TKO (5 page)

Larry Bird took a step toward me and puffed out his chest.

“Fuckin’ social worker … ,” Larry said.

I didn’t back up, I didn’t look down, I let Larry Bird feel the discomfort of moving in on someone who didn’t back up. I’m sure he was accustomed to people wetting their pants when he did this, but his act just didn’t have that kind of impact. He stood there for a second and then backed up like he was confused.

“All right, all right, that will probably be enough,” Morris said, lightly nudging Bird with his arm. “I think we got what we need, thanks for your help. Would you mind if we check your phone lines for your recent calls?”

“Sure, no problem,” I said. They all started to file out and Larry Bird gave me a menacing look. I felt less than menaced.

“So, Duff, this Polack catches his wife in bed with another guy,” Sam said.

“Mornin’, Sam,” I said.

“So he goes and gets his revolver, kicks in the door to the bedroom, and holds the gun to his head while the two of them screw. Finally, the wife looks up at him and laughs, and you know what he says?”

I tried not to encourage Sam with a response.

“C’mon, Duff, you know what he says?”

“What, Sam?” I didn’t have the energy to ignore him.

“The Polack says to his wife, ‘Don’t laugh—you’re next!’” Sam laughed his way back to his business office cubicle.

I’ve been at this job for over five years, and every day Sam stops by with a Polack joke. Like a chronic pain in the testicle, I’ve just learned to live with it.

I had a lot on my mind. Howard was MIA and had made me his Labrador. Son of Sam believed he got all his messages from his next door neighbor’s dog, and I guess that’s how I felt. Not like Berkowitz but more like the dog, because here I was, getting weird messages from a guy I only knew a little bit and because of that, I was suddenly the center of attention. Sam the Lab was just being a regular old dog when suddenly his life got spun around all crazy and it wasn’t even anything he did. I’m not sure what happened to him, but I’m betting he wound up on medication.

It didn’t make much sense to me that Howard would use me as a confidant. I didn’t feel like Howard and I had this super-tight bond. Then again, Howard probably didn’t have a lot of friends. You lop off a head or two in your youth and people never let you live it down.

I also had this fight in the Garden coming up. In my boxing career I’ve gotten used to being a short-notice fighter and I welcomed it. In the fight game there were always guys pulling out of fights for one reason or other. Sometimes it was injuries, sometimes it was contracts, and many times, despite what fighters will admit, it was fear. Sure, no one says, “Hey, I’m pulling out of this bout because I’m tired of shittin’ my pants all week and I don’t want to get punched in the head.” I was nervous enough to drop a pantload and I didn’t feel like getting my ass kicked by some million-dollar prospect, but for the chance to fight in the Garden—it was worth it.

I’ve had a difficult time concentrating lately, but with a full day of sessions I had to try to focus a bit. I say “a bit” because despite what some counselors will tell you, talking, or, more accurately, listening to someone for forty-five minutes isn’t exactly rocket science. My first session of the day was with Freddie Gleason, or, as everyone called him, Suda-Fred. Suda-Fred got his name from his drug of choice—Sudafed, the over-the-counter decongestant that has a stimulant effect upon the central nervous system, especially if you took ten at a time with a quart of coffee, which was what Suda-Fred would do. I didn’t need any fancy urinalysis tests to figure out if Fred had had a relapse. All I had to do was observe and listen as I greeted him in the waiting room.

“Hey Duff good to see you how’s everything? How’s the fight game? Man I love boxing—great game, great game, man I love boxing. How you doin’? You look good, any fights coming up? You like these sneakers? They’re new. You know what, you know what? Um, uh what was I just sayin’?” Suda-Fred exhaled all at once.

“Fred, have you—,” I tried to say.

“Have I what? Uh Duff, that really hurts, you think I’m back on that shit, wow that hurts Duff, man, man the Yanks win last night? Man, Duff, where’s the trust? Isn’t that what this is all about? Wow, heavy man. Those Yanks, man, it’s warm.”

