Suckerpunch: (2011) (17 page)

The ref called them forward for the stare down when one of the non-shitter’s cornermen ran to the cage and said something to his fighter. The guy got a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look on his face, listened again, and by then the ref was yelling at him to step up.

The guy shook his head, and when the ref walked over to see what the problem was, the fighter told him the other guy just took a dump with his gloves on and left without washing his hands. The ref needed to hear it again. Then—and you could tell he didn’t want to—he went over to the other fighter and kept a safe distance and asked him about it. The guy was irate at first, flinging his hands all over the place while everyone ran for cover; then he calmed down and fessed up.

The other guy wouldn’t fight him in that state, and the promotion didn’t have any extra gloves. The shitter won via Disqualification: Opponent Would Not Fight.

We’d gone over it plenty of times in the gym. Roth was the only guy who would’ve fought.

So I stuck to my oatmeal and fruit and wondered why Marcela hadn’t ridden with her cousins. I hoped she hadn’t been grounded. I waited for one of the brothers to say something to me, but Javier and Edson just mumbled to each other and to Jairo, who didn’t even glance my way and nodded about whatever they said. The skin on the back of his head looked tight, and his neck was all cables when he turned to listen.

I wanted to get the hell out of the Hole, but Angie was teaching a yoga class, and the kitchen was as far as I could go without looking like a voyeur. I was in there washing my bowl for the third time, almost noon by then, when the three of them came in. I had no idea what Marcela had told them about last night, but it was enough to get them serious and make her stay at the hotel and away from me. She was probably kicking the place apart.

“Woody,” Jairo said. He had his arms crossed and must have been making tight fists because his forearms were popping like he had snakes in there.

Javier and Edson stood behind him, looking at me.

“Jairo.”

“Listen, this is hard because we are friends and we like you. But this thing with Marcela, it is not right.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was going to happen like it did, but she shouldn’t have been there no matter what. I fucked up.”

Jairo’s brows came together. His scalp pulled even tighter. “Been where? With you?”

“Last night,” I said. “I don’t know how much she told you, but I’ll go through it again if you want. She was in some danger, but she held her own. It sounded like she’s seen much worse. I was impressed.”

Javier and Edson fired off into Jairo’s ears until he put up a hand and said to me, “Marcela didn’t tell us anything. We haven’t seen her since she left with you.”

“What?”

“She wasn’t in her room this morning, either, so I want to ask you where she is.”

I felt the blood drop out of my head and crash into my stomach. I blew between Jairo and the refrigerator, Javier pressing back against the wall to get out of the way, and found my jeans in a pile near my cot. I fished Kendall Percy’s business card out, opened my phone, and punched in the number labeled mobile.

Jairo and his brothers were close by, faces somewhere between pissed and worried. I held an open palm to them and listened to the phone ring.

Kendall clicked on after the fourth ring, and I could hear him laughing and talking to someone in the background before he said into the phone, “Kendall Percy, how can I help you?”

“Where is she?”

“Hey, friend, good to hear from you. Some friend, though—Lance has been with us all night, and you can’t be bothered. Now that we have your hoochie, you’re on the horn toot sweet.”

“Put her on.”

“Now, now, you’re talking to me for a bit here. Let’s get all this hashed out before things get emotional.”

Jairo reached for the phone.

But I turned away and held my hand out again. “Put her on the phone.”

“You’re probably wondering how we found her,” Kendall said. He took a drink of something and spent some time savoring it. “Lemme ask you this: How many Arco-vair-days you think there are staying in Vegas right now?”

I closed my eyes. The shirts.

“Answer is, not many. Only one hotel we could find had any booked. Don’t know why she opened the door, but she did. I hope I’m not out of line here, but that girl is a wildcat. If you two’ve had a tumble, I bet your back looks like a scratching post.”

I couldn’t bring myself to ask if he’d touched her. If the answer was bad, the worst, I was done. No more fight tonight, no more Banzai Eddie, no more Gil. It would be me dead or in prison for the rest of my life, bits of Kendall and Jake and Steve and whoever else under my fingernails and between my teeth.

Jairo was staring at me with more in his eyes than I’d ever seen from him on the mats or in the cage.

“You still there?” Kendall asked.

“Put her on.”

“You’re stuck on repeat, brother. Look, calm down. She’s fine. We’re gentlemen. We’ve been up all night watching your fights online. Who did the camera work, Stevie Wonder? But hey, you’re a pretty good fighter.”

“Those are competitions. You’ve never seen me fight.”

“Whoa. Easy. You sound like you’re chewing the phone up over there, gonna come through on my end and bite my face off. Hang on.” There was a rustling, and I heard Kendall say, “Watch yourself.”

Then Marcela said into the phone, “Woody?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, but I don’t like these guys.” And she was gone.

Kendall came back on. “All right?”

I said, “You’re coloring way outside the lines on this one. You grab a citizen, a female, from another country? You ever hear of the Trojan War?”

“They beat Notre Dame by three, right? I’m a businessman, son. I thought I told you that already. Now good luck tonight. We’re all cheering for you. And like I told you last night, things go bad for you, Lance is adios. Me’n Big Jake will take care of that, and that’ll leave Steve here to watch our lady. I’ll tell him to be nice, but he’s a wily one.”

