Suckerpunch: (2011) (25 page)

The kid gaped at him for a beat and finally turned around for the shotgun.

Which I had in my hands.

He pulled a fish face and shiny brown spit welled from his mouth. He was just a kid, couldn’t have been over seventeen.

I hit him in the throat with the bottom corner of the gun butt and let him deflate over the edge and down into the pit.

Jairo smiled over his shoulder at me and let himself fall back in. He winced and tried to see the hole near his neck, fresh blood oozing out.

I watched the tarp and said, “Get out of there before your back gets infected and falls off.”

He slopped over to the kid.

I held the shotgun level on the tarp flap until the sounds of wet violence stopped in the pit; then I set the gun down and put the ladder in.

Jairo climbed up, and I pulled his good arm to help him with the last few steps. He was covered in blood and shit and mud and tobacco spit. For the first time, his bald head wasn’t shining. He looked me up and down and asked, “How did you get so clean?”

We got into the bathroom and closed the door and put the bench against it for show. Jairo peered at Parasite and Tezo like they were part of a spoiled food exhibit and grimaced, but he seemed impressed.

I told him, “We have to clean that hole out.”

He nodded and leaned over the tub while I ran cold water from the pipe over the bullet wound. The water had a rusty smell I hadn’t noticed before and was much quieter outside the tub, but it was loud enough for me to watch the door in case I didn’t hear the rabid mob burst in. I squeezed the flesh near Jairo’s trapezius to flush the wound, and the water running off him turned from pink to red. He hissed and swore.

“That’s going to hurt,” I said. Blood kept slipping out of the raw groove in ribbons and the water didn’t have any morphine in it, so I tore another scrap off my shirt, wrung it out under the water, and twisted the faucet shut.

Jairo pressed the new scrap over the wound, his eyes shut and his teeth showing.

“Good for now?”

“It’s nothing.”

Brazilians. I went around him and dragged Tezo farther out of the corner so I could get a good look at the glass cubes in the window frame; they were mortared together and caulked around the outer edge, but it was all old and cracked and crumbly.

I rammed a corner of the wire mesh lid into the glass. It chipped a cube and made a horrible sound, but it didn’t have enough weight to do any real damage. I glanced around the room. The sinks were bolted to the wall. Tezo was too floppy to put through a window.

The tub.

“Help me tip this over.”

“What about this?” He held Tezo’s cell phone up.

“Too small.”

“No, we call Kendall. Or Jake. We find out about Marcela first.”

“The crowd could come in any second. We have to get out of here.”

“No,” Jairo said. “If they hurt her, we find out now. That way I can kill people here and not have to come back.”

I started rocking the tub side to side. “Window first, then call.”

“I’m calling,” Jairo said.

I got the tub past its midpoint and dumped it over. Red water and trash and silt rushed around Tezo’s body and Jairo’s feet. He shuffled through it in an attempt to wash his shoes.

I reached for the phone and was more than mildly surprised when he handed it to me. I put it to my ear and didn’t hear anything. Checked the phone and saw no call had been made. “Liar,” I said.

Jairo shrugged, then winced and swore at his shoulder.

I hit the down arrow to get to the call history and saw the letter
J
for the second most recent call: Jake. I scrolled past the most recent call and was about to dial out when I looked at the most recent call again.

The person Tezo had called to see if I was fighting and to bet on me to lose. The contact was saved as
BE.

Banzai Eddie.

“Motherfucker,” I said.

Marcela first. But I had to be sure. I called the BE contact.

Three rings. “This is Eddie.” Lots of noise in the background, people talking and music blasting.

I went for deadpan psycho: “It’s me.”

“What’s up, killer? Hey, I’m getting pulled five hundred ways right now. Can you talk to Benjamin?”

Benjamin, head of marketing for Warrior.

“I’ll call you back,” I said. Cut him off.

“Who you calling?” Jairo asked. “What about Marcela?”

“Right now,” I said and called Jake.

He answered after the second ring. “Hey, how’d they do?”

“Better than expected,” I said.

“Who’s this?”

“Woody. Put Marcela on.”

“Where’s Tezo?”

“Lying at my feet with blood in his lungs. His face looks like a butcher’s garbage can. Put her on.” If Jake had a number for anyone else in the gang, he could hang up and call them. We’d be fucked. I heard talk and rustling on the other end.

Kendall said, “How you doing?”

“Is she okay?”

Jairo held still and dripped and listened. “Who, Marcela? She’s fine. Why?”

“Let me talk to her.”

“What for? Hey, you ready for tonight?”

“Kendall.”

He sighed. “Hold on.” More rustling. I heard him ask someone, “Why’s he so grumpy all the time?”

I recognized Marcela’s breathing before she spoke. “Woody?”

Somebody took the bulldozer off my shoulders and cut the noose around my neck. I gave Jairo a thumbs-up. He crossed himself. “Are you okay?”

Marcela said, “Yes, we’re at the place, the one—”

I heard a yell and the phone thumping around. I closed my eyes and held my breath.

