The Big Bout Read online

  No one was nearby. They had waited until the door behind me was closed and I was too far away to duck back in or yell for help.

  I had no play here.

  I had to think fast.

  “You’re not going to hurt her,” I said.

  He shook his head. “She ah family. Be-rong with us.”

  “What about her having to marry some old guy?” I asked.

  “He ah very wealthy. Make ah good ah husband for dishonored girl. She ah be treated rike ah royarty.”

  It took me a moment to get that he was saying royalty.

  “But none of that matters if she doesn’t want to marry him,” I said, trying not to appear to be giving in too easily.

  “Different ah customs. Take ah now or die.”

  Both gunsels pressed their respective barrels deeper into me, the one in the front just above my gunshot wound.

  I flinched. And I wasn’t faking.

  “Okay,” I said. “Swear to me as a man of honor you won’t hurt her, and I’ll take you to her.”

  “She ah not ah be hurt. Swear.”

  “And you won’t hurt any of us,” I said.

  “Just want ah girl. No one get ah hurt if we ah get her.”

  “Swear to me on your word as an honorable man,” I said.

  “Swear.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I’ll take you to her. I’ll drive. You follow me.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  They led me over to their car and put me in the passenger seat with one gunsel behind me and one beside me driving, both with their guns still pointed at me.

  “Go up and take a right on eleventh,” I said.

  “You ah try and ah trick us, you ah die.”

  I nodded.

  “Where ah is she?”

  “We’ve been moving her around a lot. Different places. Different people watching her. We have an injured friend hiding in the hospital under a different name. She’s in his room for a few hours this morning with another female friend––a reporter, Kay Hudson.”

  He nodded.

  If they had been watching me they had probably seen Kay.

  I didn’t have a plan exactly. I was mostly making it all up as I went along, trying to give myself more time to come up with one. But at some point this morning Howell or Folsom were supposed to be interviewing Jeff and Kay. Maybe one or both of them were there now.

  As we pulled up to Lisenby Hospital, I turned in the seat to face Miki’s uncle.

  “My friend is very, very ill,” I said. “I don’t want him disturbed and you gave me your word no one would get hurt. Remember what I’ve done for Miki and your family. I found her. I saved her. That’s got to count for something.”

  He nodded. “It ah why you ah still arive.”

  “How do you want to do this?” I asked.

  He studied the building. There was no obvious or easy way.

  “He ah go with you,” he said, nodding to the young gunsel beside him. “Any ah trouble, he ah shoot you. She ah not there, he ah shoot you. You ah try anything at ah all, he ah shoot you. Understand?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “anything happens and he ah shoot me.”

  He looked at the young guy beside him. “You ah wear hat and sun grasses. Keep ah hand on gun in ah pocket, pointed at ah his back ah whole time. Do not ah hesitate to ah shoot him.”

  He nodded and gave me a wolfish grin.

  We walked through the front door of the hospital, just like he wasn’t wanted by the United States government.

  He was right behind me, so close that when I slowed I could feel the barrel of the weapon press into my lower back.

  Passing through the lobby and waiting area, we continued past the nurses’ station and down the long corridor to the right.

  The hallway was empty, and I tried to figure out a way to make a move without getting shot, but couldn’t come up with any.

  When we neared Jeff’s room, I only slowed slightly, and glanced in without turning my head in that direction.

  No Howell. No Folsom. Only a sad, weary-looking Kay Hudson I wasn’t even sure saw me.

  “They said they might be moving him to another room,” I said loudly. “We’ll check where he was last night. If he’s not there, I’ll go ask the nurse where they moved him to.”

  “Try anything and I ah kill you,” the soft voice said from behind me.

  I turned to the left, to the room directly across from Jeff’s, and tapped on the door loudly, hoping Kay would hear me and get help.

  “Ray,” I said. “Ray Parker. You in there?”

  I opened the door and stepped a little ways inside, but the gunsel didn’t follow.

  When I turned around I knew why.

  Both his hands were raised in the air, palms out in a gesture of surrender.

  Behind him, Kay Hudson had a gun held up to the back of his head.

  I reached into his right coat pocket and withdrew the weapon he had pointed at me, then from his other I retrieved my gun.

  “Thank you,” I said to Kay.

  “Pleasure,” she said, and though I knew she meant it, the truth the one word contained was that she could find no pleasure in anything just now––maybe ever again.

  “Have Howell and Folsom been by?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I need to find a phone and call them.”

  “Only one is back down the hallway at the nurses’ station,” she said.

  “Thanks. Come on.”

  I grabbed the gunsel by the arm and pulled him toward me, then followed him back up the hall.

  I called Folsom from the phone at the nurses’ station, and less than ten minutes later two police cars––his and another––had blocked in Miki’s uncle’s car, and the two men inside had surrendered without a single shot being fired.

  “That could’ve gone a lot worse,” Howell said.

  I nodded. “Kay Hudson saved the day.”

  I had walked out with the gunsel I had gone in with, and beat cops were cuffing the three men and shoving them into the back of the two squad cars now present at the scene.

