The DuffyVinci Code

“He called my brother a retard,” Shaheem said. He was 16 years old and was referred to the clinic because he beat the shit out of 21 year-old punk who was making fun of his brother.
“You broke his nose, gave him a concussion and cracked three of his ribs I said,”
“Yeah?” He said without a trace of street bravado. None of that “What you gonna do about it” attitude.
“Did beatin’ the shit out of this guy help Sammy?”
“Whatcha you mean?”
“I mean, you beat this shit out of this ignorant fool, fucked him up but you got arrested, got a record and now you gottta come here. Was it worth it?” I said.
“Hell yeah, Sometimes you got put people in their place.” He said.
“Isn’t that kind of self defeating?” I said. The instant it came out I wished I had used a less social-worky term.
Shaheem didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.
“I mean did it come back to bite you in the ass and cause a whole mess of shit for you?’ I said.
“Sometimes people gotta be put in their place.” He said.
“Sammy any better because of it?”
“He didn’t see shit.”
“Well then?”
“Well then what?”
“If you didn’t do it for Sammy, then you did it for yourself and it got you in a mess of trouble.” I felt like a genius.
“I did it to put the motherfucker in his place.”
I felt less like a genius. We had to finish the session and I’m not exactly sure what we accomplished.
“Alright Shaheem. We’re out of time, you can go. Do me a favor and don’t hit anyone this week?”
“Duffy—stop frontin’. Man you grew up here. You went to McDonough, shit, you’re fighter,” he said.
“Boxing’s a sport, it ain’t the same.
“Uh-huh. Two motherfuckers hit each other and you call it a sport?’ he said.
“Look--“
“Yo Duff, hook me up with some tickets for Friday?”
I was fighting on a fight card at the Crawford Armory this week and as a fighter I got a few freebies. The way people asked you would think I got a hundred.
I got two out of the desk and gave them to Shaheem.
“Look, don’t tell nobody that I gave you these. I don’t get that many.” I said.
“Straight up, Duff. You alright,” he went to give me the latest street handshake and I got about three quarter of the way through it until it fell apart. I avoided the soul handshakes because I always blew then three quarter of the way through.
Shaheem didn’t seem to care. Instead he touched his fist to his heart, pointed his first two fingers at me in kind of a horizontal peace sign and made a fist.
“What does all that mean?’ I asked.
“It means love, you and me, peace and justice,” He said with a very serious expression.
“You’re not supposed to flash any gang stuff in here, you know.”
“Nah, man, I don’t run with no gang. Just some of my fellas, It’s something we came up with.”
“Swell—don’t do it in the clinic,” I said. He just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
I extended my hand in handshake conventional enough for Dick Cheney and told Shaheem I’d see him next week.

I looked at Shaheem’s file and knew that the best thing to do was to immediately get to the paperwork. Unfortunately, for me doing the best thing wasn’t a habit I had gotten into. It was the reason why I was almost always in trouble at work. At the exact time the word “almost” formed in my consciousness trouble appeared in human form at the opening of my cubicle.
It was the Michelin Woman.
Claudia Michelin was the clinical director of Jewish Unified Services. She was a big woman, probably another corn muffin away from 300. She wore stretch pants made from a fabric that wasn’t naturally occurring and the back of her neck looked like a pack of hot dogs.
“I just audited your charts and your treatment plans are out of compliance. In fact you had a compliance rate of 44%.” She said. There seemed to be some sort of pleasure in her voice.
“Hey! How about that! I’m up from last month! Wasn’t I at 38% compliance?” I said.
“No. You were at 48%” She said. These need to be up to date by Friday.” She hefted about twenty files up to her chest.
“I’m workin’ on ‘em Claudia.”
“You need to work harder,” She gave me her version of a smile and left.

I figured there was no time like the present and opened up Shaheem’s chart. I noticed I hadn’t done notes for his last two sessions. I wasn’t in the mood for doing that much work so I did what every low level social worker does—I went to the break room to see if there were any donuts left over from this mornings in-service on, “Natural Therapeutic Techniques –Aromatherapy.” This was one in a series of natural/holistic/new age in-services that we were supposed to attend. That morning I had signed the attendance form, grabbed a coffee and a Boston crème and headed to my cubicle where within no time I was making my own less-than-therapeutic aromatherapy. Now, there was one plain lonely donut left and I made it my friend. I never got to any notes and left at five minutes to five.
