“Oh. So you’re filling in?”

  “Yep.”

  I must have known all I needed to because Mick got out of the car. I followed him across the lot and around the back of the folding seats toward the roller doors in the warehouse. The music stopped, and an announcer yelled into a superfluous microphone. He spoke each word separately with perfect diction and elongated the end of every sentence.

  “Welcome to Fiiiight Niiiiiight, here in lovely downtown Laaantaaaana!”

  It was neither downtown nor particularly lovely. We were in the middle of a building-supply business, which I found a strange place to set up a boxing event. But I figured I’d cut the guy a break. He was imbuing all the pomp and circumstance of a world championship fight into something that clearly was not worthy of it. Again I thought about all those swings and misses. You might miss more than you hit, but that didn’t mean you shouldn’t treat every at-bat like the most important of your life.

  At the large roller door, Mick met up with a guy who shook his hand and cursed—something about Johnny—then gave him a plastic pass on a lanyard. Mick uttered something, and the guy looked at me.

  “Martín,” he introduced himself, pronouncing it Mar-teen. “I’m the trainer.”

  “Miami,” I said.

  “You helping Johnny?”

  “Trying to.”

  “Exactly. I can’t keep giving him jobs if he doesn’t show.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t sure what it had to do with me. Martín handed me a lanyard like Mick’s. I looked it over as they strode inside the warehouse. Attached to it was a poorly laminated, well-used pass, likely from a desktop printer like I had in my office, and the words Lantana Building and Supply were printed on the lanyard.

  I heard the ding of a bell and glanced back to see the boxers in the ring dancing toward each other, but I didn’t hang around for contact. I found Mick in front of a line of forklifts blocking access to the rear of the warehouse, where industrial shelving held I had no idea what.

  Tight groups of people were huddled around boxers. Some were being strapped, and others were lying on towels on the floor, getting rubbed down. A few were in prayer.

  Mick and Martín stopped in front of a man straddling a chair, rubbing himself with oil that made his skin shine. He was muscular but thin enough to blow away in a breeze. I hoped he was fast because I was afraid for him if he got hit.

  Martín spoke to the boxer in rapid-fire Spanish, perhaps offering last-minute instructions. An official-looking guy came over to watch Martín wrap the hands of the boxer, who rested his arms on the back of the chair as Martín worked. He started with gauze around the wrist and up toward the elbow, then he wound it back down to the wrist. He then wrapped one layer around the hand but not the fingers. Martín took another roll of gauze and looped it around his own flat hand, about twenty-five times, to create a pad. He cut off the pad, placed it carefully over the boxer’s knuckles, and continued the gauze wrap to hold it in place.

  “What’s that?” I asked Mick.

  “Knuckle pad. Fills the glove.”

  Martín crisscrossed the hand like he was working on a mummy. When it looked like he was done, he was only beginning. Martín used some wide tape to wrap the wrist and hand over the gauze, getting the boxer to make a fist periodically to check it for fit. Next, he used a thinner tape for in between the fighter’s fingers before creating a lattice across the whole thing to pull it all taut. Martín could have worked in an ER and saved a lot of lives.

  The official moved over to watch a second contender going through the same process and glanced back as Martín did the boxer’s second hand.

  When he was finished, the official handed Mick some gloves. He fitted them onto the boxer’s hands and tied them up tight like shoes he never wished to remove. Finally, Martín taped the laces down, and the official gave a curt nod and moved on.

  “What’s that about?” I asked.

  “From the commission. Checks that the wraps are aboveboard.”

  I was going to ask what made a wrap belowboard, but I wasn’t sure I would get an answer I would understand.

  “So what exactly do you want from me?”

  Mick handed me two sports bottles. “Fill with water. Between rounds, when I say face, shoot his face. Not the eyes. I say drink, shoot his mouth. Got it?”

