he buckled as a boneless heap to the floor, the man rendered unconscious inside of seven seconds.

Kimball stood there looking down at his opponent, and then he turned to Louie who was standing in paralytic awe, his cigar threatening to fall from the corner of his mouth as Kimball shot him a thumbs-up. “Is that it? Am I done?”

Louie stood in stunned silence along with the rest of the crowd. Whereas they saw the makings of a true champion, he saw dollar signs. And then to no one in particular he whispered, “He’s gonna make me a millionaire.” And then in a celebratory manner by pumping his fist high, he yelled, “A millionaire!” It was the rally cry that got the crowd going, the quasi-silence now turning into a cacophonous riot of absolute noise and cheer.

Louie ran to the cage and curled his fingers through the rubber-coated links. “I knew you were a fighter!” he told him. “Damn if I didn’t know you were a fighter, J.J.”

“Is that it? Are we done?”

But Louie just ranted. “That was an axe kick,” he said. “A perfectly performed axe kick.”

“Louie, are we done?”

Louie’s smile broadened. “Until next week,” he told him. “Next Friday night.”

“Bigger purse?”

“After this? I’d say so.”

“I need the money.”

“Don’t we all,” said Louie, a ribbon of smoke curling lazily from the cigar’s end. “Don’t we all.”

In the locker room with distant cheers of the next fight coming through the cinderblock walls, Kimball sat on the bench undoing the tape that was wrapped around his wrists when Tank Russo was aided to a nearby medical table with his trainers aiding him into a supine position.

Kimball glanced up long enough to see Tank wave off his team before going back to the unwrapping.

Tank turned to him. “That was just a lucky kick, dude.”

Kimball ignored him.

Then: “Dude?”

Kimball faced him, his features appearing taxed. “What.”

“That was a lucky kick.”

“If you say so.” He went back to undoing the tape.

A short lapse of silence followed before Kimball spoke, his eyes focusing on the tape as he unwound the strips rather than looking at the man on the table. “Are you OK?”

Tank nodded, his eyes looking ceilingward. “A little dizzy,” he answered. “And I can feel a headache coming on.”

“You need to get yourself looked at — make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

Tank turned to him. “J.J. Doetsch,” he said. “How come I never heard of you before? It’s obvious this isn’t your first time to the rodeo.”

Kimball smiled. “I thought you said it was just a lucky kick.”

Tank proffered his own smile, an icebreaker between burgeoning friendships. “That was just my ego talking. You know how it goes in this business.”

Kimball finished with unrolling the tape from his wrists, tossed them in a trash can, and walked up to Tank who lay there with partially glazed eyes. But intuitive eyes as well.

Tank saw the scars, lines and bullet pocks along Kimball’s ripped body, the obvious wounds of battle. “You ain’t new to this, are you?”

“Cage fighting? You were my first.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he said. “You’re my first cherry pop.”

Tank faced the ceiling. “Lucky me,” he said.

Kimball placed a kind hand on Tank’s shoulder and smiled. “Yeah. Lucky you.”

When Kimball returned to the bench Louie was standing there with eight crisp Benjamins fanning out from his grasp. “Your take,” he said, “as we agreed upon.”

Kimball took the money and stared at it for a long moment. It’s not that he had never seen that amount before or held them for simple homage. It was the way he earned it — by ritualistic brutality that catered to the whims of the masses.

It was blood money.

He took the bills, folded them, and slipped them into his shirt pocket that hung on a hanger in his locker. “Thanks, Louie.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow at work, then. We’ll talk about next Friday night.” After pumping a victorious fist in excitement, Louie was no doubt heading for the Blackjack tables with his roll.

“You’re going to be a champion someday,” said Tank. “You know that, don’t you? You’re going to be right up there because you give the people what they want: a vicious wrecking machine that takes his opponents out without conscience or care.”

Kimball sighed, and then said evenly, “Without conscience or care, huh?”

Tank nodded. “That’s right, buddy. And that’s why you’re going to be a bankable star in this business. When I first saw you I thought you were just a stupid greener just standing there. Just cool and calm is what you were. Grace under pressure like I’ve never seen before. You showed me nothing, as if you were completely empty.”

Kimball stared briefly into open space before turning to the lump of bills bulging from his shirt pocket within the locker. It was so easy, he thought. The money. An obvious pull since he was good at it. But what panged him to no end was that Tank Russo instantly saw in him what others have been saying about him since the beginning: that Kimball Hayden was a man without conscience.

And a man without conscience can never see the salvation within God’s eyes.

Kimball was suddenly full of regrets.