Felony Fists (Fight Card)

by Jack Tunney

  King hit me with a straight right I saw coming from down the street. The fact I saw it coming and could have blocked it didn’t make the force of it any less when it hit me.

  The fanfare and the fight had started on time. The Olympic Auditorium was throbbing with fans and the night was alive with anticipation.

  The undercard attraction had been a blood-fest with two popular Mexican lightweights repeatedly and illegally raking the laces of their gloves across each other’s faces. Nothing was settled between the two fighters, other than to increase their animosity toward each other. The fight had ended in a split decision, which merely guaranteed a rematch.

  The fans had loved it, and wanted more.

  By the time I appeared as the challenger in the main event, followed into the ring two minutes later by King, the crowd was already howling for more blood. They fed on the violence and expected it from the start.

  King followed the straight right with a left jab. He should have followed it with a knockout blow, but it was as if he was surprised he’d hit me so easily. Sweat ran into my eyes, so I wasn’t sure, but I thought there was confusion on King’s features.

  The bell rang to end the first round. The crowd booed. They expected – demanded – more.

  I went back to my corner and plunked down on the stool. Pops was in front of me, but there was no Tina to squeeze a sponge of cold water across my neck and down my back.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Pops kept repeating as he worked on me. The strain in his face was awful.

  “Stop apologizing, Pops,” I said. “It’s my fault not yours. I have to take my medicine.”

  “Don’t let him hit you like that again,” Pops said. “You’ve got too hard a head. You won’t go down that way unless he kills you.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Pops? I have no choice, but to let him hit me.”

  “Make a fight of it!” Pops demanded. “There is still time.”

  I simply grunted and sucked my mouthpiece into place.

  “Corners out,” the ref yelled, and the bell for the second round rang.

  Anita had given Tombstone the address of a sweatshop hidden deep in the garment district. It was where she believed Cohen had stashed both Tina and Verne Chadwick’s counterfeiting operation.

  Anita and Tombstone had flown out of the dressing room – Tombstone to call in the rest of The Hat Squad, and Anita to return to her role on Cohen’s arm.

  From the ring, before the start of the fight, I’d looked down to see Anita sitting next to Cohen. I knew Cohen had a wife, but she apparently never appeared in public. I wondered if that was her choice or Cohen’s.

  Anita looked very pale. How she could even be near the man was beyond me. I understood that if she had disappeared, Cohen would have known something was up, but her proximity to him still bothered me. It just wasn’t safe.

  Coming out for round two, King appeared tentative. He was feeling me out. He threw some punches, but there was no snap to them. He was giving me openings, and when I didn’t take them, he stepped back. We were circling each other like a couple of little old ladies.

  The crowd didn’t like it and was heatedly vocalizing its displeasure. After the blood and violence of the previous fight, King and I were a huge let down so far.

  And then it dawned on me . . . King didn’t know about Tina.

  Could he really be that naïve?

  King allowed me to put him on the ropes. I couldn’t help myself. It was instinct. He was giving me the shots, but even though he was on the defensive, he was manipulating me. He pushed off the ropes with his back and grabbed me in a clinch.

  “Why aren’t you fighting?” His high voice was garbled by his mouth piece, but I understood him. Away from my ear, his words would be lost in the crowd noise.

  “Your boss is holding my trainer’s daughter,” I mumbled back.

  We broke, flashing punches at each other that looked harder and faster than they were.

  King came straight at me. We exchanged flurries, and it was my turn to clinch.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Hell no! I take you fair.”

  We danced around. The ref slapped me on the back and yelled, “Break!”

  “Tombstone has gone to get her,” I said in King’s ear. “Let’s make this look good till then.”

  We parted and King tagged me with a right uppercut as I moved away. I hadn’t meant that good.

  The bell rang to end the round and we retreated to our corners.

  “What’s going on?” Pops asked, wiping me down.

  “Any sign of them?” I asked, ignoring Pops’. I looked around, but could see nothing in the crowd.

  Tombstone had been gone more than a couple of hours. If Tina had been where Anita said, then he should be back by now – unless the news was bad.

  In the third round, King and I picked up the pace. It was still a sparring match, but there was sting in our punches and we moved good. I ridiculously found myself enjoying the confrontation. King was an excellent fighter, with amazing control and reactions. Moving around each other, looking for openings, testing, countering, attacking defending, moving, always moving – if was a ballet of sorts, a choreography of sweat and punches as precise and demanding as a dance could be in which two men were trying to destroy each other.

  But we weren’t.

  Not yet.

  The fight was now an exhibition of skill – how long we could carry it, I didn’t know.

  “Patrick! Patrick! Patrick!” The voice rose above the crowd, penetrated the intense concentration of the fight.

  “Patrick! Patrick!”

  I rolled with a punch, moved to the side, threw a three punch combination to move King back, and took one second to look to my left – to where the voice was still yelling my name.

  And there Tina was, sitting on Tombstone’s shoulders as he strode down the aisle.

