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Romeo's Fight




  Praise for James Scott Bell

  "Mike Romeo is a terrific hero. He's smart, tough as nails, and fun to hang out with. James Scott Bell is at the top of his game here. There'll be no sleeping till after the story is over." — John Gilstrap, New York Times bestselling author of the Jonathan Grave thriller series

  "Mike Romeo is a killer thriller hero. And James Scott Bell is a master of the genre." — Tosca Lee, New York Times bestselling author

  “Mike Romeo is a terrific hard-boiled hero: cage fighter, philosopher, acerbic champion of the underdog. James Scott Bell’s series is as sharp as a switchblade.” — Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award winning author

  “Among the top writers in the crowded suspense genre.” — Sheldon Siegel, New York Times bestselling author

  Romeo's Fight

  A Mike Romeo Thriller

  James Scott Bell

  Compendium Press

  Copyright © 2019 by James Scott Bell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Romeo’s Fight

  About the Author

  Free Book

  Also by James Scott Bell

  The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

  — Marcus Aurelius

  You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.

  — “The Gingerbread Man” (children’s tale)

  Romeo’s Fight

  “So you’re Mike Romeo,” the guy said. “You don’t look so tough.”

  I was sitting poolside at the home of Mr. Zane Donahue, drinking a Corona, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, flip-flops and sunglasses. I was the perfect embodiment of L.A. mellow, trying to enjoy a pleasant afternoon. Now this shirtless, tatted-up billboard was planted in front of me, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “I’m really quite personable once you get to know me,” I said.

  “I don’t think you’re tough,” he said.

  “I can recite Emily Dickinson,” I said. “Can you?”

  He squinted. Or maybe that’s how his eyes were naturally. His reddish hair was frizzy. With a little care and coloring, it would have made a nice clown ’do. He had a flat nose, one that had been beaten on pretty good somewhere. In a boxing ring, the cage, or prison.

  “Who?” he said.

  “You don’t know Emily Dickinson?”

  Blank stare.

  “Then you’re not so tough yourself,” I said.

  I took a sip of my brew and focused on the devil tat above his left nipple. Underneath were the words DIE SCUM. He was one of Donahue’s fighters for sure.

  There were others of them around the pool, ripped and showing it. And of course the bikini-clad ladies who liked hanging on arms while displaying their own wares. There was a lot of giggling going on. A meeting of the American Philosophical Society this was not.

  Zane Donahue himself was behind the swim-up bar, dispensing piña coladas under a Polynesian-themed gazebo.

  A DJ bumped dance music from a setup near a large fern by the house. There were maybe fifty people at this thing, and room enough to fit fifty more.

  It was a party I did not want to attend, but I owed Donahue a favor. A big one, as he’d given me some invaluable information that helped save a woman’s life. And he was not shy about telling me he’d call this favor in.

  So here I was, hoping the day could be redeemed with a beer and maybe a swim as I waited to meet with Donahue. But now this knuckle bucket had come over and for some reason wanted to start something.

  “You think you can fight?” Mr. Die Scum said. “Bring it.”

  “What’s with the motif?” I said.

  “The what?”

  “Motif.”

  “The hell you talkin’ about?”

  “Hell is exactly right,” I said. “As represented by Lucifer there.”

  I pointed. He looked down at his chest, back at me.

  Then he kicked the bottom of my right flip-flop.

  “Get up,” he said.

  “I’m comfortable here,” I said.

  “Get up!”

  “And ruin a nice day?”

  “Girl,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Little girl.”

  “If anything, I’m a big girl,” I said.

  He kicked my other foot. The heel. My flip-flop flipped off.

  I sighed. And put my Corona on the cement deck.

  As I stood, Die Scum took a fight stance. People were watching all this. No one moved to stop it.

  Some party.

  I put my hands up. “If we fight, it’s going to be by Dickinson rules.”

  He frowned. The scar tissue above his right eyebrow gathered into a mini-fist. He was around thirty and starting the fighter’s downward slide. Probably in denial about Father Time being undefeated.

  “What’re you talkin’?” he said.

  “Here’s what we do,” I said. “We give each other a first line from Emily Dickinson, and the other guy has to give the next.”

  “What?”

  “My river runs to thee.”

  “What the—”

  “Wrong,” I said. “It’s Blue sea, wilt welcome me. You lose.”

  Die Scum’s cheeks took on the color of cotton candy.

  More of the partiers were shuffling our way. There’s always one thing you can tell when you’re at a gathering of MMA fighters —when one bull threatens to get it on with another bull, the whole herd closes in to watch.

  “Yeah, I heard that about you,” Die Scum said. “Big brainiac, likes to show it off.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “I’d rather people like you understand me. That’s why I talk … so … slow.”

  I thrust out with both hands. My right hit the Die Scum tat. My left shoved a skull on the other side of his chest.

  Die Scum stumbled backward and fell into the pool.

  Some in the crowd laughed. Some went Oooh. A few applauded.