  “This ah not ah over,” Miki’s uncle said to me.

  “Never is,” I said. “It never is.”

  “Get him out of here,” Folsom said as he walked over to us. “Good work, Jimmy.”

  “Not me. Kay.”

  “While we’re here,” he said to Howell, “we might as well go ahead and interview her and Bennett.”

  Howell nodded.

  “Treat her like the respected war correspondent and bereaved hero she is,” I said.

  Chapter Forty-two

  That night I did what Clip had been doing the past few nights––stood behind the door of the room across the hall from Saul’s in the Marie Motel, staring through the peephole to see if the person leaving the notes threatening Freddy would show again.

  My eyes burned. My body ached. My mind throbbed.

  I had been exhausted and sore before I began. Now, after hours of standing and staring through the tiny hole, I was beyond bone-weary, but I had to do all I could to prevent the death of one of the best and most honorable men I knew.

  Lauren was asleep in the bed behind me, her soft, continuous breathing as reassuring and rapturous a sound as any made in the middle of the night.

  This was how I spent the last two nights before the big bout, but no one ever showed, no note was left, so I had no hope of finding and eliminating the threat before the fight started.

  Each afternoon, while Lauren sat with Gladys in her room, I had taken to sitting with Jeff in his.

  I’m not sure he ever knew I was there.

  Sad, vacant stare. Slack mouth slightly open. Drool cresting the corners of his mouth, dribbling down his chin. This truly talented athlete and sharp, insightful reporter was dead but not buried, reduced to an immobile infantile mound of semi-living cells.

  The humanity and ignorance capable of this form of murder represented a monstrousness I had yet to encounter. />
  “Mr. Riley,” Lady Bird Bennett said. “What are you doing here?”

  She has just strode in like she owned the place––and probably did––immaculately dressed, wearing plenty that was banned or at least unavailable during the war.

  “Wondering what kind of mother could do this to her son,” I said.

  “What? Love him enough to want to cure him?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not love. It’s nothing like love. It has more in common with what the Nazis are doing than anything I’ve seen over here. And I’ve seen a lot.”

  “I think you need to go, Mr. Riley,” she said. “My son needs his rest. I’m taking him home today.”

  I stood and stepped toward her. “You murdered your son,” I said. “Worse. You killed him and let him live to experience every second of the torture involved in being what he is.”

  “You think what I did was wrong?” she asked.

  “Wrong doesn’t even begin it.”

  She nodded and gave me the coldest smile I’d ever been given. “Let me ask you this, you cheap dime-store detective. What can you do about it?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “I could shoot you in the face.”

  “Legally,” she said. “What can you really do legally?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  She was right and we both knew it.

  I looked back at Jeff.

  I shook my head as the first tears began to well up in my tired eyes.

  “He may never win another award for war reporting, may not ever box another single round of boxing,” she said, “but he’ll damn sure never commit another obscene act of perversion either. And I’d say that’s a pretty fair exchange.”

  I patted Jeff’s hand, then turned to leave.

  When I reached the door, I looked back at her and said, “I ever do start shooting people in the face, yours’ll be the first.”

  “From what I hear, you’re a back shooter,” she said. “And do you really want to say such things to a woman capable of this?” She nodded her head toward her once great now pathetic son.

  Noah Mosely appeared in the doorway behind me. “Game, set, match to Lady Bird Bennett,” he said. “Now run along, little peeper. Go pester those without means. We’ve had quite enough of you.”

  It was the day before the fight.

  The Bay High School gym was empty except for Clip, Gus, me, and Saul.

  Clip was over in the corner bouncing the speed bag about, the rhythmic back and forth sounding like Latin percussion. His hand speed and precision were amazing.

  “Impressive,” Saul said.

  I nodded.

  We were standing on the other side of the ring, nearly on the other side of the gym.

  Gus emerged from the dressing room and started walking back over toward Clip, tape, scissors, and a water bottle in his hands.

  Saul motioned him over.

  “He’s a natural, this one,” Saul said, nodding toward Clip.

  Gus nodded, looking across the way toward the speed bag. “Gots lots of natural ability,” he said. “He quick. Tough. Good chin too.”

  “He got a shot?” Saul asked.

  Gus frowned and shook his head. “Even if we had more time to train, to teach him boxing . . . even if we could get him some fights too . . . It’s no good. Eye’s too much a liability. Linderman’s too skilled, too experienced not to exploit it.”

  Saul nodded slowly, knowingly, like all the man had done was confirm what he already knew.

  Something inside me sank.

  “With his chin,” Gus said, “with his toughness and stubbornness . . .”

  “Yeah?” Saul said, a hint of hope in his voice.

  “He could take . . . an awfully bad beating . . . just keep gettin’ up for more.”

  Saul nodded again, and again something inside me sank even deeper.

  “Do that too much against a fighter like Linderman,” Gus said, “he’ll kill you.”

  David Howell showed up about an hour later.

