The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

F. X. Toole Midnight Emissions

From Murder on the Ropes

“Butcherin’ was done while the deceased was still alive,” Junior said.

See, we was at the gym and I’d been answering a few things. Old Junior’s a cop, and his South Texas twang was wide and flat like mine. ’Course he was dipping, and he let a stream go into the Coke bottle he was carrying in the hand that wasn’t his gun hand. His blue eyes was paler than a washed-out work shirt.

“Hail,” he said, “one side of the mouth’d been slit all the way to the earring.”

See, when the police find a corpse in Texas, their first question ain’t who done it, it’s what did the dead do to deserve it?

Billy Clancy’d been off the police force a long time before Kenny Coyle come along, but he had worked for the San Antonia Police Department a spell there after boxing. He made some good money for himself on the side — down in dark town, if you know what I’m saving? That’s after I trained him as a heavyweight in the old El Gallo, or Fighting Cock gym off Blanco Road downtown. We worked together maybe six years all told, starting off when he was a amateur. Billy Clancy had all the Irish heart in the world. At six-three and two-twenty-five, he had a fine frame on him, most of his weight upstairs. He had a nice clean style, too, and was quick as a sprinter. But after he was once knocked out for the first time? He had no chin after that. He’d be kicking ass and taking names, but even in a rigged fight with a bum, if he got caught, down he’d go like a longneck at a ice house.

He was a big winner in the amateurs, Billy was, but after twelve pro fights, he had a record of eight and four, with his nose broke once — that’s eight wins by KO, but he lost four times by KO, so that’s when he hung ’em up. For a long time, he went his way and I went mine. But then Billy Clancy opened Clancy’s Pub with his cop money. That was his big break. There was Irish night with Mick music, corned beef and cabbage, and Caffery’s Ale on tap and Harp Lager from Dundalk. And he had Messkin night with mariachis and folks was dancin’ corridos and the band was whooping out rancheras and they’d get to playing some of that norteña polka music that’d have you laughing and crying at the same time. For shrimp night, all you can eat, Billy trucked in fresh Gulf shrimp sweeter than plum jelly straight up from Matamoros on the border. There was kicker, and hillbilly night, and on weekends there was just about the best jazz and blues you ever did hear. B. B. King did a whole week there one time. It got to be a hell of a deal for Billy, and then he opened up a couple of more joints till he had six in three towns, and soon Billy Clancy was somebody all the way from San Antonia up to Dallas, and down to Houston. Paid all his taxes, obeyed all the laws, treated folks like they was ladies and gentlemen, no matter how dusty the boots, how faded the dress, or if a suit was orange and purple and green.

By then he had him a home in the historic old Monte Vista section of San Antonia. His wife had one of them home decorating businesses on her own, and she had that old place looking so shiny that it was like going back a hundred years. His kids was all in private school, all of them geared to go to UT up Austin, even though the dumb young one saw himself as a Aggie.

So one day Billy called me for some “Q” down near the river, knew I was a whore for baby back ribs. Halfway through, he just up and said, “Red, I want back in.”

See, he got to missing the smell of leather and sweat, and the laughter of men — he missed the action, is what, and got himself back into the game the only way he could, managing fighters. He was good at it, too. By then he was better’n forty, and myself I was getting on — old’s when you sit on the crapper and you have to hold your nuts up so they don’t get wet. But what with my rocking chair money every month, and the money I made off Billy’s fighters, it got to where I was doing pretty good. Even got me some ostrich boots and a El Patron 30X beaver Stetson, yip!

What Billy really wanted was a heavyweight. With most managers, it’s only the money, ’cause heavies is what brings in them stacks of green fun-tickets. Billy wanted fun-tickets, too, but with Billy it was more like he wanted to get back something what he had lost. ’Course, finding the right heavyweight’s like finding a cherry at the high school prom.

Figure it, with only twenty, twenty-five good wins, ’specially if he can crack, a heavy can fight for a title’s worth millions. There’s exceptions, but most little guys’ll fight forever and never crack maybe two hundred grand. One of the reason’s ’cause there’s so many of them. Other reason’s ’cause they’s small. Fans like seeing heavyweights hit the canvas.

But most of today’s big guys go into the other sports where you don’t get hit the way you do in the fights. It ain’t held against you in boxing if you’re black nowadays, but if you’re a white heavy it makes it easier to pump paydays, and I could tell that it wouldn’t make Billy sad if I could get him a white boy — Irish or Italian would be desired. But working with the big guys takes training to a level that can break your back and your heart, and I wasn’t all that sure a heavy was what I wanted, what with me being the one what’s getting broke up.

See, training’s a hard row to hoe. It ain’t only the physical and mental parts for the fighter what’s hard, but it’s hard for the trainer, too. Fighters can drive you crazy, like maybe right in the middle of a fight they’re winning, when they forget everything what you taught them? And all of a sudden they can’t follow instructions from the corner? Pressure, pain, and being out of gas will make fighters go flat brain-dead on you. Your fighter’s maybe sweated off six or eight pounds in there, his body’s breaking down, and the jungle in him is yelling quick to get him some gone. Trainers come to know how that works, so you got to hang with your boy when he’s all alone out there in the canvas part of the world. He takes heart again, ’cause he knows with you there he’s still got a fighting chance to go for the titties of the win. ’Course, that means cutting grommets, Red Ryder.

Everyone working corners knows you’ll more’n likely lose more’n you’ll ever win, that boxing for most is refried beans and burnt tortillas. But winning is what makes your birdie chirp, so you got to always put in your mind that losing ain’t nothing but a hitch in the git-along.

Working with the big guys snarls your task. How do you tell a heavyweight full-up on his maleness to use his mind instead of his sixty-pound dick? How do you teach someone big as a garage that it ain’t the fighter with the biggest brawn what wins, but it’s the one what gets there first with deadly force? How do you make him see that hitting hard ain’t the problem, but that hitting right is? How do you get through to him that you don’t have to be mad at someone to knock him out, same as you don’t have to be in a frenzy to kill with a gun? Heavyweights got that upper-body strength what’s scary, it’s what they’d always use to win fights at school and such, so it’s their way to work from the waist up. That means they throw arm punches, but arm punches ain’t good enough. George Foreman does it, but he’s so strong, and don’t hardly miss, so he most times gets away with punching wrong. ’Course he didn’t get away with it in Zaire with Mr. Ali.

So the big deal with heavies is getting them to work from the waist down as well as from the waist up. And they got to learn that the last thing that happens is when the punch lands. A thousand things got to happen before that can happen. Those things begin on the floor with balance. But how do you get across that he’s got to work hard, but not so hard that he harms himself? How do you do that in a way what don’t threaten what he already knows and has come to depend on? How do you do it so’s it don’t jar how he has come to see himself and his fighting style? And most of all, how do you do it so when the pressure’s on he don’t go back to his old ways?

After they win a few fights by early knockout, some heavies get to where they try to control workouts, will balk at new stuff what they’ll need as they step up in class. When they pick up a few purses and start driving that new car, lots get lazy and spend their time chasing poon, of which there is a large supply when there is evidence of a quantity of hundred-dollar bills. Some’s hop heads, but maybe they fool you and you don’t find that out till it’s too late. Now you got to squeeze as many paydays out of your doper that you can. Most times, you love your fighter like he’s kin, but with a goddamn doper you get to where you couldn’t give a bent nail.

Why shouldn’t I run things? the heavy’s eyes will glare. His nose is flared, his socks is soggy with sweat, his heart’s banging at his rib cage like it’s trying to bust out of jail. It’s ’cause he don’t understand that he can’t be the horse and the jockey. How could anyone as big and handsome and powerful and smart as me be wrong about anything? he will press. Under his breath he’s saving, And who’s big enough to tell me I’m wrong?

When that happens, your boy’s attitude is moving him to the streets, and you may have to let him go.

Not many fight fans ever see the inside of fight gyms, so they get to wondering what’s the deal with these big dummies who get all sweaty and grunty and beat on each other. Well, sir, they ain’t big dummies when you think big money. Most big guys in team sports figure there’s more gain and less pain than in fights, even if they have to play a hundred fifty games a year or more, and even if they have to get those leg and back operations that go with them. Some starting-out heavies get to thinking they ought to get the same big payday as major-league pitchers from the day they walk into the gym. Some see themselves as first-round draft picks in the NBA before they ever been hit. What they got to learn is that you got to be a hungry fighter before you can become a championship fighter, a fighter who has learned and survived all the layers of work and hurt the fight game will put on you. Good heavyweights’re about as scarce as black cotton.

