by F. X. Toole
Moving with Coyle, like with the other heavies, is easy for me even now. ’Cause of their weight, they get their feet tangled when they ain’t trained right, and I know how to back them to the ropes or into a corner. I don’t kid myself, they could knock me out with the bitch alone if we was fighting, but what we’re up to ain’t fighting. What we’re up to is what makes fighting boxing.
Billy Clancy got wind of Coyle and called me in, wanted to know why I was keeping my white boy secret. I told him Coyle wasn’t no secret, said it was too soon.
“Who’s feedin’ him?”
“Me and Dee-Cee.”
Billy peeled off some hundreds. I’d later split the six hundred with Dee-Cee.
Billy said, “Tell him to start eatin’ at one of my joints, as much as he wants. But no drinks and no partyin’ in the place. When’ll Coyle be ready?”
“Gimme six weeks. If he can stand up to what I put on him, then we’ll see.”
“Will he fight?”
“He better.”
Once I got Coyle’s feet slick, damn if he didn’t come along as if he was champion already. When I told Billy, he put a eight-round fight together at one of the Indian reservations on the Mississippi. We went for eight so’s not to put too much pressure on Coyle, what with me being a new trainer to him. We fought for only seventy-five hundred—took the fight just to get Coyle on the card. When I told Coyle about it, he said book it, didn’t even ask who’s the opponent. See, Coyle was broke and living in dark town with Dee-Cee, and hoping to impress Billy ’cause Dee-Cee’d told him about Billy Clancy having money.
Well, sir, halfway through the fifth round with Marcellus Ellis, Coyle got himself head-butted in the same eye where he’d been cut up Vancouver. Ellis was a six-foot-seven colored boy weighing two-seventy, but he couldn’t do nothing with Coyle, ’cause of the bitch. So Ellis hoped to save his big ass with a headbutt. Referee didn’t see the butt, and wouldn’t take our word it was intentional, so the butt wasn’t counted. Cut was so bad I skipped adrenaline and went direct to Thrombin, the ten-thousand-unit bovine coagulant deal. Thrombin stopped the blood quicker’n morphine’ll stop the runs, but the cut was in the eyelid, and the fight shoulda been stopped in truth. But we was in Mississippi and the casino wanted happy gamblers, so the ref let it go on with a warning that he’d stop the fight in the next round if the cut got worse.
Dee-Cee got gray-looking, said he was ready to go over and whip on Ellis’ nappy head with his cane.
I told Coyle the only thing I could tell him. “They’ll stop this fight on us and we could lose, so you got to get into Ellis’ ass with the bitch and then drop your right hand on him and get respect!”
All Coyle did was to nod. He went out there serious as a diamondback. Six hard jabs busted up Ellis so bad that he couldn’t think nothing but the bitch. That’s when Coyle got the angle and, Bang! he hit Ellis with a straight right that was like the right hand of God. Lordy, Ellis was out for five minutes. He went down stiff like a tree and bounced on his face, and then one leg went all jerk and twitchy. We went to whooping and hugging. That right hand was lightning in human form. But what it was that did it for me wasn’t Coyle’s big right hand, it was the way he stuck the bitch, and the way Coyle listened to me in the corner.
Billy wanted to sign him right then, but I said wait, even though I knew Coyle was antsy to get him a place of his own.
Besides, we had to wait a month and more to see if the eye’d heal complete. It took longer than we thought, so Billy started paying the boy three hundred a week walking-around money. Folks at the casino was so wild about that right hand coming outta a white boy that Billy was able to get twenty-five thousand for Coyle’s next fight soon’s a doctor’d clear his eye. And sure enough, Coyle was right back in the gym when the doctor gave him the okay. But he had some kind of funny look to him, so I told him to go home and rest. But no, Coyle kept showing up saying he wanted to get back to that casino. How do you reach the brain of a pure-strain male hormone when he’s eighteen and one with sixteen KOs? But one morning when me and Dee-Cee was out with him doing his road work, we got a surprise. Coyle started pressing his chest and had to stop running. Damn if he didn’t look half-blue and ready to go down. Me and Dee-Cee walked him back to the car, both holding him by a arm. I thought maybe it was a heart attack. We hauled ass over to Emergency. They checked him all over, hooked him up to all the machines, checked his blood for enzymes. Said it wasn’t no heart attack, said it was maybe some kind of quick virus going around that could knock folks down. Coyle wanted to know when he’d be able to fight again in Mississippi, and I told him to forget Mississippi till he was well. On our way out, the doctor got me to the side to tell me he wasn’t positive Coyle was sick.
