The Punishing Game (10 page)

Boff raised his cup of coffee in a salute. “Ah, the wonders of amphetamines,” he said. “So how’d Yusef get filthy rich?”

“Yusef caught the eye of Bill Stephney, an exec at Def Jam—that’s a record label, Frank, not a jelly company. Yusef and Stephney were among the first to marry the style of Run DMC with politics that addressed the needs of black youth. After their initial release was a major hit, things kind of snowballed. Yusef made a lot of money before leaving Def Jam to create his own label, the Yusef Force Music Group. He signed hot young rappers who didn’t do gangsta rap. And made his fortune.”

Boff speared a fry. “Do you know how he hooked up with boxing promoter Sonny Ricci?”

“Sure,” Galloway said. “Yusef got interested in boxing because of his nephew. Since Yusef was an organizer and marketer, it was natural that he’d turn to promotion. He and Ricci started a monthly event in New York called Downtown Boxing. Because of Yusef’s reputation, Ricci’s boxing events draw a lot of hip-hop stars to the stands.”

Boff set his BLT
down. “Do you happen to know when the next Downtown Boxing show is?”

“As a matter of fact, I believe there’s one tomorrow tonight.”

As they were walking to the gym the next day, McAlary suddenly grabbed Cullen’s arm and pulled him over behind a parked van.

“What’s going on?” the boxer asked. “Did you pull a muscle or something?”

McAlary pointed up the road. “See that black Land Rover heading our way? It looks like the one the Bloods used.”

Tugging Cullen down so their bodies weren’t exposed, they watched the car approach. It seemed to slow down nearing them, then went on. After it was gone, McAlary and Cullen went back to the sidewalk.

“I thought you didn’t buy Boff’s theory that I was the target,” Cullen said.

“I don’t. But it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

“Let’s walk the rest of the way. I want to fill you in on what Boff found out.”

As he listened to what Cullen had learned about Yusef Force’s connection to Jermain, McAlary looked skeptical. “Boff thinks this hip-hop guy hired the Bloods to kill you? Just to help his nephew?”

“He’s exploring the possibility,” Cullen said.

“Sounds like a stretch to me.”

“It may be,” Cullen agreed. “That’s what Boff’s gonna find out.”

“You know, Danny, while the winner of your fight gets a shot at the champion, in this game there’s no way anybody can guarantee Jermain would beat Maroni, if he replaced you. Good fighters have lost to inferior opponents for any number of reasons.” He poked at Cullen’s chest. “Especially ones who’re distracted.”

Approaching the gym, Cullen and McAlary spotted a bum sitting on the lower step drinking from a bottle in a wrinkled brown bag. McAlary stopped and pointed at the bag. “Dom Perignon, my friend?”

The bum shook his head. “Thunderbird. World’s finest wine unner four dollas. Wanna hit?”

Shaking his head no, McAlary took out his wallet and handed the bum a five dollar bill. “Go buy some more. But make sure you find another place to drink it. Understand?”

The bum pocketed the five, stood up, and walked away. Cullen and McAlary then took the stairs and entered the gym.

“Wrap your hands, Danny,” McAlary said. “I want you to spar three rounds with Mikey. And make sure you keep a lid on that damn temper of yours.”

After Sierra had wrapped Cullen’s hands and helped him on with the gloves, Cullen joined Bellucci in the ring.

“Three hard rounds,” McAlary instructed them. “No goofing around. And no showing off!” 

While the boys were sparring, Sierra, who had a pair of gloves looped over his shoulder, walked over to McAlary, who sat on a bench with the assistant trainer and held his hands out to be taped. When Sierra was finished, he helped McAlary glove up.

After Cullen and Bellucci finished their three rounds of sparring, McAlary climbed into the ring. “That was good work, both of you,” he said. “But, Mikey, you’re still punching too much off your back foot. It costs you whatever power you have. Go work on it with Angel.”

As Bellucci left the ring, McAlary turned his attention to Cullen. “As for you,” he said, “you’re holding that damn left hand too low way too many times.”

“Sorry.”

McAlary narrowed his eyes. “Are you? We’ll see about that. I’m going to spar with you. Perhaps I can make you a little bit sorrier.” He threw some quick combos in the air to warm up, then turned as the gym door opened
.

Boff walked in and leaned against the wall closest to the door.

“If that bloke says one word to you or anybody else,” McAlary announced to the gym at large, “I’ll toss his butt out. Danny, let’s get started.”

Just thirty seconds into the round, Cullen absently let his left hand drift low. McAlary took advantage by firing a hook over it that drilled the younger boxer hard on the jaw. Cullen immediately put his left hand up higher.

McAlary smiled. “See? Make sure you keep that hand up there.”