  I figured I could follow those directions. I went in search of water but found none. Before I made a run to the bathroom, I asked one of the many guys who were standing around with nothing much to do, and I was directed to an orange-colored drink cooler. I used the spigot at the bottom to fill my bottles and wondered if two would cut it. Boxers always looked so overheated, I feared I didn’t have enough.

  When I got back to Mick, the boxer was sitting quietly, staring into the middle distance, perhaps getting himself into the right mindset. I would have wanted some headphones and the soundtrack to Rocky, but to each his own.

  The announcer outside declared the winner by TKO. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what that meant, but I recalled something about getting knocked down versus getting knocked out. I made a mental note to ask someone about that.

  When our boxer sprang up out of his chair and started bouncing from foot to foot, I realized I was going into the corner for a guy whose name I didn’t know. Martín threw several towels over each of his shoulders and led the boxer out toward the ring. Mick picked up a can cooler like he was off for a spot of fishing and followed, so I took my cue and dropped in behind them with my water.

  We paused at the door of the warehouse, next to another fighter and his people, who all looked serious. There was no trash talk or banter; everyone was focused on their own job. I tried to get my head in the game, but it was hard to do when I didn’t know a damned thing.

  The ring announcer called out a name, and the other boxer walked forward with his team. I wondered if that made him the home guy and if our man was meant to lose, or if this was neutral territory and they were up-and-comers in a battle of wills. Then Martín started to move.

  “In the blue corner, from Westgate, Florida, weighing in at one hundred seventeen pounds, Javier Guerrero.”

  The final vowel took longer for him to say than it did for me to walk from the roller door to ringside, but at least now I knew the name of my guy. Javier got into the ring and started bopping around as if he had just been fitted with new batteries. Martín eased in through the ropes, while Mick and I stayed down on the ground.

  The referee brought the two fighters into the middle of the ring and spoke to them in a hushed voice. I looked around at the crowd, which had grown but not by much. It was the cocktail hour—not the time I expected two men to bash each other in combat. The sun was sinking, giving the place an eerie feel. The lighting rig above us cast colors that would be spectacular after dark but just now were washed out like an old T-shirt.

  Martín and Javier returned to the corner and the boxer sat on a little stool. Mick stepped up but remained outside the ropes. He nudged his head to indicate I should do the same on the other side of the corner, so I did. Martín spoke again in Spanish to Javier, who cocked his head back slightly and opened his mouth like a baby bird. I read the cues and squirted a little water into Javier’s mouth, which he sloshed around and then spat out onto my shoes.

  Mick jumped down and I did the same, then Martín clambered through the ropes and down the steps. Javier popped up onto his feet. The bell rang, and he skipped toward the center of the ring.

  The two boxers looked more like boys than men; I was pretty confident I could bench-press them both. They danced around each other and threw a few jabs, sizing each other up for a good minute. Then the guy from the red corner landed a left hook. Javier stumbled backward and woke up.

  Javier rushed his opponent and started throwing wild punches. Most of them landed on the guy’s gloves held high in front of his face.

  It didn’t look technical or composed. I could imagine seeing these moves outside a bar at 2 a.m. Javier must have run out of puff because he stopped flailing and took a quick step back to gather himself, and the two men resumed their dance until the bell sounded.

  I hadn’t noticed that Mick had removed the stool from the ring but he now replaced it, and Javier flopped down on it as Martín climbed back into the ring. Mick took something metal that looked like a small branding iron from his cooler of ice and held it below Javier’s right eye as the trainer barked more instructions. The boxer opened his mouth, and I squirted some more water in, feeling like I was getting the hang of this cornerman business.

  “Face,” said Mick, and with a little more uncertainty I squirted water around Javier’s face, which Mick mopped up with one of his towels. I mustn’t have gotten it completely wrong because Javier didn’t scowl at me. He just nodded at Martín until the trainer climbed out of the ring and the bell went off again.

  The second round started like the first, dancing and feeling each other out, both men appearing light on their feet and in their bones. The battle edged toward our side of the ring, and then suddenly the opponent unleashed a flurry of punches all over Javier’s torso—ribs and stomach and chest, the thudding sounds primitive and brutal, their deep resonance making my teeth ache.

