Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  He arrived at Plunkett’s office, i Wilshire, at nine forty-five.

  Dan filled Plunkett in on his heart condition, exaggerating as he went along. He then instructed Plunkett to draw up the necessary documents to transfer all of his property to Earl—Dan’s share of the business, his house, his two apartment buildings in Westwood, the gym and everything in it, his vehicles and personal effects, his life-insurance policies, and his savings and checking accounts.

  Bobby Plunkett had known Dan from their days together at St. Jude’s in San Pedro. He knew more was going on than Dan admitted to, but he couldn’t figure out what. Plunkett, known as Bobby P to his criminal clients, cleaned his glasses with a linen handkerchief and picked at a patch of flaky skin on his bald head. He folded the handkerchief and returned it to the breast pocket of his three-piece gray flannel suit.

  Plunkett said, “You don’t look your usual pink self, but are you positive your condition is so critical that you need to do this thing right now?”

  Dan lied, but it was also the truth. “I live from day to day.”

  “Jesus, Danny, I had no idea.”

  “How long for the paperwork?” Dan asked.

  “Is a week okay?”

  “Sooner. Get on it full-time, and have a check ready for me to sign to cover everything I owe you. But remember, Earl is not to know anything about this until I die, or if for some reason you don’t hear from me in three years.”

  “Why wouldn’t I hear from you?”

  “Just set it up so it clicks into place three years from today, regardless. That way, it’ll be a done deal and Earl won’t be able to back out.”

  Bobby P said, “In three years, you could change your mind.”

  Dan said, “I’m doin it this way just in case. Heart patients can check out anywhere and anytime. I’m thinkin of goin to Ireland. What if I end up buried in the Ould Sod somewhere, and nobody here would know for ten years?”

  Plunkett said, “I’m sure they’d notify the American authorities over there.”

  Dan hated doing it, but he lied again. “I didn’t tell you. Because my mother and father were born in Ireland, I went ahead and got Irish citizenship and a mick passport.”

  Bobby P said, “I was thinking of doing that, too. Let me know what it’s like over there.”

  “Roight,” said Dan, sounding like his father. “How many days’ll this take?”

  “Give me five, maybe four, but I doubt four.” Plunkett scratched his bald head again. “What if something happens to Earl before it happens to you?”

  Dan said, “Leave half to Earl’s wife, and the other half to the American Cancer Society, in memory of Brigid.”

  Bobby P smiled wanly at his stricken friend of so many years. He, too, could talk in the old way. “So what’ll you be afther leavin me?”

  Dan answered, this time sounding like Brigid, “What Oy’ll be leavin ya is for good.”

  Plunkett had his own tremor. He reached into the credenza behind his desk and brought out two glasses and a bottle of Booker’s eight-year-old 126.5 proof. “Sure and doesn’t Mrs. Plunkett’s little boy Bobby feel like pissin the day away?”

  “One drink, laddy-buck, then it’s on to the clock with ya,” said Dan. The deception sickened him, but he didn’t want his old friend to suspect that this would be their last drink together. Each sip of Booker’s made Dan wince, but not Plunkett.

  Dan stopped at a liquor store. He bought another bottle of vodka, and a copy of Autovender, a magazine offering nearly five hundred pages of photographs of privately owned cars for sale. He drove to Hancock Park. He sat at a table overlooking the pond.

  Dan leafed through the magazine. He was looking for an original owner wanting to sell a twenty-year-old car that had a hundred thousand or so miles on it. He wouldn’t need it for long, but he would need it for sure. A Cadillac Seville, or maybe a Mercedes 300 diesel. Autovender offered a dozen choices, all under thirty-five hundred dollars. A Mercedes diesel seemed best, a workhorse car that could take him anywhere he wanted to go. Dan got on his cell phone and called to make appointments with the closest three. He withdrew forty hundred-dollar bills from the bank, and placed thirty of them in an envelope under the driver’s seat of the pickup. He put the other ten C-notes in his wallet for his trip. Should he have to negotiate a price, cash spoke to all persuasions.

  The first three cars were in poor shape. Dan telephoned three more numbers. He left his name and number on the answering machines of the first two, along with the message that he was calling about the cars advertised in Autovender. He was in the process of leaving the same message on the third answering machine when what sounded like an elderly lady picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Toussaint residence.”