Tonight was Monday and with the fights on Friday this would be the last night of sparring. If you’ve been boxing your whole life one more sparring session before a fight really isn’t going to teach you anything new or get you any more ready for an upcoming fight. It may keep your reflexes primed but it is more important to go into a real bout rested and without any residual soreness. Lots of guys without experience do too much and, come fight night, they’ve left it all in the gym.
Most fans of the sport picture gyms filled with warriors ready to hone their craft and do battle. That might be the case at Gleason’s in Brooklyn or Smokin’ Joes in Philadelphia but in the city of Crawford, New York it certainly wasn’t. When I had a fight that mattered I traveled to Brooklyn to get better sparring in but for a $600 payday I would make do at the Crawford Y. The problem with that was that the only guy that been around to fight lately had been Vinci Martinez.
Vinci worked during the day loading the trucks at the cookie factory and boxed at night. He’d been in the game for 12 years and he had morel losses than wins—a lot more.
He was a nice guy, he’d do anything for you and he trained hard—he just wasn’t very good. He took pride in being a professional boxer and I think that’s what kept him training because it certainly wasn’t the money or the fame he was getting fighting in club shows up and down the East coast. Sparring with Vinci was better than not sparring at all but not by much because he was easy to hit and easy to get away from.
Smitty, our trainer, told us to do four rounds and to keep it light. You want to stay away from cuts and bruises when you’re this close to fight night. Vinci was on the card Friday night against a guy who was ten years younger than him and 6-0. Vinci was there as an opponent but he treated it like it was a million dollar payday against Oscar DeLaHoya.
Still, tonight as we sparred I couldn’t help but notice that I was catching Vinci with every jab I threw and he wasn’t hitting me much at all. He would rush in and pin me on the ropes but I was spinning away from him like it was nothing.
There’s an unspoken code in the world of boxing gyms—shit, everything in boxing gyms is unspoken. The central thing about the code is respect. You respect the sport enough to not disgrace it and you can disgrace it in any of a number of ways. Coming to the gym and not working out is a disgrace. Elbowing, lacing, rabbit punching or any other foul is a disgrace in the gym—though it can be kind of a badge of honor in an actual bout. Maybe most important of all is that you respect your fellow fighters.
That means you don’t beat the shit out of a beginner just because you can—unless he needs to be taught a lesson or needs to be taken down a peg for talking shit or for beating up an even less experienced beginner. You also don’t embarrass a veteran because your better but you also don’t go easy on someone you’re better than him either because that’s even more disrespectful. You go as hard as you can and get your work in without hurting the guy or by making him look bad. Above all you don’t talk about how you did in the gym against another opponent except to say something like “We got some good work in today.”
It was all about respect for the work, for the guts and for the effort. Now you could ask a 100 boxers who’ve been at it for years and see if this is true. Most won’t go into it, most understand, but, for a lot of them, it is at a visceral level. Fighters aren’t like social workers—they do shit and don’t talk, not the other way around.
For the last two rounds Vinci pushed it. He caught me with a single right hand and I nodded acknowledgement, any more than that would’ve been patronizing. I concentrated on my movement and defense and it made me feel sharp, at least as sharp as I ever felt before a fight. No matter what I always feel like I could’ve done more in training before a fight.
“Nice work, Duff,” Vinci said and held up a glove.
“Yeah, thanks Vin,” I said and touched up with him.
“Who you got Friday?”
“Some guy from Warren, Ohio. He’s 8 and 8 but he’s never fought out of Ohio and never in Cleveland or Cinncinati,” I said. “How about you?”
“Some 20 year old hot shot. He was 96 and 3 as an amateur. He won the City Gloves,” Vinci said
“Ah--rough his ass up, Vinci,” I said and we bumped fists.
