On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery

by Tom Schreck

  The third call was from Rudy.

  “Look, Duff,” he exhaled heavily into the receiver. “I hate to keep piling on with the bad news, but I figured you’d want to know. During tests on Eli they found a cancerous mass in his lung. Gabbibb wants to go after it aggressively just like Mikey’s. Call me if you want some more information. I’m sorry.”

  What the fuck was going on? You couldn’t make this shit up. This felt like God had some sort of Job-like vendetta, and trust me, I didn’t have Job’s faith. My brains were fried, and I decided against even thinking about Lisa, or dealing with the suspension or anything else. I felt like drinking.

  My usual routine would’ve been to hit the gym and work everything out physically, but I just didn’t want to get involved with Smitty yet. I had a pain in my chest from where the stress had tightened me all up. I looked down at my hands and they were balled up into fists like they were before the Suggs fight. I couldn’t think straight and I could feel my heart race. AJ’s seemed like a good choice.

  The beauty of AJ’s was that whether it was early or late, it didn’t matter. The Foursome would be there before I got there and after I left, and there was a good chance that Kelley would be there early.

  “You know, if she won’t use birth control,” Rocco said, “just get her to douche with Coca-Cola after sex.”

  “She gets grossed out by the thought of me in a rubber,” Jerry Number One said. “But she’s going to warm up to the idea of sticking a Coke bottle up there? That makes a lot of sense.”

  “Talk about ‘the pause that refreshes’!” TC chimed in.

  “I once got high drinking five Cokes and taking a half a bottle of aspirin,” Jerry Number Two added, sipping his Cosmo and looking nostalgic for the old days.

  “Did that work?” Rocco asked.

  “Hell yeah,” Jerry Number Two said.

  “C’mon!” TC said. “Really?”

  “Sure,” Jerry Number Two said. “Though I guess I had done quite a bit of acid that day, before the Coke.”

  I wasn’t in a good mood and I ordered a sidecar of bourbon to accompany my Schlitz. Kelley was there and picked up on the bourbon.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “That’s not a good sign.”

  “Shitty day, Kel,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  I told him about it, and the more I spoke, the more pissed off I got. The thing is, if you talk about this shit in the office with all the social-work types, everybody has a clinical name for the bullshit. Instead of being an asshole, a guy has “poor impulse control.” Instead of a poor kid getting beat, you have a woman with “boundary issues.” It made me nuts.

  The crowd at AJ’s didn’t burden themselves with political correctness.

  “Duff,” Kelley said. “These people live like this and it sucks, but that’s the way it is and that’s how it’s always going to be. Let it go and help when you can.”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re right.” I didn’t feel like hearing it. Right or wrong, it made me crazy knowing there was a good chance Sherrie was going to take a beating tonight. The fact that that was the way of the world didn’t help. It didn’t help even a little. I ran this through my head while the Schlitzes kept going down, one after the other.

  “Look, I’m outta here for tonight,” I finally said to everyone and threw some cash on the bar. “I’ll catch ya later.”

  I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t sober either. I thought it might be a good idea to take a ride past Cinderella’s and eyeball Calabreso. I wasn’t dressed to impress the Cinderella’s crowd, but that didn’t bother me too much. The Eldorado’s V-8 hummed and I threw in the original Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden from ’72. The eight-track was queued on “Suspicious Minds,” the live version of which always got me pumped. Along the way, the vision of Sherrie being full of fear every moment, the physical pain she must’ve experienced, and the corresponding humiliation she’d feel played over and over in my mind. I could feel my hands tighten around the steering wheel ’til my knuckles were white.

  Cinderella’s was very dark with lots of mirrors, chrome, and neon. The speakers blasted that obnoxious bass that went along with today’s house music. It was only ten thirty, pretty early by club standards, but there were twenty or so people around. The barmaid had on a belly shirt that showed the piercing in her navel. She wore those tight, form-fitting black pants that young women wear today, and she filled them out very well. Her long, straight blonde hair came midway down her back. She was hot and she knew it, which made her an awful bartender.

