The Boxer and the Spy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  SKYCAM I

  CHAPTER 1

  SKYCAM II

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  SKYCAM III

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  SKYCAM IV

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  SKYCAM V

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  SKYCAM VI

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  SKYCAM VII

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  SKYCAM VIII

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  Praise

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

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  For Joan, who needs no blue butterfly.

  SKYCAM I

  Twenty miles north of Boston, Cabot was a rich town on the water. The houses were generally big and old and had nice yards. Along the ocean-front, on Water Street, the houses were mostly bigger and older and had long front porches where people could sit in good weather and look at the ocean.

  The boy liked to walk around town after dark and look in windows. He liked to see the lives being lived in the lighted interiors. Men reading newspapers, women making supper, kids doing homework. He didn’t peek in, he just looked as he walked by and felt somehow comfortable looking at the regular people doing regular things. He didn’t like to stay home so much after supper because ever since his father died, his mother wouldn’t eat supper. She’d give him his and sit with him while he ate, and drink. In a little while she would get weeping and hug him and tell him he was all she had, and it would make him really uncomfortable. So he’d go out for a walk until she got so drunk she’d fall asleep on the couch. He had gotten the timing of it down pretty well, so when he came home, he could go right to bed. In the morning there would be no mention of it. The boy didn’t have too many friends. He wasn’t mean or anything, but a lot of kids thought he was a sissy because he didn’t like sports, and he liked old movies, and he liked to draw. He knew that, but he couldn’t change himself. He could only be what he was.

  There was a sort of closed-in space on the beach, at the far end, near the bathhouse, among the big smooth rocks that stuck out into the ocean, where the boy liked to sit sometimes and think about things, and wait for his mother to drink herself to sleep. It was a cloudy night, but warm for March, and the boy was comfortable in the shadows of his place in the rocks.

  A man and woman walked along the beach toward his rocks. They walked close together.

  “It’s okay?” the man said.

  ‘Absolutely, “ the woman said.

  “The property is in my name?”

  “Yes. ”

  “Even though it’s a school project, ” the man said.

  “Yes. Cost will simply be subsumed in the school budget, ” the woman said.

  “And the fact that it’s on conservation land?”

  “That particular parcel, ” the woman said, “is no longer conservation land. ”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “You know the right buttons to push, ” she said, “you don’t have to push many in a town like this. ”

  The boy sank as low as he could in his place. There was no moon showing. Thank god it was cloudy.

  The man and woman had stopped and stood perhaps three feet from the boy, above the high water line, looking out over the dark ocean.

  “It’ll stand up?” the man said.

  “It’ll stand up and the way is greased for the next project and the one after that, ” the woman said.

  “Did it cost us?”

  “Money? No. We don’t have to split the money with anyone. I scratched some backs, they scratched mine. I know how this town runs. ”

  “You ought to, ” the man said. “You run it. ”

  “I do, ”she said.

  “What do you think we can sell the house for?”

  “My guess, a million eight, ” she said.

  “Nine hundred thousand each, he said. “And how much did it cost us?”

  She laughed softly.

  “Nothing, ” she said, and turned and kissed him hard on the mouth. They held the kiss, and then slowly separated.

  “Give me a few minutes, ” she said. “If people saw us coming from the beach together, at this time of night, they might get the wrong idea. ”

  The man laughed.

  “And they’d be right, ” he said.

  She laughed and patted his cheek and turned and walked away down the beach. He watched her as she went. The clouds that had hidden the moon drifted so that he could see her in the moonlight as she turned up the path and walked toward the street where they had parked separately. The moonlight seemed to the boy as bright as day. The man turned back and looked directly at the boy. Their eyes met.

  “You, ” the man said. “You were there.... ”

  The boy was frozen. He could hear the heavy rasp of the man’s breath.

  “You heard everything, ” the man said.

  “I didn’t hear anything, ” the boy said.

  “Yeah, ” the man said. “You did. ”

  CHAPTER 1

  Keep your shoulder up,” George said, ”and turn your hand so you hitting like with the first two knuckles.”

  Terry nodded. He was wearing sneakers and knee-length black shorts and a blue tank top. George held up the big padded mitts.

  “Left foot forward,” George said. “Stay balanced. Knees bent. Push against the floor.”
r />   Terry nodded.

