“Where were you born?”
“Here.”
“Toronto?”
“Uh huh.”
“You a popular boy? Got a lot of chums?”
“Nope.”
He looked at me suspiciously.
“No friends?”
“Nope, not much of a people person.”
He laughed.
“This I can tell.” He paused another moment and looked me over. “A handsome boy, a hit with the ladies, I imagine?”
“I do what I can.”
“Wife?”
I laughed disparagingly.
“Someone you love.”
“No.”
“Oh, you are a cold fish. You won’t get far in this life without a woman. This we can take care of for you.” He smiled at me facetiously. “Too handsome to be a fighter, though.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
He smiled again.
“Good advice.” He tightened his grip and pulled me closer to him. He was strong, stronger than I would have guessed. He stopped walking and so I stopped. He made eye contact with me.
“You’ve got a question? Well go on, I can see it on your face. Ask it.”
“Why do they call the ship ‘Dark Agnes’?”
“What? What kind of question is this?”
“The name of the boat?”
He laughed.
“How the hell should I know? What a question. Probably the previous owner’s dirty little secret, if you get my meaning.”
I did, but I didn’t say anything; I was preoccupied by the fact that Maneki had come out of some dark crevice and was now sitting, licking his paw, on the steel catwalk in front of us. He looked at me, then stood up and walked away into the shadows.
“Kendall? Hello in there!” Pink tapped me on the head with his fingertip.
“Don’t ever touch me like that again.”
Pink just stared at me, bewildered.
“Just seemed like you left the ship for a moment.”
“I was thinking about when you might get to the point about why I’m here.”
He scratched his chin and looked me over. His blue eyes flared with a confidence that would be unsettling for most.
“You’re here to fight and fight you will, my friend. Follow me.”
He didn’t say another word and led me through the bowels of the vast cruise ship. The boat was probably once an inspiration of grandeur and awe many decades ago, but now was dwarfed by its colossal successors.
As we continued to work our way along, there was a loud groan and then the great leviathan came to life as though it had been slumbering for a thousand years. With a powerful jerk which almost shook me from my feet, Dark Agnes started to move.
“We’re moving. Where are we going?”
“Out to open waters.”
“Why.”
“Privacy, of course. Arnie is always discrete. Come. I’ll show you the rest.”
He led me into a room that had been converted in order to house a large number of bleacher-style seating, with a handful of private VIP boxes looking down on the boxing ring. If you could even call it that at all, as the ‘ring’ was really nothing more than a sunken pit about four feet lower than the rest of the cold steel floor.
“You’ll box bare-knuckle, not even tape is allowed. You’ll be shirtless as well and you’ll wear standard trunks. Proper boxing shoes will be provided.” He walked around the perimeter of the ring. The overhead lighting illuminated the scattered spots of blood from previous fights.
“There is a referee, but he doesn’t do much except count to ten. He doesn’t have to do much; if you throw a kick, a knee, a head butt or anything else of the like, you’ll never fight again. The others will make sure of that. If you win you’ll fight again and as many as three times in a night. If you lose, well, you get the picture. It’s brutal but there’s money to be had and it’s good. Come on, I’ll show you your bunk.”
I left the room behind Pink and played “follow the leader” once again. The room I was to stay in for the night housed 20 other bunks and a set of lockers. There was a makeshift gym set up with a few various bags, weights, mats, and jump ropes. There were other fighters. Some of them were resting and others were working out with the equipment.
“These quarters are for new fighters. You do well and we’ll set you up with something better. You’ll have about an hour or so before things get started. Rest, exercise, whatever suits you. Just make sure you’re ready when the time comes.”
Pink took a look around the room at the fighters and then walked out. I climbed up onto an empty bunk. There was no reason at this point to practice. An hour wouldn’t change anything. I was in this thing all the way, with whatever skills I already had.
Rusty was shadowboxing. His Form suddenly appeared to me as a black raccoon. Stentinowski was sitting up in his bunk. He looked nervous. His Form was a grey coyote. He was rubbing the palms of his hands back and forth over his thighs, trying to warm them up. It was too early for that kind of nonsense. I laid back. I shut my eyes and went someplace else.
CHAPTER 8
Pugilism
If a punch is delivered properly, knuckles tear through flesh as though it were wet newspaper. My first throw was like that. I caught the Turk square below the cheekbone after a short dance of pleasantries. I wasn’t the first in and wouldn’t be the last.
I volunteered to fight. My hand went up in the air like I knew the answer to a math question. That’s how it worked though; someone beat someone else, and then another fighter filled the void.
The Turk looked meaner than he actually was and his timing was off. When I got close to him, I could smell a faint scent of whisky on his breath, which can provide just enough of an edge in a game like this.
Our eyes weren’t the same colour but they glowed with the same hate. Our focused steps taken in each other’s direction blotted out the other bodies in the crowd, as if we were the only two people in the room. When I threw the right cross, I knew even before it connected that the sap never had a chance. He hit the ground and the impact momentarily silenced the room. For me though, it was as if someone had turned the volume dial up and all I could hear was victory.
