Vinnie shook his head.
“Spiro Melinas was your manager.”
Vinnie nodded.
So what gives? I wondered, but figured it was none of my business, and so went on to other matters.
“Anyway,” I said. “Chester tried his best to clean Douggie’s clock, but the bastard went all the way through the tenth.” I laughed again.
The bus groaned, shuddered in a blast of wind, then dragged forward again.
“Well, all I remember is what a shellacking Douggie took.”
Vinnie chewed his lower lip. “ ‘Cause he wouldn’t go down.”
“True enough. He did the count. All the way to the last bell.”
Vinnie seemed almost to be ringside again at that long-ago match, watching as Douggie Burns, whipped and bloody, barely able to raise his head, took punch after punch, staggering backward, fully exposed, barely conscious, so that it seemed to be a statue Chester Link was battering with all his power, his gloves thudding against stomach, shoulder, face, all of it Douggie Burns, but Douggie Burns insensate, perceiving nothing, feeling nothing, Douggie Burns in stone.
“Stayed on his feet,” Vinnie said now. “All the way.”
“Yes, he did,” I said, noting the strange admiration Vinnie still had for Douggie, though it seemed little more than one fighter’s regard for another’s capacity to take inhuman punishment. “But you have to say there wasn’t much left of him after that fight,” I added.
“No, not much.”
“Which makes me wonder why you fought him at all,” I said, returning to my real interest in the matter of Irish Vinnie Teague. “I mean, that was no real match. You and Douggie. After that beating he took from Chester Link, Douggie couldn’t have whipped a Girl Scout.”
“Nothing left of Douggie,” Vinnie agreed.
“But you were in your prime,” I told him. “No real match, like I said. And that... you know... to lose to him … that was nuts, whoever set that up.”
Vinnie said nothing, but I could see his mind working.
“Spiro. What was his idea in that? Setting up a bout between you and Douggie Burns? It never made any sense to me. Nothing to be gained from it on either side. You had nothing to gain from beating Douggie . . . and what did Douggie have to gain from beating you if he couldn’t do it without it being a ... I mean, if it wasn’t. . . real.”
Vinnie shook his head. “Weiss set it up,” he said. “Not Mr. Melinas.”
“Oh, Salmon Weiss,” I said. “So it was Weiss that put together the fight you had with Douggie?”
Vinnie nodded.
I pretended that the infamous stage play that had resulted from Weiss’s deal had been little more than a tactical error on Vinnie’s part and not the, shall we say, flawed thespian performance that had ended his career.
“Well, I sure hope Weiss made you a good offer for that fight, because no way could it have helped you in the rankings.” I laughed. “Jesus, you could have duked it out with Sister Evangeline from Our Lady of the Lepers and come up more.”
No smile broke the melancholy mask of Irish Vinnie Teague.
I shook my head at the mystery of things. “And a fix to boot,” I added softly.
Vinnie’s gaze cut over to me. “It wasn’t no fix,” he said. His eyes narrowed menacingly. “I didn’t take no dive for Douggie Burns.”
I saw it all again in a sudden flash of light, Douggie’s glove float through the air, lightly graze the side of Vinnie’s face, then glide away as the Shameful Shamrock crumpled to the mat. If that had not been a dive, then there’d never been one in the history of the ring.
But what can you say to a man who lies to your face, claims he lost the money or that it wasn’t really sex?
I shrugged. “Hey, look, it was a long time ago, right?”
Vinnie’s red-rimmed eyes peered at me intently. “I was never supposed to take a dive,” he said.
“You weren’t supposed to take a dive?” I asked, playing along now, hoping that the bus would get moving, ready to get off, be done with Vinnie Teague. “You weren’t supposed to drop for Douggie Burns?”
Vinnie shook his head. “No. I was supposed to win that fight. It wasn’t no fix.”
“Not a fix,” I asked. “What was it then?”
He looked at me knowingly. “Weiss said I had to make Douggie Burns go down.”
“You had to make Douggie go down?”
“Teach him a lesson. Him and the others.”
“Others?”
“The ones Weiss managed,” Vinnie said. “His other fighters. He wanted to teach them a lesson so they’d…”
“What?”
“Stay in line. Do what he told them.”
“And you were supposed to administer that lesson by way of Douggie Burns?”
“That’s right.”
“What’d Weiss have against Douggie?”
“He had plenty,” Vinnie said. “ ‘Cause Douggie wouldn’t do it. He was a stand-up guy, and he wouldn’t do it.”
“Wouldn’t do what?”
“Drop for Chester Link,” Vinnie answered. “Douggie was supposed to go down in five. But he wouldn’t do it. So Weiss came up with this match. Between me and Douggie. Said I had to teach Douggie a lesson. Said if I didn’t . . .” He glanced down at his hands. “. . . I wouldn’t never fight no more.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to lose that fight with Douggie. I was supposed to win it. Win it good. Make Douggie go down hard.” He hesitated a moment, every dark thing in him darkening a shade. “Permanent.”