Beads of sweat built up on Suda-Fred’s lip between his nose and the thin mustache. He was rail thin and his face was way more wrinkled than it should’ve been for a thirty-eight-year-old man. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he wore a red velour running suit.

“Fred, uh—”

“All right, all right Duff get off my ass will ya? It’s fuckin’ allergy season you know. Sorry, sorry, sorry for the bad language. I took a little today because of the snotty nose deal, really Duff, it was the snot, disgustin’ man, disgustin’ man. I took the blue ones, you know the 418s, they got that expectors in ’em or somethin’. Helps you get that snot out of your throat, disgustin’ man, disgustin’ man, sorry for the language, man,” Fred said.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“No I’m good, I’m good, don’t need no coffee Duff.”

“No, Fred. Have you had coffee?”

“C’mon, Duff, off my ass, geez, off my ass will ya? Uh, geez again with the language, sorry man, sorry. Sure, sure a little, you know that expressive kind at the Starbucks, the dark kind—is it warm?—shit I’m warm. Man, maybe it’s the velour, shit. Who the Yanks got tonight? Yeah Duff, expressive.”

“Espresso?” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably made me hot—I’m not in trouble, am I? Duff you look in shape, you gotta fight comin’ up or something? I love boxing, love it, love the fight game. Shit it’s hot.”

Actually, you really can’t get in trouble for loading up on Sudafed and “expressive”—not legal trouble anyway. Suda-Fred had a little anxiety trouble, which often led him to less than a placid existence. So for the next forty minutes or so, it was my job to find out what I could about what had brought Fred to the Sudafed. Fred’s snot issues seemed to have been the trigger that brought on today’s relapse, but perhaps there was a deeper emotional antecedent that together we could uncover. It was up to me, skilled clinician that I was, to deconstruct the behaviors that led up to Fred’s use of the dreaded 418s.

Turns out all we could come up with was the snot, man, it was all about the snot. Fred and I spent the next forty-five minutes talking about congestion, alertness, and the Yanks—a lot about alertness.

After Suda-Fred, a session with Stanley Stillman was a welcome change of pace. Stanley was referred to the clinic by his employer’s employee assistance plan for an Internet addiction. Actually, they caught Stanley surfing porn on his company computer, and when they went through his computer logs it was pretty clear that he spent about seven out of eight hours a day on the boner sites. They tried to fire him but the union prevented it, got a doctor to give him an obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis, and now he’s getting paid time off to “recover.” I guess in his position as safety officer for the power company, his “recovery” was pretty important.

Anyway, he was a welcome relief because he barely said anything at all. I think the guy’s real diagnosis should have been something along the lines of “chronic traumatic embarrassment related to masturbatory activity.” The guys at the power company weren’t real sensitive to Stan’s plight, and not too far behind his back they referred to him as “the stroke-a-matic.” I wouldn’t feel like talking much either.

While Stan and I put up with the awkward silences, I thought about Howard. I racked my brain trying to think about how I could find out more about him. He didn’t have any family contacts and the counselors at the halfway house said he kept to himself. There was a ninety-page summary from his prison shrink that I hadn’t read all the way through yet. I’d read the first twenty pages and it didn’t say much of anything, so I’d skipped to the end where they had come to the conclusion that Howard was of very little danger to society, that his actions were the result of an abused adolescent mind processing extreme abusive stress, and unless those types of stressors were repeated, Howard was not a danger. They went on to say that even if Howard was placed under stress, he was unlikely to repeat the same violent activity.

Dr. Abadon read the report and he indicated that it was within the realm of possibility that Howard was in a way relapsing to his old compulsions and that if he was experiencing stress—which a release from prison to his old neighborhood would evoke—he could revert to old ways. That was a fair analysis, but I was afraid that one opinion might be enough for the police to assume Howard was the one and only suspect. With assholes like Larry “the Cop” Bird itching to do something dramatic, I was afraid Howard didn’t have a chance.

