other. His bruised shoulder was pretty tight, but at least his left leg wasn’t bothering him. No thanks to Mudhoney’s bat. Plenty of thanks to Angel Gemignani’s talented fingers.
Katt slammed his gloves together and smiled his baddest man on the planet smile as he crossed the ring. Coming in, the champion flicked a left jab toward Jack’s head. The punch was pathetically slow. So slow Katt could have sent it by Western Union. Jack had no trouble getting under it.
He cut to the right, avoiding Katt’s power hand. If he could stay away from the champion’s right cross, he figured he’d be okay.
Jack juked around the ring, shuffling a little, his legs nice and loose now. Katt turned, thudded his gloves together again, smiled his ridiculous smile, and followed.
Jack nearly laughed. The heavyweight’s footwork was horrible. Tony the Tiger dragged his back foot behind him like it was stuck in a bucket of horseshit. Two more Western Union jabs and Jack was gone. He was wearing a pair of Wolverine work boots, but Katt made him feel like the Flash.
Katt slurred words through his mouthpiece. “You want to fight or what?”
“Bring it on.”
Katt did. Thudding his gloves, smiling his baddest man on the planet smile, he crossed the ring faster this time. Jack stood his ground, catching the champion’s jabs on his gloves, but he couldn’t stand in with the big man forever.
A wild right slammed his bruised shoulder as he moved away. Jack felt the power in the punch right down to the bone. Katt could bang, and then some. That was for sure. Barroom rules, he’d probably take anyone. But this was boxing. And until someone designed a ring that included a juke box and a pool table, Tony the Tiger was going to have to play it the Marquis of Queensberry way.
Katt turned, gloves down, ready to give chase. But Jack jumped in, surprising the heavier man before he could set himself, driving a series of hard jabs into Katt’s face before moving out.
Katt touched his nose. His Reyes glove came away stained with blood.
“You little bitch,” he said, slapping his gloves together one more time.
Smiling his smile beneath a scarlet curtain.
Jack waved him on. The heavyweight came at him just as before, swinging wildly. Against opponents his own size. Jack had never been very fast. But with Katt he felt like a welterweight. He double-jabbed hard to the champion’s face, dipped low, and ripped a right hook to the big man’s ribs, following up with a hook to the head that missed by a whisper.
And then he was gone.
Jack grinned around his mouthpiece. This was the guy who was pulling down millions for every fight. Jack had never made that kind of money. He wasn’t even in shape, and he was boxing rings around the chump-
Katt wasn’t going to quit, though. Jack had to give him that. The heavyweight snorted and wiped fresh blood from his nose. Another slap of his gloves, another smile, and the big man really came on, a blur of suntanned flesh and neon tattoos. Aryan Brotherhood swastikas, grim reapers, grinning skulls wearing Nazi helmets. Jack laid leather on all of them, but his punches didn’t slow Tony Katt.
The jab that had seemed so pathetic moments before caught Jack dead in the face. Once, bam, twice,
bam! bam!
And then Katt’s right hand slammed Jack’s bruised shoulder. His entire arm went numb. He needed to move. He had to get out of the way-
But he couldn’t. The ring ropes burned his back as he fell against them. If he couldn’t get off the ropes before he lost his balance. . If he couldn’t slip away before Katt had a chance to launch another punch. .
Katt grunted as he set himself. Again the right hand, but this time it was whistling toward Jack’s head, and the smaller man did sink back against the ropes because there was nowhere else to go.
The punch grazed Jack’s nose and Katt’s momentum forced him off balance. He stumbled toward Jack. .
. . and Jack remembered how to breathe. .
. . and he spun away from Tony Katt, leaving the champion hanging on the ropes. .
The heavyweight was tangled up. He dropped to one knee, then pawed his way up the ropes until he was on his feet again. Jack needed the break. He still couldn’t feel his left arm, but he wasn’t going to need it. He had spotted his opening. As long as he could catch his breath-
Katt’s trainer came through the door with a couple of sparring partners. The old guy nearly had a coronary. “Tony!” he yelled. “What the hell are you doing!”
Katt waved him off and turned toward Jack. The heavyweight’s hands were down. He didn’t raise them right away. Instead, he launched into that chump move, banging his gloves together for the fifth time in as many minutes.
In just a second he’d smile that stupid smile.
It was a robotic move. Predictable as it was necessary, like a kid winding up a toy soldier before sending it into battle.
This time. Jack was ready for it. As Katt’s lips twisted upward. Jack banged a hard right against the champion’s skull.
Once. Twice. Three times.
bambambam!
Blood geysered from the champion’s nose. The lower half of his face was draped in red, and the upper half was all startled eyes.
The Tiger went down hard, his lips contorted in pain.
His trainer’s expression was worse. After all, Tony Katt was supposed to defend his title in three weeks. If his nose were broken, none of his corner men would be getting a check anytime soon.
“Oh, Jesus!” The trainer moaned. “Oh, Jesus!”
The baddest man on the planet writhed on the canvas. He wasn’t smiling now. Jack watched him. He didn’t smile, either. No one in the gym smiled.
Except for the man on Tony Katt’s left shoulder.
Colonel Harlan Sanders.
He wore a chicken-eating grin.
TEN
Harold kissed Eden long and deep. “How does it feel to almost be rich, sugar?”
“It feels good,” she whispered, “to be in love.”
They stood next to the bed in Eden’s room. Over Harold’s shoulder, through the pillbox window’s open lead shutters, Eden watched heat waves undulating off the belly of the desert. Outside it was hot, even for the Mojave. A real scorcher.
And it was a scorcher inside, too, in this cool room lined with thick cement walls.
Eden’s fingers drifted over the tattooed SS lightning bolts on Harold’s neck, across his hairless chest, down his white belly. A thick purple scar puckered low on his left side, a permanent reminder of the bullet Harold had taken for his friend while they were in prison.
Eden knelt and kissed the scar tenderly. When they had the ransom money and things cooled down, Harold was going to introduce her to Tony Katt. She couldn’t wait to meet him. Not because he was heavyweight champion, but because he was the person Harold cared about most in the world.
Next to Eden, of course.
Her tongue darted between her lips, and she teased the rough purple circle on Harold’s side with a slow lick as her long black hair brushed his thigh.
“Oh, baby,” Harold said, and more than once.
Eden smiled up at him. “Looks like I didn’t wear you out, after all.”
“Uh-uh.”