My second match came 20 minutes later and lasted only three rounds. I fought a burley Southerner who counted on landing haymakers but only ended up counting sheep on the naked steel floor. A haymaker is a fool’s errand, a long shot, a Hail Mary. A good pugilist knows this. The best of them wait with a snake’s patience and take small bites out of their opponents, filling them with the venom of fatigue.
I fought two more fights that night and won mostly unscathed. Rusty won his first two fights as well. He had a quiet viciousness that came unexpectedly. The selection of fighters was weak, or at least for me it was, and it seemed it was for Rusty as well.
After my last victory, Arnie waved me upstairs. I stepped through the door and into his VIP suite. Pink was there along with a group of men in suits and a few of Arnie’s girls. Pink was holding a crystal glass that was half-full of whisky. He carved his lips up at me and formed an insincere smile.
“You did good work tonight son.”
I nodded my thanks to Pink.
“I had a lot of money on you Kendall and you did not disappoint,” he added, taking a drink from his glass. He slouched back into the soft leather of the couch. He had girls on either side of him who were draped over his body, one of which had slid her hand inside his shirt and was running it down his chest.
“I love when a fighter volunteers. It is always the best tactic for new blood to show they have no fear. Right, girls?”
The two girls rubbed their bodies over his and nodded in unison.
I was still a little out of breath and was soaked with sweat and blood. Arnie handed me a glass.
“Sit, have a drink with us. Let me introduce you to a female.”
I took a seat and Arnie poured a generous portion of whisky into my glass. A young dark
-haired girl slid onto my lap and started dragging her fingers along my sweating skin.
“You like, baby?” She fumbled with the English words.
Arnie grabbed her by the arm with just enough firmness to intimidate her.
“Don’t talk, just sit. Let him watch the last fight.”
The girl did as she was told. I took a sip of whisky. It felt nice on my dry tongue. I pushed the girl to one side and leaned forward in my chair. She slinked up onto the arm of the chair and pouted a little at my disinterest in her. It was her job to entertain me and if she failed, she had Arnie to answer to.
The bell for the final fight of the night was about to ring. The fighters were Rusty and Stentinowski. Stentinowski stretched his arms behind his back and looked good and ready for the match. Rusty was smiling at him and looked loose and confident. In fact, he looked too confident.
The bell rang and Stentinowski approached cautiously, while Rusty moved in quickly, almost flagrantly. Stentinowksi easily landed a solid right hook and Rusty staggered backwards, shaking his head.
Rusty continued to flout his defensive tactics and Stentinowski did not waste any opportunity. He landed continuous jabs and then almost connected with an uppercut, which Rusty narrowly avoided.
Stentinowski continued to land jabs and Rusty continued to let him. Rusty never faltered though. Stentinowski grew more and more confident and his footwork became sloppy. He started to get in too close, thinking he had Rusty under his thumb. I realized Stentinowski had not managed to land anything with weight other than the original right hook.
I watched as Rusty seemed to barely avoid Stentinowski’s advances. He even allowed the odd punch to graze him slightly. Rusty was drawing him in, allowing his inflated confidence to grow and it was working. Stentinowski attempted a jab and Rusty feigned contact, acting dazed. Stentinowski moved in to finish him, throwing a powerful roundhouse. Rusty suddenly came alive and avoided the punch. He corked Stentinowski with a fierce straight and then a left hook. Stentinowski’s nose started to flow with blood.
Rusty advanced on him and hammered him with a barrage of punches and combinations, all of which hit their mark. As Stentinowski went down, the referee started to count him out. The fight was done, or at least I thought it was; somehow Stentinowski pulled himself back up onto his feet. He staggered towards Rusty, who was smiling lasciviously.
Rusty rushed forward and put a horrific punch into Stentinowski’s throat, then pummeled him in the face. Rusty sent another bone crushing roundhouse into Stentinowski’s left ear. Stentinowski remained on his feet. I watched the crowd as they screamed and howled. Rusty had worked the audience into a frenzied state. He jabbed at Stentinowski, toying with him and the crowd until their frenzy morphed into a vicious blood lust.
It was at this point, I noticed Maneki sitting amongst the crowd of people. He was watching the fighters and then looked up at me. I made no gesture of acknowledgement, nor did the cat. I turned my attention back to the fight. Rusty and Stentinowski shifted into their Forms and I watched as a black raccoon approached a grey coyote. Then they were human once more.
Stentinowksi still had enough left in him to throw a few wild punches that were slow and could have been telegraphed by a child. Rusty danced around him, poking at him, prodding him. Then he stopped and hit Stentinowski with an uppercut that shattered his jaw and followed it with another roundhouse into his right temple. Stentinowski’s feet gave way beneath him, and his legs seemed to almost crumble like Greek columns. He fell limply to his knees and then toppled over to his back. The fight was now over. The audience roared their approval. I looked over the room and watched as a sea of various Forms flashed sporadically.
Rusty went over to Stentinowski and crouched down beside him. He opened Stentinowski’s mouth and reached inside and yanked out one of his canine teeth that he had loosened during the fight. He hoisted his hand in the air, pinching the tooth between his thumb and forefinger. Stentinowski’s blood ran down his palm. The audience began to chant his name. Arnie sidled up beside me and took a drink from his glass.
