'He's a pro?'

'Yes, suh.'

'You sure you want to do this, partner?'

He licked his lips and tried to hide the shine of fear in his eyes.

'He's a good guy. He's been up against some big names. He don't do this for just anybody,' Zoot said. 'I'll be right back. You ain't got to watch if you don't want. There's a Coca-Cola machine back in the dressing room.'

'I'll just take a seat over here.'

'Yes, suh. I'll be right back.'

I don't think I ever saw anyone box quite as badly as Zoot. Either he would hold both gloves in front of his face so that he was unable to see his opponent or he would drop his guard suddenly and float his face up like a balloon, right into a rain of blows. His stance was wrong-footed, he led with his right hand, he used his left like a flipper, he took shot after shot in the mouth and eyes because he didn't know how to tuck in his chin and raise his shoulder against a right cross.

Fortunately the white kid went easy on him, except in the third round when Zoot swung at the white kid's head coming out of a clench. The white kid stepped inside Zoot's long reach and hooked a hard chop into his nose. Zoot went down on his butt in the middle of the canvas, his long legs splayed out in front of him, his mouth-piece lying wet in his lap, his eyes glazed as though someone had popped a flashbulb in his face.

Twenty minutes later he came out of the dressing room in his street clothes, combing his wet hair along the sides of his head. His nose had stopped bleeding, but his left eye had started to discolor and puff shut at the corner. We walked across the street to a café that sold pizza by the slice and sat at a table in back under a rotating electric fan.

'Have you been boxing long?' I said.

'Since school let out.'

'You trying for the Golden Gloves?'

'I just do it for fun. I don't think about the Gloves or any of that stuff.'

'Let me make a suggestion, Zoot. Keep your left shoulder up and don't lead with your right unless you go in for a body attack. Then get under the other guy's guard and hook him hard in the rib cage, right under the heart.'

He fed a long slice of pizza into his mouth and looked at me while he chewed.

'You been a fighter?' he said.

'A little bit, in high school.'

'You think maybe I could try for the Gloves?'

'I guess that'd be up to you.'

He smiled and lowered his eyes.

'You don't think' I'm too good, do you?' he said.

'You just went three rounds against a pro. That's not bad.'

'I know what you're really thinking, though. You ain't got to make me feel good. Like I say, I do it for fun.' He touched at the corner of his puffed eye with one fingernail.

'You said you were going to tell me something about the vigilante murders,' I said.

'It's gang bangers. They fighting over who's gonna deal tar in the projects. Tar's real big again, Mr. Robicheaux. Lot of people don't want to mess with crack anymore.'

'How do you know it's the gangs, Zoot?'

'I get around. I got friends in the projects-the St. Thomas, the Iberville, the Desire. They all say there ain't no vigilante.'

'Is there a particular murder you have information about?'

He thought for a moment. 'Yeah, last spring,' he said. 'A dealer got thrown off the roof acrost from our school. The gang bangers said he was working the wrong neighborhood.'

He watched my face expectantly.

'Are there any names you want to give me?' I said.

'I'm just telling you what my friends say. I ain't got no names.'

'You come from a good home, Zoot. You think you should be hanging around gang bangers?'

'I got the friends I want. People don't tell me who I hang with.'

'I see. Well, thanks for the information.' I stood up to leave.

'Ain't you gonna he'p out?'

'I'm afraid I don't have a lot to work with here.'

'Mr. Robicheaux, my mama's gonna lose her job.'

I sat back down. 'Where's your dad?'

His eyes became unfocused, then he looked over at the jukebox as though he had just noticed it.

'I ain't got one. Why you ax that?' he said.

'No reason. Your mother's a tough lady. Stop worrying about her.'

'Easy for you to say. You ain't there when she come home, always telling me-'

'Telling you what?'

'I ain't nothing but a big drink of water, I gotta be a man, I gotta stop slouching around like somebody pulled my backbone outta my skin.' He rolled up a paper napkin in his palm and dropped it in his plate. 'It ain't her fault. They get on her case where she works, then she just got to get on mine. But I'm tired of it.'

For the first time I noticed how long and narrow his hands were. Even his nails were long, almost like a girl's.

'You feel like putting your trunks back on?' I said.

'What for?'

'Take a walk with me to the drugstore, then we'll head back to the gym and talk about clocks and bombsights.'

'What?'

'Gome on, I'm over the hill. You-dump me on my butt, Zoot.'

We went into the drugstore on the corner, and I bought a rubber ball, just a little smaller than the palm of my hand, and dropped it in the pocket of my slacks. Then we crossed the street to the gym, and Zoot put on his trunks again and met me in an alcove with padded mats on the floor and a huge ventilator fan bolted into the wire-mesh windows. I hung my shirt on a rack of dumbbells and slipped on a pair of sixteen-ounce gloves that were almost as big as couch pillows.

Advice is always cheap, and the cheapest kind is the sort we offer people who have to enter dangerous situations for which they are seriously unprepared or ill-equipped. I probably knew a hundred one-liners that a cut-man or a trainer had told me in the corner of a Golden Gloves ring while he worked my mouthpiece from my teeth and squeezed a sponge into my eyes ('Swallow your blood, kid. Don't never let him see you're hurt… He butts you again in the clench, thumb him in the eye… He's telegraphing. When he drops his right shoulder, click off his light').

But very few people appreciate the amount of courage that it takes to stand toe-to-toe with a superior opponent who systematically goes about breaking the cartilage in your nose, splitting your eyebrows against the bone, and turning your mouth into something that looks like a torn tomato, while the audience stands on chairs and roars its approval of your pain and humiliation.

'Let's try to keep two simple concepts in mind,' I said. 'Move in a circle with the clock. You got that? Circle him till he thinks you're a shark. Always to the left, just like you're moving with the clock.'

'All right…' He started circling with me, his gym shoes shuffling on the canvas pad, the skin around his temples taut with expectation, his eyes watching my fists.

'Then you look him right in the eye. Except in your mind you're seeing his face in a bombsight… Don't look at my hands, look at my face. His face is right in the crosshairs, you understand me, because you know it's just a matter of time till you bust him open with your left, maybe make him duck and come up without his guard, and then pull the trigger and bust him with your right.'

He circled and squinted at me above his gloves with his puffed left eye.

'Hit me,' I said.

His jabs were like spastic jerks, ill-timed, fearful, almost pathetic.

'I said hit me, Zoot!'

His left came out and socked into my gloves.

'Hit me, not the glove,' I said. 'You're starting to piss me off.'

'What?'

'I said you're pissing me off. Do you have some problem with your hearing?' I could see the verbal injury in his eyes. I flipped a left jab at his head and drove my right straight into his guard. Then I did it again. His head snapped back with the weight of the blow, then he caught his balance and hunched his shoulders again. I saw him lower his right slightly and a glint form in one eye like a rifleman peering down iron sights.