Swamp Walloper (Fight Card)

by Jack Tunney

  As soon as I was close enough, I let loose a barrage of punches to Danny’s midsection. He tried to counter, to push me away, but I was having none of it. There was a part of me that knew I had to make the fight and the supposed death punch look good, but there was another part of me – a part I was having trouble controlling – that wanted to explode and make it real by actually killing my opponent.

  Danny was all over the place against the ropes completely defenseless. Somehow, I reined in my aggression and eased off. I let Danny clinch, waltzing with him until he got his feet and his breath back.

  “Sweet mother,” he gasped in my ear. “I never fought nobody like you.”

  And I’d never fought like this before. I was a strategist not a brawler. I could go a little berserk when needed, but my usual style was to pick my punches, find my opponents weaknesses and exploit them – sooner or later the knockout would come. But tonight, I was on a rampage.

  The crowd was screaming their approval, cheering the blood from the split I caused to Danny’s right eyebrow. I’d burst it open like an overripe tomato, and blood was flowing down his face.

  Then I saw the look in Danny’s clear eye. He was scared. I had stripped him of his confidence, broken his arrogance, and he thought I might actually kill him. I had to do something quick, before he lost his nerve.

  I feinted with my left. Danny’s defense was in such confusion he bought right into it, moving to block it and leaving a straight line between the point of his jaw and my right fist.

  Without hesitation, I shot a pile driver jab straight to the point of Danny’s jaw. He was so unprotected, the punch could almost have torn his head from his shoulders.

  I’d thrown the punch not just from my shoulder, but from my hips and my braced right leg. At the last second, I pulled it a little just before contact by stopping the turn of my hips short of a full swivel. Still, I felt the bone of Danny’s chin sink deep into my glove before he launched backward.

  His feet came off the floor as he flew like a thrown rag doll to collapse on the canvas. He was down – out – and I immediately wondered if I’d pulled the punch enough.

  There was a moment of stunned silence from the crowd before they broke out in an uncontrolled roar. As they did, there came the sound of whistles and the blaring of police voices. There were uniformed officers everywhere, breaking up the crowd and cracking heads when they didn’t get cooperation.

  I took a quick glance around, but Tombstone was nowhere to be seen.

  Wade and Quint, stepped through the ring’s sagging ropes with several uniformed officers. One of the uniforms grabbed the referee and handcuffed him. In a booming voice, Quint declared the fight crowd an unlawful assembly and the fight an illegal pugilistic exhibition. It was all mumbo-jumbo for the sake of appearances.

  Wade was standing over Danny’s prostrate form as the house doctor knelt next to the young fighter. The doctor checked for a pulse in Danny’s wrist, then along the carotid artery in the neck.

  “This boy is dead,” The doctor said loudly, turning toward me. “You killed him.”

  I felt a little touch of panic. I knew the doctor and both Quint and Wade were in on the deception, but I also knew I’d hit Danny hard – maybe too hard. I swallowed hoping I hadn’t actually done the deed.

  The crowd renewed their roaring and there was debris being thrown everywhere. Quint made a clumsy grab for me, but I pushed him aside. He growled and came back at me swinging a cosh. I couldn’t help myself. He was so slow and the adrenaline was still coursing through my body. My left fist shot out and hit Quint in the throat. He gagged and went down.

  Wade raced at me from across the ring as three uniformed officers swarmed me. I scuffled for a few moments, then went down to the canvas under the sheer weight of bodies. The officers were clearly not in on the deception. They poured blows and kicks down upon me as I curled into a fetal position, tucking in my chin into my chest, bringing my forearms up to protect my face, and wrapping my gloves around my head.

  Eventually, Wade pulled the officers away and dropped a knee down on my back. “Stay still,” he hissed. “Or you won’t get out of here alive.”

  He pulled roughly on my arms and got my hands cuffed in front of me. “Irish Mike Brophy,” he said in a clear, ringing voice. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Danny Romani during the course of an illegal pugilistic exhibition.”

