The Boxer and the Spy
- Автор: Паркер Роберт Браун
- Год: 2008
- Язык: английский
- Год: Philomel Books
- ISBN: 978-0-399-24775-0
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Boxer and the Spy». Краткое содержание книги:
Terry moved left as he pounded the bag. He could feel the sweat begin to gather along his arms and shoulders. George was right, once he began to feel the stuttered rhythm of the punches, they came faster. It wasn’t so much bang, bang as ba-bang, ba-bang.
“Okay, now move round the bag to the right, same deal. Bang, bang.”
Terry was breathing hard.
“Easy for you,” he gasped.
The change in direction had messed up his rhythm, and it took him a couple of circuits of the bag to get it back. Then he made one full circle of the bag in good ba-bang.
“Okay,” George said. “Round one, take a seat.”
Terry sat on the folding chair in the corner, his chest heaving, his arms and shoulders glistening with sweat. The sweat beaded on his face. George toweled him off and squirted a little water into Terry’s mouth.
“Don’t want to dehydrate,” George said. “You get dehydrated and it take the zip right out of you.”
Terry nodded.
“Funny, just changing directions got me screwed up on the fists of fury thing,” he said.
“Why you have to do it so much,” George said. “Get your muscles grooved into it.”
“And nobody’s even trying to hit me,” Terry said.
“Time for that will come,” George said. “Now we just getting grooved in.”
“But... I mean in a real fight some guy comes at you throwing them as fast as he can... Don’t you kind of feel like wait a minute, wait a minute?”
“Couple answers to that,” George said. “One, that happen whether you know how to box or not, so you may as well know. Second thing is you get enough training you can maybe weather that first couple minutes until the guy runs out of steam.”
Terry nodded.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know. Backpedal. Keep him off with your jab. Cover up.”
“And maybe move around him a little, try not to get cornered,” George said. “He gonna be pretty tired after a minute or two. ‘Less you fighting Smokin’ Joe Frazier, your man can’t keep throwing them like you talkin’ about for very long.”
“You ever just wanted to run?”
George shrugged.
“Boxing be mostly about training,” he said. “Remember what I tol’ you about the three thousand punches. Time you get in the ring, you might be scared, but you trained so much, you sort of can’t think ’bout running.”
“But what if you do run?”
“Then you need to do another business,” George said. “Nothing wrong with that. Boxing ain’t exactly normal anyway. You know, it ain’t normal to get into a thing where you and somebody else try to beat each other unconscious. Don’t mean you a coward or anything if you can’t do it.”
George paused and framed his words and smiled.
“Probably just mean you too normal for boxing.”
“Aren’t some fighters scared?”
“Sure,” George said. “And you can be a pretty good fighter even if you scared. Technique take you a long way. But it don’t take you all the way.”
“What does that?” Terry said.
“Heart,” George said.
“Heart?”
“Heart make you get up when it be much easier to stay down,” George said. “Make you go out for the next round when you can’t hardly see and you not sure where you are. We don’t know yet, you got heart. But I’m thinking you might.”
Neither of them spoke. George seemed to have gone someplace out of the little gym across from the Coffee Café in the fancy town. Someplace Terry had never been. Then he came back and smiled at Terry.
“Maybe just another word for not normal,” he said.
Chapter 27
It was a warm Saturday morning and they were sitting on the rocks near the ocean, looking at what Abby called her spy chart.
“These are all the people we’ve seen him with in a month,” Abby said. “And the places he saw them.”
“That whole list?” Terry said.
“Yes,” Abby said. “But they’re in order of frequency. That’s what the numbers in parentheses mean. See, he’s seen Kip Carter All-American twelve times. He’s seen Mr. Malcolm the construction teacher ten times, and so on.”
“So the end of the list doesn’t probably mean much.”
“Probably not,” Abby said. “But I put them in. Just in case.”
“Damn,” Terry said. “You’ve been putting in a lot of work.”
Abby nodded.
“And these are the places we’ve seen him go,” she said, “where he just went there and we didn’t really see him with anybody.”
“Like the supermarket,” Terry said.
“Exactly.”
“Or the Trent house. You don’t know who he sees there?”
“Carly never knows,” Abby said.
“But he’s been there, what, eight times?”
“That Carly has seen.”
“And Carly can’t tell if it’s Mr. or Mrs. or both?”
“No. Carly thinks it might be hanky-panky, but he doesn’t know.”
“Carly thinks everything is hanky-panky,” Terry said. “It’s kind of hard to imagine.”
“I could imagine her,” Abby said. “You even said once she was kind of hot.”
“With him?” Terry said. “That’s what I can’t imagine.”
“God no,” Abby said. “I can’t imagine him doing it with anybody.”
“And don’t want to,” Terry said.
“Grown-ups do have affairs, though,” Abby said.
“But Bullard is married.”
“Married grown-ups do have affairs, though,” Abby said.
Terry nodded, looking at the way the light glanced off the moving ocean.
“I guess we need to find out,” he said.
“You think it’s important?”
“I think we don’t know, so we need to find out.”
“Yes,” Abby said. “That’s the right way to think.”
Terry looked at the list again.
“Wow,” he said. “You been doing this, like, full time.”
“Pretty much,” Abby said.
“How you gonna stay on the honor roll?” he said.
“Oh, phoo,” she said. “You don’t have to do much to make honor roll.”
Terry laughed.
“You got that right,” he said. “Tank made it this term.”
“I rest my case,” Abby said.
Terry was still studying the list.
“Okay,” Terry said. “He’s seen Kip Carter the most and Mr. Malcolm the next most.”
“That we know about,” Abby said. “We don’t see him all the time.”
“I know,” Terry said. “I just don’t want to keep saying ‘as far as we know’ every time.”
“Just so you remember,” Abby said.
“I remember,” Terry said. “I remember.”
“Well,” Abby said. “Aren’t we grouchy.”
“I’m sorry. I just feel some stress, I suppose. I mean Mr. Bullard’s always looking at me, and Kip Carter is always looking at me. And, you know. I mean what are we doing?”
“We’re trying to find out what happened to Jason,” Abby said.
Terry nodded.
“Maybe what they say happened, happened,” he said.
Abby was quiet for a moment. Several seabirds lingered in the area, in search of food. Sitting close so they could both look at the charts, Terry could feel the slight pressure of Abby’s thigh against his own. After a time, Abby shook her head slowly.
“No,” she said. “We already know whatever happened wasn’t. what they say.”
“Like Mr. Bullard telling me not to ask about it...”
“And Kip Carter All-American telling you to back off,” Abby said.
“I’m not crazy,” Terry said. “There’s something going on, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Abby said. “There is.”
“And we’re the only ones who know it?”