I felt a chill. “Permanent,” I repeated.
“So Weiss’s fighters could see what would happen to them if he told them to take a dive and they didn’t.”
“So it wasn’t a fix,” I said, getting it now. “That fight between you and Douggie. It was never a fix.”
Vinnie shook his head.
The last words dropped from my mouth like a bloody mouthpiece. “It was a hit.”
Vinnie nodded softly. “I couldn’t do it, though,” he said. “You don’t kill a guy for doing the right thing.”
I saw Douggie Burns’s glove lift slowly, hang in the air, soft and easy, drift forward, barely a punch at all, then Irish Vinnie Teague, the Shameful Shamrock, hit the mat like a sack of sand.
The hydraulic doors opened before I could get out another word.
“I get off here,” Vinnie said as he labored to his feet.
I touched his arm, thinking of all the times I’d done less nobly, avoided the punishment, known the right thing, but lacked whatever Irish Vinnie had that made him do it, too.
“You’re a stand-up guy, Vinnie,” I said.
He smiled softly, then turned and scissored his way through the herd of strap-hangers until he reached the door. He never glanced back at me, but only continued down the short flight of stairs and out into the night, where he stood for a moment, upright in the elements. The bus slogged forward again, and I craned my neck for a final glimpse of Irish Vinnie Teague as it pulled away. He stood on the corner, drawing the tattered scarf more tightly around his throat. Then he turned and lumbered up the avenue toward the pink neon of Smith’s Bar, a throng of snowflakes rushing toward him suddenly, bright and sparkling, fluttering all around, like a crowd of cheering angels in the dark, corrupted air.
<
~ * ~
SEAN DOOLITTLE
Summa Mathematica
from Crime Spree
Somehow, no matter what the variables, the last customer always seemed to come in three minutes before closing.
It was uncanny: a chaos theorem that yielded takeout orders. There had been a time when Stephen Fielder, Ivan and Adele Stremlau Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics, would have been compelled to consider such a peculiar phenomenon in terms of statistical models and probability curves.
But Stephen Fielder, fry cook, only straightened his kink-riddled back and sighed. He put down his grill brick, wiped his hands on the last clean corner of
his apron, and hauled himself up front to face the man squinting at the backlit menu marquee.
“Welcome to Bronco Burger,” Fielder told him across the register. “Can I take your order?”
“Gimme the Bacon Double Bronco Buster,” said the man. “And some fries. And a Diet Coke also.”
“That’s one Wrangler?”
“One what again?”
“Wrangler Meal Deal.” Fielder pointed behind his head without looking at the board.
“Sure, whatever. Just make it a Diet Coke.”
“Do you want to Chuckwagon-size that?” Wearily, Fielder waited with his finger poised over the color-coded keypad. When no answer came, he looked up to find the customer glancing around the empty store.
A thick fellow. Not tall. An oil drum, Stephen thought, in a wrinkled linen suit. The man wore the sleeves of his sport jacket pushed up to the elbows. If he noticed Fielder watching, he didn’t show it.
“Chuckwagon-size that order, sir?”
The guy looked at him blankly.
“Look, it’s a large fry and extra-large Coke. Thirty-five cents extra. “
“Diet Coke,” the man said. He now seemed to be checking the deserted seating area behind him.
“Sir?”
Finally the man rolled his stocky shoulders, turning to Stephen with a companionable grin. “So they got you holdin’ down the whole place by yourself tonight, huh?”
In retrospect, Stephen Fielder would recognize that he probably should have heard warning bells then and there. But he was new to the late-night rhythms of the food service industry. He felt weary in his bones. It was midnight; he had raw hamburger in the creases of his palms. He only wanted to finish scraping the grill and go home.
But the kid with all the earrings was out back sweeping the parking lot; Veronica, the cute teen who worked the night shift drive-through window, camped in the break room, smoking cigarettes. Which made Stephen the only hand on deck.
So he shrugged and said, “Slow night. Will that be all, sir?”
“Sure,” said the guy. “Pretty much.”
Then he did something that caught Fielder by surprise. The man took a step toward the register, lifting his right hand as he moved. Fielder followed the slim gold bracelet dangling from the dark hairy overgrowth of the man’s wrist.
So distracted was Stephen by the strange gesture, in fact, that he never saw the customer’s other fist cross his jaw.
All Fielder saw was a blooming nova of cool blue light, followed by a hazy descending screen. He thought: hey.
Then he realized he was being dragged over the counter by the apron, which had somehow become tangled in the man’s knuckle-bound grip.
~ * ~
“You two. Scramola.”
Fielder heard the words as if from a great distance. His eyelids creaked open to a painful light. Stainless steel loomed up around him on all sides; dimly, Fielder realized he was prone on the greasy back-kitchen floor. He didn’t remember being deposited there.
