“Maybe you’ll talk me to death,” I said.
“You got a smart mouth, white boy.” Toro grinned, not backing off an inch. “Gonna be some fun bustin’ you up.”
“Hey, hey, let’s not have any fightin’ at the fights,” Tony Duke interrupted, with a bleary grin at his own wit. “Your Pops tells me we got a problem, Maguire—”
“We owe you,” I said, turning to Dukarski. “We understand that. If you want me to fight this gorilla, I’ll do it for free. But I won’t dive, Mr. Dukarski, not for you or anybody else.”
“You ain’t callin’ the shots here, sonny.” Dukarski snorted. “And you ain’t the one I want to talk about anyway. It’s your sister.”
“Then there’s nothing to talk about,” I said, standing up, flushing with fury. “I’m the fighter, Mr. Dukarski—”
“Not from what I seen,” Toro said.
“If you want to try me, bring it!” I flared, whirling on him.
“Dammit, Irish, cool your jets!” Tony Duke snapped, waving me back to my seat. “You Maguires are into me for fifteen, which your old man lost bettin’ on you, Mick. Have you got my money?”
“Not tonight, but—”
“Then it’s a done deal.” Duke leaned back, confident now. “You’re in the toilet, swirlin’ around. I can flush the lot of you down, or we can all get well. A sweet deal, one time. One and done.”
I turned away a moment, fighting down the urge to punch Tony Duke’s lights out. But I knew what would happen to the family if I did.
Out on the arena floor, acres of boozy spectators were cheering or cursing two gladiators in the ring. Fight night, Motown style. Shirtsleeves and summer dresses, not a tuxedo in sight.
Half an hour ago I’d fought an ex-con to entertain these stiffs and got my head handed to me. And now we were deeper in the hole than before.
“What’s on your mind, Mr. Dukarski?” Pops asked.
“Your girl, Jilly? Hasn’t lost a bout since she turned pro. Your family name alone makes her a heavy favorite every fight now, and after seeing her tonight, she’ll be five or six to one to win her next bout. Crazy odds, and that’s the beauty of it. Nobody takes female fighters seriously, they’re strictly for glitz. So losing one bout won’t mean squat to your girl’s career. But at five to one, we could all make a pile. Enough dough to get you off the hook, Pops.”
“Jilly won’t tank,” I said.
“Then you can give her a lesson.” Toro smirked. “Show her how to trip.”
“I hear she’s got a temper,” Dukarski said coldly, his sham friendliness gone. “That’s why I’m talkin’ to you two first. You’re gonna explain the facts of life to her, guys. She drops one lousy fight, we’re all even again.”
“Unless somebody figures it out,” Pops said. “Then we’re all in jail or on the street.”
“I can put you on the street tonight, old man. It ain’t like you got a choice. Which brings us to Irish Mick here.”
“What about me?”
“You got a temper too, Maguire, and I don’t trust hotheads. So you’re gonna fall too. You want Toro, you got him. In six weeks. Same card as your sister. I’m betting you fall in the fourth. Understand?”
“I won’t—”
“Deal,” Pops said.
“What?” I said, whirling on him. “Are you out of your freakin’ mind?”
“The man’s right, Mick,” Pops said, “neither loss will mean much in the long run. With your shoulder, you’re all but done, son. Liam, Sean, and Jilly are the future now. So we’ll do this one thing, one time, to make sure they get their chance.”
“Pops—”
“Mick will fall in the fourth, Mr. Dukarski,” Pops said, turning back to Tony Duke. “But he don’t get hurt. Nobody bleeds, you understand me? Or I’ll feed you that damn gun myself!”
“Relax, Pops, no need for drama.” Dukarski grinned, offering his hand. “We all understand the stakes. Don’t we, Mick?”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t.
Then the man I’ve worshipped my entire life reached out and shook the gangster’s hand.
Done deal.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Pops said. We were in the dressing room collecting my gear.
“How should I look? You sold us out, Pops.”
“I saved the family,” he countered. “Pull on your big-boy pants, Mick. Grow up.”