  “Left jab,” George said, “left jab, right cross.”

  “Two lefts,” Terry said.

  “Yep. Crisp. Make his head snap.”

  Terry went into his stance. His hands and wrists were taped. Over the tape, he had on big blue boxing gloves. He put the left one up near his temple and the right one a little lower, near the hinge of his jaw. His left foot was forward. He shuffled forward slightly and jabbed with his left, torquing his forearm so the punch would land the first two knuckles. And again. Both punches were off-center and slid off the mitt without the satisfying pop you got when it was solid.

  “Set up,” George said.

  Back to his stance briefly, then the right cross. It popped into George’s left mitt. Better.

  “The jabs sucked,” Terry said.

  “They were good punches,” George said. “They would have done the job. They just didn’t hit the sweet spot.”

  “Right cross was there,” Terry said.

  “Supposed to be,” George said. “Let’s do it again.”

  “Same thing?”

  “Same thing.”

  They did it again, and three more times. Terry never got all three punches right in sequence.

  “Take a break,” George said, and nodded at a folding chair.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” Terry said. “I can’t get it.”

  George smiled. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Fifteen,” Terry said.

  “Not too late,” George said. “I think you got time to learn.”

  “We been working at it for two months now,” Terry said.

  “Take three, four thousand punches, each punch, ‘fore you groove the muscle memory,” George said.

  “How many you think I’ve done?”

  “‘Bout three hundred,” George said.

  Terry worked on his breathing. He still couldn’t believe how hard it was to box, how tired he got, how quick.

  “How many you think you’ve done, George?”

  George smiled and squinched his eyes and tilted his head back as if he were figuring.

  “A million,” he said. “And eight.”

  “Eight,” Terry said.

  George was a solid-looking black man, with a modest potbelly and graying hair. He shuffled his feet a little and put a tight left hook into the heavy bag. The bag nearly came loose from its tether.

  “Nine,” George said.

  They both laughed.

  “Doesn’t that hurt your hand?” Terry said.

  “Nope.”

  “You’re not wearing gloves, you’re not even taped. Why doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Used to it,” George said.

  He was wearing black sweatpants and a gray T-shirt. His arms were still muscular looking.

  “How old are you, George?” Terry said.

  “Fifty-five.”

  “How long did you fight?”

  “Started when I was a kid, quit when I was forty-one.”

  “Did you start doing this right after?” Terry said.

  “Nope.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “I sparred a little, did some work as a bouncer.”

  “Ever lose a fight in a bar?”

  “Didn’t have many,” George said. “Ones I had didn’t last very long.”

  “But did you ever lose?”

  “No,” George said. “‘Course not.”

  Terry nodded. His breathing had steadied.

  “Round two?” he said.

  “Round two,” George said. “You and the heavy bag.”

  SKYCAM II

  His name was Jason Green and he was dead. The incoming tide had washed him up onto’ the beach and left him there as it receded. Now, he lay on his back in the pale darkness and gazed sightlessly up at the moon, while the declining ocean washed over his Air Jordans.

  He lay like that in the stillness of death until morning, when a, yellow Labrador retriever trotted happily down the beach and stopped to sniff at him. She wagged her tail and stepped back a little, then began to circle him, sniffing as she went, her tail wagging eagerly. A ways behind the dog came her owner, a woman wearing a Red Sox baseball cap and a maroon warm-up suit. She carried a leash. When she saw her dog sniffing, the woman stopped.

  “Molly, ” she said to the dog, her voice beginning to rise. “Molly, you get away from there. Molly! Molly!”

  Molly stopped sniffing and looked at her owner.

  “Molly, ” the owner was screaming now. “You come, now! Come!”

  Molly gave the dog equivalent of a resigned shrug and trotted over to the woman in the maroon warm-ups. The woman snapped the leash onto Molly’s collar and turned, and the two of them ran back up the beach. As they ran, Molly looked back now and then. Her owner did not.

  The morning sun was bright. It dried the wet clothes the boy was wearing. The ocean water was very calm. The tide had ebbed entirely during the night, and turned, and was now beginning imperceptibly to creep in. A few gulls landed near the body and hopped around, looking at it. Nothing else moved.

