Hiding Among the Dead

by Chris Bauer

  Philo approached the ring, climbed under the ropes, and got inside. He moved to a corner, leaning his back against it, then he lay his arms on the top ropes and took in his surroundings before he kneeled, pressing his hand against the blue canvas floor. It had some give to it and it dipped in the middle, no doubt a veteran of many rounds of sparring.

  “Even got a nice bounce to it, Hump, but there’s a problem.”

  “I know. No bouncy canvas where you’ll be fighting. Solid concrete. Hell, no ring neither. Poor baby,” he said in a whine, adding a pout to go with the sarcasm, “forcing you to train here, having to make do.”

  “All I’m saying is I’ll need some training time in a space similar to the fight venue,” as in something akin to the first floor of the old grain elevator.

  “You haven’t seen the third floor.”

  They reached the top of the steps, where the wind rattled the closed wooden door. Hump opened it for them.

  “Welcome to Siberia, Rocky.”

  They stepped inside. This level had a hole in the roof in the far corner, the gray sky visible through it. A melting snow pile with runoff darkened the smooth floor.

  “See that hole? Looks to be about the size of a large hot tub, don’t it? That’s because that’s what used to be under it before the neighborhood scavengers broke in, cut out the skylight, and lifted the fucker out. Miñoso here—”

  Miñoso averted his eyes, uncomfortable about the call out.

  “—he was squatting up here, before I knew him. Got his clock cleaned the night they stole the tub, when he didn’t move fast enough after the thieving pricks told him to clear out.”

  “Eliminé dos,” Miñoso said, “with my fists.”

  “Right. He knocked two of them out. Problem was, there were more than two. They tied him up and beat him while they worked on lifting the tub out, left him for dead up here. I found him, took him to the ER, and then I told him he could stay with me. He wouldn’t have none of it. He lives in a rooming house nearby, works odd jobs when he can.”

  “How old, Hump?” Philo whispered.

  “What?”

  “How old is he? And how did he get here?”

  “I’d say he’s maybe thirty-five. Just showed up, end of the summer. Landscaping work dried up in the ’burbs. Has some family around here somewhere, unless they left.”

  When Miñoso and Philo first shook hands, Philo saw what fueled the man’s fire, the fear etched into his brown face, the gaunt eyes, the wiry body, the two missing lower teeth. This man, young man, child, whatever age he was, was used to adversity, but in this cold he would have died if he were still squatting up here, beaten to a pulp or not. And no way was he over thirty years old. Philo saw maybe twenty years or so in those frightened eyes, eyes like he’d seen in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, even South America, deeply inset on the faces of poverty-stricken orphans, all wishing for a chance at salvation, one that would never come. Environments like that added decades to a man’s face.

  “How old are you, Miñoso?” Philo asked, since Hump hadn’t, and it seemed he didn’t plan to.

  “Twenty-two years.”

  The answer quieted Hump and Philo both for a moment. Just how many of these undocumented, worn out people were out there, Philo asked himself. His answer was too many. Not “too many” as in you’re-not-welcome-here-you-fuckers, you-need-to-leave-our-beloved-country too many. No, it was too many as in these people were human beings trying to better their lot in life just like the rest of us, which meant they needed compassion, not reprimand. And here was crusty old Hump, burdened with ALS, trying to do good for one of them.

  Hump started back up with Philo. “So here’s the deal. I make you some keys, you let yourself in whenever you want for the next few weeks while you train. Miñoso here lives right around the corner, ready to spot you. Just call me and I’ll send him over, and I won’t be far behind. You get the urge to give him a few bucks he won’t turn it down. How’s that sound?”

  The three men shook on it.

  Back on the second floor where it was warmer, Philo hesitated at the door to the stairs, did an about-face, wanting a moment to absorb the energy, the determination, the will power of all those who’d toiled inside these hallowed, exposed brick walls in the name of so brutal yet revered a sport. Philadelphia and Joe Frazier were to boxing like Green Bay and Vince Lombardi were to football: classy champions in a bruising sport.

  “I’ll be back tonight seven-ish, to get in some work on the bags,” Philo told Miñoso. “Will that work?”

