TKO

by Tom Schreck

  I was wondering if I’d hear from Marcia, my latest nutcase of a girlfriend. Like many of the women I’ve dated over the last few years, Marcia has turned out to be crazy. She seemed okay at first, but lately she’s been weirding out on me. Last Friday she started crying in the middle of a movie we were watching and we had to leave the theater.

  It was a Jim Carrey movie.

  She said that it was difficult for her to laugh when life was full of so much suffering. I agreed, drove her home, and got drunk at AJ’s. Our sex life has been suffering a bit lately as well, and I believe the condition is known as basset interruptus. The other night it went something like this:

  Marcia and I got back to the Blue after a night out for dinner and drinks. She wasn’t too maladjusted that night, so I proceeded to lower the lights, pour some Riunite for her, and, because I was going for that whole James Bond feel, I drank my Schlitz out of a fancy pilsner glass. While Elvis started crooning through “Love Letters” and “Young and Beautiful,” I turned up the Duff love-tron for some steamy action.

  Marcia’s breathing quickened, she pulled me down on top of her and we rolled off the sofa and onto the carpeted floor. She leaned her head back and let out a sigh while she undid the buttons on her white blouse and reached for the snap on the top of her Levis. As she shimmied out of them in that sexy but awkward way that women get out of jeans while in the horizontal position, I saw Al standing about ten feet away in the threshold that led to the dining area.

  I gave him a dirty look and tried to move my head in a way to point him out of the room and away from us. He just looked me up and down. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to proceed with the matter at hand and pretend Al wasn’t there. I got lost in it and Marcia and I were grooving. During a certain phase of this while Marcia was executing a certain act, I made the mistake of moaning. I don’t like to admit it, but I do occasionally express myself during such activity.

  Well, Al didn’t care for the moaning at all. I heard a growl, then successive barks, and then the rough scratching sounds of basset feet and nails. Then came the squealing from Marcia who was knocked back toward the coach with a flying shoulder block from Al the middle linebacker. I sat my naked ass up, looked at my girlfriend rolling over onto her side, and peered down at Al, who was snarling and growling on the carpet in front of me. You may find this hard to relate to, but it felt strange being naked with my naked girlfriend and having an eighty-five-pound long-snouted, short-legged hound between us.

  Little things like that would kill the mood for Marcia.

  The last three would-be sexual episodes have had similar outcomes, and even when I locked Al in the bathroom, he howled and slammed into the door so much it had about the same effect. Looking on the bright side of the situation, Al kept me free of sexually transmitted diseases and I had few birth-control issues.

  I checked the machine and it looked like I had two calls. The first was indeed from Marcia.

  “Hi Duff, I’m sorry about Friday. I’ve been struggling with some issues. Call me,” the message said.

  I hit the button for the second message.

  “Duffy, this is Howard. I didn’t do it.”

  That was it and he hung up.

  3

  Well, that was just swell.

  Hey, I wanted the best for good ol’ Howard but I wasn’t really up for being his middle-of-the-night confidant—especially when he was going to leave me these cryptic messages. As bad as returning Marcia’s phone call could be, I wasn’t sure I felt like chatting with Howard either. I didn’t have a phone number for him, and he surely wasn’t at the halfway house because he would’ve been arrested by now.

  Okay—so what were my options? Call the police, which was sort of breaking the confidentiality of a client, though in this case you could argue that the community was in imminent danger. Don’t call the police but tell Michelin and let her decide. Or, do nothing and open another can of Schlitz.

  The Schlitz went down easy even if my rationalization for doing nothing didn’t. Not telling the cops wasn’t doing right by my friend Kelley, although he’s a beat cop and wouldn’t be in charge of an investigation. So, in effect I wasn’t doing anything against Kelley. That didn’t feel quite right.

  Telling Michelin was out for a couple of reasons. One, she’d call in the board, fill out all the forms, and nothing would get done, and two, whenever possible, I try not to tell Michelin anything. Not telling her could get me in big trouble at work, but that wouldn’t be anything new. I was always in trouble at work and I did my best not to let the Michelin Woman intimidate me.

  I tend to pull for the underdog, and if anyone was ever the underdog, it was Howard. Life had been a shit sandwich for him and every day seemed like it was another bite. Something told me he didn’t do. It was a notion I knew I couldn’t get anyone else to believe, but sometimes you just got to go with your gut.

  Speaking of underdogs and guts, Al had flopped himself off the couch and he let out a big exhale, spun around three times, and went to sleep in front of the television. Apparently he agreed about doing nothing. Though, when it came to doing nothing, Al rarely argued.

  The next morning Michelin called for a special staff meeting to go over the agency’s position on the recent turn of events. There was nothing Claudia liked better than an official meeting with lots of official protocol and regulations. If she could add a new form to fill out, that was like multiple orgasms for her. The Michelin Woman probably didn’t get a whole lot of opportunities for real multiple orgasms, what with her being just a corn muffin shy of three hundred pounds (loosely packed on her six-foot frame), her consistent choice of man-made clothing, and the aforementioned Starsky/Hutch coif.