Vinci really believed he had a chance and it showed in his work. Boxing made him feel good about himself and it was more than just a hobby-- it was his identity. He wasn’t the brightest guy or the luckiest but he worked hard and he had boxing.
I was undoing my wraps and starting to stretch when Smitty came out of his office and yelled to me.
“The promoter just called—your fight’s off.” He said.
“What, what happened?”
“Guy got arrested on a child support thing.” Smitty said.
“They can’t get anyone else?”
“He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to pay the extra for a short notice guy.” Smitty’s eyebrows went up and he shrugged. It was the shrug of a man who had spent his whole life in boxing and stopped analyzing the nonsense of it years ago.
“Shit, you spend all this time training and—“ I was throwing my wraps in my bag when Smitty interrupted me.
“And what?” he said.
“You know Smitty, this shit.”
“Duffy that’s the game and that’s always gonna be the game,” he said ever the ringside Buddha. “Fighters find ways of getting out of fights.”
“It’s bullshit,” I said.
“Something you won’t admit is that you’re a little relieved. Relieved because you don’t have to fight and it ain’t you who pulled out.”
“Huh?”
“It’s what keeps the two of you fightin.’”
“Smitty—you’ve been sittin’ in the lotus position too long.”
“I told you you wouldn’t admit. You keep fightin’ because you’re scared not to.” That’s it plain and simple. “That fact doesn’t mean that you’re not scared to fight also.”
“Hey Smitty—you’re getting way to deep. I’m going get me a few Shlitzes.” I said.

I threw on my sweats and didn’t bother to shower. I wanted to get to AJ’s and I didn’t want to waste time. I was almost there when it dawned on me that Al, the basset hound I shared a trailer, with hadn’t been for his walk. I swung by the trailer opened the front door and Al greeted me in the charming way he has done every single time I’ve come through that door—by kicking me in the nuts.
“Nice to see you too.” I said and hefted him in to my El Dorado’s front seat.
Seven minutes later the two of us walked through AJ’s front door and right into a firestorm of an argument among the Fearsome Foursome.
“…With Mary Magdelene? C’mon!” TC said.
“Why not? The Bible says she was hot.” Jerry Number One said
“Jesus H. Christ what’s the matter with you!” Rocco said.
“What’s the “H” for Rocco?” Jerry number two said. He already had Cosmopolitan stains of his Dead t-shirt.
“You guys are out of your minds. That shit was just a book. If Jesus had a son we would’ve known about it.” Rocco said.
Al and I slipped in mostly unnoticed. AJ slid me a Schlitz and Al snuck around the bar and had disappeared into the kitchen. I was tired and didn’t feel like looking for him.
“Rocco, what about that secret Catholic society—the Opie Taylors. I read where they have the bathrobe.” Jerry Number One said.
“Bathrobe?” TC said. “Jesus wore a bathrobe?”
“Jesus Christ!” AJ yelled.
“Take it easy AJ. We’re just talking about that book,” Rocco said.
Al came running out of the kitchen with a pack of hot dogs in his mouth. AJ was running behind him and yelling.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he yelled.
“What’s the “H” for?” Jerry Number One said.
Al was under the four legs of a bar stool with the pack of hot dogs between his front paws. When AJ reached for the package Al snapped at him and growled.
“Jesus Christ, you son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled.
“There goes AJ stating the obvious again,” Jerry Number Two said to no one in particular.
“Anyway, if the son of god had a kid he certainly wouldn’t have been French.” Rocco said.
“Pierre Christ?” TC said.
“Pierre H. Christ,” Jerry Number Two said.
“What do you know—you’re an Episcipalian.” Rocco said to Jerry Number Two.
“By birth.” Jerry Number Two.
“The Episcopalians are like triple A Catholics. You know, like Columbus is to the Yankees.” Rocco said.
“There’s some advanced theological reasoning,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Would that make the Methodists Double A?” TC said.
“More like Pacific Coast League and the International league. They’re both triple A.” Jerry Number One said.
“Actually, I’d make the Lutherans triple A and I’d drop the Methodists to double A,” Rocco said with confidence.
My friend Mike Kelley, the cop came in wearing his street clothes and sat a stool away from me. He walked right past the brain trust.
