Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  “Rainbow coalition,” said Earl.

  “You’re in, right?”

  “Naw,” said Earl, “my old lady’s bitchin I don’t spend enough time at home. Besides, I got stuff to do around here.”

  “Bullshit,” said Dan, “we’re partners, right?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess I could work it.”

  Dan stood up and threw three short right hands into his left palm. Earl bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Dan didn’t know that Earl, at his wife’s urging, had put in an SOS call to Louie.

  Louie’s boy won. In the seventh, he got a jagged rip at the corner of his right eye, but Dan stopped the blood and kept it stopped. Though subordinate to Flores’s trainers in the corner, Dan and Earl worked the fight as smoothly as ever. With Louie the next day, they sat on cushions and enjoyed a long lunch in Little Tokyo. Having a champion meant that Louie suddenly ranked large in the fight game. He got drunk on hot sake and cold beer, and threw money around as if he was in a whorehouse. Earl ate so much sushi that he asked if his eyes had changed shape. The eyes that had started to look different belonged to Dan Cooley, and Earl was grateful for a wife who had men figured out so well.

  After the Olympic fight, Earl got Dan to watch TV fights. Eventually, Earl finessed him into going to club fights in and around town as well. Dan ran into fight guys he hadn’t seen in a long time, and they laughed and scratched and told war stories, and lamented the deaths of old friends.

  New times were never as good as old times, but to Dan’s surprise, he found himself wanting more of both. So Dan got Earl to go with him to venues as far away as Palm Springs, even down to Louie Carbajal’s venue, the Auditorio in Tijuana. They traveled northwest out to the Marriott Hotel at the Warner Center in the Valley. Or they’d head down south to the Arrowhead Pond, home of the Mighty Ducks, in Orange County. They often took Momolo along, wanted promoters to get a look at him.

  Momolo learned things by listening to Dan and Earl as they discussed the lights and shadows of boxing, the angles and the curves and the dead ends that could make careers disappear like sweat socks in a dryer.

  Momolo got four fights in quick succession. He went two and one, with one draw and no KOs. No matter how hard Earl worked with him, Momolo was as deliberate in his movements as he was in his speech: Earl told Dan that he thought Momolo’s chances of making big money in boxing were limited. “He’s in great shape, he works hard, he has the desire, but he doesn’t throw in combinations. And still no hook.”

  Dan didn’t want to write the kid off. “You never know.”

  “Yeah,” said Earl, “but when he starts to move up one side of the pyramid, the guys on the other side will be moving up, too.”

  “He’ll know it’s time to quit before we do.”

  When things slowed down a bit, Earl started worrying again. So he was relieved when Wardell called him and asked him to come to the Sports Arena and watch one of his top fighters in action. Earl accepted the invitation for both of them without bothering to even ask Dan.

  When he got around to telling Dan about it, Dan just smiled faintly and said, “Well, hell—why not.”

  Two days later, battling commuter traffic, Earl and Dan headed for the Sports Arena, Earl in his van, Dan in the company pickup. They drove separate vehicles because they would be taking different freeways home. Barky had his nose out the window of the pickup and couldn’t care less about smog or the stop-and-go, as long as he was with Dan. His weight had leveled out because of his runs in the hills, and he was all muscle and bone and sass.

  Detective Nájera, from West Traffic, would also be going to the eight o’clock fight. He’d leave for the eight o’clock fight at seven-fifteen, his home in South El Monte just a few miles away.

  Earl and Dan picked up the tickets that Wardell had waiting for them. They were in the first row of the stands, where it was better to watch than from down close. They were used to working ringside, but that was different. From the stands in the small facility, they could see a fighter’s foot position as well as his punches.

  It was seven-fifteen, and instead of going to their seats, they went back to the dressing room to talk shit with Jolly Joe and their cronies. Jolly Joe was working a fight down in El Centro, across from the Mexican border, and Earl and Dan were disappointed that they’d missed him.

  Then Dan saw Wardell and his fighter.

  “Who the fuck dyed that kid’s hair?” he wondered.

  CHICKY

  Chapter 26

  Chicky Garza left San Antonio on 10 West and drove through El Paso and Tucson, then crossed the Colorado River into California at Blythe. Up ahead ninety miles was Indio, where there were two Indian casinos that periodically held boxing matches, one indoors, one out. All of it was hot, most of it dry. It was the same into and past Palm Springs, and didn’t begin to green up until around Ontario, well to the east of Los Angeles.