  ROUND TWELVE

  The prison truck was a clapped-out Ford with bald tires and a ruined suspension. There were two of us sitting opposite each other in shackles on benches in the back. The sides of the canvas covering had been rolled up over metal ribs and tied to the canvas roof. The open sides did nothing to abate the stifling heat, serving only to allow the mosquitoes free range as we moved slowly down the badly rutted road.

  I was wearing rough, gray, prison clothing. My hands were manacled in front of me, my feet shackled to a chain running down the center of the truck bed. I was sweating profusely and being eaten alive by insects.

  The window in the back of the cab had been knocked out, making it easier for the passenger guard to put his shotgun on us, as he said, “Iffin you get uppity.” He was scarecrow thin with bad teeth and a wandering eye. The shotgun he caressed might be more dangerous to himself than to any prisoner.

  The driver guard was clearly the alpha of the pair. His belly lopped over his belt, but he carried himself light on his feet in the way of some fat men. Both wore faded tan uniforms with Federal Corrections’ shoulder patches, generic badges, and thick black gun belts heavy with firearm, truncheon, and big keys.

  Both of their name tags read Trask. From listening to them, I knew the driver was Calvin, and the scarecrow was Deke.

  The eight-foot wide road was the only way to and from the penitentiary. The edges were bordered by prisoner broken rocks, barely keeping the brackish water of the Bayou Sauvage swamp at bay.

  East of New Orleans and captured between Lake Pontchartrain to the north and Lake Borgne to the south, the 23,000-acre Bayou Sauvage was a hell hole of wiregrass, hardwood and gum trees teaming with birds, and stinking water filled with snakes and alligators. Spanish moss was everywhere and the smell of rotting vegetation was as oppressive as the humidity.

  I’d been told the prisoners from Sauvage Penitentiary were tasked with building and maintaining hurricane levees in the swamp to protect New Orleans from flooding. If their slipshod care of the road we were driving on was any indication, the city wouldn’t be safe from a rainstorm let alone a hurricane.

  I was seriously rethinking my loyalty to Marcus de Trod.

  Still, even though it was likely he’d done whatever he was accused of to get him sent to the Sauvage, my presence in the back of the truck was a witness to just how easy the course of justice could be perverted – or accelerated, as the judge I’d been sentenced by for killing Romani had phrased it.

  I did know, I hadn’t actually killed Romani. As his body had been hurried out of the ring and away from the press photographers, I’d seen his eyes open for a split second and make contact with mine. He’d been out for the count, but not for the final long count with St. Peter as referee.

  In the ring, Ward had fastened cuffs to my wrists and I’d been as unceremoniously hustled away as Romani’s supposedly lifeless body had been.

  Things were supposed to move slowly in the heavy southern heat, but it appeared the New Orleans justice system was as eager to be done with me as the tabloids were to crucify me. Banister had managed to release only bad pictures of me to the newspapers, not wanting me to be recognized. There might have been more than a little tampering with the reporters, but why shouldn’t they be on the take like everybody else appeared to be?

  I was tried and convicted in less than a week. New Orleans claimed not to have a facility to keep a killer like me locked up, and their petition to transfer me to the Sauvage took another politically expedited week.

  And all the time, the heat in my chest never left. I had come to feel it
as a comfortable warmth. It kept everything at bay – pain, worry, fear. It had become a part of me. I could no longer remember what it felt to be without it ... and I didn’t want to.

  They say you should be careful what you wish for ...

  “You that Irish Mike Brophy feller who kilt that boxer?” This question came from the man sitting across from me. I’d heard the transport guards call him Martin Crebbs. He was a short, wiry, scrapper, his pale skin reddened and freckled, his accent fresh from Dublin.

  I shrugged. “They called it murder because the fight was illegal, but nobody forced him to face me.”

  Crebbs nodded as if he were thinking over my statement.

  “You’ve been in the ring,” I said. It was obvious from the scarring around his eyes and the cauliflower shape of his right ear.

  “Just another pug,” he said. “Fought flyweight. Lost more fights to bleeding than knockdowns.”