  Die Scum burst to the surface, shaking his curly head and spraying water like a wet dog, shouting words of fury, scorn, and body parts.

  I took off my sunglasses.

  Die Scum climbed out of the pool. His face was a blotch-fest of red.

  He started for me.

  And then Zane Donahue appeared like a bolt of Zeus’s lightning. Indeed, the sun lit up the white bathrobe he wore.

  “Cool off, guys.” Donahue was between us, hands up. “Let’s settle this like civilized human beings.”

  Zane Donahue was rich, fifty or so, fit and connected. Not all the connections were entirely legal.

  Die Scum said he wished to remove my head and place it—I believe shove is the word he used—into a certain body cavity.

  “Let’s do this in the cage,” Zane Donahue said.

  “Yes, let’s!” A regal-looking woman joined us. How I hadn’t noticed her before is a mystery, because she was someone you couldn’t miss. Tall and substantial, wearing a wide-brimmed hat of robin’s-egg blue and a flowing dress to match, she appeared to be in her late sixties. Her face was evenly tanned. Her sunglasses were the size of coffee can lids. She wore white gloves, and the bracelets on her arms jangled like wind chimes.

  “You are mar-ve-lous!” she said, looking right at me. “I want to see this. Spare no expense, Zane.”

  “I won’t, Princess,” Zane Donahue said. “What do you say, boys?”

  Die Scum was nodding his head.

  “Not interested,” I said.

  “But you must!” Princess said, reaching out to touch my
chest.

  Die Scum issued another curse. Princess turned to him, put a finger to her lips, and he shut up.

  “Mike,” Zane Donahue said, “let me present to you Princess Moira Montenegro.”

  She smiled and held out her hand like I should kiss it. I just shook it and said, “Your highness?”

  Princess Moira held my hand firmly. “I have faith in you already,” she said.

  “Let’s do this!” Die Scum said.

  “I’m not going to fight,” I said.

  He called me a name that began with chicken.

  “No call for that!” Princess Moira said. “You will not speak unless spoken to.”

  Die Scum rolled his eyes. But he didn’t speak.

  “Now then,” Zane said, “let’s put this on the line. Three rounds, fifty grand purse.”

  “No!” said Princess Moira. “One hundred. Guaranteed!”

  “Now we’re talking,” Zane Donahue said.

  “We’re not talking,” I said.

  “Why don’t we step into my office?” Zane Donahue said.

  When he closed his office door, I said, “That was a high school production of The Glass Menagerie.”

  “Excuse me?” Donahue said. He went to his flight-deck-sized desk and picked up a dark-wood humidor.

  “Clumsy drama,” I said.

  Donahue shook his head. “Speak plainly.”

  “You set that up,” I said.

  He smiled and opened the humidor, held it out to me. I looked at the harem of dusky beauties inside it, and shook my head.

  Donahue took out a cigar, closed the humidor and placed it back on the desk. As he reached for his cutter he said, “I want to hire you.” He snipped the end of his cigar.

  “I’m already employed,” I said.

  He picked up a silver lighter that was next to the humidor and clicked it. A bluish butane flame whooshed out. He held the cigar end over the flame, turning the stogie delicately. Then he closed the lighter and took a couple of starter puffs. He looked at the end of the cigar and blew gently on it, making sure it was perfectly lit.

  “You work part time for a lawyer,” Donahue said. “And spend the rest of your time watching seaweed hit the beach.”

  “You’d be surprised how well that pays,” I said. “All the starfish kick in.”

  “I’m serious, Romeo. Sit.”

  I sat in a big leather chair. Zane Donahue sat in another big leather chair. Everything was big in his office, including his cigar.

  “Why won’t you consider fighting for me?” Donahue said. “That hundred grand is real cash money.”

  “I’m not a violent person,” I said.

  Donahue snorted. “I know your cage record. Funny, but I can’t find anything before that.”

  “Nothing funny about it,” I said.

  “You are apparently a man with a past. And you don’t want anybody to know about it.”

  “Life can only be understood backward,” I said. “But it must be lived forward.”

  “You come up with that?”

  “Kierkegaard.”

  He took a languid pull on his cigar and let the smoke issue from his mouth like a genie from a lamp. “A fighter who reads Kierkegaard. You are going to make a lot of money.”

  “Where do your fights take place? Are you licensed?”

  “No need for that. They take place on the open sea.”

  I narrowed my eyebrows accusingly. It’s an art.

  “Do you know anything about the old gambling ships in L.A.?” Zane Donahue said.

  “A way to beat the anti-gambling ordinances,” I said. “No jurisdiction out at sea.”

  “It was a heckuva system till Earl Warren, the governor, decided to shut the operation down. He did it by manipulating the law.”

  “What law?”

  “Nuisance law. Can you imagine that? Gambling aboard a ship was a nuisance! I tell you, the law is an ass.”

  “Mr. Bumble said that,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “In Oliver Twist.”