His workmates, David and Veronica, didn’t need to be told twice. As they high-tailed it out the back door, Fielder lifted his pounding head. Eventually, he managed to raise himself enough to lean against the bun warmer. Only then did he look at his assailant, who picked stale curly fries from an unemptied fryer basket.
“Are you from the foundation?” It was a ridiculous question. Fielder realized he must still have been dazed by the punch. His jaw felt knocked off its hinges.
“Yeah,” said the guy. He nodded right along, munching cold fries. “Sure. I’m from the We Stomp the Crap Outta Deadbeats Foundation. This is an outreach typa thing.”
Fielder closed his eyes and probed his jaw gingerly. The room see-sawed around him. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake.”
“Yeah? I’d feel awful bad.” The man produced a small black notepad from inside his jacket. “Fielder? Works at the Bronco Burger on Davenport, is what I got here. This is the Bronco Burger, right?”
Fielder nodded without speaking. The man pantomimed a sigh of relief by moving the back of one hand across his brow.
“I don’t understand,” Fielder said.
“I’m kinda gettin’ that.”
“I don’t. . . what do want from me?”
“Me? Hey, I don’t want anything. It’s my boss.” The guy gestured with the notebook. “He wants the money you owe him.”
Fielder absorbed these words. Dookie Weber? He couldn’t believe it. This guy worked for Dookie Weber?
“You work for Dookie Weber?”
“You’re serious. I look like I work for a turdball like Dookie Weber to you?” The man placed a hand over his heart. “Hey. Ouch.”
“Then I don’t... I don’t understand.”
“Okay, see, here’s how it is. Dookie Weber, like myself, works in the employ of a man named Joseph King. You’ve heard of Happy Joe King?”
Fielder shook his head. He honestly had not.
“Fair enough. But you’re gonna want to remember the name, and I’ll tell you why.” The man crossed his arms and leaned back against a clean stretch of stainless steel. “Dookie Weber, I mentioned, works for Happy Joe King. Except Dookie’s problem — his biggest one, anyway — is that lately he’s been forgetting who he works for. And Happy Joe? He’s none too happy, if you get what I mean. So Dookie Weber, let’s put it this way, ain’t working for Happy Joe King anymore. And that’s where Dookie’s problem becomes your problem. You following?”
“I think I’m starting to.”
“Atta boy.” The man returned to his notebook. “Now I know what you prolly gotta be thinking, so don’t worry. Happy Joe understands these things. You work with him, make an honest effort, he’s actually a whole lot more flexible than a lot of folks give him credit. So let’s you and me see where we are.”
While Stephen sat, massaging his aching jaw with one hand, the guy who worked for somebody named Happy Joe King flipped a page in his notepad and ran a finger down the next. Soon he gave a low whistle.
“Took a bath on the playoffs, huh?”
Fielder closed his eyes and nodded.
The man flipped a page. “‘Course, you ain’t been doing too hot at the track, either.”
Fielder sighed. “Not too.”
The man flipped another page. He glanced at Fielder.
“I know,” Fielder said. “I know.”
“No offense, but you must be the unluckiest fuckin’ guy I seen all year.”
“You might say the numbers haven’t been falling my way lately.”
“You might say it a couple times.” The guy flipped another page in his notepad, then closed it. “Okay. I can see we got our work cut out for us, here. Tell you what: you got some markers out at the casino that go back more than ninety days. We’ll start there and work our way forward. That sound fair enough?”
“The casino?” The amount of information in this guy’s notepad was beginning to fill Stephen Fielder with a deep sense of despair. “The Nugget?”
“No, the MGM Grand. Yeah, the Nugget. You know of another one on this river?”
“But Dookie had nothing to do with the casino.”
“No,” said the guy. “No, he didn’t. But Happy Joe King, see, he does. And since he’s consolidating the books, so to speak, it tends to put everything right there in one place, if you know what I mean. Certain patterns become visible where they might, otherwise, maybe not. Sorry to be the bringer.”
Fielder didn’t know what to say. So he just sat there.
“Hey,” said the guy. “Chin up, partner. This is all gonna work out fine.” He stepped forward, leaned over, and stuck out his hand. “Up we go.”
Before Fielder could decline the offer, he felt himself being pulled to his feet. The room wobbled again. He blinked, suddenly enveloped by an invisible nimbus of cheap cologne.
“How you feeling? Chomper okay?”
“I think it’s broken.”
“Aww, come on. I didn’t hit you that hard.”
The guy just chuckled, reaching inside his jacket to retrieve a pen. He scribbled something in the notebook, tore out the page, folded it once and stuck it in Fielder’s shirt pocket.
“That’s your number,” he said. “We’ll start out easy. That sound okay by you?”
The Best American Mystery Stories 3 Page 8