There’re less white heavies than black, and the whites can be even goofier than blacks about quick money. Some whites spout off that ’cause they’re white, as in White Hope, that they should be getting easy fights up to and including the one for the title. If you’re that kind — and there’s black ones same as white — you learn right quick that he don’t have the tit or the brains to be a winner under them bright lights.

Though heavies may have the same look, they’re as different from each other as zebras when it comes to mental desire, chin, heart, and huevos — huevos is eggs, but in Messkin it means “balls.” Getting heavies into shape is another problem, keeping them in shape is a even bigger one, ’cause they got these bottomless pits for stomachs. So you work to keep them in at least decent shape all the time — but not in punishing top shape, the kind that peaks just before a fight. Fighter’d go wild-pig crazy if he had to live at top shape longer than a few days, his nerves all crawly and hunger eating him alive. And then there’s that blood-clotting wait to the first bell. See, the job of molding flesh and bone into a fighting machine that meets danger instead of high-tailing from it is as tricky as the needlework what goes into one of them black, lacy deals what Spanish ladies wear on their heads. Fighting’s easy, cowboy, it’s training what’s hard.

But once a trainer takes a heavy on, there’s all that thump. First of all, when the heavy moves, you got to move with him — up in the ring, on the hardwood, around the big bag. You’re there to guide him like a mama bear, and to stay on his ass so’s he don’t dog it. All fighters’ll dog it after they been in the game a while, but the heavies can be the worst. They got all that weight to transport, and being human, they’ll look Tor a place to hide. A good piece of change’ll usually goad them. But always there is more training than fighting, and the faith and the fever it takes to be a champ will drop below ninety-eight-point-six real quick unless your boy eats and sleeps fight. ’Course, no fighter can do that one hundred percent. Besides, there’s the pussy factor. Which is part of where the punch mitts come in. They’ll make him sharp with his punches, but they’re also there to help tire him into submission come bedtime.

The big bag they can fake if you don’t stay on them, but a trainer with mitts, calling for combination after combination, see that’s for the fighter like he’s wearing a wire jock. But for the trainer, the mitts mean you’re catching punches thrown by a six-foot-five longhorn, and the punches carry force enough to drop a horse. And the trainer takes this punishment round after round, day after day, the thump pounding through him like batting practice and he’s the ball. I can’t much work the mitts like I once did, only when I’m working on moves, or getting ready for a set date. But even bantamweights can make your eyes pop.

Part of the payoff for all this is sweeter’n whipped cream on top of strawberry pie. It’s when your fighter comes to see himself from the outside instead of just from the in. It’s when all of a sudden he can see how to use his feet to control that other guy in the short pants. It’s how a fighter’ll smile like a shy little boy when he understands that all his moves’re now offense and defense, and that he suddenly has the know-how to beat the other guy with his mind, that he no longer has to be just some bull at the watering hole looking to gore. And that’s when, Lordy, that you just maybe got yourself a piece of somebody what can change sweat and hurt into gold and glory.

Getting a boy ready for a fight is the toughest time of all for trainers. After a session with the mitts, your fingers’ll curl into the palms of your hands for a hour or so, and driving home in your Jimmy pickup means your hands’ll be claws on the steering wheel. The muscles in the middle of your back squeeze your shoulders up around your ears. Where your chest hooks into your shoulders, you go home feeling there’s something tore down in there. Elbows get sprung, and groin pulls hobble you. In my case, I’ve got piano wire holding my chest and ribs together, so when I leave the gym shock keeps on twanging through me. By the time I’m heading home, I’m thinking hard on a longneck bottle of Lone Star. The only other thing I’m thinking on is time in the prone position underneath Granny’s quilt.

See, what we’re talking about here is signing on to be a cripple, ’cause when you get down to it, trainers in their way get hit more than fighters, only we do it for nickels and dimes, compared. So what’s the rest of the deal for the trainer? Well, sir, after getting through all the training and hurting, you live with the threat that you could work years with a heavy only to have him quit on you for somebody who’s dangling money at him now that you’ve done the job that changed a lump of fear and doubt into a fighter. But like I say, a good heavy these days only has to win a few fights for a shot at the title. If he wins that, he’s suddenly drinking from solid gold teacups. As the champ, he will defend his title as little as once. But the payoff can be mucho if he can defend a few times. So when the champ gets a ten-million-dollar payday, the trainer gets ten percent off the top — that’s a one-million-dollar bill. That can make you forget crippled backs and hands.

’Course the downside can be there, too. That’s when your heart goes out to your fighter as you watch helpless sometimes as he takes punches to the head that can hack into his memory forever. And your gut will turn against you when one day you see your boy’s eyes wander all glassy when he tries to find a word that he don’t have in his mouth no more. You feel rotten deep down, but you also love your fighter for having the heart to roll the dice of his life on a dream. And above all, you see clear that no matter how rotten you feel, that your boy never had nothing else but his life to roll, and that you was the lone one who ever cared enough to give him the only shot he would ever have.

Yet the real lure, when you love the fights with everything that’s left of your patched-up old heart, is to be part of the great game — a game where the dues are so high that once paid they take you to the Mount Everest of the Squared Circle, to that highest of places, where fire and ice are one and where only the biggest and best can play, yip!

Trainers know going in that the odds against you are a ton to one. So why do I risk the years, why do I take shots that stun my heart? Why am I part of the spilt blood? Why do I take trips to Leipzig or Johannesburg that take me two weeks to recover from? B. B. King sings my answer for me, backs it up with that big old guitar. “I got a bad case of love.”

Anyway, all I was able to get Billy was what was out there, mostly Messkins, little guys wringing wet at a hundred twenty-four and three quarters, what with us being in San Antonia. But there was some black fighters, too, a welter or a middleweight, now and then. Billy treated all his fighters like they was champs, no matter that they was prelim boys hanging between hope and fear, and praying hard the tornado don’t touch down. If they was to show promise, he’d outright sponsor them good, give them a deuce a week minimum, no paybacks, a free room someplace decent, and eats in one of his pubs, whatever they wanted as long as they kept their weight right. If a boy wasn’t so good, Billy’d give ’em work, that way if the kid didn’t catch in boxing, leastways he always had a job. People loved Billy Clancy.

See, he’d start boys as a dishwasher, but then he’d move ’em up, make waiters and bartenders of them. He had Messkin managers what started as busboys. He was godfather to close to two dozen Messkin babies, and he never forgot a birthday or Christmas. His help would invite him to their weddings, sometimes deep into Mexico, and damned if he wouldn’t go. Eyes down there would bug out when this big gringo’d come driving through a dusty pueblo in one of his big old silver Lincoln Town Cars what he ordered made special. Billy’d join right in, yip! got to where he could talk the lingo passable-good enough to where he could tell jokes and make folks laugh in their own tongue.

Billy Clancy’d be in the middle of it, but he never crossed the line, never messed with any of the gals, though he could have had any or all of ’em. The priests would always take a shine to him, too, want to talk baseball. He never turned one down who come to him about somebody’s grandma what needed a decent burial, instead of being dropped down a hole in a bag.

One time I asked Billy why he didn’t try on one of them Indian-eyed honeys down there. Respect, is what he said, for the older folks, and ’specially for the young men, you don’t want to take a man’s pride.

“When you’re invited to a party,” said Billy, “act like you care to be invited back.”

That was Billy Clancy; you don’t shit where you eat.

My deal with Billy was working in the gym with his fighters for ten percent of the purse off the top. No fights, no money. I didn’t see him for days unless it was getting up around fight time. But he’d stop by, not to check up on me, but just to let his boys know he cared about them. Most times he was smoother than gravy on a biscuit, but I could always tell when something was pestering him. ’Course he wouldn’t talk about it much. Billy didn’t feel the need to talk, or he saw fit not to.

I know there was this one time when the head manager of all Billy’s joints in San Antonia took off with Billy’s cash. Billy come into his private office one Monday expecting to see deposit slips for the money what come in over a big weekend. Well, sir, there was no money, and no keys, and no manager, but that same manager had held a gun on Billy’s little Messkin office gal so’s she’d open the safe. The manager had whipped on the little gal, taped her to a chair with duct tape to where she’d peed herself, and she was near hysteric.

