It took him fifteen minutes to walk to the new orange apartment building at Floral and Carmelita. In the foyer, he found the name m. morales next to the bell for apartment 206. Pushing the bell, he waited. Presently a voice through the intercom said, “Yeah?”
“It’s Joe Bell. I wanna talk.”
“Well, you finally got smart, huh?” the voice said contemptuously. “Come on up.”
The inner door buzzed and Joe pushed through it. As he got to 206, the door was opened by a pretty Mexican girl with eyes like ripe plums and a belly that was five or six months pregnant. Morales, in his undershirt, holding a bottle of Corona, was standing in an overdecorated living room with black velvet bullfighting paintings on the wall. He was just putting down a portable phone.
“Can we talk in private?” Joe asked.
“Teresa,” Morales said, “go visit your sister for a while. I’ll call you when to come back.” Teresa picked up a yellow plastic purse and left. When the door closed behind her, Morales asked, “You want a beer, man?”
Joe walked up close to him, pulling on the worn training gloves. “Where’s my wife, you motherfucker?”
“What? I thought you came to talk about the fight, man—”
Joe slapped the bottle of Corona out of his hand and across the room. Some of it splashed across one of the velvet paintings.
“You gringo puta—” Morales snarled. White pussy.
Joe hit him a hard right to the mouth, splitting his lip. Blood spurted. A left to the eye opened a cut in the eyebrow. It began to seep.
“I warned you to stay away from her!”
A hard right dug low into his groin and Morales’ eyes rolled back. He clutched himself with both hands and bent over. Joe drilled him hard, first to one ear, then the other. With a vicious uppercut, he straightened him up again, then rained four hard punches to the face. The flat, aged leather of the old training gloves contused flesh each time they struck. Morales tried to fall, but Joe held him up against a wall.
“Where is she, you spic cocksucker? If you don’t tell me, I’ll fucking kill you!”
Morales, choking on blood from a broken nose and his split lip, tried to speak but could not, and instead shook his head, which Joe took to mean refusal.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
Shots to the head, shots to the kidneys, shots to the liver, the solar plexus, the rib cage; then back to the head and face: under his punches, Joe felt Morales’ sphenoid bone break, the mandible snap, then the zygomatic arch collapse on the left side. His face was pulp.
Suddenly Joe realized that Morales was limp; he was unconscious, only Joe’s punches holding him up. That’s when Joe knew he’d fucked up; Morales couldn’t tell Joe where Gladys was now even if he wanted to.
Joe let the slack, flabby body in front of him slide down the wall to a sitting position, then tumble sideways with the arms twisted, as if Morales had been tied in some grotesque knot.
Gotta get out of here, Joe thought. He cracked the apartment door an inch; the hall was empty. At least 1 taught the son of a bitch a lesson.
Downstairs, as he was leaving the building, he ran into Luis and Manny. Sure, Morales had been using the phone when I got there, Joe remembered. He blocked the door to the building and shoved both of them back. “Where’s my wife, motherfuckers?”
Both of them saw the bloodied training gloves on his hands.
“Your wife?” said Luis. “What you talking about, man?”
Joe shoved them again. “You know what I’m talking about! You took my wife! Where is she?” At that moment, he had visions of Gladys being gang-raped by every spic punk in East L.A. “Tell me where the fuck she is!”
“You crazy!” Manny said indignantly. “We ain’t got your wife, man! You think we commit a kidnaping to fix a fight pool?”
“Kidnaping’s a life sentence, man!” Luis exclaimed. “You think we crazy?”
While they were talking, both pulled out their handle knives and slid the blades forward.
“You better get the fuck out of the way, man, or you gon’ get cut,” Manny said. They moved cautiously around Joe toward the door. Joe was frowning now, uncertain.
“Where you get that blood on your gloves, man?” Luis asked. “If you did what I think you did, you in bad trouble, hombre."
They got around him and moved into the foyer. Luis used a key card to open the inside door.
