by Linda Ladd
“No, I sure don’t. But he’s a big boy. He don’t need no chaperone to baby him.” He looked directly at Claire. The self-satisfied smirk was back. “I bet the guy who gave you that rock has his hands full with you, huh, sweetie? I bet you give him what-for.”
Claire stared at him without blinking and let Bud handle him. Randazzo seemed adept at pushing her buttons so she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Said buttons were now on lockdown. Bud saw and knew the score so he’d deal with this guy. That’s the good thing about partners. Sometimes it was the other way around, and she had to intercede before Bud threw some irksome guy through a window. They couldn’t help it. Neither of them was patient and/or fond of nasty, in-your-face creeps. It was just a thing with them.
Quiet for a moment, she calmed herself and got her second wind. “Your big boy? Paulie Parker? Guess what? He’s dead. Beaten to death with a baseball bat or similar weapon.”
Claire watched the blood drain out of Randazzo’s face. He started stammering. “W-w-what? No way. You’re lyin’. Don’t do that to me.” He placed his hand over his heart. “Now don’t be makin’ jokes about Paulie. You wanna give me a coronary, or somethin’?”
“I’m not lying to you, sir. So now maybe you should try to be a little more forthcoming.”
“He won his last match with Frankie over there at the lake, but he wasn’t hurt all that bad. What happened? Where is he now?”
“We found his body in Ha Ha Tonka State Park,” Bud told him. “Did you know he was still in Canton County?”
He shook his head, no more smirks, no sirree. “He was supposed to fly out with the other boys. I know he was born around the lake somewhere, but I don’t know exactly where. He fought down there before he got to the top tier.” Randazzo sank back into his swivel chair and rocked back and forth. “Oh, shit, I can’t believe this. Paulie’s my top draw.”
Disgusted, Claire shook her head. “That’s cold, Dazz. Even for you. You really are a dirt bag, aren’t you?”
“No, no, uh-uh, I love the guy, ’course, I do. But I got a business here to run. Who beat him up? Tell me.”
“That’s what we want to know. How about your other guys? Velez, maybe? He have a beef with Paulie Parker since Paulie beat him bloody at the lake the other night?”
“Nah. They get along okay. All of these guys are from around these parts. They’re pretty tight. You oughta be able to find most of my fighters at the Holiday Inn in downtown St. Louis. That’s where I’m puttin’ ’em up until they fight this weekend. Except for Shorty Dunlop. He’s still in the hospital up there in KC. Broke his damn ankle falling on the ice, but not before he won his bout fair and square against Ike Sharpe. Good win, that was. Nothin’ but a freak accident, falling down the wrong way on that left foot, so he’s gonna be laid up a while and off the circuit. I talked to Shorty just this morning, just to make sure he was gonna be okay. Doctors want him to stay off that foot for a while.”
“Do any of your fighters have any reason to harm Mr. Parker? Any bad blood or death threats? Anything like that?”
“No, no, no.” He jumped up and started pacing around. “They get along just fine, I’m tellin’ you. They’re all fierce competitors, but they’re great friends outside the ring. They’re all buds, I’m tellin’ you. All my assets like one another. You ain’t gonna find any killers in my stable. Forget about it.”
Randazzo pronounced it fergeddaboudit like Tony Soprano and other New Jersey mobster characters. Claire wondered for the first time if this Ultimate Fighting thing could be mob-related. That could explain the kid being beaten to death with a baseball bat. The Sopranos were in reruns now, and she was pretty sure she remembered a baseball bat scene. Bats were always such readily available deadly weapons. Even she had one in her backseat.
Dazz was still rambling on. “I cannot believe this. I cannot believe this. Parker could take care of himself. He was good, one of the best. Fought like a demon inside the cage. Quick as lightning. Oh, God, this is just awful, awful.” For the first time, he looked and sounded human. Almost. “How am I gonna break this to his wife?”
Bud and Claire perked up. Bud said, “We can make that notification for you. Can you give us his wife’s name and address?”
“Her name’s Blythe, Blythe Parker, and she lives over at the lake. They got them a nice big house over there up high on one of those hills. Lake view, and everything. I pay my boys good, just like I told you. Tell her we’ll take care of her. Tell her not to worry ’bout anything.”