“To be like you? That’s what I always wanted.”
“I wanted to be heavyweight champ.” He sighed, slapping his belly. “All I ever made was the weight. Maybe Liam will be a champion one day, but first we gotta get ourselves out of this jam.”
“I thought we just did. By selling Jilly out.”
“Get over your snit and start thinkin’, boy. The only true thing Dukarski said back there was about us circlin’ the drain. The rest was a crock. Something’s wrong about the deal.”
“Hell, every damn thing’s wrong with it, Pops! Dukarski’s a hood—”
“Gee, a thug in the fight game? Do tell. He ain’t the first we’ve met. They’re like lice on the biz, and always have been.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it again. He was right.
“So what are you saying? What’s wrong with the deal?”
“You tell me, dammit! Think, boy. I know we’re missing something, I just don’t know what!”
I mulled that for a moment.
“For openers, it won’t be one and done. We do this once, Dukarski will freakin’ own us.”
“He can’t burn us without burning himself,” Pops pointed out.
“Sure he can. If we get busted for illegal gambling, Dukarski will pay a fine, maybe spend time on the county, and be right back in business. But the Maguires will be done, Pops, barred from the sport forever. It’d be the end of us. You’ll be the Pete Rose of boxing.”
“Maybe I should be, if I’ve brought us to this.”
“Maybe we both should,” I conceded. “But we can’t let our mistakes wreck Liam’s future, or Sean’s. And Jilly’s most of all. We gotta make this right, Pops.”
“We still ain’t seein’ it clear. One thing, though? When Toro talked about killin’ you, he was dead serious. He ain’t a fighter, Mick, he’s a murderin’ son of a bitch. You need to be ready when you fight him.”
“I’m not afraid of him, Pops—” I broke off, considering what I’d just said.
“What is it?”
“Dukarski was sweating,” I said. “Did you notice?”
“He seemed jumpy,” Pops acknowledged. “So?”
“So the man was strapped, so was Cheech, and the Terminator kills people with his fists.”
“I don’t—?”
“We were in a public place—he had a gun and two bodyguards. Why the hell would he be nervous? What was he afraid of?”
We both mulled that one over but came up empty.
Pops left to collect our purses, a winner’s share for Jilly, loser’s for me.
I was zipping up my gym bag when Bobbie Barlow rapped once and stepped in. Dressed casually in jeans and a Detroit Tigers baseball jacket, she still managed to look classy.
“Hey, Maguire. Tough luck tonight.”
“Puncher’s luck.” I shrugged. “Didn’t go my way tonight. I’m glad you came by, though. I wanted to thank you for not writing about that sparring business.”
“I wrote the important part. Jilly’s going to be a star.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m a sportswriter, Mick; obituaries are a different department. It would have been a false alarm anyway. You owned that mope until he tripped you.”
“It was my fault, actually. I stumbled over his foot. But anyway, I owe you one. Buy you dinner?”
“I never date my stories, Mick.”
“I’m not a story anymore, lady. I’m yesterday’s news.”
“Not to me. I came by right after the fight, but you were already gone. So I went looking for you and there you were, making
nice with Tony Duke. And the Terminator.”
“We were doing a deal,” I said simply. “I signed to fight Toro in six weeks.”
“With your shoulder messed up? Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s what I do, Barlow.”
“But cutting a deal with a sleaze like Dukarski—”
“The family needs the money. Simple as that.”
“No, it’s not. Toro killed another fighter—”
“In Mexico. I know. But—”
“My point is, that’s all he’s done. Toro’s a nobody, Mick, and you’re coming to the end of your career. Even if you beat him, it won’t fatten your purses or build your image—” She broke off, staring at me.
“But it’ll build his image,” she went on. “When he beats you.”
“You mean if he beats me.”
“I don’t think so. When promoters cut a deal, both sides look for an edge, but in the end, no matter how they finagle it, it comes down to the fighters. Two guys squaring off in the ring. But it only takes one to fix a fight. Is that what I saw, Mick?”
