Undercard

by David Albertyn

  Antoine hesitates on the verge of saying something. Then his face smooths and grows unreadable. “Just curious.”

  Tyron says, “Keenan’s outside.”

  “What?”

  “Keenan’s working security at the hotel. He walked us in. He’s waiting outside.”

  Antoine’s eyes bulge with anger. Then he turns away and laughs. “It is fate!” He turns back to Tyron. “It is fate,” he says softly, his eyes imploring. “All of us here together again on this day of all days. It’s a sign. Something momentous is about to happen.” His eyes flash and the hint of a smile appears on his lips.

  Tyron watches Antoine. He wonders how quickly he can get out of the room if things take a turn. Antoine’s speech is rushed, his mind clearly racing now. “I’ll get you and Ricky into the fight. You can wait in the casino, I’ll give you money.” He turns and shouts to the bedrooms, “Carlos, trae quinientos dólares y dos boletos para la pelea.” Back to Tyron, he says, “Give your number to Carlos, he’ll handle the details.”

  He jolts forward and puts his hand on Tyron’s shoulder. Tyron almost flinches, half expecting a punch.

  “You got my back, right?” Antoine says urgently. “If shit goes down, you got my back, right?”

  “What do you mean? Like, in the ring?”

  “I don’t need help in the ring. If other shit goes down, you —”

  “Like what?”

  “Whatever! It doesn’t matter what. If things happen, you look out for me, okay? Whether we were ever brothers or not, your parents loved me. You remember that. Your parents loved me and I loved them. You look out for me tonight. Yeah?”

  “Yeah, all right man, I will.”

  Antoine stares into his eyes, searching, and finally gives a short nod, satisfied.

  Carlos, the young man with the tattoos, waits silently behind them.

  “I’ll see you later,” Antoine says. “Send Keenan in when you leave.”

  Antoine walks over to Carlos, whispers something to him, and walks back to the window.

  Carlos approaches, a wad of cash and two tickets in his hands. Tyron exchanges numbers, takes the tickets, but refuses the cash. Across the hotel suite he says, “Hey Antoine.”

  Antoine turns, his gaunt face half silhouetted.

  “Good luck tonight.”

  The boxer stares, for so long Tyron thinks there will be no other reaction, but at last it comes, a one-sided smile.

  3:53 p.m.

  Keenan pushes away from the wall with relief when Tyron comes back into the hallway — sharing an awkward silence with Ricky wasn’t much fun. I should move, Keenan thinks. Life will never be the same for me here. He is afraid, however, that Naomi won’t stay with him if he goes. He snorts. He is afraid she won’t stay with him even if he stays.

  Tyron’s eyes look glassy.

  “What’s wrong?” Keenan asks.

  “He’s weird.”

  “He was always weird.”

  “He’s weirder now. He wants to see you.”

  Well, that’s ominous, Keenan thinks. “Let me get your number,” he says, unsure if Tyron will give it to him with Ricky watching. But Tyron nods, and they punch each other’s numbers into their phones. “We’ll catch up later?” Keenan asks uncertainly.

  “Definitely,” Tyron says.

  They slap hands and embrace. With a morose look over at Ricky, who glowers at him with fury and contempt, Keenan treks back down the hall.

  Warily, he opens the door. Antoine is standing by the window.

  “Come here,” he says.

  Keenan walks across the suite with long, slow strides, surprised at how Antoine’s presence fills the room even though he is only five-ten and lean. As a kid, he could be right beside you and you’d forget he was there. Keenan was the one with presence back then. Before he became a pariah. Approaching the window, he sees how sinewy Antoine has become, how the veins branch across his forearms, how stripped he is of anything but muscle and bone.

  They look out over Las Vegas Boulevard, immensely wide yet packed with cars.

  “They come to our city for what, exactly?” Antoine asks. “They can’t get drunk, high, and laid in their own cities? Can’t waste their savings at home? They gotta come here to do that?”

  “It’s easier here, I guess.” Keenan takes a breath. “How you been?”

