I said, “What does that mean?”
Doc said, “I’m not sure. Just thought you might want to know.”
After a couple of days’ rest Coyle was back in the gym, but then he had to stop his road work outta weakness again. He looked like a whipped pup, so I figured he had to have something wrong. He said, “But I can’t fight if I don’t run, you said it yourself.”
I said, “You can’t fight if you ain’t got gas in your tank, that’s what that means. Right now, you got a hole in your tank.”
“I need dough, Red.”
He was a hungry fighter; it’s what you dream about. And there he’d be the next day, even if he coughed till he gagged. You never saw anybody push himself like him. But by then, the fool could hardly punch, much less run. But he still wanted to train, said he didn’t want us to think he didn’t have no heart.
I said, “Hail, boy, I’m worried about your brain, not heart. You got money from the last fight. Rest.”
He said, “I sent all but a thousand to my brother for an operation. He’s a cripple.”
Well, later on I learned he’d pissed all the money away on pussy and pool, and there wasn’t no cripple. But at that time I was so positive Coyle had the heart it takes that I just grabbed the bull by the horns and told Billy it was time. Billy could see the weak state Coyle was in, but on my good word it was a virus, Billy signed Coyle up to a four-year contract. On top of that, he gave Coyle a one-bedroom poolside apartment in one of his units for free. Said he’d give Coyle twenty-five hundred a month, that he’d put it in the contract, no payback, until Coyle started clearing thirty thousand a year. Said he’d give Coyle sixty thousand dollars under the table as a signing bonus soon’s he was well enough to get back in the gym. Coyle wanted a hundred thousand, but settled for sixty.
Billy said, “That’s cash, Kenny. So you don’t have to pay no taxes on it.”
“I’ll get you the title, Mr. Clancy.”
“Billy.”
I looked at Dee-Cee, knew the head of his dick was glowing same as mine. Damned if Coyle wasn’t back in the gym working hard and doing road work in only three days. Billy’s word was good, and I was there when he paid Coyle off in stacks of hundreds. Money smells bad when you get a gang of it all together.
Wouldn’t you know it? Old stinky-head went right out and spent the whole shiteree on one of them new BMW four-wheel-drive deals what goes for better than fifty thousand. Coyle got to bragging about the sports package, the killer sound system, how much horsepower it had. Who gives a rap when you can’t afford tires and battery? Buying them boogers is easy, keeping them up what’s hard.
Besides, it was about that time that Coyle’s knees went to flap like butterfly wings. See, the ladies took one look at Coyle and thought they had the real deal, what with him having that big car and flashing hundreds in the clubs.
Dee-Cee said, “How many times you get you nut this week?”
Coyle said, “That’s personal.”
Dee-Cee said, “So you been gettin’ you nut every night.”
Coyle said, “No, I ain’t.”
Dee-Cee said, “You is, too. If it was one or none, or even two times, you’da said so.”
Coyle looked at me like he’d never heard such talk.
I said, “He’s sayin’ when your legs get to wobblin’, you been doin’ it too much. He’s saying that when your legs’re weak that your brain gets to wonderin’ why’s it so hard to keep itself from fallin’ down. That’s when your brain is so busy keeping you on your feet that it don’t pay attention to fightin’. Son, you got to have your legs right so your mind can work quicker than light, or you end up as a opponent talkin’ through your nose, and the do-gooders wants to blame us trainers. No good, it’s you and your dick what’s doin’ wrong.”
Coyle said, “I’m a fighter livin’ like a fighter.”
Dee-Cee said, “Way you goin’, you won’t be for long.”
I said, “Dee-Cee ain’t wrong, Kenny.”
Dee-Cee said, “Boy, you can fuck you white ass black, but that ain’t never gonna make you champ of nothin’.”
Coyle snorted, said, “I’ll be champ of the bitches.”
Dee-Cee said, “You go out, screw a thousand bitches, you think you somethin’? Sheeuh, you don’t screw no thousand bitches, a thousand bitches screw you — and there go you title shot, fool.”
Coyle said, “Fighters need release.”
Dee-Cee said, “Say what? All you got to do is wait some. You midnight emissions’ll natural take care of you goddamn release!”
I said, “Look, we’re tryin’ to get you around the track and across the finish line first, but you’re headin’ into the rail on us.”
“Yeah,” said Dee-Cee, “workin’ wit’ you be like holdin’ water in one hand.”
Coyle thought about that and seemed to nod, but next day when he come in his knees were flapping same as before.
Come to find out, Coyle wasn’t worth the powder to blow him to hell. Billy found out Coyle had been with three gals in the stall of the men’s toilet at one of his hot spots — that they’d been smoking weed hunched around the stool, yip! Billy didn’t jump Coyle. But instead of seeing him as a long-lost White Hope in shining armor, he saw him same as me and Dee-Cee’d come to — like a peach what had gone part bad. So, do you cut out the bad part and keep the good? Or do you shit-can the whole deal? Billy decided to save what he could as long as he could.
Billy told Coyle to flat take his partying somewhere else, like he was first told. If I know Billy, there was more he wanted to say, but didn’t. ’Course big old Coyle didn’t take it too good, and wanted to dispute with Billy. So Billy said not to mistake kindness for weakness. Coyle got the message looked like, and was back in the gym working hard again — he wanted that twenty-five hundred a month. We figured the bullshit was over, leastways the in-public bullshit. But who could tell about weed? And who knew what else Coyle was messing with? By then, I got to feeling like I was a cat trapped in a sock drawer.
I told Coyle that what he’d pulled on Billy wasn’t the right way to do business.
Coyle said, “He’s makin’ money off me.”
I said, “Not yet he ain’t.”
That’s when things got so squirrelly you’d think Coyle had a tail.
First thing what come up was that stink with the plain-Jane cop’s daughter who said Coyle knocked her up — said Coyle’d gave her some of this GHB stuff that’s floating around that’ll make a gal pass out so deep she’s a corpse. Cop’s daughter said the last thing she remembered was that she was in Coyle’s pool playing kissy face. Next thing she knew she was bare-ass on the floor and Coyle was fixing to do her. She said she jumped up and fled.
Coyle claimed that he’d already done her twice, said she was crying for more.
See, it wasn’t until it come out she was pregnant that she told her daddy, who was a detective sergeant of the San Antonia P.D. She was a only child, and Daddy had them squinty blue eyes set in a face wide in the cheekbones what the Polacks brought into Texas. That good old boy got to rampaging like a rodeo bull, and right about then his neighbors got to thinking about calling Tom Bodette and checking into a Motel 6.
Once Daddy’d killed a half bottle of Jim Beam, he loaded up a old .44 six-gun, put on his boots and hat, and went on over to shoot Coyle dead.
Coyle told Daddy he loved plain-Jane more than his life itself, said that he wanted to marry her.
Cop was one of them fundamentals and figured marrying was better’n killing, so he let Coyle off.