Mojo (23 page)

Aisling was standing next to the betting table. She caught me looking at her and smiled.

“I don’t guess there’s any way out of it,” I said.

“That’s my boy,” Nash said. “I knew you’d come through.”

When Rowan returned from stowing Dancin’ Dan in the dressing room, an oblong smear of blood decorated the front of his yellow blazer. Taking his place in the center of the warehouse, he pawed at the stain nervously like he was afraid it would crawl up and attack his jugular. The crowd gathered back into a ring, and he started his spiel, though his confidence seemed shaken by the disaster of Dancin’ Dan’s face.

“I’m glad to report that Dancin’ Dan is fine,” he offered. “We cleaned him up and gave him a six-pack of beer, so he’s in good spirits.”

The audience responded with the sort of lame applause you hear at golf tournaments.

“And now for what you’ve all been waiting for—the heavyweight match.” Rowan pulled his note cards from his blazer pocket. “First, we have the big, the bruising, the large-and-in-charge man-beast from the Lower East—Nitro the Annihilator!”

At that, Nash shoved me forward into the ring. Rowan’s eyes inflated with genuine surprise. “Wait, Nash, you can’t be serious. This is your heavyweight?”

“The one and the only,” said Nash happily.

“And you’re okay with this?” Rowan asked me.

Of course, I wasn’t okay with it. Far from it. If Rowan was worried about me fighting, I figured I should be about ten times more worried. And on top of that, I realized Nash had been setting me up all along. The note card with my name on it was the giveaway. Obviously, he gave the card to Rowan earlier in the evening—before I lost any money on bets. But what could I do? Whine about the unfairness of the situation? Everyone was staring at me, including a heavy dose of perfect girls. Quitting football had been easy. All I had to do was not show up for practice. But quitting this was impossible.

I nodded. “Let’s get it over with.”

The crowd cheered.

For a second, Rowan looked like he wanted to throw down his note cards and resign his membership in Gangland. But he didn’t. Fumbling with the next card, he started the introduction. “Second up in the heavyweight bout, we have the dapper scrapper of the South Side, El Tigre Grande, El Matador, El Conquistador—Beto Hernandez!”

No
, I told myself.
It can’t be. It can’t be the same guy
. But it was. Out of the dark corridor strode Hector Maldonado’s cousin. The audience booed, and he lifted his black fedora and waved it at them. The image of Robo-Troy on top of Dancin’ Dan flashed into my head. This wasn’t going to be good.

Then Beto did something strange. He smiled at me and winked.

Nash led me to my side of the ring, and Rowan brought my boxing gloves. Rowan’s like, “I don’t know what you’re up to, Nash, but this isn’t funny. Bad karaoke is one thing, but this is out of hand.”

“Hey,” Nash said. “You’re not giving my boy, Dylan,
enough credit. He’s a hero.” Then he turned to me and told me to take my shirt off.

Of course, I’m like, “No way.” Taking my shirt off in public was pretty much at the top of my things-to-never-do list. I mean, I always cringed when I had to do it in gym class, and that was with just a bunch of sweaty guys around.

Nash wouldn’t take no for an answer, though. It was part of the rules—you had to take your shirt off before they put the gloves on you. If I didn’t take my shirt off, then both of us would have to fight bare-knuckle style, he said. I glanced at Beto. Suddenly, getting hit in the face with one of his naked fists knocked my anti-shirtless policy down to second place on the list of things to never do.

So I peeled off the Notorious B.I.G. T-shirt, and Nash and Rowan stuffed my hands into the boxing gloves. Nash took my glasses for safekeeping. Then they moved away and left me standing there in the harsh light with not even a hint of a tan and my belly sagging over the waist of my jeans. Somebody yelled, “Look at that sexy, sexy jelly belly!” And the laughter that followed didn’t exactly bolster my confidence.

Rowan went over the rules again, and the whole time Beto stared at me. He seemed to be trying to communicate something through his eyes, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then came the countdown, and at zero he stalked into the middle of the ring. I wasn’t so eager to go there, but Nash gave me a shove to get me started. Keeping a wide distance between me and Beto, I circled to the right the way I saw the other fighters do, and he did the same.

