The Big Bout Read online

  I followed him.

  Outside, people were still scattered in every direction, ducking for cover, consoling one another.

  “Which way?” Clip yelled. “Which way?”

  No one seemed to know.

  We looked around, but saw no shooters, saw no one reacting to shooters attempting to make an escape.

  We searched the crowd for a few minutes, running toward the Ritz Theater and the Tennessee House, then back toward the drugstore and the Marie Motel, but there were no signs of any shooters anywhere, and though everyone seemed to have heard the shots, no one actually saw those responsible for them.

  When we were back in my office with Saul and Freddy, I asked, “What’d you see?”

  “Didn’t see shit,” Freddy said. “Heard the shots and screams, glass started shattering, and I dove back up the steps as far as I could.”

  “Did the shots come from a passing car or a gunman on the sidewalk?” Clip asked.

  “Just tol’ you. I didn’t see.”

  “Okay,” Clip said. “Well, good luck out there.”

  “Wait,” Freddy said. “Look man, I’m sorry. All right? I wanna hire y’all. Should have before. Okay? I’ve got a big mouth.”

  “Big?” Clip asked. “Most oceans’re smaller.”

  “You take the job or not?”

  “Ain’t takin’ it ’cause it a job,” Clip said. “The measly amount y’all ponyin’ up ain’t gonna pay no bills. Doin’ it ’cause I want to, ’cause a loudmouth nigger oughta be able to fight without bein’ threatened or killed, just like anybody else.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So you workin’ the other side too,” Clip said.

  He was referring to Kay Hudson hiring me to find out what happened to Gentlemen Jeff Bennett.

  I nodded.

  “And dealin’ with the threat from the Japs,” he said.

  I nodded again.

  “Then we gonna need some help coverin’ ol’ Fast Mouth Freddy in there.”

  We were standing in the reception area not far from the staircase. Below us, cops milled about, asking questions, taking notes, waiting for Henry Folsom to arrive. Saul and Freddy were in my office, Saul comforting and reassuring Freddy, Freddy reevaluating his life.

  “We can’t afford anyone,” I said.

  He had no idea just how bad things were. Kay Hudson’s small retainer would pay for the room at the Cove and for us to eat for maybe a week, but that’s about all it would do. I was still three months behind on the rent here at our offices and the landlord was threatening to kick us out if I didn’t catch it up soon.

  “I’a see what I can do,” he said. “Maybe cash in a marker I been holdin’ or make some sorta side deal, you know, pay a brother in a different way.”

  “Even if you can, it’s gonna have to be mostly us.”

  He nodded. “Know,” he said. “It help we didn’t have the Jap distraction tonight.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “Got any thoughts on how to do that exactly?” he asked.

  “I do,” I said, “and I don’t like them. Don’t like them at all.”

  “Don’t let your conscience get in the way of us protectin’ that good girl,” he said. “She been through enough.”

  No one knew what she had been through like I did. I had seen it firsthand the night I found her. No one wanted to take care of her more than I did––except maybe Clip now that he had fallen for her. But I couldn’t get okay with the only way I could think of to deal with the threat to her.

  “I’m tryin’ not to,” I said, “but . . . how can I send innocent people back to prison?”

  The internment camps were wrong. The small community hiding at the beach who had escaped one of them should not have to go back. Their only crime was being Japanese.

  “Innocent?” he said. “Man’s a thug.”

  “Sure,” I said, “but what about the others? It’s an all-or-nothing deal.”

  “You talkin’ about gettin’ ’em sent back to a camp,” he said.

  I nodded. “And I don’t know if Miki would even be okay with that, with setting up her family, her mother.”

  “She is,” he said. “But aksk her yourself.”

  “Camps don’t bother you?” I asked.

  “’Course they do. Lot a shit bother me. Imprison a man for the color of his skin. Do shit to all because of the actions of a few.”

  “Which is what we’d be doing,” I said.

  He started to say something, then stopped, then said, “Gotdamn but you can complicate some shit.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “the world is simple and I keep complicating it.”

  “I gonna uncomplicate it for you. We can turn ’em in or I can shoot ’em.”

  While Clip kept watch over Freddy as he sparred at Bay High, I drove over to the Dixie Sherman to talk to Lauren and Miki.

  Though it was all about Miki and involved her family, I wanted Lauren’s thoughts on what I was proposing.

  The only high-rise in town, the Dixie Sherman Hotel sat at the corner of Jenks Avenue and Fifth Street. Built in 1925 by W. C. Sherman, it had one hundred and one rooms, each with a bathroom and a telephone for only three bucks.

  It wasn’t until I was stepping out of the elevator that I realized the significance of the floor, and I paused for a moment to glance over at the spot where I had shot Stanley Somerset, and once again I missed Ray Parker and our secretary July.

  Inside the room, I hugged Lauren and shared with her and Miki what I was planning.

  “I just can’t think of another solution,” I said.

  “They would all go back to camp?” Miki said.

  “They would.”

  “Jimmy-san do this for me?”

  “I would.”

