Ringside (7 page)

Sloane

I told myself I
wasn’t sure if I’d go to his fight. Boxing was a violent, brutal thing. I had
trouble thinking of it as a ‘sport’. It was more like watching two animals beat
on each other, and the thought of seeing Angel up there like that did nothing
for me.

But I owed him.
I’d only known him for a couple of days and he’d already saved me twice.

If I didn’t start
paying him back, I was going to start feeling like I’d be in his debt forever.

Besides, from what
I saw of his fights, maybe he wasn’t bullshitting me. Maybe he really did need
me to critic his form, or whatever.

I guess I knew all
along that I’d be going. When I hopped in the taxi and told him the address, he
gave me a look through the rear view mirror that pulled me up short.

“You sure about
that?”

“Yep.”

He huffed out a
long, loud sigh through pursed lips and shook his head. “Eleven o’clock at
night and you want me to take you to Harlem?” He adjusted the mirror and
studied me in it. “No way am I taking you to some drug deal or anything, so if
that’s the plan you may as well hop your ass out right now.”

I gave him a
reassuring smile. “Nothing like that. There’s a boxing match there. I know one
of the guys fighting.”

He let out a low
whistle and whacked the blinker an instant before he pulled the cab out into
traffic. “Shit, girl. Ain’t no ‘boxing match’ going down there. Gonna be a
blood bath, guaranteed.”

My stomach
lurched. I’d been worried about that. Naive as I was about this stuff, I’d had
trouble convincing myself that a fair, legal, professionally adjudicated
version of
anything
was going to
happen in one of the most dangerous parts of the city at this time of night.

Still, Angel would
be there. What kind of a person would I be if I ditched him just because things
might go a little badly for him?

“I hope you’re
wrong,” I said.

“Me too, for your
sake,” he answered. “Even if you don’t know one of the guys getting into the
ring tonight, the shit that’ll go down on that at isn’t for the faint of
heart.”

I didn’t answer.
There wasn’t really anything to say, so I just bit my lip and looked out the
window as we cut through the heart of New York.

Twenty minutes
later the cab pulled up to the address.

At least, that’s
what he said…

“This is the
place?” I asked, trying to work out if I’d somehow gotten the address wrong.

“236,” he said,
pointing off to his right.

The building he
indicated certainly had the correct number painted on the side, but there was
no way this was right.

I mean, I’d been
expecting the fight to be held in a gym or some sort of mini sporting arena.
But this, this was just a-

“Parking garage,”
the cab driver said. “The owners close at ten, and let the fights happen once
the cars are all gone. Off the books, ya see. Unregulated and dangerous.”

I nodded,
swallowing hard. This wasn’t really my element at all, but I was tough. I
hadn’t gotten where I was in life by always taking the easy way out, and if
Angel were in there I’m sure he’d have a few of his guys there too.

He’d have told
them to look out for me, so it wasn’t like I’d be in there totally on my own.

I paid the driver
and got out of the cab, painfully aware that the slinky dress I’d worn was
going to be too over the top for what was starting to sound like an illegal
street fight in the depths of a parking garage.

As I walked to the
address, a couple of guys drifted out of the shadows. One of them was smoking,
and the flare of his cigar lit his face. It was Jai, from Frank’s bar. What was
he doing here?

Was it a trap?

I reached into my
purse as casually as I could. There was a can of pepper spray in there, and I’d
had to yank it out and threaten guys with it a time or two since I’d moved to
New York.

“Easy, Sloane,” he
said. “I’m here at Angel’s request. He’s got some seats saved for you, and he
wanted me to make sure you found your way to them without any of the crowd
thinking you were ripe for the plucking, so to speak.”

“Is an escort
really necessary?”

Jai shrugged. “I’m
just doing what I’m told. Things tend to go better on this end of town if
everybody shuts up and follows that example.”

I figured that he
was right.

Unfortunately, I
could probably count the number of times I’d been a good little obedient girl
on one hand.

“Thanks for trying
to look after me,” I told him. But I’m here on my own. If Angel wants somebody
who’ll hold his hand and pat his back and suck his cock on command, he’s not
going to like life with me anyway.”

Jai looked pained.

I shrugged and
walked past him, down the ramp and over to the elevator, the doors of which slid
open as soon as I approached. “What level is this thing happening on?” I asked.