“He’s something, isn’t he?”
“Yup.”
“He doesn’t have your talent, but what he lacks in skill he more than makes up for in ferocity and cleverness.”
I nodded. I watched as they lifted Stentinowski’s body off the floor. Two men carted him out the room and as they did, his head turned limply to the side. His eyes opened and they looked right at me, but they were devoid of any life. I scoured the room for Shrikun. There were none. I had witnessed the death of my first grey.
Arnie put his hand on my shoulder.
“Come with me.”
He introduced me to a bunch of other crooks who thought their designer suits could magically transform them into legitimate businessmen, kind of the same way crooked cops think a uniform suddenly transforms them into veracious citizens. Truth is, there are no honest successful businessmen, not really. You don’t get rich by doing things by the book, whether you’re on the street or work for a legitimate organization. The only difference is that when you work for a genuine company, you get to look honest after you have the money, by holding charity events and fundraisers for cancer.
Arnie was smooth though. He could talk flight patterns around his contemporaries until they thought they were landing first-class in sunny Bora Bora, when in fact, Arnie had sold them an economy flight to shitty St. Louis.
He made it sound like he’d known me my whole life, and that he had been saving my debut for just the right occasion. He was happy and you could tell that by the way he drank his booze, which was carelessly. People only drink carelessly if they’re really happy or really sad. Arnie was the former, somewhat because I won all my fights and beat my opponents easily, but mostly because out of the three men who were listed as his fighters tonight, he and Pink had only put markers down on me. I had made them a substantial amount of money.
Arnie took me aside for a moment.
“Go with Pink, he’ll get you paid. Be here tomorrow. I have other work for you if you want it.”
I nodded. Pink was already outside the room, waiting for me on the catwalk.
“Come with me, son.”
We started walking along the catwalk. Beneath us, a group of men walked in the opposite direction and spoke Russian, or at least I think it was Russian. I couldn’t really hear them. Pink put his arm around me.
“No one stays up late anymore. You ever notice that?”
“Nope.”
He stopped walking and because he had his arm around my shoulders I was forced to stop as well. He looked me in the eye.
“The streets are empty these days. No one goes out anymore. You saying you haven’t noticed?”
“Don’t really care.”
“Boy, you really are a fighter.”
He started walking again and I stopped him.
“Are you saying I lack sophistication?” I looked hard and mean at him. He smiled up at me, unmoved by my temperament.
“Relax, no reason to get prickly with me. Just saying people don’t make merry like they used to. Makes me a little nostalgic for the old days.”
“I’m too young for the ‘old days’.”
He laughed.
“I remember this party in ‘74, never forget it. What a time I had and not a body under the roof was using. Sure we were drinking but we were all having such a time, we didn’t even need the help. People used to know how to party.”
He took his arm from around my shoulder so he could better animate his point. We kept walking.
“Music was great and everyone had long hair, men too.” He slowed a little and looked up at me with conviction in his eyes. “And women knew how to fuck. They didn’t have all these radical notions floating around in their skulls confusing them. It made it so much easier to liberate them from their druthers.” He snickered. “I love this word, druthers, sounds so amusing to me.”
“That so?”
“Yeah, that’s so.” Th
ere was irritation in his tone.
“The only good thing I know that came out of the seventies was Star Wars.”
He groaned. “You’re a pain in the ass. Do you hear me?” “Unfortunately you’re all I hear.”
He shook his head and stopped walking.
“In here.”
We stepped into a small room. There were four men with high-powered MK 17 SCAR assault rifles. How this weapon even made it into the country was beyond me. The men carrying the weapons appeared to be mercenaries or ex-military of some kind; they exuded that certain confidence mixed with absolute unquestioning subjugation.
Pink ignored them completely and they in turn did the same to him. In fact, Pink seemed to be oblivious to their very existence and wore a lighthearted smile on his lips as he busied himself.
“Here we are.”
Pink punched in a code onto a keypad on the wall, and the entire wall gave way to reveal a hidden walk-in room. He entered it and went to a large safe that would rival any state-of-the-art bank safe. He entered a combination and then put his eye up to a monitor. A flash of light made a retinal scan of his eye, like something right out of movie. The safe made a not-so-subtle shifting sound and Pink pulled on the large handle of the door. It opened.
Unable to contain my curiosity, I stepped forward. Inside were mountains of cash in various currencies. Pink went over to a stack of Canadian bills and grabbed a small brick of cash.
“Come in here.”
I stepped inside.
“Will this keep you busy for a while?”
The stack he handed me was easily five grand, in hundred dollar bills.
“Looks good to me.”
“Good. Step outside.”
Pink closed the vault door and spun the activation wheel, resetting the combination and security protocols of the vault. I started to leave.
“Where you going? You bored with me?”
“A little,” I chuckled “Going back to the party.”
“There’s a good lad.”
I walked out. Pink called after me.
“Do me a favour and make that brunette’s dreams come true for me, will ya?”
Of Violence and Cliché Page 4