by Matt Rogers
With the Belmont Country Club trawling past on his right, and the sun low in the sky, and the breeze on his face, he knew to savour what he was feeling.
Living with Will Slater, there was discomfort on a daily basis, but it was all for a purpose. Tyrell had come from destitution, and now he was fitter and healthier and smarter and calmer and happier. In the interim, there’d been a painful period of burning away deadwood, cutting through to the person he was today, but the results spoke for themselves. By forcing himself not to focus on the rewards, they ended up naturally falling into his lap. A byproduct of good habits.
Which was what Slater had told him would happen all along.
The country club and its neighbouring fields transitioned into residential sprawl as he cycled toward Boston. Approaching Somerville, he slowed down to a crawl in the bike lane so he could ride one-handed and reply to Danielle’s message with the other. Professional cyclists sped past him on their carbon bikes but he didn’t even notice. He typed: That’s good. Was thinking of a way to get yours.
He studied the short two sentences before he sent the text, then daringly added an “x” at the end. Before he could think twice about it, he pressed Send.
Before he was a teenager he’d been involved in gangs and drug deals, but somehow all of that paled in comparison to the butterflies he had now. He figured there was no getting around this sensation, and tried to enjoy it for what it was.
When he looked up from his phone screen with a stupid smile on his face, there was a cargo van parked horizontally across his path.
He was on Massachusetts Avenue and there wasn’t a whole lot of room to manoeuvre, so he touched the brakes well before he’d have to swerve the pushbike around the van’s hood. As he slowed, he sensed a rush of movement on his left, up on the sidewalk. He hadn’t been riding fast to begin with, so he was now moving slow enough to look over and see what the commotion was.
Two big guys were running at him.
If he hadn’t screwed up their plans by slowing down, they would’ve fallen into line behind him. He could see from the way they were moving they’d planned to shove him in the back, send him and his bike careening toward the cargo van, its side door open to receive him. Or maybe he was paranoid.
Then both men made a lunge for him.
They did it together, one interconnected movement, but Tyrell wasn’t travelling fast enough for a push. So they were going to try to bundle him up, drag him kicking and screaming into the van if that’s what needed to be done. Without really thinking about any of this, because it all happened so fast, he used his newfound strength to accelerate rapidly. His quads burned as he pushed down hard on the pedals but the surge did its job, and he was out of range when they snatched at him. By that point he had momentum so he pedalled another few revolutions, putting himself maybe a couple dozen feet from the strangers.
Then he skidded the bike to a stop and stared openly at them.
They stared back at him.
No one spoke.
7
One guy wasn’t as big as the other.
It was the first thing Tyrell noticed.
Any strange man rushing at you seems enormous, but the one who’d gone first was only a couple of inches taller than Tyrell, who was five-eight and growing fast. His skin had a gleam to it, slick and shiny in the afternoon glare. A dome of a forehead overshadowed buttonlike eyes. There were a couple of strands of hair left at the top of his forehead where he must’ve once sported a widow’s peak, but the rest had receded to the back of his head, forming a line of hair tracing round his skull from ear to ear. He was wiry under his clothes but he’d moved fast, darting at Tyrell, and Tyrell knew there was athleticism there. He looked like he was in his mid forties.
The other guy was bigger. Same size as Slater’s friend, King. Six-three, maybe a little less than two hundred and twenty pounds. Big thick fingers. He still had all his hair. It was blonde and there was swathes of it. He’d yanked it back into a man bun. He would’ve been a good-looking man if not for the damaged red skin of an alcoholic, and the jagged white scar running up his left cheek, like an arrow pointing to an empty socket. There was no eyepatch to be seen, so Tyrell got a good look at the damage. The wound was in the shape of a sceptre, the socket serving as the orb atop the staff of the cheek scar.
The one-eyed guy put his hands at his sides like he hadn’t a care in the world, and he waved a gentle apology. ‘Sorry about that, kid. Mix-up.’
It was a good performance.