“That would be a mistake,” I said. I’d pick Marcela to walk away from it but not unscathed.

“Yeah, yeah. Go get ‘em, champ.” Kendall clicked off.

I closed my phone and looked at Jairo and the others, waiting, eyes drilling into me, hands opening and closing.

I took all three of them to Gil’s office at the other end of the hall from the kitchen. Gil was at his desk surrounded by framed photos and insurance forms and his coffee. His eyebrows raised as he watched me close the door, then go across the room and close the door to the hallway. Angie’s voice got cut off midway through a drawn out “And modify . . .”

The Arcoverdes stood against the wall across from Gil and watched me.

Gil looked at me and said, “Morning. What’s up?”

I told them everything, but I left out the parts about what I thought of Steve and what he would do to Marcela. A Brazilian rampage through the city wouldn’t help anyone. I finished with the part about the phone call to Kendall, Jairo saying I should have let him talk to the son of a bitch, to which I nodded but knew it would have been bad.

When I was done, I stood in the middle of the room, fury boiling from the brothers on my right and Gil’s disappointment freezing me on the left. I stood still and let the tornado whip me apart.

Gil picked up the phone.

Jairo said, “Who are you calling?”

“The police.” Like that was the only number the phone could dial.

“Woody, did he say anything about that?”

I replayed the conversation with Kendall. “No, he didn’t.”

Gil started to dial.

“Stop,” Jairo said. “What do you think he will do if he sees Marcela’s face on the TV?” I hesitated. “We’d never find her.”

Jairo pointed at Gil. “Put that down. We go to the bakery right now.”

Javier and Edson were already through the door to the Hole, heading for the parking lot.

“He wouldn’t keep her there,” I said.

Jairo snapped his fingers. “Keys.”

“We’ll have to take two cars.” I barely fit in my pickup, let alone me and three furious Brazilians. And I wasn’t going to tell two of them they couldn’t go.

“I’m driving. And I don’t want my truck involved in any felonies.” Gil studied me while he lifted the keys out of a drawer. Jairo left, and it was just me and Gil. “I thought we were done with all this.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s yeah? Look at me.”

“It’s just one of those things. Hindsight, you know?”

“No, because I have foresight.”

I nodded.

“Do you want to fail?”

“What? No.”

Gil put his fists on top of the desk and leaned over it. “Then why do you keep walking around with a lit fuse, looking for sticks of dynamite to poke it into?”

“It’s not like that.”

“No? Then what’s it like?”

“Hey,” Jairo yelled from the back door.

Gil pushed off the desk and walked out. He left his coffee behind.

The chill hung in the room and gave everything sharp corners and edges. It made me tighten up.

I don’t like being the one to blame.

I don’t like having no control.

When I don’t have control, I tend to wrench it back and deal with whatever comes bouncing along at the other end of the chain, sizzling and growling and leaving stains everywhere.

Things were out of control, and I was to blame, and I was starting to lose my temper.

We rode to the bakery in silence except for the directions I gave Gil. I took deep breaths and tried to find options besides what Kendall had laid out. I couldn’t find any. Unless something drastic happened to shift the circumstances, Kendall’s way was the only way.

Good thing I was in a drastic mood. I even liked the sound of the word, picturing Kendall coming upon the scene with that little smile sliding off his face, saying, “This here . . . this is
drastic.”

We pulled into the strip mall at a little past one in the afternoon and parked far enough away so the people inside the bakery couldn’t see The Fight House logo stenciled on the side of the Expedition. We went through the door, the place almost full with people eating slightly late lunches or very late breakfasts. It still smelled good, but there was a mixture of aromas instead of the purity of baked goods.

The girl behind the counter smiled at us before we were halfway to the counter. Her name tag said Hannah. “Hey, guys, welcome to the New Harvest Bakery.”

Jairo headed for the hinged gate on the left. “This way?”

I nodded.

“Is Kendall here?” I asked.

“Kendall? Kendall who?” Hannah frowned. Either confused or a great actress.

The customers noticed the change in the room and started to hush up.

“The guy who works in the back room.”

Jairo and Javier and Edson went through the gate toward the double doors.

“You can’t come back here,” Hannah said.

Jairo said, “Bah,” and pushed through the doors. I thought about going over the counter to catch up but went for the gate instead.

Hannah looked through the flapping doors. “Alan, I think these guys need to talk to you.”

I brushed past her. In the silent dining area behind me, I heard Gil say, “Can I get a large coffee?”

A fortyish guy in dark pants and a white button-up shirt with a gold tie—Alan, I figured, but he was too important for a name tag—was walking toward the doors with a clipboard in one hand, the other waving at Jairo and his brothers. The steel racks were full and pushed against the back wall, and there were a few workers in baker’s whites frozen with their hands in dough or sinks of dishes, watching Jairo pound on the door in the corner. The mixer I’d dropped the gun into was churning away at something pale and elastic. I didn’t see any flour on the floor with my footprints in it, which helped a little.