“Eight.”

I got in and
pushed the button for the correct floor.

“What do I tell
Angel when he asks if your here?” Jai said, as the doors began to close.

“Tell him I’m not
some kid who needs to be told what to do all the time,” I said. “But tell him
I’m here, just like I promised.”

Angel

One of these days
, I told myself for the hundredth
time tonight,
I’m going to make the big
time. I’ll have a dressing room, and a manager that doesn’t cozy up to the mob,
and enough street cred to fight somewhere big. Vegas maybe, or Atlantic City.

I looked around at
the corner of the parking garage they’d told me was ‘mine’ for the night. A
shitty folding table held most of my gear, and my boxing gloves hung from the
back of a chair so old I didn’t dare sit in it. There was a bucket for piss and
spit, if I needed it, and a towel.

That was it.

I could hear the
grumble of the assembled crowd behind me. They were ready for a show, and that
was exactly what they were going to get.

“You ready?”
Jessie asked, sucking in air. The spot that were fighting was well lit, but all
of the rest of this place was shadows and stripes of light. My manager was a
fat, sorry sack of humanity, but he’d been picking fights well enough for the
last year or so, so I kept him.

Besides, there
wasn’t a whole lot of choice when it came right down to it. Most people
wouldn’t touch the stuff going down tonight with a ten foot pole.

“I am,” I told
him.

“Good,” he said,
his shifty eyes sliding this way and that. “Because, I’ve got some news. Just
remember though, before I tell ya, that you’re good. Damn good. Hell, I think
you could take a run at the title right now, if we didn’t have to wade through
all these shitty little contenders first.”

“What is it?” I
asked, ignoring his praise. Part of his job was to blow smoke up my ass, and
most of my job was to ignore it.

He held up his
hands, shaking his head back and forth. “Now, it don’t matter, but the Carello
family called a couple of minutes ago. Vinnie broke his hand or something, they
said, so they’re substituting another of their own for tonight’s fight.”

“Broke his hand,
huh?” I growled. The Carellos had a reputation for dirty schemes and even
dirtier tactics. This fit right in with everything I knew about them. “So who’s
the new guy?”

Jessie shrugged,
and I could tell he was trying to underplay the fighter I was going to face in
a couple of minutes, though whether that was for my benefit or that of my
manager I couldn’t really say. “Niko Krusev.”

“Nitro?” I grabbed
my gloves and put them on, holding my hands out for Jessie to lash tape around
my wrists to hold them tight. “Are you telling me that they’ve got Niko the
Nitro Krusev on their payroll now, and that he’s coming here?”

“No,” Jessie said.
“He’s already here… Been here for ten minutes or so.”

There were a lot
of things I
wanted
to do, but only
one that made any sense. Raging about the change or trying to pussy out of the
fight wasn’t going to help matters, and it would only hurt my reputation. In my
position, you shut your mouth and fought whoever they put in front of you,
which left me with only one question. “What are the odds?”

It looked like the
last thing Jessie wanted me to ask. He finished taping me up and mopped the
sweat from his shiny forehead with the back of one hand. “Odds don’t matter,
Angel. We both know that.”

“Tell me the odds,
asshole.”

Jessie shrugged.
“You were two to one against Vinnie, which was fine. Was always going to be an
uphill fight, but we’d watched the film. You’d have won. He’d have tired
himself out and you’d have weathered the storm.”

“And what are they
now?”

“You gotta
understand,” Jessie said, his voice undercut with just a hint of whine, “that
the bookies had this change dumped on them at the last second just like you and
I did. They aren’t exactly sure what to make of it, so they’re-”

“What are the
fucking odds, Jessie?”

“Six to one
against you. The smart money is for a knock out in the third.”

Right. Which meant
that Krusev had come back from wherever he’d been the last few months looking
bigger and meaner than ever. “Is Sloane here?”

“What? Angel, man,
you listening to yourself? You gotta focus. Who cares if some bitch showed or
not? You have to pay attention to the fight that’s five minutes away, not the
pussy that may or may not want your attention.”

I brought my
gloved hand down on his shoulder hard enough to make him sputter. “That’s
enough of that shit out of you. Now tell me if my girl’s here.”