If Tyrell had less life experience, it would’ve worked. It was so fluid, following straight on from the attempted kidnapping with barely a moment of pause for the target to figure out what had happened. A novice might’ve chosen to shake the whole thing off, gripped by confusion as they pedalled away, convincing themselves they’d imagined that first part.
Tyrell stayed right where he was. Frozen. One foot on the sidewalk, the other on a pedal. He’d pulled up halfway between the van and the duo, his rear tyre half a foot from the gutter. Everything lay in his line of sight. The van hovered in place, idle. A silhouette sat behind the wheel, masked by the low sun’s glare, but Tyrell didn’t dare take his eyes off the pair on the sidewalk.
Am I supposed to do something?
He couldn’t fight them. It wasn’t so much that they looked mean. Looks can be deceiving. But they were big, and that’s never usually deceiving. Tyrell was barely a teenager. He’d hit the pads with Will a bunch, but what did that mean against two grown men? Nothing.
He could ride away. Was that what Slater would want?
Yes, you fucking idiot, he thought.
He tensed his abdomen to pull the bike around and pedal hard.
Before he could move, the oily-faced man took a gun out of an abdominal holster inside his jacket.
The other guy hadn’t shifted his expression an ounce.
That false smile stayed on his lips and his one eye stayed kind as he said, ‘We just wanna talk to your dad.’
8
The guy with the gun had the right idea, keeping it low, against his thigh.
His jacket sleeve covered most of the weapon.
Tyrell still didn’t know much about guns, but Slater had a SIG, and it looked a lot like one of those.
There were no pedestrians directly between them, but Massachusetts Avenue was by no means deserted. There were people in parked cars, sitting out the front of shops and cafés and dry cleaners. There were people in moving cars, driving past them. There was a pair of middle-aged women on the other side of the street, still oblivious.
And — to hit the jackpot — there was a Boston P.D. cruiser at the edge of Tyrell’s peripheral vision, all the way down the other end of the avenue, parked parallel to the curb.
Facing the other way, but that didn’t matter.
A gunshot was a gunshot.
Tyrell’s hands started shaking as the adrenaline dump emptied into his veins, but he did everything he’d been taught to keep his voice steady. ‘You gonna shoot a kid in broad daylight?’
The single eye stared, still flooded with false kindness. ‘Not if you play it cool.’
‘You seen the cop over there?’
‘Uh-huh. He can’t see us from here. Or you. Van’s in the way.’
Tyrell looked the guy right in the eyes. Gripped the handlebars as tight as he could, but his fingers still trembled. ‘Fuck you.’
He turned and rode away.
Beelined for the cop car.
9
It was a calculated risk, but that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.
The one-eyed guy was right. They were out of the cruiser’s line of sight. Tyrell had only spotted the vehicle’s rear bumper. He could’ve been bundled into the van without the police seeing anything, but the argument didn’t work when it came to shooting him with an unsuppressed firearm. That wasn’t as quiet or as clean as a snatch and grab, and they wouldn’t do it.
That’s what Tyrell told himself, over and over
again, to stop himself fainting from the tension.
Each second seemed an eternity, each revolution of the pedals akin to a giant cog turning slowly, laboriously. At any moment he expected to feel the bullet pierce his spine, explode out the front of his chest. He anticipated his lifeblood spraying over the handlebars, coating the front tyre, and then he’d lose feeling in his arms and legs and tumble off the bike in the middle of the street, consciousness falling away…
None of that happened.
His heart hammered as he surged up the street toward the cruiser. The sun glared in his face, almost dipping below the horizon, and it disorientated him, nearly blinding him completely. He almost wobbled and fell and he didn’t dare look back to see what the abductors were doing in case he found himself staring down the barrel of that gun.
Sweat coated his face by the time he skidded to a stop beside the squad car, braking so hard the bike almost shot out from under him, nearly sending him tumbling across the asphalt. He somehow managed to keep his feet and he reached out and knocked on the tinted window, harder than he intended.