  As he got closer, it was starting to get dark and a few lights were coming on. The sun was setting as Chicky drove toward it, and the sky was all purple and orange and dark blue with black splotches and streaks of silver. Smog hovered over the sprawl. Coming down a steep hill near a big cemetery, Chicky felt himself entering a foreign land where folks would tell you to go take a flying fuck and not look back. Chicky would show ‘em.

  To save money on the road, and to be safe while he slept, Chicky had pulled into truckers’ stops to nap. He ate plastic-wrapped ham-and-cheese sandwiches he bought in gas stations and washed them down with Pepsi. His red ‘81 Chevy pickup, with “Fresita” painted in beautiful script on both doors, had held up like a champ. The map had looked simple enough—keep his ass on the I-10 all the way smack into downtown L.A. Back in San Anto he couldn’t have imagined what it might be like, but here he was.

  “The winner, and new champion of the world, Eduardo Chicky Garza! Garza!” Chicky was serious when he said that out loud, but had to laugh as well.

  Crossing into California, Chicky’d called information, but there was no Dan Cooley listed in the Los Angeles area, and no Cooley’s Gym. All Chicky knew about California was what he’d seen in the movies. He would have to get the lay of the land before he started to track down Dan Cooley. Chicky felt sure Cooley was still a trainer, still ran or worked out of some kind of gym. It only made sense. It’s what old fight guys did. He’d ask around. Somebody’d know. He wasn’t worried. He still had about $2,400 from the $2,600 cushion he’d left San Antonio with. A fortune. First thing, once he got situated, he’d buy him that Stetson. Then get him a picture of him wearing it standing in front of Fresita with Dan Cooley, and send it to his abuelito.

  “Look out, Al-lay, ol’ Garz’s ridin into town!”

  He checked the map as he drove, his eyes flicking to the blue highlighter he’d traced along the map’s red line of the highway. He was coming into Baldwin Park, still part of the arid sprawl on the east side of Los Angeles. Big green 605 Freeway signs began to appear, along with off-ramp signs that hung alongside the road. Chicky squirmed in the seat of the truck, his behind sore from the long drive.

  He checked the map, his eyes darting in the fading light between the blue highlighting and the traffic. The north/south interchange of the 605, the San Gabriel River Freeway, had to be close. He could almost taste Al-Lay. He wanted something good to eat, that was for sure. He wondered what the City of the Angels would look like all lit up.

  There were sure to be cheap motels in L.A., but now he wondered where to find one. He looked down to check the map again. When he looked up, he had to slam on the brakes. There were four lanes of cars, and lit-up brake lights stretched all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, as far as Chicky could tell. It wouldn’t take Chicky long to know why Angelinos called their freeways the longest parking lots in the world.

  “Estamos a puro chingazo,” Chicky mumbled. We’re fucked for sure in this mess.

  Chicky waited with the others for the police and ambulances to take away the wreckage up ahead, human and machine. But as
cars got closer to the site of the accident, he got detoured onto 605. After a half hour of stop-and-go, he saw the blinking lights of a half dozen patrol cars up ahead. After another fifteen minutes, he could see the overpass of the 605.

  He checked the map again, and saw that the parallel East and West 60 was just a few miles to the south by way of the 605. He’d swing south on the 605, and then west again on the 60 into Angel Town.

  But he had to put up with even more stop-and-go traffic on the 605. Stuck in the mud of traffic, Chicky glanced over and noticed the brightly lit red and yellow of the Santa Cruz Sports Arena. He only got a glimpse of it, but damned if it didn’t look like a bullring there among the trees and the pylons. He’d never heard of bullfights in California.

  “Course you never can tell in Califa.”