Billy had some of his help make a few phone calls, and damned if the boy what did Billy didn’t head for his hometown on the island of Isla Mujeres way down at the tip of Mexico, where he thought he’d be safe. Billy waited a week, then took a plane to Merida in the Yucatan. He rented him a big car with a good AC and drove on over to the dried-out, palmy little town of Puerto Juarez on the coast that’s just lick across the water from what’s called Women’s Island.

He hung out a day or so in Puerto Juarez, until he got a feel for the place, and so the local police could get a good look at him. Then he just pulled up in front of their peach-colored shack, half its palm-leaf roof hanging loose. He took his time getting out of his rental car, and walked slow inside. Stood a foot taller than most. He talked Spanish and told the captain of the local federales his deal, made it simple. All he wanted was his keys back, and he wanted both the manager’s balls. The captain was to keep what was left of the money.

That night late, the captain brought forty-six keys on three key rings to Billy’s blistered motel. He showed Polaroids of the manager’s corpse what was dumped to cook in the hot water off the island, and he also brought in the manager’s two huevos — his two eggs, each wrapped in a corn tortilla. Billy Clancy fed them to the wild dogs on the other side of the adobe back fence.

Billy checked out some of the Mayan ruins down around those parts, giving local folks time to call the news back to San Antonia. Billy got back, nobody said nothing. Didn’t have no more problems with the help stealing now he’d made clear what was his was his.

There was only one other deal about Billy I ever knew about, this time with one of his ex-fighters, a failed middleweight, a colored boy Billy’d made a cook in one of his places. Nice boy, worked hard, short hair, all the good stuff. First off, he worked as a bar-back. But then the bartenders found out the kid was sneaking their tips. They cornered him in a storeroom. They had him turned upside down, was ready to break his hands for him, but then he started squealing they was only doing it ’cause he’s black. Billy heard it from upstairs and called off his bartenders, piecing them off with a couple of c-notes each. He listened to the boy’s story, and ’cause he couldn’t prove the boy was dirty, he moved him to a different joint, and that’s where he made a fry cook out of him. The kid was good at cooking, worked overtime anytime the head cook wanted. But then word come down the kid was dealing drugs outta the kitchen. Billy knew dead bang this time and he had one of his cop friends make a buy on the sly.

See, Billy always tried to take care of his own business, unless when it was something like down in Mexico. Billy said when he took care of things himself, there was nobody could tell a story different from the one he told. So he waited for the boy outside the boy’s mama’s house one night late, slashed two of his tires. Boy comes out and goes shitting mad when he sees his tires cut, starts waving his arms like a crawdad.

Billy comes up with a baseball bat alongside his leg, said, “Boy, I come to buy some of that shit you sell.”

Boy pissed the boy off something awful, but he knew better than to challenge Billy on it. So the boy tried to run. He showed up dead, is what happened, his legs broke, his balls in his mouth. No cop ever knocked on Billy Clancy’s door, but drugs didn’t happen in any of Billy’s places after that neither.

It was a couple years after that when Dee-Cee Swans collared me about this heavyweight he’d been working with over at the Brown Bomber Gym in Houston. I said I wasn’t going to no Houston — even if it was to look at the real Brown Bomber himself. Dee-Cee said there wasn’t no need.

Henrilee “Dark Chocolate” Swans was from Louisiana, his family going back to Spanish slave times, the original name was Cisneros. Family’d brought him as a boy to Houston during World War Two, where they’d come to better themself. Henrilee’s fighting days started on the streets of the Fifth Ward. He said things was so tough in his part of town that when a wino died, his dog ate him. Dee-Cee was a pretty good lightweight in his time, now a’course he weighs more. Fight guys got to calling him Dee-Cee instead of Dark Chocolate, to make things short. Dee-Cee said call him anything you want, long as you called him to dinner.

He wore a cap ’cause he was bald-headed except for the white fringe around his ears and neck. He wore glasses, but one lens had a crack in it. He had a bad back and a slight limp, so he walked with a polished, homemade old mesquite walking stick. It was thick as your wrist and was more like a knobby club than a cane. But old Dee-Cee still had the moves. The time, between now and back when he was still Dark Chocolate, disappeared when Dee-Cee had need to move. Said he never had no trouble on no bus in no part of town, not with that stick between his legs. Dee-Cee had them greeny-blue eyes what some coloreds gets, and when he looked at you square, you was looked at.

Way me and him hooked up was chancy, like everything else in fights. ’Course we knew each other going way back. Both of us liked stand-up style of fighters, so we always had a lot to talk about, things like moves, slips, and counters. Like me, he knew that a fighter’s feet are his brains — that they’re what tell you what punches to throw and when to do it. Since there was more colored fighters in Dallas and Houston, that’s where Dee-Cee operated out of most. But he had folks in San Antonia, too. He showed up again, him and a white heavyweight, big kid, a Irish boy from L.A. calling himself “KO” Kenny Coyle. What wasn’t chancy was that Dee-Cee knew I was connected with Billy Clancy.

Dee-Cee got together with Coyle, trained him awhile in Houston after working the boy’s corner twice as a pickup cutman in a Alabama casino. The way the boy was matched, he was supposed to lose. See, he hadn’t fought in a while. But he won both fights by early KOs, and his record got to be seventeen and one, with fifteen knockouts. Coyle could punch with both hands at six-foot-five, two hundred forty-five pounds, size sixteen shoe. His only loss came a few years back from a bad cut to his left eyelid up Vancouver, Canada.

The boy’d also worked as sparring partner for big-time heavyweights, going to camp sometimes for weeks at a time. That’s a lot of high-level experience, but it’s a lot of punishment, even when you’re bone strong, and sometimes you could tell that Coyle’d lose a word. Except for the bad scar on his eyelid, and his nose being a little flat, he didn’t look much busted up, so that made you think he maybe had some smarts. He was in shape, too. That made you like him right off.

Dee-Cee was slick. He always put one hand up to his mouth when he talked, said he didn’t want spies to read his lips, said some had telescopes. He was known to be a bad man, Dee-Cee, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a sense of right and wrong. Back before he had to use a cane, we got to drinking over Houston after a afternoon fight — it was at a fair where we both lost. Half drunk, we went to a fish shack in dark town for some catfish. Place was jam-packed. The lard-ass owner had one of them muslim-style gold teeth — the slip-on kind with a star cutout that shows white from the white enamel underneath? Wouldn’t you know it, he took one look at my color and flat said they didn’t serve no food. Dee-Cee was fit to be tied — talked nigga, talked common, said Allah was going to send his black ass to the pit along with his four handkerchief-head ho’s. Old muslim slid off the tooth quick as a quail when Dee-Cee tapped his pocket and said he was going to cut that tooth out or break it off.

We headed for a liquor store, bought some jerky, and ended up out at one of them baseball-pitching park deals drinking rock and rye and falling down in the dirt from swinging and missing pitches. People got to laughing like we was Richard Pryor. Special loud was the hustler running a three-card monte game next to the stands, a little round dude with fuzzy-wuzzy hair. He worked off a old lettuce crate and cheated people for nickels and dimes. Not one of them ever broke the code, but old Dee-Cee had broke it from the git. He watched sly from the fence as the monte-guy took even pennies from the raggedy kids what made a few cents chasing down balls in the outfield.

Dee-Cee put on his Louisiana country-boy act, bet a dollar, and pointed to one of the cards after the monte-guy moved the three cards all around. ’Course Dee-Cee didn’t choose right, couldn’t choose right, so he went head-on and lost another twenty, thirty dollars. Then he bet fifty, like he was trying to get his money back. The dealer did more slick business with his cards, and Dee-Cee chose the one in the middle — only this time, instead of just pointing to it and waiting for the dealer to turn it face-up like before, Dee-Cee held it down hard with two fingers and told monte-man to flip the other two cards over first. Dee-Cee said he’d turn his card over last, said he wanted to eyeball all the cards. See, there was no way for nobody to win. The dealer knew he’d been caught cheating, and tried to slide. Dee-Cee cracked him in the shins a few times with a piece of pipe he carried those days, and pretty soon — wouldn’t you know it? — the monte-man got to begging Dee-Cee to take all his money. Dee-Cee took it all, too. ’Course he kept his own money, what was natural, but he gave the rest to the ragamuffins in the field — at which juncture the little guys all took the rest of the night off.

