Knockout. Erica Orloff
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obliterate any bacteria, I’ll be okay.”
Deacon rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how it is you ain’t dead yet. I can see your gravestone. ‘Killed by Old Chicken.’”
“But I’m sturdy stock. Grandma lived until she was eighty-eight.”
“I got my hands on you too late. By the time you came to live with me, your father had already turned you into a junk-food eatin’, trash-talkin’, poker-playin’ hellion.”
I gave him my best you-are-so-full-of-shit look. “Deacon, you play poker with me.”
“Yes, but I do not curse like a navy seaman when we’re playing.”
I popped my Chinese food in the microwave, heated it and began eating out of the box. Ten minutes later the phone rang, and I ran toward it.
“Yes…I’ll accept the call…Dad?”
“Hey, Jack, how are ya, kiddo? Good to hear your voice.”
“I’m doing okay.”
“How’s Deacon?”
“You know, lecturing me about my taste for Chinese.”
“Best food on the planet, especially the second day. What I wouldn’t give for Chinese takeout right now.”
“If I could, I’d mail you some.”
He laughed his hollowed-out laugh. He was counting the days until his release—four long years from now. “How’s Keenan look?”
“Good. He’s in great shape, and Deacon says next week we’ll go into lockdown mode, have him move out to the ranch. That way we can keep him from that flaky actress he’s dating.”
“Is she still talking about having a baby with him?”
“Yup. I’m sure it’s a ploy to get at his multimillion-dollar take for this fight.”
“He needs to dump her. He’s too smart for that.”
“Let’s hope so.” Both my father, who was a boxing legend himself, and Deacon had watched too many of the guys they trained fall in with, as Deacon called them, “fast women and phony friends.” We all thought it was pathetic when people like Mike Tyson ended up declaring bankruptcy. Entourages, flashy clothes and cars. They bought into the life, and it ended up leaving them destitute with only fleeting memories of the good life.
“Want to talk to Deacon?”
“No, that’s okay. Tell him that Keenan needs to stop leading with his left every time he’s going to throw an uppercut.”
“Okay.”
“Listen, there’s a line of guys here waitin’ for the phone. Bye, Jack.”
“Bye, Dad. I love you. See you next visiting day.”
“Love you, too.”
He hung up, and I felt my spirits sink. My father was framed. Sure, everyone says that whole “I’m really innocent” routine, but in my father’s case, it’s true. We even know who did it: Benny Bonita. Which was why, more than anything, we wanted Terry Keenan to win and decimate his opponent Gentleman Jake Johnson. We may not have been able to prove my father was not trying to extort Benny Bonita—it was the other way around—but we could plaster his fighter’s face on the canvas and prove, once and for all, that the Rooney brothers—and one Jackie Rooney—were the best trainers and managers in the world. Even from prison my father was a better trainer, a better man, than the oily Bonita.
Later that night, Miguel Jimenez’s face had the consistency of raw beef. He sat, shoulders slumped, in the locker room of the arena.
“What happened, Miguel? Look at you. You have bruises on top of bruises. You look like the friggin’ elephant man!” I snarled.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He wouldn’t look at me, his dark black eyes darting away from mine.
“Oh, you’re gonna talk about it. Something happened in that ring.”
My uncle Deacon said, “Leave him alone. The kid feels bad enough he got knocked out without your big ol’ mouth rubbing it in, Jacqueline Marie.”
When my uncle uses my given name—instead of calling me Jack like the rest of the world—I know he means business.
“Fine. Just go shower, Miguel.”
I shook my head and stormed out of the locker room. Deacon followed me.
“Jack, Miguel’s just a kid from the barrio. He got an attack of nerves. He had an off night.”
I wheeled around in the hallway outside the locker room. “That was no off night, Deacon. It was a dive. He took a goddamn dive!”
Deacon stared me down. Suddenly, I saw a flash of recognition go through him; his eyes changed almost imperceptibly. He shook his head. “My God…I…Lord, I think you might be right.”
“And I know who’s behind it.”
“Bonita?”
“Has to be. You know, Crystal keeps going on and on about Tony Perrone and Bonita joining forces to take over our fighters, and she says they have something on Terry Keenan. They want him to go down in round five. She said she heard them. She’s got this whole conspiracy thing going on.”
“Yeah, but she thinks she was alien-abducted during puberty.”
“I know. But she says she heard them.”
“Why would Perrone mess with Bonita? I mean, sure, allow the fights to be held at the Majestic, but get involved? Get his hands dirty?”
“I don’t know.” I suddenly doubted the whole thing. “Maybe Miguel did just have an off night.”
“Let’s just go home and think about all this before we go confronting Keenan—or Miguel.”
“All right. I feel sick to my stomach, anyway. What a lousy night.”
The two of us had ridden to the Las Vegas Metro-dome arena in Deacon’s Mercedes. We drove out of the city of Las Vegas toward our home. I planned to try to get Crystal to think harder about exactly what she’d heard happening in Tony Perrone’s office.
As we drove into our gated community, the houses sparkled with their outdoor lights twinkling beneath the Nevada sky. Deacon had taken his boxing earnings and endorsement deals he and my father did—a series of commercials for razors, and a popular one for Cadillac—and invested it all in Vegas real estate before the big boom hit. He had enough to live on in style for the rest of his life.
My uncle and father pretty much raised me together. Deacon never married nor had children, so it seemed as if I was his just as much as my dad’s, the way he doted on me. He never fell for fast women and phony friends.
My father, on the other hand, had no phony friends but loved cheap women. He was saddled with me as a full-time father when my mother, whom he married in a Vegas quickie wedding, decided to divorce him equally quickly after I was born, leaving me behind, and moving to Hollywood with a B-movie producer she met while cocktail waitressing. I don’t remember her, and frankly, I never missed having a mother, except when it was time to buy my first bra. Deacon and my father stood in the department store arguing over whether I should get the sexy black one (my choice—I wanted a boyfriend), plain white cotton one (Deacon’s choice) or the sports bra (Dad’s choice).
“Deacon, maybe we should have Big Jimmy around for Crystal. Just in case all this stuff she’s saying is true.”
Deacon nodded. I could tell he was still thinking about Miguel.
Big Jimmy was our cornerman and a former motorcycle club member. He was also Crystal’s last boyfriend before Tony Perrone. He still loved her, I think.
As we pulled into our driveway, Deacon said, “I