Mick picked up a quarter out of the console and held it between us. He showed me the one side with an eagle on it, then he flipped it so George Washington was facing me. He held it there for a moment before dropping the coin back into the console.

  “What’s your point?” I asked.

  “Same coin, but the sides never meet.”

  He got out of the car, so I followed as I considered what he’d said. Did he prefer to keep his work and private lives separate, or was it the old and the new, or did he just think that was how things worked out? I had no idea. Mick remained a riddle wrapped in an enigma covered in a burrito wrapper.

  When we got into the courtyard, everyone was exactly where we left them, except my beer had disappeared. Muriel poured me a fresh one, and I sat beside Danielle.

  “Okay?” she asked.

  “Honestly, no. He’s in a bad place.”

  “And his wife and kids?”

  “They’ve gone to stay with other family.”

  “Did he hurt them?”

  “No. No he didn’t.”

  “Will he?”

  I thought about the hole in the wall. “I hope not.”

  “That’s not overly reassuring.”

  “No, but it’s all there is. He’s not in charge of himself when he’s like this. Someone else is driving the bus.”

  “Maybe he needs professional help.”

  “He doesn’t have any money or insurance to pay for that.”

  “You don’t need money or insurance to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. It’s the Baker Act. If you believe you’re a danger, or you’re assessed as such, they have to admit you regardless of ability to pay.”

  “I’m not sure he’s in a place right now to do that voluntarily, and he could argue he was drunk—which he is. Plus, he has a report from Dr. Wrexham saying there’s nothing wrong with him.”

  “So we wait until he does something he can’t take back?”

  “No. Right now he’s sleeping it off and his family is staying elsewhere. I think we have to wait until he’s in a better frame of mind to talk to him about these other options.”

  “Will he listen?”

  “I don’t know. When I spoke to him the other day, he was lucid and apologetic about how his actions were affecting his family, so maybe.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “So do I.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I left early the next morning and headed up I-95 before switching onto the turnpike and branching out from Fort Pierce toward Orlando. I felt a little like I was running away from the problem of Johnny Cabrini, but the fact was I was best put to use getting him and Tina some money than I was talking him into psychiatric help. We agreed that Mick and Tina were the ones for that job, and even then it was dependent on Johnny regaining some control over himself. The fact that he had done so before was no guarantee that he would again. The most important variable was getting him sober.

  I expected to get an update from Mick by the time I got to Orlando a couple hours later, but I had heard nothing by the time I pulled into the lot that surrounded the small business complex off West Sand Lake Road.

  It was one of those new-looking buildings with lots of reflective glass and a fake lagoon out the back. Tenant directories were becoming a thing of the past—I assumed for security reasons—but I wanted to avoid the security desk, so I just continued to the elevator as if I belonged in the place. My button-up shirt and chinos turned out to be the perfect disguise.

  Like in hotels, I assumed the suites were numbered according to their floor, so I got off on two and went wandering. Lots of heavy, closed fire doors and few people. The bathrooms were locked, and there were no communal spaces. It seemed like a stellar place to work, at least compared to a federal penitentiary.

  I checked the nameplate beside each door as I passed by until I found one called Bruiser Promotions. It felt right. I tried the handle and found it open. Some businesses were worried about security more than others.

  The office lobby was cramped, with two chairs in the corner and a reception desk. There were framed posters on every wall hailing events over what appeared to be about a thirty-year period. Most of the earlier ones were for big event boxing matches, and as time crept on it seemed that Bruiser Promotions had branched out into concerts and music festivals, many featuring acts from Mexico and South America.

  The woman behind the reception desk, with her hair curled up her head like soft-serve ice cream, was not much more than a pair of eyes. Either she was sitting on a very low chair or the desk was built for a giant.

  “Help you?” she said with a heavy accent that suggested English was not her preferred language.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Priestly.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “He certainly should be.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s here right now. Can I take a message?”

  “No. This isn’t a phone call.”

  “Well, let me see if I can find someone to . . .” Her trailing off told me the plan was to find someone to help me out of the building. She walked off down the corridor to her left, where I could see a line of glass-fronted but dimly lit offices. On the other side of the reception desk was another corridor with offices bathed in a more natural-colored light, suggesting they had windows.

  I took the corridor less traveled. Beyond the four sunny but empty offices, the corridor banked right and, I assumed, wrapped back around to the one where the receptionist had gone. In the middle of the horseshoe was a conference room with glass walls. I assumed that was where all the people were, but I couldn’t tell for sure, as the drapes were closed on my side. That suited my purpose just fine.

  I strode down to the end of the corridor and surveyed the corner offices. One had a nameplate that read Breyer Priestly and faced the parking lot. The other overlooked a pristine lawn and a lake with a water jet. The boss always takes the best view, so that was the office I let myself into. I noted the nameplate on the door: Loman Priestly.