Dee-Cee got me off to the side one day, his hand over his mouth, said did I want to work with him and Coyle? He told me Coyle maybe had a ten-round fight coming up at one of the Mississippi casinos, and I figured Dee-Cee wanted me as cutman for the fight, him being the trainer and chief second. I say why not? some extra cash to go along with my rocking chair, right?

But Dee-Cee said, “Naw, Red, not just cutman, I want you wit’ me full-time training Coyle.”

I say to myself, A heavyweight what can crack, a big old white Irish one!

Dee-Cee says he needs he’p ’cause as chief second he can’t hardly get up the ring steps and through the ropes quick enough no more. ’Course with me working inside the ring, that makes me chief second and cutman. I’d done that before, hell.

Dee-Cee says he chose me ’cause he don’t trust none of what he called the niggas and the beaners in the gym. Said he don’t think much of the rednecks neither. See, that’s the way Dee-Cee talked, not the way he acted toward folks. Dee-Cee always had respect.

He said, “See, you’n me knows that a fighter’s feet is his brains. My white boy’s feet ain’t right, and you good wit’ feet. We split the trainer’s ten percent, even.”

Five percent of a heavyweight can mount.

Dee-Cee said, “Yeah, and maybe you could bring in Billy Clancy.”

Like I said, Dee-Cee’s slick. So I ask myself if this is something I want bad enough to kiss a spider for? See, when a fan sees the pros and the amateurs’, he sees them as a sport. But the pros is a business, too. It’s maybe more a business than a sport. I liked the business part like everybody else, but heavyweights can hurt you like nobody else. So I’m thinking, do I want to chance sliding down that dark hole a heavyweight can dig? Besides, do I want to risk my good name on KO Kenny Coyle with Billy Clancy? I told Dee-Cee I’d wait a spell before I’d do that.

Dee-Cee said, “No, no, you right, hail yeah!”

See, I’m slick, too.

What it was is, Coyle was quirky. He’d gone into the navy young and started fighting as a service fighter, started knocking everybody out. He won all of the fleet and other service titles, and most of the civilian amateur tournaments, and people was talking Olympics. But the Olympics was maybe three years away, and he wanted to make some money right now. Couldn’t make no big money or train full-time in the navy, so one day Coyle up and walks straight into the ship’s captain’s face. Damned if Coyle don’t claim he’s queer as a three-dollar bill. See, the service folks these days ain’t supposed to ask, and you ain’t supposed to tell, but here was Coyle telling what he really wanted was to be a woman and dance the ballet. Captain hit the overhead, was ready to toss him in the brig, but Coyle threatened to suck off all the marine guards, and to contact the president himself about sexual harassment. Didn’t take more’n a lick, and the captain made Coyle a ex-navy queer. Coyle laughed his snorty laugh when he told the story, said wasn’t he equal smart as he was big? Guys said he sure was, but all knew Coyle wasn’t smart as Coyle thought he was — ’specially when he got to bragging about how he stung some shyster lawyers what had contacted him while he was still a amateur. See, they started funneling him money, and got him to agree to sign with them when he turned pro. He knew up front that nobody was supposed to be buzzing amateurs, and he got them for better’n twenty big ones before he pulled his sissy stunt on the navy. When they come to him with a pro contract, he told them to stick it, told them no contract with a amateur was valid, verbal or written, and that he had bigger plans. He had them shysters by the ying-yang, he said, and them shysters knew it. Coyle laughed about that one, too.

Too bad I didn’t hear about the lawyer deal until we was already into the far turn with Coyle. By the time I did, I already knew Kenny was too big for his britches, and that he was a liar no different from my cousin Royal. If it was four o’clock, old Royal’d say it was four-thirty. Couldn’t help himself.

Coyle’s problem as a fighter was he’d not been trained right, but he was smart enough to know it. His other trainers depended on his reach and power, and that he could take a shot. The problem with that is that you end up fighting with your face. What I worked on with him was the angles of the game, distance, and how to get in and out of range with the least amount of work. The big fellows got to be careful not to waste gas. But where I started Coyle first was with the bitch. See, the bitch is what I call the jab, that’s the one’ll get a crowd up and cheering, you do it pretty. Bing! Bing! Man, there ain’t nothing like the bitch. And Coyle took to it good, him being fed up with getting hit. With the bitch, you automatic got angles. You got the angle, you got the opening. Bang! Everything comes off the bitch. I got him to moving on the balls of his feet, and soon he was coming off that right toe behind the bitch like he was a great white going for a seal pup. Whooom!

See, when you got the bitch working for you is when you got the other guy blinking, and on his heels going backward, and you can knock a man down with the bitch, even knock him out if you can throw a one-two-one combination right. Coyle picking up the bitch like he did is what got me to think serious on him, ’specially when I saw how hard he worked day in, day out. On time every day, nary a balk. Dee-Cee and me both started counting fun-tickets in our sleep but both of us agreed to pass on the ten-round Mississippi fight until I could get Coyle’s feet right.

Moving with Coyle, like with the other heavies, is easy for me even now. ’Cause of their weight, they get their feet tangled when they ain’t trained right, and I know how to back them to the ropes or into a corner. I don’t kid myself, they could knock me out with the bitch alone if we was fighting, but what we’re up to ain’t fighting. What we’re up to is what makes fighting boxing.

Billy Clancy got wind of Coyle and called me in, wanted to know why I was keeping my white boy secret. I told him Coyle wasn’t no secret, said it was too soon.

“Who’s feedin’ him?”

“Me and Dee-Cee.”

Billy peeled off some hundreds. I’d later split the six hundred with Dee-Cee.

Billy said, “Tell him to start eatin’ at one of my joints, as much as he wants. But no drinks and no partyin’ in the place. When’ll Coyle be ready?”

“Gimme six weeks. If he can stand up to what I put on him, then we’ll see.”

“Will he fight?”

“He better.”

Once I got Coyle’s feet slick, damn if he didn’t come along as if he was champion already. When I told Billy, he put a eight-round fight together at one of the Indian reservations on the Mississippi. We went for eight so’s not to put too much pressure on Coyle, what with me being a new trainer to him. We fought for only seventy-five hundred — took the fight just to get Coyle on the card. When I told Coyle about it, he said book it, didn’t even ask who’s the opponent. See, Coyle was broke and living in dark town with Dee-Cee, and hoping to impress Billy ’cause Dee-Cee’d told him about Billy Clancy having money.

Well, sir, halfway through the fifth round with Marcellus Ellis, Coyle got himself head-butted in the same eye where he’d been cut up in Vancouver. Ellis was a six-foot-seven colored boy weighing two-seventy, but he couldn’t do nothing with Coyle, ’cause of the bitch. So Ellis hoped to save his big ass with a head-butt. Referee didn’t see the butt, and wouldn’t take our word it was intentional, so the butt wasn’t counted. Cut was so bad I skipped adrenaline and went direct to Thrombin, the ten-thousand-unit bovine coagulant deal. Thrombin stopped the blood quicker’n morphine’ll stop the runs, but the cut was in the eyelid, and the fight shoulda been stopped in truth. But we was in Mississippi and the casino wanted happy gamblers, so the reflet it go on with a warning that he’d stop the fight in the next round if the cut got worse.

Dee-Cee got gray-looking, said he was ready to go over and whip on Ellis’s nappy head with his cane.

I told Coyle the only thing I could tell him. “They’ll stop this fight on us and we could lose, so you got to get into Ellis’s ass with the bitch and then drop your right hand on him and get respect!”

All Coyle did was to nod. He went out there serious as a diamondback. Six hard jabs busted up Ellis so bad that he couldn’t think nothing but the bitch. That’s when Coyle got the angle and, Bang! he hit Ellis with a straight right that was like the right hand of God. Lordy, Ellis was out for five minutes. He went down stiff like a tree and bounced on his face, and then one leg went all jerk and twitchy. We went to whooping and hugging. That right hand was lightning in human form. But what it was that did it for me wasn’t Coyle’s big right hand, it was the way he stuck the bitch, and the way Coyle listened to me in the corner.

