Crimewave Read online

  Claren's body was difficult to get all into the chute at once, especially with Michelle's ongoing buzz, but with enough effort, all ninety pounds of Claren were send flying down to the ground floor, Michelle listening for the confirming thud as Claren's body hit the dumpster.

  Michelle got back into her apartment and closed the door, locking it and double checking to make sure it was locked. She had to get to bed now, to be prepared for the ways her life would change, literally overnight. She stripped off her dress and looked out over Williamsburg. Clubs were starting to let out, with throngs of hipsters pouring out of unmarked doors and into subway stations. Looking down Union Ave, she saw a police car screaming down the street, lights and sirens blazing. It caused Michelle to panic for a second, but when the car stopped in front of a couple homeless guys beating the shit out of each other, she allowed herself to calm down.

  Even though she would have to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, having to make up an answer when people asked "Where's Claren?", and question after question about where she got her subjects for her pictures, Michelle knew deep down that it was all worth it.

  She was a star now.

  Rabbit Punch

  My heart thumps in my chest like a kick drum. My fists are wrapped tight in bandages, permanently clenched. I come out from under my hood for the first time since I’ve entered the arena, and I remember why I do this whole thing in the first place. I hear the cheering from all sides of me, each voice screaming from the distance to pump me up, and it’s working. Now I’m not fighting in Madison Square Garden and I’m sure as hell not Floyd Mayweather, but I’m the best goddamned boxer this little underground operation has seen in a while, and every single man, woman and child in this hot, packed arena knows that. Ahh, hell, who am I kidding, there aren’t any kids or women here.

  I look over to the other corner of the ring to get a good eye on him. Victor Rodriguez, the current champ of the Bronx Invitational Boxing League stands there, acting like he’s already won with the way he’s dancing around in his corner, raising his fists. The guy’s weird for a heavyweight, tends to fly around the canvas looking to exhaust his opponents instead of, you know, fighting them. Some guys might call a fighter like that a pussy, and rightfully so, but I’ve seen Rodriguez fight and he’s put down guys twice his size...he’s no pussy, this one.

  Myself, I’m a classic brawler, looking for that shot that’ll rock your skull and turn out all your lights. I know this match is going to be a tough one, and I don’t want to discount anything Rodriguez has done, but this is a match I just have to win. We’re in The Bronx, my hometown, less than a mile from where I grew up and fought my first fight on the corner of Gleason and Beach after some punk from Soundview stole my bike and thought I wouldn’t notice. My blood’s on these streets, I deserve this, and I’m not going to let a hotshot from Puerto Rico hold down the title past tonight.

  My cornerman, Bud, says some things to me but I don’t hear them. When I’m this close to a match, all I hear is the crowd, the cheering. This is where I get my energy, from the people out there. Bud’s still talking while I’m thinking about strategy, getting psyched to go out there and put Rodriguez down.

  The ring announcer hushes everyone as he clicks on his wireless mic and addresses the crowd. His voice isn’t like those polished announcers that sound like they should be doing radio, no, you know this guy’s from The Bronx and he doesn’t give a fuck.

  “In the red corner tonight, our challenger from right here in The Bronx, twenty eight years old, coming in at six feet three and two hundred and thirty pounds, wearing black shorts with the yellow trim, Cal Riggs!”

  The crowd erupts and gets me going even more. The crowd came here for a show, and I’m gonna make it my mission to make sure they get one. I slam my gloved fists together and jump up and down just a little bit to show I’m ready for this, just to convince the skeptics, but you better fucking bet I’m ready.

  “And in the blue corner, the defending heavyweight champion of the Bronx Invitational Boxing League, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, twenty five years old, with a height of six feet one inch and a weight of two hundred and twenty seven pounds, wearing the red shorts with white trim, your champion, Victor Rodriguez!”

  Rodriguez gets some cheers too, pretty much on par with what I got. He’s the champ, and people love champs. The crowd’s also cheering because they know they’re about to see something they won’t forget for a long while, a match that’s gonna be seared into their brains for a long while.

  The ring girl flashes the card to show that it's round one, and the bell dings.

