Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  He drank some grape juice for the potassium and the fructose. He read the police report again, but this time he crumpled it and tossed it in the trash, spat on it, then took the trash down to the Dumpster.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  The next four days were more whisky and pretzels. He thought about blowing his head off with the shotgun and being done with it. That would be consequence.

  He looked for the report. Didn’t remember that he’d tossed it. He put on all the lights. Tore up the place. Panting, he sat down, cupped his face in his hands. He poured more whisky in the water glass. He crumpled the brown bag from the liquor store. As he tossed it into the empty trash can, he remembered the report and having taken out the trash. He grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight from the shop and ran back to the Dumpster, terrified that the trash had already been picked up. He lifted the plastic lid. The Dumpster was full. He climbed in, went through every piece of trash. He was halfway into the soggy mess when the wide beam of the flashlight flicked across the report. Dan squatted down, hoping that the coffee stains and milk and garbage had not erased the full name and address of the driver.

  He left the trash on the ground and went to his room. He spread the report on the table and smoothed out the soggy wrinkles. Searched letter by letter, number by number, line by line. And then he saw it. Guadalupe Ayala. Breed Street. He washed and dried his hands. He searched the Thomas Guide for the right map. There it was. In fookin Boyle Heights. It was near where he’d circled the high school, Roosevelt, home of the Rough Riders. He’d been right there. He’d fookin go back. And finish it.

  Dan showered and shaved for the first time since he’d met with Nájera. He backed the Caddy out of the shop, then picked up the Hollywood Freeway at Melrose. When he got to Breed, he slowly drove by the pink-and-green house. He circled back around. He parked on Breed, on the same side of the street as the pink house down the way, but north of Sixth so he could have a 180 -degree view of the action. He waited. It was six-thirty. The black sky had gone rosy to the east. Time was back on the clock. He wished he had coffee. He lit a Montecristo, needed the bang. He waited, smoke hovering inside the car despite the open windows. He began to understand how snipers felt. It felt good. He had the shotgun beside him on the leather seat. He’d get her on her way to school. Even if someone picked her up in a car, it didn’t matter. He’d kill her if she was going to confession.

  But it didn’t work out that way.

  He took up his position for four days. The gun was cocked. The push-button safety was built into the base of the trigger guard. He made sure it was off, meaning that the trigger was ready. Four bullets for her, one for him. On the first day, at five after seven, two boys and two girls, all Chicanos, rounded Inez Street and walked north, toward Dan. They stopped in front of the pink house. One of the boys whistled. A moment later, another girl joined them. The others greeted her, and then all crossed Breed at mid-block and walked toward Sixth Street and Dan. It was the Ayala girl. Pretty as a brown dove, a palomita.

  The other kids chatted, but she remained silent, her dark eyes down. There was something about her that stopped Dan for a moment, made him rethink what he was about to do. He blinked several times, drew on his cigar, then decided he couldn’t do it here, not with her friends around. No. He’d have to catch her alone. He had time, all the time in the world. But he noticed that none of these kids wore a gang outfit. That confused him.

  Dan waited until they turned east. He also waited until they had crossed Soto, wanted to be sure they were heading for the high school. As they turned up Mathews, he followed slowly along Sixth. From the corner of Mathews, he saw them turn into the main gate of the school.

  “Gotcha.”

  He soon established that this was the route she would take every day. Now all he had to do was call the school for the schedule of classes. Say he had to pick up his grandson.

  “Classes start at seven twenty-five and end at three-fourteen.”

  “Three-fourteen? Really?”

  “That’s correct. I assume you are registered with us as a relative.”

  Things had changed since Dan had gone to school. It didn’t matter. He’d be there each day, and he’d find her all right, find her all by her lonesome little self. He began to eat properly. He slept well. He cut down on the hooch. He was, so he told himself, almost back to normal.

  Earl had noticed it. “You’re lookin better.”

  “Feelin better.”

  Dan watched as the Ayala girl’s friends stopped by for her each morning at the same time. One morning her brother stuck his head out of the door. He and the girl played little gangbanger sign games.