  “No one get hurt?”

  “I can’t guarantee that,” I said. “If your uncle or his boys resist . . . then . . . And if there’re shots fired . . . anyone can get shot.”

  Miki seemed to think about it.

  I looked at Lauren. “What do you think?”

  “You know what I think. The camps are evil. Sending them back there is evil, but given the circumstances––them wanting to enslave Miki, to make her a . . . what I almost was––it’s the lesser of two evils.”

  “Miki?” I said.

  She frowned, twisted her lips, and shook her head. “Miki go back. Cannot risk Mama-san life.”

  Lauren nodded. “Okay. But you’re not going back. Soldier will figure something else out.”

  “I will?”

  “Sure you will, fella,” she said. “It’s what you do. Besides, you’ve got” —she glanced at the watch on her slender wrist— “nearly five hours to do it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I got back down to the lobby, I asked Francis Stevens, the young redheaded bellboy, if I might have a word––and told him if he tossed a few back my way there’d be a buck in it for him.

  According to Kay Hudson, the Dixie Sherman had been the last place Jeff and Rebecca Bennett was seen.

  “I understand Jeff Bennett and his wife had a room here a few days back?”

  “No, sir. No wife. Just Gentleman Jeff.”

  He jumped into a boxing stance and began to jab at the air.

  Francis Stevens was too young to be a bellhop and looked it. The war had caused a shortage of young men––something the enterprising young Francis took advantage of. With his red hair showing beneath is cap, the boyishness of his pale, freckled face, his diminutive stature, and the way the small gray uniform swallowed him up, he looked like a kid playing bellhop in a comedy picture more than an actual bellboy.

  “He was here alone?” I said.

  “No, sir. I didn’t say that, now did I?”

  If this was a simple case of Jeff not being so gentlemanly and stepping out on Rebecca, it would practically solve itself.

  “He had a different dame with him?” I said.

  “No, sir. Nothin’ like that. His manager maybe. I don’
t know for sure. Someone said it was his sparring partner.”

  “What happened?”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Anything eventful happen while he was staying here? Anything suspicious?”

  “No, sir. I don’t think he ever came out of his room until . . .”

  “Until what?”

  “Well I was gonna say until he checked out, but he never did. He just vanished. One minute he was here, the next he was not. And nobody saw him leave. Nobody saw nothin’.”

  “How long was he here?”

  “Hard to say since we don’t know exactly when he left, but I’d say somewhere in the neighborhood of three days?”

  “How’d you know he was gone?”

  “Girl went in to clean the room.”

  “So he took his stuff?”

  “No––well, not everything. That’s what was strange. She thought he had, but she found some stuff hidden when she was cleaning the room. You ask me, I say it proves he was taken against his will. He’s not the sort likely to forget anything––’specially somethin’ important enough to hide. And you’ll never convince me Gentleman Jeff Bennett would ever skip out on a bill. Not in a million years.”

  “What did she find?” I asked. “Where is it now?”

  “I don’t know what all. I’ve just heard a word or two here and there. Some papers or somethin’, a book or journal or . . . maybe some photographs.”

  “Where’s the stuff now?”

  “She turned it over to the manager and he turned it over to the cops.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Miki won’t go for the plan,” I said.

  Clip and I were standing in the corner of the Bay High gym, watching as Freddy added serious bodily injury to the insult of being a sparring partner.

  As usual, there were no reporters in the gym. The only access the press had to Freddy was following his workout when for a brief period they were allowed in to pepper the obnoxious, opinionated boxer with a total of two questions each.

  “Not sure she got a choice,” he said.

  “Says she’s goin’ back.”

  “She absolutely got no choice about that.”

  “Doesn’t want to take the risk of anyone getting hurt––mostly her mom.”

  He shook his head. “I’a protect her fuckin’ mama-san. She ain’t goin’ back to that shit.”

  “Lauren told us to come up with a different plan.”

  “Us?”

  “Well, you, but I figured I’d try to help.”

  He smiled his big, brilliant smile. “You come up with anything yet?”

  “Maybe. Just now on the drive over here, but it’s pretty damn thin.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “We don’t show tonight.”

  “Genius,” he said.

  “They come after us. But they won’t send Miki’s mom. It will be the old man and his gun boys. We have them picked up.”

  “’Less they shoot us first.”

  “It’s not a perfect plan,” I said.

  “Big of you to admit.”

  I smiled.

  “So we risk our lives and that of civilians instead of Bunko Matsumoto,” he said.

  “Would you rather risk your mother-in-law?”

  He didn’t respond, but I saw the twitch of something resembling the start of a smile on his large lips.

  “My biggest concern,” I said, “and I have many . . . But the biggest, and it was the same with the other plan too, is that once they’re captured––”

  “If they captured.”

  “If they’re actually captured,” I amended, “that they’ll just turn Miki in.”

  He nodded. “Be better we just shoot ’em.”

  “Jimmy?” Folsom said when I walked into his office. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  I nodded.

  “Come on. Have a seat.”

  I did.

