Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll - Todd Robinson

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warned with a passion. “Think of the green across the Glean.”

      “What’s a Glean?” wondered Rhino.

      “Ready, Scuzzy?”

      “Ready-steady. Rocking to go. When I get money?”

      The longest time took to disentangle Beardy from the ropes and explain to him where and who he was. After Rhino had taken Hulk to the Hoboken Methodist Hospital and The Cadaver discovered he had a limp, Mercy Beaucoup was left with no choice but enter the ring in his mustard Calani pants and shiny Hungarian shoes.

      Although Mercy Beaucoup danced like a butterfly, he most assuredly did not sting like a bee. For three minutes that seemed to pass slower than the seasons, Mercy buzzed around the ring, maintaining a steady presence in the corner farthest from Scuzzi, doing the Ali shuffle, gyrating his head, feigning with great flourish, and not once getting within ten feet of his opponent. Anon, Mercy Beaucoup fainted from exhaustion, falling face-first on the post. By this time, Weeping Willy had locked himself in the powder room and Viddi tried unceremoniously to pry the door open with a rusty umbrella in lieu of a crowbar as Dimitri Sciatscu voiced some reservations about the quality of his sparring partners.

      At The Palooka Bar, Viddi was late for their meeting with South African trainer Ludwig Van Oizman, a contemporary legend west of Transvaal. Although Oizman had coached some Olympians of note in Jo’burg, he did not command an exorbitant fee in the land of the free, as he was just off the boat after causing a tribal dispute of some acrimony in his homeland. To boot, he met the one requisite no trainer in the Big Apple did: he’d never heard of Viddi.

      “Sorry ’bout the delay, guv’nor.” Viddi was beaming with even more confidence than usual.

      “No harm done. You have my fee, Mr. Golbranson?”

      “In what sense?”

      “In your pocket. In that sense.”

      “With the neighborhood going to seed and all…” Viddi explained with forbearance.

      “We gave you the dosh last night,” sighed Rhino.

      “You left us ruined, man.” After his punishment at the hands of Scuzzy, Beardy found it somewhat difficult to speak.

      “Well, I don’t have it on me, physically.”

      Oizman, though not amused, knew the world too well to be angry. “You carrying it metaphysically?”

      “You told us the dough might as well be at Fort Knox,” wailed Hulk.

      “Let’s not get into politics.”

      “Viddi, Viddi, Viddi,” singsonged Mercy Beaucoup, glaring at Viddi through the blackness of his eye.

      “Rollo was celebrating his last outing as a free man for quite some time. You expect me to treat my own brother to tap water and easy-listening radio under such circumstances?”

      Calmly, Oizman stood up and walked away.

      “But who’s going to train Scuzzy?” bellowed Viddi with indignation as he tried to grab Oizman’s shirtsleeve.

      “You do it for all I care.” Oizman tore himself free with a light middleweight’s grace of movement.

      “Hey, Jungle Jim there isn’t as stupid as he looks,” exclaimed Viddi as the boys scowled at him in disappointed silence, reassuring them with the famous Viddi wink.

      At the Ring of Fire Gym, Dan Prince had been listening long enough to the out-of-towner with the chapeau Alpin and thick sunglasses sing the praises of his prodigy—much too long, since the man kept tugging at his sleeve to the point of playing a tune to the jangling of Dan Prince’s vast array of rings and amulets.

      “What title did you say your fighter holds, Mr. Gunnerson?” queried Dan Prince, his patience on the brink of exhaustion.

      With caution, Viddi looked around. All it took was one palooka who recognized him and he’d be outward-bound faster than a mermaid out of a tuna factory. “The YMCU.”

      “How can he be a champion when he’s never had a professional fight? In my fifty years in the game I’ve never heard of such a title.”

      “It’s East European. You’ll have people from the former Ukraine stampeding at the gates.”

      “The Ukraine?” Dan Prince could swear the Bedlamite was trying to play “When the Saints Go Marching In” by yanking hard enough at his sleeve.

      “Scuzzy’s from Bucharest.” Viddi kept rattling the moveable jewelry store on Dan Prince’s person.

      “And where do you hail from, Mr. Gunnerson?”

      “In my day I was a contender in Lilleby, in Norway.”

      “Professional boxing isn’t allowed in Norway.”

      “I had to go all the way to Finland to beat guys into meatballs.”

      “Also illegal in Finland.”

      “It’s okay for Norwegians to box there, in the north.”

      “Mr. Gunnerson, please go away.”

      “Yumpin’ yemeni. Want to project your ham-and-eggers from m’boy, be my guest.” Viddi’s dramatic exit was somewhat foiled by his missing the door by seven inches as his dark glasses allowed for limited view.

      All heads, bare and geared, Alpine and native, turned at the muffled explosion and flurry of strange curses followed by a soft hiss.

      “Not again,” sighed Dan Prince.

      Mambo le Primitif found himself unable to retrieve his gloved hand from the other side of the sighing boxing bag as he waited for some of the sand to sift out.

      “Third bag this week.” Babycakes McGee, the trainer, yawned.

      “About time he came out,” said Dan Prince softly.

      “You’ll have to fly someone in from Touristown. Word’s spreading and no one east of Palookaville would be stupid enough to take him on.”

      An angelic smile lit up Dan Prince’s face like all the votive candles at St. Peter’s, a portent he was about to make or save money. “Oh, Mr. Gunnerson. Wait…”

      Joe, the owner, was none too happy to see the Katzenjammer Kids saunter into The Palooka Bar like an invading horde. To date, he had profited little from his acquaintance with Knold and Tot, the grandsons of the infamous Torsten “The Hooch” Jones—who spent the last fifty years of his life in Sing Sing after killing off a whole Elks Lodge in the Catskills with a batch of homemade brew labeled The Tallahassee Twister. Knold and Tot tried to slide inconspicuously towards the bar, no mean feat for the identical albino twins, Knold limping on his left leg and Tot on his right.

      “I’m still in court because of that Elderberry Nectar.”

      “Vintage stuff that. Chap had a defective immune system.” Tot did not take kindly to ingrates casting aspersions on their skills at the family trade.

      “Check this out,” whispered Knold, affecting a conspiratorial glance.

      “We call it ‘the Alabama Mama,’” hummed Tot softly but proudly.

      With stealth, Knold opened his Tasmanian Devil bomber jacket, revealing a plain quart bottle. “Scentless as a Methodist altar. Go on the town and the missus won’t smell a thing.”

      “And you can tipple all you want while you do the racing forms at work,” added Tot. “It’ll sell like tutti-frutti ice cream in hell.”

      “I’m still using your ‘Hiroshima Hummer’ for pest control,” objected Joe.

      “Keep it as a free sample,” offered Knold. “The rubes’ll be crying out for more.”

      “Dying for more, most likely,”

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