  After a time, in the distance, there was the sound of a siren. Then a police car pulled up in the beach parking lot, and two cops got out and walked down the beach toward the body. When the cops got close, the gulls began to squawk and then flew up and circled overhead while the cops squatted in the sand beside the dead boy.

  CHAPTER 2

  Did you hear about Jason?” Abby said.

  They were hanging on the Wall across from the town common.

  “Jason Green?” Terry said.

  “Yes,” Abby said. “He committed suicide.”

  Terry stared at her.

  “Suicide?”

  “Yeah,” Tank said. “Cops said he loaded up on ‘roids and it made him crazy.”

  “Steroids?” Terry said.

  “Isn’t it awful?” Beverly said.

  “Jason never did ‘roids,” Terry said. “He wasn’t a jock. He wanted to be some kind of damn landscape designer.”

  “They found him on the beach,” Suzi said.

  She seemed excited. Her cheeks were bright.

  “They said he probably jumped off the Farragut Bridge and the currents took him to our beach,” Suzi said. “Some woman found him when she was walking her dog.”

  Beverly hunched her shoulders and hugged herself as if she were cold.

  “How’d you like to have found him?” she said.

  “How come you haven’t heard about this?” Abby asked. “It was on the tube last night. It was all over school today.”

  Terry shrugged.

  “All Terry thinks about is boxing,” Suzi said.

  “And sex,” Terry said.

  “With Abby?” Suzi said.

  “I don’t know what he’s thinking about,” Abby said. “He sure isn’t doing anything.”

  “Not because I don’t try,” Terry said.

  They all laughed. Suzi took out a pack of long thin cigarettes and lit one.

  “Try me,” Suzi said.

  They all laughed again.

  “Abby can’t fight me off forever,” Terry said.

  “Don’t count on it,” Abby said, and smiled at Terry.

  “You ever take anything?” Tank said. “You know, to help with the boxing and stuff?”

  Terry shook his head.

  “George would kick my butt right out of the gym if he caught me,” Terry said.

  “You really going for the Golden Gloves?” Terry said.

  “Not this year, maybe next, depends on when George thinks I’m ready.”

  “Was he really a pro boxer?” Tank said.

  “George fought everybody,” Terry said.

  “So how come he’s in some little health club teaching kids?” Suzi said.

  “Probably didn’t beat everybody,” Tank said.

  “He beat a lot,” Terry said.

  A tan Ford Fusion cruised past the common and stopped in front of the Wall.

 
; “I think that’s the principal,” Beverly said.

  The side window went down. It was Mr. Bullard.

  “Get rid of the cigarette,” he said.

  He was a thick man, with a thick neck.

  “We’re not in school,” Tank said.

  “Get rid of it,” Mr. Bullard said.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Principal,” Suzi said.

  She dropped the cigarette on the sidewalk and carefully stamped it out. Bullard nodded, looked hard at Tank for a moment, and drove away. As soon as he was out of sight, Suzi took out another cigarette and lit it.

  “You know,” Beverly said, “I think, actually, it’s against the law. I think they passed it last year.”

  “Smoking?” Suzi asked.

  “Smoking in a public place,” Beverly said.

  “That’s bogus,” Tank said.

  They all sat watching the smoke from Suzi’s cigarette curl up into the soft air.

  “Who says Jason was on ‘roids?” Terry asked.

  “It was on TV last night,” Terry said.

  “So that makes it true for sure,” Suzi said.

  “Yeah, babe,” Tank said. “If there’s one thing you can trust, it’s television.”

  “They did an autopsy,” Suzi said.

  “And they found some kind of note,” Beverly added.

  “What’d it say?” Terry asked.

  “I don’t know. They just said it was a suicide note.”

  “Jason was kind of porky,” Tank said. “Maybe he was taking them to lose weight.”

  “How many people you know of take steroids to lose weight?” Terry asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tank said. “Some of the guys on the football team take ‘roids. I could ask them.”

  “Why don’t you,” Terry said.

  “I will,” Tank said.

  CHAPTER 3

  The town beach in Cabot ran a couple of miles along the south end of town. It was broken occasionally by outcroppings of dark rock, rounded smooth by being so long beside the ocean. Terry sat with Abby on one of the outcroppings.