  Martín shouted something to Javier, but he didn’t react. I couldn’t blame him. I had taken a few body shots myself over the years, without the benefit of Marquess of Queensberry rules. I remember being astounded at how being hit or kicked in the belly could make my ears ring like a fire alarm going off in my head.

  Javier launched himself into his opponent and wrapped his arms around him, preventing any more punches from being thrown. The referee stepped in and untethered them, then he pulled them into the middle of the ring.

  “Box,” he called out, and they resumed, but Javier looked spent.

  The bell rang after a few soft efforts from both sides. When I got up onto the ropes, I was taken aback by Javier’s face. It had developed a soft, papery texture that reminded me of the old guys in the Pugilists’ Club. Mick held his metal tool on Javier’s face and an ice bag on the back of his neck. I squirted some water into his mouth and on his face, but mostly I just stared at him.

  He nodded to Martín as if all was okay, but his chest was heaving like his heart was clocking 200 beats per minute.

  Mick removed the ice and said, “Body.”

  I directed some water onto Javier’s chest, Mick wiped it up, and once more we got out of the way and let them do their thing. Mick put his ice bag back into the cooler along with the metal tool.

  The next two rounds looked like an even contest to me, with punches landing here and there, but mostly they circled each other and as they became fatigued, more holding on.

  When the bell dinged after the fourth round, the ring filled with people. I sprayed down Javier’s head. Martín removed his gloves and handed them down to a guy on the ground who carried them away to the warehouse.

  The referee asked the two fighters to come to the middle of the ring, where they hugged each other. They were certainly brothers in arms, but I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to embrace someone who had just attempted to punch my lights out.

  The announcer called out the judges’ scores and proclaimed Pedro Morales the winner. The man put his hands up in victory, then embraced Javier once more. While he did a victory lap around the ring to a smattering of applause, not unlike that from a golf tournament, we crawled out of the ring and back into the hole from which we had come.

  Martín cut the wraps from Javier’s fists and told him that it was a good effort. A guy dressed like a Vegas pimp—beige trousers and a shirt opened up two or three buttons too many —trotted into the warehouse to slap Javier on the back and say, “Okay, okay.” Another man emerged from the office and handed the pimp an envelope. He slowly thumbed through the cash and handed some money to Martín, who shoved his cut into his shirt pocket. He then gave some to Mick. He offered me a look like I was the reason Javier lost.

  “Okay?” Mick said to Martín.

  “Sì. No problem. Tell Johnny to sort himself out.” Martín shook my hand. “Thanks for your help.”

  I nodded but said nothing. I had performed tasks that had been perfected by monkeys at NASA, so I wasn’t too ebullient.

  “Next time,” said Mick as he put his hand on Javier’s shoulder. The kid nodded, but his expression said a next time wasn’t such a great idea. He looked as close to dead as a healthy person ever did.

  I followed Mick outside. The parking lot had filled up, and the crowd was growing. Evening gave purpose to the lighting rig and hid the industrial surrounds, offering an atmosphere similar to the Vegas fights I had seen in passing on television. At least that was the effect if I squinted.

  As we reached the Eldorado, Mick handed me a twenty-dollar bill. I looked at it for a moment like I had never seen one before.

  “What’s this?”

  “Pay.”

  “For squirting water at a kid’s face?”

  He nodded and opened the car.

  “Is this what you earn for this stuff?”

  “You. Cutman gets thirty.”

  “So Johnny would have gotten twenty bucks for this?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hang on. If I’m replacing him, who did you replace?”

  “Dunno. Johnny was bringing the cutman.”

  “So he made two guys absent.”

  “Yep.”

  “No wonder Martín wasn’t happy.”

  “Yep.”

  “Twenty’s not a lot of dough for a night’s work though, is it.”

  “Each fight.”

  “How many fights can a cornerman do?”

  “Depends. One, maybe two.”

