The Best American Mystery Stories 3

by Edited by James Ellroy

  “On your feet, boy,” he said to Robinson.

  “I’m eating my dinner,” Robinson said.

  The big man took hold of Robinson’s arm, and Robinson came out of the chair as if he’d been ejected and hit the big guy with a good right hand. Robinson was a good-sized guy in good condition, and he knew how to punch. It should have put the big guy down. But it didn’t. He took a couple of backwards steps and steadied himself and shook his head as if there were flies. At Digiacomo’s table everyone had turned to look. The only sound in the room was the faint clatter of dishes from the kitchen. It was so still I could hear chairs creaking as people turned to stare. I was on my feet.

  “Sit down,” I yelled at Robinson.

  “Not up here,” Robinson said. “I’ll take it downtown, but not up here.”

  The big man had his head cleared. He looked at the table where Digiacomo sat.

  “Go ahead, Sonny,” Digiacomo said. “Show the nigger something.”

  The big man lunged toward Robinson. I stepped between them. The big man almost ran over me, and would have run over both of us if I hadn’t hit him a hell of a left. It was probably no better punch than Robinson’s, but it benefited from the brass knuckles I was wearing. It stopped him but it didn’t put him down. I got my knee into his groin and hit him again with the knucks. He grunted and went down slowly. First to his knees, then slowly toppling face forward onto the floor.

  The place was like a tomb. Even the kitchen noise had stopped. I could hear someone’s breath rasping in and out. I’d heard it before. It was mine.

  The four men at Digiacomo’s table were on their feet. All of them had guns, and all of them were pointing at us. Digiacomo remained seated. He looked mildly amused.

  “Don’t shoot them in here,” he said. “Take them out.”

  I was wearing a Colt .45 that I had liberated from the U.S. Marine Corps. But it was still on my hip. I should have had it out when this thing started.

  One of the other men, a thin tall man with high shoulders, said, “Outside” and gestured with the .38 belly gun he carried. He was the gunny. You could tell by the way he held the weapon, like it was precious.

  “No,” Robinson said.

  “How about you, pal?” the gunny said to me.

  I shook my head. The gunny looked at Digiacomo.

  Digiacomo said, “Okay, shoot them here. Make sure the niggers clean up afterwards.”

  The gunny smiled. He was probably good at it. You could see he liked the work.

  “Which one of you wants it first?” he said.

  At the next table a small Negro with a thin mustache, wearing a cerulean blue suit, said, “No.”

  The gunny glanced at him.

  “You too, boy?” he said.

  At the table on the other side of us a large woman in a too-tight yellow dress said, “No.” And stood up.

  The gunny glanced at her. The small Negro with the mustache stood too. Then everyone at his table stood. The woman in the too-tight dress moved in front of Robinson and me. Between us and the gunny. The people from her table joined her. The people from mustache’s table joined them. Then all the people in the room were on their feet, closing on us, surrounding us, making an implacable black wall between us and the gunny. I took my gun out. Robinson stood motionless, balanced on the balls of his feet. From the bar along the far side of the room came the sound of someone working the action of a pump shotgun. It is a sound, like the sound of a tank, that doesn’t sound like anything else. Through the crowd I could see the round-faced bartender leaning his elbows on the bar aiming a shotgun with most of the stock cut off.

  The gunny looked at Digiacomo again. They were an island of pallid faces in a sea of dark faces. Digiacomo got to his feet for the first time. His face was no longer amused. He looked at me through the crowd, and at Robinson, and seemed to study us both for a moment. Then he jerked his head toward the big man who had managed to sit up on the floor among the forest of Negro feet. Two of the other men with Digiacomo eased through the crowd and got the big man on his feet. They looked at Digiacomo. Digiacomo looked at us again, then turned without speaking and walked out. The gunny put his belly gun away, sadly, and turned and followed Digiacomo. The other men, two of them helping the big guy, went out after him.

  The room was as still and motionless as Sunday in Antarctica. Then Robinson said again, “Not up here,” and everyone in the room heard him and everyone in the room began to cheer.

  “Lucky thing this is a baseball crowd,” I said to Robinson.

  He looked at me for a moment as if he were somewhere else. Then he seemed slowly to come back. He smiled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Lucky thing.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  F. X. TOOLE

  Midnight Emissions

  BUTCHERIN’ WAS DONE while the deceased was still alive,” Junior said.

  See, we was at the gym and I’d been answering a few things. Old Junior’s a cop, and his South Texas twang was wide and flat like mine. ‘Course he was dipping, and he let a stream go into the Coke bottle he was carrying in the hand that wasn’t his gun hand. His blue eyes was paler than a washed-out work shirt.

  “Hail,” he said, “one side of the mouth’d been slit all the way to the earring.”

  See, when the police find a corpse in Texas, their first question ain’t who done it, it’s what did the dead do to deserve it?

