said.
“What do they do with, as Rocco calls it, the leftover tittage?” Jerry Number One said.
“What do you mean?” TC asked.
“Well, when she gets them reduced, where does the tittage go?” Jerry Number One said.
“On eBay-I think they auction it,” Jerry Number Two said.
“What do they put it in?” TC asked.
“Mason jars, I think,” Jerry Number Two said.
“I might bid on that. It would be a collector’s item, and if she got a new boyfriend I could sell it to him,” TC said.
“Man, you guys are boobs-they recycle it for insulation,” Rocco said.
“How warm could that keep you?” Jerry Number One said.
“It depends what you did with it,” Jerry Number Two said.
“There wouldn’t be much, at least not enough to cover an attic,” TC said.
“I don’t know-have you ever seen her in a bikini?” Jerry Number Two said.
“Hey-does this count toward the seven-second thing?” TC asked.
As you might expect, Kelley was turned away, doing his best to watch a replay of a classic women’s golf tournament. I’m guessing none of the competitors had any artificial tittage issues.
“It was definitely Howard, huh?” I said.
“Yeah-they checked with the prison and it was his blood,” Kelley said.
“What do you think happened?”
“I think Howard got there and somebody didn’t want him to meet you.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Kell-does this change your view on his guilt?”
“Yeah, to some extent.”
“What do we do about it?”
“We? Don’t tell me you’re getting back in the private-eye business.” Kelley rolled his eyes.
“Uh…” I didn’t know how to say what was on my mind.
“Oh geez…”
“I just feel like someone has to look out for Howard. Everyone’s against him.”
“It’s tough to get people on your side when you have his history.”
“Yeah but-”
“Duff, he brutally murdered four kids.”
“Thirty years ago. Doesn’t a guy ever get to live that down?”
“Not in my book.”
“Maybe in mine. Maybe what was going on inside him was so painful that his choices were narrowed.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like those assholes you work with.”
“It’s different. I know everyone’s responsible for what they do, but couldn’t it be the case that for some people, doing the right thing is just really, really fuckin’ hard?” I took a sip of the Schlitz.
“Allow for that and you got chaos in society,” Kelley said.
“I’m just talking about one guy-not all of society.”
“Look, Duff, I’m not a real complicated guy and I don’t do a complicated job. I bust guys who break the law.” Kelley took a pull of his Coors Light. “The bigger issue is you getting involved. Last time you did, it wreaked havoc, people died… shit, you almost died. Everything came out okay, but it almost didn’t. Use your head and let the cops handle this one,” he said.
We sat quietly for a second and I knew he was right. It wasn’t my job, it wasn’t my role to defend the universe or even to come to Howard’s rescue. I was overinvolved already and I had enough going on in my life that I didn’t need to play Robin Hood.
“You’re right. I need to back off,” I said.
“Promise me, you’ll stay away from the hero stuff,” Kelley said.
“Yeah, it doesn’t feel quite right but it makes sense. No more ‘Duffy for Hire.’”
“AJ, let me buy Duffy’s next Schlitz.”
Kelley didn’t buy my drinks very often.
14
I continued to train for my bout with Perryman. It wasn’t the real intense training you do to get in shape, it was the type of training you do to stay sharp and keep your engine tuned. It’s hard for people to understand, but more isn’t better when it comes to training. Probably the biggest problem you see with fighters is overtraining-that is, they do too much. Guys will try to work out their anxiety by pushing themselves extra hard, and come fight night they’ve left all their energy back in the gym. I’ve been around long enough to know not to do that.
My new spiky-haired promoter called Smitty and let him know that my bout was going on a card featured at the Altamont Fair. The fair is a big county to-do up the Thruway near Albany, and it drew a couple hundred thousand people every year for a week in August. I don’t know how he pulled it off, but he had a five-card show scheduled for the weekend and fairgoers would only have to pay an extra ten bucks on top of their fair admission to get in to the fights.
Big-time promoters could make things happen and make things happen quickly. The notoriety the Garden fight gave me was going to be short-lived, so he had to exploit it quickly. I didn’t mind; I was used to taking short- notice fights, and besides, Jerry Perryman was guaranteed to be as mediocre as it got. The Crawford newspaper, the Union Star, even did a profile of me and explained how the fight was a lead-in to the NABU title fight.
Newspaper stories covering my fights were few and far between. I almost never fought close to Crawford, and most of the time they never covered it. Now I was a human interest story because of my counselor job and my overnight success as a prizefighter. Never mind that the overnight success took fourteen years.
Meanwhile, Al was still making me nuts with all his running around the trailer. It had gotten to be an every- morning thing, maybe because Billy seemed to show up uninvited almost every morning to demonstrate a new way he could fall on his head. Al didn’t like the unannounced visits, so even when Billy didn’t come he’d bark and run around to ward off anyone who might show up. The bruises and welts on my shins from when Al would duck for cover just ahead of my grasp were piling up like the notches on a cowboy’s gun.
I called my old friend Jamal for some canine guidance. Jamal was a fighter who had hung up his gloves after a lackluster pro career and he also was in the Nation of Islam. That’s where he met Walanda, a client of mine who was murdered a while back. She was Al’s original master after he flunked out of the Nation’s bomb-sniffing canine program. It wasn’t that Al couldn’t sniff explosives-in fact, he was very good at it and even helped me uncover a terrorist aiming to drop a dirty bomb on Yankee Stadium last year. The problem with Al was that he was always shitting and pissing on everything and that didn’t go over too well with the bow-tied and righteous brothers.
I wanted Jamal’s recommendations for calming Al down. I got him on his cell.
“Hey Duff-I’m surprised you even talk to little people like me now that you’ve hit the big time,” Jamal said.
“Oh, I’m big all right,” I said.
“White guy with an Irish name-shit, you got it made as long as you keep winnin’. Who they got for you?”
“Some guy named Perryman from Arkansas.”
“Boy, they takin’ care of you, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess-hey, what do I do to get my short-legged Muslim brother to settle down? He’s making me nuts.”
“Shittin’ and pissin’, huh?”
“Actually, I’ve kind of gotten used to that. It’s the crazy running all around the house.”
“Take him tracking. Have him follow someone around or just take a walk without him and leave a hunk of food at the end of your walk. He loves to find where people went.”
“You’re kidding me.”