“Just to fill you in, the boys are talking about Jesus’s son Pierre, the secret society of Opie Taylors, God’s bathrobe and where the Protestant faiths line up to equivalent minor league baseball associations,” I said. “That, and AJ’s called Al a son-of-a-bitch for taking a pack of hot dogs.”
“Bet that didn’t bother Al,” Kelley said without expression. He never had expression.
I looked over at Al and he had a single frank in his mouth like a cigar. He looked like a long eared Edward G. Robinson. There was still a half a pack left.
“What are you doing here tonight with the Schlitz—aren’t you fighting tomorrow? Kelley said.
“Nope, it fell through. The guy got picked up on a child support thing,” I said.
“Classy bunch you pugilists. I’m working security at the armory tomorrow.”
‘Not going to be much of a card.”
“Who’s fighting from around here?” Kelley took a pull off his Coors’ Light.
“Just Vinci.” I said.
“No…Vinci’s still at it? Man, what’s he thinking?”
“I know, I know. I worked with him tonight and everything I threw landed.”
“I guess he just loves it, hard to figure,” Kelley said. Before I could ponder his rare existential musing, we were distracted by AJ’s yell.
“Ha! I got ya you son-of-a-bitch!” AJ had snuck up on Al from behind and slid a broom under his nose to pull away the remaining hot dogs from between his paws. Al was looking from side to side bewildered.
“Remind me to stay away from the hot dogs here,” Kelley said.
AJ was holding the half pack of hot dogs over his head like it was the holy grail. He started to heft himself over the bar but he crashed his shin into the brass railing and yelped in pain.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he yelled and instinctively grabbed for his shin dropping the hotdogs. Al scurried over, scooped them up and went back to the fort created by the for legs of the bar stool.
“Son-of-a-bitchin’-bastard-hound!” he yelled.
“That’s basket hound.” TC said.
“You all right AJ?” I asked. He just made a face and went back to cleaning glasses.
“Pierre H. Christ, that had to hurt,” Jerry Number Two said.

I decided to help Smitty out in the corner Friday night. It kept me close to the fights and it was a good show of support for Vinci. It also got me in free and kept me out of the grandstand with all the drunks and wannabees. There were 6 fights on the card, three four rounders, one six and Vinci’s fight was an eight. It wasn’t Hagler vs. Leonard at Ceasars’ Palace and the armory was barely half full.
I went out ringside and looked over the crowd. I saw Shaheem and his brother Sammy and Shaheem gave me another one of his salutes. They were about ten rows back in the armory’s equivalent of the VIP seats. Shaheem took good care of his older brother and he made sure he was dressed in hip street gear—baggy pants, hockey jersey and a brand new red Yankees cap. Still, Sammy spent most of the time playing some sort of little hand held video game and seemed to be oblivious to the fact that there was boxing matches going on.
The first three bouts were mismatches and ended early. This is always a danger at a fight card especially when it’s poorly matched with a lot of unknown fighters who are making their pro debuts. The promoter made the situation worse by delaying the start of the next fights to draw the evening out and make it seem longer. What it did was piss of the fans who were pretty drunk to begin with and who were now getting drunker …and meaner.
None of this really fazes the fighters who have more important things on their minds. I held the pads for Vinci as he loosened up for his bout. He was slow, he was telegraphing his punches and he kept his head high when he threw. None of these were good things for any fighter but for a pro going up against someone who could fight it was all very, very bad.
Vinci had his game face on and Smitty gave him the pre-fight talk. Smitty finishes every speech before every fight the same way and it always gets you focused.
“This ain’t no bingo game tonight. This is as much about what’s inside you as it is about muscle and fight. Show me what you got inside.” Smitty said. I loved hearing it.
Vinci was the first out of the dressing room and he got a lukewarm response. He wasn’t a known fighter and he had a crummy record so that was how the crowd greeted him. His opponent came to the ring to Eminem music and he had a shiny new black satin robe covering his head.