  I sat without a drink for a full five minutes while the belly shirt checked her hair, smoothed the fabric covering her ass, and checked the nails. She approached me without saying anything and just lifted her head and eyebrows slightly in what I gathered was a substitute for asking me if I wanted a drink.

  “Jim Beam on the rocks.”

  She served it without a smile, took the ten that I’d thrown on the bar and I got two dollars change. I loved these places. I could still feel the blood pumping through me, but I contained it and hid it the best I could.

  A few sips in, I got talkative with Belly Shirt.

  “Hey, where can I get a DVD player around here?” I said. “Know anyone who gets them?”

  Belly Shirt went to the other end of the bar, motioned to a guy talking in a circle of women, and sent him over. She said something to him and he nodded. He took a sip of his Jägermeister and came over. He had three gold chains around his neck and he wore one of those tight, black silk T-shirts along with black pants. His hair was greased back and he had a big head with a prominent nose and dark eyes. He was a weight lifter and he wore the T-shirt to show off the biceps and chest.

  “You lookin’ for somethin’?” Calabreso said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was hoping to get some DVD players.”

  “Some?”

  “As many as you got,” I looked him straight in the eyes. “Can we deal?”

  “What you want with a lot of ’em?”

  “What’s this?” I said. “What do you care?”

  “Just curious.” He sipped his drink and broke the eye contact. “You got money on you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Follow me.”

  We walked out of the front of the club and around the corner. His white Lexus SUV gleamed in the moonlight. He had custom gold trim all over the obnoxious thing. He walked ahead of me with an arrogant street swagger that I’m sure he had honed over the course of his life.

  Calabreso was my height, about six foot one, and he was ripped from the weights. He put the key in the back of the car and lifted the door. There were boxes neatly stacked with all sorts of electronic stuff, like DVD players and boom boxes, all the way up to the front seat. It was like a rolling RadioShack.

  He looked at me closely.

  “You’re the fighter, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I recognized the old-school flattop. You’re not real big for heavyweight—what you go, about two ten?”

  “Yeah, just about.”

  “I got a question for you,” he said with a half smile. “How come you keep fighting even though you hardly ever win?”

  The thing people don’t understand about boxing is that it’s a whole lot harder to do then it looks. The pitty-pat you see on TV is actually guys getting punched in the face really hard. Assholes like Calabreso who thought they were tough didn’t have any respect for it. He figured I was a bum.

  “I like it, I guess,” I said.

  “Well,” he laughed, “maybe you could get a collection of your losses on DVD and watch ’em over and over before you go to bed every night.”

  “Or maybe I could get a 115-pound girlfriend,” I said, “and beat the shit out of her to make me feel like a man.”

  “Hey, fuck you, asshole.” A prominent vein in his neck throbbed. “Mind your business or you’re bound to get hurt.”

  Calabreso straightened up and took a step toward me with his chest out a
nd his eyes glaring. It probably scared the hell out of street guys, but stepping forward was a bad idea.

  I threw a good straight jab with my right hand and it landed squarely on his nose. Fighters know the sound; it’s not a big “whack” like you hear in the movies. It’s more of a low, muffled crack, like when you crack your knuckles really good. The best part is, it really fuckin’ hurts and it makes your eyes tear up so you can’t see.

  Instinctively, I followed the jab with a left cross, smashing both his hands and his nose this time. You can’t spend twenty years boxing and not let the cross follow the jab. The punches were automatic, like they couldn’t not come.

  Calabreso writhed, moaning like a guy who hadn’t been hit before. I dropped a wicked body shot into his solar plexus. He let out a loud groan, grabbed his stomach, and fell, doubled over on the pavement. His face was covered in blood and he was rolling around on the pavement with one hand on his midsection and the other over his nose. That was probably enough, but then I remembered Sherrie—and a flash of the helplessness and fear she must have felt ran through me.

  That was it.

  “I wouldn’t mind this on a DVD, asshole,” I said, grabbing him by the neck and slamming his head into his gold-colored bumper. His big head made the sound of a pumpkin getting smashed and he fell backward behind the SUV. He was on his back; his face was a burgundy mess.