He nodded slowly,
rubbing his shoulder like a scolded child. “Yeah. Jai said she got here about
ten minutes ago. She wouldn’t let him show where you’d set seats up for her,
though. Some shit about her being ‘her on her own’, whatever that means.”

I opened my mouth
to tell her to find him, to make sure she was okay and maybe, just maybe to get
her out of her if things went bad for me. But the guy running the fight shouted
my name, and the crowd went from a rumble to a roar, drowning me out.

Time to earn my
money.

Sloane

I expected them to
ring a bell or something to start the fight, but all the guy that seemed to be
in charge of the festivities did was shout “Go!” at the top of his lungs.

Then again, I’d
expected there to be a boxing ring.

And a referee…

Angel and the big
blonde fighter everyone had been calling ‘Nitro” charged at each other like
wild animals released from their cages, crashing together in the center of the
concrete and smashing at each other with their gloved fists.

If all of the rest
of the evening didn’t clue me in, I knew right then and there that I was in for
a spectacle I’d only ever be able to think of as gruesome.

Nitro was taller
than Angel, and his reach was longer too. Both men seemed happy to trade
punches, but it didn’t take more than thirty seconds to see that Angel’s style
hadn’t changed much from the videos I’d watched last night. He planted his feet
and took the punishment, sending screaming right hooks and devastating
uppercuts in whenever there was an opening.

His punches were
landing, but so were the other guys. By the time the sound of an air horn
ripped through the parking garage to signal the end of the first round, Angel’s
face was already sporting a cut above his left eye, and his other eye was
starting to swell. I doubted it would be much longer before it started to get
in the way of his vision, and when that happened I didn’t like his chance.

Nitro’s nose,
already crooked to begin with, was clearly broken again. Blood streamed freely
from both of his nostril as a guy on his team crammed what looked like Vaseline
up there to stop the bleeding. Angel had a guy working on his cut too, along
with a fat, sweaty grease ball of a man who hovered around him, offering
advice.

I pushed through
the crowd to get closer to Angel. I didn’t want him to see me, afraid that I’d
throw him off his game. Still, I wanted to hear what this guy was telling him.

When I did, I
ground my teeth in frustration.

“Another couple of
rounds just like that and you’ve got him, Angel,” the fat guy was saying.
“Listen to this crowd. They love it! What a spectacle. Knock out the Russian
and you’re on your way to the big time for sure!”

Right. Another
round or two of the same sort of fighting may well be entertaining to the
bloodthirsty people in attendance, but it was definitely
not
the way he should be fighting.

“Did she show up?”
I heard Angel mutter.

Angel was sitting
down on a stool, which made it easy for the fat guy to look right over his
shoulder and lock eyes with me. “Yeah, she’s here somewhere. I heard her say
something about how much of a man you are for taking a beating like that.
You’ve got her wet, Angel. She’s yours, after the fight.”

Angel’s back was
to me, so I couldn’t see his reaction to the man’s words.

The air horn
sounded again, and Angel and Nitro got back to the dirty, sweaty, bloody
business of beating each other to a pulp.

Again, all Angel
seemed intent on doing was panting his feet and swinging away, trading bombs
with the bigger man.

Was it a pride
thing? Was there some unwritten, macho rule that said getting out of the way of
the punch that was going to knock your head off was unmanly? Even the comment
section of the videos I’d watched the night before had made mention of his
appalling footwork, though some of his fans had said that Angel’s style was
exactly what they liked to see.

Of course they
liked it. They weren’t the ones getting smashed to pieces in the ring.

The second round
went a lot like the first, and when the air horn stopped them from killing each
other momentarily, my heart was in my throat.

I couldn’t watch
this. Not anymore. Angel had wanted me to be here, and I’d come just like I’d
promised. I didn’t know who he was to me, but the feelings I had for him were
certainly growing.

Why then did he
want me to see him like this?

His fat manager
brought him back to the stool. I could see in Angel’s clouded eyes that he
wouldn’t have been able to find it on his own, and when the guy turned him
around and made him sit, the same shit started coming out of his manager’s
mouth.

“They love you,
Angel. Listen to ‘em!”

The crowd was most
definitely hitting a fever pitch. They may have been savvy, seasoned viewers of
this sort of carnage, but even I could sense that this wouldn’t last much
longer. One of these men was going to go down, and the other was going to
either be a murderer or just short of one.