Billy wanted to sign him right then, but I said wait, even though I knew Coyle was antsy to get him a place of his own. Besides, we had to wait a month and more to see if the eye’d heal complete. It took longer than we thought, so Billy started paying the boy three hundred a week walking-around money. Folks at the casino was so wild about that right hand coming outta a white boy that Billy was able to get twenty-five thousand for Coyle’s next fight soon’s a doctor’d clear his eye. And sure enough, Coyle was right back in the gym when the doctor gave him the okay. But he had some kind of funny look to him, so I told him to go home and rest. But no, Coyle kept showing up saying he wanted to get back to that casino. How do you reach the brain of a pure-strain male hormone when he’s eighteen and one, with sixteen KOs? But one morning when me and Dee-Cee was out with him doing his road work, we got a surprise. Coyle started pressing his chest and had to stop running. Damn if he didn’t look half-blue and ready to go down. Me and Dee-Cee walked him back to the car, both holding him by a arm. I thought maybe it was a heart attack. We hauled ass over to Emergency. They checked him all over, hooked him up to all the machines, checked his blood for enzymes. Said it wasn’t no heart attack, said it was maybe some kind of quick virus going around that could knock folks down. Coyle wanted to know when he’d be able to fight again in Mississippi, and I told him to forget Mississippi till he was well. On our way out, the doctor got me to the side to tell me he wasn’t positive Coyle was sick.

I said, “What does that mean?”

Doc said, “I’m not sure. Just thought you might want to know.”

After a couple of days’ rest Coyle was back in the gym, but then he had to stop his road work outta weakness again. He looked like a whipped pup, so I figured he had to have something wrong. He said, “But I can’t fight if I don’t run, you said it yourself.”

I said, “You can’t fight if you ain’t got gas in your tank, that’s what that means. Right now, you got a hole in your tank.”

“I need dough, Red.”

He was a hungry fighter; it’s what you dream about. And there he’d be the next day, even if he coughed till he gagged. You never saw anybody push himself like him. But by then, the fool could hardly punch, much less run. But he still wanted to train, said he didn’t want us to think he didn’t have no heart.

I said, “Hail, boy, I’m worried about your brain, not heart. You got money from the last fight. Rest.”

He said, “I sent all but a thousand to my brother for an operation. He’s a cripple.”

Well, later on I learned he’d pissed all the money away on pussy and pool, and there wasn’t no cripple. But at that time I was so positive Coyle had the heart it takes that I just grabbed the bull by the horns and told Billy it was time. Billy could see the weak state Coyle was in, but on my good word it was a virus, Billy signed Coyle up to a four-year contract. On top of that, he gave Coyle a one-bedroom poolside apartment in one of his units for free. Said he’d give Coyle twenty-five hundred a month, that he’d put it in the contract, no payback, until Coyle started clearing thirty thousand a year. Said he’d give Coyle sixty thousand dollars under the table as a signing bonus soon’s he was well enough to get back in the gym. Coyle wanted a hundred thousand, but settled for sixty.

Billy said, “That’s cash, Kenny. So you don’t have to pay no taxes on it.”

“I’ll get you the title, Mr. Clancy.”

“Billy.”

I looked at Dee-Cee, knew the head of his dick was glowing same as mine. Damned if Coyle wasn’t back in the gym working hard and doing road work in only three days. Billy’s word was good, and I was there when he paid Coyle off in stacks of hundreds. Money smells bad when you get a gang of it all together.

Wouldn’t you know it? Old stinky-head went right out and spent the whole shiteree on one of them new BMW four-wheel-drive deals what goes for better than fifty thousand. Coyle got to bragging about the sports package, the killer sound system, how much horsepower it had. Who gives a rap when you can’t afford tires and battery? Buying them boogers is easy, keeping them up what’s hard.

Besides, it was about that time that Coyle’s knees went to flap like butterfly wings. See, the ladies took one look at Coyle and thought they had the real deal, what with him having that big car and flashing hundreds in the clubs.

Dee-Cee said, “How many times you get you nut this week?”

Coyle said, “That’s personal.”

Dee-Cee said, “So you been gettin’ you nut every night.”

Coyle said, “No, I ain’t.”

Dee-Cee said, “You is, too. If it was one or none, or even two times, you’da said so.”

Coyle looked at me like he’d never heard such talk.

I said, “He’s sayin’ when your legs get to wobblin’, you been doin’ it too much. He’s saying that when your legs’re weak that your brain gets to wonderin’ why’s it so hard to keep itself from fallin’ down. That’s when your brain is so busy keeping you on your feet that it don’t pay attention to fightin’. Son, you got to have your legs right so your mind can work quicker than light, or you end up as a opponent talkin’ through your nose, and the do-gooders wants to blame us trainers. No good, it’s you and your dick what’s doin’ wrong.”

Coyle said, “I’m a fighter livin’ like a fighter.”

Dee-Cee said, “Way you goin’, you won’t be for long.”

I said, “Dee-Cee ain’t wrong, Kenny.”

Dee-Cee said, “Boy, you can fuck you white ass black, but that ain’t never gonna make you champ of nothin’.”

Coyle snorted, said, “I’ll be champ of the bitches.”

Dee-Cee said, “You go out, screw a thousand bitches, you think you somethin’? Sheeuh, you don’t screw no thousand bitches, a thousand bitches screw you — and there go you title shot, fool.”

Coyle said, “Fighters need release.”

Dee-Cee said, “Say what? All you got to do is wait some. You midnight emissions’ll natural take care of you goddamn release!”

I said, “Look, we’re tryin’ to get you around the track and across the finish line first, but you’re headin’ into the rail on us.”

“Yeah,” said Dee-Cee, “workin’ wit’ you be like holdin’ water in one hand.”

Coyle thought about that and seemed to nod, but next day when he come in his knees were flapping same as before.

Come to find out, Coyle wasn’t worth the powder to blow him to hell. Billy found out Coyle had been with three gals in the stall of the men’s toilet at one of his hot spots — that they’d been smoking weed hunched around the stool, yip! Billy didn’t jump Coyle. But instead of seeing him as a long-lost White Hope in shining armor, he saw him same as me and Dee-Cee’d come to — like a peach what had gone part bad. So, do you cut out the bad part and keep the good? Or do you shit-can the whole deal? Billy decided to save what he could as long as he could.

Billy told Coyle to flat take his partying somewhere else, like he was first told. If I know Billy, there was more he wanted to say, but didn’t. ’Course big old Coyle didn’t take it too good, and wanted to dispute with Billy. So Billy said not to mistake kindness for weakness. Coyle got the message looked like, and was back in the gym working hard again — he wanted that twenty-five hundred a month. We figured the bullshit was over, leastways the in-public bullshit. But who could tell about weed? And who knew what else Coyle was messing with? By then, I got to feeling like I was a cat trapped in a sock drawer.

I told Coyle that what he’d pulled on Billy wasn’t the right way to do business.

Coyle said, “He’s makin’ money off me.”

I said, “Not yet he ain’t.”

That’s when things got so squirrelly you’d think Coyle had a tail.

First thing what come up was that stink with the plain-Jane cop’s daughter who said Coyle knocked her up — said Coyle’d gave her some of this GHB stuff that’s floating around that’ll make a gal pass out so deep she’s a corpse. Cop’s daughter said the last thing she remembered was that she was in Coyle’s pool playing kissy face. Next thing she knew she was bare-ass on the floor and Coyle was fixing to do her. She said she jumped up and fled.

Coyle claimed that he’d already done her twice, said she was crying for more.

See, it wasn’t until it come out she was pregnant that she told her daddy, who was a detective sergeant of the San Antonia P.D. She was a only child, and Daddy had them squinty blue eyes set in a face wide in the cheekbones what the Polacks brought into Texas. That good old boy got to rampaging like a rodeo bull, and right about then his neighbors got to thinking about calling Tom Bodette and checking into a Motel 6.

Once Daddy’d killed a half bottle of Jim Beam, he loaded up a old .44 six-gun, put on his boots and hat, and went on over to shoot Coyle dead.

Coyle told Daddy he loved plain-Jane more than his life itself, said that he wanted to marry her.

Cop was one of them fundamentals and figured marrying was better’n killing, so he let Coyle off.