“What’s that address?”
He gave Claire one that she wasn’t familiar with so she wrote it down in her notepad. “We’re gonna need to talk to those other fighters. Can you arrange interviews?”
“Yeah, but you’re gonna have to come to St. Louis to do it. I got contractual obligations over there this weekend and all next week, too. No way can I break ’em.”
“Tell us about your other fighters.”
Randazzo began to list them, basically by their adeptness in the cage and their whereabouts on the rankings. “All of ’em have probably made it to St. Louis by now, except for Shorty. Like I told ya, he’s still in the hospital up there in Kansas City. Ike got him pretty good in the noggin a couple of times, too. He’ll come through, all right, though. I told him to take all the time he needed to get over the dizzy spells and get to walking again. You know, he’s got blurred vision and all that kinda stuff. Won’t take him long to recover, though. He’s a little guy, but he’s a hard case.”
“You’re a prince,” Claire said, trying not to grit her teeth. She envisioned getting him out back in an alley and showing him what the little lady could do with her own hands and feet. Maybe while wearing brass knuckles. She’d give him all the time he needed to get over his dizzy spells and blurred vision and inability to walk, too.
For the next thirty minutes, they questioned him at length, got quite a bit of nothing else out of him. But, nevertheless, enough for the next round of interviews. Despite his fast talk and sociopathic-like lack of true feelings, Randazzo turned out a lot like the three monkeys of legend. He saw nothing, he heard nothing, and he spoke of nothing that would help them one iota except for the name of Paulie’s wife. But he was not off Claire’s hook. Claire would just love to arrest him, and took the time to look around his office for a bloody baseball bat on her way out. She didn’t see one, but hey, maybe she’d still get the chance. He wasn’t off her list of suspects, not by a long shot.
Blood Brothers
On the same day that Punk learned all about hatred and protecting his little beagle puppy, his pa held another fight out in their cow pasture. But this time only Punk and his brothers fought, and they fought one another. They started with his oldest two brothers first. Pa made them strip down naked and fight with bare knuckles. He pushed them out into the dirt ring, shouting degrading and humiliating things the whole time.
“Okay, boys, let’s see some blood now,” he called out. “You ain’t stoppin’ till one of you is lyin’ down there on the ground and beggin’ for mercy. Do it, or I’ll do it for you, by God.”
Punk sat beside Pa and watched his brothers go at it. It was hard to watch, the way they were kicking at each other and biting and trying to jab fingers into each other’s eyes. He averted his gaze, unable to watch, and wished that Bones was there with him. Then there came a terrible jolting blow to his ear, hard enough to knock him off the bench. He held his head and whimpered as Pa leaned down close.
“You keep them eyes open, you hear me, boy. Then maybe you’ll learn somethin’ from your big brothers out there actin’ like men.”
So Punk kept his eyes open, but he tried to think about other things as the fight went on and on, until the younger one fell half-conscious and exhausted in the dirt. His pa jumped up. “Good job, Tiger. You’re the best fighter by far. Go on inside now and grab yourself a beer. The rest of you drag that loser over to the table. I’ll deal with him later.”
“Want us to doctor him up, P
a?” said his next oldest son.
“No, let ’im bleed out for a while. Teach him to try harder.”
So they left him in the dirt under the picnic table, bleeding from his nose and mouth and his cut-up fists. The second set of boys walked into the ring, and his pa hit the bell with his hammer. “Now let me see some spilled blood, or I’ll whup you both myself. Hear me, do you hear me!”
It was then, in that moment, that Punk truly began to hate his father’s guts. He hated him with all his being, with all his heart and soul. Pa was evil, just like his ma had always whispered to Punk. He was cruel and mean and horrible.
The second fight was even worse than the first one. The boys were still too young to have developed big muscles and were skinny and uncoordinated. They whaled on each other for as long as they could until they both fell onto their knees in the dirt, exhausted and bleeding and crying.