  Looking closer, I could see the ridges of his eyebrows, which would be the target for any opponent. Split those open and if a cutman couldn’t staunch the blood between rounds the referee would call a forfeit.

  “How’d you end up here?” I asked, as the truck lurched through a series of potholes. The wooden bench I was on wasn’t built for comfort or balance, especially when shackled.

  “Came over on a beer barge. Jumped ship and thought I’d see the sights.”

  I’d heard of supply ships they called beer barges delivering Irish beer to thirsty Irish ex-pat throats. They must certainly drink enough of the stuff to make the trip profitable.

  I raised my manacled hands. “And what happened?”

  “Ah, worst luck. I kilt a whore who stole my wallet.” He said it as if somehow it was her fault. Then he confirmed his point of view. “I had my knife on her, but she wouldn’t give it back. She tried to get away and just ran into the point of the blade, the silly cow. Should of only been a nick, but it got an artery. Like I said, worst luck.”

  I’d heard variations of his statements from almost every thug I’d ever arrested. It was never their fault and they were all innocent – just worst luck.

  I felt my stomach do a flip-flop, suddenly aware again of the precariousness of my position. In the Navy and with the LAPD, I’d put more than my share of men in the brig and in the prisons. I never planned on ending up there myself. If any of the cons in the Sauvage found out I was a cop, I wouldn’t last an hour.

  I had to stop thinking and acting like a cop. I had to think like Crebbs and all the others of his ilk. The joke was, I actually was innocent, but there was nobody going to believe me.

  Banister had promised – after I’d been given a week to work out something for the Adrieux brothers and find out what happened to de Trod – to thunder down on Bayou Sauvage Penitentiary with all the power he could muster from his FBI days. His plan was to dismantle the Trasks’ stranglehold on the prison’s administration and burn up the headlines with his reforming hard-line. All of which conveniently overlooked the fact he was supposed to be reforming the NOPD itself, not colluding with the head of the local mob to take down another disparate entity.

  However, the politics were not my concern. Chief Parker had given me and Tombstone a job to do: Clean up the murder of Marcus de Trod – whatever it took. It was a job I’d be doing anyway because Marcus was St. Vincent family. Father Tim never let us forget we were family. We could have our squabbles, and we did. Sometimes, we didn't even like each other. But, if you had been in the ring with someone at St. Vincent’s, you were their brother and you didn’t let them down – ever.

  Tombstone would also be here. He and I were a different kind of family. The family of the badge. There were tough gangs in LA. Mob boss Mickey Cohen was in LA. But those of us who wore the blue through and through were part of the biggest, toughest, meanest gang in town. We backed down for nobody. If we ever did, we wouldn’t survive.

  I’d long ago learned Tombstone had his own network of contacts. Sheer talent went a long way, but I knew it took more than being a great detective for Tombstone to become the first Negro detective on the LAPD. While I’d been in the Navy, Tombstone had been in the Army saving the lives of two future congressmen, a future senator, and the son of a four star general. Tombstone had political pull at a level rare for a man of color.

  Banister might be playing fast and loose with the truth, with my freedom, and ultimately with my life. He would abandon me to the wolves as soon as it was politically expedient – except Tombstone, and those in power who owed him, wouldn’t let him.

  Tombstone and I were bound tighter than blood. Tighter than race. Wherever he was, Tombstone would be coming for me – and he would be bringing the apocalypse with him.

  I felt the truck begin to slow, and I leaned backward to see around the cab. Ahead, on one side of the road, were twelve ragged men in prison grays. Their feet were shackled. Half of them were using heavy sledge hammers to smash a line of boulders into smaller rocks. Two other men were taking the smaller rocks, walking down a mud levee extending out from the road, and placing them on top of other rocks along the base.

  Another prison truck was parked on one side of the road. The remaining four prisoners were working in concert to roll heavy boulders out of the truck bed and dropping them on the road for the other prisoners to smash up.

  There were two guards in tan uniforms wearing trooper hats and sun glasses leaning against the truck. Both held shotguns. Floating on the swamp were two boats, each manned by a rifle toting, guard.