The window buzzed down.
Tyrell couldn’t see much, dark spots encompassing the centre of his vision from the sun in his eyes.
A deep male voice said, ‘You okay, son?’
Tyrell blinked, pushed his fingers into his closed eyelids, trying to squint away the glare. As he did so, he found he couldn’t speak. He could make out the rough features of the cop — white, tall, overweight, thick short hair. His vision was too blurred to see anything past that, and something in his brain screamed at him to stay quiet.
He had to pause, just to work through it.
He knew it was conditioning.
Years and years of his biological father and his uncles and every other lowlife he’d ever known whispering in his ear, steadily corrupting his worldview. They’re all pigs and they’ll have you thrown in jail the second you open your fucking mouth, kid.
Don’t talk to the pigs.
Tyrell’s Adam’s apple spasmed. He swallowed hard.
The cop said, ‘Son? Is everything alright?’
The sun blindness faded and Tyrell made out the finer details of the policeman’s face. A big bushy moustache, jowls under his chin, and kind eyes. He was staring up at Tyrell from the passenger seat without an ounce of judgment. Just a man in a position to help.
It wiped all that conditioning away.
Tyrell opened his mouth to tell the cop everything. Then, before he spoke, he glanced over his shoulder.
The van and the two men were gone.
Vanished.
He swallowed again and turned back to the open window. The cop was openly concerned now.
‘Sorry, man,’ Tyrell mumbled. ‘False alarm. I’m good.’
He rode away.
10
The kick rocked Will Slater back across the garage floor.
He stumbled to a halt, shook out his forearms, then lifted the pads to chest height again. ‘One more.’
He stepped forward into the fray.
Sucking wind, Jason King didn’t back down. He grunted something primal as he threw the final kick. His heart rate was maxed, his muscles sapped of all energy, all his glycogen depleted. He’d need a rest day tomorrow, but for now he could throw one more strike, make one more effort.
There was always room in the tank for one more.
You’re never completely done.
Slater braced for it but with King’s speed, size, and power, there’s not much that pads can do to protect you. They take some of the force out, sure, but not enough. Not when you’re this dangerous. The bones in Slater’s forearms rattled as he reversed again, having to take two or three stutter-steps to disperse the impact.
He came to a halt and said, ‘That’s it. Time.’
King sat down in a heap.
Slater gave him a few minutes to get his breath back, lower his heart rate to baseline. They’d been at it for an hour, focused only on King’s output. For today, Slater was the coach and the coach alone. Tomorrow it’d be the reverse. They’d figured it was about time they put each other through a maximal exertion test, seeing just how far they could push themselves when their reserves were depleted and every part of them wanted to quit.
After King had finished downing the rest of his electrolytes, Slater said, ‘That’s a better result than last year.’
King nodded, wiped sweat out of his blazing blue eyes. ‘Ain’t slowing down yet.’
‘Won’t be long.’
Unspooling his sweat-soaked hand wrap, King looked up from the concrete floor, where he sat in a puddle. ‘You trying to kill the mood?’
Slater shrugged. ‘It’ll happen to you. It’ll happen to me. Happens to everyone. We’re screaming towards forty. Sooner or later we’ll decline.’
‘And then?’
‘There’ll be newer guys. Fresher, hungrier. Better.’
King knew that. It’s why each generation of athletes was better than the last — improvements in knowledge, both scientifically and technologically. There’s better ways of recovering, better ways of learning.
‘Hell,’ Slater said, ‘Tyrell will end up more of an athlete than I ever was if he stays consistent. I didn’t even know what a barbell was at his age.’
King looked Slater up and down, noting a physique that rivalled an Olympic sprinter. ‘You sure?’
‘Yeah. I’m sure.’
The front door opened and slammed.
Hard.
Slater glanced in its direction, as if he could see through the walls.
King said, ‘Someone’s excited.’
‘He hit a PR this morning,’ Slater said. ‘Three hundred pound deadlift. He’s probably pumped from—’
The garage door flew open, cutting him off mid-sentence.
