Suckerpunch: (2011) (31 page)

I handed the phone back to Eddie. When he reached for it, I shoved his arm across his throat and stepped in. I got my shoulder against his triceps and my arms around him in an over-the-shoulder hug and lifted him off the floor. I squeezed his arm into his neck to cut off the blood to his brain. He made a sound with no vowels and started to kick at my legs.

The rest of the room was silent until Gil yanked on my arm. “Hey, hey.”

I turned to him. “If you want to leave the room, I understand. This has to happen.”

Gil sized it up, looking for a way to get Eddie free of the arm triangle. Eddie’s kicks were getting weaker. Gil was watching me choke out my one chance at a successful career, watching me retreat from the next step in my life and piss on it. He could have taken my legs out, attacked my groin, gouged my eyes. Instead, he ran his hands over the stubble on his head. “Jesus, Woody. Tell me you know what you’re doing.”

“I do.” Eddie stopped moving. I could hear him breathing deeply next to my ear.

“Tell me I won’t need to mortgage the gym for legal fees.”

“You won’t.” I set Eddie down on the couch and put his phone in my pocket.

“Whatever you’re doing, it
has
to happen?”

“Yes.”

Gil closed his eyes. “What do you need?”

“I need your bag.”

I carried the bag through the corridor and tried to make it look lighter than it was. Gil made us do farmer’s carries with heavier weight, but at the gym I didn’t have to smile and thank other fighters and trainers when they congratulated me on the win.

I could see the exit fifty feet ahead on the left when Benjamin shuffled out of a doorway directly across from it, working his phone. He raised it to his ear, and my pocket started to ring. Benjamin heard the chime in stereo and frowned. He took the phone away from his ear and listened, looked toward me.

Then he noticed Jairo walking next to me, and he physically shrank. Benjamin brought his phone back up and said, “Hey, no, what?” and spun and disappeared through the doorway while Eddie’s phone continued to ring in my pocket.

We went through the exit. My truck was still there; the security guard wasn’t. Jairo helped me shove the bag into the passenger seat. Eddie groaned inside.

Jairo said, “Woody, let me help. Javier, Edson, all of us.”

“Can’t do it.”

“Because Kendall said so? Fuck that guy.”

“I agree. But this is going to be fast and loud. If I get you killed saving Marcela, I’m not going to feel great.”

Jairo scoffed and gestured at the bullet groove in his shoulder. “Who can kill me?”

“Go with Gil. I’ll take her to the gym.”

“If you don’t?”

I thought about it. “Join the Air Force. Get assigned to Nellis. Drop a bomb on Chops’s compound.”

He frowned.

“See you soon,” I said. I left him standing in the parking lot and headed northeast toward the desert.

But first, one quick stop.

I backtracked through the streets and turns Jairo and I had flashed through on the way to the arena. This time I obeyed the speed limit and traffic lights. No reason to hurry just yet, and my right eye was swelling shut, throwing my depth perception off. I squinted into the oncoming headlights and did a pretty good job of not running anyone over.

Eddie stirred in the duffel bag. He asked someone a question and screamed quietly.

I smacked the bag. “Hey. I’ll let you out of there if you stay quiet and hold still.”

“Whozzat?”

“Woody.”

“Where . . . It smells in here.”

I reached over and tugged the zipper open a few inches. Fingers poked through and peeled it open the rest of the way. Eddie sat up out of the bag and blinked. He looked around. “Brah, what the fuck? My head . . .”

“It doesn’t last. This is what you need to know: We’re going to get Marcela. If things go right, you’ll be fine. If they don’t, you’re on your own.”

“No. Let me out.”

“I’ve knocked out three people in the past few hours, all of them bigger and tougher than you, and I’m still ready to go. Sit still and shut up or I’ll put you in the glove compartment.”

“What do you need me for?”

“Moral support.”

“Fuckin’ liar. Where are we going?”

“North. Then east.”

“Nice. Thanks. Can I at least get out of this bag?”

“As long as you run when I tell you to. Otherwise, stay in so I’ll have some handles.”

Eddie muttered and fought his way out of the bag. It was a close contest. “Dude, why does everything around you stink?”

I felt a little sorry for him. Coming out of Gil’s sweat bag into the truck, with the dried sludge from Tezo’s pit caked on the seats, probably had him wishing I’d dot him once on the nose.

I turned right on Fremont, drifted into the left lane and let the truck roll at idle speed. No one was behind me to complain.

Eddie said, “What the hell is that smell, anyway? I’m cracking a window.”

“Stick your head out far enough, you might smell the source.”

“Huh?”

“But I recommend you duck.” I came to a full stop outside Tezo’s garage and held the horn down.

After ten seconds the old man poked his head out of the office and saw me. I gave him the finger and he disappeared. Five seconds after that the place turned into a hornet’s nest. The door flew open, and half the guys from the bleachers stormed out waving guns and automotive tools. The other half and the old people had either left or learned their lesson. I hit the gas and watched all the headlights pop on in the rearview mirror.