I heard Kendall say, “What’d I tell you about that? Now you don’t get to watch this no more. Steve, change it back to ESPN.” He returned to the phone, a little out of breath. “Goddamn. She’s a sly one, huh?”

“Did you hurt her?”

“She’s
fine,”
Kendall said. “For now, anyways. You even gonna ask about Lance?”

“Fifteen minutes, wherever you say. We trade Marcela and Lance for Tezo.”

“Tezo? Who gives a shit about him?”

“Why is Banzai Eddie in Tezo’s phone?”

Silence. Then a clicking sound, like Kendall was doing something with his gum while he did some hard thinking. Then, “All right, son, listen. Up ‘til now you’ve been in a game of checkers. You’re about to fall onto a chessboard; you get what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“See, that’s why I think it’s best you sit tight and let this play out the way it’s supposed to.”

“Which is?”

“Now that you’re all
informed,
I guess that’s for you and Eddie to discuss,” Kendall said.

“So he and I will discuss it. Let Marcela and Lance go.”

“Sorry. They’re my queen and king on the board. Well, queen and pawn maybe.”

“Our deal is still on. I knock Burbank out, and they come back safe.”

He chuckled. “You just go out there and do your best.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“No time, boy. Your first Pay-Per-View broadcast just started. Damn, there’s your face! You look sweaty. Okay, gotta go. See you on live TV in, what, maybe an hour or two?” He hung up.

I looked at the time display on the phone: 7:05.

“Motherfucker.”

The tub went through the glass cubes on the first try with me on one side and Jairo on the other. The back feet got hung up on the sill so I tipped it out upside down. We both scrambled out onto the cracked asphalt. I filled my lungs with street exhaust and stale grease from a nearby restaurant and almost cried from the euphoria.

I hurried to the front corner of the building and looked around. The parking lot was full of chrome and tinted windows, probably ten cars and trucks in all. Someone had ridden a chopped Schwinn and left it leaning against the front of my truck. There was a narrow path from us to the truck, bordered on the left by the garage doors that would never open again and three of the parked cars on the right. It looked wide enough to get the truck through, but I was in a glass-half-full kind of mood.

I didn’t see anyone milling around the parking lot while they waited for me to return to the pit, but the tinted windows on the cars could have hidden an army. I thought about the guns lying inside on the tile floor. The drivers zipping past would keep going if they saw a group of guys yelling at each other in the parking lot; they’d drive into poles and buildings and call the cops if they saw guns. I said to Jairo, “Get ready.”

We started moving. I dug into my wet pocket and pulled out my key fob and punched the unlock button. The truck’s hazard lights blinked once and the horn bleated. Nobody opened a car door or came out of the building.

Jairo grabbed the Schwinn and sent it rolling into the passenger door of a lowered Impala.

I winced and waited for the alarm to start wailing. Nothing.

We got in the truck and squeezed through the narrow gap between the cars and building and shot past the corner. I dropped off the curb into the street and floored it and checked the rearview mirror. The smashed window gaped like a ragged wound, and I waited for Tezo’s mangled face to pop up in it, but it never did.

I turned left on Maryland Parkway, a block before the Strip. This time of night on a Saturday, Strip traffic would be slower than amputee bingo. I popped the console open and got my phone out—seventeen missed calls, all from Gil.

Jairo peered into the console and took out a fistful of drive-through napkins, dropped the shirt scrap onto the floor mat with a splash, and pressed the whole stack against the bullet wound.

I scrolled to Gil and made the call.

“Jesus, Woody, where the hell are you?”

“We’re on the way, ten minutes, maybe fifteen.” I could hear noise around him, people talking and laughing and some smacking that was probably someone hitting focus mitts to warm up.

He must have moved or turned because the sound faded. He said, “Did you find her?”

“No.”

“Shit, okay. Well, you gotta get here as soon as you can. The doctor needs to check you out before the fight or else you forfeit, and Eddie’s hollering about how you won’t get a job fighting colds in this town if you don’t walk through the door five minutes ago. It’s fucked up, but he seems pretty anxious to pull the plug on the main event.”

He was talking fast and I was driving fast; I wanted to tell him to grab Eddie and choke him until I got there. It took me a few seconds to catch up to what he’d said. “Forfeit?”

“Disqualified for a failed physical.”

“Christ, can’t they stall?”

“What’s happening?” Jairo asked.

Gil said, “Why would he do us any favors? You know he wants Burbank to win anyway.”

“Yeah, about that . . .” I came up on a yellow light on Sahara and watched it change to red and saw the rims of the crossing cars start to spin and blew through the intersection. Horns protested into my exhaust. “Eddie’s into something with Kendall.”

“What?”

“I don’t know any details, but he’s got something to do with Kendall grabbing Marcela.”

Jairo crushed my right forearm, letting me know

I hadn’t mentioned that to him yet. Gil said, “Are you sure?”

“Long story, but yeah. If he comes close, stuff his ass in a closet until we get there. I got some blanks he needs to fill in.”