Otto Penzler (ed) - Murder 06 - Murder on the Ropes raw Read online

  Wanting to feel more of that sun, he tried to stand. Heard a voice in the distance...

  “Stay down! Forgodsake, Mick!” Nate was yelling at him. Couldn’t make sense of it. Realized he was on one knee. Unless he got up, the parade would pass him by...and suddenly he was back.

  The ref had parked K in a neutral corner. And he was counting Mick out.

  Damn! He’d been knocked down. Okay. Been here before. Mick waited till the ref said seven, then staggered to his feet, wobbled, almost fell again.

  “You okay?” Grissom yelled in his ear. Crowd was roaring, drowning him out. “Take a minute if you want! You got fouled! Want to walk it off?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Kroffut! Get back in your corner!” The ref roared as K came charging across the ring. Seeing K jolted Mick a notch closer to reality. But when Grissom asked again if he was all right, Mick said yes because he was still in Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium on the sunniest September morn of his life.

  Mick’s serene glow continued even as Grissom was cleaning his gloves, signaling for the bout to continue. And perhaps the Olympic sun saved him. Dazed, rubber-kneed, Mick instinctively danced away from K. After weeks of practicing Sunlight Shining on Water, the sunglow in his mind freed a lifetime of trained reflexes to trigger automatically.

  Staying outside, only vaguely aware of his surroundings, Mick managed to deflect most of K’s punches. The pain of those that struck home gradually dragged him back from Barcelona, to Detroit, to the arena. Into the ring. And the lights, and the roaring crowd.

  Felt his legs coming back, firming up. Realized he was in a Sunlight on Water mode. And that it was working. Sort of. K was helping. Enraged at seeing his easy knockout slip away, he’d reverted to the street fighter he was, windmilling wild haymakers at Mick’s head. Deadly punches, but easy to slip.

  The timekeeper’s ten-second warning sent K’s fury over the edge. Desperate to finish Mick before the bell, K lunged again. But this time Mick sidestepped the rush, firing off a machine-gun combination that caught K full in the face, snapping his head back, bloodying his nose.

  K was so surprised he stood like a stone after the bell rang, the two of them glaring at each other until Grissom stepped between, waving them to their corners.

  Slumping on the stool, Mick sagged against the turnbuckle pads, sucking air, grateful for the support of the ropes. Grateful to be breathing.

  Half his consciousness was still dreaming in the golden Barcelona sun. Seeing faces reflected in the light. A high school teacher. Math? Couldn’t think of her name. Dead now.

  Theresa and her beautiful daughter. “It must be hard to love something that doesn’t love you back...” Theresa. Swiveling slowly, he searched the faces in the crowd. And found her. She was on her feet, moving toward the aisle with Tony Brooks. Ramos was slumped in his seat, out cold. Brooks caught Mick’s eye, grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. Okay.

  “Mick?” Wash’s voice seemed to come from far away. “We’re almost there. Third round’s coming up. Just walk out, mix it up a little and go down. You hear me?”

  Mick didn’t answer. Closed his eyes instead, shutting out everything, then took a deep, ragged breath and let it out slowly.

  “No,” he said.

  “No? No what?”

  “No to all of it,” Mick swallowed. It was hard to concentrate. Part of him wanted to return to Olympic Stadium, hearing the crowd, feeling the sun on his face. “No dive. No deal. I can take this guy.”

  “What! Are you nuts? He’s killin’ you! You’ve earned your money! Go down!”

  “No. The fix is off, Wash. Theresa’s safe and Ramos is out of the picture. K’s on his own now. So am I.”

  “But you made a deal! I made one!”

  “I know you did. You were in it with Tommy from the first, weren’t you? Had to be. You were the only one who could tell him who Theresa was. A little insurance to make sure I stayed fixed, right? You sold us out, Wash. Me and Nate both.”

  “Dammit, Mick, you’re past it and you wouldn’t listen. You gotta listen now. Tommy Duke—”

  “Fuck Tommy Duke! You think after fightin’ this guy I’m worried about Tommy fuckin’ Duke? But you better worry about him, pal. Because he paid you to fix me and I’m done playin’ along. Hope you and Tommy both bet real heavy on this fight, Wash, because I’m about to put his boy down.”

