Mischa Hannigan, owner and proprietor of Hannigan's Jungle, watched from his tiered office as Hammerhead Johnny put Tanker Bell through his paces in the ring. His eyes travelled from the laboring fighters in the ring to the crowd of spectators standing and sitting around, watching the Tank work. He was smooth and fast, without a kink, stabbing light quick jabs and those murderous body-rights that had stopped the Contender, breaking, the press had said after the fight, the metal rib-cage inside the Contender's body. Mischa Hannigan was happy. After fifteen years of obscurity, his gym was fast-becoming popular again. He had begun to charge admissions again to fans and promoters who were eager to see the Tank at work. Once again during the afternoon workouts there was the hum and roar of spectators, the slap-slur of springing feet on the canvas followed by the booming of fists echoing from rib-cage and jaw-bone structure. There was the smell of money in his gym now, along with the smells of leather and oil.
The door behind him opened and Hannigan turned to Charlie Jingle.
"'Lo, Charlie."
"'Lo, Mish.... How's he look?"
"Terrific! If I didn't know him for twenty years, I'd swear he was brand, spankin' new!"
Charlie Jingle grunted quietly and walked to the plate-glass window. He looked down at them there in the white-roped square, watched the Tanker attack with a quick-reflex attack, block a flurry of counter-blows, weave under a right-hand smash to the head, and rock Hammerhead Johnny to the ropes with a combination of shoulder-straight jabs to the stomach and a cross-hand right to the chest. A hum of approval and amazement went up from the spectators.
"Charlie!" shrieked Mischa Hannigan. "Charlie, did you see that? And that Hammerhead Johnny is supposed to be the most stable Pug in the business. They say he's got magnets in his feet, can't nobody break the contact of—"
"Calm down, calm down, it's only practice."
"Practice he calls it! If Hammerhead could bust up the Tank, don't you think he would?"
"Hammerhead's an old junkpot, Mich, and you know it!"
"Old he may be, Charlie, but junkpot he's not. Crafty as a damn president of Pugs, Inc., he is, and everybody in the business knows it. He ranks with the best sparrin' partners in the world, he does."
In the ring below something happened that drew a roar of uncontrollable excitement from the crowd. It was over in a flash and nobody saw quite how it happened. Hammerhead Johnny's body described a rigid, dark arc in the air, hovered suspended a second in a completely horizontal position, and then crashed with a hollow boom to the deck. The Hammerhead did not move.
"BEGREE!" howled the delighted Mischa Hannigan. "BEGREE, he's knocked him cold!" He began to dance around the room in a jig that shook his frame with every jolt and pirouette. Charlie Jingle laughed.
"I'll be dammed! The Tank's really got it! He really has got it!"
"Oh, we're rich, we're rich, we're rich!" chanted the hysterical Hannigan, dancing his macabre dance of the human puff-ball. There was a knock at the door and Hannigan, still chanting, danced to the door and opened it. The relaxed puffy flesh drew tight, his back stiffened. Charlie Jingle peered around his girth to see who stood there.
Harry Belok, in a black Homburg and a blue pin-stripe suit, stepped smiling into the room, twirling an ebony cane. He doffed his hat, bowing slightly. Behind him a small man slid in next to the wall, his whole body screwed up tightly into his neck. Hannigan, with a pale, sickly smile, shut the door.
"If it ain't Harry Belok! Hello, Harry."
Harry Belok, smiling, looked straight at Charlie Jingle. "Whadayasay, Hannigan! How's things, Charlie? Long time no see, hah?"
Charlie Jingle, with a tightness in his throat, mirrored the sick expression of Mischa Hannigan. He smiled a smile so forced his flesh stretched like a rubber mask out of control.
"Hello, Harry. What can I do for you?"
"'S this way, Charlie-mo. I just seen your boy work out. I just seen him club the Hammerhead to the deck with the weirdest combination I ever seen. It's somethin' new, he's got. Somethin' original! Know what I mean?" Harry Belok stopped pacing, stopped twirling, to look at Charlie Jingle. Charlie Jingle waited.
"Well—I hear around the grapevine that Pugs, Inc., don't relish the thought of givin' your boy a crack at Iron-Man. Is that true, Charlie-mo?"
Charlie Jingle shrugged.
"It don't mean a thing, Harry. You know that as well as anybody."
"Yeah, Charlie-mo. But you know as well as anybody that the Fight Commission has got a rules book as thick as this room. If Pugs, Inc., really wants to, they'll find some kinda statute that disqualifies your boy for the championship. Now, you don't want that to happen, do you?"
Charlie Jingle began to feel the heat flushing up behind his eyeballs. "What's the pitch, Harry?"
"I think maybe what you ought to do, Charlie-mo, is lemme buy a chunk out of your boy. Then I guarantee you get the match."
"What makes you think I don't get the match anyway, Harry?"
Harry Belok turned, pointing his stick through the glass to the gym.
"Look down there. You see any reporters there? You see any cameras shootin'?"
Charlie Jingle did not move, keeping his eyes unblinking on Belok.
"Okay. There's no reporters. No press build-up. Pugs, Inc., has put the freeze on. So? What's the point?"
"The point," said Harry Belok, tapping Charlie Jingle's chest with the white-tipped stick, "the point, is that you don't get no match from Iron-Man unless you play ball with me!"
Charlie Jingle squinted at him through a cloud of brown-blue smoke. "Can't do it, Harry-mo," he said quietly.
"You serious?"
"Dead serious," said Charlie Jingle.
"You get too serious, that's the way you liable to wind up," said Harry Belok through his teeth. He turned and stomped toward the door and went out. The little man against the wall slid out after him.
Charlie Jingle walked nonchalantly to the door, hooked his foot behind it, and kicked it shut with a loud slam. Mischa Hannigan took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his brow.
"You've gone crazy, Charlie. You've gone stark ravin' mad!"
Charlie Jingle whirled.
"All these years, Mish, I starved and sweated in tank-joints. All these years I broke my back, and nobody lifted a finger except a choice one or two. Now I've got a crack at somethin' good and everybody wants in. Well I don't want them in! I want them to stay clear, and lemme go my own way! Is that crazy?"
"But Charlie," moaned Mischa Hannigan. "You can't go laughin' at the Fixer like that! Don't you have enough worries without gettin' killed?"
Charlie Jingle looked at him a blank moment and then laughed. He turned, looking toward the ring below. The Tanker was on the Gym floor, looking up. He waved. Charlie turned to Hannigan.
"Can you get me the Jawbreaker to spar with Tanker, Mish?"
Hannigan sank slowly into his leather chair behind the beat-up, rusting metal desk. He rubbed a patch of rust with his thumb.
"Sure. Sure I can get the Jawbreaker. Can you get the match?"
"You just watch my dust," said Charlie, and went out.
Mischa Hannigan crinkled his nose. He began to feel his asthma coming on.