Except near where I had come over. There was a circle of disturbed dirt.

  I took a photo, then turned away and made my way through the foliage. The leaf litter underfoot was moist. I pushed through branches and came out into another parking lot.

  The building up ahead had a newer prefabricated design, with the middle section higher than the ends. I could see the side window of the store at one end was papered over as if it were vacant. I had no idea what business was in the middle, but it had a large roller door on the back, likely for deliveries. As I walked closer, I saw there was another business at the far end. Another rear door. And above it, another surveillance camera.

  The door beneath the camera was locked, but access to the street was on that side, so I walked around to the front. It was a family-owned convenience store, the kind of place that wasn’t part of any chain or franchise. I went in with the ring of a little bell.

  The store was packed to the rafters with stock. It was like one of those New York City bodegas, where much of the merchandise was so high on the shelves that the store provided a hook on a long pole to get stuff down. I got the scent of coriander seed and cumin.

  The guy behind the counter was an Asian man about my age. He offered me a half smile as I approached.

  “What time do you guys close on Thursdays?”

  “Eleven.”

  “You got video surveillance?”

  “Why, you gonna rob me?”

  “No, sir. I’m from the office of the public defender.”

  “You got ID?”

  I pulled out my PI ID card, which I never showed to anyone.

  “That says you’re a PI.”

  “I am. I’m investigating for the public defender. You hear about the dead guy on the next block?”

  “Yeah, I don’t like that.”

  “Me either. So you got surveillance video?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I saw a camera in the back.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it run after you close?”

  “Twenty-four seven.”

  “Would you mind if I took a peek at the video for that night?”

  He looked me up and down. I got it. He was a businessman, and in this case, he held all the cards. Supply and demand. Not like the goose at the car wash. This guy had what I wanted, and he was the only show in town.

  I already had my wallet out, so I took a twenty and held it out to him. He frowned at me.

  “What do you want?”

  “To see the video.”

  “Okay. What’s with the twenty?”

  “To see the video.”

  “You trying to pay me to see the video?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “You don’t pay me for that. I want you to find these guys. I don’t want crime in my neighborhood.”

  I nodded and made to put my money away.

  “You want to buy something, that’s different.”

  “You show me the video, and I’ll think about my shopping list.”

  He seemed satisfied with that plan. He took me to a back office and woke up his computer.

  “What’s the store next door?” I asked.

  “Bed shop. Closed down. Bad for business. Makes the place not look good.”

  He clicked on his video app and found the night in question. I asked him to start it at closing time. The video showed the section of the rear lot behind the store. I saw the man sitting before me come out and throw trash into a dumpster. Then nothing.

  “This is your store?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Long hours.”

  “Yes.”

  “You work hard.”

  “Better than staying in North Korea.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Each time he tapped the space bar, the video advanced by thirty seconds. We kept seeing nothing. Then around 11:20 p.m., something flashed on the screen. He jumped back in time a minute.

  A car cruised in behind the shops and stopped. The lights were killed, but no one got out for a few minutes. I half expected to see the car start rocking, as whoever was inside got amorous, but instead, a man got out and walked away from the camera out of view.

  “Damn,” I said. “Did you see him?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean, don’t worry. I have another angle.” He pulled up the view from a second camera. He explained that it was situated in the same place as the first, but it was a wide angle of the entire parking lot. He forwarded the video to 11:20 p.m. This angle didn’t show the car stop behind the store, but it did show the man walking across the lot toward the cinder block wall. He pushed into the foliage I had just come through and disappeared.

  “He’s gone,” said the store owner.

  “He’ll be back. Can you go to just after midnight?”

  As he tapped the space bar, I asked him what his name was.

  “Kim,” he said. “You?”

  “Miami.”

  “No.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Really, your name is Miami?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “My son’s name is Miami.”

  My jaw hit the floor. “Are you serious?”

  “Serious. He was born in Miami, three weeks after we came to the United States.”

  “And you named him Miami?”

  He nodded proudly.

  “I like that,” I said. “I’m not the only one.”

  “No.”

  “Does he live there?”

  “No. He’s in Chicago. At medical school. He will be a doctor.”

  “Damn. A doctor. You must be proud.”

  “You ever have a dream that you dream so hard you know it will come true?”

  “Yeah, I know that dream.”

  “Did it come true?”

  I thought about getting to play baseball and football at Miami, about playing in the minor leagues. I never made the majors, and I lost my parents and my mentor along the way. But I found Danielle, and I found Ron, and I found my Longboard Kelly’s family.

  “Yeah, it did.”

  Kim nodded. “Mine too.”

  He slapped the space bar a few more times, then I watched the man come back out of the bushes. The video said 12:44 a.m. The man walked like he was injured, as if he had maybe tripped when climbing over the wall. He went across the lot and out of view.

