Get Hit, Hit Back (Fight Card)

  FIGHT CARD: GET HIT, HIT BACK

  ANOTHER TWO-FISTED FIGHT CARD TALE

  JACK TUNNEY

  FIGHT CARD

  CREATED BY PAUL BISHOP AND MEL ODOM

  OTHER TITLES IN THE FIGHT CARD SERIES

  FIGHT CARD: FELONY FISTS

  FIGHT CARD: THE CUTMAN

  FIGHT CARD: SPLIT DECISION

  FIGHT CARD: COUNTERPUNCH

  FIGHT CARD: HARD ROAD

  FIGHT CARD: KING OF THE OUTBACK

  FIGHT CARD: A MOUTH FULL OF BLOOD

  FIGHT CARD: TOMATO CAN COMEBACK

  FIGHT CARD: BLUFF CITY BRAWLER

  FIGHT CARD: GOLDEN GATE GLOVES

  FIGHT CARD: IRISH DUKES

  FIGHT CARD: THE KNOCKOUT

  FIGHT CARD: RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

  FIGHT CARD: AGAINST THE ROPES

  FIGHT CARD: THE LAST ROUND OF ARCHIE MANNIS

  FIGHT CARD: SWAMP WALLOPER

  FIGHT CARD: GET HIT HIT BACK

  MORE FIGHT CARD NOVELS

  COMING SOON

  FIGHT CARD: BROOKLYN BEATDOWN

  FIGHT CARD: UNION OF THE SNAKES

  AND DON’T FORGET

  THE FIRST TWO EXCITING

  FIGHT CARD MMA NOVELS

  FIGHT CARD MMA: WELCOME TO THE OCTAGON

  FIGHT CARD MMA: THE KALAMAZOO KID

  AND COMING SOON

  FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT

  FIGHT CARD: GET HIT, HIT BACK

  e-Book Edition – First Published May 2013

  Copyright © 2013 John Kenyon

  Cover by David Foster

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organizations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher.

  ROUND 1

  OTTUMWA, IOWA 1954

  My head snapped back as the kid threaded a jab through my raised arms. Collins, a rangy guy in black trunks, seemed to sense the end was near. He followed with two more quick jabs that slid off the top of my head as I tucked chin to chest. I was pinned to the corner, my back against the ropes. I knew if I stayed like this, the kid couldn't do much more damage. But if I didn't move, the fight was over anyway.

  As if reading my mind, Harry yelled from my corner, "Get outta there, Griff! Come on!" His voice was like a megaphone filled with angry gravel. I'd heard it a million times, but that didn't lessen its effect. I gathered myself and thought about how I was going to get out of this.

  Without looking up, I waited until Collins started to run out of steam. I then threw a blind uppercut. It missed, but it created enough room between us to let me slip out of the corner. I tried dancing to the side, but my jelly legs wouldn't allow it. The best I could do was stagger along the ropes to the spot between corners. I leaned back and let the ropes bounce me toward the center of the ring, where I stood wobbling, waiting for the kid.

  I was supposed to win this fight. I had several pounds on Collins, and a couple of inches of reach. We had fought a few times before, and though he'd taken a couple from me on lucky shots to the jaw, I usually didn't have much trouble with him.

  Plus, fighting in front of my hometown crowd, if you could call it that, was supposed to help. No one bet on these matches – legitimately, anyway. But it was usually known who was favored. I wasn't picking up much energy from the assorted mugs crammed onto metal bleachers set up along the two long walls of the Coliseum. They usually cheered for whoever was behind in the hope they would get a longer, bloodier bout. Still, they seemed to be pulling for me when they bothered to call out anything, likely convinced there would be no bloodshed and a hometown victory was the best they could hope for.

  The opening round had found us feeling each other out with more dancing than punching. Strange, given we knew each other as well as any two fighters could. But Collins fought warily, and I couldn't seem to snap out of that same mindset. I got in a couple of licks, but mostly we shuffled around the ring, tapping our gloves with weak jabs now and again, staying away from each other. The bell was met with boos from the crowd, which seemed to spur Collins.