Joe walked away, confusion shrouding him, questions beginning to form. He started trotting. The cool night air felt good against his sweaty face and neck. Somewhere along the way, he peeled off the bloody gloves and threw them in a trash can.
Back at his own apartment, Joe went into the bathroom and washed his face with cold water. It was when he was drying his hands that he saw the note. It was propped up against the aspirin bottle where she knew he’d find it; he always took an aspirin tablet at bedtime because he thought it thinned his blood and relaxed him while he slept.
Dropping the towel on the floor, he read the note:
Joe—I’ve left with Hass and his brothers. Sorry to
do it like this, but I want to make something of myself.
Just throw all my stuff out. Hass wants me to have
everything new.
Gladys
PS. Good luck with the fight.
P.P.S. I’ll see a lawyer in the near future.
Joe sat down on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the note. Inside, he felt like his intestines were shriveling. His heart began to hurt. He wanted to cry, but he hadn’t cried in so long he didn’t know how anymore. Punches and pain do that. Fighters and abused kids learn not to cry.
After a while, he went into the other room, packed an old cardboard suitcase and left.
When he got to Indio at midnight, he walked from the shabby little bus station to the Aztec Motel, which was half a mile down the highway from the Rialto Resort and Casino, where the fight was to take place. After checking into a room, he sat on the bed, took a slip of paper out of his wallet with Race’s phone number on it, and called him.
“I’m already in Indio, Race,” he said. “I took a bus down. I was afraid I’d get car sick riding down in the morning. This way, I get a good night’s rest and I’ll be fresher for the fight.”
“You on the level with me, boy?” Race asked suspiciously. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong, is they?”
“No, nothing’s wrong. I’m a little nervous, is all.”
“That’s all? You sure?”
“I’m okay, Race.”
“All right then. I’ll bring all the gear down with Ortega tomorrow. You be at the Rialto for the weigh-in at two, understand? Don’t you be late.”
“I’ll be there, Race. Don’t worry.” He paused a beat. “Listen, Race, thanks for all the help getting me ready.”
“Ain’t no call to thank me, boy. I jus’ does what I gets paid to do, tha’s all.”
Yeah, sure, but the way you do it makes a difference, Joe wanted to tell him. The way you do it is special. But Joe knew that Race wouldn’t want to hear any such talk as that, so all he said was, “See you tomorrow, Race,” and hung up.
For a few minutes, Joe sat on the side of the bed, thinking about his situation. By now, Luis and Manny would have reported what happened, and someone in La Familia, probably that guy Ortega paid protection to, Chico something, would have decided what to do to him and when. He was in for a bad beating, he knew; maybe even a maiming of some kind: a smashed ankle that would leave him with a limp; broken fingers that he could no longer make a fist with; or a cutting, some kind of facial slashing that would leave a bad scar that people could see. La Familia liked to mark victims of retaliation to remind everyone that the price for disrespect was very high.
Because Mickey Morales had said that Joe’s opponent tomorrow, Antonio Avila, was a member of La Familia, Joe was sure that nothing would be done to him until after the fight. No one was going to jeopardize Avila’s rapidly improving record. “The Anvil” was proba
bly being groomed for a multimillion-dollar pay-per-view fight with Oscar de la Hoya, the “Golden Boy,” who had moved up to middleweight after losing three out of his last four at welter. It would be a battle for bragging rights between two products of the East Los Angeles streets. The winner would then face the winner of Felix Trinidad-Fernando Vargas for the undisputed one-fifty-four and one-sixty unified title. La Familia wasn’t going to mess with plans like that just for immediate reprisal for a beating taken by one of its neighborhood underlings. Reprisal would come, to be sure, but in good time. Business first, then revenge.
What he had to do now, Joe knew, was psych himself up to go the full six with Avila. His three-thousand-purse bet at thirty to one would bring him ninety grand. With that kind of money, he could rent a nice apartment, with air-conditioning, and find Gladys and get her back. She would take him back if he had some serious money like that, he knew she would; she loved him. Maybe he could even get Ortega to talk Chico-whatever-his-name-was into working a deal to withdraw retaliation for the beating of Morales; maybe for a piece of Joe’s winnings; maybe even for a quick, big money rematch with Avila, eight, even ten rounds, with Chico as co-promoter.
