“Sounds like we need to queer the deal with this fight. You say it’s a club fight?”
“Right.” She licked, and loved, the lemon ice in its folded paper cup. “A club called Roberto’s just off White Horse Park, it is. Not that far from the boardwalk, but barely within the city limits.”
“These fighters on the club circuit often get bought,” Morgan said, shaking his head.
“I’m sure, but Ross told me nobody’s throwing the fight. It’s something else.”
Morgan asked.
“You bet.”
“Can you let me into the gym?” It was a rhetorical question. Morgan knew no lock could resist Felicity’s touch. Without further words they stood, dropped money on the table and left.
It seemed odd to Felicity that the air was as warm and sticky in town as it was as right up on the boardwalk. Two blocks away from shore, bright lights gave way to deep shadows, and ultramodern casinos and shops were replaced by sagging, run down, dirty buildings on dingy cluttered streets. It was as if they stepped out Disneyland’s front gate right into Gotham City. Morgan walked with confidence but without him, Felicity would have expected a mugger at every corner.
Streets around Farley’s Gym looked deserted as midnight approached. Felicity pulled a spring steel pick from her purse. Then she simply walked up to the front door, and opened it. The owner, using a key, might have taken longer.
Darkness inside the gym was almost absolute. Morgan’s light brown eyes adjusted quickly, his night vision being almost as good as Felicity’s. They moved silently across rubber mats toward the locker and shower areas. Morgan, who had not visited a real gymnasium in years, breathed deeply the odor he knew outsiders found so offensive. It was the scent of hard work and determination and a hint of dreams that never died, even if a fighter was beaten into the ground. In some ways, he preferred this honest atmosphere to that of his health club, where he went three times a week to lift chromium plated weights in a bright, carpeted, air conditioned exercise room. A place where hip hop flavored musak drowned out the grunts of the few serious lifters.
He soon found Cevida’s prep room. He must be this gym’s contender to have a space to himself. They turned on the light and in short order, they found the trainer’s area. In the center of the room stood a massage table. One wall was almost covered by a set of scales, a low table, a wooden cabinet and poster size photos of various famous fighters. The table held a pair of boxing gloves, shoes and a clipboard.
Morgan tried on Cevida’s gloves, which were regulation size and weight as far as he could tell. He squeezed them in various places, and tested the laces.
“What are we looking for?” Felicity asked.
“If nobody’s paid to lose, there are only so many ways to fix a fight, Red,” He said. “Thought there might be weights in the gloves, or some kind of foreign object he could come up with, then hide.”
“Ever box, Morgan?” Felicity asked. “Seems like you’ve done about everything else.”
“Full contact karate, and some Thai kick boxing in the East,” He said. “Never this stuff, though. Enough of this thing hitting your head will scramble your brain after a while.” He pointed at the left glove, then threw a few lightning fast jabs at a wall.
“That’s right,” Felicity said, almost to herself, turning to the locked cabinet. “Ross said, all he has to do is put his glove on Bonham enough times.”
“That a direct quote?” Morgan was examining a pair of boxing shoes.
“Naturally,” Felicity said, picking the cabinet’s lock without paying much attention to it. “What good’s a photographic memory if you can’t show off once in a while? Now, let’s see what’s in here.”
The cabinet came open and Morgan started through its contents one at a time. “Okay, you got your ace bandage, your plaster, your tape, your Motrin with codeine that’s probably not a legitimate prescription.”
“What’s in here?” Felicity lifted a vial down from a cabinet.
“Never seen these?” He popped the top off and waved it under Felicity’s nose. She snapped backward. “Smelling salts. Lots of people use poppers now, but this is the tried and true. Now this bottle I don’t recognize.” Morgan pulled down a small unmarked vial. He figured it held maybe six ounces of a clear, gelid liquid.
“Me either,” Felicity said, taking it. “Why don’t people put labels on this stuff?” She opened the bottle and sniffed. “No odor. Any ideas?”