The bell sounded and the two fighters circled each other. Vinci looked slow on his feet and unbalanced and when Montinerro’s first jab landed on Vinci’s nose he staggered a little bit. Vinci tried to counter but he was so slow Montinerro wasn’t even where Vinci’s punch went. Montinerro came back with a jab-cross-hook combination and all three punches landed and they all had some steam on them. Vinci was in for a long night.
“Nice move Martinez!” I heard come from the crowd. It was a small enough crowd that hecklers could be heard throughout the armory. You could hear laughing.
Vinci threw a wide hook that didn’t come close and Montinerro countered with left-right.
“Hey, Vinci, nice catch!” came the voice from the crowd again.
Montinerro was starting to pick up on the crowd and started to showboat. He did an Ali shuffle and then hit Vinci with a wild uppercut. Then he’d mug for the crowd.
“Way to go Vinci!” the heckler mocked. The round ended and Vinci came back to the corner. I helped Smitty with the bucket and he called for the Endswell, a metal bar kept on ice in the corner. Trainers press it to the face when swelling starts and Vinci was needing it in three spots.
The next two rounds were more of the same except worse. Vinci was tiring, Montinerr0 was totally aware that his opponent had nothing and that fueled the younger boxer’s aggression. The heckler had also picked up the pace.
“Keep blockin’ em with your face, Vinci?”
“Time to call it a career Vinci!”
“Keep to the cookie factory!”
Montinerro was mocking Vinci in the ring and I think that encouraged the heckler. It was getting bad and I looked at Smitty who just raised his eyebrows and kind of shook his head. Vinci was getting tagged but more humiliated than beat up. Smitty didn’t want to stop it because that would’ve done a whole lot more damage to the man’s self image than getting punched in the face.
Vinci kept on losing every round. By the seventh Montinerro was openly laughing while he scored on him. The heckler was getting stupider, louder and drunker.
“Nice going genius!” He yelled.
Fighters and cornermen almost never pay attention to the crowd—they’re just not that important. This was different and I turned to see who was doing all the yelling. It was a big blond haired guy, probably 6’3” and built like a college football player who left the game seven or eight years ago. He was in the good seats and standing with a beer in his hand. He saw me looking at him and he yelled;
“What the fuck are you looking at?” and then laughed long and hard along with a whole row of buddies who had joined in.
Kelley was about twenty feet from the row in uniform keeping his eye on the things. The bell rang for the end of the seventh and Vinci came back to the corner.
“Don’t stop it Smitty and I want to finish. Don’t stop it,” Vinci was pleading. Smitty let him out for the final round and Montinerro went right back to work on him.
“That’s it, genius keep fighting!” the heckler yelled.
I looked over my shoulder and saw him laughing and I felt something inside.
“Bum!, Bum! Bum!”
I looked over and saw Kelley and our eyes met. He looked away but I knew he was as disgusted as I was.
Vinci took an exaggerated fake and then got hit with a right hand that staggered him.
“Nice going retard!” the heckler yelled.
Something went real bad in side of me. I left the corner, hopped the metal gate that separated the ringside from the crowd and headed straight up the stands looking for the loud mouth. I could taste the hate in my mouth.
He was in the last seat in the aisle.
“What the fuck do you-” he never got finish.
I through a six inch hook to his body that landed square into his solar plexis. He made a half groan half yelp and fell on his ass. His head hit the back of the chair and he doubled over and started to barf. He was wretching and groaning and the only thing that kept him quiet was when he get another wave of vomit pass through his mouth.
My heart was pounding, my vision was narrowed and I could barely hear. I heard the bell ring ending Vinci’s fight and I looked up and all the guys in the row who had been laughing along side the heckler were in shock. Just then when of his cronies yelled.
“Hey officer, this guy just assaulted my friend!”
“Shut up asshole, your friend got off easy,” Kelley said. I didn’t even see him come up. “Duffy get back to your corner and take care of your fighter.”
I started to head back to the ring when I heard someone call my name.
“Yo Duff!”
I turned and looked up a few rows and there was Shaheem. Sammy was next to him playing his little video game. Shaheem just looked at me for awhile then he gave me his sign. I flashed it right back him and all at once realized he was right.
Sometimes you got to put a motherfucker in his place.