Arrangements was made quick so the girl could wear white to the altar and not show. But then Coyle ups and says he’d have to wait till after the kid was born, that he wanted a blood test to prove he was the real daddy. The cop went to rampaging again and was fixing to hunt Coyle down, but he was took off the scent when his daughter stuck something up herself. Killed the baby, and liked to killed herself. The family was in such grief that Daddy started to drink full-time. The girl was sent off to live with a aunt up Nacogdoches. The cop had to go into one of them anger management deals or get fired from the force. ’Course Coyle slapped his thigh.

Second deal was about sparring, and was way worse for me’n Dee-Cee than the cop-daughter deal. All of a sudden Coyle started sparring like he never done it before. Everybody was hitting him — middleweights we had in with him to work speed, high school linemen in the gym on a dare, grunts for God’s sake. The eye puffed up again, and we had to take off more time. All of a sudden Coyle’s moving on his heels instead of his toes, and now he can’t jump rope without stumbling into a wall. A amateur light heavy knocked him down hard enough to make him go pie-eyed, and Dee-Cee called the session off. Most times like that, a fighter’s pride will make him want to keep on working, but not Coyle. He was happy to get his ass outta there. Billy heard about it and quick got Coyle that second Mississippi fight for seventy-five thousand. Got Coyle ten rounds with a dead man just to see what was what.

The opponent was six foot tall, three hundred twenty-eight pounds, a big old black country boy from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who couldn’t hardly scrawl his own name. But in the first round, with his damn eyes closed, he hit Coyle high on the head with an overhand right and knocked him on his ass. Me and Dee-Cee couldn’t figure how he didn’t see the punch coming, it was so high and wide. Coyle jumped up, and to his credit, he went right to work.

Bang! Three bitches to the eyes, right hand to the chin, left hook to the body, all the punches quick and pretty. The black boy settled like a dead whale to the bottom, and white folks was dancing in the aisles and waving the Stars and Bars. It was pitiful, but Coyle strutted like he just knocked out Jack Johnson. Me and Dee-Cee was pissed, and our peters had lost their glow. Dressing room afterward was quiet as a gray dawn.

Coyle took time off, not that he needed the rest. He came back for a few days, then it got so he wasn’t coming in at all. If he did, he’d lie around and bullshit instead of work. You could smell weed on him, and his hair got greasy. Now all our fighters started going flaky. Sweat got scarcer and scarcer. There was other times Coyle’d come in so fluffy from screwing you wished he didn’t come in at all. Gym got to be a goddamned social club what looked full of boy whores and Social Security socialites. What with Coyle lying around like a pet poodle, Billy’s other fighters started doing the same. Some begged off fights that were sure wins for them. You never want a fighter to fight if he’s not ready, but when they’re being paid to be in shape, they’re supposed to be in shape, not Butterball goddamn turkeys.

I tried to get Coyle to get serious, but he kept saying, “I’m cool, I’m cool.”

I said, “Tits on a polar bear’s what’s cool.”

That went on for three months, but I wasn’t big enough to choke sense into him. Besides, no trainer worth a damn would want to. Fighters come in on their own, or they don’t come in. Billy wanted a answer, but I didn’t have one. How do you figure it when a ten-round fighter hungry for money pulls out of fights ’cause of a sore knuckle, or a sprung thumb, or a bad elbow? Course old Coyle didn’t volunteer for no cut in pay.

One day he was lounging in his velour sweatsuit looking at tittie magazines. He said to turn up the lights. I said they was turned up. He said to turn them up again, and I said they was up again. Coyle yelled at me the first and last time.

“Turn ’em all the goddamn fuck up!”

“Boy,” I said, and then I said it again real quiet. “Boy, lights is all the goddamn fuck up.”

He looked up. “Oh, uh-huh, yeah, Red, thanks.”

About then I figure Kenny don’t know shit from Shinola.

Vegas called Billy for a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fight with some African fighting outta France. He had big German money behind him, and he was a tough sumbitch, but he didn’t have no punch like Kenny Coyle. Coyle said he’d go for the two-hundred-thousand fight in a heartbeat.

I knew there had to be some fun in all this pain. We whip the Afro-Frenchie and win the next couple of fights, and we’re talking three, maybe five hundred thousand a fight. Even if he loses, Billy’s got all his money back and more, and me and Dee-Cee’s doing right good, too. If we win big, we’ll be talking title fight, ’cause word’ll be out that there’s some big white boy who could be the one to win boxing back from the coloreds. The only coloreds me and Dee-Cee gave a rap about was them colored twenties, and fifties, and hundreds that’d make us proud standing in the bank line instead of meek. Like I say, the amateurs and the pros ain’t alike, and Billy’s figuring to get his money out of Coyle while he can. Me and Dee-Cee’s for that, ’specially me, since it gets me off the hook.

But neither one of us could figure what had happened with Coyle, so we got Billy to bring in some tough sparring partners for the Frenchie fight to test what Coyle had. Same-oh same-oh, with Coyle getting hit. But when he hit them, damn! they’d go down! A gang of them took off when Coyle threw what that writer guy James Ellroy calls body rockets that tore up short ribs and squashed livers. But it was almost like Coyle was swinging blind. Usual-like, you don’t care about the sparring partners, they’re paid to get hit. But the problem was that Coyle was getting hit, and going down, too. He’d take a shot and his knees would do the old butterfly. We figured he’d been smoking weed, or worse — being up all night in toilets with hoochies.

Dee-Cee said, “Can’t say I didn’t tell him ’bout midnight emissions, but no, he won’t listen a me.”

But Coyle wasn’t short on wind, and he looked strong. Me’n Dee-Cee’d never seen nothing like it, a top guy gets to be a shot fighter so quick like that, ’specially with him doing his road work every dawn? Hell, come to find out he wasn’t even smoking weed, just having a beer after a workout so’s he could relax and sleep.

Seeing all our work fall apart, I figured we was Cinderella at midnight. Me and Dee-Cee both knew it, but we still couldn’t make out why. Then Dee-Cee come to me, his hand over his mouth.

Dee-Cee said, “Coyle’s blind in that bad eye.”

I said, “What? Bullshit, the commission doctors passed him.”

“He’s blind, Red, in that hurt eye, I’m tellin’ you. I been wavin’ a white towel next to it two days now, and he don’t blink on the bad-eye side. Watch.”

Between rounds sparring next day, with me greasing and watering Coyle, Dee-Cee kind of waved the tip of the towel next to Coyle’s good eye and Coyle blinked automatic. Between the next round, Dee-Cee was on the other side. He did the same waving deal with the towel. But Coyle’s bad eye didn’t blink ’cause he never saw the towel. That’s when I understood why he was taking all them shots, that’s when I knew he was moving on his heels ’cause he couldn’t see the floor clear. And that’s why he was getting rocked like it was the first time he was ever hit, ’cause shots was surprising him that he couldn’t tell was coming. And it’s when I come to know why he was pulling out of fights — he knew he’d lose ’cause he couldn’t see. He went for the two-hundred-thousand fight knowing he’d lose, but he took it for the big money. I wanted to shoot the bastard, what with him taking Billy’s money and not saying the eye’d gone bad and making a chump outta me.

The rule is if you can’t see, then you can’t fight. I told Dee-Cee we got to tell Billy. See, Billy’s close to being my own kin, and it’s like I stuck a knife in his back if I don’t come clean.

Dee-Cee said to wait, that it was the commission doctor’s fault, not ours, let them take the heat. He said maybe Vegas won’t find out, and maybe the fight will fuck Coyle up so bad he’ll have to retire anyhow. Billy’ll still get most of his money back, Dee-Cee said, so Billy won’t have cause to be mad with us. That made sense.

But what happened to mess up our deal permanent was that the Vegas Boxing Commission faxed in its forms for the AIDS blood test, said they wanted a current neuro exam, and they sent forms for a eye exam that had to be done by a ophthalmologist, not some regular doctor with a eye chart. Damned if Coyle wasn’t sudden all happy. He couldn’t wait once he heard about the eye test. Me and Dee-Cee was wondering how can he want a eye test, what with what we know about that eye?

