Birth of a Monster (13 page)

Ryler began throwing some controlled
jabs and crosses, which Richie quickly moved clear of.

“There might be a future in this for
you, kid, but it takes more than talent. It takes coming in here
when you don’t feel like it. It takes coming in here when your
friends are out chasing tail—you’ll understand that one when you’re
older. It takes coming in here when you’re scared because there’s
somebody better than you who just loves pounding your face in,
because you know you’ve got a tiger inside and one day you’ll be
pounding his face in.”

Richie just nodded. He had long since
learned from his dad the benefits of nodding your head and keeping
your mouth closed.

“Okay, now you do that for two hours.
And then you come in here tomorrow and do that for two hours. And
if I see you in here every day for the rest of the week at least
two hours doing what I just told you, then I just might teach you
something new.”

Ryler gave him a slap on the back, and
Richie set to it. And set to it the next day. And—

“Message delivered,” a konulan said,
interrupting Righty from his pleasant daydream. Righty was on
Harold’s back many hundreds of feet above ground.

“Good work, friend,” Righty
said.

Now he just had to wait to see if Mr.
Harry Felden came outside to take the money . . . or rather, Harold
would have to see it. Righty saw little besides darkness and
amorphous shapes below.

His mind slipped back . . .
.

That Friday, Coach Ryler had approached
him grinning.

“I didn’t think I’d see you on Tuesday
much less the rest of the week. Usually, a little praise is all it
takes to convince a man or a boy he’s got something licked, and
he’ll never practice again. But you’re made of different stuff,
aren’t you?”

Richie nodded more out of fear of
contradicting the hulk than genuine belief. He didn’t think it
would be helpful to mention that his dad would have belted him if
he had failed to come in.

“Well, I’m a man of my word,” Ryler
said, good-naturedly.

He put Richie into the same defensive
stance and said, “Now, relax your knees, keep your back straight,
and allow your body to move up and down in a slight
circle.”

Richie nodded, and Ryler held his
shoulders, moved him just ever so slightly to the right and then
down, back to center, and then straight back up. He repeated the
process about ten times and then switched sides.

“Now, you do that whenever you see
somethin’ comin’ at your face you don’t wanna kiss.”

He then began throwing some hooks
towards Richie’s head. First, slow, and then working up to
intermediate speed.

“You’re coming along real swell,” Ryler
said.

“Now, you do that two hours a day,
Monday through Friday, for two weeks, and I’ll show you some real
fun stuff after that.”

Richie happily complied, and after two
weeks Coach Ryler showed him how to spring upwards from that crouch
with a left or right hook onto Ryler’s outstretched
hands.

When Richie made Ryler’s leathery old
hands sting a tad while he held them out in lieu of the regular
boxing mitts, he knew this student had something special. And
though little Richie did not know it, he had discovered something
special. It was his signature move, and he used it not only
defensively but also offensively, using it to fake out his opponent
about his next move because he could spring up from that crouch
with a nasty straight punch or hook just as easily.

Ryler had put Richie into the ring at
age twelve, rather than fourteen, because he knew by then there was
no way he could take Richie’s skill to the next level based on
drills alone. That was when Richie had met one of his first big
challenges in life: Mike Brewster, better known at the boxing club
as Mike the Bruiser.

The name was no exaggeration. At three
years Richie’s senior, he was far stronger and technically superior
to boot.

“This is when your training becomes
psychological,” Coach Ryler said to Richie when he caught a few
tears escaping from his eyes after a royal beating.

“You’re strengthening your very soul,”
he added.

Richie nodded. The coach had brought
him this far; he trusted him.

“Technique’s important, kid, but it’s
time you started putting on a little muscle. Come this
way.”

Richie followed him over to a rusty,
old bar—clothed mostly in leather, but worn through in places.
Richie looked up at it, realizing it was out of his
reach.

“Don’t worry, kid,” said Ryler,
dragging a chair over to it.

“Hop up.”

Richie did so and grabbed onto
it.

“Drop down and pull yourself up as many
times as you can.”

Richie’s trembling toothpick arms
managed to pull him up a couple times, and although he made a
Herculean exertion, the third rep was outside the realm of
possibility.

“No problem, kid,” said Ryler, grabbing
Richie’s feet and giving him some light assistance, which became
greater and greater as he brought Richie to his tenth
rep.

“This is your new girlfriend,” Ryler
said gruffly. “Spend time with her every day for at least an hour.
Rest, then pull. Rest, then pull. Then, one day, Mike Brewster’s
going to cringe when he sees you stepping into club, not to mention
the ring,” Ryler added laughing.

Richie took an immediate liking to the
old bar and began stopping by an hour before school as
well.

Four years later, Richie was sixteen
years old and two hundred pounds, without a speck of fat visible to
the naked eye. He did two hundred pull-ups in the morning and three
hundred chin-ups in the evening after everyone else left the
academy, and he could do eighty reps of either exercise in a single
stretch.

He was also no longer “Richie.” Mike
the Bruiser—who was now nineteen and had a respectable record of
ten wins and two losses professionally—had first recommended the
nickname “Righty” after Richie had caught Mike’s iron-like abs with
a vicious right uppercut, making them feel like they were made out
of plywood, and causing Mike the Bruiser to double over in pain and
drop one knee in a sign of defeat.

