Pound for Pound (30 page)

“You pig.”

“Gnuff.”

Dan showed no interest when Earl invited him to watch TV fights. When Earl mentioned fights in Indio or Palm Springs, and asked if Dan wanted to go with him, Dan begged off, saying it was too far. When Earl suggested local club fights at the Santa Cruz Sports Arena in Montebello, or at the Hollywood Park Racetrack Casino in Inglewood, or at one of the local Marriott hotels that held fights under chandeliers, Dan would say he’d be too busy taking Barky for his run in the hills.

“See, Barky’d miss pissin on the Hollywood sign.”

“A lousy fight once in a while, what the hell.”

“Naw,” Dan would say, his eyes looking off, or sometimes deep within.

The phone rang during one of these conversations. Earl answered, and yelled for Dan. “It’s Louie, from TJ.”

Dan picked up the phone. “Louie fuckin Carbajal.”

“Dan
culero
Cooley.”

Dan said, “What you sellin this time?” He winked at Earl.

“No, no, I ain’t sellin nothin, I’m comin to
Al-lay.”

“I didn’t know they let undesirables across the border.”

“That’s you. Down here they got posters with you
foto
to warn
las madres.”

“How can I help you, you Luigi?” Dan asked.

“I’m comin for the featherweight title fight at the Olympic Auditorio. I got a piece of the promotion, and one of the fighters, but don’t tell the goddan Commission.”

“Everything you do is ‘don’t tell the goddan Commission,’ “said Dan. “Who’s your boy?”

“Bazooka Flores, out of Hermosillo, champ of México. See, I think maybe I promote sontine in
Al-lay
by myself, but for now I wan’ you to work Flores’s corner, you and Errol.”

Dan had to sit down. A title fight. The Olympic. Memories, all good but one. Dan remembered the low ceilings of the concrete dressing rooms, the exposed pipes, and he remembered the photo displays of old-time strong men out front that had so fascinated him as a boy.

Dan said, “I thought they only had
norteña
bands and that hip-hop shit at the Olympic these days.”

“Yeah, but you can still promote fights,” Louie told him. “All you gotta do is pay the rent, and the licenses for the Commission, and all the city and state shit, too.”

“Why don’t you promote it at the Auditorio in TJ?”

“Title fight. Lots of Mexicanos in Al-lay. Dollars instead of
pesos.”

Dan said, “Thanks, Lou, but I’m busy here at the shop and all.”

“No, no, I need a good cut man for my boy, and besides, I wan’ a white man and a black one in the corner to make it look good for the fookeen gringos and the
maiates
in the crowd.”

“Louie, you’re a beaner racist fuckin pig.”

“Of course!”

Dan got the details and hung up and told Earl about the fight, and working with two of Flores’s regular corner men. “I’ll be workin cuts, you work the bucket. The kid’s trainers’ll handle the grease, ice, and conversation. Title fight, so four can work the corner.”

“Rainbow coalition,” said Earl.

“You’re in, right?”

“Naw,” said Earl, “my old lady’s bitchin I don’t spend enough time at home. Besides, I got stuff to do around here.”

“Bullshit,” said Dan, “we’re partners, right?”

“Well, yeah, I guess I could work it.”

Dan stood up and threw three short right hands into his left palm. Earl bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Dan didn’t know that Earl, at his wife’s urging, had put in an SOS call to Louie.

Louie’s boy won. In the seventh, he got a jagged rip at the corner of his right eye, but Dan stopped the blood and kept it stopped. Though subordinate to Flores’s trainers in the corner, Dan and Earl worked the fight as smoothly as ever. With Louie the next day, they sat on cushions and enjoyed a long lunch in Little Tokyo. Having a champion meant that Louie suddenly ranked large in the fight game. He got drunk on hot sake and cold beer, and threw money around as if he was in a whorehouse. Earl ate so much sushi that he asked if his eyes had changed shape. The eyes that had started to look different belonged to Dan Cooley, and Earl was grateful for a wife who had men figured out so well.

After the Olympic fight, Earl got Dan to watch TV fights. Eventually, Earl finessed him into going to club fights in and around town as well. Dan ran into fight guys he hadn’t seen in a long time, and they laughed and scratched and told war stories, and lamented the deaths of old friends.