  Claudia called the meeting to order and thanked Dr. Abadon for joining in. As a consultant, he didn’t have to be part of impromptu meetings, but he joined this one because of its importance.

  “I wanted to bring the treatment team together to discuss the risk management related to the series of events in the community,” Michelin said.

  She handed out a form about patients’ rights when a crime has been committed and our duty as professionals to contact the appropriate authorities.

  “If Howard Rheinhart is in contact with any of you, I need to know so I can inform the board and the police,” Michelin said.

  “Claudia, it sounds to me like you’ve already assumed he’s guilty. Shouldn’t we give him a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt?” I said.

  “Actually, Duffy, I have every reason to believe that Rheinhart is responsible for this teenager’s slaying,” she said.

  “I don’t think he did it,” I said.

  “Um, I can understand your view, but in my assessment he is clearly capable of this murder.”

  I wasn’t sure which bothered me more—the fact that she was dismissing my opinion or the fact that she was so arrogant about it.

  “I just don’t think he did it.”

  “Duffy, you’re not really qualified to render this kind of diagnosis are you?” she said.

  She smiled at me in such an incredibly patronizing way that it made one of the tendons in my neck twitch. I decided I better let it go before I did something I regretted.

  “I think we have to be realistic. Howard Rheinhart is a disturbed individual who has a history of committing heinous crimes,” Dr. Abadon said.

  “You know, I met with the guy and through some real tears he told me he just wanted to live in a world where people weren’t out to get him all the time,” I said.

  “Classic paranoia, indicative of delusions of persecution,” Claudia said.

  “It ain’t fucking paranoia if you’ve been physically beat on and emotionally ridiculed every single fucking day of your life!” I said. Then I slammed my fist down on top of my powdered donut. The force sprayed powdered sugar all over the side of th
e Michelin Woman’s head. It kind of gave her black curly hair white highlights.

  “Duffy—in my office right away,” she said.

  You wouldn’t say that the Michelin Woman was in my corner when it came to, well, anything. Now I was going to have to listen to her bullshit and probably receive some double-special secret warning for being disrespectful to her. Michelin took the seat behind her desk, reached into the top drawer and produced a series of forms. She was in her element and after neatly stacking the forms so that they were nice and even, she looked up at me.

  “That was totally inappropriate,” Michelin said.

  I believe there is a law that social workers need to use the word “inappropriate” a minimum of eleven times a day.

  “I am the executive director here and I will not tolerate that kind of disrespect.”

  “How about disrespecting the clients … you know, those annoying people we work with?”

  “Don’t be wise, Duffy, you are in enough trouble.”

  “C’mon, Claudia—you were being rigid. I was trying to stick up for the client.”

  “That is inappropriate. You need to show the appropriate respect. You are receiving a verbal warning for inappropriate language, behavior, and insubordination,” Claudia said. She was down to eight “inappropriates.”

  “Do you really have to fill out three different written verbal warnings?”

  “Yes—your behavior was inappropriate in regards to language, inappropriate in regards to behavior, and inappropriate in regards to insubordination,” Claudia said.

  Holy shit—a hat trick! Three “inappropriates” in a single sentence! I wonder if I could call the Social Worker Hall of Fame or something. She was down to five and it was only quarter after ten.

  I signed my three written verbal warnings and came to the realization that I wasted a perfectly good half a donut by smashing it. Now there’s something that was inappropriate. Grieving the loss of my donut but grateful that my little hissy fit shortened the meeting, I decided to head for my desk. Our office is small, with cubicles for Monique, the other counselor, and me, another batch of cubicles for business office staff, and a few multipurpose rooms. “Duffy’s Cubicle of Love” was right next to Monique’s.

  Monique was talking to Trina, the office manager. They stopped chatting when I approached.

  “Girls, were you talking about me?” I said.

  “You outdid yourself today,” Monique said. “Assaulting the director with a powdered donut,” she said. Monique was wearing an orange dashiki that really highlighted her smooth black skin.

  “Yeah, Duffy, you’ve really made a commitment to stay in trouble here, haven’t you?” said Trina. Trina looked good today; she always looked good.

  “You guys trying to tell me that she wasn’t out of line?”

  “Duff—the evidence points at Howard, doesn’t it?” Monique said.

  “I don’t know. Howard freaked out for a period of time in his life when he was getting provoked and tormented in every facet of his life. That isn’t going on now. I think—” My phone interrupted.

  “Duff, has our buddy shown up today?” It was Kelley.

  “Nah, no sign of him.”

  “There’s been another one,” Kelley said.

  “Another what?” I feared I knew what he was talking about.

  “Another murdered kid.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Duff.” Kelley hesitated. “The kid was McDonough’s QB.”

  4

  I did what I always did when my stress climbed into the red zone—I went to the gym. I’ve been fighting since I was a teenager, first as a karate guy and then as a boxer. I had gotten my black belt as a teenager, and one day I felt ultra-confident going in the boxing ring against a guy with a few amateur fights. He hit me in the stomach and I puked all over myself. As soon as I stopped tossin’ my Cheerios, I started training as a boxer and I’ve never looked back.