  The first boat was a narrow, oblong, skiff about twenty feet in length with a blunt bow and stern, a flat bottom, and slightly flared sides. There was what appeared to be a two-cylinder engine attached.

  The other boat was completely different. It was an open, flat bottomed, rectangular boat – a floating platform of sorts – with a propeller engine mounted on the back. The driver sat in an elevated position in front of a cage to protect him from leaning back into the large propeller. It was what the locals called an airboat.

  The truck Crebbs and I were in came to a stop when a battered ex-military Jeep pulled up in front to block our progress. A very tall, powerfully built man, his tan uniform shirt stretched across his wide chest, stepped out of the Jeep. Two Alsatian dogs followed at his heels.

  He wore tan cavalry pants tucked into knee-high leather boots, which gleamed with polish. The short sleeves of his shirt were tight around massive biceps. His black hair was surprisingly long for a man in uniform, combed straight back to fall below his shoulders. More interestingly were the dozen or so layers of beads he wore around his neck, swooping down across his shirt. There were also at least three leather thongs amongst the beads, each supporting a small leather pouch like a precious pendant.

  His face was a carved monolith, all jaw and forehead. He wore no hat or sunglasses. His eyes were black dead pools on either side of a strong nose, which was distinguished by a knuckle-sized bump near the top.

  The heat in my chest flared and I knew instinctively who this was – Warden Lucas Trask. The devil made flesh.

  He walked slowly down the side of the truck I was in, carrying a Winchester rifle casually in one hand. The two large dogs padded silently after him.

  All rock breaking and work on the levee had stopped. None of the guards spoke, and Trask himself was silent as he stopped and stood, first looking at Crebbs and then at me.

  He stared at me a long time. I stared back. The burning in my chest made me feel I could break the shackles restraining me and attack. Still, I sat stoic, waiting.

  Trask suddenly gave me an engaging smile, his eyes sparking in the sun. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed at Crebbs.

  Deke immediately got out of the passenger side of the truck, almost tripping over himself in his haste. He climbed into the truck bed and used a large key to unlock Crebbs’ foot shackles. Leaving Crebbs hands manacled, Deke roughly pulled him to his feet and forced him to jump down from the back of the truck. Crebbs stepped away, facing the back of the tru
ck now, watching Trask and his dogs.

  Trask levered the action on the Winchester, putting a shell in the chamber. One of the dogs growled.

  “Now, what’s this about?” Crebbs asked, his voice not hiding the quaver in his Irish lilt.

  Trask waggled the fingers of his right hand and the growling dog moved forward. As it got within three feet of Crebbs, it bared its teeth and snapped several rapid barks.

  Crebbs automatically backed up.

  Trask waggled the fingers of his left hand. I could see there were only three of them – the pinky and ring finger only stubs. The second dog moved forward. It was silent, but its lips were pulled back to reveal sharp incisors.

  Crebbs backed up again. “Sweet Mary, there’s no need for this now. Whatever you want, I’ll do it ...”

  “Can you bring my whore back to life?” Lucas Trask spoke with the same low register as the growls of his dogs. He cocked the trigger on the Winchester.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Crebbs manacled hands were out in front of him, pleading. The dogs had him herded back to the edge of the road. “It was all just an accident. She stole my wallet.”

  “Not the way I hear it,” Trask said. His voice was dead calm. He whistled a shrill note and the dogs began to force Crebbs down the road a few paces, then off the road until he was ankle deep in swamp water.

  “I hear you took what you wanted from Sylvie and not only didn’t intend to pay for the goods, but struck her and took her evenings earnings – my earnings.”

  “No ...” The dogs were at the edge of the water now, Crebbs in the swamp crotch deep. “I didn’t kill her. She came at me. It were an accident ...” Crebbs was crying. His fear of the dogs and the snot running from his nose making his Irish accent almost indecipherable.

  Trask was silent for a moment. His eyes watching the swamp as if waiting for something. Then he spoke. “An accident? I didn’t realize ...”