The Best American Noir of the Century

matador. After his bullfighting career ended, he moved to Los Angeles, getting into shape at boxing gyms and eventually becoming a trainer and cutman, who attends to a fighter’s injuries between rounds.

After trying unsuccessfully for forty years, he finally sold his first short story to a literary journal, Zyzzyva, in 1999. Once he was published, he chose a pseudonym, an amalgam of Francis Xavier, the sixteenth-century philosopher, teacher, and saint, and his favorite actor, Peter O’Toole. A collection of his short stories, Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner, was published in 2000. Incidents from several of these stories were adapted for the screenplay of Million Dollar Baby (2004); the film won four Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Director (Clint Eastwood, who also starred), Best Actress (Hilary Swank), and Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). Many of the stories were based on the real- life exploits of Boyd’s friend Dub Huntley, who taught him to box. Four years after Toole’s death, his long novel, Pound for Pound, was published to outstanding reviews. In 2007 the AMC cable channel announced a series of one-hour boxing dramas based on Toole’s short stories.

“Midnight Emissions” was first published in the anthology Murder on the Ropes (Los Angeles: New Millennium, 2001); it was selected for the 2002 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories.

Butcherin’ was done while the deceased was still alive,” Junior said.

See, we was at the gym and I’d been answering a few things. Old Junior’s a cop, and his South Texas twang was wide and flat like mine. ‘Course he was dipping, and he let a stream go into the Coke bottle he was carrying in the hand that wasn’t his gun hand. His blue eyes was paler than a washed-out work shirt.

“Hail,” he said, “one side of the mouth’d been slit all the way to the earring.”

See, when the police find a corpse in Texas, their first question ain’t who done it, it’s what did the dead do to deserve it?

* * *

Billy Clancy’d been off the police force a long time before Kenny Coyle come along, but he had worked for the San Antonia Police Department a spell there after boxing. He made some good money for himself on the side — down in dark town, if you know what I’m saying? That’s after I trained him as a heavyweight in the old El Gallo, or Fighting Cock gym off Blanco Road downtown. We worked together maybe six years all told, starting off when he was a amateur. Billy Clancy had all the Irish heart in the world. At six-three and two-twenty-five, he had a fine frame on him, most of his weight upstairs. He had a nice clean style, too, and was quick as a sprinter. But after he was once knocked out for the first time? He had no chin after that. He’d be kicking ass and taking names, but even in a rigged fight with a bum, if he got caught, down he’d go like a longneck at a ice house.

He was a big winner in the amateurs, Billy was, but after twelve pro fights, he had a record of eight and four, with his nose broke once — that’s eight wins by KO, but he lost four times by KO, so that’s when he hung ‘em up. For a long time, he went his way and I went mine. But then Billy Clancy opened Clancy’s Pub with his cop money. That was his big break. There was Irish night with Mick music, corned beef and cabbage, and Caffery’s Ale on tap and Harp Lager from Dundalk. And he had Messkin night with mariachis and folks was dancin’ corridos and the band was whooping out rancheras and they’d get to playing some of that nortena polka music that’d have you laughing and crying at the same time. For shrimp night, all you can eat, Billy trucked in fresh Gulf shrimp sweeter than plum jelly straight up from Matamoros on the border. There was kicker, and hillbilly night, and on weekends there was just about the best jazz and blues you ever did hear. B. B. King did a whole week there one time. It got to be a hell of a deal for Billy, and then he opened up a couple of more joints till he had six in three towns, and soon Billy Clancy was somebody all the way from San Antonia up to Dallas, and down to Houston. Paid all his taxes, obeyed all the laws, treated folks like they was ladies and gentlemen, no matter how dusty the boots, how faded the dress, or if a suit was orange and purple and green.

By then he had him a home in the historic old Monte Vista section oi San Antonia. His wife had one of them home-decorating businesses on her own, and she had that old place looking so shiny that it was like going back a hundred years. His kids was all in private school, all of them geared to go to UT up Austin, even though the dumb young one saw himself as a Aggie.