  The second round was all him. I'm a southpaw, which usually throws guys a bit. But Collins had fought me enough to know how to counter it. He would dance around out of reach, then come in with a flurry of shots to the body, hunching me over into a defensive position. Before I could counter, he'd be gone, bounding away as I flailed at air with all the effectiveness of an off-balance scarecrow.

  I figured I won the first round thanks to a couple of solid headshots, but he definitely took the second. I stayed away from him in the third, landing a few body shots that probably gave me that one, but he had pummeled me in the fourth. That left this fifth and last round of our middle-of-the-card exhibition. If I didn't do something soon, the damage he had done already was enough to take the round, and the fight.

  My wait in the center of the ring wasn't long. The kid, seeming glad for the breather, now turned and bore down on me, his fists a blur, as if my head was a speed bag. He seemed to sense the fight was his, but went about winning it the wrong way. Probably ahead on points in this round, he should have stayed away from me. Instead, he came hard, tiring himself out while staying close. My arms deflected the blows, and here in the middle of the ring, I could move side to side and duck the haymakers the kid was throwing and counter with a couple of jabs. At this rate, I might not win, but I wasn't going down, either.

  "He's droppin' his right, Griff!" Harry yelled. "Go for the head!"

  Both of us in the ring seemed to hear Harry at the same time. The kid had both hands down as he tried to punch under my arms, aiming for my midsection. The punches had little on them, as he'd spent himself too soon. I stepped right and cocked my left fist. The kid's eyes grew wide as he tried to shift from punch to protection, raising his arms to cover his face. But despite my arms feeling like sacks of sand, I was quicker. I uncorked a fierce jab that connected with the kid's nose and sent him reeling. I went after him as quickly as I could, my feet shuffling across the canvas. I threw two right jabs and a wicked left cross that nearly turned him around to face the sparse crowd.

  The kid, taking a chance to gather his wits, put his gloves on the ropes and kept his back to me, knowing I couldn't hit him from behind. I reached for him, my glove slipping off of his sweat-slickened shoulder as the referee pulled me away. He yelled at Collins to turn and fight, but the kid didn't budge. Maybe he still thought he had me on points and was willing to wait it out. The ref began a standing eight count, but before he could get there, the bell rang to end the fight.

  I slouched toward my corner, where Harry waited with a stool and a bottle of water.

  "Why didn't you fight like that the whole time?" he asked as I sank to my seat. "For a while there, you were fighting like a kid taught by a priest again. I thought I'd knocked that crap outta ya!"

  What Harry could never understand is the priest, Father Tim, was as fierce in the ring as Harry was himself. Maybe more, his calm voice more unnerving than Harry's predictable growls and grunts. The lessons borne of Father Tim's finesse and Harry's street smarts combined to give me the edge in nearly every bout I fought.

  I grabbed the water awkwardly between my gloves and drank deeply. Mostly because I was thirsty, but also because I didn't know how to answer Harry's question.

  Why didn't I fight like that the whole time?

  Harry let me sit silently,
rubbing my shoulders and toweling off my head. For a moment anyway. Then he was on me.

  "See what happens when you stick to the plan? I told you to watch for him to drop his defenses. I don't know what you were doing dancing with him in the corner there, but once you got out and did what I tol' ya, you ended it. You're gonna win this, kid."

  This required no response. He was preaching the gospel of Harry, and anything short of an "amen" would earn me a cuff upside the head. I opted for reverent silence.

  After a couple of minutes, the bell rang and the referee stepped to the center of the ring. I got up and joined Collins to flank the ref. There was no fanfare here, no grand pronouncement. The ref looked at a sheet of paper the judge handed him from the side of the ring, then simply grabbed my hand and raised it above my head for a moment before letting it drop. He then walked to the ropes, raised the top one and stepped through and down to the gym's concrete floor so he could grab a smoke between bouts.

  I turned to the kid and gave him a quick embrace.

  "Got a lucky shot," I said in the kid's ear.