  Flicking cigar ash into a glass ashtray set inside a leather container sitting on the corner of his desk, Donahue said, “We go out twenty-five miles, past Coast Guard jurisdiction, a pleasure cruise. Make a day of it. Get back close to midnight.”

  “And you have fights?”

  “Two,” he said. “An undercard and a main event.”

  “And who watches these fights?”

  “People with money, of course.” Zane Donahue smiled. “They become rabid fans. Like the princess. Now what’s she going to do with all her money if not have fun with it? And she just loves you, I can tell.”

  “She’s not subtle,” I said.

  “She has a good eye for talent and what makes a good show,” he said.

  “I’m not in show business,” I said.

  “We’re all in show business,” Donahue said. “There’s no such thing as a private life anymore. You either control your own show, or somebody’s going to control it for you.”

  “You make a good case for going back to the nineteenth century,” I said.

  “Is that where you’d like to be, Mike?”

  “With a little homestead on the lone prairie.”

  He rested his cigar on the deep impression in the glass ashtray. He picked up his phone and made a few swipes.

  “I assume,” he said, looking at the phone, “that your answer is firm?”

  “It is.”

  “I’m a determined guy,” he said. “I usually get my way.”

  “It’s good for the soul to be disappointed every once in awhile.”

  “Who says I have a soul?” said Zane Donahue. “Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Romeo.”

  I was walking back to my Corona when somebody said, “Hey, Mike!”

  It was a blast from my past. Archie Jennison and I had done cage time together twelve years earlier. Time had not been good to him. He looked like Mickey Rourke’s uglier brother.

  He pumped my hand and smiled. He was missing a front tooth. His eyes had a puffy, drunk look.

  “Man, it’s good to see you here,” Archie said. “You coming on board?”

  “Board?”

  “One of the fighters.”

  I shook my head. I gave the party a quick scan for Die Scum. He was on the far side of the yard, huddling with Princess Moira. I was glad they were far away.

  Archie said, “It’s good money.”

  “It’s a young man’s game, Arch. What are you now?”

  “Only the big four-oh, last August.” He stuck out his hairy chest. I think I was the only guy by the pool with a shirt on. “Go ahead, hit me.”

  “I’ll pass,” I said.

  “Mike, there’s all sorts of miracle working juice now. You can go till you’re seventy.”

  “You have a fall-back plan?” I asked.

  He smiled. “You know me, Mike. Only one way to fight and live, and that’s just bull ahead, make money, enjoy yourself. Otherwise you might as well work at a bowling alley in South Dakota.”

  “There are some very nice people in South Dakota,” I said.

  “Same old Mike! You always had funny things to say.”

  “Sometimes I even get serious.”

  He put his arm around me. “I’m kind of glad to hear you say that. You think we could talk?”

  “Aren’t we talking now?”

  “I mean, you know, quietly.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How bout now?”

  “Now?”

  “There’s a place I know,” he said. “Got something I want to run by you.”

  “You’re not selling life insurance, are you?”

  “Nah!”

  “Amway?”

  “Come on, man. I’ll buy you a friendly drink.”

  “If you put it that way.”

  “Bosco!” he said.

  “What?”

  “Bosco. It’s just a thing I say.”

  “I guess everybody’s got to have a thing t
hey say.”

  He laughed. “What’s yours?”

  I showed him the tattoo on my left forearm. Vincit Omnia Veritas.

  “Oh yeah, I remember that,” he said. “I forgot what it means.”

  “Truth conquers all things,” I said.

  “Heavy,” he said.

  “Some days I even believe it.”

  I followed Archie’s Volvo in my classic Mustang convertible, Spinoza. We came to a little place in Venice, a hipster bar, built in the 1930s and now redone for the twenty-somethings who thought they were the first generation to appreciate Irish whiskey. The dark wood paneling gave the interior an old-school appearance, like a speakeasy.

  We sat at the bar, which went around in a rectangular shape. A young, female bartender in a white shirt and black vest came over. Archie ordered a double Bushmills Black. I called a Smithwick’s pint.

  “It sure is good to see you again, Mike,” Archie said in that big, welcoming voice I remembered.

  “Let me ask you something, Arch.”

  “Anything, man.”

  “Did you know I was going to be at Donahue’s party?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Arch?”

  A big grin. “Okay, you got me. I did. Zane told me. He knew we fought together. He knows a lot. And he’s a good man to have on your side.”

  The bartender set down our drinks.

  Archie lifted his glass. “May ye live to be a hundred, with one year extra to repent!”

  We clinked and drank. Archie took in his whole shot and motioned to the bartender for another.

  “Ah, the good old days,” he said. “When was the last time we were together? Memphis?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “You were so good,” Archie said. “I always wanted to ask you where you trained.”

  “I picked things up along the way,” I said.

  “Didn’t you have a teacher, a trainer?”

  “Sure. A couple. And books.”

  “Books?” Archie said. “You can’t learn to fight from books.”