I said, “What does that mean?”
Doc said, “I’m not sure. Just thought you might want to know.”
After a couple of days rest Coyle was back in the gym, but then he had to stop his road work outta weakness again. He looked like a whipped pup, so I figured he had to have something wrong. He said, “But I can’t fight if I don’t run, you said it yourself.”
I said, “You can’t fight if you ain’t got gas in your tank, that’s what that means. Right now, you got a hole in your tank.”
“I need dough, Red.”
He was a hungry fighter, it’s what you dream about. And there he’d be the next day, even if he coughed till he gagged. You never saw anybody push himself like him. But by then, the fool could hardly punch, much less run. But he still wanted to train, said he didn’t want us to think he didn’t have no heart.
I said, “Hail, boy, I’m worried about your brain, not heart. You got money from the last fight. Rest.”
He said, “I sent all but a thousand to my brother for an operation, he’s a cripple.”
Well, later on I learned he’d pissed all the money away on pussy and pool, and there wasn’t no cripple. But at that time I was so positive Coyle had the heart it takes that I just grabbed the bull by the horns and told Billy it was time. Billy could see the weak state Coyle was in, but on my good word it was a virus, Billy signed Coyle up to a four-year contract. On top of that, he gave Coyle a one-bedroom poolside apartment in one of his units for free. Said he’d give Coyle twenty-five hundred a month, that he’d put it in the contract, no payback, until Coyle started clearing thirty thousand a year. Said he’d give Coyle sixty thousand dollars under the table as a signing bonus soon’s he was well enough to get back in the gym. Coyle wanted a hundred thousand, but settled for sixty.
Billy said, “That’s cash, Kenny. So you don’t have to pay no taxes on it.”
“I’ll get you the title, Mr. Clancy.”
“Billy.”
I looked at Dee-Cee, knew the head of his dick was glowing same as mine. Damned if Coyle wasn’t back in the gym working hard and doing road work in only three days. Billy’s word was good, and I was there when he paid Coyle off in stacks of hundreds. Money smells bad when you get a gang of it all together.
Wouldn’t you know it? Old stinky-head went right out and spent the whole shiteree on one of them new BMW four-wheel-drive deals what goes for better than fifty thousand. Coyle got to bragging about the sports package, the killer sound system, how much horsepower it had. Who gives a rap when you can’t afford tires and battery? Buying them boogers is easy, keeping them up what’s hard.
Besides, it was about that time that Coyle’s knees went to flap like butterfly wings. See, the ladies took one look at Coyle and thought they had the real deal, what with him having that big car and flashing hundreds in the clubs.
Dee-Cee said, “How many times you get you nut this week?”
Coyle said, “That’s personal.”
Dee-Cee said, “So you been gettin’ you nut every night.”
Coyle said, “No, I ain’t.”
Dee-Cee said, “You is, too. If it was one or none, or even two times, you’da said so.”
Coyle looked at me like he’d never heard such talk.
I said, “He’s sayin’ when your legs get to wobblin’, you been doin’ it too much. He’s saying that when your legs’re weak that your brain gets to wonderin’ why’s it so hard to keep itself from fallin’ down. That’s when your brain is so busy keeping you on your feet that it don’t pay attention to fightin’. Son, you got to have your legs right so your mind can work quicker than light, or you end up as a opponent talkin’ through your nose, and the do-gooders wants to blame us trainers. No good, it’s you and your dick what’s doin’ wrong.”
Coyle said, “I’m a fighter livin’ like a fighter.”
Dee-Cee said, “Way you goin’, you won’t be for long.”
I said, “Dee-Cee ain’t wrong, Kenny.”
Dee-Cee said, “Boy, you can fuck you white ass black, but that ain’t never gonna make you champ of nothin’.”
Coyle snorted, said, “I’ll be champ of the bitches.”
Dee-Cee said, “You go out, screw a thousand bitches, you think you somethìn’? Sheeuh, you don’t screw no thousand bitches, a thousand bitches screw you—and there go you title shot, fool.”
