The Big Bout Page 4

  “How is it?” she asked.

  I smiled at her, appreciative for her concern, but even more so for knowing to be.

  “More of a bittersweet science now,” I said.

  She nodded. “Sorry. Can’t help but think it’s my fault.”

  “It’s not.”

  “If I hadn’t come through that door the first time . . . If we hadn’t become . . . If I hadn't been stupid enough to try to end it . . .”

  “I was just thinking about what you said about warning those two,” I said. “The only thing I’d change is the pain you went through. I’d do whatever it took to take away your sickness and pain, but I wouldn’t change anything. How could I? We wound up together. And as far as boxing or anything else, I’d give up anything for you, to be with you. Gladly. I’d give my other arm right now just for more time with you.”

  She reached over and took my remaining hand and held it, and we were quiet for a long moment.

  Eventually, Miki appeared in the doorway.

  She was pale, the lines of her face creases of discomfort.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Lauren stood and walked over to her. “I want you to lie down for a while,” she said. “Here, you can use Ray’s old office.”

  They disappeared from view but I could still hear them. Lauren was saying, “Did you take the aspirin?”

  “Just like Lady Boss Lauren say.”

  “Okay, try to sleep for a while.”

  When Lauren reappeared, I said, “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. Got a visitor today. Just needs to rest for a little while.”

  “A visitor?”

  “Her monthly one.”

  “Oh.”

  She eased back down in the chair beside me, her slow movements revealing how she was really feeling.

  Taking my hand again, picking up right where we had left off, she said, “I’m not doing enough . . . for others I mean. Staying with Gladys the little that I do is just . . . it’s not enough.”

  I didn’t say anything. Just waited. She’d get to what she wanted to say when she was ready.

  “I know I’m limited in what I can do. I’m no Rosie.”

  She was referring to Rosie the Riveter, the tireless assembly line–working woman popularized a year or so back in the song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb and in the Norman Rockwell painting on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post last Memorial Day.

  “I’m still so weak,” she continued, “and I don’t know how much time I have left, but . . . when I’m not with you––which I want to be as much as possible––I don’t want to just be sitting around waiting to die.”

  I adored so very many things about Lauren, but this, her generosity and graciousness, her gratitude and desire to give back, was near the top of the list.

  “If it’s okay with you . . .” she began, “I’d like to volunteer at the USO.”

  The USO, or United Service Organization, was formed in 1941 by several civilian groups including the Salvation Army, the YMCA, and the National Jewish Welfare Board, as a home away from home to boost morale and provide recreational services for uniformed servicemen. My understanding was the private organization was partnering with the government––in particular the Department of Defense. The government was providing the buildings and the organization raising funds to staff and operate them, fulfilling the mission of bolstering morale for the military by providing on-leave recreation for uniformed personnel.

  After the first USO Club was established in Louisiana in 1941, they began popping up all over the world, something like two a day by now, offering our troops a place to congregate, to dance, to listen to music, to be social, to relax, to have a cup of coffee and an egg, to write a letter home, to enjoy the attentions of a pretty girl.

  Our local USO club was located at the end of Harrison Avenue right on the bay.

  “What would you do?” I asked.

  “I’d be a junior hostess.”

  I knew that was what she was going to say but I was still unprepared for how it would make me feel.

  Junior hostesses were the young women whose job it was to socialize, comfort, entertain, hang out with, dance with, and boost the morale of the servicemen making the USO their home away from home. It was an honorable job that attempted to keep our boys out of bars and brothels, but it was also fraught with many perils and pitfalls, an emotional minefield for the young serviceman, perhaps the young hostess, and certainly for the young hostess’s––what? What was I to Lauren? I wasn’t her husband, but I was far more than a boyfriend. That I was even asking demonstrated the difficulties of her doing this.

  I felt completely confident in us, had complete faith in her, but that was a relatively recent phenomenon. For much of our relationship I had suffered bouts of jealousy, of obsession and suspicion, particularly following our first breakup and the devastating rejection I experienced because of it.

  How would I handle her role as companion to lonely, scared, homesick young men in a uniform I would never get to wear?

  “It’s just the senior hostesses are supposed to be at least thirty-five,” she said.

  Theoretically, senior hostesses played the role of mother, while the junior hostesses were meant to be more like sisters, neighbor girls-next-door, and friends.

  “If you’d rather me not, I’ll find another way to serve,” she said. “I just thought it would be a good fit given my physical limitations and lack of energy.”

  “I’m so . . .” I began. “You’re such an amazing person. Just promise me you won’t overdo it. Please take care of yourself.”

  “I will. I promise. For you even more than me. Really? You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “You’ll be so good at it,” I said, avoiding her question. “Do so much good for those who need it most, who themselves are doing so much good. I’m . . . just so proud of you. You inspire me. Wish I could do more.”

  Chapter Ten

  I walked Lauren down the stairs toward the sidewalk and Harrison Avenue below, feeling as if my center had caved in a bit, but when we emerged, another more urgent sensation replaced it.