I didn’t say anything to that. Which was an answer, of sorts.
“You owe me, Maguire. You just said so.”
“I don’t want to lie to you, Bobbie.”
“Well, that’s something, at least. Forget dinner, but I’ll toss you a bone for free. If Dukarski promised you a payoff? You won’t see it. He doesn’t have it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Duke bet the wrong way on the last Mayweather fight, and borrowed big to do it. He’s down fifty Gs to Fat Jack Cassidy, a loan shark out of Warsaw Heights. And people who can’t pay Fat Jack tend to disappear. One way or the other.”
“Where’d you hear this?”
“Sorry, Maguire, one freebie’s all you get,” she said, shaking her head. “And you still owe me a story.”
“I’d rather buy you dinner.”
“I’ll settle for the truth,” she said from the doorway. “If you ever remember what it is.”
“Duke’s in the hole to Fat Jack Cassidy?” Pops mused when I told him. “No wonder he’s worried. He damn well should be. He’s in deeper trouble than we are. How much did she say?”
“Fifty thousand. Which is a huge problem. For us.”
We were in the gym office, Pops behind his desk, watching something on his computer, me in a chair facing him. The walls around us were lined with dozens of photos and trophies, the bloody plunder won over three generations of war in the ring. Barely worth a few hundred bucks to a collector.
Worth everything to a Maguire.
“Which part is the problem?” Pops asked, still frowning at his computer screen, his face blue in the reflected light.
“The fifty Gs,” I said. “Duke can’t lay a bet anywhere near that against Jilly. A wager that big on a girl fighter would raise too many red flags.”
“You’re right.” Pops nodded without looking up. “Even if he spreads it around, winning more than ten, fifteen grand on an upset would draw the gaming commission like crows to roadkill. But the fifteen might be enough to keep Fat Jack Cassidy from capping him while he waited for the real payoff.”
“What payoff ?”
“Take a look at this,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
“What is it?”
“Fight film, from Mexico. Toro Esteban versus Momo Benitez. It wasn’t easy to come by. There are laws against snuff films.”
“Benitez is the fighter Toro killed?”
“Take a look,” Pops repeated. “What do you see?”
There was no sound, and the film was grainy, an overhead-view shot from a cheap-ass videocam suspended above the ring.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Toro came out of his corner cautiously, feeling out Benitez. His opponent looked sloppy to me. I spotted a half-dozen openings that Toro missed.
They wasted the first round feeling each other out, but halfway through the second, Toro suddenly picked it up, firing off a dozen hard body shots that clearly hurt Benitez . . .
“Watch this,” Pops said, leaning in.
In his corner, between rounds, Benitez and his manager were arguing. But in Spanish and without sound? I had no idea what the beef was.
Third round, Toro jacked up the action again, a full-body attack. Benitez had no counter for it; he kept taking the punches, clearly hurt, until Toro caught him with a low blow, then laid him out with a hammer strike to the temple. Benitez hit the deck, didn’t move. The screen went dark.
I stared at the blankness.
Staring at death, I suppose.
“What did you see?” Pops pressed, his eyes intense.
I considered that a moment.
“The body attack,” I said. “Benitez wasn’t expecting it. Is that what he was arguing with his manager about?”
“I think so. The question is, why didn’t he expect it? Toro’s a body-puncher, they must have known that. So why were they surprised?”
It took a moment for the answer to register. And when it did, I went utterly still. Realizing what I’d just seen.
“It wasn’t a fight,” I said slowly. “It was murder.”
“Benitez was set up,” Pops agreed. “I think he was fixed to fall in the fourth. So when Toro came at him full on in the second, it caught him by surprise. He wasn’t ready to fight, or defend himself properly. He thought he was going to dance a few rounds, then drop.”
“Instead, Toro used him for a punching bag, knowing he wouldn’t fight back,” I finished. “The poor bastard had no chance at all.”
“Still, they couldn’t have known they’d kill him,” Pops mused.
