The Long Count

The DetectiveIt was a quarter past nine and the rain was doing its best impression of a man who didn't want to go home. Dale had the coffee on and the day's last appointment scratched off the book. Then the door opened, and trouble came in out of the wet wearing a black veil and gloves that cost more than my rent.

DaleWe're closed, ma'am. The detective's done saving the city for one night. But I can pencil you in for the morning, if the morning ever bothers to show up.

The DameIt can't wait for morning. By morning they'll have him in the ground and a story to go with him. I'll pay double for the inconvenience. I always pay for what I want.

The DetectiveIt's all right, Dale. Sit down, Miss. The chair's not as soft as it looks, but neither am I. Start with the name. His, and then yours.

The DameTommy Doyle. The Clock, they called him, because he never went down before the bell. They found him this morning in his locker, cold, the night he was supposed to lose the title. Only he didn't lose it. He stayed on his feet, and somebody made sure he never got off them again.

The DameMy Tommy was clean. He never took a dive in his life, not once, not for anyone. So you tell me, Detective. Why does a man who wouldn't go down end up dead in the one corner that was supposed to be his?

DaleA clean fighter and gloves like that in the same room. One of those two is lying, and it isn't the fighter.

The DetectiveDale was right, the way she usually is. The lady's grief was real, but so was the diamond on her finger, and in this city those two things rarely keep the same company. Still, a dead man who wouldn't go down is a question, and I've never been able to leave a question alone. I took the case before I finished the thought. The trouble was, I believed her about Tommy. And if she was right, somebody in Calloway Bay had killed a man for the crime of staying honest.

The DetectiveI found Frankie Slim where the rain found him, in an alley off the harbor that smelled like low tide and bad decisions. A fighter named Doyle had won the biggest bout of his life on Friday, and turned up dead in his dressing room on Saturday. In Calloway Bay, that's not a coincidence. That's an arrangement.

Frankie SlimDetective, c'mon, not tonight, huh? It's wet, it's cold, and I got nothin' for ya. Whatever they're sayin' about Doyle, I wasn't even at the fight. I was home. Ask anybody. I swear on my mother.

The DetectiveNobody's saying anything, Frankie. That's the problem. A man wins a fight he was supposed to lose, then loses his life by morning. You hear things. So tell me about the fight.

Frankie SlimThe fight? The fight was the worst-kept secret on the waterfront, that's the fight. Doyle was supposed to take a dive in the fourth. Everybody knew it. The bookies knew it, the cornermen knew it, the kid sweepin' the floor knew it. So the dumb money piles on the other guy, see, 'cause the fix is in.

The DetectiveOnly Doyle didn't take the dive.

Frankie SlimNah, the mug went and won, didn't he. Stood up in the fourth like a stand-up guy, God rest him. And here's the part that don't sit right — the book still cleaned up. All that late action ran through Marchetti's book, every dollar. Win or lose, the house don't bleed.

The DetectiveA fixed fight that doesn't go to plan. The house should've taken a beating. Who walked away rich, Frankie?

Frankie SlimWhoever bet against the fix. Somebody knew Doyle'd stay on his feet — knew it cold — and laid it all on him to win. That's the real killin' right there, and it went straight into Marchetti's pocket. Aw, geez, why'd I say that. I didn't say that. I gotta go, Detective, I just remembered I left a kettle on across town.

The DetectiveAnd Frankie was gone, swallowed up by the rain and his own bad nerves. But he'd left the worst of it behind. Somebody bet against a fix knowing it would fail, and got paid for being right. Doyle didn't die for losing. He died for winning the wrong fight for the wrong man. And every road in this town, sooner or later, runs back to Marchetti's book.

The DetectiveThe Chronicle newsroom at midnight smelled like cold coffee and hot lead. Flynn worked the way a terrier works a rat hole, all teeth and no patience. I'd come to him with a fixed fight and a dead boxer. Flynn never wanted the body. He wanted the money that paid for the casket.

FlynnDon't sit yet, you'll want to stand for this. Your boy Doyle goes down in the third at the Crescent Arena. Fine. But I don't chase fists, I chase deeds. So I pulled the title on the Crescent. Guess who holds the lease.

The DetectiveMarchetti.

FlynnThat's the easy answer, and it's wrong. Pauly runs the gate, sure. But the building? It's owned by a company that's owned by another company that's owned by a trust. I spent four hours in the morgue files chasing it. Every shell's a dead end with a lawyer's name on the door. And then the last one isn't a lawyer at all. It's a charity.

The DetectiveA charity owns a fight house where men get killed on a fixed card. That's a long way to launder a building, Flynn. Whose charity?

FlynnThe cleanest name in Calloway Bay. The trust they're throwing the gala for this very week, the one with his picture in my own paper above the fold, the benefactor, the friend of the orphans, the man they're handing a medal Thursday night. Him. He owns the canvas Doyle bled out on. He just doesn't know I know yet.

The DetectiveFlynn was grinning like a man who'd struck a vein. He didn't see the rest of it. In a drawer somewhere he kept an old file with a single name blacked out in the margin, a story killed before it ran, and he'd never tied it to the smiling face above the fold. I had. The blacked-out name and the charity were the same man. I let Flynn keep grinning. Some threads you don't hand a friend. Not when pulling them is what gets a man drowned in his own harbor.

The DetectiveThe Blue Room had a new coat of paint since the last time Brogan kicked the doors in, but the smell was the same — cigars, gardenias, and money that never asked where it came from. Pauly Marchetti sat in the back booth like a man who'd never spent a night in a cell. Far as the courts were concerned, he never had.

