Going Fast (9 page)

“You're comin' on, man, you're comin' on. I can tell.”

Darren eased away, and Zach followed, teetering on an invisible balance beam. Johnny moved in to fill Darren's space.

“Christ!” Johnny watched Darren exit, lumpy and scarred. “Darren looks gruesome. Did he get hit that much?”

“Naaah.” Ownie dismissed the suggestion as absurd. “He's all puffed up from them steroids. When he finished boxing, he said he wanted to see how big he could get, just like a Howard Dill pumpkin. I touched his arm and it was like granite, so he must be shooting everything.”

“Yeah?” Johnny had seen busted noses and cheekbones, but Darren's face was smudged and out of focus. “He looks like a monster.”

Ownie shrugged. “That seafarer's hat don't do nothin' for me.”

It will soon be time for everyone to leave, Ownie told himself, looking over his shoulder at Turmoil, sitting on a bench with Tootsy.

A thick, older man entered the room and stood, face frozen into a mask of grumpiness. He had a scar shaped like a half-moon on one cheek, and his chin stuck out like he'd been insulted. He walked toward Ownie, over the skate scars and electrical tape left by a hockey team, making it clear that no one was going to rush him.

“This is my brother Butch,” Ownie told Johnny, who smiled while Butch grunted ambiguously. Taller than Ownie, Butch had the same big ears covered by a salt-and-pepper cap. His nose was smashed too flat to determine its original shape, his eyes were hematoma slits acquired in 120 pro fights. He had fought all over the United States and down as far as Aruba: 80-30-10.

“He was the first fighter I ever had.” Ownie was playing with Butch, taking the parts they'd assumed fifty years ago. “Take a look at him now.” A two-beat pause. “He's a mess.” Butch grunted again. “I didn't know what I was doing back then. As I went along I got better at it; the guys didn't get beat up so bad, they ended up less ugly than this.”

Butch acted like the banter was beneath him, then barked in a voice as threatening as a summons: “Is this guy you got worth looking at or are you pissing away my time?” Johnny's eyes widened as Butch continued. “He looks too tall, like some goddamn freak. I hear he's got no power, that he stinks.”

“He's got power, and he's not that tall.”

“Some goddamn Gil Anderson circus freak.”

The big crowd was gone now, the dressing room quiet. Johnny, Tootsy, and Suey were permitted to stay while Ownie readied Turmoil. Round and round Ownie wrapped the surgical gauze and tape, pleased with his new taping device. “My God, I'm a smart man,” he said.

“Huh?” Turmoil looked up.

“I'm a regular Einstein.”

That's all Ownie wanted: a peek at Turmoil's eyes, an instant readout on blood distribution, heart rate, pupillary constriction, and electrical activity in the skin. Before a fight, some fighters asked strange, unrelated things, like, “Who cleans the rink?” “How did you meet your wife?” They would spit, garble words, but their eyes were the key, because eyes show fear. Nerves you can work with, Ownie believed, you can can 'em like shaving lotion, but fear is fatal.

Ownie had seen a quarter-pounder shrink like an inflatable doll on his way to meet Tyson in the ring. By the time he hit the ropes, he was a mass of empty rubber punctured by fear. Before a fight, Ownie had never needed to check on Tommy.
He was as cool as Aqua Velva. Tommy Coogan was a man with a job to do every time he climbed in the ring, and Ownie never had to deal with fear or doubts so deep they could destroy you.

“Ah dohn want him here.” Turmoil pointed at Suey Simms sitting on a bench, still wearing his plaid tam and white shoes.

“I had me a stroke,” Suey had been telling Johnny. “Monday, no Tuesday, over at the Woolco.”

“Was it bad?” asked Johnny, surprised.

“Hmmm, hmmm, I knew somethin' was happenin', so I went to that clinic. I had one of them foreign doctors check me out. When he finish, I say, ‘Thank you very much, doc. I gotta get goin' cuz it's Dollar Forty-Four Day.'”

As Suey chortled at his own joke, Ownie thought about all the eyes he'd looked into. Just once, he'd like to see eyes like Tyson's, cool, unchecked, free of guilt or anyone's expectations, the eyes of a man who would walk through a plate glass window just out of spite. Of course, you'd never admit that, so you kept it private, like the fact that you couldn't do fractions or had once been to court.

The Tumblebug banished, Turmoil started to shadowbox.
Rat-a-tat-tat
like a jackhammer. Reggae music, supplied by a tape deck, bounced off the concrete walls and a photo of a hockey team in black-and-gold jerseys.

“Le-le-le-lettts ga-ga-go, killer,” urged Tootsy. Ownie let the gym owner, who suffered from a stutter, be the second. The trainer put a silver robe around Turmoil, who was helpless now that his gloves were taped on. Ownie tightened the satin belt.

“I seen Sanchez,” said Johnny. “He's got the cold creeps, all right.”

Turmoil nodded and stared at something beyond the O
UT OF
O
RDER
urinal. Bending on one knee, he closed his eyes to
pray. When the prayer ended, Ownie put a hand on Turmoil's neck and rubbed out the tightness. Tootsy picked up his bucket and towels, and Ownie, like a death row guard, announced it was time. “Let's go. We got a job to do.”

The tiny entourage rounded a corner.

“Le-le-le-lettts ga-ga-go,” urged Tootsy.

They passed a hot dog vendor and a rent-a-cop talking to a bald man in a yellow sweater. The egghead looks familiar, Ownie thought. Polite applause and Tex-Mex music drifted downstairs as Sanchez entered the ring, a migrant worker in a red bandana and boots with bells. Then a boo and laughter from the crowd.

Listed as thirty-two, Sanchez was older, Ownie figured, a faceless trial horse with an expedient past that changed like a story passed through a bar. As part of the fraud, he shaved his head to hide the grey; he hoisted his trunks up high to cover a gut; and he wore black leggings over broken veins the colour of grapes.