Sure enough, when the eye test comes in, it says that Coyle’s close to stone blind in the bad eye, the one what got cut in Canada. The nuero showed Coyle’s balance was off from being hit too much in training camps, which is why he couldn’t jump rope, and why he’d shudder when he got popped. The eye exam proved what me and Dee-Cee already knew, which is why Coyle was taking shots what never shoulda landed. What it come down to was the two-hundred-thousand-dollar fight was off, and Coyle’s fighting days for big money was over. It also come down to Billy taking it in the ass for sixty grand in signing money that was all my fault. And that ain’t saying nothing about all the big purses Coyle coulda won if he had been fit.

Turns out that the fight in Vancouver where Coyle got cut caused his eye to first go bad. The reason why word didn’t get loose on him is ’cause Coyle didn’t tell the Canadian doctors he was a fighter, and ’cause it was done on that Canadian free health deal they got up there. The eye doc said the operation was seventy percent successful, but told Coyle to be careful, ’cause trauma to the eye could mess it up permanent. What with him dropping out of boxing for a couple of years the way fighters’ll do when they lose, people wasn’t thinking on him. And the way Coyle passed the eye test in Alabama and Mississippi was to piece off with a hundred-dollar bill the crooked casino croakers what’s checking his eyes. When later on he told me how he did it, he laughed the same snorty way as when he told how he played his game on the navy.

That’s when I worked out what was Coyle’s plan. See, he knew right after the Marcellus Ellis fight that the eye had gone bad on him again, but he kept that to himself instead of telling anyone about it, thinking his eye operation in Canada won’t come out. That way, he could steal Billy’s signing money, and pick up the twenty-five hundred a month chasing-pussy money, too. I wondered how long he’d be laughing.

Only now what am I supposed to say to Billy? After all, it was my name on Coyle what clinched the deal. It got to be where my shiny, big old white boy was tarnished as a copper washtub. I talked with Dee-Cee about it.

Dee-Cee said, “You right. That why the schemin’ muhfuh come down South from the front!”

See, we surprised Coyle. He didn’t know the tests had come back, so me and Dee-Cee just sat him down on the ring apron. Starting out, he was all fluffy.

Dee-Cee said, “Why didn’t you tell us about the eye?”

Coyle lied, said, “What eye?”

Dee-Cee said, “Kenny, the first rule’s don’t shit a shitter. The eye what’s fucked up.”

Coyle said, “Ain’t no eye fucked up.”

“You got a fucked-up eye, don’t bullshit,” said Dee-Cee.

“It ain’t bad, it’s just blurry.”

“Just blurry means you ain’t fightin’ Vegas, that’s what’s muthuh-fuckin’ blurry,” Dee-Cee said, muscles jumping along his jaw. “I’m quittin’ you right now, hyuh? Don’t want no truck with no punk playin’ me.”

Coyle’s eyes started to bulge and his neck got all swole up and red. “You’re the punk, old man!”

Coyle shoved Dee-Cee hard in the chest. Dee-Cee went down, but he took the fall rolling on his shoulder, and was up like a bounced ball.

Dee-Cee said, “Boy, second rule’s don’t hit a hitter.”

Coyle moved as if to kick Dee-Cee. I reached for my Buck, but before it cleared my back pocket, Dee-Cee quick as a dart used his cane bap! bap! bap! to crack Coyle across one knee and both shins. Coyle hit the floor like a sack full of cats.

“I’ll kill you, old man. I’ll beat your brains out with that stick.”

Dee-Cee said, “Muhfuh, you best don’t be talking no kill shit wit’ Dark Chocolate.”

Coyle yelled, “Watch your back, old man!”

Dee-Cee said, “Boy, you diggin’ you a hole.”

Dee-Cee hobbled off, leaning heavy on his cane. Coyle made to go after Dee-Cee again, but by then I’d long had my one-ten out and open.

I said, “Yall ever see someone skin a live dog?”

I had to get Coyle outta there, thought to quick get him to the Texas Ice House over on Blanco, where we could have some long-necks like good buds and maybe calm down. Texas Ice House’s open three hundred sixty-five days a year, sign out front says GO COWBOYS.

Coyle said, “Got my own Texas shit beer at home.”

Texas and shit in the same breath ain’t something us Texans cotton to, but I went on over to Coyle’s place later on ’cause I had to. I knocked, and through the door I heard a shotgun shell being jacked into the chamber.

I said, “It’s me, Red.”

Coyle opened up, then limped out on the porch looking for Dee-Cee.

Coyle said, “I’m gonna kill him, you tell him.”

Inside, there was beer cans all over the floor, and the smell of weed and screwing. Coyle and a half-sleepy tittie-club blond gal was King around half bare-ass. She never said a word throughout. I got names backing me like Geraghty and O’Kelly, but when I got to know what a sidewinder Coyle was, it made me ashamed of belonging to the same race.

I said, “When did the eye go bad?”

Coyle was still babying his legs. “It was perfect before that Marcellus Ellis butted me at the casino. But with you training me, hey baby, I can still fight down around here.”

“You go back to chump change you fight down around here.”

“My eye is okay, it’s just blurry, that’s all, don’t you start on me, fuck!”

“It’s you’s what’s startin’.”

“This happened time before last in Mississippi, okay? And it was gettin’ better all by itself, okay?”

I stayed quiet, so did he. Then I said, “Don’t you get it? You fail the eye test, no fights in Vegas, or no place where there’s money. Only trainer you’ll get now’s a blood sucker.”

Coyle shrugged, even laughed a little. That’s when I asked him the one question he didn’t never want to hear, the one that would mean he’d have to give back Billy’s money if he told the truth.

I said, “Why didn’t you tell us about the eye before you signed Billy’s contract?”

Coyle got old. He looked off in a thousand-yard stare for close to a minute. He stuttered twice, and then said, “Everybody knew about my eye.”

I said, “Not many in Vancouver, and for sure none in San Antonia.”

Coyle said, “Vegas coulda checked.”

I said, “We ain’t Vegas.”

Coyle stood up. He thought he wanted to hit me, but he really wanted to hide. Instead, he moved the shotgun so’s it was pointing at my gut.

He said, “I don’t want you to train me no more.”

I said, “Next time you want to fuck somebody, fuck your mama in her casket. She can’t fuck you back.”

That stood him straight up, and I knew it was time to git. As the door closed behind me, I could hear Coyle and the tittie-club blonde start to laugh.

I said to myself, “Keep laughin’, punk cocksucker — point a gun at me and don’t shoot.”

I drove my pickup over to Billy’s office next day, told him the whole thing. It wasn’t far from my place but it was the longest ride I ever took. I was expecting to be told to get my redneck ass out of Texas. He just listened, then lit up a Montecristo contraband Havana robusto with a gold Dunhill. He took his time, poured us both some Hennessy XO.

He could see I felt lowdown and thought I’d killed his friendship.

I said, “I’m sorry, Billy, you know I’d never wrong you on purpose.”

Billy said, “You couldn’t see the future, Red. Only women can, and that’s ’cause they know when they’re gonna get fucked.”

Billy put the joke in there to save me from myself, damned if he didn’t. I was ready to track Coyle and gut him right then. But Billy said to calm down, said he’d go over to Coyle’s place later on. I wanted to go, said I’d bring along Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.

“Naw,” said Billy, “there won’t be no shootin’.”

When Billy got to Coyle’s, Kenny was smoking weed again, had hold of a big-assed, stainless steel .357 MAG Ruger with a six-inch barrel. Billy didn’t blink, said could he have some iced tea like Coyle was drinking. Coyle said it was Snapple Peach, not diet, but Billy said go on’n hook one up. Things got friendly, but Coyle kept ahold of the Ruger.

Billy said, “Way I see it, you didn’t set out to do it.”

Coyle said, “That’s right. Ellis did it.”

Billy said, “But you still got me for sixty large.”

Coyle said, “Depends on how you look at it.” He laughed at his joke. “Besides, nobody asked about my eye, so I told no lie. Hey, I can rhyme like Ali, that’s me, hoo-ee.”

Billy said, “Coyle, there’s sins of commission and there’s sins of omission. This one’s a sixty-thousand-dollar omission.”

Coyle said, “You got no proof. It was all cash like you wanted, no taxes.”

Billy said, “I want my sixty back. You can forget the free rent and the twenty-five hundred you got off me every month, but I want the bonus money.”

Coyle said, “Ain’t got it to give back.”

Billy said, “You got the BMW free and clear. Sign it over and we’re square.”