There were all kinds of possibilities. Joe intended to level with Ortega about everything as soon as the fight was over. Ortega would find a way to help him. Everything was going to be all right.
Unpacking the few things he had brought with him, Joe took a shower and pulled on a pair of clean sweatpants and a T-shirt. Outside, next to the motel office, he got a bucket of ice and from a vending machine bought two bags of pretzels and a Sprite. Back in the room, he changed from the sweatpants to his Jockey shorts, turned on the TV and stretched out to eat what was going to be his supper. He found a movie on TV, an old John Wayne picture where he was trying to rescue his niece who had been captured by Indians. Joe had already seen it a couple times before, but he decided it was good enough to watch again, so he left it on.
As he watched the movie and ate, he alternated soaking each hand in the bucket of ice to reduce any swelling from the punches he had hit Morales with. They would be all right by morning; lucky he had thought to wear the old training gloves. Despite all the problems, despite the fact that he had been mistaken, he was not sorry about the beating he had given Mickey Morales. He hated punks like that. All they did was make life harder for people who already had it hard enough. Joe was glad he had taught the son of a bitch a lesson.
When he got Gladys back, he knew he was going to have to forgive her for sleeping with Hassim, which he guessed she had already done. But he was sure he could do that. Pretty sure, anyway. Gladys was one of those women who was easily flattered by the attention of men; she had just been led astray, was all. He could forgive her. He loved her enough; he could do it.
Everything was going to be all right.
At one forty-five the next afternoon, Joe walked into the Rialto Resort and Casino ballroom, where the ring had been set up in the middle of neat rows of three thousand folding chairs. A medical scale was standing near the press row, and members of the Agua Caliente Tribe Athletic Commission, the referee and the ringside physician were standing around talking. Avila and his entourage were seated nearby. Ortega and Race were standing on the sidelines, looking nervous.
“Where the hell you been, boy?” Race asked indignantly when Joe walked up.
“What’s the matter, I ain’t late,” Joe said.
Ortega looked relieved. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Got a good night’s sleep down the road.”
“You eat today?” Race asked.
“Nope. I’m starving, man.”
Ortega went over to the commissioners and they called everyone up to the scale. Antonio Avila was young, relaxed, toned, buff. He bobbed his chin at Joe. “How you doing, Bell?”
“Good. How you doing, Avila?”
“Good.”
The fighters stripped down to their Jockey shorts. And took turns on the scale.
“Avila, one-fifty-eight,” the referee announced. Then: “Bell, one-fifty-seven-and-a-half. ”
As Joe dressed, Ortega said to Race, “Take him into the restaurant and feed him. I’m going to hang around for Camacho Junior and Malloy to weigh in. There’s some hostility between them; might be interesting.”
“Showboating is all it’ll be,” Race replied cynically.
When Joe was dressed, he and Race went into the resort restaurant, which was glass-walled, palm-tree-lined, and built around a small lagoon on which ducks paddled about. They were shown to a table and Joe ordered a New York cut steak, home fries and a Caesar salad. “Can I have iced tea?” he asked Race.
“Sure. Drink all the caffeine you want for the rest of the day.” Race had a chicken salad plate. While they were eating, he said, “ ’Member that smartass spic Mickey Morales that Gil run off couple weeks ago?”
Joe’s stomach tightened. “Yeah, what about him?” “Somebody beat the piss out of him yesterday. They got him over in the county medical center. Sounds like he got busted up good and proper. Little prick prob’ly deserved it.”
“Who, uh—who done it?”
Race shrugged. “Beats me. I just heard it from one of the guys that trains Avila. They all part of that La Familia bullshit. Mexican gangsters, that’s all they are.”