  It was a good-sized room, enough for a heavy desk and a casual meeting space with two sofas and a coffee table near the door. There were more posters: two heads glaring at each other as if one boxer suspected the other of a crime; a guy in an enormous sombrero with a title that simply read Julio; and several that advertised female singers dressed like they were Victoria’s Secret models.

  I settled into the sofa against the wall so I could see anyone who came in before they saw me. It took about twenty minutes before a man, whose cologne announced his presence ahead of his arrival, strode in. He walked directly to his desk and began tapping at his computer before he glanced up and saw me. He just raised a single bushy eyebrow, and I wondered if people regularly wandered into his office or if he was just one cool customer.

  “You have ten seconds.”

  “And then?”

  “I call security or I shoot you. Not sure which yet.”

  “Let’s put a pin in those ideas, Mr. Priestly.”

  “You know who I am.”

  “I do.”

  “So who the hell are you?”

  “Miami Jones.”

  “That supposed to mean something to me? You’re not a fighter. You’re too soft.”

  “Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  “Five seconds, and I don’t think I’ll bother with security.”

  “I represent Johnny Cabrini.”

  “Who?”

  “Johnny Cabrini.”

  “Is he a boxer?”

  “He was.”

  “Did I promote him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he couldn’t have been much good if I don’t remember him. I always remember the champs, but the losers ain’t my concern.”

  “But they are, Mr. Priestly. See, Mr. Cabrini is owed money from your fund, and I’m here to collect.”

  “Fund? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The fighters’ fund.”

  He leaned back and sucked in some air through his puffy, purple lips. “The GBC?”

  “One and the same.”

  “Well, you’re as dumb as a bag of rocks, aren’t you?”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so, ’cause I got nothing to do with all that.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “But if you knew a damned thing, you’d know that already.”

  “All I know is the whole thing is built like a house of mirrors, and when I see things that are deliberately complicated, I think there must be something crooked on the other side.”

  “You do all that thinking by yourself?”

  “No, I got a team. Best in the business.”

  He spewed a phlegmy laugh. “At what?”

  “Making a great deal of noise in the media about big guys ripping off the little guys.”

  “That must be terrifying. Look, Orlando—”

  “Miami.”

  “Whatever. I told you, I don’t have anything to do with that stuff, whether you like it or not. I’m a promoter, best in the business.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure Julio is a big deal.”

  “Over five million albums sold and plays arenas, twenty thousand strong.”

  That did seem like a pretty big deal.

  “It’s my brother that runs the Global Boxing Council, genius. Not me.”

  “And which office is he in?”

  “He doesn’t work here. The GBC is based in the Virgin Islands.”

  “And the ride-sharing app on my phone is based in the Netherlands, but the goose sitting on the golden egg is always in California.”

  “My brother is based in the BVI as well. Google it.”

  I surely would, and I wondered why I hadn’t yet. Surely Lizzy already had.

  “Well, tell him from me that Johnny Cabrini wants his money, and I’m coming for it.”

  “Do I look like a secretary?”

  He looked like a pufferfish. “That’s Johnny with a y.”

  I walked out before he could have the last line—or shoot me—and I didn’t stop until I got to my car. I was on the road back to West Palm within a minute. It was a long way to go for such a short conversation, but I didn’t blame Sally or his contacts. I had not been specific about which Priestly I wanted because I didn’t know there were two. So now we knew. One was in Orlando and the other was based in the British Virgin Islands. That phrase—based in—was an interesting choice. It covered a fair bit of ground.

  As I headed out of Orlando, I selected the Eagles live album on my phone and turned it up. I zoomed along the long black line thinking about how sometimes in life you swung and missed. People tended to get upset, to cause themselves massive amounts of stress, because something that they had tried hadn’t worked as planned. A recipe went haywire or an outing was spoiled by rain or a sales pitch fell on deaf ears. Or they drove a total of five hours to have a two-minute conversation that seemed to achieve nothing.

  But most people failed to acknowledge the math and philosophy at play—something all baseball players understood implicitly. The math said you swing more than you hit. A lot more. The best batting average in Major League Baseball belonged to Ty Cobb. He batted .366, which meant he got a hit 36 percent of the time he went up to bat. So the best ever didn’t get a hit two-thirds of the time. When you factored in strikes and foul balls and other pitches that he didn’t hit, Cobb’s success rate was probably less than 1 in 10.

  He failed 90 percent of the time and ended up being the best of all time. That was the math. The philosophy suggested that the 10 percent could not happen without the 90. Failure bred success as much as success did, as long as you didn’t bathe in it. Edison failed to make a light bulb more times than most people would have tried, and then he didn’t fail. I would bet all the sand on Hollywood Beach that Ty Cobb wasn’t a Hall of Famer because he hit 1 in 10, but because he didn’t let the 9 in 10 stop him from trying again.

