Otto Penzler (ed) - Murder 06 - Murder on the Ropes raw

by Unknown Author

  “Sure.”

  Jerry walked over to the corner, feeling exposed again. At least Tom seemed friendly and cheerful enough. He almost wished Tom had escorted him over to the fighter, and then pushed that thought aside. Sure, he wasn’t a fighter, but he was an up-and-coming columnist. He had nothing to apologize for.

  He stood near Sonny, watching him work the bag. The sound of the gloves striking the leather was a constant noise that sounded like a fast engine, whirring along. He tried to catch the boxer’s eye but the young man stared straight ahead. He had on black shorts with red stripes, a tank-top T-shirt in the same color scheme, and the gloves were a dull red. His black hair was cut short. Sweat was rolling down the side of his face and along his thick neck. He was breathing hard, the noise almost as loud as the punches, and then he said “Hah!” and gave the bag one more punch and stepped back. He looked over and wiped his face clumsily with the back of one glove.

  “Didn’t mean to ignore you,” he said. “Thing is, I’m working, and I don’t like being disturbed. Gotta finish this part of the workout. What’s up?”

  “Jerry Hughes from the—”

  Sonny nodded, wiped his sweating face again. Each glove had everlast on the cuff. “Yeah, I know, the Sentinel. Tom told me all about it. You wanna do a story on me, right?”

  “That’s right,” Jerry said, thinking maybe a half hour or an hour with this guy, and he’d be back home in his apartment in the harbor district. With a nice glass of wine. “A profile for my column.”

  Sonny shook his head. “Nope.”

  Jerry said, “It’ll be a nice feature, with a photo and everything.”

  Sonny started tugging the gloves off and walked out of the corner. Jerry stuck close as he said, “What do you think I am, stupid? Talk to you and get my pic in the paper? Think I’m that hard up for attention?”

  Jerry said, “Look, I thought this was all cleared with your, um...

  Sonny got one glove off, revealing a hand wrapped in some sort of cloth strip. “Manager? Owner? Tom’s a nice guy and he does manage a bunch of us, but trust me, I’m just one guy. And mister, this wasn’t cleared with me. He thought a story about me would be interesting. Bah. I know the friggin’ drill. Poor kid trying to claw his way out of the projects by boxing, keeps on going though he’s never won a real bout. Sorry, don’t need the grief. Tom thought it might change people’s minds about his gym and such, and I don’t care. I told him that and I’ll tell you. I don’t need the grief.”

  By now Sonny’s voice was raised such that a few other fighters in training noticed it, and they looked over at them. Jerry suddenly felt outnumbered. Still, he reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his business card. “I sure wish you’d change your mind. It would be a nice story. I can guarantee you that. I’m not an investigative reporter, trying to sniff something out. Just a human interest story, that’s all.”

  Sonny took the card, tucked it into the front of his shorts. “My mind might get stirred up now and then, but I don’t think I’m gonna change it. Look, it’s time for me to shower up and get out of here. See ya.”

  Jerry saw him walk down another corridor, thought about chasing him into the locker room and decided arguing with a naked man who settled questions with his fists wasn’t a good idea. He looked around for Tom, the gym owner and manager, and spotted him in one of the rings, working with a fighter who didn’t look more than fourteen or fifteen. Jerry waited, thinking maybe he could talk again with Tom and figure something out, but after a while, the noise and the smells and the humidity just got to be too much. It was time to leave.

  Outside it was dark and the cold air seemed as sharp as razors. Jerry coughed and zipped up his coat. A bust, but it wasn’t his fault. He’d talk to Rick tomorrow, see if he could work something out. Maybe Rick could get a hold of the gym owner—Rick was an old-timer, and no wonder he knew the guy—or maybe Rick would assign him something else. And nothing against the gym or the boxers, but he felt like his clothes would need to be dumped in the laundry hamper when he got home.

  Home. There was a thought. Ahead was his car, still looking lonely in the cluttered street, and he wondered how he would approach Rick tomorrow when he told him what had happened.

  He was still thinking about his options when they jumped him.

  The noise of their feet came first, as they raced out of an alleyway, and he turned just as a fist struck him in the chest. He coughed and tried to shout out as more fists pummeled him, as he hit the ground, dimly recalling the group of toughs who had been eyeing him earlier from across the street.