  Collins clapped me behind the head with his glove.

  "I'll get ya next time, chump."

  We made eye contact and smiled. The kid, who had come down on a bus from Ames with other guys from his gym, was a frequent opponent. Next time, he'd likely be on his home turf and would expect to even the score. We weren't friends, exactly, but we weren't enemies, either. At times, I wish my opponents weren't so nice. It would be easier to knock Collins' block off if he was a jerk.

  When I turned to leave the ring, Harry was already gone, back to the locker room to get the next fighter. We had six matches today. Mine was the fourth. He'd return with the light heavyweight for the next bout. I slipped through the ropes and down to the concrete floor. Harry and Eddie, our middleweight, were walking to the ring.

  "Go on up, Eddie," Harry said, clapping him on the back. "I'll be right there."

  Eddie nodded and kept walking, throwing light punches at the air as he went. Harry grabbed my arm and pulled me back behind the Coliseum bleachers.

  "What's wrong with you?" Harry said. "You start fine and you end fine, but in the middle, it's like you're not even out there. When I try to talk to you, I get nothing."

  I shrugged my shoulders, partly out of insolence and partly because I didn't know the answer, didn't want to think about it. He was right, though. Until the fight was on the line, I hadn't really been paying attention. And even then, I fought more with instinct than anything he had taught me, the skills I'd learned as a boy once again pulling me through despite Harry's attempts to make me a contender.

  "You wanna win? You wanna be something more than an exhibition fighter in some backwater? You gotta focus," he said. "You have the talent, Griff. But if you don't snap out of it, you're gonna be nothing more than a bank guard who bores people with stories about when he used'ta be a fighter."

  He gave me a light slap on the cheek and then stared intently in my eyes for a long moment. I stared back, then nodded as an excuse to break his gaze. He turned and walked back to the ring, and I hit the locker room for a quick shower.

  ROUND 2

  The gun was in my face before I could do anything.

  I was coming out of the back after clocking in to start the morning, sticking the last bite of a pastry into my mouth as I came through the door. The manager, Mr. Turner, always has someone pick up something at the bakery on Friday mornings for the customers. Says it's what sets Fidelity Bank & Trust apart. It was Tess's turn this morning, so she put one in the back for me.

  Mr. Turner, a short, fussy man with a variety of three-piece suits, likes me to be on the floor at all times, but I figured ducking in the back for a treat is fine. If there's a problem, the alarm rings throughout the bank, so I always know when something is happening. Or, I should say I would know. It happened only a couple of times in the year I've been here, both false alarms. I’m only on three days a week, so I have time to train and spar, but I like the job and do it right, running my eyes over the place every time I come back onto the bank floor.

  This time, my eyes locked on two guys in dark clothes with canvas sacks pulled over their faces coming through the front door. Before I could move, the alarm bell started to ring. It was quick thinking by one of the tellers, who obviously had no doubt about their intent.

  I reached to undo the snap holding my handgun in its holster. However, the lead guy, the larger of the two, seemed to know exactly where I would be and came across the bank's checkerboard tile floor with large, quick steps, like a heavyweight cutting the ring in half. He had his shotgun up and pointed at my nose before I my fingers could graze leather.

  “Don’t do it, champ,” he said, then turned to watch as his partner swept a handgun across the room, silently commanding the handful of customers to drop to the floor. I thought of taking that split second to unholster my weapon, but the gun in my face was an effective deterrent.

  He turned back to me and without taking his eyes off of mine, reached down, unsnapped my holster and removed the gun. He slipped it into his waistband, grabbed me by the shirtfront and pulled me toward the middle of the floor.

  “Get down with the rest of them,” he commanded, giving me a kick in the backside as he did. "No funny business." I repositioned myself as I dropped so I could keep most of the room in my sights.

  They seemed to know what they were doing. The first guy stayed back, his shotgun at the ready to keep everyone in line, while the second guy, the smaller of the two, went along the counter to collect the drawer contents from each of the four tellers. He gestured with his pistol for them to hurry as they stuffed packs of bills into his open duffel bag. They were trained to do this quickly; the less time a robber was in the bank, we had been told, the less chance someone would get hurt.