Although Cullen nodded like he had learned his lesson, a minute later his left hand drifted low again, and as soon as it did, McAlary whacked him hard again. Pissed at himself for being so dumb, and also at his trainer for showing him up, Cullen began aggressively stalking McAlary, throwing several hooks to the body that had little effect because the wily trainer tucked his elbows close to his body to let his arms cushion the blows.

Inevitably, the other boxers stopped working to watch them spar. By the time the round ended, Cullen’s face sported a couple rising bruises. Now he was angry that the whole gym had seen him get embarrassed. He was determined to get even in the next round.

“Okay,” McAlary said, “let’s go another round.”

This time Cullen made sure to keep his left hand high for the first two and a half minutes of the three-minute round. But when Sierra called out, “Thirty seconds,” he purposely let his left drift low. McAlary swallowed the bait and threw another right hook. But this time, Cullen was prepared. He shifted his head so the blow only glanced off him, then countered with a terrific body shot that made McAlary audibly groan.

Cullen smiled. “I bet that hurt.”

Despite the pain, McAlary grinned. “Yes, but I loved it. Nice move. You set me up pretty.”

“Want some more pain, coach?”

“Not today, thank you.” McAlary smiled and pointed one glove at Cullen’s face. “Go put some ice on those bruises I gave you.”

Boff was still leaning against the wall when Cullen and Bellucci came out of the locker area in street clothes.

“What are you doing inside the gym?” Cullen said.

“I got bored waiting outside. Plus it’s hot as hell on the street. So I figured I’d come in and watch Wonder Boy train.”

“But it’s no cooler in here than it is out there.”

Boff nodded. “True. But at least there’s something here to look at besides fat mamas and their bawling babies.”

Cullen and Bellucci followed Boff out of the gym and down the stairs.

“Where’re off to today, chief?” Bellucci asked.

“Sorry, Mikey,” Boff said. “But the person I’m going to see wouldn’t appreciate it if I brought you along.”

“Because of my hair?”

“No. The guy is more than a little paranoid. I had to lobby hard just to get him to allow Danny to come with me.”

Bellucci looked clearly disappointed. “Well, see you later then.” He walked off looking slightly sulky.

“I told McAlary about your theory on Yusef,” Cullen said as Boff put the rental Honda in gear, jacked up the air conditioning full blast, and pulled away. “He’s not buying it. He said there’s no way to guarantee Jermain would win the title. So killing me doesn’t seem worth the risk.”

“A point well-taken. But if Yusef considers Jermain a son, we don’t know how far he’d go just to see that the son at least got a chance to win a championship. You wouldn’t believe some of the trivial reasons people kill other people.”

Boff drove onto the
Brooklyn Bridge and dredged up another story.

“I once defended a wine connoisseur who had stabbed his friend in the throat with a corkscrew while they were eating dinner at the client’s house. His reason for doing it? The friend had farted at the table while my client was testing the nose on a two thousand-dollar bottle of
Château Haut-Brion.”

“Don’t tell me you got him off.”

“Yup. On temporary insanity. I dug up psychiatric experts who testified that the accused was pathologically obsessed with rare wines. Jury selection was the key. We chose two workaholics, a stamp collector, and an aerobic dance instructor—all obsessive types.” He smiled in satisfaction. “Anyway, getting back to Yusef, since we don’t know yet how his mind works, we’ll continue to assume he’s a prime suspect.”

As they got off the bridge in
Lower Manhattan, Cullen asked, “So where’re we going?”

“To meet someone who can help us get a handle on whether Yusef is really against violence as much as he claims. If he is, then we might have to look elsewhere for our bad guy.
” 

After driving north on 6
th
Avenue, Boff pulled into a parking garage on West 23
rd
Street. Down on the basement level, he drove around until he saw the headlights of a parked car flash on and off twice. He parked two spaces away from the car, and he and Cullen walked over to it. Boff got in the front, Cullen the back. Boff didn’t make introductions.

The driver appeared to be in his late thirties with long, slicked-back hair. Without looking at Boff, he said, “Let’s do this fast. I can’t be seen with you.”

Still staring straight ahead, he took a folder off the dashboard and handed it to Boff, who flipped it open and began looking through it.

“As you can see,” the driver began, “James Simms, AKA Yusef Force, didn’t have a rap sheet. I found that a little bit unusual for a hip-hop guy. So on a hunch, I checked him out with Juvy.”

Boff turned a couple pages and found the juvenile rap sheet. “Three arrests when he was thirteen for nickel and dime stuff.”

The driver finally looked at Boff. “Then he graduated,” he said.

Boff looked down at the file again and nodded. “Assault and battery and possession of stolen property.”

“Simms was only fourteen,” the driver said, “so they shipped him to
Speckford Juvenile Center near Albany. He was a resident from 1977 to 1980. Now it gets interesting.”