Coyle said, “You ain’t gettin’ my Beamer. Bought that with my signing money.”

Billy said, “You takin’ it knowin’ your eye was shot, that was humbug.”

Coyle said, “I’m stickin’ with the contract and my lawyer says you still owe me twenty-five hundred for this month, and maybe for three years to come. He says you’re the one that caused it all when you put me in with the wrong opponent.”

Billy’d put weight on around the belly, and Coyle was saying he wasn’t dick afraid of him.

Billy didn’t press for the pink, and didn’t argue about the twenty-five hundred a month, didn’t say nothing about the lost projected income.

“Then tell me this,” Billy said, “when do you plan on gettin’ out of my building and givin’ back my keys?”

Coyle laughed his laugh. “When you evict me, that’s when, and you can’t do that for a while ’cause my eye means I’m disabled, I checked.”

Billy laughed with Coyle, and Billy shook Coyle’s left hand with his right before taking off, ’cause Coyle kept the Ruger in his right hand.

Billy said, “Well, let me know if you change your mind.”

“Not hardly,” said Coyle. “I’m thinkin’ on marrying that cop’s daughter. This here’s our love nest.”

Me and Dee-Cee was cussing Coyle twenty-four hours a day, but Billy never let on he cared. About a week later, he said his wife and kids was heading down to Orlando Disney World for a few days. On Thursday he gave me and Dee-Cee the invite to come on down to Nuevo Laredo with him Friday night for the weekend.

Billy said, “We’ll have a few thousand drinks at the Cadillac Bar to wash the taste of Coyle out of our mouths.”

He sweetened the pot, said how about spending some quality time in the cat houses of Boys Town, all on him? I said my old root’ll still do the job with the right inspiration, so did Dee-Cee. But he said his back was paining him bad since the deal with Coyle, and that he had to go on over Houston where he had this Cuban Santeria woman. She had some kind of mystic rubjuice made with rooster blood he said was the only thing what’d cure him.

Dee-Cee said, “I hate to miss the trip with y’all, but I got to see my Cuban.”

I told Billy he might as well ride with me in my Jimmy down to Nuevo Laredo. See, it’s on the border some three hours south of San Antonia. I had a transmission I been wanting to deliver to my cousin Royal in Dilley, which is some seventy-eighty miles down from San Antonia on Highway 35 right on our way. Billy said he had stuff to do in the morning, but that he’d meet me at the Cadillac Bar at six o’clock next day. That left just me heading south alone and feeling busted up inside for doing the right thing by a skunk.

I left early so’s I could listen to Royal lie, and level out with some of his Jack Daniel’s. When I pulled up in front of the Cadillac Bar at ten of six, I saw Billy’s bugged-up Town Car parked out front. He was inside, a big smile on him. With my new hat and boots, I felt fifty again, and screw Kenny Coyle and the BMW he rode in on. We was laughing like Coyle didn’t matter to us, but underneath, we knew he did.

Billy got us nice rooms in a brand-new motel once we had quail and Dos Equis for dinner, and finished off with fried ice cream in the Messkin style. Best I can recollect, we left our wheels at the motel and took a cab to Boys Town. We hit places like the Honeymoon Hotel, the Dallas Cowboys, and the New York Yankey. Hell, I buried myself in brown titties, even ended up with a little Chink gal I wanted to smuggle home in my hat. Spent two nights with her and didn’t never want to go home.

I ain’t sure, but seems to me I went back to the motel once on Saturday just to check on Billy. His car was gone, and there was a message for me blinking on the phone in my room, and five one-hundred-dollar bills on my pillow-. Billy’s message said he had to go on over to Matamoros ’cause the truck for his shrimps had busted down, and he had to rent another one for shrimp night. So I had me a mess of Messkin scrambled eggs and rice and beans and a few thousand bottles of Negra Modelo. I headed on back for my China doll still shaky, but I hadn’t lost my boots or my El Patrón so I’m thinking I was a tall dog in short grass.

There seems like there were times when I must a blanked out there. But somewhere along the line, I remember wandering the streets over around Boys Town when I come up on a little park that made me stop and watch. It happens in parks all over Mexico. The street lights ain’t nothing but hanging bare bulbs with swarms of bugs and darting bats. Boys and girls of fourteen to eighteen’n more’d make the nightly paseo — that’s like a stroll on the main drag, ’cause there ain’t no TV or nothing, and the paseo’s what they do to get out from the house to flirt. In some parts, the young folks form circles in the park. The boys’ circle’d form outside the girls’ circle and each circle moves slow in opposite directions so’s the boys and the girls can be facing each other as they pass. The girls try to squirt cheap perfume on a boy they fancy. The boys try to pitch a pinch of confetti into a special girl’s month. Everybody gets to laughing and spitting and holding their noses but inside their knickers they’re fixing to explode. It’s how folks get married down there.

’Course, getting married wasn’t on my mind. Something else was, and I did my best to satisfy my mind with some more of that authentic Chinee sweet and sour.

Billy was asleep the next day, Sunday, when I come stumbling back, so I crapped out, too. I remember right, we headed home separate on Sunday night late. Both of us crippled and green but back in Laredo Billy’s car was washed and spanky clean except for a cracked rear window. Billy said some Matamoros drunk had made a failed try to break in. He showed me his raw knuckles to prove it.

Billy said, “I can still punch like you taught me, Reddy.”

Driving myself home alone, I was all bowlegged, and my heart was leaping sideways. But when it’s my time to go to sleep for the last time, I want to die in Boys Town teasing the girls and learning Chinee.

I was still hung over on Monday, and had to lay around all pale and shaky until I could load up on biscuits and gravy, fresh salsa, fried grits, a near pound of bacon, three or four tomatoes, and a few thousand longnecks. I guess I slept most of the time ’cause I don’t remember no TV.

It wasn’t until when I got to the gym on Tuesday that I found out about Kenny Coyle. Hunters found him dead in the dirt. He was beside his torched BMW in the mesquite on the outside of town. They found him Sunday noon, and word was he’d been dead some twelve hours, which meant he’d been killed near midnight Saturday night. Someone at the gym said the cops had been by to see me. Hell, me’n Billy was in Mexico, and Dee-Cee was in Houston.

The inside skinny was that Coyle’d been hog-tied with them plastic cable-tie deals that cops’ll sometimes use instead of handcuffs. One leg’d been knee-capped with his own Ruger someplace else, and later his head was busted in by blunt force with a unknown object. His brains was said to hang free, and looked like a bunch of grapes. His balls was in his mouth, and his mouth had been slit to the ear so’s both balls’d fit. The story I got was that the cops who found him got to laughing, said it was funny seeing a man eating his own mountain oysters. See, police right away knew it was business.

When the cops stopped by the gym Tuesday morning, I was still having coffee and looking out the storefront window. I didn’t have nothing to hide, so I stayed sipping my joe right where I was. I told them the same story I been telling you, starting off with stopping by to see old Royal in Dilley. See, the head cop was old Junior, and old Junior was daddy to that plain-Jane gal.

I told him me and Billy had been down Nuevo Laredo when the tragedy occurred. Told him about the Cadillac Bar, and about drinking tequila and teasing the girls in Boys Town. ’Course, I left out a few thousand details I didn’t think was any of his business. Old Junior’s eyes got paler still, and his jaw was clenched up to where his lips didn’t hardly move when he talked. He didn’t ask but two or three questions, and looked satisfied with what I answered.

Fixing to leave, Junior said, “Seems like some’s got to learn good sense the hard way.”

Once Junior’d gone, talk started up in the gym again and ropes got jumped. Fight gyms from northern Mexico all up through Texas knew what happened to Coyle. Far as I know, the cops never knocked on Billy Clancy’s door, but I can tell you that none of Billy’s fighters never had trouble working up a sweat no more, or getting up for a fight neither.

I was into my third cup of coffee when I saw old Dee-Cee get off the bus. He was same as always, except this time he had him a knobby new walking stick. It was made of mesquite like the last one. But as he come closer, I could see that the wood on this new one was still green from the tree.

I said, “You hear about Coyle?”

“I jus’ got back,” said Dee-Cee, “what about him?” One of the colored boys working out started to snicker. Dee-Cee gave that boy a look with those greeny-blue eyes. And that was the end of that.