  “Si, campeón, I am liking that,” Miñoso said.

  20

  Walking around money. That’s what Wally Lanakai had tossed Philo when he exited his house after the break-in.

  A showy gesture, like he was a benevolent mobster type with compassion for the little guy. The SOB had destroyed the bathroom skylight leaving a hole in his roof, and had busted through his front door. Two thousand bucks wasn’t going to cut it. Ripping out the skylight and re-tarring the roof, that alone would be three, four grand at least. He took another pass at cleaning up the bathroom, the worst place in the house to have broken glass. He removed the tarp he’d tucked into the skylight, replacing it with plywood screwed into the ceiling from the inside. Soon as he drilled the last screw, he realized how dark this made it in there, the skylight the only natural light source.

  Fuck this, he wanted another skylight. He’d replace the glass with something shatterproof and a bit heavier duty, then go for the iron bars. A cheaper solution, and letting the sunlight in would be better for human biorhythms, some shit like that. The front door was where he’d spend more money, maybe get something impenetrable but hell, who was he kidding, the front door wasn’t the only way to breach the house. Sixteen windows front and back, upstairs and down, meant sixteen other ways for someone to get in and mess him up or his shit or both.

  Regardless, he’d made his decision to live here and he wasn’t going back on it. This was the last place his dad had lived, which made this the last chance he had to get their relationship right, even though he was the only one left to work on it.

  “Six,” he said to his cat, “your pop is heading into the city to the gym, to scrape off some rust. Sorry, but you need to stay in tonight. See you later, sweetums.”

  Meow.

  Philo’s messages to Patrick on the drive downtown, phone and text, went unanswered. New insights and a new territory to plumb for Patrick’s identity—the Hawaiian Islands, for Christ sake. They had a lot to talk about. He visualized Patrick at this moment, nomadic amnesiac, on a SEPTA bus somewhere in the city, or on the Broad Street Subway, or on a trolley in Port Richmond, or maybe sleepwalking his way around Elkins Park.

  Tomorrow. It would be tomorrow before they talked.

  Philo selected a downloaded track on his phone and blasted it through his Jeep’s audio system while navigating Philly’s inner-city streets. The piece was a voice-over read by a movie-trailer-guy wannabe, the track from stop-motion video action shots featured in a Nat Geo film on fight science, the topic, “The One-Punch Knockout.” The stills that accompanied the audio replayed in his head, with a beating heart providing the audio’s pulsing, building background track.

  Thump-thump, thump-thump…

  “The one-punch KO sends the brain flying inside the skull, causing a chain reaction. The skull accelerates and decelerates rapidly, the brain recoiling toward the back of the head, causing trauma from the rear, then snapping back to the front of the skull, causing more trauma. This perfect flow of energy—this kinetic linking—travels through the puncher’s entire body. The punch starts in the feet, the rear foot driving backward into the ground. The energy travels through the legs, into the hips, through the large muscles of the back, head, and shoulders, like the coiling and cracking of a whip. The whip snaps when the fist explodes against the target, and the kinetically linked energy is released. And yes, size does matter. The heavier and longer-limbed the puncher, the more dangerous the whipl
ash.”

  The thumping faded, was followed by more boxing tips, these including the science behind knocking out opponents in five minutes or less from an accumulation of blows. The beating heart returned, a new voice artist reading from a piece published in Popular Mechanics by journalist Marita Vera.

  Thump-thump, thump-thump…

  “Here’s how it happens. The body contains dissolved sodium, potassium, and calcium, collectively known as electrolytes, which are responsible for conducting impulses along neurons. Every time a fighter receives a blow to a nerve, potassium leaves the cell and calcium rushes in, destabilizing the electrolytes, while the brain does all it can to keep these levels in balance. With each successive blow this balance is harder to maintain, and more and more energy must be spent in the process. When the body reaches the point where the damage outweighs the body’s ability to repair itself…”

  Thump-thump, thump-thump…

  “…the brain shuts down to conserve enough energy to fix the injured neurons at a later point. In the words of Anthony Alessi, a neurologist and ringside physician for the Connecticut State Boxing Commission, ‘After a brain injury, the heart must supply sufficient blood flow for the brain to repair itself. If the demand outweighs the supply, the brain shuts down and leads to a loss of consciousness.’”

