“Action,” Prince corrected. “The real stuff.” He pointed through the window to the gym. In the round ring, two men were helping another man to his feet. Blood was dribbling from his mouth. The man who’d caused the leakage was leaning against the ropes, idly scratching his six-pack belly.

“This ain’t sports entertainment, like pro wrestling. These fuckers go at it like pit bulls because (a) the money’s good, and (b) they need to beat the shit outta another guy.”

“Need to?” Cherry asked.

“A lotta those guys got hornets in their heads. Issues, you know? Fighting lets the hornets sting someone else for a while. I spend half my time trying to keep their fighting in the gym and in the ring, not a nightclub or alley.”

“Why’s the ring round?” I asked, not unaware that traditional square boxing rings were oxymoronic.

“No corners to hide in,” Prince said. “The crowd likes to see fighters fight, not catch their breath in corner clinches.”

I looked over the floor, every body chiseled down to muscle, not an ounce of flab. “These guys live in the gym, Mickey?”

“If they wanna make it in the XFL they’ll be here ten hours a day, minimum. They pump up their bodies, I pump up the image, get them looking right, named right.”

“Excuse me,” Cherry said. “Named right?”

Prince smiled, leaned back in the chair, put crossed legs atop the table doubling as a desk, showed us the bottoms of his sleek, gunmetal-gray loafers.

“A kid walks in here with a name like Lester Doodle, we change that shit to something like Bruce Cartwright, a cross from Bruce Lee and the cowboys on that show Bonanza. Now that’s a fighter’s name.”

“You didn’t change Bobby Lee Crayline’s name.”

“It’s a great name already. Right away, you got the Southern feel.”

I shot Cherry a near-invisible nod. Her turn. “Bobby Lee’s got new problems on top of the kidnapping and deadly escape, Mr Prince,” Cherry said. “Seems like he’s suspect numero uno in three murders in eastern Kentucky and another three in Alabama.”

Prince closed his eyes, sighed, and shook his head. He looked honestly saddened but maybe he was a good actor. I waited several seconds and added the second punch, the pile driver.

“Ain’t it a crying shame, Mickey?” I said. “A lot of people dead, all because of the escape you helped plan.”

Prince’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

“We know you hired Slezak, Dunham and Krull to get Bobby Lee brought to the Alabama Institute for Aberrational Behavior. Bobby Lee escaped on a trip financed by your company. Coincidence?”

Prince’s feet pulled from the table and slapped the floor. The chair rocketed upright.

“I had NOTHING to do with—”

“You may want to call Mr Slezak,” Cherry said. “This time to defend you on an Accomplice to Murder charge.”

Prince looked shaken. He’d expected the standard questions about contacts from his former employee, not being linked to the executions of two prison guards. Not the kind of PR any growing empire needed.

He hustled to the windows, closed the blinds. “No way I tried to spring Bobby Lee,” he said. “I was trying to help him. Both times I only wanted to help him. You gotta believe me.”

I gave Prince my most piercing cop stare. “I believe you, Mick. That you wanted to help Bobby Lee. But now I want you to help me.”

Prince looked confused. “With what?”

“Bobby Lee died yesterday. He drove off a cliff while trying to kill me. I’m kinda interested in finding out why.”

40

“Let’s start with the chronology, Mick,” I told a more-chastened Mickey Prince. “Tell me about Bobby Lee’s first incarceration. His six-month sentence.”

“It was an accident. He killed a man in combat.”

“Oh?” Cherry said. “I thought he killed a man in an entertainment event.”

“People die in boxing. People die in football. People die in bicycle races, for crying out loud. Do they spend six months in prison?”

“Crayline didn’t go to prison,” I corrected. “Because of his history of violence, the judge sent him to the Alabama Institute for Aberrational Behavior for evaluation. They’re prisoners in prison, Mickey. They’re patients at the Institute, safe from each other and treated as humanely as their conditions permit. It’s not close to prison.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Prince nodded. “I’ll give you that.”

Cherry said, “Then Bobby Lee got out and picked up where he’d left off: fighting. There were no problems with the audience because he’d killed a man?”

“Bobby became an even bigger star. Don’t look at me like that. It’s how things are.”

“Let’s move ahead, Mick,” I said. “Bobby Lee fights for another couple years, winning every bout. Becomes a top XFL star, the champ. But then he loses a fight. It must have crushed him.”

Prince shrugged. “No big deal. Jessie Stone was a damn good fighter, but Bobby was the best. Bobby would have won the next time. I woulda promoted it as a grudge match and everybody’d make even more money.”

I pulled my feet from the table and went to lean against the wall beside Prince. I looked down on him while he had to crane his head up to talk to me. Control.

“Instead,” I said, “Crayline suddenly quits and dis-appears. Six months later he kidnaps Stone and imprisons him in a pit, killing him through exposure and deprivation. Bobby Lee’s sent to prison. But you pull political strings and get him returned to the Institute. You hire a high-caliber law firm—”

“I wanted Bobby to get real mental help,” Prince said, actually sounding sincere. “I owed him, since he helped make me rich. Slezak wanted a shrink on Bobby Lee’s case. Bobby Lee laughed and said, sure, try it out, figuring he’d never go under. Turns out hypnotizing Bobby Lee was easy as turning a light on and off. Dr Neddles pulled the story out in little pieces then put it together so it’s right in time. It’s nasty shit. You really want to hear it all?”

“I think we can take it.”

Prince started pacing, as though motion helped tell the story. He crossed and re-crossed the room as he spoke.

“Bobby Lee’s daddy took off when he was five. His mama died of an OD a couple months later, at home. A relative stopped by one day, found Bobby Lee’s mom on the couch half rotted away. They found the kid under the house, hiding in a root cellar.”

“Lord,” Cherry said.

“Bobby ended up with an aunt with mental problems and her husband. His uncle made a living staging cockfights and dogfights. The dogs lived in shit-filled cages. He starved the animals, beat them, zapped them with cattle prods.”

“To make them better fighters,” I said, my stomach going sour.

“Then one day …” Prince took a deep breath. “Then one day, the uncle wondered if an eleven-year-old kid could be made into a fighting dog.”

I closed my eyes. Felt my guts turn over.

“To start with,” Prince said, “the uncle made Bobby Lee live in a tiny dirt storm cellar. There was no light. Bobby pissed and shit in a washtub that got emptied maybe once a week. The uncle fed him scraps. Beat him to get him used to pain.”

“Who the hell could an eleven-year-old fight?” Cherry asked, aghast.

“Other kids. Bobby never knew where they came from. Once every couple months he’d be yanked out of the basement and trucked off, sometimes on the road for hours, to an old barn or abandoned mine tipple. Other kids would be there, fighters.”

“Were there gloves? Rules?”

“The kids fought naked except for athletic cups to protect their balls. The fighters didn’t have names, numbers were pinned to the cups. The kids were put in a long, narrow pit - they nicknamed it the grave - and beat the shit out of each other while the audience bet on the action.”

“No kid said, I’m not doing it?” I asked.

Prince’s eyes rose to mine, held. “You know what a breeder does to a dog that won’t fight? Kids that didn’t fight weren’t ever seen again.”