He Fixed My Fight, So the Champion Vanished novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Cooler

The street door was still unlocked.

I climbed the stairs in the dark with my hood dripping, and I stopped at the top.

One light was on, over the ring.

Cal was sitting on the apron with his elbows on his knees and the release letter on the canvas beside him.

He did not look up.

"Bea said you went to the motel," he said.

"Vince was in room fourteen," I said. "He had Lou in a chair."

"Is that why you came back?"

"I came back to tell you something before he does."

He went still.

"Is it a question?"

"No."

"Then say it."

I had practiced it the whole nine blocks, and every version was gone.

I stood on the wet boards with my hands open at my sides.

"On March fourteenth, four years ago, I was in the back room at the arena in Allentown," I said. "I was twenty-one. Vince handed me a cooler."

Cal's head came up.

"He told me to carry the sealed bottles to the corners. He said it was how you learned the business. He told me to put the one with the blue tape on top, because it was the house bottle."

The rain ticked on the skylight.

"I carried it to the blue corner and the red corner. I put the blue tape on top and I said good luck."

He did not speak.

"I didn't know what was in it," I said. "Not until my own bottle went down the sink. I swear to you, Cal."

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