The Barbed-Wire Kiss (14 page)

He scanned the floor seats, saw Fallon in a red chair, two rows back from the ring. Beside him sat Mickey Dunleavy, elbows on his knees, watching the action. He looked heavier than Harry remembered, his dark suit stretched tight across wide shoulders. He said something to Fallon and then sat back, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. There was no sign of Wiley.

The smaller fighter was in trouble now, losing his bearings, circling into punches instead of away from them. When the bell rang, he walked slowly back to his corner and collapsed on his stool, chest heaving. The referee leaned over him while the cornermen swabbed him down. On the other side of the ring, his opponent was on his feet, pacing, waiting for the bell.

The referee turned away, shook his head sharply. There were more boos from the crowd, and a plastic water bottle sailed through the air and skittered across the canvas. The referee swept it away with his foot, crossed the ring, and caught the winner’s forearm, raised it high.

From behind Harry, a voice said, “What a couple of pussies.”

He swiveled. Two rows behind him was the younger of the two men he’d seen go into the Sand Castle that day. He wore a yellow Fila warm-up suit over a white T-shirt, and his high-top basketball shoes were propped on the seat in front of him.

“He asked me to come up, keep you company,” he said. “Make sure you didn’t get lost.”

Harry looked him over, then turned back to the ring. There were two new fighters in there now, both Hispanic. One was short, dark, and heavily muscled, with a broad Indian face. The other was thinner, lighter skinned, Puerto Rican maybe, with smooth, almost pretty features. They met in the center of the ring, touched gloves, and went back to their corners.

“It’s the Mexican kid he came to see,” Warm-up Suit said. “We’ll go down after it’s over.”

The bell rang and the two fighters came out. The good-looking one was moving fast. He stretched out his left glove as if measuring distance, keeping the other man at bay. He shuffled his feet, hot-dogging it, and the Mexican stepped in and hit him a solid shot beneath the left elbow.

A cry went up from the crowd, but the light-skinned fighter covered up, took the follow-up blows on his elbows and forearms, stealing time to catch his breath. Then he peeked out, flashed a jab that hit the Mexican above the right eye and snapped his head back. He tried to close, but the Mexican swung wildly at him with both arms, angry. They clinched, staggered around the ring as one until the referee broke them up.

At ringside, Fallon and Dunleavy were in conference, heads together.

The bell rang for the second round and the two fighters came out strong, the light-skinned one firing lefts. The Mexican took a couple in the head, then waded in, started to work the body again. But the other fighter danced away, used his longer reach to land a solid shot on the Mexican’s left ear. A chant came up from the ringside seats: “NAN-do! NAN-do! NAN-do!”

Nando acknowledged them with a quick shuffle, stung the Mexican with another jab, and then walked right into a body shot that doubled him. They tangled again, clinched, Nando sucking wind. But when they broke, he managed to tag the Mexican solidly on the jaw, sending him stumbling back.

Nando closed then, hurt but working through it, looking for the openings. The Mexican bulled in again but Nando kept him at arm’s length, popping jabs, every third one followed by a solid right.

The Mexican was bleeding from his left eyebrow now. He planted his feet, head down, threw big, slow blows that bruised arms and elbows but didn’t get through. By the time the bell rang, the cut was bleeding freely. He slumped onto his stool and his cornermen worked at the cut, swabbed blood from his eye.

“That’s it,” Warm-Up Suit said. “I think Pancho there lost his chance.”

But when the bell rang, the Mexican was up and moving, head down as if he intended to force the other fighter out of the ring with his body alone. Most of the ringside crowd were on their feet now. Fallon and Dunleavy sat impassive.

The Mexican pushed forward, bracing his feet, throwing blows that would have ended the fight if they had connected. But Nando hung back, reading the distance. He made the mangled eyebrow his target, fired shots into it whenever he could, then danced away. The Mexican plodded on, as if walking through mud, and Nando set him up with a left jab, then hammered him with a right. Sweat, blood, and spittle flew. The Mexican took one drunken step in the wrong direction and Nando hit him three times in quick succession. The Mexican sat down hard on the canvas, a look of confusion on his face, and the crowd roared.

“That’s it for the beaner,” Warm-Up Suit said.