  The speaker’s voice slowed for dramatic effect. “‘That’s when the ring doctor knows to end the match…’”

  The heartbeat amplified, suffixed by a beeping hospital heart monitor.

  Thump-thump-BEEP, thump-thump-BEEP…

  “‘…because if he lets the fighter continue…’”

  THUMP, THUMP, BEEP…

  “‘…the fighter is going to die.’”

  BEEEEEEEP.

  Miñoso stood at the front door to the gym, a watch cap in Oakland Raiders black and silver pulled over his ears, a stitched-up hole near its crown. They shook hands, Philo taking measure of this young yet prematurely ancient man. “Miñoso. Hey.”

  “Campeón.”

  For Philo, the salutation was the equivalent of saluting a military superior while on a mission: if you want your lieutenant dead from sniper fire, you salute him. “No more of that ‘champ’ stuff, Miñoso,” Philo said. “It’s Philo from here on in, okay?”

  “Is okay.”

  He handed Miñoso a greasy paper bag. “I brought you a cheesesteak. You need to put some meat on those bones. While I set up upstairs, you eat.”

  “Gracias.”

  Upstairs, Philo stuck bunches of small smiley-face stickers head-high on both sides of the heavy bag suspended from the ceiling, approximating where his opponent’s temples would be at full height, then he did the same for the solar plexus shots. In his experience the punch that concussed the brain most frequently, and short-circuited the fighter’s legs, was the hook to the temple. And the best shots to make a man lower his hands for those punches to the temple were punishing hits to the body. The info Philo had on Wally Lanakai’s fighter was he was a six-four Hawaiian, two inches taller than Philo, and he carried a sculpted two hundred twenty pounds, with long arms and a strong chin.

  While Miñoso chewed, Philo fished. “The guy’s name is Tonka. No idea if it’s a first name, last name, or nickname. Tonka. Ever heard of him?”

  “Si.”

  “Where?”

  “Kids juguetes. Toy camiones, excavadoras. Hijos de puta son indestructibles.”

  “I got the toy trucks and excavators part, Miñoso, but not the rest. Translate.”

  “Those Tonka toys, they are, how you say, indestructible. But I never hear of no fighter named Tonka.” Miñoso eyed Philo’s hands, his look skeptical. “No tape on your wrists, campeón…er, Philo?”

  Philo pushed the heavy bag into a sway, circled it left to right and right to left, his punching against the bag slow, deliberate, up and down each side. “Taped hands? In this sport? Nah. Finish your cheesesteak, then hold this bag still so I can pound it.”

  “You are wearing Levi’s. ¿Por qué?”

  “Part of the charm of the sport, Miñoso, is fighting in the clothes that brought you here. I’m a jeans kind of guy.”

  “This fighter you fight, those etiquetas”—Miñoso pointed at the smiley stickers head-high on the bag; regardless of the heavy bag’s back and forth swing, they remained at nearly the same height—“he no move his head up or down?”

  “Yes, he’ll move his head up and down. But when he’s upright, that’s where he’ll be. After you put on the headgear, we go upstairs. You’ll help me with the up-and-down part.”

  Upstairs, the snow on the floor in the corner had melted some but the room was still cold, the wind whipping through the hole in the roof. Hump had found an electric space heater and placed it up there earlier to take the edge off, but it wasn’t much help, not much better than a pair of hand warmers. Fine, far as Philo was concerned, the grain elevator venue would fare the same unless the cold snap snapped. Miñoso bobbed and weaved in gray sweats and headgear in the center of the floor, but otherwise stayed flat-footed in front of him, stopping short of showing what he could do footwork-wise, “’cause gringos like you ain’t be catching me if I did.”

  That, Philo figured, was Hump talking shit to him as his trainer, filling this young man with lightweight bullshit meant to show boxing ring generalship and an ability to score with flyswatter jabs and pattycake hooks. Things that didn’t mean squat in a bare-knuckle fight. “Go ahead, Miñoso, move your bad ass around however you want to. Just make sure I get some bobbing and weaving along with it, bud.”