  When I hear that ding, I clench my fists and make my way to the center of the ring. I’ve got three minutes to work this guy over as good as I can, but I’ll have to be careful because he’s got the endurance to go all ten rounds, something I couldn’t do with my mass of muscles stacked on my bones. The guy’s a F16 and I’m a Sherman tank, so there’ll be no way I can catch up with him, I can only hope to snag him in passing.

  I approach Rodriguez, he’s a live wire, just like I’d expected. His hands shuffle around in front of his face and down his chest, he’s trying to make me wonder just where those hands might end up when he sticks his first punch. He dodges over a step and sends a couple of jabs my way, catching me on the shoulder but not doing much. He’s not going to win by throwing just a few punches like that, he’s gonna try to take me down gradually. I'll need to try to not let those little punches wear me down much.

  After enduring Rodriguez's hits for a minute, I counter with a close uppercut, using my body more than my arm to power my fist into his ribs. It connects and sends him back. It doesn’t affect him the way I want it to, but at least I know the guy is touchable.

  We dance some more, trade blows here and there. I get him with a couple of good hooks to his jaw that slow him down for a second, but he comes back with four jabs that come in so fast I don’t even see his arms move, and by now I’m starting to feel the pain from the punches seep in through my defenses. The round ends just before I can line up a perfect jab to the center of his chest, but the ref pulls the two of us apart before I can uncork it.

  I head back to my corner and sit on my stool. Bud’s there to greet me.

  “Looking good out there, Cal.”

  “Yeah? Seems like I can’t lay a solid punch on the guy, he’s flying around so much.”

  “He’s a fuckin’ jumping bean, I’ll give ya that much.”

  “Jumping beans are a Mexican thing, right? Rodriguez is Puerto Rican.”

  “Ahh, they’re all the same...”

  As good of a cornerman Bud is, his latent racism has gotten to me more than a few times over the years. You’d think a guy who worked with a black boxer like myself would try to show some more open-mindedness.

  “Now listen up, you gotta knock him off his rhythm. He’s bouncing around like that, clench him up and then shove him back across the ring. The only way he’s got you swinging at air right now is because he’s got the both of you dancing to music only he can hear. So break that rhythm up.” He claps me on the shoulder and one of his assistants sprays a cold blast of water into my mouth.

  I stand up, and a few seconds later the ring girl does her thing again to start the next round. I come out this time with some drive to knock Rodriguez off his game. He's prancing around on his tiptoes, waiting to hit me with a flurry, but I break him up and clench him, containing his energy for just a few seconds. From the moment we clench, I can feel that he wants out of it. He’s afraid I’m gonna start blasting him with inside punches, and he’d be right in most other cases, but this time I decide to let Bud’s idea ride. I let him go out of the clench and shove a bit, a good push but not enough for the ref to notice, and he flies off to the other side of the ring. It’s here I see my opportunity to get something going. He starts bouncing on his feet again, but before he’s able to get his hands up, I rock him with a hook to the top left side of his forehead. He winces, and I see t
hat one of my punches has gotten to him for the first time in this fight.

  I’m able to do the clench-shove-hook trick a few more times during the round, and my efforts reap a nice little circle of bright red just above his left eyebrow. This’ll be my target for the rest of the match, because if I can pop that thing open and get it bleeding, it’ll drain him quicker than a factory worker’s paycheck at the bar.

  I’m riding high on the success of Bud’s little technique, hearing the crowd scream my name...and I would say I’m a little unfocused, that explains why Rodriguez is able to start getting punches in on me.

  At first it’s just a couple lightening fast uppercuts, but soon he’s unleashing a storm of punches on me that are so fast I don’t even register they’ve hit me until a second later. I try to clench him up, but it’s impossible with the kind of motions he’s putting into this fight. I’m thankful when the bell rings to end my misery, because I knew Rodriguez wouldn’t have stopped otherwise.