And it was. He made it back up and to his corner, but when the bell rang for the next round, he stayed there. Nando leaped into the air and his cornermen crawled through the ropes to join him in the ring. They had to hold him still long enough for the referee to come over and raise his glove.

Harry stood, heard the seat behind him flip up as Warm-Up Suit did the same. Harry made his way to the aisle, started down the concrete steps, not waiting for him. Below, he saw Dunleavy and Fallon already out of their seats, coming toward him. He met them on the floor.

“How are you, Harry?” Dunleavy said, putting his hand out.

He was a full head taller than Harry and heavier. He wore a suit jacket and white shirt, but no tie. His short black hair was showing gray on the sides and his face was ruddier, but his eyes were the same dull gray Harry remembered. His grip was strong.

“Mickey,” he said.

“That was a sad-ass performance to have to watch,” Fallon said. He was dressed the same way he had been at the country club, this time all in black. “Sorry to put you through it. Let’s go get a drink. They got a bar set up outside.”

They went through a side door and out onto a roped-off area of the boardwalk. There was a minibar and a handful of tables with wooden chairs set up, but only one was occupied: two young black men nursing bottles of Heineken. The pair watched them until Dunleavy met their eyes, then they looked away.

“Let’s sit down,” Fallon said.

The night had chilled slightly and a light fog hung over the water. The fast-food stands and fortune-telling booths that lined the boardwalk were all dark and shuttered, some for good. The only sounds out here were the waves rolling up the beach and the muffled noise of the crowd inside. The air smelled of salt water and creosote.

Fallon dragged a chair out, turned to Warm-Up Suit.

“Tommy,” he said, “do me a favor, will you? Go see if you can find Saba. He’ll be looking for me. Tell him I’ll catch up with him later. We’ll talk about the kid.”

Dunleavy sat down. Tommy looked at him, then back at Fallon.

“Eddie,” he said, his voice tight. “I think we got a misunderstanding here.”

Fallon sat down, signaled to the middle-aged black woman standing alongside the bar. Harry remained standing.

“What do you mean?” Fallon said, touching himself for a cigarette.

“If you don’t want me around while you talk, just say it,” Tommy said. “You don’t need to come up with some bullshit errand for me. That’s an insult.”

Fallon found his pack, took it out.

“What bullshit?” he said. “The guy’s going to be looking for me. I don’t want him coming out and bothering us when we’re talking, that’s all. Relax.”

He took out his lighter, got the Kool lit.

Tommy looked at him, chewed his lower lip. “One of these days, Eddie,” he said, “we got to talk about some things. I think you’re a little confused about the situation.”

The waitress came over to take their order and Tommy looked at her, then started back toward the hall, walking slowly. Harry pulled out a chair, sat down.

“You shouldn’t bust his balls like that,” Dunleavy said. “He’s a good kid.”

“What a hothead,” Fallon said. “You see that look? Like he wanted to take a swing at me?”

“You should show a little more respect,” Dunleavy said. “Humor the kid. He’s a hard worker.”

“Maybe so, but I feel like he’s in my face every time I turn around.”

Fallon ordered bottles of Lowenbrau. Out beyond the jetty, Harry could see the lights of fishing boats in the darkness.

“This is better,” Fallon said. “It’s hard to concentrate with fifteen hundred screaming spics around you.”

Dunleavy turned to Harry. “What’s it been?” he said. “Six years?”

“About that.”

The waitress brought their beer and glasses. Fallon gave her a twenty, told her to keep the change. He poured beer into his glass.

“This guy Saba,” he said. “He’s trying to get me to put some money into this stable of fighters he’s bringing up. The Mexican was supposed to be his star.”

“Looked like he ran out of steam,” Harry said.

“Ran out of heart, more like it,” Dunleavy said. He sat back, tipped his bottle into the glass. His wrist was thick, vein-roped. “None of it counts if you can’t go the distance.”

Fallon shifted in his seat, looked uncomfortable, a flash of irritation on his face.

“Excuse me for a minute here,” he said. He stood up. “I’ll be right back. Give you guys a chance to talk about old times.”