  Miñoso danced backward, forward, shadowboxed circles around a flatfooted Philo, his boxing gloves alternating between protecting both sides of his face and speed punching, with Philo taking something off his bare-knuckle punches each time he cornered him. Miñoso finally pulled up and dropped his arms to his side, pounding his padded forehead with a fist, yammering at Philo through his mouth guard: “You heet me like I am a girl! I am no girl! You catch me, you heet me!”

  “Miñoso, this is our first sparring session. Calm down.”

  “HEET ME!” Miñoso pleaded, covering his temples with his gloved hands, and continuing his taunts, bobbing down, then up, then down again, then…

  Miñoso awakened with his back on the cold, hard floor, Philo standing over him.

  “Miñoso. You okay? Miñoso?”

  Hump arrived alongside, his expression deadpan, Miñoso still laid out. “Mouthed off at you, didn’t he?”

  “Little bit. He wanted me to hit him harder.”

  “This was a bad idea, Philo, having him spar with you. He’s giving up too much weight, but he begged me. The kid has a room in a row home where fifteen other immigrants live. He’s living in poverty. He’ll do anything for a buck.”

  “I hit him pretty good, Hump, stomach, arms, head shots. Men twice his size went down quicker. So if he’s still game, I’m fine with it.”

  Miñoso spoke, still on his back, the words garbled, but Philo understood two of them, and what was being asked. “Los riñones?”

  “No hits to the kidneys, Miñoso. All my punches were clean. You won’t be pissing blood on my account. But next time we do it my way, a little slower and more deliberate, okay?”

  “Si. Bueno. Gracias,” he said, blinking his eyes clear and adding, still in Spanish, “I must check my gym bag for my other pants. I seem to have soiled these.”

  21

  The warehouse was less than two blocks from the Delaware River in Bristol, a Philadelphia suburb. Convenient for an execution and watery disposal of a body, should this be what Olivier had in mind. Kaipo slowed her van as she passed the empty guard shack and drove to the rear of the warehouse. The parking lot sidled the building deep into the property, was large enough for forty or more tractor-trailers but now there were none, hadn’t been any for nearly a decade. She parked outside the first loading dock, per Olivier’s instructions. Her van’s headlights brightened the graffiti-covered garage door.

  Kaipo guided
the pressure cooker down the ramp from her van, rolled it along like a piece of luggage, the cooker bouncing whenever it caught a pebble on the alligatored asphalt. Tonight she was particular with her personal appearance, going for friendly and unsuspicious: pink sneakers, a gray gym outfit under a warm parka, hair in a tight ponytail. Unthreatening and unassuming, because in her head…

  She wasn’t entirely convinced this wouldn’t be an attempted hit just as easily as it could be the delivery of a replacement pressure cooker.

  Also moving into her head was Patrick Stakes the amnesiac, and his display at the car dealership, with tall garage doors much like these here. She’d seen haka war dances before, once as a guest at a US Army change of command ceremony in Hawaii just before she left the Islands for the mainland. A group of soldiers in camo performed it, dramatic and serious, for their outgoing commander, its chest-beating, foot-stomping and flexing threatening and barbaric, visually and orally. Her head was full of haka now, the beat mounting as she walked onto a ramp that led to the dock, fueling her skepticism—her resolve—about this rendezvous with Olivier. She slowed, reached a pair of swinging doors next to the loading dock’s overhead garages and rolled the cooker into them, testing to see if they were open; the doors separated. She unzipped her parka and inched the cooker forward into the warehouse, no complaints from anyone or thing on the other side. The swinging doors closed behind her.

  Five hundred thousand square feet of three-story warehouse. She could see maybe the first fifty feet into its depths, courtesy of her flashlight. The general theme, no matter where she shined her light: pristine white, like she’d stumbled into a great hall in the afterlife. A nice touch if they wanted her dead. She rolled the cooker forward, her soft-soled sneakers squeaking on the shiny floor, and the cooker’s squeaky wheels echoing; she stopped twenty feet in, did a visual sweep. Long yellow rectangles on the floor outlined where storage shelves once were, the rectangles disappearing into the recesses of the warehouse. Creepy. Her phone buzzed in her pocket; she read the text.