  He got to Sandy and took her money, then went to Tess, the last teller in the line. She made eye contact with me just before the robber got to her window. I wanted to help her somehow, but she didn’t seem to need it. She was cool. She grabbed the guy’s bag, filled it with cash and handed it back.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder, walked with quick strides to the gate separating the front from the back, vaulted it and headed to the open vault, where two bags of cash sat waiting to be distributed to the tellers. It was payday at the packing plant, and the guys getting off the first shift at three o'clock would stream in soon after to cash their checks. We always got an extra amount to cover that day, but Mr. Turner, who usually filled the cash drawers, hadn’t gotten to it yet.

  The robber grabbed the bags, emptied them into his duffel, zipped it shut and headed toward the door. His partner checked his watch, nodded and followed, his back turned to the door so he could face the bank floor. They must have timed the alarms. It took the cops about four minutes to get to the bank after an alarm had been tripped, and if I had to guess I’d say these guys were in and out under three.

  “Everybody stay down,” said the one with the shotgun. “No heroics. Especially from you, tin badge.” He pointed at me with his gun, his eyes locking on mine as he hit the door, turned and rushed out.

  I pushed myself up onto my knees and then jumped to my feet and ran toward the door.

  “Griffin, the police will be here soon, don't go!” That was Mr. Turner, but I ignored him.

  As I reached for the handle, I remembered my second weapon, a small gun I wore in an ankle holster. I’d felt silly buying it because no one so much as sneezed in that place, let alone ever made like they were going to rob it. But I wanted to be ready.

  I cleared the door and reached for the gun, hopping on one foot as I found its grip and pulled it from the holster. I saw the two men running around a corner and into an alley a block away. I followed, hoping to see their getaway car so I could describe it to the cops. I was glad for the roadwork I had put in during training. Even in leather-soled brogans, I knew I could keep pace. As I came around the building, I saw the taller robber reach a late model,
brown sedan, an Oldsmobile or something like it. The smaller guy, the one carrying the money, lagged a bit behind. I dropped to one knee and sighted my gun on the one carrying the bag.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” I said. He didn’t and I did, aiming for the guy’s leg. I heard him shriek, drop his gun and reach around to his back. I'm better with my fists than a gun, and had a tendency to shoot high. He dropped to his knees and fell forward onto the money bag. I got up and walked quickly across the distance between us, never letting my gun drop.

  I reached the man on the ground. He was on his stomach and wasn’t moving. The big man, the one who had his gun on me during the robbery, reached the getaway car and turned, his hand on the door handle. I yelled for him to stop, but he opened the door and stood behind it, using it as a shield. As he raised his shotgun toward me, I heard sirens split the air. Keeping my gun on the car, I knelt to feel for a pulse on the second robber. The one at the car climbed in as I did this, and the car squealed and sped away. I fired once, hitting the trunk, but it still fishtailed up the alley and turned at the next street.

  I turned my attention back to the robber on the ground. I realized I was kneeling on his back, my knee pinning him to the bag. He still hadn’t moved, and when I flipped him over and pulled up the sack covering his face I understood why. His eyes had glassed over and his features were slack. I must have caught him in the heart, a lucky shot, or unlucky, if you saw things from his point of view. Then again, he wasn’t going to see anything from his point of view ever again.

  I pulled the bag out from under his body and let him fall onto his back. I hefted it, realizing they’d come away with a nice score. I unzipped it and looked at the contents. It was stuffed with bills, some loose, some banded. I worked in a bank, and saw large sums like this every day. But seeing it outside of the bank was startling. I picked it up, wanting to secure it. Looking around, I saw we were at the edge of the bank’s employee parking lot. Protected on three sides by other buildings, it was compact but accommodated the ten or so cars needed for employees. My car was just a few feet away from us. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my keys and opened my trunk. I threw the money bag inside next to my shoes and gloves, pulled a picnic blanket over the bag and slammed the lid.