  “Please, please … ,” he said, in what the great philosopher Mike Tyson once called “womanly noises.”

  “Fuck you,” I heard myself say, and I slammed him face first into the bumper again. He fell backwards onto the pavement.

  “You know what, asshole?” I knelt with one knee on his chest and grabbed him by his silk T-shirt. “They’re gonna know inside that you beat a little girl. This is what your life is going to be like for the next few years.”

  I took his cell phone out of his pocket. He was bleeding all over my jeans, my hands were covered with his blood, and he was gagging every now and then from the bleeding. I called AJ’s.

  “AJ,” I said, “put Kel on.” Calabreso didn’t move under the pressure of my knee. Kelley picked up the phone.

  “Kel?” I said. “I need you to arrest somebody for me.”

  “What?”

  “I happened across what I think is some stolen merchandise.” Calabreso groaned a little under my knee. “I’m on Allen, that alley around the corner from Cinderella’s. Oh, and the guy got banged up a little.”

  “Duffy—are you fuckin’ nuts?”

  “Kel—I think I’m going to get going,” I said. “I probably don’t want to be around here much longer. Can you do something official for me?”

  I hung up. Calabreso was unconscious and wasn’t going anyplace for a while, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I hoisted him up fireman-style and loaded him into the driver’s seat behind the wheel. There was a roll of duct tape on the floor, so I taped his hands to the steering wheel and figured it was time to go. I closed the door to the back of his car and headed to the Eldorado. A set of parked headlights had appeared a couple hundred yards down the street. I didn’t know who or what it was, and I didn’t figure it was in my best interest to hang around and find out.

  I gunned the Eldorado and headed to the Moody Blue as fast as I could. I turned up the eight-track just as Elvis was finishing up the glory hallelujahs in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It was the last part of a song he did called the “American Trilogy.”

  We sang it together all the way home.

  11

  I was almost to the Moody Blue, with lots of adrenaline pumping through my veins, when I realized Al had been in there alone since I left for AJ’s. That meant that he was alone for the last seven or so hours.

  I heard him start to howl and scratch the door as soon as I took the first step up the stairs to the front door. I opened the door and before I got it a quarter open, Al was through the door, jumping up on me, jumping off of me, spinning around, and then repeating this whole circuslike act. I inched my way into the trailer, and it looked like a clip from either the Discovery Channel’s feature on hurricane damage or Animal Planet’s special on neglected dogs living in squalor.

  The house was littered with papers, the curtains were down off the windows, crushed Schlitz cans were strewn about the house and Al had chewed the fabric off two kitchen chairs. Apparently, after finishing off the sofa cushions he was bored. The place didn’t smell great, either, and I’ll spare the fine details, but let’s just say Al clearly has no need for added dietary fiber. But I would need to flip my mattress over and change the sheets.

  I fed Al and took him for a walk down Route 9R. He needed the walk, and I needed to unwind a bit. I took a Schlitz along with me, though I was going to need a lot more than one to settle down. Al was happy to be out and got busy sniffing every foot of land we covered on our walk, stopping to give extra attention to any vertical object stuck into the ground.

  I didn’t feel completely okay with what had just happened. I was okay with the first three punches because he had them coming for a couple of reasons. One reason was the abuse he’d been giving Sherrie and another reason was I had to hit him to subdue him, so he could be arrested. The last reason had more to do with street shit. I didn’t like him mocking my ability to fight and spreading his nose all over his face was something he was asking for by disrespecting me. Different jungles have different rules and he violated one of his own jungle’s rules. If you’re going to sell wolf tickets you have to be prepared for someone to cash one in once in a while.

  Smashing his head into the bumper was an act of rage. I didn’t have to do it to protect myself or to make sure the cops would get him or even to make the point that he shouldn’t hit a young girl like Sherrie. It left him unconscious and maybe seriously hurt, and that was more than the situation called for. Maybe it was the bourbon, maybe it was Sherrie, or maybe I was getting my shit off from my own frustration. It didn’t feel completely right.