  “Seconds out!” the timekeeper called.

  “Mick, don’t be stupid! You’ll walk away with nothin’ if you walk away at all. It’s crazy!”

  Mick didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Wash was right. He probably was past it. Time to get out. But not Tommy Duke’s way. Or Wash’s.

  Maybe he was crazy to care about this game. But you can’t choose what you love. It chooses you. You can only honor it. Or not. And that choice is what you are.

  Biting down on his mouthpiece, Mick stared up into the TV lights. Almost went into Sunlight Shining on Water. But didn’t.

  Instead, he breathed deeply, smelling the crowd, hearing their rumble like distant thunder. Then he stood up, steadying himself, staring across the ring at K.

  He wanted to remember this. The noise. The pain. All of it. Clear and deem. Maybe he was getting punchy. Because he felt eighteen again. Olympian. Eager for the bell to sound.

  When it rang, K came charging out of his corner, teeth bared, furious. Mick marched calmly out to meet him. And lightly

  tapped his gloves.

  Startled, K glanced at the ref. Both of them looked so surprised Mick couldn’t help grinning around his mouthpiece.

  “Last round,” he said.

  IN THE TANK

  by Andrew Bergman

  Jerry Merman was a pudgy and freckled guy of about thirty-five who proudly introduced himself as a second cousin of the comedian Morey Amsterdam and then waited for a boffo reaction. He didn’t get one. 1 asked him to sit down and he did, but the Negro kid who had come in with him remained standing. When I suggested that he sit down also, the kid didn’t budge, and when I asked him his name, he looked questioningly over at Jerry Merman.

  “His name is Typhoon Walker,” Merman answered, taking a white handkerchief from the pocket of his blue suit jacket and patting down his brow. It was a gray but humid Wednesday afternoon in the spring of 1952, and my fan wasn’t working much better than usual.

  “Interesting name,” I said. “He a weatherman or a fighter?” “Correct on the second guess,” Merman said pleasantly. “He’s a pugilist, a light-heavy.” He dabbed at his neck. “You know they sell air conditioners these days, Mr. LeVine.”

  “I think I read about that in Popular Science." I looked over at the young fighter. “Take a load off your feet, Mr. Walker.”

  Walker didn’t make eye contact; he stood staring at the floor, his large fists knotted together in front of him. It was obvious that sitting down in a white man’s office didn’t come any easier to Typhoon Walker than asking for a job running the Bank of New York. “You from the South, Mr. Walker?” I asked.

  The light-heavy nodded in the affirmative, moving his lips as if in silent prayer.

  “Bull’s-eye, Mr. LeVine.” Merman dove right in again. “Guess you’re a private dick for a reason. Typhoon’s from Mississippi, doesn’t get any more South than that. You could tell because he’s so shy, is that it?”

  “Something like that,” 1 told him. Walker had a long, sorrowful face, and his biceps rolled like dark music from beneath his short-sleeved white shirt. His hair was cut close to his well-shaped skull and his ears weren’t much bigger than a child’s. Despite the impressive musculature, he looked less than intimidating. In point of fact, he looked frightened.

  “Go ahead and sit, kid,” Merman told him. “Do what the man asks.” Typhoon Walker finally sat himself down in a most gingerly fashion, as if my oak chair held an electric charge.

  I leaned back behind my desk and started unwrapping a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint. I had quit smoking precisely sixteen and a half days before.
“So what can I do for you gentlemen?”

  Merman cleared his throat noisily. “I have a problem,” he began. “Typhoon is on the undercard of the Billy Graham-Rocky Castellani fight on Friday. You follow boxing, Mr. LeVine?”

  “I do. Not avidly, but I know who’s who. Graham-Castellani could be a decent fight.”

  “Could be, unless Graham plays it cute, which he has a tendency to do.” Merman took a small cigar from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “Won’t smoke it,” he said, too eager to please by half. “Just like to chew it.”