“You weaklings, just look at you, out there blubberin’ like little freakin’ girls. What? A few blows and you give up. Good God, you oughta be ashamed of yourself. Now git on out there to that dog pen and stay there, you little shits. Now you both is gonna have to answer to me and the business end of that whip o’ mine.”
Angry, Pa stood up and paced around the dirt circle, shaking his head and ramming his fist into his palm. “I’m a telling you, I’ve never seen such a bunch of sissies. Hell, when I was little, littler than you, boy, my pa’d put us in the ring oldest to youngest and we never cried and took on like little babies. You gonna cry there, Punk. You gonna cry, too. Go ahead. Cry, crybaby, cry your eyes out.”
Punk didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if his pa wanted him to say no or yes or just listen and say nothing at all. He was afraid to say anything wrong or Pa would hit him again.
“Well, are you or not? Cat got your tongue, you sissy punk?”
Afraid, Punk finally said, “No, sir. I ain’t gonna cry no more. Not never.”
“Well, guess we’ll see about that. Git up and git in that ring. Now!”
Punk looked around for Bones, but he couldn’t see him anywhere. He hadn’t shown up for the practice bouts. Pa was gonna kill him if he didn’t come soon. Where was he, anyways?
Dragging himself out into the center of the dirt ring, he looked around again, hoping that Bones would show up soon. He couldn’t fight long without his tag team partner. He didn’t know how to win or duck the punches or evade the jabs. And who was he gonna fight with, anyway, if Bones didn’t come?
“You ready, kid,” Pa said, and then he put up his own fists in front of him like a boxer. Oh, God, no, he was gonna have to fight his pa! That was the worst thing of all. He had seen his pa beat up his oldest brother until he couldn’t get out of bed for a week.
“I—I—don’t know. I just started learnin’—”
“You are a sissy, ain’t you? Don’t you worry none. I ain’t gonna kill you, unless you won’t fight with me.”
Punk just stood there. His pa frowned and came over and slugged him hard in the stomach. He bent over double, holding his gut, the breath knocked out of him, but then his pa was back, picking him up bodily and throwing him down on the ground. He kicked him in the side, and Punk cried out with pain. “Well, you sure didn’t last long, now did you, Punk? C’mon, git up on your feet and hit me. Hit me as hard as you can. I’ll let you. Go ahead. Do it, or I’ll knock your teeth plumb down your throat.”
So Punk dragged himself up and weakly doubled his fist. He swung out at his pa’s stomach, but missed entirely. Laughing at him, Pa slapped him up the side of his head with his open palm, one side and then the other, until he fell down again. He groaned, and this time he didn’t get up.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, here came Bones, flying to the rescue, attacking their big pa as if he wasn’t twice his size. Fists pummeling, yelling the most awful obscenities, he hit his pa between the legs, hard with his fist, causing him to lurch over and fall to his knees. Punk sat back and watched as Bones began to kick Pa in the side, harder and harder, with the toe of his leather work boot. Then he pushed the big man down onto his back, grabbing him around the throat and riding him like a cowboy as Pa tried to buck him off.
Punk smiled to himself, thinking that Pa deserved to get hit like that, but now he was afraid for Bones. His pa was surely going to kill him for messing him up so bad. And that was against the rules of the ring, anyways, to kick anybody down there in the crotch. For that, Bones was gonna be punished so long and hard that he might even die.
But then, after a few minutes, Pa rolled over and held his arms up in the air. To Punk’s shock, he was laughing, even though Bones’s blows were still landing all over his chest and face. “Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Pa cried out, pleased. “You boys need to be more like old Bones here. Bones is gonna be a champion someday, and that’s for sure. Bones has no fear. You don’t see him cryin’ and snivelin’, now do you? He’s the best of the lot of you. The rest of you just suck. So you can all go without dinner tonight because Bones and me, we’re goin’ into town to McDonalds and then to the movies.”
Then he stood up and picked up Bones and boosted him on his shoulders and carried him away like he was the winner and the best fighter in the world. Punk lay back in the dirt and stared up at the clear blue sky. He pulled in a deep breath and tried to stop the bleeding of his nose with his fingertips. He didn’t care where his pa was going, he didn’t care what he did there; he was just glad he was gone. He hoped he had a wreck and died and never came back again.