  Antoine slowly turns his head from the window and stares malevolently at Keenan. “How did you fuck up that bad?”

  Keenan starts, unprepared for the hostility.

  “Did they teach you to do that to Black people? Is that the thinking, take ’em out one at a time, eventually all America’s problems will be solved?”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “Easy. We ain’t kids no more. A lot’s changed.”

  “No shit.”

  Keenan has a gun holstered at his hip and for a moment thinks he might need it, but Antoine’s animosity recedes. No softness or warmth appear to fill the void, just a blank disposition, as he says, “How did it happen?”

  Keenan can’t put into words the thinking and instincts that develop over time as a cop — and, if he’s being honest with himself, had been developing long before he joined the force. He was taught to shoot to kill anyone he deemed a threat to himself or others. But there is no gradation of threat. A terrorist armed to the teeth and a Black man who doesn’t listen are both threats. Or maybe it’s just that he told that kid to stop, to get on the ground — he, a police officer, who should be heard, who should be obeyed — and the kid didn’t listen and he needed to be taught a lesson. Or maybe he was angry and he had never used his gun before in the line of duty, and he felt disrespected and he wasn’t about to look weak, he wasn’t going to be made to feel weak, he was a cop after all, and this seemed like the right time to finally step up. Or maybe it’s that other cops were always watching, and you had to be hardcore or you wouldn’t be trusted. Or maybe things just happened faster than he was expecting, and he didn’t quite know what to do, and shooting the perp was the only action that came to mind. “I shouldn’t talk about it,” is what he says to Antoine.

  “How’s your father?”

  Keenan’s eyes narrow. “He’s fine. He’s retired now.”

  “He’s keeping busy?”

  “Not really. He mostly watches football at home or drinks at a local sports bar. How about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “How is your . . .” Keenan remembers too late Antoine’s family situation. He tries to think if there is someone else he should ask about.

  “Don’t hurt yourself, Keenan. There’s no one.”

  “You got a girl?”

  Antoine shakes his head. “How’s Naomi?”

  “Great. She’s really great. She’s been following your success. She’s proud of you.”

  It is the only time in their conversation that Antoine looks taken off guard. His eyes soften and he seems about to smile. Then a shadow crosses his face. “Any kids?” he asks.

  “Not yet. We might wait another few years.”

  “So, you my security detail for the rest of the night?”

  “No. I’m behind the scenes wherever they need me. I won’t be in the arena.”

  Antoine’s gaze slides back out the window. The red sun is blazing even as it begins to wane. Watching Antoine like that, his strange, simmering intensity, Keenan realizes he has nothing to say. He realizes also, in this moment, that he doesn’t like him, that he never really liked him. Perhaps he did as the third member of their crew — fourth if you counted Naomi — but not one-on-one. Antoine deserves to be alone.

  “I might not see you again,” Antoine says. “Good luck with everything.”

  “Good luck with the fight.”

  They shake hands and then Keenan is back out in the hallway, glad to be free of the man who
for two years as a teenager had spent almost every day in his company. Times change, Keenan thinks. For company, he would pick just about any stranger over Antoine now.

  5

  4:10 p.m.

  Tyron and Keenan gone, and his fight still hours away, Antoine returns to his room, closes two sets of curtains, and stretches out on his bed. As his head hits the downy pillow, and he tugs the sheets around himself, he thinks of the nights he spent in alleys and empty lots, the nights in gang-run crack dens and austere prison cells, how he would rest his head on rough cement or filthy floorboards, how he might wake up shivering, wary for his life, or worse, with someone’s hands on him and have to use his fists to get clear. Upon reflection, the comfort of this bed doesn’t do much for him. Of course, given the choice between a cushiony king-sized mattress and the hard ground, he’d take the bed. But his ambitions have never lain in material things, which always seemed fleeting and inconsequential, an opinion Antoine developed as a boy when he and his father would break into wealthy people’s homes.