  Ten hard men, all wearing sharp suits with Fedoras or Borsalinos, followed behind carrying axe handles – The Hat Squad, with Chief Parker at the forefront in full uniform.

  As the bell to end the third round sounded, The Hat Squad moved in to surround Cohen and his bodyguards. They took no immediate action, beyond cutting Anita/Eve out of the pack to take her into protective custody. Beyond that, they simply allowed their presence to speak for itself.

  ROUND 18

  From the bell starting the fourth round, the fight turned into a war. The bell seemed to sound higher and sharper, like the report from a starter’s pistol at a track meet.

  King and I met in the center of the ring like two opposing freight trains. We were all out, fists flying, no covering up, toe to toe, battering and being battered. The crowd roared.

  The blood sung through my veins, every muscle engorged and alive. I felt the thuds of King’s fists, but there was no pain – there was only . . . a strange kind of beauty.

  This fight, this round, this moment, this now, was the culmination of everything in my life. There was nothing outside of the ring, nothing beyond the violent embrace of King’s fist and my answering responses.

  Something had happened inside me when it was apparent King had no idea about the kidnap. Suddenly, I saw his honor. He was a fighter. Proud and angry, even perhaps hate-filled, but he was a fighter – a true man who lived and died by the law of the fist.

  And so was I.

  I was Patrick Felony Flynn the giant killer – and I lived to match my heart, my skill, and my very soul against other men of the same creed.

  Solomon King was such a man.

  King’s relentless fists drove me slowly backward. I answered every punch from him with one of my own. I sidestepped and slipped a strong straight right, throwing a looping left of my own into King’s exposed torso. He grunted, smashing me with a clubbed left to my right shoulder. Numbness tingled for a split second down my arm.

  I jabbed with my left, once, twice, three times – moving King backward this time – trying to remember all the things Willy Stevenso
n had drilled into me.

  The heat in my brain cooled just enough for me to start thinking – to start responding instead of reacting to King’s assault. I started feinting with my rights and throwing my left like Willy had taught me.

  Suddenly, King threw a triple combination toward my head. I parried the first and slipped the second, but the third caught me hard. On instinct, I pushed forward instead of backing up. I stepped inside the start of King’s follow-up right hook, and drove my own a left jab into his heart.

  My shot should have stopped him cold, but King’s right hook had been a feint, and the power of my punch to his heart was tempered by my walking into a solid shot from King’s deadly left fist to my chin.

  Both of us swayed apart and away. I stumbled, but kept my feet. King had also staggered two steps backward. The crowd shot to its feet, roaring, yelling for one or the other of us to go down.

  I lurched back toward King. He lurched toward me. We exchanged blows, grunting with effort.

  The bell rang.

  Neither King nor or I were aware of it. We kept throwing punches, trying to smash each other, two mountains of granite with sledge hammers for arms.

  Then the referee was between us, the bell ringing again and again. Pops and King’s trainer, Stockbridge, were pulling us apart.

  We separated, virtually dragged away to our corners. I was crazed. I wouldn’t sit on the stool, bouncing from one foot to the other, not even aware of Tina trying to sponge me down. The second I’d seen her safe, every sense of dread in my brain had been swept away by the fury bursting like a dam inside me.

  I was ignoring Pops, trying to look around him at King, who was standing in his own corner trying to look at me. Pops instructions and pleadings were lost in the sound of the crowd, which had become a palpable physical presence.

  Pops was barely able to get out of my way when the bell rang. I was across the ring, three-quarters of the way to King’s corner when I met him in a crash. We bounced, clinched, and lost our balance – both of us falling to the canvas more wrestlers than boxers.

  We came up from the canvas together, ready to tear into each other, but the referee got between us again. He tried cooling us down with a standing eight count, then rubbed our gloves off on his shirt before turning us loose again. It didn’t slow us down.

  I moved in, trying to get inside King’s reach. I hammered at his body leaving purplish welts glowing on his black skin with every blow. My gloves felt hot as if my fists were on fire.

  For his part, King was clouting my ears and kidneys, repeatedly clubbing me with his fourteen inch fist as if he were a blacksmith trying to bend iron.

  I threw a looping left I thought was going to hit home. However, King jerked his head forward at the last split second, taking the punch high on his forehead where it did little damage.

  The barrage of flying leather continued through the sixth and the seventh.

  Before the start of the eighth, Pops’ words finally got through to me.

  “You’ve got to hit him from the canvas, like I taught ya’ . . . If you don’t, he ain’t never going down and you’re gonna lose this in a split decision . . . Ya’ know Cohen has got the judges rigged just in case . . . Ya’ got to put him down . . .”

  I could feel the swelling on my cheeks and around my eyes, but I could still see pretty good. My nose was mashed, but I hadn’t breathed through it in years, so that didn’t make no never mind.

  What was important was I could still feel spring in my legs and my arms felt strong. I felt well oiled, all my parts in working order. The damage was superficial welts and bruises, but nothing had gone bone deep.

  I was ravenous to fight.

  King was bigger, heavier, had a longer reach, and was in tremendous physical shape. But, I was far from done.