The crowd booed. “Quit stalling!” somebody yelled, and Beto moved in closer.

His first punch came at me almost in slow motion, but I
still wasn’t able to block it. His aim wasn’t good, though, and his fist whooshed by my face, catching nothing but air. The same thing happened with the next two jabs, and I started to wonder if maybe he was missing on purpose.

“Come on, Nitro!” This time I recognized Brett’s voice. “Show him what you can do!”

I had absolutely no idea what I could do, but I figured I ought to try something, so the next time Beto lunged at me, I took a wild swing. He blocked it easily and countered with a smack to my chest. It stung but not that bad. It reminded me of my short football career. Sure, I didn’t like hitting people, but getting hit never hurt that much.
Maybe I have tough skin
, I thought.
Maybe I can actually get through this fight okay
.

Then Beto faked a high punch, and when I threw up my arms, he ducked and tackled me to the floor. My head hit pretty hard, and I was so stunned I couldn’t keep him from wrestling me over onto my stomach and grinding my face into the concrete.

Expecting punches to start slamming into the back of my head, I gritted my teeth, but the punches didn’t come. Instead, Beto pressed his mouth close to my ear and goes, “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. When I let you up, I’m going to cock back my right arm so you can see the punch coming, but I’ll pull up short. You just act like I hit you and go down and don’t get up. You got that?”

I nodded as much as I could considering the circumstances.

“Okay, I’m going to hit the floor next to your head two times, and then you act like you’re throwing me off.”

His fist pounded the floor next to my nose, and I lurched upward. He pretended to spill off to the side, and then we jumped to our feet and started circling each other again. My
head was a little woozy from bouncing off the floor, but I concentrated on his right fist, preparing for the phony knockout blow. I didn’t know why Beto would want to help me like this, but I was glad he did. I just hoped Nash and the rest of the audience would buy it.

Beto came at me, but his right fist never cocked, and instead he peppered my shoulders with a volley of lefts. The crowd wasn’t happy. They kept calling out for more action. I threw a couple of punches, but again Beto blocked them easily. Unlike Huy, I didn’t have speed on my side. Then Beto motioned with his head for me to come in closer. I did, and he started to set his right for the big punch. One problem—the floor was slick from my own sweat, and I slipped just as his fist launched, so instead of jerking back before he could hit me, I fell right into the punch. His fist crunched into my nose, and the next thing I knew I was lying facedown on the floor again, no faking to it.

I wasn’t exactly knocked out. I could hear everything around me—jeers and laughter and boos—but it all sounded as if it came from far away. Nash’s voice finally reached me, yelling at me to get up, and then other voices joined in the chant: “Get up! Get up! Get up!”

My brain heard the chant, but my arms and legs didn’t. It was like they belonged to someone else, someone who was pissed at me for getting them into this situation. Then a collection of anonymous hands grabbed me around the biceps and rolled me over onto my back. Rowan and Beto leaned over me.

“Are you okay?” Rowan asked.

My mouth moved, but I’m pretty sure no real words came out.

They helped me to my feet, and my legs started to solidify under me while, at the same time, cursing me for weighing so
much. A few people applauded, but more jeered as Rowan and Beto half dragged me back to the dressing room. Aisling Collins did
not
run up, throw her arms around me, and kiss me on the cheek for my bravery.

In the locker room, I sat on a bench while Rowan went for paper towels for my bloody nose, which felt like it weighed about sixty pounds all by itself.

“I’m sorry about that, man,” Beto said. “You were supposed to pull back.”

“Is it broken?” I asked, gingerly touching the bridge of my nose.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”

“What happened?” It was Melody. She and Miss Chastity stared at me. The other fighters, including a puffy-faced Dancin’ Dan, stood behind them.

“An accident,” Beto told her.

“Some accident,” she said.

Rowan came back with the paper towels and dabbed the blood away from my face. “Here,” he said, giving me a towel. “Keep your head tilted back.”

My mind was clear now, but my whole face hurt. Melody stood on the bench next to me and brushed my hair back from my forehead. “Stupid uppity-ups,” she said. “You’re better than them any day.”

The bleeding had slowed to a trickle by the time Nash showed up and handed over my shirt and glasses. Brett and Aisling came with him. “I guess we’re even,” he said. “Let me get you a bottle of beer. That should help.”