  Over the next couple of rounds, we go back and forth, the momentum shifting from me to him almost on a second by second, punch by punch basis. I know I’m wearing him down, and I know I am getting to him, but he’s doing the exact same thing to me. By the end of round six, he’s busted up my nose enough that I feel a slow trickle of blood. I try not to breathe in the blood, but I start to get that familiar taste of copper running through my whole mouth. Along with that taste comes the pain in my nose. It’s throbbing and it’s burning up, but I’m pretty sure it’s not broken. I don’t think anyone could break my nose at this point, since it’s already been mashed to pieces in a hundred other fights.

  The bell rings to end the sixth and I run to my corner to get as much treatment as I can during the break. Bud sees the blood coming down my face and chin and motions for his cutman, Dante. Dante’s a great guy and a better cutman, so I’m glad to have him on my side. He wipes as much blood as he can from my face so that the ref won’t call the match due to it, then he pulls out the epinephrine swab and guides it up my nose, careful not to hit any of the swollen skin around it. He takes out his trusty enswell and rubs it along the right side of my face. The chill of the metal calms me down and lets me focus. Even with both the enswell and the epinephrine working their magic, the nosebleed won’t stop completely. Dante looks at me sternly.

  “I can’t get that to stop, my man. Best thing I can do is shove a few cotton balls up there while the ref’s not looking and you can go another round before he calls it.”

  “Do what you gotta do to keep me in that ring.”

  “You confident you can take him down in this round, kid? Neither of you are looking like you’re packing any knockout punches.” Bud says.

  “I can do it, just give me another round.” I say. I can see the worry in Bud’s face, and I know he doesn’t want me to go on, but the fact is that both of us also have money in this fight, and I've got pride on the line. Bud nods to Dante to go ahead with his procedure, and in the couple of seconds when the ref is checking up on Rodriguez, Dante shoves one and a half cotton balls soaked in epinephrine into my nostril, getting them far enough up there to where the ref won’t notice. He coats the whole side of my face with Vaseline to keep things from erupting and getting worse. And like that, I’m as good as new.

  I know I’ll have to end things in round seven, I just have to wait for Rodriguez to give me the opportunity. His jumping and bobbing is now just a slow sway, but it’s enough to keep me on my toes. His eyebrow’s swelling to where it looks like a ripe tomato, so I focus on that and let myself get into a zone, tunnel vision on that one spot, the spot that’s going to let me win this fight.

  About a minute and a half into the round, Rodriguez tries an unusual, loping left hook that flies eight inches from my face, but it also turns his head to the right, exposing that big red target on his brow. This is my chance, and it’s the only one I’m going to get before I’m bleeding too much to keep going. Rodriguez tries to right himself from the blown punch, but just as he’s getting his head back up, I gather up every last bit of strength I have in left in my body and reel back with a gigantic right hook. I let it fly, aimed for the spot on his eyebrow.

  The punch connects, and Rodriguez’s neck spins around. I can tell this was that punch, the one that would take him down. Everything goes silent around me and I hear gasps, the spectators finally allowing themselves a breath during the best fight they’ve ever seen. The rest of his body follows his head on his trip down, and I see a long rope of blood burst from his eyebrow. A direct hit. Rodriguez nails the canvas like a bag of flour, thudding and bouncing a couple of times before coming to a rest.

  I hear the ref counting to ten in my head, but in my mind I know I’ve already won. With as tired as we both are, there’s no chance Rodriguez is getting up from that. He fought a good fight, I’ll give him that, but a man can only take so much.

  When the ref reaches ten, the bell rings to declare me the winner, and I enjoy my moment of glory as the new champ of the league. I can feel the belt cinched around my waist already.

  But my glory, it’s short lived when I notice that even after fifteen, twenty, thirty seconds, Rodriguez hasn’t moved. I don’t see his shoulders heaving, he's not taking in big gulps of air like everyone does after getting knocked down. He’s lying there, motionless and I start to get worried.

  The ref drops down to his knees. “Son, you alright?” He slaps him a couple of times on the cheek, but Rodriguez does nothing. My heart’s pumping harder and faster than it did during the entire match. The ring doctors rush to Rodriguez’s side and I see them try to perform CPR on him...but CPR’s pretty useless on a dead man.