Pauly MarchettiLook who walks into my place. Sit down, sit down, have a drink, you make me nervous standin' there. You know, a lesser man, after everything you done to me — the raid, the papers, all of it — a lesser man would hold a grudge. But me? I'm a reasonable man. So tell me what's eatin' you, and we'll talk like friends.

The DetectiveA fighter named Doyle. Eddie Doyle. He went down in the fourth at the Armory two weeks ago, then he went into a drainage ditch off Quayle Street with his neck broke. And your book had the fix on him three days before the bell.

Pauly MarchettiThe fix? Sure. I ran the book on that fight, I'll say it to your face. A man's gotta earn, and a tank job on a club fighter, that's a livin', that's not a sin. That's Tuesday. But a dead kid in a ditch? Come on. You think I want a body on a undercard, the heat, the heartache? A dead fighter is bad for business. That ain't me. On my mother, that ain't me.

The DetectiveSomebody killed him, Pauly. Men don't break their own necks over a four-round dive.

Pauly MarchettiNow you're usin' your head. Think about it. Nobody clips a man over a couple points — that ain't business, that's somethin' else. Whose name is on that arena? Whose charity night was it, all them flashbulbs, the mayor shakin' hands, the photographs in your friend Flynn's paper? A man like that can't have a crooked fight stinkin' up his big clean evening. And a man like that — he don't carry the ditch himself. He's got people. You wanna pull that thread, detective, you go on. But you didn't hear his name from me. I like my arrangements. And I like breathin'.

The DetectivePauly went back to his drink, all the warmth gone out of him like steam off the harbor. He'd handed me the fix and kept the murder, and for once I believed the line he was selling. Because the part that turned my stomach wasn't the lie. It was the truth. A man was dead over a reputation, and the reputation belonged to somebody who'd never get his cuffs dirty. I'd reached this floor three times now. Every time, the elevator only went up.

The DetectiveThe Crescent Arena at three in the morning is a cathedral with the lights off. Ten thousand empty seats, the smell of rosin and old blood, and one woman standing in the middle of the ring like she owned the deed to it. She'd hired me to find out who got Doyle killed in the eighth round. I'd found out. The trouble was, the answer had her perfume all over it.

The DetectiveYou can stop crying for him now, sweetheart. There's nobody up in the cheap seats to sell it to. Doyle wasn't your fella. You never wept over that kid in your life.

The DameNo. I didn't. He was a club fighter with soft hands and a big mouth, and the mouth was the problem. But you needed a grieving girl to chase, so I gave you one. You chase so beautifully, detective.

The DetectiveSo whose girl are you, really? Doyle threw that fight on somebody's orders. He took the dive, and then he took the long count for good. That's not a gambler's grudge. That's housekeeping.

The DameI belong to a very respectable man. The kind whose name opens this arena and a dozen rooms you'll never see. He keeps me the way he keeps everything — carefully, and out of the light. Doyle was going to talk about a fixed fight, and a man like mine doesn't tolerate a loose thread. So he let the kid die in the ring, in front of ten thousand witnesses, and called it a tragedy.

The DetectiveAnd you hired me to wrap it up neat. Point me at some palooka with a grudge, let me drag him in, and the gala upstairs goes off without a stain.

The DameI hired you to find a killer, and there are so many convenient ones in this city. Take the money, take the name I give you, and take a long train somewhere warm. You're a marked man already — I've heard your name said in rooms where it isn't safe to be named. This is the kindest exit you'll ever be offered. I'd take it, if I were the type who got offered things.

The DetectiveAnd there it was — the same hand I'd felt on the back of my neck for four cases now, only this time it was wearing a glove and a smile. She wasn't Doyle's love. She was his love. The untouchable man at the top, reaching down through a beautiful woman to pin his murder on a stranger. She was offering me cash to hold the frame steady while he hammered in the nails. I looked at the money. I looked at her. And I started counting how many ways a man could say no in a building with no witnesses and ten thousand empty chairs.

The DetectiveThe rain found the precinct steps the way it finds everything in this town, patient and cold and in no particular hurry. Brogan was waiting at the top of them, collar up, a cigarette dying in the wet. He had the look of a man who'd just signed something he couldn't read in the dark.

Lt. BroganIt's closed. Doyle's killing. We got a fella for it, a tough name of Renko, did some collecting for the Marchetti crew. His prints, his motive, a witness who'll swear to it. He'll hang before the leaves turn.

The DetectiveRenko didn't fix that fight, Paddy. Renko couldn't fix a parking ticket. The book that bought Doyle's dive pointed higher than Renko, higher than Pauly. We both read the same page.

Lt. BroganThe book folded. Quiet. A girl who knew where it was decided she'd rather be alive and gone than right and floating, and I don't blame her for it. So there's no book, and there's no name, and there's a small-time tough who'll do for the papers. That's the case. That's all the case there's gonna be.

The DetectiveAnd the man whose name was on that page? I suppose his calendar's clear.

Lt. BroganHis calendar's full. They're giving him a medal Saturday. Civic something, black tie, the mayor's gonna cry. A fighter's dead, a nobody swings, and the whole town puts on its good suit to clap for the man who paid for it. I'm too old to call that justice. I'm not even gonna pretend to you that I tried.

The DetectiveHe went back inside, out of the rain, where it was warm and the coffee was bad and nobody was going to hang who deserved to. I stood there a while longer. I had a name now, the real one, the one at the top of the page, and I tucked it in beside the other secret I'd already chosen to drown. Two of them now. A man can carry two. I turned up my collar and walked home into the wet, no closer to the top than the day I started, and the city slept easy, the way it always does, on a bed somebody else paid for.