“Probably not. They double-crossed him, figuring to end his career, put him in traction. His death was a bonus.”
“Toro’s whole reputation, the ‘Terminator’ business, began with that fight,” Pops said. “Before Benitez, Toro was just another pug. And even the killing didn’t make him a headliner, because Benitez was a nobody, and it happened in Mexico.”
“But if he kills a second fighter? Say an Irish Maguire, in Detroit? Dukarski will be minting money off this guy.”
“Jilly diving is only a smokescreen,” Pops agreed. “To get you into the ring with your guard down. So Toro can make his name by stomping you into dog meat.”
“Or killing me. If he can.”
“We’ve got to go to the law, Mick.”
“To say what? Toro killed Benitez? Hell, everybody knows that. He’s proud of it. And if we admit we’re mixed up in a fix with Dukarski, we’ll be flat broke, barred from boxing forever, while he waltzes away without a scratch. The law can’t help us here, Pops. We have to settle this on our own.”
“How?”
“We do what we’ve always done. We’re Irish Maguires. We come up with a plan, then step in the ring and swing away.”
There’s a famous quote from former heavyweight champ Joe Frazier. My Pops has it painted on a banner that hangs over our training ring:
“You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned . . . That’s where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you’re going to get found out now. Under the bright lights.”
We took Smokin’ Joe’s advice, kept our fight plan as simple as possible. First we brought Jilly up to speed on the fix. Pops told her she was supposed to lose, and why.
“Duke needs to make two things happen,” Pops explained. “He bets heavy that you lose and makes enough to hold off the loan sharks. Then Toro beats Mick real bad, maybe to death? And Duke gets himself a big earner for the long run.”
“That’s his plan.” Jilly nodded grimly. “What’s ours, Pops?”
“The exact opposite,” Pops said flatly. “You win your bout and bankrupt that son of a bitch. Then Mick calls in the ring doctor, admits his shoulder’s injured, and cancels out. And Toro stays a nobody who can’t make Duke a nickel.”
“Sounds like a pla
n.” Jilly nodded, frowning, mulling it over.
“And?” Pops asked.
She glanced up with the feral flare of combat in her eyes. “I like my part of it just fine.” She grinned. “Who do I have to beat?”
“A Russian called Olga the Borg,” Pops said warily. “A cage fighter out of Duke’s stable. She’s tough and tall, a lot taller than you, with a longer reach. And she’ll definitely be in it to win it. Duke won’t tell her nothing about the fix.”
“What fix is that?” Jilly asked, all innocence.
“Exactly right.” Pops nodded. “Ain’t no fix, girl, not anymore. Just make damn sure you win!”
That was our fight plan. And we trained hard for it, Jilly to win, me to look like I was serious about a fight Pops would cancel at the last minute.
It was a good plan. Until the night of the fight. When it all went south.
I was alone in my dressing room, sitting on the massage table. Jilly’s fight was being announced and I was waiting for the ring doctor so I could cancel mine.
The door burst open and Pops charged in, his eyes wild.
“What the hell?” I demanded, jumping to my feet. “Why aren’t you in the ring with Jilly?”
“Dukarski,” he said. “He sent a limo for Liam and Sean. They’re sitting at ringside between him and Gamez. Gamez is strapped and Duke is too.”
“Jesus! Did he threaten them?”
“He don’t have to! The message is plain. The boys don’t know nothing. Hell, they’re happy as clams to have front-row seats.”
“What about Jilly?”
“She ain’t said nothing either, but she can see what Duke expects her to do. Them boys are there as insurance to keep her in line.”
“Then it’s gotta be on Jilly,” I said flatly. “She’s the one in the bright lights tonight, Pops. Whatever she decides, we back her up. Now get back out there, look after her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait, for now. If I go after them like this, they’ll see me coming a mile away. Get out there and follow Jilly’s lead, whatever it is.”
Pops hurried back through the crowd to the ring. Standing in that doorway, watching him go, was harder than any fight I’ve ever been in. All we had going was Smokin’ Joe’s advice.