  “Play on,” Dan whispered.

  Dan started to wait for her after three in the afternoon. So what if there were witnesses? But, if she walked home, alone or otherwise, she didn’t take the same route that she took to school in the mornings. Dan decided that some gang punk was giving her a lift somewhere. Probably to get fucked.

  The following Monday morning, Lupe Ayala was accompanied by the same four friends. That afternoon, Dan found a parking place on Mathews near Roosevelt’s main gate. At three-twenty, the same van that had run down Tim Pat showed up. It was driven by an older woman, who greeted the Ayala girl with a hug. Dan followed the van east through the afternoon traffic. They passed the Nichiren Buddhist Temple at Camulos Street. The van crossed Evergreen, kept going one more short block to Euclid, and turned right. It proceeded along Euclid to Whittier Boulevard. It made a right and then a quick right into a stucco mini-mall a few doors from fire station number 25 . The small businesses in the two-story mall were draped with banners and posters and signs in Spanish advertising bargain prices. Sandwiched between them was a covered stairway leading to the second floor. Above it were signs advertising a dental clinic and a lawyer. There was another sign, initials only: “CFD,” in large black letters.

  Dan watched as several cars filled with children entered the driveway of the mall. He could only see the children’s heads because of the many cars in the parking lot. His view of the stairway was blocked. He would wait on Breed. He would wait on Mathews. He would follow the van here. He would follow the girl home.

  Dan waited until eight o’clock, but the van didn’t leave the parking lot. Except for the taco joint and the guitar store, everything else on the ground floor was closed. Upstairs, the lights were out. The same thing happened the next night. The girl, Dan concluded, must have different people driving her home.

  Stalking became an obsession. Part of what made it interesting was that Dan’s opponent didn’t know he was on her tail. His only problem was that his ass was getting sore from all the sitting. By parking on the other side of the street in front of the CFD, he learned that Lupe and eight to ten little Latino kids were going up the stairs leading to the second floor. Maybe it was a private school that taught English, or even Spanish. He sure as hell couldn’t track the girl upstairs, not with all those kids up there.

  Dan stayed with the pattern. School in the morning, then wait in front of the mini-mall. Fire trucks would head out from time to time, but mostly it was same-ol’-same-ol’, except he’d park the car in different spots. He’d see the girl, but she was never alone.

  At eight o’clock the following Saturday morning, the older woman picked the girl up at her house. He lost the van at a red light when it made a left turn on Whittier Boulevard. When he got to the school, the van was gone, but Lupe Ayala was standing alone at the driveway. Dan drove by, saw that Lupe wasn’t watching him, then circled back. He parked in the red zone next to the fire station and got out of the car, thirty yards from the girl. Let them tow the car, let them have it. He wouldn’t be driving again after the next half minute. He pushed the safety button to off.

  He removed his Dodgers cap and dark glasses, wanted the girl to know who he was. He held the gun down, pressed it behind his right leg. His heart began to race, as if he’d been holding his breath. He breathed deeply from the diaphr
agm, but he wasn’t getting oxygen. He felt woozy, but not enough to force him to turn back.

  The girl glanced at him, then turned away to look up the empty street. People were sleeping in after a boozy Friday night. He walked slowly, didn’t want to draw the attention of the few who were out, the shopkeepers, the firemen polishing their truck. His eyes focused on the girl’s neck. He’d shoot her there and watch her fookin head come off. As he got closer, his vision cleared.

  When he was ten steps away from the girl, she looked back in his direction, and noticed him for the first time. She recognized him. He pointed the gun from his waist. He saw the hurt in her sloe eyes. She saw the gun and she looked away and made the sign of the cross and lowered her head. As he closed on her, the older woman pulled into the driveway in her van. Eight little kids tumbled like pups out of a cardboard box, grinning and signing and hugging Lupe’s legs. The girl did something with her fingers, and pointed toward the stairs. The kids paid her no mind, continued to scramble around her. She tried to place herself between Dan and the children, but they continued to circle her.