  ~ * ~

  Billy Clancy’d been off the police force a long time before Kenny Coyle come along, but he had worked for the San Antonia Police Department a spell there after boxing. He made some good money for himself on the side — down in dark town, if you know what I’m saying? That’s after I trained him as a heavyweight in the old El Gallo, or Fighting Cock gym off Blanco Road downtown. We worked together maybe six years all told, starting off when he was a amateur. Billy Clancy had all the Irish heart in the world. At six-three and two-twenty-five, he had a fine frame on him, most of his weight upstairs. He had a nice clean style, too, and was quick as a sprinter. But after he was once knocked out for the first time? He had no chin after that. He’d be kicking ass and taking names, but even in a rigged fight with a bum, if he got caught, down he’d go like a longneck at a ice house.

  He was a big winner in the amateurs, Billy was, but after twelve pro fights, he had a record of eight and four, with his nose broke once — that’s eight wins by KO, but he lost four times by KO, so that’s when he hung ‘em up. For a long time, he went his way and I went mine. But then Billy Clancy opened Clancy’s Pub with his cop money. That was his big break. There was Irish night with Mick music, corned beef and cabbage, and Caffery’s Ale on tap and Harp Lager from Dundalk. And he had Messkin night with mariachis and folks was dancin’ corridos and the band was whooping out rancheras and they’d get to playing some of that nortena polka music that’d have you laughing and crying at the same time. For shrimp night, all you can eat, Billy trucked in fresh Gulf shrimp sweeter than plum jelly straight up from Matamoros on the border. There was kicker, and hillbilly night, and on weekends there was just about the best jazz and blues you ever did hear. B. B. King did a whole week there one time. It got to be a hell of a deal for Billy, and then he opened up a couple of more joints till he had six in three towns, and soon Billy Clancy was somebody all the way from San Antonia up to Dallas, and down to Houston. Paid all his taxes, obeyed all the laws, treated folks like they was ladies and gentlemen, no matter how dusty the boots, how faded the dress, or if a suit was orange and purple and green.

  By then he had him a home in the historic old Monte Vista section oi San Antonia. His wife had one of them home-decorating businesses on her own, and she had that old place looking so shiny that it was like going back a hundred years. His kids was all in private school, all of them geared to go to UT up Austin, even though the dumb young one saw himself as a Aggie.

  So one day Billy called me for some “Q” down near the river, knew I was a whore for baby back ribs. Ha
lfway through, he just up and said, “Red, I want back in.”

  See, he got to missing the smell of leather and sweat, and the laughter of men — he missed the action, is what, and got himself back into the game the only way he could, managing fighters. He was good at it, too. By then he was better’n forty, and myself I was getting on — old’s when you sit on the crapper and you have to hold your nuts up so they don’t get wet. But what with my rocking-chair money every month, and the money I made off Billy’s fighters, it got to where I was doing pretty good. Even got me some ostrich boots and a El Patron 30X beaver Stetson, yip!

  What Billy really wanted was a heavyweight. With most managers, it’s only the money, ‘cause heavies is what brings in them stacks of green fun-tickets. Billy wanted fun-tickets, too, but with Billy it was more like he wanted to get back something what he had lost. ‘Course, finding the right heavyweight’s like finding a cherry at the high school prom.

  Figure it, with only twenty, twenty-five good wins, ‘specially if he can crack, a heavy can fight for a titles worth millions. There’s exceptions, but most little guys’ll fight forever and never crack maybe two hundred grand. One of the reason’s ‘cause there’s so many of them. Other reason’s ‘cause they’s small. Fans like seeing heavyweights hit the canvas.

  But most of today’s big guys go into the other sports where you don’t get hit the way you do in the fights. It ain’t held against you in boxing if you’re black nowadays, but if you’re a white heavy it makes it easier to pump paydays, and I could tell that it wouldn’t make Billy sad if I could get him a white boy—Irish or Italian would be desired. But working with the big guys takes training to a level that can break your back and your heart, and I wasn’t all that sure a heavy was what I wanted, what with me being the one what’s getting broke up.

  See, training’s a hard row to hoe. It ain’t only the physical and mental parts for the fighter what’s hard, but it’s hard for the trainer, too. Fighters can drive you crazy, like maybe right in the middle of a fight they’re winning, when they forget everything what you taught them? And all of a sudden they can’t follow instructions from the corner? Pressure, pain, and being out of gas will make fighters go flat brain-dead on you. Your fighter’s maybe sweated off six or eight pounds in there, his body’s breaking down, and the jungle in him is yelling quick to get him some gone. Trainers come to know how that works, so you got to hang with your boy when he’s all alone out there in the canvas part of the world. He takes heart again, ‘cause he knows with you there he’s still got a fighting chance to go for the titties of the win. ‘Course, that means cutting grommets, Red Ryder.

  Everyone working corners knows you’ll more’n likely lose more’n you’ll ever win, that boxing for most is refried beans and burnt tortillas. But winning is what makes your birdie chirp, so you got to always put in your mind that losing ain’t nothing but a hitch in the git-along.

