Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“Jack Valentine said you keep a fuck pad.”

“I’m disappointed to hear you use language like that.”

“Are you sleeping with Linda Gail or not?”

He said something I didn’t expect: “If I had my way, I’d be you. I wouldn’t be married to the woman I live with, and I wouldn’t have my father’s last name.”

“You always seem to slip the punch,” I said.

“Slipping the punch is the name of the game,” he replied. “Come on, you can be my cut man. Check out that guy’s skin. It’s luminescent. It reminds me of an exhumed corpse. He could pass for a human slug. This is going to be great.”

“Why don’t you say it louder?”

The ex-convict boxed under the name of Irish Danny Flannigan. His body was free of tattoos and wrapped like latex, his armpits shaved, his lats as ridged and hard as whalebone. He was flat-chested, his small eyes buried deep in his face. He danced up and down in his corner, rotating his neck, waiting on Roy. I had no doubt he was the kind of man you never provoked or underestimated.

“I think this is a mistake,” I said.

“Don’t be hard on him. I bet he’s a fine fellow,” Roy replied.

Flannigan worked his lips around his mouthpiece and hit himself in the face with both gloves, pow, pow, to show his indifference to pain and his frustration with the delay.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Roy said, climbing into the ring. “Tell me what to do. I’m a bit new to this.”

“There’s the spit bucket on the apron in case you want a drink,” Flannigan said.

“Really?” Roy replied. “Oh, excuse me. You meant that as a joke.”

“Let me know if I hurt you, and I’ll back off. Or tell the ref. You look like a bleeder. We try to screen out the tomato cans here. You a bleeder, pal?”

“That could be. I hope not,” Roy said.

A Mexican kid pulled the string on the bell, and Irish Danny Flannigan jabbed Roy once in the forehead, once on the eye, then hit him with a right cross that folded Roy’s face against his shoulder and bounced him off the ropes. The next blow caught Roy square on the nose and splattered blood all over his chest and shoulders.

“You all right?” Flannigan said, stepping back. “Maybe you ought to go lie down. You don’t look too good.”

Roy swung at him and missed. Flannigan hit him with a combination of blows that were devastating, pinning him against the turnbuckle, working on his rib cage and face and then his rib cage again, hooking him under the heart, the kind of blow that’s like a piece of broken wood traveling through the vitals. Roy was bent over, trying to cover up, blood running from his nose over his upper lip.

A referee got between the two of them. Other fighters in the gym had stopped their workout to watch. I climbed up on the apron. “How about it, ref?” I said.

“You want to stop, Mr. Wiseheart?” he said.

Roy showed no sign that he’d heard the referee. He went into a crouch, his gloves in front of his face, his elbows tucked in. He took two shots in the head for each one he threw. Flannigan didn’t try to hide his intentions; he was going to break every bone in Roy’s face. Then I realized I was about to see a side of Roy Wiseheart I had not seen. When the bell rang, he didn’t go to his corner. The referee tried to grab his shoulder, but Roy pushed him away.

Flannigan realized the game had changed, and turned around and faced Roy. “This is the way you want it? Fine with me,” he said. “Which funeral home does your family use?”

Maybe it was luck. Or maybe Roy was faster and smarter in the ring than anyone had thought. He feinted with his right, as a novice would, then shifted his weight and fired a left straight from the shoulder into Flannigan’s jaw, knocking his mouthpiece over the ropes. Flannigan was stunned. Somebody in the back of the gym laughed. Flannigan came back hard, windmilling his punches, sweat flying from Roy’s hair with each impact. By all odds, either from the number of blows Roy took or out of self-preservation, he should have gone down. Flannigan knew it, too. He acted as though he had won the fight and started through the ropes for the dressing room. Roy picked up a wood stool from the apron and brained him with it.

It didn’t end there. Roy climbed out of the ring with Flannigan, flinging the stool at his head and missing, then pulling off his gloves and clubbing Flannigan in the face with his bare right fist, squashing his nose, splitting his eyebrow. Flannigan toppled into the metal chairs, the spit bucket rolling across the floor. I had never seen anything like it. Flannigan’s people had to form a human wall to protect him.

I got in front of Roy, my left hand pushing against his sternum. His stench was eye-watering. “Where are your clothes?” I said.

“In the car. The locker room here is full of cockroaches.”

I shoved him ahead of me, out the door.

“Jesus, what’s the hurry?” he said.

“Are you out of your mind?”