  “Move, move,” one said harshly. “Grab the loser’s wallet!” He rolled, tried covering his head with his hands, tried to say something but he couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t do a damn thing, as the kicks and punches continued, and then—

  A yelp. Another yelp. “Damn it, who the—”

  Another shout.

  He rolled on his back, tried to sit up. His hands were shaking. Two of his attackers were on their hands and knees, trying to crawl away. A third seemed to be helping yet another as they went back into the alley.

  Then a shape came toward him, knelt down. It was Sonny, breathing hard, dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  Sonny laughed. “It’s okay. You’ll feel worse tomorrow. Here, let me help you up.”

  A half hour later they were in an all-night diner, sitting in a booth in the far corner. Sonny ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie, while Jerry made do with a tall glass of ice water. He took some of the ice cubes out and wrapped them in his handkerchief, which he pressed against his left cheek. Sonny nodded and said, “You’ve also got some scrapes on your hands, but you’re okay. I’ve seen worse.”

  Jerry felt the shakes continuing in his legs as he kept the ice and handkerchief against his face. “I don’t see why you thought calling the cops would be a waste of time.”

  Sonny shrugged, poured some sugar into his coffee. “Where do you live?”

  “Harbor Point.”

  “Nice place. You call there about being roughed up, you’d get a couple of squad cars, maybe even a detective assigned to look into the case. Down here, same call would have a cruiser come by when they had a chance. Maybe a ten, twenty-minute wait for someone to show up. You want to keep on hanging out there, waiting for a cop to show up? Maybe those guys would come back later, with their friends. Doesn’t sound like much of a choice. I thought we made the right call.”

  Jerry moved his tongue slowly about his mouth. All his teeth seemed okay, but there was a wound inside his cheek where he had bitten himself. “Thanks,” he said. “I should have said thanks.” Another shrug. “No big deal. Four on one isn’t real fair. I decided to even things up.”

  “By going against four? Really?”

  He sawed into the piece of pie with his fork. “Sure. Those clowns didn’t know how to fight.”

  Jerry shifted the ice pack against his face, winced at the sharpness of the pain. “Really? Seems like they did all right to me.” Sonny smiled. “No offense, but it wasn’t a fight until I got there. Those four guys were whacking you, but there wasn’t anything pro about it. Just fists and kicks. I got there and scattered them out with a couple of good jabs. That’s all. They had no punches, no brains, no strategy.”

  Jerry watched Sonny as he picked up the piece of pie, chewed and swallowed. “Strategy?”

  “Sure. Strategy. Oh, I get it. You think I’m a dumb guy, a guy who can only think with his fists, right?”

  “Ah, no, not really...”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t get pissed. I know what you’re thinking, and that’s fine. I get that all the time. Look, tell me, when’s the last time you’ve been in a fight. Not counting tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Jerry thought back, went through, thinking and examining, going back and back and... “Grammar school. I think. Fourth or fifth grade, in a schoolyar
d. Nuns came and broke it up. That was that.”

  “Uh huh,” Sonny said, working on another piece of pie. “Since you’re so quick to judge who I am and what I do, here’s a taste of it for you. Nuns, huh? Private school, nice little neighborhood, high school and college. Safe career, working with your mind. Nothing physically demanding. Nothing like shingling a roof in a rainstorm, or framing a house in a cold breeze. Both parents alive and loving and all that good stuff. A good guess?”

  Ice water was starting to dribble down his wrist, and he wondered for a moment why he was here, listening to this nonsense. Another tremble from his legs. And that’s why. He owed this guy. Owed him a lot.

  “Not complete but yeah, pretty close.”

  “And never a physical confrontation, never a fight, never a punch in your nose, all those years. Right?”

  “Correct.”

  Sonny grinned, speared the piece of pie. “Nice story. Here’s mine. Grew up a few blocks from here in the projects. Single mom who worked a lot. Got knocked flat on my ass when I was ten. Then a couple more times. Then I got tired of being knocked around. Came down to the gym, started learning how to fight. And when 1 knocked a few other guys down, they left me alone. Simple survival. Muddled through high school. Did okay but not great. College not even a possibility. Now I do construction days, boxing nights and weekends. And there you go.”