As Fallon went back inside the hall, Harry looked over to see the two black men watching them again. They wore FUBU satin jackets and cargo pants, braided gold around their necks. The one on the right wore a diamond-studded cross on a silver chain that hung halfway down his chest.

“Prostate trouble,” Dunleavy said. “Guy can’t go a half hour without having to take a piss. He’s getting to be like an old woman.”

Dunleavy looked older, harder than the last time Harry had seen him. The lines around his eyes were cut deeper and there was a fleshiness to him that hadn’t been there before. He still radiated strength, but the aura of health was gone.

“Kind of a surprise, isn’t it?” Dunleavy said. “Running into each other like this?”

Harry poured his own beer, stopped when the glass was half full.

“How’s the stomach?”

“Fine, now.”

“I caught one in the arm once.” Dunleavy touched the fleshy part of his arm over the left elbow. “Chasing a stolen car on the Turnpike. They ditched it, ran. When I went after them, one of them turned and started popping off at me with this little twenty-five he had. I was so charged up I didn’t even realize he’d tagged me. The piece of shit jammed and he was still trying to clear it when I put six in him. You got yours too, I heard.”

Harry didn’t answer.

“Twenty years ago—hell, ten—you would have gotten a medal for it.”

“Maybe not.”

“They turn on you quick, don’t they? You make the job your life, and the next thing you know they come down on you for doing it too well. I went through the same thing.”

Harry drank some of the beer. Fallon came back to the table, sat down.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “There’s a mosaic on the wall in the men’s room, looks like fucking Michelangelo painted it, but half the pissers are broken.”

“What’d you expect?” Dunleavy said.

“I tell you, though,” Fallon said, “This used to be some place. When I was growing up they had shows here all the time. Hendrix, the Stones. Even the Beatles. And before that it was Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, they all played here. Now it’s a place where niggers and spics pay twenty dollars a pop to watch other niggers and spics pound the crap out of each other. I guess it’s—what do they call it?—cathartic.”

Harry looked past Dunleavy’s shoulder to where the black men sat, listening to them. He wondered if Fallon was unaware of their presence or just didn’t care.

“So let’s talk,” Harry said.

“Okay.” Fallon settled back. “First, let me say I had no idea you two knew each other. We didn’t exactly get off on the right foot. I’m sorry about what happened at the club.”

“That Lester should cut down on his steroid intake,” Dunleavy said. “He didn’t know what he was getting into.”

“But you know how it is,” Fallon said to Harry. “When you’re in my position, somebody’s always trying to get one over on you. At the time I didn’t know you. You came out of nowhere, you understand what I’m saying?”

“You still don’t know me.”

“Maybe not. But Mickey filled me in. He told me you were a stand-up guy. If he’d been at the club that day, everything would have gone differently. But what’s past is past.”

“Okay,” Harry said.

“So you met my wife?”

Harry looked into his eyes, saw no reaction there.

“Only briefly,” he said. He lifted his glass.

“What did you think?”

He shrugged. “A beautiful woman.”

“Yeah, God bless America, right? An old guy like me. We’ve been married close to three years already, she tell you that?”

“No, we didn’t talk much.”

“Three years. Why she stays with me, sometimes I don’t know. A high-maintenance woman, you know what I mean? I have to keep my eye on her all the time.”

“How’s that?”

“Oh, I don’t mean she fools around on me or anything. It’s just that she likes to test me every once in a while. We were out in Vegas last month and she must have dropped ten grand of my money. You should see that woman bet. Never a thought to it, never a plan. Always the hunch, the feeling. The risk doesn’t matter to her. But that’s how women are, right?”

“I guess.”

“She used to live around here, years ago. But I met her down in Florida, working in a restaurant, believe it or not. Girl with a college education. She’d gotten hooked up with the guy that ran the place.”

“What happened?”

“It was just like in the movies. Love at first sight. I used to come into the restaurant sometimes, flirt with her, you know, all that stuff. Then we got to talking a little. This guy she was with at the time, he was a jerk-off. A drinker, a doper, out of control, running the business into the ground, stealing out of the register with both hands. She was looking to get out, but he wouldn’t let her go, you know? He was stupid.”

“Stupid?”

“There’s times you should fight to protect something, and there’s times when you should step aside and let things take their course. This guy didn’t know which was which.”