  Chicky finally got a break. Afraid that he was lost, he took the Firestone Avenue exit and headed west, thinking that would get him back on track. It wasn’t long before he passed over the dry concrete banks of the L.A. River, and could see the illuminated cones and cubes of downtown Los Angeles ten-plus miles away. He was completely turned around. He got off Firestone at Atlantic, then turned right toward the towns of Bell and Vernon. As he crossed Florence Avenue into Bell, he immediately felt he was deep into the Westside of San Anto, though this was upscale a notch or two. Except for street signs, virtually everything was written in Spanish. Doctor, dentist, and lawyer signs were in Español, as were the bill-boards. Cars smoked, sombreros were proudly worn. Mexican cafés offered all kinds of seafood. Food stands sold tacos, enchiladas, tortas, and all classes of antojitos, or snacks—¡Tacos joven, todas classes de antojitos!

  Chicky saw a motel sign over a drab 1930 s stucco building, and his anxiety leveled out. At a corner stand next to the motel, he parked and ordered a Pepsi and a torta made on a crusty, wide roll with cheese and avocado, or aguacate. Jalapeño chiles were free, all you could eat. He had a pan dulce for dessert, dunked the sugared sweet roll in scalding-hot café con leche—espresso and milk served in a tall glass—latte Mexican style. Then he drove into the motel’s parking lot and checked in.

  “Well, I made ‘er, abuelito,” Chicky said from deep in his throat. “Almost anyway.”

  Chicky woke for the third time at noon, but he wasn’t sure where he was. He parted a brown curtain and looked out on a dusty asphalt parking lot, but still wasn’t sure. He doused his face with cold water, then remembered checking into the Bell Motel, but he had no real idea where that put him relative to downtown L.A. He showered, gave his short hair a quick wash with hand soap, and went down to the office, where an old white woman with paper-thin skin informed him that he was in Bell, California.

  “This town used to have a different complexion,” she said, “no offense intended.”

  “How far are we from downtown L.A.?”

  “On a good day, and at the right time, twenty minutes.”

  “How far on to Hollywood?” Chicky asked.

  “Another twenty minutes, you’re lucky.”

  At the food stand next door, Chicky had Mexican scrambled eggs, with beans and tortillas, and another café con leche. He walked for a half hour trying to get his bearings, and, after a good look-see, asked people on the street and in shops if there was a boxing gym nearby. No one knew.

  A police car was parked on the street and the middle-aged policeman inside looked Mexican. Chicky greeted him politely and asked about fight gyms and a certain white trainer. The cop thought Chicky was putting him on, then realized he was serious.

  “Where you bringin that accent from?” said the cop.

  “San Antonio, just got into town, and I’m lookin for a Mr. Dan Cooley, who lives in these parts.”

  “What, you a fighter?”

  “Yessir.”

  The cop hadn’t heard a “Yes, sir” in a long time, and smiled. He thought a moment, then gave Chicky the names of several gyms and general directions to them.

  “I don’t know the addresses, but start with these. They can give you more places to check if you don’t find your man there. The nearest one is the El Indio, and that’s just a few blocks over at the corner of Florence and Bear.”

  “Bear?” said Chicky, the sound of it tugging at him despite his self-control. “How you spell that?”

  The cop looked at him closely, thought he might be a smart-ass after all. “B-E-A-R. Like in Teddy bear.”

  Chicky was disappointed. “I thought it might be spelled B-E-X-A-R, that’s the county San Antonio’s in. Down there we say ‘Bear County’ for Bexar County, like in Teddy bear. Yeah, well ‘bear’ kinda took me back.”

  The cop understood, saw that the boy was showing signs of homesickness. “Well, good luck, cowboy.”

  “Much obliged.”

  Walking, Chicky took Florence over to El Indio. He passed by the assend of Bell High School and saw the football field and track, and noted that this could be a convenient place to do roadwork. Chicky would learn that El Indio was known among L.A.’s Mexican fight guys as el taco roto, the broken taco. But it was clean and presentable and the walls were covered with photos and posters of legendary Mexican fighters, going back to Mexico City’s Raul Ratón Macias of the mid -50s. The gym was nearly empty, most pros having finished their workouts by one o’clock. They’d run early, then slept. Now they’d sleep again, then walk after dinner. Fighters would waste away if they didn’t get their shut-eye and lots of it. An old guy playing dominos told him that the manager, Tony Velasco, would be back around five.

  Chicky bought a street map of Los Angeles, and back at his room called information for the addresses of the gyms the cop had given him. He used his blue highlighter to mark the routes he’d take. The blue lines looked like grapevines twisting senselessly through the grid of the map, but Chicky knew that once he’d been to one place, then the next one, the ones after would be easier to track down.