When Cullen leaned forward to try and look at the folder, the driver whipped around. “Sit back!” he said. “You don’t see any paper!”

Cullen shrugged and leaned back.

“I also checked out Sonny Ricci for you,” the driver said. Boff turned a few pages. “As you can see, Ricci has an adult record for a barroom brawl. And like Yusef, he also had a juvy sheet.”

“Ricci was quite a spunky kid,” Boff said, glancing over his file.

“Yeah. Before Ricci was ten, he’d been arrested six times for a variety of semi-serious charges. At thirteen, he got sent away for breaking and entering. Take a wild guess where Ricci did his time.”

Boff nodded. “Speckford.”

“Ricci was inside Speckford from 1977 to 1980. Same time as Simms. What you need to know is that when these two mutts were there, Speckford was like an adult prison. If you were afraid to use your fists or a knife, you didn’t survive. I’m sure that by the time these two nitwits got out, they were street-hardened.”

The driver grabbed the folder from Boff, closed it, and slapped it back on the dashboard.

“This makes us even, Boff. Don’t ever contact me again.”

“Not even for a friendly beer?”

Ignoring Boff’s question, the driver started his engine. “Get out.”

As soon as they left the car, it sped off.

“Who the hell was that weirdo?” Cullen said.

“A detective in North Homicide.” They got into Boff’s rental. “Eight years ago, Internal Affairs accused him of faking crime scene evidence in order to get a conviction on a major case. The Boffer not only helped get the charges dropped, but the cop was recommended for a promotion. He was that rare client of mine who actually was innocent.”

After leaving the garage, Boff drove west on 23
rd
Street, then took a left onto 7
th
Avenue and headed downtown. Cullen noticed that Boff kept glancing in his rear view mirror.

“What’s up with the mirror?” he asked.

“We’ve got company,” Boff replied. “A gray Nissan Maxima with two people up front. Don’t turn and look.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want them to know I’ve spotted them.”

“Because….?”

“The Boffer’s going to teach them that it’s a waste of time trying to tail him.”

And with that, Boff made a couple of turns, got on Spring Street, and parked near a bar a half a block from the elevated West Side Highway. There was a neon sign hanging above the bar’s front door:
EAR
est. 1817 A.D.

“Funny name for a bar,” Cullen said.

Boff let out a sigh. “Study the sign some more, Danny. Tell me what you see.”

After staring at the sign again for a minute, Cullen still had no clue what Boff was after. “All I see is the bar’s name and the date it was established.”

“Actually, if you had a more developed sense of observation, you would’ve noticed that the sign originally said BAR.
But at some point in the sign’s history, the neon stopped flowing through the right side of the B. Making it look like an E. So now it’s called the EAR, and it’s one of the five oldest bars in the city.”

“Thanks for the history lesson. Is our tail still there?”

“They parked behind us. About a half block away. Let’s go into the Ear. When you get out of the car, do NOT look around. Just walk into the bar.”

The place was crowded and noisy. Boff led Cullen past the packed bar to a slightly elevated room in the back with about ten tables and chose one toward the rear of
the room. Then he sat where he was facing the bar’s entrance. A waitress came by, recited the specials, took their orders, and left.

“I’m going into the kitchen for a minute,” Boff said. “Stay here.”

“Do you know the cook?”

“No.”

Without explanation, Boff disappeared into the kitchen. As soon as he was alone, Cullen hustled to the kitchen doors and peeked in through one of the two portals. Sure enough, Boff was talking to a cook. Boff slipped the guy some money, picked up an order of fried onion rings from a servers’ counter, and walked out the kitchen’s back door. Cullen quickly followed him, almost bumping into another cook holding a sizzling pan of bacon strips.

The door opened onto a narrow alley. After Boff cleared the alley and turned left on the sidewalk, Cullen resumed following again. As he reached the sidewalk, Cullen stood still and watched as Boff carried the fried onion rings to the Maxima.

When Boff was about fifteen feet away from the car, he shouted, “Hi there, guys! I brought you some fried onion rings just in case you get hungry waiting for me.”

Without warning, Boff suddenly dropped the onion rings and dove behind the front end of another parked car as a semi-automatic pistol poked out the passenger side window and fired off a burst. Cullen froze for a moment on the sidewalk, then dived into the alley.

The shooting stopped, and the Maxima pulled away from the curb and sped off, passing the alley as it raced by. Cullen left the alley and trotted over to Boff, who was back on his feet, dusting off his pants. He didn’t appear to be hurt.

“Are you all right?”

Boff smiled. “Never been better.”

“Did you get the plates?” Cullen asked.

“Yup. They’re likely stolen, but I’ll have them run.”

“Well, genius,” Cullen said, “your idea of not losing them sure worked out well.”

Boff smiled. “Actually it did.”