I wouldn’t call what happened next a car chase. I drove; they followed, but no one bumped onto the sidewalk or T-boned another car at an intersection. They were smart enough to hang back and wait for me to get cornered or make a wrong turn. I got north to Owens and turned right and watched a few of the cars peel off left and right at side streets. I spotted them paralleling me, trying to anticipate a turn and be there to cut me off. They got snarled up in the residential traffic and eventually fell back in behind me.

A low-slung pickup came within kissing distance of my rear bumper for a block. I looked in the mirror and saw Tezo’s swollen head in the passenger seat. He should have been in a hospital, maybe the coma ward. The tattoos were temporarily hidden in the cuts and bruises. He was talking into a cell phone, his puffy mouth barely moving.

Eddie cranked his head around. “Who’s that?”

“You don’t recognize your buddy Tezo?”

He stared.
“That’s
Tezo? I pictured him being less . . .”

“Mauled? You’ve never met?”

“No, just over the phone.”

“To place bets against your fighters, that kind of thing, right?”

“Gambling is legal,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, you should know. He was halfway to drowning me when he called you to place that bet.”

“No shit.” Eddie was still mesmerized by Tezo’s piñata head.

We crossed North Hollywood and the houses petered out. Tezo must have figured out where we were heading; the string of tinted windows and chrome rims got aggressive. They looked for clear spots to pull ahead of me, but their clearance and tires weren’t designed for the dirt road, let alone the ditches and humps alongside. I sped up and they fell back.

Eddie faced forward again and said, “So, what, we’re having a meet out here? You need me to negotiate with Tezo?”

“No, he’ll be busy.”

“So what the fuck am I here for?”

I got the truck to fifty on the washboard road. “Mostly, to be scared.”

“I ain’t scared.”

I got Eddie’s phone out and called Kendall.

He picked up right away. “Hey, I can see you on the security camera. How are just you and Eddie driving all them cars?”

“Tezo found me,” I said. “Get that gate open.”

Kendall said something away from the phone, came back. “Your boy Chops is
not
a fan of yours right now.”

“Likewise. But if he doesn’t open the gate, Eddie’s gonna get chewed up out here and you’ll have to deal with the Yakuza yourself.”

Eddie said, “Who is that? Is that my phone?”

I dropped it and got both hands on the wheel and floored it toward the crest that flattened outside the compound.

Eddie fumbled his phone off the floor and hit a button.
“Kendall?
You’re taking me to that cowboy? In the fucking
desert?”

“You can jump out and talk to Tezo, tell him why he shouldn’t have bet a hundred grand on me to lose. Or run like hell and wait for the Yakuza to find you. Or we top this crest and if the gate’s not open, we smash into it and won’t care what happens next.”

I glanced over at him.

He was scared.

The truck roared briefly when the wheels left the ground at the top of the crest. The dull metal wall was still rattling open. We landed and slewed before straightening out, and I had to twist the wheel to the left. Chops probably had a database of vehicle widths, and the opening froze at what looked like two inches wider than my side mirrors. The right mirror hit the gate and flapped on its hinge against Eddie’s window when we squeezed through. The gate was already closing.

I crushed the brakes.

Eddie rolled onto the dashboard and bounced back onto the seat.

The truck slid. I’d waited too long.

Then the gate clamped against the passenger side, and the sound of metal grating on metal made me wince. The gate pinned the truck against the wall. I hauled Eddie out my door and pulled him into a run up the driveway. The entire compound was blacked out; I could see the outline of the house and a car parked outside the garage against the night sky. Everything else was a shade of black.

Eddie’s shoes were offended by the gravel and tried to take him down. He caught himself on my arm, got upright, and said, “Don’t leave me here with Kendall, man. You do that, I’m gone. And that means Warrior is gone, and you’re back fighting for gas money.”

“I know. Now shut up and keep moving.”

I looked back. Headlight beams searched the sky from the other side of the crest, then dropped and silhouetted my truck wedged in the gate opening. The first car, maybe still Tezo’s, braked and started to slide sideways. The second car came over the ridge and had to crank right to avoid hitting it. Guys were already spilling out of the first car and running toward the gate.

I almost carried Eddie the last fifty feet of the driveway. The car outside the closed garage door was a late model Cadillac. Eddie ran around and crouched behind it. I thumped on the trunk lid. “Marcela?”

A gunshot came from behind me, a loud crack that bounced off the far wall and rolled back before it was interrupted by another shot, then another.

“She’s inside,” a voice said.

I took my lips off the Cadillac’s rear bumper and my shoulders out of my ears and turned around.

Chops was standing in his trench twenty feet away, the AR leveled across the hood of one of his dirt-filled vehicles toward the gate. I flinched when he squeezed off another round. Shapes were scrambling over the side of my truck, tumbling over each other to lie flat in the bed or get to the other side of the wall. When there were no more targets, I waited for the gun to turn toward me. Chops had sent me into a pit to die; shooting me would be self-defense.

He had his eye pressed to the scope, a dim ring of green light oozing out around his glasses. He kept the gun trained on the gate. “What’d you stop for? It was open far enough.”

“I got a little sideways coming through.”