The Best American Mystery Stories 2002
- Автор: Грейди Джеймс, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2002
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-12494-7
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2002». Краткое содержание книги:
“You know the rest of the plan,” said Taylor.
“Yes,” said Gene, “I do.”
“So,” said the banker to Gene as he stood to leave: “How you gonna do in the fight?”
“Swell.”
“Glory,” said Doyle. “Ain’t it great.”
That night Gene and Billie made love for the last time before the fight.
“We have to beat everybody,” Gene whispered to her. “Even Harry, and we have to clue him in as much as we dare. We have to do the holdup. Not let anybody die. Get to the car. Then take over Doyle, wrap him up. Drive out east to Texas John’s, dump the whole true thing on him, and comince him ours was the only way. If we turn in the cash plus the guy who shot him and stole it, we got a chance. Maybe Doyle will rat on Taylor, too, buy himself a deal. The men Harry owes won’t go after you two: you’re not worth it to be roped in as accessories. I’ll do time if I have to. No matter what, you’ll be free.”
“You mean from all this.”
“From all that you want free of.”
“It’s a terrible plan.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
Heaven moved aside and let the noon sun boil down on a bull’s-eye boxing ring that Fourth of July, 1923, a black-roped canvas square centered in the heart of an octagonal sloping wooden arena on a sallow dust prairie. Gene wore those bloodied black gloves, blue satin shorts, and his second skin shoes. For a long count he existed alone in the hollow, dry breeze, floating in slow motion, bouncing on the balls of his feet, jabbing air that was as thick as invisible molasses. He lived in the belly of a blazing whiteness. He heard his rasping breaths, his cannon heartbeat. Then gravity’s roar rocketed him back to a box of glory in Shelby, Montana, to Doyle and Harry wearing corner-men’s white shirts and bow ties and sweating at their post, and Gene knew everything had gone terribly wrong.
“Nobody’s here!” he yelled to Doyle. “Look out at the stands! Like three rows of people! Maybe three hundred at most! Empty bleacher seats stretching all the way up to the sky!”
Toad Taylor bobbed outside the ring beneath their corner, a ridiculous straw skimmer knocked off-center above his crimson face as he shook both hands in the air and hissed at them: “They’re coming! The charter trains! Don’t believe them when they say they didn’t go! We stopped the rumors about no fight! We did! So they have to go! They have to be here! Plus the crowds outside! Thousands of them! You’re just the throwaway! The time filler! The real people will be here! They’ll bring the big money! They have to! They must! This is the heavyweight championship of the world!”
But not for Gene.
Or for Eric Harmon, younger, taller, heavier muscled, and abruptly materialized in the opposite corner. The sheen on Eric looked like the boy had oiled himself, but Gene knew it was sweat: Eric would not cheat. Eric’s eyes were bullets. As their gloves fell away from the referee’s handshake, Gene felt Eric drop benevolence he’d cradled for a lifetime.
Then rang that bell.
A whirling fury charged across the ring to Gene, gloves hooking and jabbing and feinting fast, so fast, trees falling on his raised arms as Gene backpedaled, saw flashes of sky and flesh flung his way. Eric connected with a right hook Gene blocked with his shoulder. Gene spun—
Hit the canvas and bounded up before the referee could count two. The bell rang.
“He’s killing you out there!” screamed Doyle in the corner as he sponged Gene’s face.
“He’s trying.”
“The fight’s gotta last!” Doyle glared into Gene’s face. “Decide how you want to die.”
Ding!
Gene took the ring and meant it. Eric rained blows at him. Gene slipped a punch and fired his jab back along the younger man’s arm in a blow that shook Eric’s face. But Gene pulled the last two punches of his combination. Eric didn’t care. Round Two, Three, Four, Five. Eric matched each ticking second of the clock with a punch, a move, a charge.
Round Six Eric bloodied Gene’s mouth. Not much. A trickle of salty wet inside his cheek. The bell rang. Gene went to his corner. If Doyle or Harry said anything, he heard them not. He swallowed. When the bell rang, a new beast pranced out to meet Eric.
All fights have a rhythm, a jazz that is the two combatants and the fight itself, a music that shimmers beyond the sum of its parts into a set with its own time and place and fury. Often individual elements of a fight so dominate that the jazz is muted or lost to naked eyes and souls. But even then, the jazz is there. The true boxer senses that jazz in his bones, a feeling he can’t create alone but one that he can slip into, and through it, become it. And command.
Round Seven came the jazz, and the jazz was Gene. Eric’s punches hit him and hurt, damaged and didn’t matter. Gene’s jabs slammed into the bigger man on time, in rhythm. Gene’s mind cut a deal with the jazz to play long enough to keep the set alive as Gene’s gloves smacked the meat of a young man. Here the ribs. There a hook to the face. Left-left-square up right bam! Over and over again. Round Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eric fought with everything he had and more, but in this music that was his sound, his damning sound: Eric was a fighter fighting. Gene was a boxer. Force against finesse. Strength against science. Work against art. Eric had a heart full of prayers but the angels’ chorus was jazz.
Round Eleven. Blood ran from Eric’s ears and nose. He threw off the referee. Come on! his gloves beckoned Gene. Come on! Round Twelve. Thirteen. Gene danced him into a clinch.
“You can have it!” whispered Gene. “I’ll take a dive in the fifteenth! Don’t make me do this!”
Eric pushed off him and wildly swung-missed. Spit out his mouthpiece. Through broken teeth yelled: “Hell wi’ you! I’m real!”
The low punch Eric threw might have hit home in Round One, but now Gene slid back and let it fan. Without thought, Gene’s right counter slammed his opponent’s jaw. Eric hit the canvas so hard Gene bounced. Stay down! Gene willed. Eric staggered up on the seven count.
Round Fourteen. Eric stood in the center of the ring like a heavy bag absorbing punch after punch from Gene, who for a fury blind minute couldn’t stop. Then he backed away, only bobbed back in close when it looked like the referee would call it.
Fifteen. Final round. Strings down from the sky plucked Eric off his corner stool and puppeted him toward Gene. Blood and sweat trickled down both of Eric’s arms to drip on the canvas. His guard didn’t rise above his belt. Gene tapped his face twice. Eric staggered back—
A roar from the soles of his shoes tore through the state. Eric charged, his arms swinging slow wild haymakers like a baby, his eyes drowned by gore streaming from his splattered forehead as he yelled: “W’re are ’ou? ’Hre ’ou? Fight me! Fight me!”
No one should lose like that. Gene snapped up a perfect guard, danced in. As softly as he dared, Gene hooked a right into the staggering man’s cheek and felled him to the canvas.
The referee stood there, not bothering to count ten. The last bell rang.
Gene knew the referee raised his hand. Knew Harry gave him water, wiped him down. Knew the mayor bounded into the ring and hung a gold-painted brass medal around his neck. Men carried Eric out of the ring. Gene saw his chest move and knew that boy’s hands still clung to life inside bloodied boxing gloves. And as Gene staggered between the ropes Doyle held and saw an arena overflowing with empty seats, he knew that now began his real fight.
Momentum pulled him to the arena corridor. As they walked past the stands, Gene saw a man pass a Mason jar to the only other two people sitting in the row. Gene knew the Mason jar didn’t hold the concession stand’s lemonade. Going down the corridor’s ramp, Gene and his crew met a squad of trainers and corner-men coming up with night-haired Jack Dempsey.