  “How far can you take boxing?”

  “As far as I can.”

  Jerry got a few more ice cubes out of his glass, his fingers numb. “Tom said you had a big fight coming up. Said...well, he didn’t seem too confident about your chances.”

  ‘“Confident about your chances,”’ Sonny repeated. “That’s a fancy way of saying he expects me to get my clock cleaned. Yeah, he’s probably right.”

  “So why do it?”

  “What makes you think I have a choice?” Sonny said.

  “Don’t you?”

  Sonny finished his pie. “Tell you what. Let me show you. Okay?” Jerry said, “Okay. Only if I can bring this ice pack.”

  “Deal.”

  They were now back inside the gym by themselves—Sonny said he had a key because he sometimes swept up on weekends for a few bucks—and were standing by one of the large hanging punching bags. Sonny had taken off his sweatshirt and was in jeans and a white T-shirt. “First thing first,” he said, wrapping a long strip of cloth around his wrist, hand and fingers. “Get your hand nice and wrapped tight, give you support. You want to know a secret?” “Sure.”

  “You know when you’re wrapped too tight?”

  “Nope.”

  Sonny smiled, starting work on the other hand. “When your fingers turn red and start to tingle, cutting off the circulation. Real fights, you use gauze and tape, but practicing like this, a cloth wrap is just fine. Okay, here we go, put on a pair of ten-ounce gloves, help me with this, will you?”

  Jerry held the glove open and against his chest, as Sonny pushed in his hand. He felt himself move back as Sonny increased the pressure, and then they did the other glove. Sonny reached down to a folding chair, where he picked up a mouthpiece. “Not only protects your teeth, but it keeps your jaw firm. Good punch comes in, prevents your jaw from swinging around and getting fractured.”

  The mouthpiece slipped in, and then Sonny’s voice changed. “That’s why you hear that puffing noise when we’re in the ring. Hard to breathe good with the mouthpiece in. So we breathe, hard through the nose. Okay, watch.”

  Sonny went after the bag, snapping into action from one heartbeat to the next. The heavy bag was hanging by a chain from a metal frame, and Jerry saw four 50-pound weights holding down the frame, but the punches from Sonny came so fast and hard that the frame and punching bag started dancing into a corner. Sonny came back, breathing hard. “See? Did you see that?”

  Jerry reluctantly shook his head. “Well, I’m not sure what I saw. I saw a number of punches.”

  “Right, right, but they’re different. All of ’em. Here, watch.” And Jerry watched over the next half hour as the young boxer demonstrated his jab, his uppercuts and overhand punches, the way the hips rolled with each punch, adding that much energy, the way the left shoulder was hunched up, protecting one’s face, how the elbows and wrists were held in close, to protect the ribs. The punches went out, dancing the bag yet again, and he remembered once, a year ago, touring a utility power plant and walking past the electrical generator. From this young boxer he felt the same humming power, coming at you almost in a subconscious way. He also recalled the first time he had come into the gym, how out of place he had felt, and how superior he was, in working with his mind and not his fists. Now he was embarrassingly aware that he had broken the first rule of journalism: assuming you knew a damn thing about something you had never encountered before.

  Sonny paused, breathing harder, his T-shirt now sweated through. “All right, those are the basic punches. Takes you a while to learn them. But fighting somebody else is a hell of a lot different from punching a bag. Here, punch me in the face.”

  Jerry said, “Excuse me?”

  A confident nod. “C’mon, hit me in the face. And don’t worry. You won’t hurt me. Put up your hands, just like a boxer.”

  He felt ridiculous doing as he was asked, posing as a boxer, but he did just that. He put up his hands, held in his arms tight— just like Sonny had done—and the boxer nodded and said, “Go on.” Jerry swung out with his right hand, which was swatted away in a matter of seconds, and then there was a blur, as Sonny’s right hand flew up and stopped, seemingly millimeters away from his ribs. Jerry flinched and stepped back.

  “See?” Sonny asked. “Quick. You gotta be quick. You come at me to my face, and I work quick enough, I can batter away your punch. I do that, it opens you up for a good undercut. See?”