So one day Billy called me for some “Q” down near the river, knew I was a whore for baby back ribs. Halfway through, he just up and said, “Red, I want back in.”

See, he got to missing the smell of leather and sweat, and the laughter of men — he missed the action, is what, and got himself back into the game the only way he could, managing fighters. He was good at it, too. By then he was better’n forty, and myself I was getting on — old’s when you sit on the crapper and you have to hold your nuts up so they don’t get wet. But what with my rocking-chair money every month, and the money I made off Billy’s fighters, it got to where I was doing pretty good. Even got me some ostrich boots and a El Patron 30x beaver Stetson, yip!

What Billy really wanted was a heavyweight. With most managers, it’s only the money, ‘cause heavies is what brings in them stacks of green fun-tickets. Billy wanted fun-tickets, too, but with Billy it was more like he wanted to get back something what he had lost. ‘Course, finding the right heavyweight’s like finding a cherry at the high school prom.

Figure it, with only twenty, twenty-five good wins, ‘specially if he can crack, a heavy can fight for a titles worth millions. There’s exceptions, but most little guys’ll fight forever and never crack maybe two hundred grand. One of the reason’s ‘cause there’s so many of them. Other reason’s ‘cause they’s small. Fans like seeing heavyweights hit the canvas.

But most of today’s big guys go into the other sports where you don’t get hit the way you do in the fights. It ain’t held against you in boxing if you’re black nowadays, but if you’re a white heavy it makes it easier to pump paydays, and I could tell that it wouldn’t make Billy sad if I could get him a white boy—Irish or Italian would be desired. But working with the big guys takes training to a level that can break your back and your heart, and I wasn’t all that sure a heavy was what I wanted, what with me being the one what’s getting broke up.

See, training’s a hard row to hoe. It ain’t only the physical and mental parts for the fighter what’s hard, but it’s hard for the trainer, too. Fighters can drive you crazy, like maybe right in the middle of a fight they’re winning, when they forget everything what you taught them? And all of a sudden they can’t follow instructions from the corner? Pressure, pain, and being out of gas will make fighters go flat brain-dead on you. Your fighter’s maybe sweated off six or eight pounds in there, his body’s breaking down, and the jungle in him is yelling quick to get him some gone. Trainers come to know how that works, so you got to hang with your boy when he’s all alone out there in the canvas part of the world. He takes heart again, ‘cause he knows with you there he’s still got a fighting chance to go for the titties of the win. ‘Course, that means cutting grommets, Red Ryder.

Everyone working corners knows you’ll more’n likely lose more’n you’ll ever win, that boxing for most is refried beans and burnt tortillas. But winning is what makes your birdie chirp, so you got to always put in your mind that losing ain’t nothing but a hitch in the git-along.

Working with the big guys snarls your task. How do you tell a heavyweight full-up on his maleness to use his mind instead of his sixty-pound dick? How do you teach someone big as a garage that it ain’t the fighter with the biggest brawn what wins, but it’s the one what gets there first with deadly force? How do you make him see that hitting hard ain’t the problem, but that hitting right is? How do you get through to him that you don’t have to be mad at someone to knock him out, same as you don’t have to be in a frenzy to kill with a gun? Heavyweights got that upper-body strength what’s scary, it’s what they’d always use to win fights at school and such, so it’s their way to work from the waist up. That means they throw arm punches, but arm punches ain’t good enough. George Foreman does it, but he’s so strong, and don’t hardly miss, so he most times gets away with punching wrong. ‘Course he didn’t get away with it in Zaire with Mr. Ali.

So the big deal with heavies is getting them to work from the waist down as well as from the waist up. And they got to learn that the last thing that happens is when the punch lands. A thousand things got to happen before that can happen. Those things begin on the floor with balance. But how do you get across that he’s got to work hard, but not so hard that he harms himself? How do you do that in a way what don’t threaten what he already knows and has come to depend on? How do you do it so’s it don’t jar how he has come to see himself and his