“How do you figure?”

“Look at this.” Boff pointed to the gouges the bullets had made in the sidewalk. “When they started firing, were you on the sidewalk, Danny?”

“Yeah. Just outside the alley.”

“Follow me,” said Boff, who headed back toward the bar. A dozen curious patrons were already pouring out the front door to see what had happened.

“Who fired the gunshots?” someone shouted.

“Those weren’t gunshots,” Boff replied in a calm voice. “Just some kids playing with firecrackers.”

“They sure sounded like gunshots.”

Boff shook his head. “They make firecrackers louder and louder these days, don’t they.”

Quickly losing interest, the patrons went back inside.

Boff turned Cullen. “Now show me where you were standing.”

Cullen pointed at the pavement. “Right about there.”

“Now look there and tell me what you see.”

Cullen was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Okay, let me put it this way. What
don’t
you see?”

After a moment, Cullen got it. “Oh. No bullet holes.”

“Correct. And what does that tell you?”

“That, uh…they were shooting at you. Not me?”

Boff nodded. “Don’t you find that curious?”

“Well…maybe they didn’t see me.”

“Trust me, they did. Let’s go inside.”

As they walked back in, Cullen said, “
If somebody’s trying to kill
me
, why were they shooting at
you
?”

Boff didn’t reply right away. They returned to their table and sat down just as their food was coming out.

“One reason,” Boff finally said, “could be that these guys weren’t connected to the person who contracted to have you killed. I still have a lot of enemies here in New York.” He smiled. “I know, it’s hard to believe. And even if these yo-yos
were
involved with the so-called drive-by, shooting at you again wouldn’t have been very smart.”

“Why not?”

“Because if the cops learned you’d been shot at again, they’d probably take a second look at Biaggi’s murder, but from a different perspective. That’s something I’m sure the contractor wouldn’t like to see happen. My guess is these clowns were trying to take the Big Boffer out of the equation. Without me, you’d have zero chance of finding out who’s behind all this.”

“So I’m safe, then?” Cullen asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Boff squeezed some deli mustard on a thick burger topped with Bermuda onion and bacon.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” He took a big bite out of the burger. “If they still want you dead—and I’m sure they do—they’ll find a less obvious way to kill you. Like a car accident, for example.”

Cullen frowned, put his fork down on his plate of smoked trout, and told Boff about the taxi that had almost hit him. “What do you make of that?” he finished.

Boff took another huge bite of the burger, set it down, chewed, and spread his hands. “Well, the cabbie could’ve been trying to run you over. But there’s no way of knowing. So in the meantime, we continue checking out Yusef Force. And you, my friend, you make sure you look both ways before crossing the street.”  

They focused on eating, and Boff said nothing further about the shooting. But these jokers had just upped the stakes, he said to himself. Big time. This was no longer a mission his wife had sent him on. Now it was personal.

“I’ve got to piss,” Cullen said a minute later. “Don’t eat my fish.”

As soon as Cullen was gone, Boff called his wife. “How’s everything at home, honey?”

Not as good without you. I miss you so much.

“Same here. How about Steven and Sharon? I’m guessing they’re thrilled that I’m gone.”

They asked if
I could arrange to keep you in New York indefinitely
.

“No surprise there.”

How’s the case going?

“It’s moving along. One of the highlights of my trip so far was learning that my sweet old mother takes numbers for a mobster and keeps a shotgun behind the counter.”

Jenny started laughing.
Thelma? You’re kidding me.

“I’m dead serious. And speaking of dead…a few minutes ago somebody tried to shoot me.”

Oh, no! Not again. Are you all right?

“Never been better.”

There was a pause at the other end.
Promise me you’re not going to do what you did the last time somebody tried to kill you.

Boff said nothing.

Don’t you give me that Frank Boff silence routine!

“Honey, our food just came out. I’ve got to go. Love you.” He hung up.

***

The black limo was on the
Saw Mill Parkway heading north when Throaty Voice’s cell phone rang.

“What’s up,”
he said to the caller.

It was his Hispanic friend.
I just wanted you to know I tried to hit Boff.

“
Without consulting me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

I don’t like him nosing around. He’s got a talent for screwing things up
.

“
I gather you weren’t successful,” Throaty Voice said.

No
t this time
.

“
Listen, my friend, and listen good. You are not to try this kind of stunt again. What you did today made this personal for Boff. That’s the
last
thing we wanted to do.”

I don’t care what this guy’s reputation is
.
If he gets close, I’m going to take more action
.
We’ve got too much riding on this.

“
What are you going to do? Make another useless attempt to kill him?”

There are other ways to slow
Boff down.

“
Like what?”

This and that
.

“
Care to be more specific?”

Not now.

“I don’t like this.”

You don’t have to. Just
trust me.