  Working with the big guys snarls your task. How do you tell a heavyweight full-up on his maleness to use his mind instead of his sixty-pound dick? How do you teach someone big as a garage that it ain’t the fighter with the biggest brawn what wins, but it’s the one what gets there first with deadly force? How do you make him see that hitting hard ain’t the problem, but that hitting right is? How do you get through to him that you don’t have to be mad at someone to knock him out, same as you don’t have to be in a frenzy to kill with a gun? Heavyweights got that upper-body strength what’s scary, it’s what they’d always use to win fights at school and such, so it’s their way to work from the waist up. That means they throw arm punches, but arm punches ain’t good enough. George Foreman does it, but he’s so strong, and don’t hardly miss, so he most times gets away with punching wrong. ‘Course he didn’t get away with it in Zaire with Mr. Ali.

  So the big deal with heavies is getting them to work from the waist down as well as from the waist up. And they got to learn that the last thing that happens is when the punch lands. A thousand things got to happen before that can happen. Those things begin on the floor with balance. But how do you get across that he’s got to work hard, but not so hard that he harms himself? How do you do that in a way what don’t threaten what he already knows and has come to depend on? How do you do it so’s it don’t jar how he has come to see himself and his fighting style? And most of all, how do you do it so when the pressure’s on he don’t go back to his old ways?

  After they win a few fights by early knockout, some heavies get to where they try to control workouts, will balk at new stuff what they’ll need as they step up in class. When they pick up a few purses and start driving that new car, lots get lazy and spend their time chasing poon, of which there is a large supply when there is evidence of a quantity of hundred-dollar bills. Some’s hop heads, but maybe they fool you and you don’t find that out till it’s too late. Now you got to squeeze as many paydays out of your doper that you can. Most times, you love your fighter like he’s kin, but with a goddamn doper you get to where you couldn’t give a bent nail.

  Why shouldn’t I run things? the heavy’s eyes will glare. His nose is flared, his socks is soggy with sweat, his heart’s banging at his rib cage like it’s trying to bust out of jail. It’s ‘cause he don’t understand that he can’t be the horse and the jockey. How could anyone as big and handsome and powerful and smart as me be wrong about anything? he will press. Under his breath he’s saying, And who’s big enough to tell me I’m wrong?

  When that happens, your boy’s attitude is moving him to the streets, and you may have to let him go.

  ~ * ~

  Not many fight fans ever see the inside of fight gyms, so they get to wondering what’s the deal with these big dummies who get all sweaty and grunty and beat on each other. Well, sir, they ain’t big dummies when you think big money. Most big guys in team sports figure there’s more gain and less pain than in fights, even if they have to play a hundred fifty games a year or more, and even if they have to get those leg and back operations that go with them. Some starting-out heavies get to thinking they ought to get the same big payday as major-league pitchers from the day they walk into the gym. Some see themselves as first-round draft picks in the NBA before they ever been hit. What they got to learn is that you got to be a hungry fighter before you can become a championship fighter, a fighter who has learned and survived all the layers of work and hurt the fight game will put on you. Good heavyweights’re about as scarce as black cotton.

  There’re less white heavies than black, and the whites can be even goofier than blacks about quick money. Some whites spout off that ‘cause they’re white, as in White Hope, that they should be getting easy fights up to and including the one for the title. If you’re that kind — and there’s black ones same as white — you learn right quick that he don’t have the tit or the brains to be a winner under them bright lights.

  Though heavies may have the same look, they’re as different from each other as zebras when it comes to mental desire, chin, heart, and huevos — huevos is eggs, but in Messkin it means “balls.” Getting heavies into shape is another problem, keeping them in shape is a even bigger one, ‘cause they got these bottomless pits for stomachs. So you work to keep them in at least decent shape all the time — but not in punishing top shape, the kind that peaks just before a fight. Fighter’d go wild-pig crazy if he had to live at top shape longer than a few days, his nerves all crawly and hunger eating him alive. And then there’s that blood-clotting wait to the first bell. See, the job of molding flesh and bone into a fighting machine that meets danger instead of hightailing from it is as tricky as the needlework what goes into one of them black, lacy deals what Spanish ladies wear on their heads. Fighting’s easy, cowboy, it’s training what’s hard.

  But once a trainer takes a heavy on, there’s all that thump. First of all, when the heavy moves, you got to move with him — up in the ring, on the hardwood, around the big bag. You’re there to guide him like a mama bear, and to stay on his ass so’s he don’t dog it. All fight
ers’ll dog it after they been in the game a while, but the heavies can be the worst. They got all that weight to transport, and being human, they’ll look for a place to hide. A good piece of change’ll usually goad them. But always there is more training than fighting, and the faith and the fever it takes to be a champ will drop below ninety-eight-point-six real quick unless your boy eats and sleeps fight. ‘Course, no fighter can do that one hundred percent. Besides, there’s the pussy factor. Which is part of where the punch mitts come in. They’ll make him sharp with his punches, but they’re also there to help tire him into submission come bedtime.

  The big bag they can fake if you don’t stay on them, but a trainer with mitts, calling for combination after combination, see that’s for the fighter like he’s wearing a wire jock. But for the trainer, the mitts mean you’re catching punches thrown by a six-foot-five longhorn, and the punches carry force enough to drop a horse. And the trainer takes this punishment round after round, day after day, the thump pounding through him like batting practice and he’s the ball. I can’t much work the mitts like I once did, only when I’m working on moves, or getting ready for a set date. But even bantamweights can make your eyes pop.