He took the bottle from Felicity, examined it closely, and tipped it up. A few drops of liquid slid into his hand. He rubbed it between his fingers, wondering how quickly it would evaporate. He was about to taste it, when he unexpectedly lost his balance and dropped back on the table. Felicity jumped as if slapped.
“What happened?”
Morgan stared at the ceiling for a moment, at least as startled as Felicity had been. Like her, the last thing he would ever expect himself to do was to lose his balance. Yet, that was exactly what happened.
“I don’t know,” he said, finally answering her, “but I think it’s this stuff.” He poured a little of the liquid into his palm and, in about thirty seconds, he felt another slight wave of dizziness.
“What is that stuff?”
“Don’t know, Red, but I bet it’s the fix,” he said. “Looks like it’s some kind of drug that causes disorientation and disrupts your inner ear.”
“But you didn’t drink it,” Felicity said, taking the bottle from him. “The second time you didn’t even inhale it.”
“That’s right,” He said, with a grin. “When I was a kid I knew some college boys who joined the army because they found it ‘broadening.’ When everyone else was smoking dope they took LSD. When the narcs got hip to sugar cubes and stuff, they just put the stuff in rub on tattoos. The drug went right through your skin. If a hallucinogen can work that way, why not whatever this is?”
Felicity smirked at her partner. “EVERYONE else was smoking dope?”
“Never mind.”
“So this is some kind of anesthetic derivative,” Felicity said, pacing around Morgan. “Like the stuff the dentist rubs on your gums so you don’t feel the big needle. Only this stuff goes straight to your brain.”
“Sure don’t last long,” he said, standing and waving his arms as a test. “But in a fight, it wouldn’t have to. A neat scheme, and not likely to get busted if that stuff evaporates quick enough.”
“Okay, so now that we know the plan, what can we do about it?” Felicity asked, plopping down on the massage table herself. “Call the police or the boxing authorities or something?”
“I’ve got another idea,” he said. “It’ll make this scam a lot less attractive without involving any cops. Cops ask questions and you and I could be sucked into that. Besides, my plan has a bonus. It’ll cost these cheats some money.”
-17-
Mornings were never kind to Andreas Skorolos. Even as a fighter he was a night owl, never really able to get into training before noon. After an undistinguished boxing career, he had begun an equally obscure life at ringside, often missing his boxers’ roadwork because they began before dawn.
Now, just before sunup, he heard his doorbell. Skorolos hefted himself to his feet, pulling on pants and slipping into shoes before his eyes were fully open. He left on the tee shirt he slept in. Who would visit him at such an hour? Skorolos staggered out of his bedroom, past the little kitchenette at the back, across his narrow living room.
“Who is it?” he asked, already unlocking the door. A burglar wouldn’t knock, after all.
“Message for you.”
What the hell was this? He opened the door as much from curiosity as anything else. Morgan stiff armed him back, stepped in and closed the door behind him. Skorolos fell back into his shabby arm chair. Morgan looked into the bedroom on the left, the kitchenette on the right. It was clear that Skorolos was alone. The living room held a battered sofa and a big, aging console television. Floor tiles were cracked in places and the wallpape
r was gray from its years in place, just hanging there. Much like Skorolos. Years in the same place. Just hanging there.
“Who the hell are you?” Skorolos shouted.
“Oh, just a man from the New Jersey crime commission,” Morgan answered calmly. “Thought I’d ask you some questions.”
“You…you got to show me some I.D.” He got his feet under himself and leaned forward. Of possible people to fear, government employees were low on his list. They had rules they had to play by. But Morgan stepped forward until he hovered just above the trainer.
“I ain’t got to show you shit, scum ball. If I flashed my badge I might be tempted to throw your fat ass in jail.”
“You can’t threaten me,” Skorolos said. A low rumble came from his throat and he suddenly lunged forward. All his weight and power went into one right hook into Morgan’s stomach. As if he knew it was coming, Morgan slipped the blow easily, grabbed Skorolos’ arm and spun him onto the sofa. He landed with a great puff of wind, and all resistance blew out of him right then. Morgan squatted down on his haunches to get on eye level with the man.