  Dan gave his name and explained that he was interested in the car she had for sale. She answered his questions about the condition of the car, and they agreed to meet in an hour and a half, after Mrs. Toussaint asked for Dan’s land-line phone number and address. That way she could check him out in the phone book.

  “Can’t be too cautious these days.”

  Dan said, “I understand.”

  Right on the dot, Dan rounded a curve in the 4400 block of Palma Road, and saw a tomato green 1979 300D parked in front of a stucco house. A red and white “For Sale” sign was in the front window of the car. An old woman with thinning blue hair stood cleaning the car with a long-handled red duster.

  Dan introduced himself to Mrs. Toussaint, an eighty-year-old who shook Dan’s hand firmly.

  She said, “This was my late husband, Maurice’s, pride and joy, bought it new.” She indicated two boxes on the backseat. “Records go back to day one. Maurice worked at the old main post office across from Union Station, don’t you know. He and I were the only ones who ever drove this old heap. Now my eyes are shot. I guess you’ll want to chisel me on the price.”

  “Not necessarily,” Dan said. The exterior and the leather interior of the car were in excellent condition. Tan sheepskin seat covers protected the front seats. “You’re asking twenty-six hundred. That’s on the high end for a diesel this old, but it’s fair enough if the car’s in good shape.”

  The old lady snorted. “Mercedes diesels’re the best cars ever made, so why wouldn’t this one be? It’s got only ninety-some thousand miles on it.”

  “I see it’s got good tires.”

  “They’re a month old, so’re the brakes and battery.”

  Dan’s quick check under the hood confirmed his favorable first impression. He asked for and received permission to take the car on a test drive. But only after he left his wallet with Mrs. Toussaint. Her mamma didn’t make no foolish babies.

  Dan quickly got down the hill and onto the Arroyo Seco Parkway. The car checked out to be exactly what he wanted. He’d been gone eight minutes by the time he returned the car.

  Mrs. Toussaint said, “You took longer than you said.”

  “I apologize, and I’ll buy the car.”

  “Well, all right.”

  The transaction took two more minutes. Dan handed over the money, and she handed him the signed pink form.

  Mrs. Toussaint squinted at him and said, “Now you drive carefully, hear? You got a good car. Don’t wreck it!”

  Dan dropped the car off for a lube and oil change that same afternoon. He had a complete tune-up, including filters, glow plugs, belts and hoses, new wiper blades, and new shocks. He added freon to the AC, also had new head- and taillights installed. Since he didn’t plan to register the car in his name, he didn’t want some cop pulling him over because of a blown taillight.

  The Mercedes was set to go the day before Plunkett called to tell Dan to come in and sign the documents.

  When Dan got back from Plunkett’s office, Earl was looking under the tarp that covered the shot-up Cadillac. He’d loved that car almost as much as Dan. Watching his partner waste away was killing Earl. How do I tell a grown man what to do when I might be doin the same thing he is?

  Earl
ignored the carnage inflicted on the Caddy and asked Dan, “What about doin some more fights? Get back into the game.” He paused and then said, “You ain’t got no life, livin this way.”

  “Listen to me,” Dan whispered. “I don’t care anymore if I win or lose. Maybe I need a change.”

  Earl said, “Hell, yeah! You need a rest, that’s all.”

  Dan said, “All I know is that you got a family, and that you’re workin too hard.”

  Earl said, “My wife understands. She said that gettin your butt out of town for a spell might do the trick. You’d feel different in no time.”

  “I been thinkin about takin a long drive, you know? Maybe see some of the country I’ve only flown over. Maybe take the coast route all the way up to Washington state.”

  “Yeah. Stop and visit somebody you know.”

  “I got nobody.”

  “Then go to Ireland. You always wanted to go to Ireland.”

  “I don’t even care about Ireland, Earl,” said Dan. “I’m not goin away for all that long. And I don’t want you workin so hard. Hire somebody in my place. You’d have more time for your family and the gym. Bring in another trainer.”

  Earl tried to smile. He said, “You spoiled me, Coach.” He didn’t remind Dan that business at the gym was mighty slow these days.