  “You can smoke it or stick it in your ear. All the same to me.” I smiled at Merman affably, and for the first time I saw a flicker of a smile twitch at the corner of Typhoon Walker’s mouth. “Are you Typhoon’s manager, Mr. Merman?”

  “Call me Jerry.” A drop of sweat hung from the tip of his substantial nose and then dropped onto his shirtfront. It was warm, but not that warm, and 1 wondered if Merman wasn’t a doper of

  some kind. “Yes, I have a half-interest in Typhoon with a few other sportsmen. I’m an investor by trade, but I enjoy the sporting life.” This guy seemed as much like an investor as I do a ballroom dancer. “What do you invest in?”

  “Talent,” he said with some pride. “Talent of all kinds. Some singers, a couple comedians, and a few fighters.”

  “So you’re an agent then?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t like that word, right, Typhoon?” He looked at the kid from Mississippi, and for the first time Typhoon spoke a complete and comprehensible sentence.

  “That’s right, Mr. Merman, you sure don’t,” is what he said, and then he resumed examining his hands.

  “And who are your partners?” I asked Merman.

  “Different people for different ventures. Obviously, handling a young fighter like Typhoon is a different enterprise than handling a chanteuse like the inimitable Lily Francoise, who’s opening a limited engagement this Friday in the Champagne Lounge at the Drake.” “And you have a problem concerning your fighter, which is why you came here with him?”

  “We have a big problem.” Now it was “we.”

  He dug into his jacket pocket and handed me an envelope. I leaned across the desk and took it. Across the front of the envelope was written in perfect calligraphy:

  Mr. Jerry Merman

  Personal & Confidential

  “Nice handwriting,” I said.

  “I’d call it exquisite, actually,” Merman said.

  I opened the envelope, which had not been glued shut, but sealed with a gold adhesive circle on the back. Typhoon Walker leaned forward in his chair as I lifted the gold seal, as if to get a better look.

  The letter was brief and to the point, and rendered in the same silken hand as the envelope.

  Merman—

  Your light-heavyweight, Walker, will

  be shot to death if he does not go down

  and stay down in the third round on

  Friday night. This is not an idle threat

  and do not take it as such.

  Friends of White Athletes

  I placed the letter and the envelope on my desk.

  “Not a pleasant thing to receive,” I said.

  “I’m terrified,” Merman said, but he didn’t sound terrified, not even close. His fighter licked his lips and stared at the floor. “How about you, kid?” I said to the light-heavyweight.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly, examining the parquet floor. “Seem pretty crazy.”

  “How do you mean crazy?”

  Merman piped up again. “He means someone has to be crazy...”

  “Mr. Merman,” I told him with some force, “if I ask your fighter a question, it means I want him to answer it. If you keep up this ventriloquist act, I’ll give you the names of a half dozen perfectly competent shamuses who’ll be more than happy to humor you as long as you pay them in U.S. currency.”

  Merman spread his hands in a gesture of good fellowship. “I was just trying to speed things along.”

  I turned back to the fighter. “Tell me what you think, kid.” Walker wet his lips once more. “This a four-round fight, mister. Why should anybody care what happen? Bet big money on a four-round fight? Don’t make no sense.”

  The kid sat back in his chair, as exhausted as if he had just completed a filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate.

  ‘“Friends of White Athletes.’” I said to no one in particular. “Sounds like a race thing, not a gambling thing, unless that’s just a red herring. Or a white herring.”

  “Plenty of colored fighters,” Merman said. “Why my kid? To make him an example? Makes no sense, just like he said.”

  I held the letter up to the light, as if looking for a secret message. All I saw was a watermark.

  “Let me see what I can do,” I told the two men. “And I need to hang on to this letter. My fee is fifty dollars a day, plus expenses.”

  Merman rubbed his nose. “That means you work exclusive for us?”

  “That means 1 charge fifty dollars a day plus expenses. You don’t like my work, you’re free to dump me at any instant. And I want a hundred in advance.”

  Merman smiled, but only with his mouth; his brown eyes didn’t join in the fun. “You’re a tough son of a bitch. That’s just what Typhoon and I need.” He took a billfold from his inside jacket pocket, removed five twenties sharp enough to slice cheese with, and laid them flat on my desk, along with his business card. Then he and his fighter arose and headed for the door.