  As darkness drags him down, Antoine’s last waking thought is that the dream will visit him again. To remember his father so close to sleep is to beckon it from the dark corners of his mind. The dream is so immersive and has maintained such a consistent narrative over the years that he can no longer tell exactly how, or if, it differs from the memory that gave birth to it.

  He is twelve, creeping through the Las Vegas mansion of a billionaire. Everything is dark and blurry, including his father, who glides from shadow to shadow ahead of him, no longer Raul Deco as he is in the light of day, but a shadow himself. His utter silence, his absence of sound, gives Antoine confidence. They will not be caught. They are never caught.

  The alarms have been disabled; the hidden cameras have been found; and the safe, behind a cabinet in a room at the back of the mansion, succumbs to his father’s skills. It is their second heist of the night. The first, a law office off Industrial Road, had also been for documents.

  The dream skips ahead in time the way dreams do. They are in his father’s car beside a dumpster, underneath a long highway overpass. On Antoine’s lap is a brown manila envelope containing the documents collected from the night’s two heists. His father is nervous. Antoine can feel it. His father is never nervous. Not when he’s getting chased down by the most vicious dogs, not in the company of the most beautiful women, not when he’s questioned by the most persistent detectives; Raul Deco is never nervous. But he is nervous now. Antoine can feel it.

  “Get out, hijo. Find someplace to hide. I’ll be back soon.”

  For the first time in Antoine’s life, he senses that his father needs him. Yes, perhaps he has been useful to his father as an extra pair of eyes, ears, and hands on their various jobs, but useful as a luxury instead of a need. Right now, his father needs him. Raul might not know it, but Antoine does. His father will make a mistake without him.

  “What are these documents, padre?”

  “It’s a will. Copies of the same will. Now out. ¡Vete!”

  “Who’s it for?”

  His father looks at him, and Antoine — the thirty-two-year-old Antoine having the dream — understands this look. He is weighing whether or not to confide in his son, whether or not to show frailty before his boy, whether or not to look for support from the person he is guide and mentor to — none of which he has ever done before. In the end, he says only one word. “Cops.”

  “Cops?”

  “They’re waiting for me. Go.”

  Antoine is torn between obeying his father and adhering to his instincts. “Maybe you should leave one of the wills with me.”

  His father snatches the envelope from his lap. “Get out of the car, Antoine.”

  He slithers out of the vehicle, knowing that if he doesn’t move, the edge he just heard in his father’s voice will be followed by the back of his hand. The car pulls away, passing in and out of shadow in the half-lit dusty lot beneath the highway.

  No matter how many times Antoine brings back the dream, no matter how hard he tries, he can never change its ending. He can never force himself to stay in the car. And the moment it drives off, he loathes himself for abandoning his father.

  He hides behind the dumpster, watching his father’s brake lights recede under the overpass. Like a soldier under fire, he scampers from one concrete pillar to the next.

  The car is now far up ahead, its tail lights like the glowing red eyes of some small creature in the dark. He begins to run. The lights blink out.

  His lungs burn, and yet his legs barely move. Like a mosquito caught in the sap of a tree, some viscous thing holds him back. But he has to catch up to his father. It’s imperative. It’s the most important thing he has ever had to do. He knows what will come otherwise. The chill in his blood can’t be wrong.

  Lost in the remnants and shadows, he runs from pillar to pillar. Until the glowing red eyes open once more. They are stationary. He can see his father now, standing outside the car, envelope in hand. Beyond him a black sedan is parked, and before it, no more than a silhouette in the shadows, a tall man stands waiting. He throws a black duffle bag into the slanting light from the highway above, and Raul warily approaches it.

  It is then that Antoine sees the second man, using a pillar for cover, gun in hand, creeping up behind his father. Antoine is still so far away.

  His father has checked inside the bag and slung it over his shoulder, and now he tosses the envelope into the shadows for the first man to take. Antoine opens his mouth to scream. The gunman comes out of cover and aims his weapon.