  Jerry wasn’t too sure but he went along with a few more exercises, feeling like a six-year-old being invited to pitch against a major-league baseball player. The young man was so confident, so strong, and so able to block away the feeble punches that Jerry was throwing, it was almost humiliating. And it would have been humiliating, except for the serious way Sonny was going at it.

  Then the young boxer stopped, spat out his mouthpiece into his hand. “There. That’s some of the moves. But I left out one thing. The strategy.”

  “What do you mean, strategy?”

  Sonny started tugging off his gloves. “I know what you’re thinking. The whole object is to beat the crap out of your opponent, right? So where’s the strategy in that? Let me clue you in, Jerry. You’ve got four rounds, of three minutes apiece, to fight your opponent. Twelve minutes total. So you gotta use your mind, too. You find out who your opponent is, you watch some videotapes, you figure out the kind of moves he likes to use. Does he like to work from the ropes? Does he push you in with his feet? Does he have a particular combination he uses? If he’s hit in one spot, how does he respond? Let me tell you, a good strategy and good jabs can mean a winning combination, every time.”

  Jerry watched as Sonny started undoing the wraps from his hands. “Suppose the moves and strategy don’t count. Maybe your opponent’s been told to...well, you know...”

  “Oh. Throw the fight, huh? Maybe in some places, but not here. Look. I’m a boxing amateur. No money, just trophies or certificates if I win something. Maybe there’s betting on the side, but I don’t see none of it. Nope, I keep my nose clean, do the best I can, work my way up through the Golden Gloves tournaments. Keep on doing that and you get noticed by the guys working for the Olympic team. That’s what I want to do, Jerry. Fight my way up there and be somebody. Then maybe turn pro. We’ll see. If not, well...back to construction and nothing else. But at least I gave it a shot.”

  “But what about this fight coming up in a couple of days?” Jerry asked. “You said you expect to get beat. Even Tom Hart, the gym owner, he thinks you’ll be beat. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  Sonny didn’t seem enthused anymore, and he sat down, still unwrapping
the long pieces of cloth from his wrists and hands, carefully rolling them up. “Yeah, it bothers me. What do you think? You go in a ring, you’re standing there, exposed. It’s you against the other guy. Everything’s on the line. You’re either coming out of that ring a winner or a loser. There’s no middle ground. There’s a finality to it, you know? And sure, it stinks that the odds are against me, that everybody thinks I’m gonna lose this Saturday. But that’s part of the deal. To get noticed.”

  “Who are you fighting?”

  “Some kid from Portland. Luis Romero. Has hands like concrete, they say.” Sonny finished with the wraps, stuck them inside the gloves, looked up. “But I’m gonna fight. It’s my first real bout, and I can’t back away. I just can’t. Not after all the years of running, weight lifting, training. I can’t back off.”

  Jerry looked at that determined face, the sweated-out T-shirt. He said quietly, “My column.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d still like to do it.”

  Sonny placed the gloves in his lap, like they were tiny objects of affection. “You would, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Sonny shrugged. “Oh, what the hell, I guess so.”

  Three days later, Jerry was in his apartment, all the windows and doors locked, sipping a glass of Bordeaux, listening to a jazz station from Portland, looking out at the harbor. This was his quiet time, his special time after work, to be here alone with his books and slowly building antique collection. It was a time to relax and forget the outside world, to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. He sighed, sipping the wine.

  It wasn’t working.

  It hadn’t worked for days, and it scared him so.

  The column had gone well, the morning after his visit with Sonny. He had written so fast and furious that for the first time in a long time, he spell-checked his column twice before submitting it. He wrote about Sonny, about the man in the ring, about how he was scheduled for a fight he knew he was going to lose. He quoted Theodore Roosevelt’s saying about the man in the arena being the only one that counted. He noted that boxing had an ancient lineage, dating back five thousand years to the Sumerians and then up to the Greeks and Romans. He touched briefly on the marquess of Queensberry rules, the legacy of John L. Sullivan, all the way through the boxing greats of the 1920s and 1930s, up to Muhammad Ali and beyond. When the column was finished and he sent it over to Rick for review, he was actually physically tired. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before, writing about musicians or poets.