And Coach Ryler’s words had proven
prophetic, as Mike the Bruiser looked at Righty Rick in dismay
every time he saw him enter the club. Mike had switched clubs after
that, claiming he had outgrown the small-town club, and at age
seventeen Righty met him in the ring, making his professional
debut. Righty had knocked out the frightened Mike with vicious body
blows in the first round, after which he moved to another state,
assuring himself that—while he still had a bright future ahead of
him in boxing—he didn’t ever want to meet Righty Rick in the ring
ever again.

As Righty approached larger and more
important fights—while still in high school; those were the good
ol’ days; Janie just about swooned every time he glanced in her
direction; or so he thought—Ryler sat him down after an evening’s
practice and told him: “There are many different kinds of fighters,
but amongst good fighters there are two general
categories.

“First, you have your safe fighter. A
safe fighter’s goal is not to lose. A safe fighter goes for the
decision. He looks for openings and takes careful shots so that he
can rack up points. Sure, he’ll go for the knockout occasionally,
but only if it’s in the final round, and his opponent serves it to
him on a platter. Now, within this category, you have lots of
different sub-styles: the jab artist, the footwork specialist,
etc.

“But there’s a second category, and
it’s called the killer. The killer doesn’t care about points. For a
killer, the object is to send his opponent into a long sleep on the
canvas as soon as possible. There are many reasons this category is
so rare, but the most important one is that most fighters simply
don’t have the killer instinct necessary to hurt another man that
badly in so short a time. The other main reason is fear. When you
go for the kill immediately, it’s an all-or-nothing game. Either
you succeed, or you wear yourself out with missed punches and leave
yourself at the mercy of your opponent in the first
round.

“Then, there’s the strength issue. A
lot of fighters just don’t have the power to knock a fresh opponent
out, whether their punches land or not. Lastly, there’s the
technique issue. I’ve seen a few behemoths win for a stretch
because of their massive power, but their power made them too lazy
to learn the proper technique. Thus, they ultimately end up
punching the air against true professionals and getting knocked out
once they were winded.

“But you—you’re a killer.
You’ve got it all, Righty. It doesn’t bother you one bit to hurt
another man so badly in one or two minutes in front of an audience
that you send him to the ground. And you’re not afraid of going for
the kill and losing. I’ve seen you miss seven punches in a row and
double the guy over with the eighth as calmly as if that was the
punch you had been intending to do the job all along. And you’ve
got the power. I’m seventy-one years old, Righty. I’ve been doing
this a long time, and believe me when I say no one . . .
no one
punches like
you.

“And finally, you’ve got the technique.
Watching you makes me think of descriptions I’ve read of a tiger
killing its prey. It’s like seeing art. Your footwork, your head
movement, your speed, your deception, your endurance, your timing,
your accuracy, your power . . . you’ve got it all. You will
transcend boxing one day, Righty, and become a national legend—a
symbol of national pride. I just hope you can always properly
channel your aggression into boxing. There’s something really
violent lurking inside of you. You must always try to
control—”

“He’s taking the money,” Harold said,
excitedly.

Righty slammed his internal diary shut
and snapped back to the present.

“He’s leaving the house . . . quickly
on horseback.”

“In a carriage?”

“No. I don’t even think he took the
time to saddle!” Harold replied.

“Follow him, but stay high up,” Righty
instructed.

While they monitored the movements of
Mr. Felden, Righty’s mind stubbornly insisted on at least wrapping
up a few key points from the daydream that had been
interrupted.

Your boxing coach died of a
heart attack a year later. Your dad died the next year in a
lumberyard accident. Your mom died of tuberculosis, but we both
know that came from heartache. You lost your shot at national glory
and became a legend only in a local bar in the one-horse town
called Ringsetter.

“The story ain’t over yet,” Righty said
out loud, prompting Harold to cock his head to the side. He asked
nothing. He knew the scent Righty released whenever he dreamed of
his fall.

It hovered around him almost
constantly.

Chapter 26

“Who in the hell’s behind this?”
thundered the mayor. This was no public speech. This wasn’t even a
meeting with his staffers. This was his true inner
circle.

They were inside a luxurious coach,
having spent a pleasant evening of dice, fine whiskey, and women,
although the gravity of today’s events had put a bit of a damper on
their usually festive atmosphere. Amongst them were a senator, two
city councilmen, and a private detective. Outside the coach, a
fearsome bodyguard rode on each side, and two armed coachmen guided
the horses.

But there was a very palpable
absence—the elephant not in the room, if you will—and that was the
chief of police, to whom they so often looked for guidance when
trouble with the underworld started.

The senator, who represented the state
of Rodalia, which included the city of Sivingdel, had many links to
the mayor, but one of the most relevant at the moment pertained to
SISA. The mayor had made a gentleman’s bargain with the senator
long ago that if he voted for SISA he would give him a $10,000 flat
fee plus a 5% ongoing cut of any kickbacks he got from the chief as
the result of taxing the city’s drug peddlers. The chief’s
obligation had been to give the mayor 50% of all his kickbacks from
whatever revenue he extorted from the drug gangs, and the mayor
told him he would see about greasing the palms of whoever else in
the city government needed it.

It had worked splendidly during Heavy
Sam’s reign, and even for a brief period thereafter, but once the
mysterious Mr. Brass had taken over, a nasty little drought had
ensued. Perhaps someone had failed to enlighten the newcomer as to
the ways of Sivingdel. So, the mayor had told the chief to spend no
longer than three weeks investigating the gang from top to bottom
and then to hit them hard and then squeeze out whatever he could
from the humiliated, and enlightened, Mr. Brass.