Coyle said, “Fighters need release.”
Dee-Cee said, “Say what? All you got to do is wait some. You midnight emissions’ll natural take care of you goddamn release!”
I said, “Look, we’re tryin’ to get you around the track and across the finish line first, but you’re headin’ into the trail on us.”
“Yeah,” said Dee-Cee, “workin’ wit’ you be like holdin’ water in one hand.”
Coyle thought about that and seemed to nod, but next day when he come in his knees were flapping same as before.
Come to find out, Coyle wasn’t worth the powder to blow him to hell. Billy found out Coyle had been with three gals in the stall of the men’s toilet at one of his hot spots—that they’d been smoking weed hunched around the stool, yip! Billy didn’t jump Coyle. But instead of seeing him as a long-lost White Hope in shining armor, he saw him same as me and Dee-Cee’d come to—like a peach what had gone part bad. So, do you cut out the bad part and keep the good? Or do you shit-can the whole deal? Billy decided to save what he could as long as he could.
Billy told Coyle to flat take his partying somewhere else, like he was first told. If I know Billy, there was more he wanted to say, but didn’t. ’Course big old Coyle didn’t take it too good, and wanted to dispute with Billy. So Billy said not to mistake kindness for weakness. Coyle got the message looked like, and was back in the gym working hard again—he wanted that twenty-five hundred a month. We figured the bullshit was over, leastways the in-public bullshit. But who could tell about weed? And who knew what else Coyle was messing with? By then, I got to feeling like I was a cat trapped in a sock drawer.
I told Coyle that what he’d pulled on Billy wasn’t the right way to do business.
Coyle said, “He’s makin’ money off me.” I said, “Not yet he ain’t.”
That’s when things got so squirrelly you’d think Coyle had a tail.
First thing what come up was that stink with the plain-Jane cop’s daughter who said Coyle knocked her up—said Coyle’d gave her some of this GHB stuff that’s floating around that’ll make a gal pass out so deep she’s a corpse. Cop’s daughter said the last thing she remembered was that she was in Coyle’s pool playing kissy-face. Next thing she knew she was bare-ass on the floor and Coyle was fixing to do her. She said she jumped up and fled.
Coyle claimed that he’d already done her twice, said she was crying for more.
See, it wasn’t until it come out she was pregnant that she told her daddy, who was a detective sergeant of the San Antonia P.D. She was a only child, and Daddy had them squinty blue eyes set in a face wide in the cheekbones what the Polacks brought into Texas. That good old boy got to rampaging like a rodeo bull, and right about then his neighbors got to thinking about calling Tom Bodette and checking into a Motel 6.
Once Daddy’d killed a half bottle of Jim Beam, he loaded up a old .44 six-gun, put on his boots and hat, and went on over to shoot Coyle dead.
Coyle told Daddy he loved plain-Jane more than his life itself, said that he wanted to marry her.
Cop was one of them Fundamentals and figured marrying was better’n killing, so he let Coyle off.
Arrangements was made quick so the girl could wear white to the altar and not show. But then Coyle ups and says he’d have to wait till after the kid was born, that he wanted a blood test to prove he was the real daddy. The cop went to rampaging again and was fixing to hunt Coyle down, but he was took off the scent when his daughter stuck something up herself. Killed the baby, and liked to killed herself. The family was in such grief that Daddy started to drink full-time. The girl was sent off to live with a aunt up Nacogdoches. The cop had to go into one of them anger management deals or get fired from the force. ’Course Coyle slapped his thigh.
Second deal was about sparring, and was way worse for me’n Dee-Cee than the cop-daughter deal. All of a sudden Coyle started sparring like he never done it before. Everybody was hitting him—middleweights we had in with him to work speed, high school linemen in the gym on a dare, grunts for God’s sake. The eye puffed up again, and we had to take off more time. All of a sudden Coyle’s moving on his heels instead of his toes, and now he can’t jump rope without stumbling into a wall. A amateur light heavy knocked him down hard enough to make him go pie-eyed, and Dee-Cee called the session off. Most times like that, a fighter’s pride will make him want to keep on working, but not Coyle. He was happy to get his ass outta there. Billy heard about it and quick got Coyle that second Mississippi fight for seventy-five thousand. Got Coyle ten rounds with a dead man just to see what was what.
