When the Thrill Is Gone

14

Overconfidence killed the cat, dog, pouncing lion, and the entire global alliance of the Axis powers. That is to say, when two men who have the strength to stand upright get in your face you have to act fast and with certainty.

I took a step toward them, holding out my right hand as if I expected somebody to shake it. The gesture was meant to say that we were all brothers there in the rat’s-nest cove behind the dirty brick buildings. The smaller of the two men was five inches taller and forty pounds heavier than I. That put him well over two hundred pounds. I could see that it wasn’t all fat. He tried to stiff-arm me when I got close enough. I lowered down into a squat and hit him with a left hook to the gut that made him whimper. Instantly, with my right hand, now a fist, I slammed the jaw of Shorty’s jumbo partner. He would have hit the ground if I hadn’t followed up with six or seven punches that both debilitated him and kept him standing upright. Then I turned back to the whimperer and threw a long right hand.

That was a mistake.

Sometimes I forget that you are not compelled to follow the rules of boxing when in the street. The second man stood back and pushed against my shoulders. Already off balance, I fell to the ground. Even though he was probably suffering from a broken rib or two, the guy tried to kick me in the head. I rolled onto my left shoulder, grabbed his ankle, and yanked. Falling, he cried out again. I climbed up his prone body, throwing punches at anything flesh. I connected with half a dozen punches and got to my feet just in time to duck under a fist aimed at my head by Jumbo. The fact that he was still conscious meant that he would have made a good specimen for the sweet science. But he was raw, untrained.

We traded blows for all of ninety seconds, me landing and him not. When it was over he’d lost a few teeth, broken his right hand against a brick wall, and had blood streaming from three cracks in his face.

I stood back and gestured at the two men; the larger one was down on one knee and Shorty was lying on his side, wondering how to breathe right.

The gesture said that if they wanted more I had it for them.

Working together, they managed to get to their feet and stumble away.

To my surprise Tally had not fled. He hadn’t helped in the fight, but he was standing in front of the shack with a fist-sized rock in either hand.

“You were waiting for me to soften them up?” I asked the frightened young man.

Tremors traveled from his shoulders down into his hands. He showed his teeth in a rictus that might have been anything from a laugh to the beginnings of a heart attack.

“Shall we go inside?” I said.

He looked back the way his attackers had gone.

“They’ll need medical help before coming back here,” I said. “You think they might send some friends?”

He shook his head and then gazed at me with those unhealthy orbs.

Dropping the stones, he said, “You know how to fight.”

“Comes in handy in back alleys and jail pens.”

Tally pulled a key from his pocket and turned toward the entrance. He went through the rough-hewn door into a dwelling that was most likely a temporary workman’s shed when it was first thrown up.

It was a medium-sized room with no windows, a cot against one wall, and a huge plank table against another. There were clothes on the floor and comic books strewn around. Taped and tacked up on the walls were blue-lined sheets of notebook paper that had drawings of faces on them. Lots of native talent with little follow-through. The doodlings of a talented but hyperactive mind that the teachers never got through to — if they ever tried.

There was no bathroom that I could see but he had a chrome sink filled with dirty dishes. This was a poor, uneducated man’s home, replete with the earmarks of poverty in the twenty-first century. There was a brand-new laptop computer and an Xbox on the desk amid the empty pizza cartons, Avengers comic books, and reams of lined paper, either scrawled upon or waiting their turn.

“Nice computer,” I said.

“Chrystal gave me that stuff.”

“That was nice of her.”

“She just wants me to stay away, so she gives me stuff not to feel guilty.”

“Who were those guys?” I asked.

“Big Boy an’ Two Dog,” he said. He pulled out a metal-and-vinyl folding chair from a corner and set it out for me.

He plopped down on the cot and said, “They give me some weed to sell but the cops busted me and took what I had left and all my money. But, you know, them two expect to get paid, or kick somebody ass.”

I had yet to sit down. I was still wondering what I could hope to get out of this hopeless brother.

The shack smelled of Tally, that hint of rot that you might find in the wing of a hospital where they put the patients who can’t pay.

I sat and asked, “What does Chrystal have against you? You’re both artists.”

“You like my drawings?” he asked.

“They have a lot of power. Portraits mainly, huh?”

“I like faces. Sometimes I ride the subway all day long and just draw one face after the other. They got every race in the world right down on the F train.”

“That why you have problems with Chrystal?”

“What you mean?”

“Maybe she thinks you’re competing with her,” I suggested.

“The last time I went to her house some kind of silverware went missing,” he said. “I didn’t steal it. What I want with some old forks and spoons? Probably one of the servants did it, but they blamed me ’cause when I come around is the only time they check.

“But you right about that art, man. It was me who first asked Dad if maybe I could have a welding set to copy comic-book characters on steel. He got it for me but then, after a while, it was Chrystal doin’ it all the time. She hogged it up and now she famous, married to some rich white man, and blamin’ me for a thief.”

To punctuate his dissatisfaction Tally took off his fake snakeskin jacket and dropped it on the splintery floor. His black T-shirt showed off arms that were thin and unencumbered by muscle. His milk-chocolate lips hung down in defeat.

“So you wouldn’t know where she went or how I could get in touch with her,” I said.

“We don’t talk. Shawna said that Chris went on a vacation or somethin’.”

“She tell you that four or five days ago?”

“I’ont know, man,” he complained. “Neither one’a my sisters care about me. Shawna just wanna use you an’, an’, an’ Chrystal don’t wanna hear from ya.”

“Chrystal gave you the computer and games.”

“But she don’t care. All she got to do is leave a note with that Mr. Pelham. She don’t even have to go shoppin’, just tell him what to buy an’ where to bring it. And he don’t come himself. They got that white niggah Phil to bring it out here. He just call on the cell phone and I got to run outside to pick it up from his limo.”

I could see the kid’s point. I understood his sister’s position, too. The thing I didn’t know was about my employer.

“What’s your problem with Shawna?” I asked.

“Why?”

“She hired me and you said that she must not really care and is tryin’ to do something I don’t even know about,” I said. “I don’t wanna be used any more than you do.”

“Shawna smile in your face, call you her best friend, and then, when you tell her sumpin’, it be all ovah the street before you could sneeze. She jealous an’ spiteful and won’t even visit her own mother in the hospital. If she got hold of that green-and-red necklace she prob’ly stoled it. Prob’ly stoled that silverware, too, and then told Chrystal it was me. I bet she did.”

I wondered. The words indicted Shawna but he delivered them in a way that seemed... insincere. I was sure he knew more but this was neither the time nor place for a full interrogation.

“You know you can’t stay here, Ted.”

“Why not?”

“Because Big Boy and Two Dog will be back.”

Tally glanced at his one door and I suppressed a smile.

“Where I’ma go?”

“I got a friend in the Bronx got a pool hall needs cleanin’ and a room for the janitor. I could get him to let you stay there for a week or two. In the meanwhile I got a lawyer that can represent your case.”

“Why you wanna help me, man?”

“I was hired to do a job by a woman you say I shouldn’t trust. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not just taking your word on that, I have my own suspicions. So I might need you to help me later on. The only way I can be sure you will is if I help you now.”