  Parked just a few spots down from us was the vehicle I equated with threat as much as any cop car––a six-passenger Presidential Delux–style Land Cruiser with a black roof, the extremely rare whitewall tires, and a back glass with ventilating wings.

  It belonged to Miki’s uncle, the man who had promised to kill me the next time he saw me if I didn’t produce Miki for him.

  Lauren followed my gaze over to the car.

  “Is that . . .”

  As usual, wartime Harrison was busy, steady traffic on the street, the sidewalks bustling with people––shoppers, couples, mothers with strollers, businessmen, and military personnel in uniform.

  From out of the crowd all around us a young Japanese man wearing a hat and large, dark sunglasses to help hide his identity stepped up behind Lauren, wrapping his right arm around her waist while pointing a small revolver into her side with his left. His suit coat hid most of his hand and the gun in it.

  He pulled her over toward our building, pressing his back to the door of our walkup.

  I followed.

  As I did, a broad middle-aged Japanese man with dense black hair and thick orangish skin, also mostly hidden beneath a hat and behind dark glasses, stepped up behind me and jammed a gun of his own into my back. He was wearing the same three-button tan Glen Plaid sports coat and solid medium brown wool slacks with pleats and cuffs as before, the same hand-painted tie and brown-and-tan wingtips.

  He was Miki’s uncle here to make good on his promise.

  Lauren and I were face to face, pressed into one another, sandwiched together by the two armed men.

  “I love you,” I said.

  Her eyes locked onto mine and I saw something in them, a calmness and fearlessness that made me admire and appreciate her all the more.

  “Borrowed time,” she said. “Get the most out of every moment––even
these.”

  I nodded.

  “You ah find ah niece?” he asked.

  “You’re gonna do this here?” I asked. “In front of all these people?”

  “You ah find her ah or no?”

  “Things have changed,” I said.

  When he had first approached me, I was wanted for murder, operating in the shadows like him and his small community of fugitives who had escaped from Manzanar, a relocation camp for citizens of Japanese descent situated on the edge of the desert along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.

  Because I couldn’t go to the police, they had turned to me for help. Because I was isolated and wounded and didn’t want to stop my search for those responsible for what had happened to Lauren and my old partner Pete, I had not only worked for them but allowed them to bully me a bit––something I was no longer prepared to do.

  “How ah so?” he said.

  “You and I have even less in common now.”

  “You ah explain. Now.”

  “I’m no longer sideways with the cops. You still are.”

  “This ah change ah nothing for ah you,” he said. “You ah die just as ah easy. Girl too.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Okay. I found her, yes. I haven’t been able to get her, but I can. I just need a little longer.”

  “You ah bring her to ah beach tonight. Same ah spot. Eight ah clock. Or we ah kill you. And girl.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “We ah take girl make ah sure you ah are.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ll be there. I found her before. I’ll find her again. I’ll be there tonight. Like I said. You have my word. I’ve never given you a reason to doubt that I do what I say I will.”

  “We ah still ah take girl. Just ah safe ah side.”

  I shook my head again. “No,” I said again. “That’s not acceptable. You walk away now and I meet you tonight or we do this in the street right now. You get caught. Go to jail. Never see your niece again. Up to you?”

  He didn’t say anything, just increased the pressure of the barrel in the small of my back.

  “All I have to do is yell Jap right now,” I said, “and you’re captured and sent back to the internment camp.”

  “Unless ah I ah shoot you.”

  “Then you go to jail or get ah killed yourself. Up to you. But you’re not leaving here with my . . . with Mrs. Lewis.”

  “Okay ah cowboy. See you tonight at ah eight.”

  With that they vanished back into the crowd, the car starting the moment they did, backing out as soon as the two men were back inside, easing into the stream of traffic and disappearing down the way.

  Lauren and I leaned into an intense embrace.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, her weak head rising and falling slowly beneath my chin.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I’m just glad Judy got her period today.”

  Chapter Eleven

  After making sure Lauren was okay and tucking her and Miki into a room at the Dixie Sherman under a different name, I drove back to my office to meet Clip to make a plan.

  On the way, I stopped by the Lighthouse Café.

  I couldn’t help myself.

  Located on the lower end of Harrison Avenue, not far from the USO, the Lighthouse looked like a large milk bottle.

  It was just after lunch and the crowd was gone. The tables, in need of bussing, were littered with dirty dishes––most of those empty, with only smears of catsup and gravy remaining, others with partially eaten meals.

  The place looked suddenly and abruptly abandoned.

  Nell, in her pressed waitress uniform and soiled apron, was standing near the back, a plate of food in her hand.

  She was an extremely thin middle-aged woman with shortish curly hair and long, bony fingers.

  She smiled and waved and I walked over toward her.

  “You got a minute?” I asked.

  “Long as you don’t mind me eating,” she said. “I’m starvin’.”

  We sat at one of the few clean tables toward the back and she began attacking wartime food as if it tasted better than it looked, which, having eaten here often, I knew did not.