  On ships and on land, in bars and alleys, in smokers and VFW halls, I’d fought men who were bigger and badder me. I’d faced down enemies in three-quarters of the world. And I’d never run out of heart. What I had to find out now, was how much heart King had left in him.

  If there was one thing I’d learned from all the fights, against all the odds, was the man who keeps on slugging, who keeps on coming, is the man who wins the fight.

  The bell rang to start the eighth, and I took the fight to King, slugging and coming.

  I brushed aside a pair of snapping jabs, and slipped inside to punish King’s body. I kept slamming away until I had him on the ropes.

  He was game, I’ll give him that, slipping away and stinging me hard on the left side under my kidney.

  I growled in pain, an angry bear, and chased after him. I was on the edge of control, a red glow slipping down inside my eyeballs. I gave no thought to defense, just to an all-out assault.

  King bobbed and weaved, trying to dance away, but instinctively, I was aware his legs had slowed down, his footwork sluggish. So I hit him again and again.

  And then the moment came.

  King was tired and it showed in the lazy way he pulled his arm back to start a jab. It was the same movement I’d seen again and again in the films I’d seen of King. He’d broken the habit for most of the fight, but he was tired and there it was.

  I started to throw my left, as I had done the whole fight. King saw it coming and over-committed to his jab, thinking he’d slip the left and I’d be open for him to stun me with his right.

  As he threw the jab, I moved away from my feinting left, stepped inside King’s deadly jab, and threw an overhand right.

  But I didn’t just throw the right, I launched it.

  I finally knew what Pops’ had been preaching about. For the first time, I felt the detonation of power from the canvas under my right foot flow up my leg, though my torso, into my shoulder, down my arm, and explode out my fist as I connected with King’s chin.

  He hung on the end of my fist for an instant before the follow through of the punch lifted him off his feet and dropped him flat on the canvas.

  His already limp, unconscious, body bounced once, flopping his arms out to either side, and then King was still.

  My own head exploded with noise as the focus of the fight vanished and the world crashed down around me. The crowd was on its feet screaming. The Hat Squad was scaring the heck out of everyone around them as they banged their ax handles on the seats in approval.

  Cohen and his bodyguards were trying to slip away. One of the lugs reached for Anita and instantly got an ax handle across his shoulders for his trouble.

  Then I felt Tina’s young arms wrap around me followed by Tombstone embracing both of us at the same time. Pops was there too, yelling something I couldn’t hear.

  I freed myself and moved to where Marvin Stockbridge was waving smelling salts under King’s nose. The fighter’s head moved away from the smell, his eyes opening. He was groggy, but appeared okay. Stockbridge and another corner man helped King to his feet.

  King looked at me out of swelling eyes and nodded twice.

  I nodded back.

  I was Patrick Felony Flynn the giant killer.

  EPILOGUE

  I was alone in my room above Ten Hawks Gym again. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even sit still. I bounced on the bed for a few seconds, then got up and paced the small space.

  Earlier, Tombstone had told me how he and the rest of The Hat Squad had torn apart the garment district until they got to the sweat shop where Anita had said Tina was being kept along with Verne Chadwick and his counterfeiting operation. They had found everything, even the stolen paper, which had just been delivered. It was going to be almost impossible to tie the operation back to Cohen, but it was going to hurt his organized crime machine like nothing else.

  Anita was already heading back to Kansas and from there to another undisclosed city for her own protection. She was a good kid, and I would have like to have seen more of her, but some things just weren’t meant to be.

  Chief Parker was riding high on the publicity from the arrest. He’d already told Tombstone we were fully
fledged Hat Squad members from here on out.

  As I paced, I relived the fight in my mind over and over.

  There was a knock on my door.

  I really didn’t want company. I’d spent time with everyone after the fight. Now, all I wanted was to be alone and quiet. It was why I was up in my room instead of downstairs in the gym where everyone was still celebrating.

  “Open up,” Tombstone said from the other side of the door. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

  I opened the door.

  “This just came.” Tombstone handed me an envelope. “Hand delivered.”

  It went through my mind it might be a death threat from Cohen, but then I saw the handwriting and disregarded that thought for another day.

  The note was from Willy Stevenson.

  Archie says you deserve a shot at the title, but says you’re going to have to get through me first. And remember, I know everything about you. See you in the ring in twelve weeks.

  I showed the note to Tombstone.

  I was Patrick Felony Flynn, the giant killer, and I was going to get my shot . . .

  BONUS PREVIEW

  FIGHT CARD: THE CUTMAN

  JACK TUNNEY

  ROUND 1

  HAVANA, CUBA

  1954

  I was tying Wide Bertha to the mooring cleats when the two mooks swaggered toward me like they owned the dock. I wasn’t in no mood for a scrap, but things didn’t turn out that way.

  The last three days at sea before we made portage at Havana, we’d fought hurricane weather, and I felt like I was about stove in. All I wanted was a hot meal, a bellyful of beer, and a nice, soft rack to sleep it off. Someplace where I could wash the stink of the ship off me and not have to worry about a dog watch.