There Are Doors

To the Fights

At first it seemed that she had vanished in the throng of office workers; then he glimpsed her sleek head, its hair returned to the copper he remembered by the level light of the setting sun. He hurried after her, lost sight of her, found her and lost her once more, yet hurried forward still. Streetlights were coming on, section by section, all over the city.

The streetlights—and yet it had been lunch, surely lunch, that he had shared with Lara. He passed a church where services were in progress; he could hear the throb of the organ and the singing of many voices. Lights within made the stained-glass windows glow like gems. One showed Lara, with a spear in one hand, a mirror in the other. He stopped for a moment to stare, then hurried on.

Someone caught him by the shoulder. “Just where the hell have you been?”

He turned and saw North; as he did, North’s fist slammed into his right kidney. He gasped with pain and doubled over, but the crowd on the sidewalk was so thick, shouting and shoving as it fought to reach three ticket windows, that no one seemed to notice, though perhaps it was only that those who saw them ignored them.

“That’s for leaving me,” North said. North grasped his tie as if it were a leash and led him out of the crowd and into a narrow alley. There he jerked the tie away and swung wildly at North’s face. North stepped inside the blow, there was a red flash of pain, and he was sitting on the filthy bricks clasping his belly and retching.

“That’s twice,” North said. “Get up!”

Tina’s voice, tiny and muffled by his jacket, asked, “Are you sick?”

He smiled and said, “Yes,” suddenly glad that both blows had been too low to harm her.

“What the hell are you grinning for?”

“I’m still alive.” He stumbled to his feet. “Isn’t that enough?”

“For you,” North told him. A door opened, throwing a beam of strong yellow light into the dark alley. “Come on.” North led the way down a steep flight of concrete steps.

“Where are we going?” he asked. It was an effort to speak, but a distraction from the pain.

“To put on a show.” North chuckled. “Like we did before.”

The steps ended in a wide concrete corridor that stank of sweat. A middle-aged man in a torn T-shirt and khaki trousers hurried past them carrying a stack of clean towels and a bucket of water.

North said, “We’ve got lots of time. They haven’t started the preliminaries. He’ll have one of the big rooms close to the elevators.”

The corridor turned and turned again, growing still wider and still more brilliantly lit. Tight-lipped young women with notebooks and lounging men with cameras clustered at one end. North shouldered them out of the way, seemingly oblivious to their protests and threats. “Come on!” North snapped. “Follow me!”

He followed as closely as he could. They stopped before a wide metal door painted dark green. A big cardboard sign neatly lettered in India ink had been taped to the door at eye level: JOE JOSEPH.

North knocked so loudly it seemed likely that the knocking alone would open the green door, smashing its latch and hinges. A bald man opened it instead and swore. North strode inside, leaving the bald man to push back the men with cameras and the intense young women with notebooks. A flash filled the whole bare room like a bolt of silent lightning before the bald man closed the door.

It was not until he was nearly in the center of the room that he realized that the bald man at the door had been Eddie Walsh. Eddie’s prizefighter, Joe, sat on a masseur’s folding table, wearing blue-and-white boxing shorts, a blue satin robe, and gym shoes, and looking as big as the store.

W.F. glanced up from taping one of Joe’s enormous hands and grinned at him. He tried to grin in return, then bit his lips as he sought to recall the name of the serious-looking blonde in the crimson dress. That would be Jennifer, of course, whom he had never met. Joe’s wife, Jennifer.

North was speaking to Joe in a low, crisp voice that seemed to imply that they were the only significant people in the room, the only people who mattered an iota. “Meet your new handler,” he said. “I’ll be in your corner with Walsh tonight, and believe me, my being there is bound to bring you good luck—the greatest fight of your entire career. You know who I am?”

Joe did not reply or change his expression even slightly. The big hand he held out to W.F. neither moved nor trembled; the blank, blue eyes stared sightlessly at something far away. If the fighter was thinking about anything at all, it appeared to be utterly unconnected with the events taking place in the room. A saint contemplating God or a gourmand contemplating Dinner might have worn the same open, empty face.

“We’ve got a couple of dozen men up there,” North told him. “Not because we need that many, but because I want them to see you in person. They’ll be watching you before you get into the ring, and they’ll watch you fight, and they’ll still be watching you when you come out, memorizing the way you look and the way you move. Four men in two cars are watching your car, just in case you’re dumb enough to try to use that. You may get home okay, if you’re God-damned lucky. Maybe. But either you play along, or you’ll be dead by this time tomorrow night. Her too.” North jerked his head to indicate Jennifer. “Maybe these two nobodies from noplace you’ve been carrying, if they happen to get in our way. But you for sure. You and your wife, and you can take that to the bank.”

Joe’s voice was as slow and big as he remembered. “You want me to throw the fight.”

“Hell, no,” North said. “You can fight as good as you want to. I don’t care whether you win or lose. But I’m going to be one of your handlers.”

“Bullshit,” Walsh told him.

There was a knock at the door, a nearly inaudible tap. Walsh hurried over to open it, and Lara came in.