  It was now or never. Dan knew she’d recognized him, would call the police if he didn’t take her head off while he had the shot. Maybe he could order her behind the wall so the kids wouldn’t see. But something was wrong. There was no noise, only absolute silence, only the kids’ wiggly fingers and their adoring eyes as they looked up at the girl. Dan stopped, still as a stone. He focused on her hands and fingers. He took himself back to Tim Pat’s death there in the street. Dan realized that the girl had been talking sign language to the kid. What he had taken for gang signs was a young woman comforting a deaf child.

  Dan backed away. He did a 180, pulled the shotgun down along his leg again, and plopped into the Caddy. The girl dropped to her knees and covered her face. As Dan floorboarded the Caddy out of there, he saw the children pulling playfully at Lupe’s fingers.

  Dan took surface streets, expecting to be red-lighted by the police. It was over. Finally. He’d commit suicide by cop. He’d point the shotgun at the police, shoot over their heads, make them kill him. He couldn’t blame the girl for calling in the cops. What he could not know, as he left Lupe in front of the Clinic for the Deaf, was that she felt she didn’t deserve to live.

  Dan drove to the Hollenbeck police station on First Street, where he parked in clear view of entering and exiting patrol cars. The Hollenbeck gym for amateur boxers was off to one side. He waited a half hour. When the heat didn’t approach him, he drove off. He had a double Wild Turkey at the first bar he came to, chased it with a bottle of Beck’s. He stopped at more saloons. He circled police headquarters at Parker Center. The boys in blue didn’t pull him over. He had more boilermakers. The brand names no longer mattered. He drove back and forth in front of the Hollywood station. Nothing. He was drunk by now, but no one noticed.

  Driving drunk was stupid, he knew that. And it was criminal. He knew that, too. His mind was clear, he saw all the points. Connecting them was the task. He watched himself as if through a microscope. He was a speck of shit. He was to blame for Tim Pat’s death, bottom line. The girl killed the kid, Dan could never forget the horror of that. But he’d never go after her again. He’d never get the chance now, even if he wanted to, not if the cops caught him drunk with a riot gun. No, the girl would never have to worry about Dan Cooley again.

  If only he’d gone with the little guy to the ice-cream truck. Dan was supposed to be the kid’s watchdog. The kid was Dan’s fighter. Trainers are supposed to take care of their fighters. It was a rule. Dan had broken his own rule. He dug at his eye.

  He started to gag, his eyes began to run. He couldn’t stop himself, so he pulled into a gas station. That made him stop, just going through the motions, other people moving around, pumping gas. He filled the tank. He rode the freeways for the rest of the day, sometimes counterclockwise, sometimes clockwise, stopping only for more gas and liquor. He got back to the shop sick of himself and sick to his stomach. Drunk, he wasn’t sure and he didn’t care. He ate some heavily sugared lemon cookies and drank evaporated milk.

  He went back downstairs to the cement floor. Cement was easy to hose down. He sat on a bench, then straightaway set the black polymer stock of the shotgun on the cement floor and pressed the barrel against his forehead. He exhaled. He pressed the push-button safety, felt the click. Because of the booze, and because of his haste in running from the Ayala girl, he had forgotten that the safety had already been in the off position. He exhaled again, then hit the trigger with his thumb, shoved down on the curved trigger with all his might.

  Nothing happened. He checked the gun. Fookin safety was on. He sat there blinking. He pushed the safety to the off position. He placed the tip of the barrel in the middle of his face. He exhaled. He waited. He exhaled again. But he didn’t have the courage for a second go. He started to howl, stumbled to his feet, and pumped five shots into the Caddy. He blew out the windshield and tore up the rag top and upholstery and blew out a headlight and ripped into a fender and a tire. He was blinded by the spurting light, and deafened from the booms that reverberated inside the garage. It was done, all of it. He began to choke on gun smoke. He began to weep.

  Earl saw the car first thing in the morning. Then he saw what lay on the floor next to it. He locked the shotgun in the back of his van. He went to Dan’s room.

  Dan told him the whole story, told him what he’d been up to for the past weeks, right down to the fuckup with the safety. “I’m ashamed of myself.”