  “Time to train.”

  “Where do you train, kid?” I asked Typhoon Walker.

  The fighter stared at his sneakers. “They got me over at Hochstein’s.”

  “Where else,” Merman said brightly. Then he opened the door for his fighter, winked at me for no reason I could fathom, and left the office.

  Over a solitary lunch at the Stage Delicatessen, I ate a whitefish platter and studied the letter. The handwriting was truly exquisite, which was not only incongruous but confounding. It was the type of calligraphy that nuns had taught childhood friends of mine who suffered through their Catholic educations with reddened knuckles and sore behinds. The beauty of the script only made the note more sinister. Beyond that, I was clueless, which was perfectly appropriate for this stage of the investigation, to wit, the stage where I have lunch and wonder why the hell I wasn’t born rich. I polished off my last pickle and decided to go downtown and see what was happening over at the legendary Hochstein’s Gymnasium.

  Hochstein’s gym was an ancient establishment on West Twenty-ninth Street that was unprepossessing on the outside and got a lot worse once you stepped through the door. It was badly lit and echoed with the sounds of leather being struck and young men grunting and not infrequently farting as they aimed their fists at objects both animate and inanimate. Hochstein’s existed on two floors, with boxing rings on each and a full array of light and heavy bags, plus rooms for showering and changing. Men of varying ages and shapes stood almost motionless and watched the boxers train, commenting to each other from the sides of their mouths or not saying anything at all. Some of these men were professionals, some were bookmakers, some were undoubtedly criminals, and others were like me, curious and oddly startled, like visitors to a city zoo.

  At the time of my entrance, a couple of lightweights were enthusiastically banging each other around the front ring. They wore protective headgear and oversized gloves. A diminutive trainer wearing a porkpie hat stood beside the ring holding a stopwatch; he directed a steady stream of advice toward the taller of the two skinny kids.

  “Downstairs, Chico! Downstairs!” the trainer hollered.

  The taller kid responded by firing a couple of left hooks deep into his sparring partner’s ribs. The sparring partner’s face reddened behind his headgear and he countered with a right uppercut that the tall kid blocked with his forearms. The tall kid missed a wild left to the head, but came right back with a right to the shorter man’s stomach, then danced away before t
he little trainer said “time.” The two fighters turned and leaned over the ropes; they were both breathing hard.

  “Better, Chico,” the trainer said in a hoarse croak. “Not so much head-hunting.” He waved at the sparring partner. “Okay, Vinnie, that’s it.” Vinnie nodded like a vaudeville horse, then climbed out of the ring with surprising grace. Chico stood and awaited further instructions.

  The trainer threw him a towel. “Go take your shower, kid. Then we’ll talk.”

  Chico hopped childlike over the ropes and jogged toward the shower room. I smiled amiably at the little man in the porkpie hat.

  “Quick hands,” I said.

  The trainer took a Tiparillo from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “If his brains were that quick, we’d be in business. Only had ten fights. We’ll see.” He squinted at me and lit his cheap cigar, which ignited like yesterday’s funnies. “You got a fighter here?”

  “Nope. I’m just a tourist.” I handed him my card, which he took and studied for so long I began to wonder if he was literate.

  Finally he looked up. “You know an Abe LeVine?”

  “No.”

  “He was in the dress business, had a stroke, then retired. Had a piece of a middleweight I trained, Johnny Nitro.” The trainer slid my card into his shirt pocket, then extended his small workingman’s hand. “Barney Adelman. What can I do for a private dick?”

  I asked him if he knew anything about Typhoon Walker or Jerry Merman and he nodded.

  “I seen Walker train around here and he definitely has possibilities—very quick, long reach, tremendous jab and straight right. Quiet kid, almost retard-quiet, but he ain’t a retard ’cause I heard him talk a couple times.” Adelman looked over my shoulder and waved at a heavy-set man who had just entered the gym. The man was wearing a fur coat and a fedora. “Hiya, Nick,” the trainer said.