  Kim quickly switched back to the first video and forwarded it to 12:44 a.m. We watched the back of the store and the car. The man clicked his fob, and his lights flashed. As he pulled the car door open and the interior light came on, he glanced around, looking in the direction of the camera.

  “You know that guy?” asked Kim.

  “Yes, Kim, I do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I didn’t climb back over the cinder block wall. I couldn’t do it with the bags full of merch I had picked up from Kim’s store. I walked along the street, past the closed bed shop, the hurricane wire fence, the dollar store, the barber’s, and the payday lender.

  After dropping my purchases in my car, I looked back and noticed the door to the stairs was open. I walked over and up the stairs to the club. That door was open, too, but there was no humdrum of conversation or televisions in the background. I stopped at the entrance and looked inside.

  The folding chairs lay on the tabletops where the cleaner had mopped the floor that morning. There were no customers, nobody sitting in chairs by the window or at the bar. There were a couple of kegs near the door. Coming or going, I wasn’t sure.

  Maxine Mitchell came out from the back room with a clipboard, checking the liquor stocks behind the bar. I didn’t want to give her a heart attack, so I knocked on the doorjamb before walking in. She gave me her tight smile as I crossed the floor.

  “You’re early,” she said. “Hard day?”

  “For some.” I leaned against the bar and looked around the room.

  “If you’re looking for someone, they’re not here yet.”

  “I like watching bars open. It’s like seeing a sunrise. Nothing but possibilities.”

  “You’re a strange duck,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  “Definitely. I like strange ducks. You want a soda?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “So you came up here to watch me work?”

  “Not exactly. I saw the door open. I was wondering about Johnny.”

  “Wondering what?”

  “You told me about him and Samson and Mick, as boys.”

  She looked over at the photo of the three boys leaning on the ropes. “Yeah.”

  “They grew up together,” I said. “Inseparable.”

  “Yep.”

  “Then a promotor put two of them together in a fight for a title shot.”

  “It happened.”

  “How often did two fighters who fought each other remain friends?”

  “I don’t know. But Johnny and Allan were all right after.”

  “I got it from a good source that Johnny definitely won that fight but that Samson was more likely to win a title. He could sell tickets. That’s important, right?”

  “It is.”

  “So the guy less likely got the title shot and muffed it, and the guy more likely lost an unlucky one then got drunk and busted up his knee.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Is it though? Because something doesn’t add up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stone’s rule number one.”

  “All fights happen in the ring.”

  “It’s like gospel around here.”

  Maxine leaned her elbows on the bar. “It was. It is.”

  “I agree. It’s ingrained in fifty-year-old men who learned it as teenagers. Which makes me wonder.”

  “Wonder what, pet?”

  “Why would one of your boys—Stone’s boys—on the cusp of success, break that golden rule?”

  “You mean Allan?”

  “I do mean Allan. He was a ticket seller. Seems unlikely that one lucky shot ended his career. I could see that of Johnny. He never filled the halls, he never got the crowds in. So much so that he became the other guy, the opponent, the journeyman. But Samson? The knee injury in the fight didn’t end his career. Everyone says so. They tell me he did rehab, was on the way back. I can’t believe a big hitter who got backsides in seats doesn’t get another shot. Maybe the next shot. Johnny didn’t win a title, but maybe Samson could.”

  Maxine picked at the grout between the tiles on the bar.

  “But instead he broke Stone’s rule,” I said. “A rule as ingrained in all of them as breathing.”

  “He got drunk.”

  “He wasn’t the first guy in the world to get drunk, nor the last. Not even the first around here, I’ll wager. But he broke the rule. Why?”

  Maxine focused her attention on the grout.

  “Why did he break the rule, Maxine?”

  She looked up at me. The tight smile was gone. “Because of Tina.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know for sure, but once I saw Allan Samson’s face in Kim’s video, I started getting a tic in my pitching shoulder. I tried to listen to my tics.

  She sighed. “Tina and Allan stepped out together.”

  “Stepped out?”

  “You know what I mean. They were an item. Tina had been around the boys for years. And they were young and they became a thing. It happens.”

  “Yes, it does. But . . .”

  “She left him.”

  “For Johnny.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he got a title shot and Samson didn’t?”

  “That’s what we all thought. That’s when it happened.”

  “Samson’s in rehab and his girl leaves him for his best friend?”

  “I know.”

  “So Samson gets drunk and fights.”

  “You can understand why.”

  “Not really. See, I know a little about muscle memory. About learning things so deep that you can’t defy them. I can try not to breathe, but it doesn’t work. I can try to throw a ball without wriggling my pitching shoulder, but I can’t. To stop it, I have to think so consciously about it that I can’t throw properly. That’s how these guys think about this damned rule. So Samson broke it, and he fought outside the ring. I figure to do that, he has to work so hard to forget about the rule that he’s not switched on for the fight.”