New times were never as good as old times, but to Dan’s surprise, he found himself wanting more of both. So Dan got Earl to go with him to venues as far away as Palm Springs, even down to Louie Carbajal’s venue, the Auditorio in Tijuana. They traveled northwest out to the Marriott Hotel at the Warner Center in the Valley. Or they’d head down south to the Arrowhead Pond, home of the Mighty Ducks, in Orange County. They often took Momolo along, wanted promoters to get a look at him.

Momolo learned things by listening to Dan and Earl as they discussed the lights and shadows of boxing, the angles and the curves and the dead ends that could make careers disappear like sweat socks in a dryer.

Momolo got four fights in quick succession. He went two and one, with one draw and no KOs. No matter how hard Earl worked with him, Momolo was as deliberate in his movements as he was in his speech: Earl told Dan that he thought Momolo’s chances of making big money in boxing were limited. “He’s in great shape, he works hard, he has the desire, but he doesn’t throw in combinations. And still no hook.”

Dan didn’t want to write the kid off. “You never know.”

“Yeah,” said Earl, “but when he starts to move up one side of the pyramid, the guys on the other side will be moving up, too.”

“He’ll know it’s time to quit before we do.”

When things slowed down a bit, Earl started worrying again. So he was relieved when Wardell called him and asked him to come to the Sports Arena and watch one of his top fighters in action. Earl accepted the invitation for both of them without bothering to even ask Dan.

When he got around to telling Dan about it, Dan just smiled faintly and said, “Well, hell—why not.”

Two days later, battling commuter traffic, Earl and Dan headed for the Sports Arena, Earl in his van, Dan in the company pickup. They drove separate vehicles because they would be taking different freeways home. Barky had his nose out the window of the pickup and couldn’t care less about smog or the stop-and-go, as long as he was with Dan. His weight had leveled out because of his runs in the hills, and he was all muscle and bone and sass.

Detective Nájera, from West Traffic, would also be going to the eight o’clock fight. He’d leave for the eight o’clock fight at seven-fifteen, his home in South El Monte just a few miles away.

Earl and Dan picked up the tickets that Wardell had waiting for them. They were in the first row of the stands, where it was better to watch than from down close. They were used to working ringside, but that was different. From the stands in the small facility, they could see a fighter’s foot position as well as his punches.

It was seven-fifteen, and instead of going to their seats, they went back to the dressing room to talk shit with Jolly Joe and their cronies. Jolly Joe was working a fight down in El Centro, across from the Mexican border, and Earl and Dan were disappointed that they’d missed him.

Then Dan saw Wardell and his fighter.

“Who the fuck dyed that kid’s hair?” he wondered.

C
hicky Garza left San Antonio on 10 West and drove through El Paso and Tucson, then crossed the Colorado River into California at Blythe. Up ahead ninety miles was Indio, where there were two Indian casinos that periodically held boxing matches, one indoors, one out. All of it was hot, most of it dry. It was the same into and past Palm Springs, and didn’t begin to green up until around Ontario, well to the east of Los Angeles.

As he got closer, it was starting to get dark and a few lights were coming on. The sun was setting as Chicky drove toward it, and the sky was all purple and orange and dark blue with black splotches and streaks of silver. Smog hovered over the sprawl. Coming down a steep hill near a big cemetery, Chicky felt himself entering a foreign land where folks would tell you to go take a flying fuck and not look back. Chicky would show ‘em.

To save money on the road, and to be safe while he slept, Chicky had pulled into truckers’ stops to nap. He ate plastic-wrapped ham-and-cheese sandwiches he bought in gas stations and washed them down with Pepsi. His red
‘81
Chevy pickup, with “Fresita” painted in beautiful script on both doors, had held up like a champ. The map had looked
simple enough—keep his ass on the I
-10
all the way smack into downtown L.A. Back in San Anto he couldn’t have imagined what it might be like, but here he was.

“The winner, and new champion of the world, Eduardo
Chicky
Garza! Garza!” Chicky was serious when he said that out loud, but had to laugh as well.

