by Otto Penzler
“These people,” Menéndez complains, shaking his head. “Too stupid to close a door even in the rain.” Then he realizes whom they are visiting. “I didn’t mean your father. I meant the old bitch, the one who lives down here.” He points to the door beside the mailboxes to their right.
José Antonio notes to himself that Menéndez has been here before.
They climb the stairs to the second landing. The detective knocks roughly at a scarred door.
“Who’s there?” The voice is reedy. Even through the wood, José Antonio can hear the wheeze between each word.
“The police, Señor Sánchez.” Menéndez winks at his client. “We’ve found something that belongs to you.”
“It’s unlocked,” the voice manages between wracking coughs.
“You’re about to meet your father,” the detective whispers, turning the knob.
The door swings open on the room, its walls shuddering with candlelight.
Juan López lies in his bed. He is a small man, nothing like his son. The voice rattles before it speaks. “What have you got of mine?”
The body in the bed is wasted; the face, sunken. Consumption, José Antonio realizes, remembering the wretched death of a consumptive Dr. Hidalgo described one evening.
The old man wheezes, waiting for Menéndez’s answer.
The detective puts a hand on his client’s shoulder. “Your son, Señor López.”
Menéndez pauses, like a boxer who has just landed an unexpected punch, but the old man does not flinch. “I don’t have a son,” López growls between breaths.
“Papá? It’s me, Papá, José Antonio.”
“You?”
José Antonio nods. “My mother sent me.”
“That whore—” But the word turns into a cough he can’t stop.
“Choke on your insult, you murderer.”
López recovers his breath, little by little. “Water,” he begs. “For the love of Christ, a glass of water.”
Ignoring the trembling hand stretched out to him, José Antonio walks around to the other side of the bed, so Menéndez fills a glass from the pitcher on the nightstand.
As his father laps it up, rattling breaths between sips, José Antonio leans over and barely utters, “You are going to die, Papá.”
A cough—no, a laugh—bursts from López’s lips, spewing water over his covers. The old man peels the damp sheet from his chest. Stains of yellow sputum blotch the undershirt he wears. “Of course I’m going to die,” he manages between breaths. “And stop calling me ‘Papá.’ I’m not your father.”
“You are Juan López, no? The husband of Elena Altiérrez?”
“Oh, yes, all that. But not the father of José Antonio López. He is a bastard, that boy.”
José Antonio wavers. “Then who is my father?”
The old man tries to shrug but starts coughing again. “Some Indian,” he chokes out, then calms himself with deep breaths. “Why do you think a man kills his wife? He looks at his boy and sees nothing of himself. And his woman, the bitch, she mocks him with it.” He laughs to himself. “Of course he takes a knife to her.”
“Gentlemen, please,” Menéndez interrupts, “I can see you have things to discuss. I should go.” But the ex-convict stands there, waiting. José Antonio looks up from the bedridden old man. “There’s just the matter, señor, of the final reckoning . . .”
“Oh, yes, forgive me. I still owe you something, don’t I?”
The detective nods as his client comes around the bed.
José Antonio knows how things kill only in the jungle. No slow toxin drips from the fangs of a jungle snake; already the mouse is being digested before it is even swallowed. And the monkey, pricked by a dart, plummets dead from its branch to the damp leaves matted about the trunk of the tree. So when he draws the knife from behind his back and drives it, all in one motion, into the heart of the man who has cheated him of nearly all his lottery winnings, the fat body slumps across the bed without a moan of protest.
José Antonio turns back to his father.
“I can’t move,” López coughs. The heavy corpse has pinned his withered legs to the mattress. Then, grasping the situation, he sneers, “Go ahead. Kill me, you son of a whore.”
But José Antonio takes his father’s skeletal hand and wraps it around the hilt of the knife still buried in Menéndez’s chest. The old man struggles to extricate his bloody hand from beneath the body pressing against his own.
“They’ll come in the morning, won’t they, someone, the old lady downstairs, with your breakfast?” José Antonio explains as he wipes his hand on the blanket. “And what will you tell them, Señor Sánchez, about this former police officer murdered in your room with your own knife? It is yours, you know. It’s the knife I pulled from my mother’s belly.”
The old man is defiant. “I’ll tell them about you, you bastard.”
“You’ll tell them you are Juan López, the murderer of Elena Altiérrez? Killing a young mother—that’s even worse than this. Would you rather be executed for her murder? Either way, it’s justice, isn’t it?” José Antonio leans over and blows out the candle on the nightstand. “You think about it, Papá. You think about it all night until they come for you in the morning.”
“You can’t leave me like this,” the voice wheezes pitifully in the dark.
“Isn’t this how you left me?” the dark answers.
8
Sometimes in the jungle, surrounded by vegetation higher than the eyes, one nonetheless senses the path home. It requires no compass, no landmarks, only an ear to listen to what one already knows.
Monday at two o’clock, Alma climbs the stairs to José Antonio’s room, taps twice, and softly opens the door, expecting to find her lover awaiting her afternoon visit. Though he has missed breakfast before, out early on one of his walks, he has always come home for their siesta.
But on the bed, his city clothes are laid out like a corpse on its bier. Above the linen pants, within the linen coat, the collared shirt is drawn closed with the tie she once taught the man to knot. As she bends to touch the cloth, Alma sees the tie has been threaded through a diamond wedding ring and the shirt pocket is stuffed with hundred-peso notes bound by a letter she will stain with her tears.
Already the steamer on which José Antonio has booked passage inland is leaving behind the smoking plains on the outskirts of Puerto Túrbido. As he sits in the bow on the case of whiskey he has bought for the fiesta with the last of his winnings, it salves his heart to see the brown brush unwither into green jungle.
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 saying? 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 saying, 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 bee
n 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 for 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.