  It’s funny—karate gets all the hype as this quasi-spiritual thing for deep-thinking ponderers while boxing gets portrayed as something for guys who just learned to walk upright. Yet both involve the science of assaulting someone to unconsciousness or maiming them into submission. Just because karate guys yell things out in Japanese and wear pajamas with no shoes while they’re learning to kill you, it gets more of a New Age rep. The real deal is there’s something spiritual to fighting, something at our very core that most people don’t understand. I believe it’s something that’s inside every person and it gets sublimated in boardrooms and bedrooms and every place else you can think of. I also believe if people got in the ring once in a while, then they wouldn’t have to be such pains in the asses with their bullshit competitiveness in life. Of course, there would probably be a gigantic dip in the sales of SUVs.

  I’m what’s known in the boxing trade as a professional opponent. I fight ham-and-egg guys who stink and I beat them, which gives me enough wins to make my record credible. Then, I get put in the ring with some up-and-comer whose manager wants a W for his fighter, and more often than not I get my ass kicked. The ironic thing is that the ass-kicked money is way more lucrative than beating some guy who’s as big—or bigger—a nobody as I am.

  I train at the Crawford Y, where the boxing gym is in the smelly old basement. The equipment is old and worn just like it should be, and you rarely see anyone dressed in spandex in the basement. The “boxercise” movement hasn’t reached the basement, and even though every now and then somebody who watched a couple of exercise videos comes in and thinks he can box, he usually doesn’t last long—thank God.

  The best part of the fight game is that you can’t fight and really think of anything else. If you do, you get smacked in the head and that has a way of interrupting irrational thought patterns. That type of meditative step was exactly what I was looking for today, and I was hoping the sweat would exorcise the Michelin Woman from my soul.

  I wrapped my hands and moved around enough to break a sweat so that when Smitty motioned me into the ring, I’d be ready. Smitty worked everyone through the mitts, and you did it on his schedule—it was understood that you didn’t leave him waiting. Nothing was ever said, but it got around the gym with the fighters real quick what expectations were. Smitty had been my only trainer and he believed in repetition. He would tailor your training for an upcoming fight, but before you got working on your strategy he would run you through the same fundamental drills.

  You could tell a fighter trained by Smitty. One way was by conditioning—if you weren’t in shape you didn’t fight. That was all there was to that. The second way was we all had superb defense. Smitty used this drill to make sure that your punching hand went back to protect your head so much that I couldn’t not recoil my punch because it was simply ingrained into my nervous system. I’ve been knocked out more than a few times, but every single one of them came when I was throwing at the same time as my opponent. It was never because I dropped my guard.

  “I got a call about a short-notice fight,” Smitty said after he took me through five rounds.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “Money’s good. It’s on the undercard of the lightweight title fight with the Irish champ, what’s his name … ?”

  “Mulrooney.”

  “That’s it. The guy you’re fighting was the ’04 Olympic Team heavyweight. The name’s Marquason.”

  “Is he good?” I said.

  “Real good.” Smitty’s expression never changed and you knew he didn’t bullshit. “Hits hard, moves well. He’s 12 and 0 with eleven knockouts. He’s coming off an eight-month layoff because of a cut he got from a butt.”

  “How good’s the money?”

  “Fifteen grand.”

  “Shit—whose he got backing him?” I asked.

  “You know who, with the spiky hair.” Smitty rol
led his eyes.

  “Where’s the fight?”

  “The Garden.”

  “The theater?”

  “Nope, the main arena.”

  “I’m in,” I said.

  A chance to fight in Madison Square Garden was like getting to take batting practice with the Yankees. I’ve fought in the small theater, the Felt Forum, a few times but that wasn’t the same. This was a chance to fight in the same room, even the same ring, where Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Willie Pep, Joe Frazier, and Muhammad Ali fought.

  The fight was only four days away, which meant I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to train. I was better off warming up every day, eating right, and working on a specific strategy for the guy. The next five days would be like final-exam week in college. Smitty would drill me over and over on what the guy does, how he moves, how he sets up his punches. By the end of the week I’d want to kill Smitty, but it was what I needed.

  Knowing he had a serious cut in his last fight was important. Smitty told me that the contract specified the popular Mexican style gloves for the bout. They were known as the “puncher’s gloves” because they had very little padding over the knuckles. They also had a slight seam running up the side, and that seam would be an important part of my strategy. I would spend the next five days throwing my jab just to the right and dragging that seam across the bag.

  I set up a schedule with Smitty and headed up the stairs to the locker room. On my way I took a peek in the auxiliary gym to check out the karate club. The guys who ran it when I was a kid didn’t run it anymore; it had changed hands a bunch of times. Through the little square window I saw a class of about fifteen, mostly guys in their late teens or early twenties.

  The two black belts were shouting orders in Japanese and strutting in between the lined-up formation of the students. They swaggered back and forth and tucked their thumbs inside their black belts, occasionally making eye contact with a student after eying him up and down. Their black and red gis were professionally pressed, and they had their names embroidered on the left sides of their uniforms.