  It probably is inconsistent with good social work practice as well, but I cared less about that. If I had followed protocol, Sherrie would have taken another beating and a lot of other useless bullshit would’ve gone on, not to help anyone, but to cover a lot of administrative ass. Of course, smashing someone’s head into a bumper probably isn’t the most acceptable therapeutic intervention for couples that aren’t getting along.

  It also wasn’t fair to Kelley, who had to go clean up the situation. Clearly, he would have to face questions about how he knew about the situation and how he got tipped off. Kelley could finesse his way around all of that, but that wasn’t the point. He shouldn’t have to do that because his social-work friend wanted to play Robin Hood. I owed Kelley more than a drink.

  Al finished sniffing and leaving his own biological calling card along Route 9R, and we headed to the Moody Blue. It wasn’t until that point that I realized my right hand had swollen up. Later, when I washed my hands I noticed I had scraped the skin on my first two knuckles. They were so covered in Calabreso’s blood that I just figured the blood wasn’t mine. I drank another Schlitz and sprayed as much lemon-scented deodorizer around the trailer as I could. Despite the fact that I just made my living space smell like lemony dog shit, I fell asleep hard with Al next to me.

  The next day Sam greeted me before I even made it to my cubicle.

  “Hey Duff,” he said. “Didya hear about the Polack who wore a condom on each ear?”

  “Mornin’, Sam.”

  “He didn’t want to get hearing aids.”

  Sam moved on, and I sat at my desk to go through my mail, e-mail, and interoffice stuff. Monique poked her head into my cubicle on her way back from getting coffee.

  “Did you read the paper this morning?” she said.

  “Nah.”

  “Sherrie’s boyfriend was busted on stolen merchandise, but not before he took a pretty good beating.”

  “No shit?” I said.

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, huh?”
r />   “Ain’t that the truth.” I tried not to give it my full concentration.

  “When are you seeing her again?” Monique asked. “It will be interesting to see how she handles it.”

  “I’m supposed to see her this afternoon.”

  “Sometimes women in abusive relationships have bizarre reactions to this sort of thing.”

  Monique knew a lot about the dynamics of abuse. I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but I believe she had some personal experience with it. I knew she tended to get most of the clients with that kind of background on her caseload. She was comfortable with their issues, and I don’t think she got drunk and drove around town looking to beat up their boyfriends.

  I got the office paper and went through the local section. On the second page there was a story about Calabreso’s arrest.

  Off-Duty Cop Comes Across Stolen Merchandise

  Off-duty Crawford Police Officer Michael Kelley came across a suspicious vehicle last night and made an arrest for stolen property estimated at over $20,000. Charged with possession of stolen property was 24-year-old Michael Calabreso. Calabreso is likely to face additional charges. It appeared as if a deal for the stolen property had gone wrong as Calabreso had been found unconscious and taped to his own steering wheel.

  “The alert actions of Officer Kelley have resulted in the recovery of stolen property and the apprehension of one of the city’s kingpins in contraband and stolen merchandise,” said Crawford’s Police department spokesperson, Randy Weiser.

  Calabreso is recovering and is listed in stable condition at Good Samaritan Hospital.

  That was a relief. I was glad Calabreso wasn’t going to be crippled or brain dead. I was also relieved to read that it didn’t look like Kelley was going to be in any trouble. The fact that he was being made out as a hero wouldn’t please him, and he’d still be plenty pissed, but at least he wasn’t facing any problems on the job.

  I headed to the medical center to see Eli and Mikey and to talk to Rudy. The Michelin Woman wouldn’t approve, but I could say I was doing a session within the hospital or I was providing support or some shit. In reality, I wanted to get a handle on what to expect in terms of a prognosis for each of the guys and visit with them. Neither of them had any family and the people they hung out with were the type of friends whose lives centered around drugs and tricking. Those peer groups had a silent code that when you’re gone—gone being in jail, in the hospital, or dead—you’re gone. Taking into consideration the dangers of that type of lifestyle, it was a necessary mindset.