I took the towel away from my face. “I don’t need anything from you.”

And he goes, “What’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with me? Are you kidding? You set me up. You had this whole thing planned all along.”

And he’s like, “How could I know it would end up like this? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of hard-boiled investigator guy, fighting off thugs with switchblades and everything. I didn’t know you’d turn out to be such a wimp.”

I looked at Brett. “And you—I’ll bet you knew about this too. Both of you going around acting like you’re my friends, but you’re just a couple of phonies.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Are you telling me you didn’t enjoy the steak and the limo ride?”

“Maybe I did, but that’s when I thought we were friends. But we never were, not even for a second. All you are is a user. You might think that makes you better than us, but you’re wrong.”

“That’s right,” said Chastity. “You aren’t any better than us.”

“Oh, shut up,” Nash told her. “You got paid.”

“Don’t tell her to shut up,” said Dancin’ Dan from over my shoulder. “She can talk anytime she wants to.”

“Yeah,” confirmed Robo-Troy. “Anytime she wants to.”

“You suck,” added Melody.

Nash backed up, obviously uncomfortable with the bristling attitude in the room. “Wow, talk about ingratitude,” he said. “We didn’t do anything but hire you out of the kindness of our hearts. And on top of that, do you know where this city would be without my dad and his business and all the jobs it provides? Right in the toilet.”

“You know what?” Beto said. “We don’t care who your dad is because he’s probably a
pendejo
just like you.”

“Just like you,” Dancin’ Dan agreed.

“Anyway,” Beto went on. “I don’t care about your daddy’s
money. What’d you ever do but sit back and sponge off him? All you had to do was get born. That’s no kind of accomplishment to brag about.”

And Nash’s like, “That’s big talk coming from an illegal. You better make sure your papers are in order.”

Beto didn’t respond to him, though. “Put your shirt on, Dylan,” he told me. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait for me,” Melody said. “I’ve had enough of this scene for the night.”

Dancin’ Dan and Robo-Troy chimed in that they were ready to go too.

As we started out of the room, Nash is like, “Go on, slink out, Dylan. Go pretend you’re somebody because you’re nobody to any of us.”

The words had barely dropped out of his mouth when Beto’s fist launched. This time it didn’t fly in slow motion either. It landed square against Nash’s jaw, dropping him to the floor on his butt. The look on his face told me he’d never imagined a world where something like this could happen to someone like him.

“See you later, douche bag,” said Melody as we walked around him.

In the main room, everyone stared at us. They didn’t look the same as they had before. They were much smaller.

Beto drove a sleek green lowrider with awesome chrome rims, which I decided was way cooler than any limo or Lexus or Mercedes. Melody rode up front with Beto, and I squeezed into the back with Robo-Troy and Dancin’ Dan, who had already become the best of buddies despite their fifteen-minute rumble. In fact, we all became instant friends. When we got tired of talking about how funny it was to see Nash land on his butt, the conversation switched to how each of us ended up at Gangland in the first place.

Dancin’ Dan’s story was loaded with a bombshell. Originally, Nash hadn’t wanted to hire him as a fighter at all. The two met through one of Dan’s buddies, a guy named Dickie, who had rumbled for Nash before, also losing to Robo-Troy.

“That’s kind of why I wanted to get in there and try to kick your ass,” Dan told Troy, and Troy’s like, “That’s all right. I would’ve felt the same way.”

“But the thing was,” Dan continued, “at first he wasn’t about fighting. He wanted me to do some burglaries for him.”

I’m like, “Burglaries? No kidding?”

“That’s right. He had him some floor plans and all kinds
of other information on these mansions he’d been to. He knew how to get in without setting off the alarm and where all the good stuff was to steal and everything. The deal was supposed to be he’d pay me, and I’d also get to keep everything I stole except for a few items he could use to prove to his friends he was in on it.”

“That must’ve been one of his games,” I said. “He figured he’d pull off a real crime instead of just this fake-gangster stuff.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dan said. “It seemed real important to him. But I wasn’t about to get involved in all that. Sure, me and Dickie done a couple burglaries when I was a kid, but I’m through with that kind of stuff.”