  Thinking that Dan Cooley would have a gym closer to downtown and in a white neighborhood, Chicky headed for the gyms that sounded Anglo to him.

  Huntington Park Gym, on Soto, sounded white. It was fairly close, but it was all Latino. Though everyone in the gym could pronounce “Cooley” all right, the cholos had fun joking with the name, saying culero instead of Cooley. One of the old-timers woke up from his nap and said he’d known Dan for years, but that he hadn’t seen him working in corners lately. Fight guys are always polite to strangers, but they are closemouthed around people they don’t know, for fear that they might somehow rat someone out.

  Hollenbeck Gym, east of downtown, was a cop gym for amateur kids, mostly Mexican. The amateur coaches weren’t familiar with Dan’s name.

  Hoover Street Gym was south of downtown, near where the Rodney King riots had erupted. Black and Latino fighters and trainers worked at Hoover. One of the old-timers said that Cooley had once had a gym in Hollywood, but that it was closed as far as he knew.

  “It name Hard Rock,” another old man said.

  “No,” the first said. “It Hard Knock. Hard Rock be a Hollywood uptown club for spo’tin folks.”

  Broadway Gym, at the corner of 108th Street, deep down in South Central L.A., had some Latinos working out, but it was mostly black. The old black men playing checkers knew Dan Cooley, all right, and knew that he’d had a gym some time back, but were not sure of its name or where it had been. The owner, Wardell Purdy, walked with a limp, had lip whiskers and a full head of steel gray hair. Wardell added that he’d known Dan Cooley forever, but hadn’t seen him in a while, and had heard that Dan had closed his gym.

  “It was called the School of Hard Knocks,” said Wardell, “somethin like that. I ain’t sure, but I think it was on Wilcox, in Hollywood near Melrose someplace. Cooley could fight, I can tell you that, and he did it so pretty you wished you had the same daddy.”

  Wardell also suggested the Boxing Commission. Chicky called, and spoke to a polite secretary, but she informed him that the last time she’d tried to call Cooley for her boss the phone had been disconnec
ted.

  Chicky said, “Can you tell me where his gym is?”

  “Sorry, we don’t keep that information on file.”

  Chicky checked with information, but there was no listing for the School of Hard Knocks, and none for Hard Knock, either. By the time he got back to Bell, he was bushed and returned to the motel instead of to the Indio. He had Pepsi and another torta next door, and fell asleep watching grainy TV in his room.

  The next day, he was offered a deal at the motel. If he paid for the room a week in advance, $210.00, the rate would be thirty dollars a day instead of $42.50. He was also offered a deal of $500.00 a month if he paid in advance, and that included maid service and clean sheets and towels once a week. Chicky realized that finding Dan Cooley was going to take some doing, and went for the monthly deal. He could always move after thirty days. He’d done the numbers and felt that he was saving money, but paying out five hundred in one chunk hurt. He hoped that he’d find Mr. Cooley, who could surely help him settle into a cheapo $200 bachelor apartment somewhere close to his gym. Without realizing it, Chicky was still operating at San Antonio prices, but he would soon realize that in L.A., his fortune of $2,600 wasn’t going to last long.

  Chicky’d picked up the names of several other gyms along the way. Someone confirmed that Cooley’s gym had been in the vicinity of Melrose and Wilcox, but that Cooley had somehow dropped out.

  Chicky asked, dreading the answer, “He couldn’t be dead, could he?”

  “Could be, I suppose.”

  Chicky checked his map, marked the L.A. grid with his blue highlighter, and lit out. He circled the area for an hour, passing the Hollywood division of the L.A. Police Department twice, but he saw no sign of a gym. He was ready to head back for Bell when he noticed an old building set back from the street, its front dirty and neglected. Dry eucalyptus leaves and bent weeds had claimed the yard. The door and windows were boarded up with slabs of weathered plywood. Chicky pulled over and got out, leaving his truck to idle. A man dressed in a dirty T-shirt and plaid brown-and-green bell bottoms was watering his lawn next door. He had a drinker’s nose; the veins looked like they were ready to burst. Apprehensively, Chicky asked if the adjacent building was the Hard Knock Gym.