The opponent was six foot tall, three hundred twenty-eight pounds, a big old black country boy from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who couldn’t hardly scrawl his own name. But in the first round, with his damn eyes closed, he hit Coyle high on the head with an overhand right and knocked him on his ass. Me and Dee-Cee couldn’t figure how he didn’t see the punch coming, it was so high and wide. Coyle jumped up, and to his credit, he went right to work.
Bang! Three bitches to the eyes, right hand to the chin, left hook to the body, all the punches quick and pretty. The black boy settled like a dead whale to the bottom, and white folks was dancing in the aisles and waving the Stars and Bars. It was pitiful, but Coyle strutted like he just knocked out Jack Johnson. Me and Dee-Cee was pissed, and our peters had lost their glow. Dressing room afterward was quiet as a gray dawn.
Coyle took time off, not that he needed the rest. He came back for a few days, then it got so he wasn’t coming in at all. If he did, he’d lie around and bullshit instead of work. You could smell weed on him, and his hair got greasy. Now all our fighters started going flaky. Sweat got scarcer and scarcer. There was other times Coyle’d come in so fluffy from screwing you wished he didn’t come in at all. Gym got to be a goddamned social club what looked full of boy whores and Social Security socialites. What with Coyle lying around like a pet poodle, Billy’s other fighters started doing the same. Some begged off fights that were sure wins for them. You never want a fighter to fight if he’s not ready, but when they’re being paid to be in shape, they’re supposed to be in shape, not Butterball goddamn turkeys.
I tried to get Coyle to get serious, but he kept saying, “I’m cool, I’m cool.”
I said, “Tits on a polar bear’s what’s cool.” That went on for three months, but I wasn’t big enough to choke sense into him. Besides, no trainer worth a damn would want to. Fighters come in on their own, or they don’t come in. Billy wanted a answer, but I didn’t have one. How do you figure it when a ten-round fighter hungry for money pulls out of fights ’cause of a sore knuckle, or a sprung thumb, or a bad elbow? Course old Coyle didn’t volunteer for no cut in pay.
One day he was lounging in his velour sweatsuit looking at tittie magazines. He said to turn up the lights. I said they was turned up. He said to turn them up again, and I said they was up again. Coyle yel
led at me the first and last time. “Turn ’em all the goddamn fuck up!”
“Boy,” I said, and then I said it again real quiet. “Boy, lights is all the goddamn fuck up.”
He looked up. “Oh, uh-huh, yeah, Red, thanks.”
About then I figure Kenny don’t know shit from Shinola.
Vegas called Billy for a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fight with some African fighting outta France. He had big German money behind him, and he was a tough sumbitch, but he didn’t have no punch like Kenny Coyle. Coyle said he’d go for the two-hundred-thousand fight in a heartbeat.
I knew there had to be some fun in all this pain. We whip the Afro-Frenchie and win the next couple of fights, and we’re talking three, maybe five hundred thousand a fight. Even if he loses, Billy’s got all his money back and more, and me and Dee-Cee’s doing right good, too. If we win big, we’ll be talking title fight, ’cause word’ll be out that there’s some big white boy who could be the one to win boxing back from the coloreds. The only coloreds me and Dee-Cee gave a rap about was them colored twenties, and fifties, and hundreds that’d make us proud standing in the bank line instead of meek. Like I say, the amateurs and the pros ain’t alike, and Billy’s figuring to get his money out of Coyle while he can. Me and Dee-Cee’s for that, ’specially me, since it gets me off the hook.
But neither one of us could figure what had happened with Coyle, so we got Billy to bring in some tough sparring partners for the Frenchie fight to test what Coyle had. Same-oh, same-oh, with Coyle getting hit. But when he hit them, damn!, they’d go down! A gang of them took off when Coyle threw what that writer guy James Ellroy calls body rockets that tore up short ribs and squashed livers. But it was almost like Coyle was swinging blind. Usual-like, you don’t care about the sparring partners, they’re paid to get hit. But the problem was that Coyle was getting hit, and going down, too. He’d take a shot and his knees would do the old butterfly. We figured he’d been smoking weed, or worse—being up all night in toilets with hoochies.