“How good’s the money?”
“Fifteen grand.”
“Shit-whose he got backing him?” I asked.
“You know who, with the spiky hair.” Smitty rolled his eyes.
“Where’s the fight?”
“The Garden.”
“The theater?”
“Nope, the main arena.”
“I’m in,” I said.
A chance to fight in Madison Square Garden was like getting to take batting practice with the Yankees. I’ve fought in the small theater, the Felt Forum, a few times but that wasn’t the same. This was a chance to fight in the same room, even the same ring, where Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Willie Pep, Joe Frazier, and Muhammad Ali fought.
The fight was only four days away, which meant I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to train. I was better off warming up every day, eating right, and working on a specific strategy for the guy. The next five days would be like final-exam week in college. Smitty would drill me over and over on what the guy does, how he moves, how he sets up his punches. By the end of the week I’d want to kill Smitty, but it was what I needed.
Knowing he had a serious cut in his last fight was important. Smitty told me that the contract specified the popular Mexican style gloves for the bout. They were known as the “puncher’s gloves” because they had very little padding over the knuckles. They also had a slight seam running up the side, and that seam would be an important part of my strategy. I would spend the next five days throwing my jab just to the right and dragging that seam across the bag.
I set up a schedule with Smitty and headed up the stairs to the locker room. On my way I took a peek in the auxiliary gym to check out the karate club. The guys who ran it when I was a kid didn’t run it anymore; it had changed hands a bunch of times. Through the little square window I saw a class of about fifteen, mostly guys in their late teens or early twenties.
The two black belts were shouting orders in Japanese and strutting in between the lined-up formation of the students. They swaggered back and forth and tucked their thumbs inside their black belts, occasionally making eye contact with a student after eying him up and down. Their black and red gi s were professionally pressed, and they had their names embroidered on the left sides of their uniforms.
The shorter one, Mitchell, had a thick mop of black hair, oversized biceps, and a mouth that went crooked as he barked out his orders. Harter was taller and wirier with his blond hair pulled into a Steven Seagal-inspired ponytail. Both of them had had dragons tattooed on their forearms-Mitchell’s was red and Harter’s was green. Hey, individuality is everything.
They were obviously pumping iron besides their karate training. Their biceps and pectorals were oversized in proportion to the rest of their bodies in that way that bodybuilders create their physiques. It always looked out of proportion to me and not the least bit functional. If you look at pictures of the bodies of Muhammad Ali, Ray Robinson, or, for that matter, Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee, you’ll see physique in perfect proportion and built for function.
Mitchell had four stripes on his black belt and Harter had three, so I guessed Mitchell was one degree of douchebag above Harter. Harter, with his ultra-cool green dragon tattoo displayed under his expertly folded uniform sleeve, was going off on this one scrawny kid in the back row. The kid looked like he weighed 140 pounds soaking wet, and he had a wicked pizza face. He was on his knuckles, counting out pushups in between gasps while the black belt stood over him, smirking and letting him know he didn’t have what it took to ever be a black belt.
I hated watching jerkoffs like this get their abusive shit off under the guise of martial arts discipline. It made no sense, and karate had more than its share of assholes who thrived in it because they wanted to be in charge of someone and feel powerful. It pissed me off, but that’s how a lot of karate classes worked. The goal was to break students down before you built their spirit back up. The problem was that I didn’t see the building of anything going on. What I did see was one zit-faced kid shaking and crying from pushups. Not my issue, I told myself.
I showered and hit AJ’s. A lot of people shake their heads when they hear I don’t forgo the Schlitzes when I’m training for a fight. Well, I cut back, lay off the Jim Beam, and I watch what I eat a little better. I’m a heavyweight and I don’t have to make a certain weight, and a few beers aren’t going to harm me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
“Hey, fellas,” I said, walking toward my seat just to the left of the taps.
“Rocco’s all bound up,” TC said.
“Bound up?” I made the mistake of asking.
“What’s he seeing, some dominatrix with a fetish for ropes?” Jerry Number Two said.
“I’m fuckin’ constipated again,” a very uncheerful Rocco said.
“Again… or should we say still?” Jerry Number One said.
“How about you’re an asshole again and still?” Rocco retorted.
“Isn’t that the problem?” Jerry Number Two asked. “That your asshole is still again and again?”
“Man, you did too many drugs…,” Rocco said through a grimace.
“You should lay off the cheese,” TC said. “You eat a brick of that Cracker Barrel every fuckin’ day.”
“Talk about shittin’ a brick… or not shittin’ a brick,” Jerry Number Two said, somewhat rhetorically.
“You know, I read that when John Wayne died they found forty pounds of impacted fecal material in his colon,” TC said.
“Fecal?” Jerry Number One asked.
“You know… shit,” TC said.
“What kind of shit?” Jerry Number One asked.
“Shit shit, regular shit… you know, poo,” TC said.
“No way the Duke had forty pounds of shit in him when he died.” Rocco sounded annoyed. “You’re full of shit,” Rocco said.
“Not like the Duke,” said Jerry Number Two.
“Fuck you, Jerry,” Rocco said.
Kelley was in with his back turned away from the Foursome, drinking his Coors Light and watching Notre Dame run out the clock against Michigan State in 1966 on ESPN Classic.
“Never understood Parseghian’s move here,” he said.
“Probably impacted fecal material,” I said.
“Please don’t… they’ve been on that for two hours. It’s making me sick.”
“Howard called me,” I said.
“What?”
“The other day, it was on the machine. All he said was he didn’t do it and hung up,” I said.
“And you waited to tell me this because…”
“I don’t know. I believe him and I think no one else does.”
“You’re nuts, you know that, don’t you? A serial killer disappears after two murders and you get around to telling me the next day?” Kelley said. He looked disgusted, but then again Kelley always looked disgusted. “You’ve got to call the precinct ASAP. They’ll want to check your lines and see if they can trace it.”
“That’s fine, I’ll take care of it. Relax,” I said.
“Is there anything else you’re holding back?”
“No, that’s it.”
“You sure, or is there something I’ll find out tomorrow in between discussions of how much shit John Wayne was packing?”
“No, that’s it.”
“It’s all over the national news now, you know. It’s going to be a circus. MSNBC is going to do a live remote, and they got that asshole shrink on who used to be a forensic profiler doing commentary.”
“Oh fun,” I said.
I got off the topic and had a few Schlitzes before heading home. I told the fellas about the fight in the Garden and they congratulated me. On the drive home I listened to Elvis’s ’68 Comeback Special and gave some thought to Howard and why I felt strongly about protecting him. I didn’t know much about him, he didn’t know much about me,