“S-s-s-sounds like a like a g-g-g-good ca-ca-crowd,” said Tootsy, hopeful.

Turmoil looked distracted, touching his ten-ounce Everlast gloves together, shaking his legs out, biting his lower lip gently like he was trying to put a name to a face. What was he thinking, Ownie wondered before moving ahead.

Turmoil ducked under an insulated water pipe as Ownie checked his gear: adrenalin, Vaseline, cotton swabs, dry towels, all tidy, and just the way he liked it. Ownie did not think that Sanchez would last long. The old fighter had arrived in town with just a kit bag for company; Champion had hired a local to work his corner. “It don't matter,” Sanchez had mumbled to the promoters. “I just need some sleep.”

“Oh-oh-oh-nee,” Tootsy sputtered. “Oooh.”

“What?” Ownie turned, impatient. “What?”

“T-t-t-tur,” Tootsy sputtered, and Ownie saw the second pointing at Turmoil, who had stopped under a Christmas decoration.

“Are your boots okay?” Ownie asked the fighter. “Are your gloves all right?” This was nothing new in the fight book, Ownie told himself. Riddick Bowe held up a bout once for twenty minutes, fussing, for no good reason, over gloves.
C'mon
. Ownie pushed Turmoil's back, but the big machine was frozen. “What's wrong?”

Ownie waved off Tootsy to give them room. Just then, the men's room door swung open and an old-timer in suspenders hobbled out, smelling stale and medicinal. Ignoring him, Ownie rewound fifty years of mental tapes shot in bingo halls and morgue-like rinks, stadiums and casinos, looking for the answer. Over the years, Ownie had seen battle royals, deaf-mutes, bears, and midgets. He'd seen guys walk out after round one, fall down drunk mounting the steps, throw up, find God in the ring, but he'd never seen a fighter go cold in the hallway.

“Ownie.” The old-timer was chasing after him.

“Ah cahn fight,” Turmoil muttered, staring at the concrete floor. “Ah cahn fight.” Is this it, Ownie asked himself: the punchline?

“We're having a merchant marine reunion.” The old-timer was hobbling toward them on legs as stiff as stilts, unstoppable it seemed. “Now that we've got benefits.”

“Why?” Ownie tried to catch Turmoil's eyes, which were darting from side to side, chasing imaginary fireworks in the sky. Everything around them seemed to vanish: signs, overhead pipes, broken hockey sticks. Jesus, Ownie thought, if he can't handle Sanchez, if he's freaked by this, we are done, because this is routine, man, this is as predictable as death.

“Iss that mon,” Turmoil moaned.

“Who? Sanchez?”

“The mon we juss saw in the suit.”

“Can you tell me how to get in touch with your brother Butch?” the old-timer shouted before Tootsy pulled him aside.

Oh,
that
man, Ownie realized, the guy dressed in a V-neck sweater and slacks as though he was auditioning for a role in a Disney movie.

“What about him?” Ownie had seen the man in the office of a hockey team that had reportedly used his services as a hypnotherapist. How would Turmoil know anything about him?

“He put a spell on me,” Turmoil claimed.

“Whaaaaat?” Holy Mary Mother of God, thought Ownie. What kind of trip was this? It was as crazy as the time that George Foreman convinced himself there had been a plot to pump poisonous gas into his dressing room, or the night that Boom Boom Vachon accused Snowball Dooley of sleeping with his wife, and the poor wife was so ugly she'd have made Snowball melt. Ownie weighed his options.

“It's okay. It's all okay.”

“Noooo.” Turmoil hugged his chest like he was in shock, like someone emerging from a car crash with glass shards stuck in his forehead. “He put a spell on me.”

“He can't put a spell on ya, walkin' down the hall.”

“Yesss.”

“A big man like you?” Ownie laughed a desperate laugh.

Turmoil stared at the floor, a quivering hulk of power and nerves. Up above, the crowd was strangely still, as though someone was planning a surprise party with horns and streamers. What, Ownie wondered, was Sanchez doing to pass the time?

“Okay, maybe he did,” Ownie conceded.

Turmoil nodded and folded his body in two. Ownie didn't think that Turmoil really believed the man had put a spell on him. It was nerves, he told himself. No, it was
fear
looking for a way to stall. Whatever it was, he would play along.

“I never told you this, but I studied that stuff too. I learned it when I was with Tommy Coogan over in South Africa. Some of the Zulus taught me.” Turmoil looked at Ownie's face for hope. “They had bareknuckle boxing goin' on behind a wall of elephants, and I was helping. So, the long and the short of it is: I know what spell he put on you and I can take it off.”

“Ah you shur?”

“Man, I never been so sure of anything in my life. I don't like to do this, because you could handle Sanchez if you were in a coma . . .” Ownie closed his eyes. “But here it goes. Watch my hand.” He put his mitt in Turmoil's face, a blur of age spots and dented bone. “You are in my power, you will do as I say. When you awake, you will win the fight in round six.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah, man, we're back in business.”

“Finally, ladies and gentlemen, Turmoil Davies.”

Instead of Islands music, Turmoil had selected “Farewell to Nova Scotia” to court local fans. Three piss tanks waved beer bottles in the air as Turmoil climbed through the ropes, grim and detached, and Ownie entered introduced as “Ownie Flanagan, the man who brings champions to life.”

“Who are you? Frankenstein?” a hoochhead yelled.

Ownie blocked out the noise.

Two office workers sat at the Athena's counter fixing their lips in the glass of a revolving pie case. “When we were kids, we found a hoary bat in our cottage, tangled in the curtains.” One woman's teeth were stained with Jungle Berry, which gave her a carnivorous look.