Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Do what?” he said.

She spun and hit the bag dead-center with a karate kick.

“You can do that?” he said.

“What’s the deal on Earl Deitrich and the skeet club?” she said.

“I’ll take a shower and we’ll go somewhere,” he said. “But first there’s this guy been pinning me. I gotta straighten him out.”

“Which guy?” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. Have a seat. This kind of guy is, what d’you call it, predictable,” he said.

We watched from a bench against the wall while Cholo continued hitting the bag. It didn’t take long to see the scenario at work. A blond man, with brilliantine in his hair, was skipping rope by the ring, crossing his wrists, slapping the floor hard under his flat-soled shoes, an indolent grin on his mouth as he stared straight into Cholo’s face.

“You make that guy?” I said to Temple.

“Used to be a mule for Sammy Mace? Out of Houston, he did a vice snitch, I thought he was in Huntsville,” Temple said.

“Johnny Krause.”

“Yeah, that’s it. He beat the homicide beef on appeal. What’s he doing here?”

The man named Johnny Krause stopped skipping rope and picked up a pair of sixteen-ounce sky-blue sparring gloves from the apron of the ring and walked toward Cholo. He paused no more than a foot from Cholo, pulling on his gloves, his abdominal muscles protruding slightly over his elastic waistband, indifferent to the possibility of being hit by Cholo’s elbows or the bag swinging back on its chain.

“Go three with me. I’ll take it easy on you,” he said.

“I want to go three, I’ll ask. Go fuck your ‘easy,’ too,” Cholo said.

Krause made a casual face and turned his head to the side and looked into space. His blue, white-striped trunks reached almost to his knees and clung like moist Kleenex to his skin. “Suit yourself. You been staring at me all morning. I thought you wanted to go,” he said.

“Me staring at you?”

“Don’t worry about it. Sorry I bothered you, Paco,” Krause said, and rubbed the sweaty top of Cholo’s head with the palm of his glove.

Cholo knocked his arm away.

“Who you calling Paco, man?” he said.

“That ain’t your name?” Krause kept smiling and tapped Cholo on the ear, winking, raising his guard now, his head ducking down behind his gloves as though he were about to be hit. “I been hearing you’re one badass mean motherfucker. Don’t hurt me, mean motherfucker,” he said.

Cholo stepped away from the bag and swung at Krause, his glove ripping into empty space, pulling him off balance.

“The wind almost knocked me down. I got to carry an anchor around. Get me out of here,” Krause said.

Others had stopped their workout and were watching now, laughing, making remarks behind their gloves to one another.

“Get a timekeeper. We don’t use no headgear, either,” Cholo said.

Johnny Krause sprang into the ring, threw a combination left and right at the air, his lips pursed, his chin tucked into his chest. Then he leaned back into the turn-buckle, his arms spread on the ropes, and watched Cholo, down below, pulling on the other pair of blue gloves with his teeth.

I stepped between Cholo and the apron of the ring. “I don’t know why, but he’s setting you up. Don’t do it,” I said.

“Fuck you,” he replied, and climbed up into the ring, the tattoos of a knife dripping blood and a death’s head on his throat running with sweat.

An old man with white, puckered skin and hair like meringue clicked a stopwatch and clanged the bell. Johnny Krause had either fought professionally or in prison, because he took complete control of his environment as soon as he moved to the center of the ring.

He stepped sideways, bobbed, or jerked backwards so quickly that Cholo couldn’t touch him, all the time feigning restraint, as if Cholo were the aggressor in what should have been a sparring match.