Crossing into California, Chicky’d called information, but there was no Dan Cooley listed in the Los Angeles area, and no Cooley’s Gym. All Chicky knew about California was what he’d seen in the movies. He would have to get the lay of the land before he started to track down Dan Cooley. Chicky felt sure Cooley was still a trainer, still ran or worked out of some kind of gym. It only made sense. It’s what old fight guys did. He’d ask around. Somebody’d know. He wasn’t worried. He still had about
$2,400
from the
$2,600
cushion he’d left San Antonio with. A fortune. First thing, once he got situated, he’d buy him that Stetson. Then get him a picture of him wearing it standing in front of Fresita with Dan Cooley, and send it to his
abuelito.

“Look out, Al-lay, ol’ Garz’s ridin into town!”

He checked the map as he drove, his eyes flicking to the blue highlighter he’d traced along the map’s red line of the highway. He was coming into Baldwin Park, still part of the arid sprawl on the east side of Los Angeles. Big green 605 Freeway signs began to appear, along with off-ramp signs that hung alongside the road. Chicky squirmed in the seat of the truck, his behind sore from the long drive.

He checked the map, his eyes darting in the fading light between the blue highlighting and the traffic. The north/south interchange of the
605,
the San Gabriel River Freeway, had to be close. He could almost taste Al-Lay. He wanted something good to eat, that was for sure. He wondered what the City of the Angels would look like all lit up.

There were sure to be cheap motels in L.A., but now he wondered where to find one. He looked down to check the map again. When he
looked up, he had to slam on the brakes. There were four lanes of cars, and lit-up brake lights stretched all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, as far as Chicky could tell. It wouldn’t take Chicky long to know why Angelinos called their freeways the longest parking lots in the world.

“Estamos a puro chingazo,”
Chicky mumbled. We’re fucked for sure in this mess.

Chicky waited with the others for the police and ambulances to take away the wreckage up ahead, human and machine. But as cars got closer to the site of the accident, he got detoured onto
605.
After a half hour of stop-and-go, he saw the blinking lights of a half dozen patrol cars up ahead. After another fifteen minutes, he could see the overpass of the
605.

He checked the map again, and saw that the parallel East and West
60
was just a few miles to the south by way of the
605.
He’d swing south on the 605, and then west again on the 60 into Angel Town.

But he had to put up with even more stop-and-go traffic on the
605.
Stuck in the mud of traffic, Chicky glanced over and noticed the brightly lit red and yellow of the Santa Cruz Sports Arena. He only got a glimpse of it, but damned if it didn’t look like a bullring there among the trees and the pylons. He’d never heard of bullfights in California.

“Course you never can tell in Califa.”

Chicky finally got a break. Afraid that he was lost, he took the Firestone Avenue exit and headed west, thinking that would get him back on track. It wasn’t long before he passed over the dry concrete banks of the L.A. River, and could see the illuminated cones and cubes of downtown Los Angeles ten-plus miles away. He was completely turned around. He got off Firestone at Atlantic, then turned right toward the towns of Bell and Vernon. As he crossed Florence Avenue into Bell, he immediately felt he was deep into the Westside of San Anto, though this was upscale a notch or two. Except for street signs, virtually everything was written in Spanish. Doctor, dentist, and lawyer signs were in Español, as were the bill-boards.
Cars smoked, sombreros were proudly worn. Mexican cafés offered all kinds of seafood. Food stands sold tacos, enchiladas,
tortas,
and all classes of
antojitos,
or snacks—
¡Tacos joven, todas classes de antojitos!

Chicky saw a motel sign over a drab 1930 s stucco building, and his anxiety leveled out. At a corner stand next to the motel, he parked and ordered a Pepsi and a
torta
made on a crusty, wide roll with cheese and avocado, or
aguacate.
Jalapeño chiles were free, all you could eat. He had a
pan dulce
for dessert, dunked the sugared sweet roll in scalding-hot
café con leche
—espresso and milk served in a tall glass—latte Mexican style. Then he drove into the motel’s parking lot and checked in.

“Well, I made ‘er,
abuelito,”
Chicky said from deep in his throat. “Almost anyway.”

Chicky woke for the third time at noon, but he wasn’t sure where he was. He parted a brown curtain and looked out on a dusty asphalt parking lot, but still wasn’t sure. He doused his face with cold water, then remembered checking into the Bell Motel, but he had no real idea where that put him relative to downtown L.A. He showered, gave his short hair a quick wash with hand soap, and went down to the office, where an old white woman with paper-thin skin informed him that he was in Bell, California.