  Dan hesitated, then measured each word. “I can’t go back on the floor no more. I see flashes of Tim Pat in the mirrors.”

  Earl touched Dan’s shoulder. Dan shuddered, choked back a sob, then broke all the way down. Earl let him go on, patted him like he patted his little girls when they hurt. Dan gagged, but couldn’t weep. Earl got paper towels.

  “Wipe and blow.”

  “Look how low I’ve sunk.”

  Earl thought about the mirrors and the voices. He looked into Dan’s haunted eyes. “I don’t know any other way, so for now, I say we close the gym to outsiders.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m sayin,” Dan said. “You don’t have to close down on my account.”

  “I’ll keep workin with Momolo. He’s good in the shop, and he’s got heart. His dream is to return to Africa as a champ and open a powdered-milk factory. Kids over there don’t get milk.”

  “Ain’t nothin better than a dream.”

  “I’ll tell trainers and their fighters that I don’t have time to run the gym alone, and that you’re quittin the game.”

  Dan hung his head. “That ain’t no lie.”

  “Course that don’t mean you can’t come back, right?”

  “Right,” Dan lied. His mouth hardly moved. His eyes revealed nothing. “Yeah, I think it’s about time I took that drive.”

  “You sure you’re up to driving all the way to Washington?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Dan replied. “I’ve always wanted to get me a potful of Dungeness crab right out of the water.”

  “When you takin off?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day.”

  Dan bought a road atlas that had maps of all the states, the kind that included illustrations and descriptions of points of interest. He bought a sleeping bag, thinking that it would allow him to sleep in the car, thus minimizing the number of people who would see and possibly remember him. He left his room in the gym clean as a monk’s cell. He stayed away from his home on Cahuenga.

  Everything Dan needed, including the booze, was locked in the trunk of the 300 D. He hugged Earl and shook his hand. Both choked up. Dan promised that he’d call that night, and then at least every week. It meant one, maybe two more phone calls before Dan’s plan went into effect. Dan eased the green diesel Merc into traffic without looking back.

  Dan had driven the I-10 through Texas several times while campaigning as a young fighter, and knew exactly where to head. He’d told Earl that he’d be driving north, but instead he’d aim for some hidden spot in the dry Davis Mountains off the I-10 a hundred miles or so east of El Paso. Late some night, while parked in a remote valley tucked between the mountaintops, he’d fill five plastic one-gallon bottles with gas from one of the five-gallon cans he had locked in the trunk. He’d line a cardboard box with several layers of aluminum foil. He’d spread part of a bag of charcoal briquettes, also stored in the trunk, across the foil, then place the gas-filled water bottles and the five-gallon gas can on top of the briquettes. He’d place the loaded cardboard box in the backseat of the car, and sit next to it. He’d use one razor blade to cut a hole in the crotch of his right pants leg big enough to expose the pink scar left from the angioplasty, the thumping femoral artery just millimeters beneath the skin. He’d use a second razor blade to sever the femoral with one stroke. Then he’d have a drink.

  While the blood was spurting across the back of the front seats—but before Dan felt light-headed and passed out from loss of blood—he would ignite several of the slow-burning briquettes a few inches from the bottles filled with gas. He’d be unconscious by the time the flame of the first burning briquettes ignited the adjacent briquettes, which, in turn, would melt the nearest bottle of gas. Once the first bottle melted and the escaping gasoline roared out like a Molotov cocktail, the other four bottles would go up like an atom bomb. The remaining five-gallon plastic can would also melt, and more gasoline would flood the car, the interior now a crematorium. The beauty of the “plan” was that the flames and smoke would be gone by daybreak. Dan was pleased that there would be nothing left of him. No face. No gold inlays. No fingerprints. No ID. Nothing. Any edible slush that might remain would be worked over by land scavengers and carrion birds. There was a good chance that his bare black bones would lie there for years. If found, small-town police would do a routine report. If anyone bothered to trace the vehicle to Mrs. Toussaint, she would probably have thrown away his phone number. The case would be closed, satisfactorily or otherwise. Earl and his family would be taken care of. Ashes to ashes.