“Try that again, and I’ll hurt you,” he said, putting just the slightest edge in his voice. “I’m not showing you a thing because I’m under cover. But if you decide to be stupid, I’ve got this bottle of drugs I got out of your cabinet. It’s covered with your fingerprints and I think you might do some time if I hauled you in.”
Now Skorolos was sitting up straight, listening hard. Did he hear a deal here? Why else would this guy be talking instead of putting handcuffs on him? If he paid attention, he might find a way out of this.
“All right, pal, what is it you want?” he asked. “And how did you find me?”
“I got your address at the gym. Now, what do you do with that stuff?” Morgan asked, standing and backing off a step. “Paint it on the fighter’s gloves?”
“That’s right,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt the other guy, not really.”
“No, of course not,” Morgan said. “It just slows him up a bit, maybe puts his balance off for a second. Really, it has about the effect of a good right hook to the jaw. Nobody would know the fight was tampered with. Nobody.”
“Okay, so you know.” he was losing patience. “So what do you want?”
“I want to know if your fighter is in on this?”
“Cevida?” Surprise coated Skorolos’ voice. “He’d never go along with anything crooked. Boy’s as honest as any I’ve met. But he’ll never get anywhere. He just ain’t got the power. He’s a good man, just not a good fighter. At least this way, he can have a little bit of a career. A couple of wins, you know? And a few dollars.”
“Very few, I’ll bet,” Morgan said. “And he’ll have at least one less win than you thought. You’re not going to put the drug on his gloves tonight.”
Skorolos’ voice dropped to a whine. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t back out of this. I already been…”
“Already been paid, porky?”
“They give me big money to do this deal,” he said.
“Don’t worry, you won’t back out,” Morgan said, stepping in again to rest a hand on his shoulder. “You’re just not going to do it. Their fighter loses, and they pay off to a lot of lucky, lucky betters.”
“You nuts?” Fear pushed Skorolos to his feet. “They’ll kill me.” Morgan walked across the narrow room, and brushed aside the curtain to glance out the front window. He surveyed the street from three flights up.
“Tell me, how much do the bad guys give you to tilt the odds this way?”
Skorolos saw this as the turning point. If he answered he was committed. If he didn’t, he would probably end up in jail. Deciding was easier than he expected.
“I get ten G’s.”
“Ten grand?” Morgan struggled to stifle a laugh. “That’s your idea of big money? It’s not five percent of what they’ll clear from this one fight. Tell you what. You don’t look too stupid. I’ll give you twenty to blow the deal and skip town.”
“Twenty thousand dollars?” He could hardly believe it.
“Right, and all you have to do is do nothing tonight.”
“Wait a minute.” Skorolos retained a certain amount of skepticism. He knew about government budgets. “When do I get the money?”
“Why Andreas, my friend you disappoint me.” Morgan pulled an envelope from his hip pocket. “I’ll give you half the money now.” Morgan reached out, offering Skorolos the envelope. He greedily snatched it, and opened it to count its contents. He blinked when he realized that he literally had only half of the money. He held a stack of bills, each displaying half of Benjamin Franklin’s portrait.
“There’s two hundred of them in there,” Morgan said. “I’ll deliver the other half of each of them to you in not much more than twenty-four hours from now. With that much scratch you should be able to get out of Jersey before Cevida’s owners figure out what happened. Since they got no respect for you, it will be a while before it occurs to them that you might be the cause of their big loss.”
Skoloros wasn’t sure if he’d just been insulted, but he wasn’t about to argue with a man offering him this kind of a payday. He was just about to smile when Morgan stepped closer again and clutched his throat with a big right hand.
“Now I know you ain’t too bright, but you wouldn’t think about double crossing me, would you?”
Skoloros shook his head, feeling hard fingertips dig into the flesh on either side of his neck.