  The notion settled well with me as I cut through the long and lonely stretch toward Fort Pierce. Such thoughts and a little bit of Don Henley singing about wasted time helped me beat away the idea that it might have been exactly that.

  I was pulling into Longboard Kelly’s when my phone rang.

  “Miami?”

  “Tina. What’s up?”

  “I called to say thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything you’ve done.”

  “I haven’t really done anything yet.”

  “But the fund.”

  “What about it?”

  “They just called me and said they made an error and that Johnny was due a payment.” She sounded like she had won the jackpot in the Powerball.

  “How much did they offer?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “A month?”

  “No.”

  “First payment.”

  “No.”

  “So five hundred total.”

  “Yes.” She sounded a little less excited now. “They say I have to sign an agreement.”

  “Tina, don’t agree to anything and sure as hell don’t sign anything.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a bad offer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The first offer always is. This is just an opening gambit. We can do better.”

  I asked her to give me the name of the person who had called and their phone number, and I pulled a notepad from my console and scribbled it down.

  “Fishook?” I said.

  “Yes, that’s what he said.”

  “Okay. We’ll keep on it. We can do better, so remember, don’t sign anything.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Positive.”

  Before I went into Longboard’s I called Lizzy in the office and gave her the info.

  “His name is Fishook?” said Lizzy.

  “That’s what she said. Put the name and number together and see what it adds up to.”

  Lizzy ended the call, and I got out and wandered toward the courtyard and a well-earned beer, thinking that sometimes you have to be prepared to swing and miss in order to get a hit.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I didn’t even get to sit down. I could see from Muriel’s Wonder Woman pose—hands on hips, strong arms tensed—that all was not right with the world.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “How do you mean?” I put my hands on the bar but didn’t take my stool.

  “Mick’s being weird.”

  I was going to make a crack about Mick always being weird, but it felt wrong. She was talking about a different kind of weird.

  “How so?”

  “He’s leaving again.”

  “Leaving where?”

  “Since when does he tell me where he’s going?”

  “Now, you mean?”

  “Yeah. He just asked if I was okay by myself for the night, but not in so many words.”

  “Are you okay by yourself?”

  “Apart from the kitchen, of course I am. I’m usually by myself, or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed. Mick’s usually in the back.”

  “Right. There used to be a time when he was always here, out in the back. Now he’s heading off here and there, and he doesn’t look himself, Miami. What’s wrong with him?”

  I smiled. “You worried about him?”

  “Of course I’m worried about him, you idiot.”

  I dropped the smile. “It’s this thing with his friend. A childhood friend who’s in a bad way—depression and stuff—and I think Mick is trying to make up the difference because he doesn’t know how to fix it.”

  “Can he fix it?”

  “No. But that doesn’t stop people from trying, does it?”

  “You need to go with him.”

  “I need a beer.”

  “Miami, I’m serious.”

  “Okay. He hasn’t left yet, has he?”

  “No.”

  “So I’ll ask him.”

  I didn’t have to ask him. Mick came out of the back in a white tank-top undershirt and a stern expression. He rounded the bar but didn’t break stride.

  “Wanna know what Johnny’s been doing with his life?” he said.

  He didn’t wait for an answer, so I didn’t give one. It was the longest sentence I had ever heard from Mick’s lips, so I was intrigued by that alone. I nodded at Muriel and chased Mick out into the parking lot. We got in the Eldorado, and Mick drove south. I didn’t feel the impulse to chat and Mick never did, so with the wind flowing through my hair like a mutt leaning out the window, I sat back and didn’t enjoy the ride.

  Mick pulled into a building supply company in an industrial area near the Lantana airfield. A guy at the gate must have recognized Mick, because he waved us through, into a humongous lot, more for moving large machinery and heavy loads onto trucks than for parking, its perimeter lined with pallets of pavers and cinder blocks. The main building looked to be a warehouse, with a tiny parking lot in front of a people-sized door at one end and at the other, a double roller door that could accommodate a jumbo jet. One of the rollers was closed, and the other was halfway down and obscured by what had been erected in front of it.

  A boxing ring—the real deal, with a lighting rig above it and speakers blasting music that I neither knew nor cared for. The ring was surrounded by folding chairs, about half-filled with people. My back-of-napkin math said the crowd could reach four hundred if every seat were occupied. Through a throng of people inside the ring—what were they all doing in there?—I could see two bare-chested men waiting in the corners, ready to face off.

  Mick killed the engine, and we sat for a moment.

  “You wanna share?” I asked.

  “Johnny,” he said, stating both the obvious and the minimum.

  “Please tell me he’s not fighting.”

  “Nup. License out of date.”

  “So?”

  “Was supposed to be a cornerman.”

  “What exactly does a cornerman do?”

  “Works in the corner.”

  This wasn’t helping. “So . . .”

  “He didn’t show.”