But Pa eventually did come back and all the brutality continued for a long time to come. As the years passed by, Punk toughened up more and more. It took lots of bruises and injuries and bloody noses, but he got stronger and braver and better. Pa rarely whupped him anymore, or any of the other boys, either, because they were all now as big and brutal as Pa was. One time, they got a visit from a police officer, and he told Pa that his boys had to start going into town to attend school. But Pa said he was homeschooling them, and the cop left and had not come back again. So they had their school lessons every morning, and the rest of the day, they sparred in the new chicken-wire cage that Pa had constructed inside the barn. They practiced all week for the Saturday night matches out in the pasture, and they all had begun to win. They were famous in the neighborhood. Famous for winning cage fights and for Pa’s cruel dog fighting business.
One night when Punk was out in the barn, feeding the dogs, with Banjo at his heels, Pa came inside and shut the door behind him. He had his whip in his hand, and Punk looked at it and then at his pa’s face. Pa was frowning and looking at Punk out of very mean eyes. Punk could smell the booze on his breath, lots of it. Pa let them all drink with him now, even the youngest ones. He let them do whatever they wanted to do, smoke, drink, stay out all night hunting and fooling around and knocking mailboxes off their posts, but only if they fought hard on Saturday and won their matches.
“Time for you to learn how the dog fights go, Punk Boy.”
“Okay.” Punk put down the pail of dog food and waited. Pa was unpredictable when he was drinking so early in the day. He got real nasty and ugly and cruel. That’s when he was the scariest. That’s when he lost control and hurt them the most.
“Git over here, boy. Wassa matter wit’ you?” Pa’s voice was slurred. His face was red and flushed and his eyes were watery. He had really hung one on that day. He was smashed.
“Yes, sir.” Punk was beginning to wish Bones would show up and calm Pa down. He was the only one who could, but he had disappeared again, off somewhere by himself, doing whatever he did when he went off alone. Punk always felt a lot safer when Bones was around to protect him. Bones was Pa’s favorite kid by far. Bones hardly ever got in trouble or was punished for anything, no matter how bad it was. Pa said that Bones was his golden goose.
Punk stood silently and watched his pa open the gate and grab a big Rottweiler named Demon by the collar and drag the whining dog out to the beating post. He put him on the short leash, and
the dog whimpered and moved nervously from side to side, well aware of what was coming. Pa beat his best fighting dogs daily to make them mean. It made Punk want to vomit, and he always tried to comfort them when Pa was done and left them lying there, all cowed and pitiful and snarling at any kind of human contact.
“Okay, boy, it’s your turn to learn to whup these curs into shape. You ain’t near good enough in the ring as Bones is. You ain’t never gonna amount to nothin’. You hear me, boy. You ain’t worth spit.”
Punk looked down at the whip in his pa’s hand and then at the cowering, terrified dog. He set his jaw. “I ain’t gonna do it. I ain’t gonna whup no helpless, tied-up little dog.”
First Pa looked absolutely stunned, and then Punk could almost see the terrible rage gushing up out of him, like it always did when one of the boys defied his orders. “What did you say to me? What did you say, you little turd?”
“I ain’t gonna whip no dogs. Not ever. And I ain’t gonna let you do it, neither.”
Another shocked stare, and then Pa threw back his head and laughed down deep inside his gut. But then he sobered and the mean look came back. “That so? How you gonna stop me, boy?”
“Just go back in the house and go to bed, Pa. You’re drunk. Sleep it off. Let me be and go about finishin’ up my chores.”
When he turned around and picked up the bucket again, his father came at him, raining down blows with the leather whip. He hit Punk in the face before Punk could dodge the assault, and blood oozed from the long red weal down his left cheek. He kept on hitting Punk with the whip, and Punk tried to catch it in his hand and pull it out of his grasp. He finally shoved his pa and got the whip away from him, but then Bones was there, his guardian angel flying in to the rescue, and he grabbed the heavy pail and swung it forcefully against their pa’s skull. It hit with a sickening clang, and Pa went down on his knees and then fell face-first in the straw.