  “So forty bucks, tops.”

  “Double if you win.”

  “So you leave your own bar to make a lousy thirty bucks?”

  “Not usually. I told ya, he wouldn’t hire Johnny again if I didn’t cover. You too.”

  “I don’t need twenty bucks for that.”

  “Me either. I give it to Tina.”

  I handed the twenty back to Mick. “Mine too.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I woke up the next morning with a soft breeze flowing through the house. Danielle and I had enjoyed Mick’s fish sandwiches when he and I had returned to Longboard’s after the fight and then called it an early night. Danielle was now on the back patio, stretching or yoga-ing or whatever contorting one’s body into a pretzel was called these days.

  I made her a smoothie, which she took to the shower with her. When she came out, she was dressed to take on the world, and she left me at the kitchen counter with a kiss.

  Sipping my smoothie, I thought about what I had seen the evening before. It was like the minor leagues of boxing—none of the pretense and flash of Vegas but all the sweat and hurt. I was familiar with the feeling, having spent six years in the minors and barely a glimpse of the show. I played my share of half-empty stadiums followed by cold showers in fleabag hotels. Those guys last night were paying their dues, doing the work to learn and maybe get their shot at something big—or at least indoor.

  Ron was working on some kind of insurance case, having offloaded the task of tracking down details on the fighters’ fund to Lizzy. I was considering going into the office to show some interest in what they were doing, even though we all knew I had none. My thought was interrupted by the siren call of my phone.

  “Miss me already?” I said to Danielle.

  “Of course,” she said, not missing a beat in a way that I wished I could do. “But I was also listening to the PBSO radio on the way in.”

  “You listen to the sheriff’s radio while you drive to work?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” There was nothing else to say. Some people are trainspotters and some people are cops.

  “Listen, you were doing something at this Pugilists’ Club in Lake Worth, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “They just called in a suspicious death at the club.”

  “Who?”

  “They’re not advertising that on the radio, MJ.”

  “Oh hell.”

  “You think your guy might have . . . ?”

  “He wasn’t in a good place, last I saw him.”

  “And he didn’t show last night.”

  “Oh hell,” I said again. “I gotta go.”

  I dashed into the bedroom, threw on some clothes, hopped across the living room putting shoes on, and returned to the kitchen for my keys and wallet. Despite rush hour being over, the morning traffic was heavy, but I knew that dead people didn’t mind waiting.

  I drove along 10th Avenue until I reached the strip of stores. Nothing looked out of place until I pulled into the rear parking lot, where a third of it was cordoned off with crime scene tape. Besides a medical examiner’s van, there were patrol cars and an unmarked sedan parked askew in the way only cops and BMW drivers do. The focal point was the alcove that led up to the Pugilists’ Club. I parked in the back near a news van, where people were setting up for the jolly overdressed folks on morning television.

  The day felt cooler, as if the seasons had changed, to the extent they ever did in South Florida. Or maybe it was just the chill in my spine.

  I slipped past a deputy talking with a reporter or segment producer and eased under the barrier tape. I recognized the detective standing with his hand in his suit pocket. He was talking to another detective I didn’t know—she saw me coming.

  “Sir, this is a crime scene,” she said.

  “Yeah, I saw the tape.”

  The detective I knew turned to me. “Jones? What are you doing here?”

  “Kelty. I was out for a morning walk.”

  “That’s gonna get you heaved to the other side of the line, regardless of who you’re married to.”

  “I’ve been working with a client who is a member of the club upstairs.”

  “And you think he might be involved?”

  “I’m concerned he might have harmed himself.”

  I could see the other detective was happy to kick me to the curb.

  Detective Kelty was one of those guys who had been an old soul when he was a rookie graduating from the academy. He then spent thirty years waiting for his body to catch up to his attitude. He had gray hair when I met him and a slight paunch; his suit may have fit his shoulders but not his hips. I had never known him to break the law, but he wasn’t a stickler for the rules either if it meant getting his job done.