  I killed him.

  Those three words snap me back into the reality of the situation. I killed him. I don’t know what to do; I’m just standing in the middle of the ring, my dead competitor at my feet.

  Seeing that this is a less than legal boxing establishment, the crowd has begun to flow out of the arena, all of them fearing that they’d be caught up in all of this when the law comes in.

  I can’t turn to look at Bud, can’t look at Dante, can’t look at anyone but Rodriguez’s lifeless face pressed against the canvas.

  I decide I have to get out of here. It’s not the most noble thing to do, but there’s no way the cops are going to believe me that I didn’t mean to do it. Years in prison for something that was an accident...I just don’t think that’s what I deserve.

  I use the chaos of the crowd to escape the ring and head back toward the locker rooms. Nobody tries to stop me, the weak ones try to just make their way out of the arena, not giving anyone any trouble, while the ones who might have the balls to actually try to detain me don’t, since they probably fear I’ll do to them what they just saw me do to another man. I think I hear Bud yell my name, but even if I did I wasn’t going to turn back. I can’t ever turn back to that again.

  I go into the locker room and throw on my clothes, then I walk back through the halls of the gym. I walk away from the scene of the crime, away from what I did. Technically I have a $10,000 prize waiting for me in the pocket of the commissioner, but I can’t, I won’t take blood money. I hope he spends it on Rodriguez’s funeral.

  New York City welcomes me when I step out into the night air. My one good nostril, the one not packed with adrenaline soaked cotton balls, takes in fresh air that calms me down. I have a long way to go back to my apartment, but I decide to walk it instead of taking the subway. I need time to clear my head, to figure out what the hell I’m gonna do next.

  About halfway through my walk, my cell phone rings in the pocket of my jacket, and I pull it out. “Bud” shows up on the caller ID screen. I throw the phone into the street, under the wheel of a passing city bus. The driver screams at me, calls me a fucking asshole for doing it, but I just walk on.

  The ten block walk back to my apartment takes less time than usual. Since my mind was filled with the frantic thoughts of my gameplan, I must have walked at double the usual speed. I get
into the building, wave hi to my landlord, Rosa, who’s still manning the desk even at eleven at night, watching a TV broadcasting a reality show about slutty girls fighting over the affection of a washed-up rock star. I never realized how trivial and horrible the show was until just now, seeing it through the new lenses I’ll never be able to take off again.

  I walk up the four floors to my apartment, and I try to convince myself that it’s not all that bad. Hundreds, maybe thousands of guys throughout the history of boxing have died in the ring. It’s a hazard of the sport, all the fighters, all of the trainers, all the promoters know that it’s a real risk, that you might send your biggest guy out into the ring for that championship bout, only to end up with a corpse and a future cut short. It’s not like I meant to kill him, and even though I was working his eyebrow which is a little morally questionable, I don’t think anyone’s ever died from eyebrow trauma. Maybe he had some sort of heart condition, an undiagnosed one, that cropped up out of nowhere. Maybe he was hopped up on coke or something and his heart just went *pop*. Hell, there could have been a dozen things that could have killed him that I had nothing to do with.

  But the fact stood that I was the one that was punching the hell out of him. I was the one who laid into him with one of the hardest punches I’ve ever thrown in my boxing career. It was the finishing blow, no matter what else may have been going on inside of him.

  I get to my apartment and open the door. I go into my sanctuary. Nobody, not even Bud knows I live here, so I should be safe from the cops for a while, maybe long enough for me to figure out how to worm my way out of this mess. With enough time, the detectives might come knocking, but I imagine I have at least a week before they come to stir things up.

  I open my refrigerator to look at my stock of food, but nothing looks appetizing. I haven’t eaten since six or so hours before the match, and I’m usually able to eat a massive dinner after I’m done with a fight, but right now food looks like the most disgusting thing in the world. I try to watch TV for a while, too, but it has the same effect. It’s so trivial, so vapid, and so hollow once you know what the real world is like, when the real world comes and slaps you right in the face and forces you to change everything you’ve lived for.