“And you wouldn’t even consider telling anybody else about our little deal, would you?”
Again, Skoloros shook his head, feeling Morgan’s eyes bore into his own.
“That’s good,” Morgan said. “Because that would really piss me off and then instead of bringing you the other half of those bills when I got back, I’d tear your head off and shit down your neck.”
Then Morgan released the trainer, gave him a light slap on the cheek and backed out of his apartment.
Staring at his handful of cut bills, Skorolos decided mornings were still not kind to him.
-18-
Roberto’s club threatened to burst with a standing room crowd. Waitresses hustled through the narrow spaces between tables, trying to keep up with the bottomless demand for beer. The crowd babble imitated white noise, like crashing surf or a television set after sign off. The spilled beer smell nearly masked the sweat and the garlic from hoagies and Philly steaks. All other lights, even the neon bar signs, were overpowered by a single glaring hooded bulb hanging from a frayed cord above the raised canvas ring, dead center.
At a rear table, Ross Davis sat with crossed legs in apparent total comfort. A cigarette hung from his right hand, a tall glass filled with a golden brew stood on the table in front of him, and his left arm hung loosely over the back of Felicity’s chair.
The chaos hit Felicity’s senses like a cattle prod. She hated disorder, especially in the form of shouting, shoving humanity. This time, she minded it less than usual, because it partially concealed her nervousness. She and Morgan planned today’s activities in great detail, but she had not seen him since they parted the previous night. Now she couldn’t avoid thoughts of the thousand possible combinations of events that could result in things going wrong.
Five minutes before the big fight was to begin, Felicity saw him enter. Deadpanned, still wearing mirrored sunglasses, Morgan edged his way forward through the crowd. She looked through him. He was a stranger to her now. He would stay in character, and so must she.
When he reached Davis, Morgan crouched to bring him to eye level. Davis expected pretty much what he saw: a strong arm man, cold, deadly, arrogant but prone to follow orders. He waited, saying nothing.
“I’m Johnson.” Morgan shouted in Davis’ direction. He was barely heard above the crowd. “J.J. Slash told me to make contact when I got settled in Atlantic City. Guess I’m your backup.”
“Find a corner, but stay in sight,” Davis shouted back. “We’ll get together after the
fight, outside. Might need you to help collect a few bets.” He gave Morgan one quick smile, which wasn’t returned. When Morgan moved off to stand in the nearest corner, Davis hugged Felicity close.
“What a boorish clod,” he yelled to her. “No class, just muscle. Probably carrying a gun. Did you see the way he was glaring down your blouse?”
Felicity stifled a chuckle after that last comment, but luckily the crowd roared, covering her reaction. From somewhere she couldn’t see, “Flash” Cevida, the underdog, bounced and danced up to the ring in black trunks. He appeared to float over the ropes. He grinned at the crowd, waving his hands over his head. From all appearances he was feeling like a winner.
Seconds later, another, louder cheer went up. “Big” Bill Bonham, the favorite, stepped into the ring wearing long baggy white trunks. He was glowing with confidence. This opening ritual fascinated Felicity, who had not watched much boxing. From the introductions, beginning with “Ladies and gentlemen”, through the warning to the boxers to fight fair, this pointless, tension building hoopla was worthy of Atlantic City, even if it did happen on a back street, some blocks distant from the boardwalk.
From his corner vantage point, Morgan sized up the two boxers. Bonham stood an inch taller, with big black arms that glinted under the light, like his scalp. It looked like Cevida had a slightly longer reach. His muscles were longer, smoother. He had that hungry dog look in his eye. Often, in a near even match, the hungrier animal will win. Morgan wondered briefly if the drugged gloves were a true fix, or merely insurance.
A bell rang, and two bodies collided in the ring’s center like projectiles fired from cannons. It would be a good match. Cevida depended largely on footwork and tearing jabs. Bonham had that big right hand which jarred opponents every time it landed.
Lost Art Assignment Page 9