Stan went on his less than merry way and I went back to check out Howard’s file. Reading through assessments was like taking the time to read through the directions for a universal television remote, only not as entertaining. It just went on and on in that annoying psychobabble that had fancy names for everyday things. It talked about his shallow affect, his dysthymic mood, and the fact that he was oriented times three. In English, I think that meant that Howard looked depressed and acted depressed but knew where he was, who he was, and what day it was.

Hidden in some of this bullshit were some things that may have explained why Howard was the way he was. His mother never visited him in prison and apparently she moved to Wisconsin where she herself was arrested for kiting checks. The mother had a half-sister in Oklahoma who had eight children, though neither she nor the children ever met Howard. The father, who left before Howard was born, died of cirrhosis ten years ago. Now there’s a warm bunch to pass the turkey around with on Thanksgiving.

Howard was, by most accounts, a model inmate. In his first five years incarcerated he was in Ossining, and on two occasions he was “assaulted.” There wasn’t a ton of information about what constituted a prison assault, but one could only wonder. After those five years he was moved to Green Haven, where he stayed until he was discharged. Twelve years before he was discharged, a guy in the cell next to him was beaten to death over some jailhouse drug dealing, and Howard had always maintained that he knew nothing about what was going on. Apparently, the drug situation was pretty bad for a while because five inmates died of drug use while in Green Haven during that period.

All very interesting, but averaged out over thirty years there really wasn’t a ton of unusual stuff about inmate Rheinhart. I was just closing his file when Trina buzzed me and told me Michelin wanted to see me. Oh joy.

“Duffy, I am not pleased with this situation with Rheinhart,” Claudia said.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“It’s bad for the clinic. It puts us in a bad light and it makes us vulnerable.”

“Bad light? Vulnerable?”

“It’s bad publicity and it overshadows the work we do. It could interfere with our ability to help clients,” Claudia said, running her hand palm-down through her Starsky-do, which was something she did when she was lying.

“Uh-huh. What does that have to do with me?” I said.

“You’re his counselor.”

“So.”

“Make sure you do everything you can to assist his apprehension.”

“What if he’s innocent and he gets hurt?”

“Duffy—be realistic.”

“I’m not always good at that,” I said, and I got up. “Claudia, I better go or you’ll be writing out verbal warnings for me.” I turned to get out of her office.

“Make sure you do what I told you,” she said.

I needed to get to the gym … for a lot of reasons.

6

With just a few
days before a bout there’s not a ton you can work on, but it felt better to be in the gym doing something to get ready. I had been sparring on and off for the last month so I was reasonably sharp. Sparring too close to a fight can be dumb because you can get an injury that would make you pull out of the fight. When you’re a fighter of my caliber, that’s a big mistake because they’ll just go to the boxing registry and find another guy with your weight, height, level of competition, and won/loss record. Professional opponents really have a lot in common with the bovine futures being bought and sold at the Chicago Board of Trade. If you’re a boxing superstar like Oscar de la Hoya and everyone’s dying to fight you and you get injured, you call the fight off and the whole boxing world will wait for you. Well, the boxing world wouldn’t wait the length of a beer commercial for Duffy Dombrowski and guys like me don’t see many $15,000 paydays, so I didn’t want to take any chances.

I did want to get a feel for the Mexican gloves because I hadn’t worn them much. They’re expensive and the shows I fight on usually cut costs by using cheaper gloves. I swallowed the $250 and got a pair, figuring it was money well spent. God, they felt great, probably as good as an alligator shoe feels on someone who cares enough to buy the repulsive things. They really formed around my fists, and my hands just felt natural inside of them. I did three rounds of regular bag work and then practiced throwing the jab and just grazing the corner of the heavy bag. I saw some of the Puerto Rican fighters working this move with the Mexican gloves on the bags at Gleason’s in Brooklyn one time and they had it down to an art form. I don’t know about my artistic expression but I was getting a feel for letting the seam drag over the bag.