  Dan took the 5 North over the Ridge Route and then swung to the right at the 99. A half hour later he pulled into Bakersfield. In a kicker beer joint, he sat thinking of his fights at the old Strongbow Arena all those years ago, the wooden seats so close to the ring there was no place for the corner men to work. Heat from the cotton fields and heat from human bodies made the slick walls sweat. Dan had lost eight pounds during one Bakersfield fight.

  He called Earl that night and lied some more, said he had stopped at the town of Harmony on Highway 1, which was actually over on the coast, just down from the Hearst Castle at San Simeon.

  “The ocean’s beautiful, and things are cheaper here than up near the castle.”

  Earl sounded worried to Dan. “What’d you have to eat, some of that good fresh fish they got up there?”

  “Had some fresh, charcoal-broiled halibut, salad, baked potato, the works. Coffee and pie. No booze.” He’d eaten a ham-and-cheese sandwich he’d gotten back on the 5 when he stopped for gas at Gorman. Dan said, “Give my love to the family. I’ll call you in a week.” “Don’t forget,” said Earl. “Not me.”

  Earl hadn’t believed a word Dan said. He didn’t know why, but he hadn’t.

  CHICKY

  Chapter 19

  Sunday, the last day of the tournament, Lamar Steuke presiding. Weigh-in. Physical. The bout sheet was drawn up according to weight class, the lightest going off first. Chicky would fight seventh on the program. Fighters were told to be back by ten-thirty, no later than eleven. Hands wrapped, they were to be ready to fight at twelve. Passbooks, all filled out, would be handed back to them as they left the ring with their trophies, losers as well as winners getting trophies.

  Eloy was on time and Chicky was already up. Eloy could see he had gained some weight, but was still under 147. As soon as the kid got his boots on, Eloy took him down to Crockett’s for biscuits and gravy with a little fresh salsa on the side, an order of sliced tomatoes, a cinnamon bun with raisins, and two glasses of milk. Once he’d taken a healthy dump, Chicky weighed in at 145. Eloy was pleased that Chicky might not have to give up much weight to Sykes. In fact, Sykes had lost his appetite com
pletely, and instead of pushing 147 at the weigh-in, he came in all eyes and scared shitless at 144. Toby and Seth looked the other way. Mr. George knew something had gone down, even if Sykes didn’t.

  Finished with the weigh-in, Paco went with Chicky and Eloy back to Crockett’s. Chicky had two glasses of grapefruit juice, oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins, and corn bread with butter and honey. Trini had slept in, after all, gotten more sleep than Eloy for sure.

  Paco said, “Don’t worry, Trini’ll be pumped at fight time.”

  It was nine-fifteen when Chicky finished eating his second carbohydrate meal that morning. Paco told them they didn’t have to show up until eleven-fifteen, because the tournament, as always, wouldn’t get started until twelve-thirty or so.

  “So you’re all set?” Paco asked.

  “Ready, set, go.”

  Eloy could see that his nietito, his grandbaby boy, was sleepy from the rich food, and from fighting all night in his sleep, so they went right upstairs to Chicky’s room. It had been three hours, going on four, since Eloy had medicated himself after connecting with Trini. He felt his scalp dampen, and a trickle of sweat slipped down the crack of his ass. That hit hadn’t lasted the way it should have, but he couldn’t let on that he was in trouble. Chicky finished getting his equipment and fighting togs together, then sat on the bed.

  “You hit the pillow, I’ll git you up.”

  Chicky crawled under the covers. “Where’ll you be?”

  “Doin the mess-around over at the show, but I’ll be back for you a quarter of.”

  Chicky was almost asleep. “I love you, old man.”

  Eloy touched the boy’s cheek, was swallowing hard as he left the room, but his tight throat was not only from the love he felt for his grandson. He wondered if his last shot of lullaby had been as strong as usual. Might he have injected less? Naw, he knew that this was doper-think.

  Eloy would have to get off good and do it soon or he’d never make it through the tournament. At least he wouldn’t have to cook up, thanks to Trini. He could do himself quicklike right there in the truck if he had to, but if he parked on the street somewhere he wouldn’t be able to enjoy it afterward, wouldn’t be able to listen to the sound of snow falling on the moon.