Nothing more was said on the subject. Race avoided discussing the impending fight; he wanted Joe’s mind to relax and be fresh when he went into the ring. Instead, Race reminisced about the “old days,” meandering casually, dropping names of “fine” trainers like Whitey Bimstein, Ray Arcel, Jack Blackburn; and tough middleweights, “Ones you’d have to kill to make quit,” like Carmen Basilio, Gene Fullmer, Jake LaMotta, Tony Zale; and when title fights were fifteen rounds, and twelve-round fights were “elimination bouts” to decide who would get a chance to try fifteen with a titleholder; when there were no “pussy” titles: “junior” this and “super” that.
“A middleweight was a middleweight, by God,” Race recalled. “He weighed between one-forty-eight and one-sixty, period. None of this one-fifty-four shit. There were eight divisions and eight champions, period. Now there’s seventeen divisions and five titleholders in each one. That’s ten times as many. It’s ruining the game!” He chewed on the inside of his mouth for a moment, then asked, “You want another steak?”
Joe shook his head. “Can I have dessert?”
“Okay. Tapioca pudding or Jell-0.”
“Come on, Race. Apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.”
“Tha’s too much sugar.”
“Without the ice cream then.”
“Okay.”
Joe ordered his apple pie. When they finished eating, Race asked what kind of room Joe had at the motel. “Just a cheap little room,” Joe said.
“Twin beds?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay we gon’ down there and take us a nap. You wait here, I’ll tell Gil.”
A few minutes later, the two of them walked down the highway toward the Aztec Motel, and a little while after that, with the drapes drawn and the cooler on, they were stretched out on separate beds, the old black trainer and the getting-old white fighter, both scar-tissued, both ring-worn, both too weary, without realizing it, for what lay ahead that evening.
Race got Joe back to the resort’s makeshift fight dressing room at four-thirty, got him into his protective cup, trunks, socks and shoes, and had him do some shadowboxing to begin warming up. Since it was an ESPN Friday Night Fights card, Joe and Avila would be the first fight to be televised. There were shorter, standby fights, four-rounders, to be put on in case of an early knockout in the opener. The main event would go on at seven local time, ten in the east.
After Joe had warmed up sufficiently, Race patted him dry with a towel, then one of Avila’s cornermen came in and Race taped Joe’s hands. The Avila man used a Magic Marker to sign both wrappings. Ortega would be doing the same thing in Avila’s dressing room. Presently the referee arrived and spent fiv
e minutes going over the commission rules for the fight.
After all that was over, Race sat Joe on a stool and massaged his trapezius and deltoid muscles to loosen up Joe’s punching ability and perhaps add a split-second to his speed. Afterward, he knelt in front of him, Joe’s legs stretched out straight, and massaged inside each thigh the adductor magnus muscle, which was the first one to transmit from the brain to the legs the result of a damaging punch. When he finished, he got Joe into his twelve-ounce ring gloves and taped the laces down.
Before long, a young Indian ring assistant stuck his head in the door and said, “Joe Bell, ten minutes!” They could hear him step across the hall to another door, open it and say, “Antonio Avila, ten minutes!”
Race got Joe back on his feet, put punching pads on his own hands and said, “Okay, loosen up.” Joe rose, went into his fighting stance and began hitting the pads wherever Race moved them: up, down, out, forward, back. Within five minutes, Joe had broken a good sweat again.
The young Indian came back to the door. “Ready for Joe
Bell.”
“Let’s go,” Race said, holding a terry-cloth robe with extrabig sleeves for Joe to put on. Race picked up his water bucket, water bottle and a rolled corner pack containing swabs, Vaseline, adrenaline chloride cut paste, an ice pack, sponge and other items he needed to work the corner. Ortega met them at the door and they made their way down a deserted hotel hallway into the crowded, converted ballroom, its folding chairs now about 80 percent filled with people.
Joe liked stepping into the rush of noise that met him. There was some scattered applause as he and Race followed Ortega down the aisle to the ring. Here and there, hands reached out to pat his back or shoulders, and some people said, “Good luck.” A few called him by name, but most of the spectators didn’t know who he was. Indio was Avila country; Joe was just the latest sacrifice.
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