  “I know I can’t keep apologizing every time I see you, but . . . I am so very sorry for what I let myself get sucked into, for looking the other way, for . . . for what it could’ve cost you.”

  I didn’t say anything and we sat in silence for a few moments.

  Things would never be the same between us again. He had betrayed me in the worst possible way––the way only an intimate father figure could, but his remorse made what I was here to ask for much easier.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I really did believe you’d figure a way out of all of it. I knew you and Clip could handle it.”

  My face must have revealed my skepticism.

  “I honestly did,” he said. “I’m not just saying that. And I was right.”

  “The things I was forced to do,” I said. “What we were put through . . .”

  “I really do feel terrible, son. And I’d like to spend the rest of my life making it up to you and winning back your trust.”

  “The latter will never happen,” I said, “but the former . . . I’m actually here for a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “Two favors, actually.”

  “Anything I can do,” he said.

  “Which you’ve proven is anything at all,” I said.

  “Jimmy,” he said, “how about you not make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “I need help with a very delicate situation,” I said. “It’s gonna take some flexibility and finesse.”

  “Tell me.”

  I did.

  When I finished he said, “Sounds straightforward enough. Capture the refugee thugs without anyone getting hurt and grant immunity to the girl.”

  I nodded.

  “I can do that,” he said. “I’ve got a new man I’ll assign to it. Just joined the force. Reminds me a lot of you. He’ll . . . he’s perfect for the job.”

  “And Miki will be safe,” I said.

  “You’ve got to keep her hidden,” he said. “There’s only so much I can do. You can’t parade her down Harrison Avenue for everyone to see, but I can make sure our guys don’t come after her––no matter what the ones we take into custody say.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “That’s nothin’. What else?”

  “I want to know what you have on the Jeff Bennett disappearance and take a look at what he left in his room.”

  “We have nothing,” he said. “Because there is nothing. He didn’t disappear. He just went home without paying his bill––something his mother has assured me will be taken care of. As for what he left in the room, you can take it to him for us. Look at it all you like before you do.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Driving back to the office to read over the materials Jeff Bennett left in his room, I spotted the two gargantuan twins walking down Harrison, their enormous upper bodies and huge heads rising above the throng of pedestrians moving like earth’s landmass down the sidewalk.

  I drove up a little past them, parked, and waited to see where they went.

  In a few minutes they finally reached me, passing without ever looking my way, continuing on to Child’s Drugs and Walgreen Agency on the corner, then crossing the street to the Marie Motel.

  I got out of the car and followed them.

  Buses to the beaches left from the Marie, charging fifteen cents one way or twenty cents round trip. One was loading at the moment and I lost sight of them as they disappeared behind the only thing around big enough to eclipse them.

  When I rounded the bus, I saw the two giants talking to what appeared to be a midget, but was most likely an average man. After a few minutes of conversation, they crossed Harrison again, not stopping for traffic but forcing traffic to stop for them, and entered Child’s, duckin’ beneath the door as they did.

  I waited a few minutes then crossed, but instead of going directly into Child’s, I went next door to Christtos’s 5 & 10, loitered outside, then stepped back over and entered Child’s.

  Inside I found the two behemoths at a booth with Miles Lydecker, a smallish middle-aged man
in a black-market suit, eating a grilled cheese sandwich between sips of a brown cow––a foaming float of vanilla ice cream and root beer.

  Miles Lydecker was the smallest, best-dressed, and most well-connected bookmaker in town.

  Aha, I thought, then walked over to their table and said it out loud. “Aha.”

  The two big men looked surprised to see me, but Miles only looked mildly annoyed.

  “Hiya Riley,” he said. “Ain’t seen you in a while. How’s tricks? You don’t look so good. Heard you lost the limb and left the force.”

  I nodded, but continued staring at the two goliaths across from him. “I just don’t get it,” I said.

  “What don’t you get?” Miles asked. “What?”

  “How the booth, hell, the entire foundation of this joint isn’t collapsing.”

  “American-made, baby,” he said. “We do it better than anybody. Why we’re gonna win the war.”

  I slid into the booth beside him.

  He didn’t move much, but he was small enough so that even though he was in the middle of the seat, there was still room for me.

  “Riley, I’m eating and havin’ a meeting with my associates. I ain’t got time for––”

  “He was with the jig who showed up at the gym,” the man across from me said.

  “I’ve been hired to protect Freddy Freeman,” I said.

  They all laughed a little at that.

  “Always with the jokes,” Miles said.

  “Why’d you send the brothers elephantine around to lean on him?” I asked.

  “A, I ain’t sayin’ I did, but B, if I did, it would have nothin’ whatsoever to do with you.”

  “Why don’t you want him fighting?”

  “I do,” he said. “I want nothin’ more.”

  “Then why threaten him? Why say you’re goin’ to kill him?”

  He looked at his two associates. “What’s this? Did you threaten to kill him?”

  They both shook their heads. “No, sir,” the one across from me said. “Was just tellin’ him what you told us to when this guy shows up and . . .”