  His father turns back toward his car, looking over his shoulder at the tall silhouette. He doesn’t see the gunman. He doesn’t see his death coming for him. Antoine’s voice dies in his throat. They’ll find me, he thinks. The gunman opens fire.

  Eight times the pistol flashes: the gunshots echo in the cavernous space. His father writhes and jolts. Again Antoine wants to scream. Again his voice fails him.

  The gunman collects the duffle bag from his father’s still body and climbs into the black sedan. The engine revs in a guttural growl. Antoine scrambles around the nearest pillar so that he is hidden when the sedan screams past. He peeks around the concrete at the last moment and is given a snapshot of the two men in the car, a shaft of light on them in this one instant.

  They are faceless. No hair. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Each a blank white canvas of flesh. His dreaming mind unable to retrieve their features from this split second of memory.

  The sedan is absorbed by the night, as if always a part of it. Antoine leaves the pillar. He walks out into the middle of the empty lot beneath the overpass to his father. The blood has already spread a distance from the body.

  His tears stream, and still Antoine’s survival instinct calmly says, if cops killed him, cops cannot find you with him. Go.

  Antoine looks up from his father’s face and sees in every shadow a pair of glowing yellow embers. They wink and blink and dance back and forth, and then the growls and howls come from all directions. One coyote emerges from the dark, the largest and boldest of them, its long, bared fangs glinting in the half-light. The pack begins to approach, lean bodies taking form around the fiery eyes. Fur bristling, tongues lolling, long jaws slavering for his father’s pooling blood.

  Antoine rises. He needs to run and run fast. But he can’t. He can’t leave his father again. He tries to lift him. The coyotes growl and slink closer. The cops will be coming. The ones in uniform. And somehow they will alert the faceless cops who murdered his father, and they will realize that Antoine was there, witness to their deed, accomplice to their thefts, a threat to their plans. A loose end they hadn’t known needed to be tied.

  He screams at the coyotes. They gnash their foaming jaws. The biggest launches at him. Fangs wide.

  Antoine’s eyes snap open. He is slick with perspiration beneath the fine triple sheets; his fist
s are balled up tight. There were no coyotes, no glowing eyes, when he abandoned his father for the final time. But days later, when he had to ID the body, he saw what the coyotes had done to it in his absence, and the chrysalis of their memory was planted in his mind. He presses himself up into a kneeling position. His fist is a blur. Slap. The pillow puffs up around his knuckles. He readies to fire another one.

  Not yet, a voice inside him says — the same voice he has been obeying since he was twelve years old. Save it. Save it for tonight.

  6

  5:38 p.m.

  “Ballers ball, baby, ballers ball,” Ricky says, as he rakes in the blackjack pot with both hands.

  “You’re down overall.”

  Ricky sucks on his teeth. “For now.”

  Tyron laughs and shakes his head, then, scanning his surroundings, accidentally makes eye contact with one of the mermaids. She smiles playfully before cutting between two tables, a tray of martinis at shoulder height.

  Tyron is embarrassed that only a smile from this woman, sent from a distance, is enough to cause a flutter in his chest. True, she is clad from the waist down in a fabric so thin it is half transparent, skin-tight grey-­turquoise patterning made to look like fish scales. And true, all she has on her upper half is a near-imperceptible string bikini holding in place a pair of small seashells. And of course, it is true that she is one of the hottest women he has ever seen in person. But the real reason for his jittery excitement over a look from a half-naked woman is that he has spent so little time with women in recent memory. He is embarrassed at how long it has been since he last had sex. Forget sex, how long it has been since he last had a date.

  “What do you think?” Ricky asks Tyron, as he motions to his new cards, a six of clubs and a jack of diamonds.

  “I don’t really play cards,” Tyron says.

  “Lighten up, Ty! Shit, we’re in the hottest casino on the Strip and soon we’ll be watching the fight of the decade. This is your homecoming, dude. You ain’t a soldier no more, you a free man. Forget Auntie Trudy’s cookout, this is your celebration! You with me?”