  Clip was in the ring with a sparring partner, but instead of sparring, Gus was having the man stand in various positions and walking Clip through what to do to counter what Linderman would do.

  “What’s going on here?” David said.

  I told him.

  He shook his head and looked at Clip, his gesture and expression conveying admiration not disapproval.

  I told him about the threatening letters Freddy had been getting. “I’m gonna need some help protecting him,” I added.

  “You got it.”

  “Thanks.”

  We were quiet a while, watching Gus in the most quiet and unassuming way show his encyclopedic knowledge, insight, and understanding of boxing.

  “Interviewed Jeff Bennett,” he said. “With a lot of help from Kay. He doesn’t say much and what he does doesn’t make much sense. Unless he improves––and the doctor is doubtful he will much more––he’ll be no help at all as a witness. Even if he were willing to do it, which he’s not, the defense attorney would pick his teeth with him. They say he survived his ice pic lobotomy, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t say that at all.”

  Nothing he was saying surprised me, but it was still a blow.

  “With Kay’s help and the little I could get from him, I’ve pieced together what I think happened,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “What we already knew or at least suspected. Bennett thought he could blackmail his mother with a story exposing her and some of her closest friends in various unethical and illegal activities. Leave him alone, let him be and do what he wants to and he won’t print it. That sort of thing.”

  I nodded.

  “He’s in a room at the Dixie with the young man who was killed, Cecil Deets. A man he can’t identify breaks in on them, tells Jeff he’s a sick embarrassing deviant and is coming with him to get some help. The man has weapons. They fight him anyway. Cecil is killed. Jeff is knocked out and taken away. Wakes up in Dr. Delpy’s sanatorium.”

  “You know who’s behind it,” I said.

  “I do,” he said. “We all do––including Folsom. No way we get her on this, but we’ll keep watching, keep digging . . . Eventually we’ll get her on something.”

  “All you been through and you’re still an optimist,” I said.

  “You don’t think we will?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because we’re inept or corrupt?” he said.

  “Neither,” I said.

  “I won’t stop,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “I’ll prove you wrong.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Folsom’s name was on the list ’cause Jeff believed he was the cleanest cop in town and would help him.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  “This Nation in the past two years has become an active partner in the world's greatest war against human slavery,” the president said, beginning his State of the Union Address to Congress. “We have joined with like-minded people in order to defend ourselves in a world that has been gravely threatened with gangster rule. But I do not think that any of us Americans can be content with mere survival. Sacrifices that we and our allies are making impose upon us all a sacred obligation to see to it that out of this war we and our children will gain something better than mere survival.”

  Roosevelt’s voice, blasted from the PA system set up for just that purpose, echoed through downtown, bouncing off the USO building and around the makeshift boxing ring until it was absorbed by the enormous crowd that had turned out for the match.

  “We are united in determination that this war shall not be followed by another interim which leads to new disaster, that we shall not repeat the tragic errors of ostrich isolationism—that we shall not repeat the excesses of the wild twenties when this Nation went for a joy ride on a roller coaster which ended in a tragic crash.”

&nb
sp; I was in Clip’s corner, parading around as a cut man, but really providing security, the .38 under my right shoulder hidden by the cardigan sweater I was wearing with Fighting Freddy Freeman on the back.

  David Howell and Folsom and a few other cops were roaming the crowd. Lauren and Miki looked through binoculars from the back of a pickup across the way. Everyone alert for anything suspicious that might identify the would-be assassin.

  Besides Saul, Gus, and me, they were the only ones who knew that Fighting Freddy Freeman was actually Clipper Jones.

  At a table ringside, the radio announcer calling the fight, a middle-aged man in a gray suit and fedora and burgundy bowtie known as Radio Red McCall, was saying, “It appears that Fighting Freddy Freeman overtrained for the fight, lost too much weight, and has somehow seriously injured his left eye. The bigger, sharper Linderman must outweigh the Negro fighter by over thirty pounds. Folks, don’t go anywhere. This one won’t last long.”

  As the ring announcer finished the introductions, I continued scouring the crowd, searching, scanning, trying to suss out who might have a weapon and ill intentions.

  Near ringside I saw Corn Griffin, who a decade before had been the number two heavyweight contender in the world––at least until he met up with James J. Braddock at the Madison Square Garden Bowl in June of ’34.

  Born in Blountstown less than forty-five minutes away, Corn Griffin was considered a local, and his defeat by Braddock at the Garden when Braddock was considered washed-up and only given two days’ notice for the fight was dismissed with the explanation that he hadn’t taken the match seriously, had gone out drinking the night before and was still hung over.

  When I looked back, seconds were out of the ring and the bout was beginning.

  The bell sounded and Clip bounced out to meet Leonaldo Linderman, who charged across the ring toward him.

  “Linderman storms out of his corner,” Red said into his microphone. “He senses what all of us here at ringside do—Freddy’s lights are halfway out already.”

  Linderman loaded up, obviously going for a one-punch knockout in the first seconds of the fight.