Tyrell spilled in, breathless and perspiring. He had that look of terror in his eyes that Slater had seen too many times to count, and immediately he knew how serious it was. The boy tried to speak, but couldn’t stop panting. He must’ve ridden home as fast as humanly possible, gassing himself out in the process. Which meant he was scared for his life.
Slater gripped him by the shoulders and said, ‘It’s okay. What happened?’
Tyrell took a breath, wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘Two guys tried to grab me. There was a third dude. A driver…’
King said, ‘Grab you?’
‘Massachusetts Avenue,’ Tyrell gasped, talking in rapid bursts of information between breaths. ‘Out near Somerville. I was ridin’ in the bike lane, and a van was parked at the top of a one-way street. Think the street was called Haskell. I saw a sign. Anyway, yeah, two guys run out behind me and I can tell they were tryin’ to push me into the van. The sliding door was open. But I slowed down when I saw the van and threw off their rhythm, so they had to sorta stutter-step, and I was able to ride up on the sidewalk outta range. They tried to play it off like they ain’t tried to do what they did, but I didn’t buy it. Then one of ’em pulled a piece.’
Slater glanced over his shoulder at King, who looked ready to kill someone.
He turned back to Tyrell. ‘How’d you get away?’
‘Just rode off. They weren’t gonna shoot me on a busy road like that. They were tryna threaten me ’cause their first plan didn’t work. But I could see through it, and there was a cop up the road, so I rode over there. They didn’t shoot. Well, obviously…’ He gestured to his damp shirt, to the lack of bullet holes. ‘Anyway, by the time I got to the cops the van was gone.’
Slater racked his brain, trying to determine if there was anything incriminating lying around. ‘Are the police on their way here?’
Tyrell shook his head. ‘Nah. I didn’t talk to them.’
‘You could have.’
‘Yeah,’ the boy said, then nodded vigorously. ‘I know, man. I know. It wasn’t that. It was just…those dudes were already gone, and, like, better I tell you two than the cops, y’know…’
From behind Slater, Ki
ng said, ‘Much better.’
There was venom in his tone.
Slater thought, What are the odds? Opportunistic kidnapping?
King said, ‘You see anything we could use to track them down?’
‘Not really for one guy,’ Tyrell said. ‘He was just … slimy-looking. But there’s a whole lotta people look like that. The other guy, though…had a scar up his left cheek. And his eye was gone. I remember thinkin’ he shoulda been wearin’ a patch.’
Slater looked back at King. ‘That mean anything to you?’
King stared into space as he flashed through memories, then shook his head. ‘Not off the top of my head. You?’
‘Me neither.’ Slater faced Tyrell. ‘Did they say anything to you?’
‘Yeah,’ Tyrell said, his eyes widening with stress. ‘Just that they wanted to speak to my dad.’
Slater hesitated. ‘Your real dad?’
‘Nah,’ Tyrell said, letting what had happened to his biological father wash off him. ‘The way they phrased it, I think they meant you…’
Which changed everything.
King said, ‘Fuck.’
Slater whipped around, his concern immediately elsewhere.
He looked King in the eyes and said, ‘Violetta.’
King rushed for the door.
11
Low sun drenched Ingleside Park in gold.
Manicured green lawns separated the skate park and tennis courts. Violetta pushed the stroller along Walden Street’s sidewalk, protected from the glare by the row of evenly spaced trees bordering the park. Beside her, Alice Dunfield wheeled her own stroller. Her son, Noah, babbled to himself, sitting bolt upright in his seat so he could take in his surroundings with curious eyes. The much younger Jason King Jr. lay on his back, snapping in and out of sleep with a small half-smile on his face.
Behind them, Bill Dunfield walked stiffly, slowly. His gait was laboured from aching muscles. At his own request, he’d ramped up the morning boxing lessons with King, and he was paying the price. But that was all part of it. You had to suffer to grow.