  “Evidently your thinness is not from lack of appetite or eating,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “What can you tell me about the junior hostesses at the USO?” I asked.

  I had so much I needed to be doing, so many things to figure out and plan, but this was what I’d be thinking about while trying to do all of them if I didn’t deal with it now.

  I knew Nell had volunteered at the USO as a senior hostess. I knew she would shoot straight with me. I knew she would know what she was talking about.

  “They’re good girls,” she said. “Doing good work. Really providing a great service.”

  She paused for a moment to take another big bite of her food, then continued.

  “Those girls are probably doing more for the morale of our boys than anyone else in the country.”

  “What kind of training do they receive?”

  “None really. Some take a charm school class, but . . .”

  “Are they all single?”

  “Most, but not all. More of the senior hostesses are married than the juniors, but there’s a fair number of them that are too.”

  “Why do most of them do it?”

  She shrugged her thin, skeletal shoulder. “I’m sure I can’t say. To serve their country, to help us beat the Japs and the Nazis––”

  “Are most wanting to meet servicemen? Looking for a husband?”

  “Most?” she asked, her gaunt face scrunching up in consideration of the question. “Maybe. Probably.”

  “Are they allowed to date?” I said. “To see the servicemen outside of the club?”

  “It’s discouraged, but can hardly be stopped. You know? Why all the questions, fella? This for a case? Somethin’ happen to one of the girls?”

  “Just background.”

  “They’re good girls,” she said. “They keep these boys away from bottles and loose broads and help keep their spirits up. Do things get out of hand sometimes? Sure. Do lonely boys take things to mean things they don’t? Sure. Are some of the girls trying to find a brave soldier husband? Of course. But is it a great program worth having? Absolutely.”

  Chapter Twelve

  When Clip walked into my office he tossed a copy of the News Herald onto my desk.

  “You see dis shit?” he said. “Like the nigger tryin’ to git hisself killed.”

  An article about the upcoming fight quoted Freddy making a variety of inflammatory statements about the country, the culture, the war, and the oppressive power structure––by which he meant white people without saying it.

  I nodded.

  “He ain’t wrong,” Clip said.

  “No, he’s not.”

  “But gotdamn, he ain’t got to say it like that and in there.”

  “Maybe he does,” I said. “Maybe somebody does.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe so. Well, enough about loudmouth niggers. Let’s rap about what to do about these damn Japs.”

  Before I could respond, I heard the door downstairs open and someone climbing the stairs.

  I stood and walked out, Clip joining me, his gun drawn.

  When we reached the stairs and looked down we saw Saul and Freddy Freeman walking up.

  “Who the hell you expecting?” Saul asked.

  “Or dis how you greet every client?” Freddy said.

  “Nah,” Clip said, “just the dumbass niggers that run they mouth in the papers.”

  “Okay if we come up?” Saul asked.

  From up above him, I could see that he had even less wispy white hair than I realized, and watching him climb the steps showed he was weaker and more feeble than projected by his posture and bearing.

  “Sure,” I said.

  A few minutes later, the four of us were in my office––Freddy and Saul in my client chairs, me behind
my desk, Clip partially propped up against a filing cabinet in the corner to my left.

  “What’s with the muggin’ in the mornin’ paper?” Clip asked.

  “Somebody gotta say it,” Freddy said.

  “That’s what Jimmy said.”

  Freddy looked at me in surprise. “Oh, yeah? Now ain’t that a kick.”

  “Why it gotta be you?” Clip said.

  “Who else? I the one they listenin’ to right now. Sorta like nigger of the month. You mights be happy bein’ a house nigger, but––”

  “I seem like a house nigger to you?”

  “The reason we’re here,” Saul said, “is to apologize for how the first meeting went, and to hire you to find out who’s threatenin’ Freddy and to protect him while you do.”

  I didn’t say anything and we waited.

  And waited.

  After a few moments of awkward silence, Clip and I smiled at each other.

  “Oh,” Clip said, “that the apology?”

  “Only one y’alls likely to get from me,” Freddy said.

  “It was my fault,” Saul said. “I shoulda spoken to everyone ahead of time so we all knew what to expect and––”

  “Wasn’t your fault, Saul,” Clip said. “It just your house nigger got no manners.”

  Freddy started to say something, but instead stood up and walked out without a word.

  “I was really hoping we could figure this out,” Saul said. “He’s in real danger––more now after the article this morning. I know he’s . . . a . . . that he’s challenging, but he’s sincere in what he’s saying. He’s not just boxing. He really is using his moment to . . . to try and––”

  From down on the street shots were fired.

  Glass shattered. Women screamed. Horns honked. Tires screeched. And a loud thud was heard in the stairwell.

  We jumped up and ran toward the stairs––Clip out in front, gun drawn, me not far behind, Saul quite a few steps farther back.

  “You hit?” Clip yelled.

  “Nah. They missed me.”

  “Go upstairs with Saul,” Clip said, passing Freddy and continuing through the shattered glass door out onto the sidewalk.