  Earl said, “At least you’re both alive.”

  “I hit bottom.”

  “Only way now’s up.”

  “I coulda done evil,” said Dan. “I’m supposed to be dead.”

  Earl said, “Well, you didn’t and you ain’t.”

  “I couldn’t even blow myself away.”

  Chapter 11

  The change of seasons in Los Angeles can slip right by you. July and August are usually hot, but it can stay hot on into October. January first can get hotter for the Rose Bowl game than the Fourth of July. But Dan was as oblivious to the weather as he was to everything else.

  At his gym in Hollywood, Dan would stare at himself in a wall mirror and wonder if he’d gone brain dead.

  “Might as well have.”

  He struggled with whisky every day. He’d be drunk for a stretch, then not. Drunk, he’d lie up in his room, racket from the shop and gym drowned out by the liquid candy in his head. When he was sober, he’d work in the shop, but Earl could see Dan’s hands tremble. He knew Dan was only going through the motions, and that Dan craved the very thing that was killing him. Then Earl took a shot at breaking the pattern. Momolo was booked for a fight and Earl needed a cut man in the corner. When he asked Dan, to Earl’s amazement Dan said yes without giving him an argument. Then Earl started to worry—had he made a mistake? Would Dan be sober when the day of the fight came? And even if he was sober, could he handle it?

  The days passed slowly. The gym remained open, but Earl, working alone for the most part, couldn’t give fighters all the time they needed, and some moved on to other trainers. No hard feelings on either side. The fight game was black and white. You could or you couldn’t. You did or you didn’t.

  During the brief stretches when Dan was on the wagon, he would keep the gym clean. He’d also go back home and clean the house until it squeaked. Windows, tile, rugs, hardwood floors. He’d polish the mahogany tables and chairs, and wipe down the clear plastic that covered the sofa and overstuffed chairs. He’d change the bedding and towels, though they were never used. He wondered why he bothered. He wondered, too, if this would be the place, as it had been for Brigid, where he would put his head down for the last time.

  He could never sit down in the house, no matter how tired he got. Being there just brought back too many memories. He saw Brigid pregnant her first time. He saw his kids playing and praying. He saw little Brendan in his tiny coffin. He saw Mary Cat the night of her first date. He saw Terry’s cl
osed coffin, his body too broken to show. He saw Tim Pat alive at Carson, saw him dead in the street.

  Dan heard the slow grind of an old lawn mower. Cuco Corrales was the same Mexican gardener that Bridey had hired nearly thirty years before. He was stooped and gray now, but he still kept the place neat and pruned. Dan thought of Lupe Ayala, thought of all the shit things he’d said and thought about her.

  “I blew it with Nájera, too,” Dan said out loud.

  Dan had to drink beer for breakfast just to get out of his room in the morning. He worked in the shop when he could, even managed to tear down the “GyM” sign and board up the front windows and door of the gym so no other little kid could ever die because of it or him. Fighters and trainers could still enter through the rear door.

  Each night he had drunk himself unconscious by eight o’clock. Once again he let the gym get dusty, the floors unswept, neglecting it the way he had in the weeks after Tim Pat was killed. It didn’t matter—more fighters drifted away to other gyms. They were uncomfortable in an atmosphere permeated with Dan’s grief and dereliction. It was pretty much down to Momolo and Earl using the gym. Dan brooded silently. Suicide came back to taunt him—he didn’t have the guts.

  Pain in his chest began to flick on and off, would then flare like a gasoline fire. The pain increased daily until Dan was pressing the butt of his right hand hard above his left tit, this after only going halfway up the office stairs or climbing the steps to his room. He tried to help Earl in the gym, but he’d have to beg off the punch mitts after thirty chickenshit seconds. Walking at his regular pace through the parking lot of a supermarket, he’d be out of breath before he got to the front door. He’d seen the same things happen to his mother and father. Modern medicine and surgery had not been available to them. He had no doubt about what was going on inside him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted any of the cures. Booze seemed to offer a better solution, didn’t require a prescription and was sure to lead to a permanent cure.