  “You think a lot,” said Maxine.

  “It comes with the territory. I have to read between the lines because people often don’t tell me the whole truth. What is the whole truth, Maxine?”

  “You know what it is. Tina left Allan and Allan took it hard. After the title-fight loss, Johnny went to him to make peace.”

  “And they fought again.”

  She let out a long breath. “Yes. They fought again. And Allan lost again. Really did his knee in. Johnny felt bad about it, but what was done was done. Those boys could forgive a fight, but matters of the heart? That’s something else.”

  We stood at the bar in silence for a while before I moved things along.

  “Do you open up every day, Maxine?”

  “If we open, I do it.”

  “No one else?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about closing?”

  “I’ve had some of the guys do that over the years, but all they need do is pull the door closed at the bottom.”

  “They have keys?”

  “No. That door is self-locking.”

  “Anyone else have keys?”

  “No. Just me.”

  “Has it always been like that?”

  “Always.” She moved along the bar, opened a drawer, and lifted up a large ring with about twenty keys on it. I didn’t know what people had all these keys for. I had one for my house and one for my office. Even my car started with a button.

  “You’ve got a lot of keys.”

  “I should get rid of some of them, but I just got used to carrying them. They remind me of Stone.”

  “Your husband? Why?”

  “We had the same keys. Actually, some of these are for the gym. I should probably go through them and give them to Allan. I don’t really need them.”

  “Samson has a big key ring just like that.”

  “Yeah. That was Stone’s. When I sold the gym to Allan, I just handed him Stone’s keys. I don’t even know what half of them are for, maybe lockers and storerooms. No idea.”

  “You had the same keys as Stone?”

  “Yeah. In case one of us ever needed to cover for the other. You know.”

  “I do. So Stone had a key to this place?”

  She stopped and thought about it a moment. “You know, I think you’re right. He would have.”

  “And that key would be on the ring you gave to Samson.”

  “I suppose it still would. Not that he needs it. He probably doesn’t know what all those keys are for either. You think I should ask for it back?”

  “Not right now,” I said. “But I could ask him when I see him.”

  “Yeah, whatever. If you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  I glanced out the window. There were things I wasn’t ready to share with Maxine. That I had seen video of Samson sneaking toward the club after it closed, that someone had called Ricky the Fudge from inside the club shortly afterward, and that Samson had fled the scene after Ricky was dead.

  And now I had a motive, and it had nothing to do with boxing. The end of a boxing career was one thing—and I knew about not quite making it to the top in your chosen sport. But like Kim’s dream, I knew things could work out for the best despite that. I got the sense that Allan Samson had done okay. He wasn’t a world champion, and he would always have those what ifs in his mind when he lay awake at night. But he was also the owner of a gym that took at-risk kids off the streets and gave them purpose and hope. He was the center of a community, heavily involved in the sport he loved. He might not have known it, but he was the descendent of Stone Mitchell, carrying on his legacy, imbuing young men and women with Stone’s rules, rules that would hold them in good stead for the rest of their lives.

  The motive I saw was the oldest one in the book. It seemed hard to believe that three decades down the track that motive still burned in him, but it was obvious to me that it did.

  Maxine said she was just going to collect some bottles from the back. I said I needed to make a call. I walked to the far corner of the room and looked out at the sunny day. I must have been just above where the payday lender guy and I had discussed getting the video, where Allan Samson had slid into the club sight unseen.

  “Office of the public defender, Barry Schiff speaking.”

  “Barry, Miami Jones. Do you have the photos from the Cabrini discovery?”

  “And good afternoon to you.”

  “Sorry, Barry. I do hope you are well and that prosperity rains down upon you.”

  “Well, thank you. The files are locked up. What do you need?”

  “Did the investigators take photos of the arrest scene, the things they found there?”

  “Probably.”

  “Can you see?”

  “One sec.” He put me on hold, and I glanced back to watch Maxine straightening bottles of liquor behind the bar. Then Barry came back on the line.

  “Okay. Yes, there are some pics. The cot, the garage, and so on.”

  “Is there a photo of the brass knuckles they found?”

  “Hmm. No, no, yes. Yes, there is a shot of them. Although there’s just one. Is that a plural like a pair of scissors?”

  “It is, Barry. A set is one item because it covers multiple knuckles.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “How does one describe brass knuckles? They’re a brass color?”

  “The rings, Barry.”

  “There are four rings attached side by side, and there’s a bigger space at the bottom where the hand goes through, I guess.”

  “No, the hand wraps around the bottom part and it tucks into the palm. But I’m asking about the rings, where the fingers go through. What do the tops of the rings look like?”

  “Like rings. Like wedding bands. I don’t know how else to say it.”