Fatherhood by Thomas H. Cook

destitution. Whatever deal Spiro Melinas had made for Vinnie, whatever cash may have ended up in some obscure bank account, it hadn’t lasted very long. Which brought me finally to the issue at hand.
    â€œToo bad about.…” I hesitated just long enough to wonder about my safety, then stepped into the ring and touched my gloves to Vinnie’s. “About … that last fight.”
    â€œYeah,” Vinnie said, then turned back toward the window as if it were the safe corner now, his head lolling back slightly as the bus staggered forward, wheezed, then ground to a halt again.
    â€œThe thing is, I never could figure it out,” I added.
    Which was a damn lie since you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to come up with the elements that make up a fix. It’s money or fear on the fighter’s side, just money on the fixer’s.
    So it was a feint, my remark about not being able to figure out what happened when Douggie Burns’s glove kissed Vinnie’s cheek, and the Shameful Shamrock dropped to the mat like a dead horse, just a tactic I’d learned in business, that if you want to win the confidence of the incompetent, pretend to admire their competence. In Vinnie’s case, it was a doubt I offered him, the idea that alone in the universe I was the one poor sap who wasn’t quite sure why he’d taken the world’s most famous dive.
    But in this case it didn’t work. Vinnie remained motionless, his eyes still trained on the window, following nothing of what went on beyond the glass, but clearly disinclined to have me take up any more of his precious time.
    Which only revved the engine in me. “So, anybody else ever told you that?” I asked. “Having a doubt, I mean.”
    Vinnie’s right shoulder lifted slightly, then fell again. Beyond that, nothing.
    â€œThe thing I could never figure is, what would have been worth it, you know? To you, I mean. Even, say, a hundred grand. Even that would have been chump change compared to where you were headed.”
    Vinnie shifted slightly, and the fingers of his right hand curled into a fist, a movement I registered with appropriate trepidation.
    â€œAnd to lose that fight,” I said. “Against Douggie Burns. He was over the hill already. Beaten to a pulp in that battle with Chester Link. To lose a fight with a real contender, that’s one thing. But losing one to a beat-up old palooka like—”
    Vinnie suddenly whirled around, his eyes flaring. “He was a stand-up guy, Douggie Burns.”
    â€œA stand-up guy?” I asked. “You knew Douggie?”
    â€œI knew he was a stand-up guy.”
    â€œOh yeah?” I said. “Meaning what?”
    â€œThat he was an honest guy,” Vinnie said. “A stand-up guy, like I said.”
    â€œSure, okay,” I said. “But, excuse me, so what? He was a ghost. What, thirty-three, four? A dinosaur.” I released a short laugh. “The last fight of his, for example. With Chester Link. Jesus, the whipping he took.”
    Something in Irish Vinnie’s face drew taut. “Bad thing,” he muttered.
    â€œSlaughter of the Innocents, that’s what it was,” I said. “After the first round, I figured Burns would be on the mat within a minute of the second. You see it?”
    Vinnie nodded.
    â€œThen Douggie comes back and takes a trimming just as bad in the second,” I went on, still working to engage Irish Vinnie, or maybe just relive the sweetness of my own vanished youth, the days when I’d huddled at the ringside press table, chain-smoking Camels, with the bill of my hat turned up and a press card winking out of the band, a guy right out of Front Page , though even now it seemed amazingly real to me, my newspaperman act far closer to my true self than any role I’d played since then.
    â€œThen the bell rings on Round Three and Chester windmills Douggie all over again. Jesus, he was