Chapter 68

Cooper

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I get up at five thirty to go on a warm-up run before the fight. The fight will begin at noon, but first I need to warm up as thoroughly and strategize as completely as if my life depends on it.

Incidentally, it does.

When I texted Vlad the afternoon before to tell him to hold off on releasing the photo and let him know about the fight, he immediately offered to come prepare me. He called me shortly after and, before I could say anything beyond ‘hello,’ he said,  “There is no way I’m not coaching you.”

I could hear the usual gym sounds — training shoes squeaking on the floor, grunts and yells, thumps of bodies hitting mats — in the background. “I am your coach. I coach all your fights. Now, who are you fighting?”

“The guy’s name is Sid ‘Maneater’ Johnson,” I said. “Know anything about him?”

There was silence from the other end of the phone for a few moments. After a couple beats, I started to wonder if the call had dropped. “Hello?”

“I’m still here,” Vlad said. He sounded worried. “Yeah, man, I know Maneater. He used to fight in your league back in the day, but got kicked out a year or two before you got into fighting.”

“Kicked out?” I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean kicked out?”

“He concussed four guys in one season in the cage and one was so bad that the guy is a freakin’ vegetable now. The ref called the match to save the other guy’s life and Maneater beat the ref to a pulp.” I could pretty much hear Vlad shaking his head over the phone. “Irreparable brain damage, man. It’s no joke. And do you know how he got his name?”

“No,” I said. “How?”

“There’s rumor that he’s some kind of cannibal,” Vlad said. “I don’t know if that’s the truth, or if he just does it for the shock appeal, but he has this nasty habit of taking a big bite out of his opponents after defeating them. He chews it up—literally chews up some other man’s flesh—and swallows. It’s probably just the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to his opponent, but even if it’s all just for show, it takes some kind of seriously sick man to eat a part of another human. I dunno, man...”

“Then I guess we better prep smart tomorrow,” I said.

“I’ll see you at Hudson Park at six,” Vlad said, “sharp.”

Now it’s a quarter to six and time get going. Branna is still asleep, her beautiful face as angelic as ever, when I slip out. I’m stopped before I get to the front door, of course.

“Where do you think you’re goin’?” the giant oaf guarding the inside of the front door grunts.

“I have a fight today. I’m going on a training run,” I say. “I’m not running away. Come with for all I care.”

The burly oaf scratches first his head and then his balls. Then, as though he had just thought of it himself, he says, “You know what? I’m gonna come with you. And don’t think I’m not going to love every minute of blowing your head off if you try to make a run for it.” He grins sadistically and pats his pistol holster.

“I’m not running away,” I repeat. “I’m a man. I fight my battles.”

The oaf picks his motorcycle helmet up off of the floor next to him and snaps it on before opening the door. We walk out, and he hops on a Harley by the door, nods at a few other heavily muscled guards just hanging out in front of the house, and revs his engine a few times. Then I start running to the park and he follows behind.

Maybe if he trained more and shot up less, he could keep up. ‘Roids are for wusses who don’t want to work hard and can’t achieve real strength on their own. Real men fight for what they want and they earn it through their own personal merit.

I speed up. I might as well make the associate’s bike’s engine work a little. I run five minute miles all the way to the park, so when I get there, my shirt is soaked through and I am super pumped up. I see Vlad stretching over by the benches, so I jog over while the O’Sullivan oaf parks his bike.

“Cooper, my man,” Vlad greets, thumping me on the shoulder. “I could ask how you get yourself into these kinds of messes, but I’m not in the mood for a dumbass answer or some sappy love shit. We’re in pre-fight mode now and the first thing I am going to need you to do is forget all about all that other drama. Forget about Kyran and Branna and getting shot if things don’t go your way. You’re in the zone now, man.” Vlad has gone full coach mode and it is just what I need. “I need you to visualize the Maneater—”

“I’ve never seen the guy,” I interrupt.

“Eh, he’s a guy with a face,” Vlad groans. “Never mind, never mind—that’s what these new smartphones are for, isn’t it?” He pulls his phone out of his pocket, does a quick Google search, and holds the phone up for me to see. I squint at the screen. The Maneater is one of those really big guys whose shoulder muscles pop up over the side of their tank top straps like some cartoon villain. He either fell asleep in a tanning bed or, more likely, hung out on the streets so much that his skin baked into a permanent, overdone salmon color and hardened leather texture. His face has been messed up so many times that it healed back like a two-year-old’s play dough art piece. There isn’t anything left on his face that isn’t crooked, and his nose must have broken and healed back wrong at least three or four times, judging by the many different ways that it zigs and zags. He has gray, almost white, irises, like a blind guy and his upper lip is curled into a snarl in the photo. His hair is buzzed, but he has a messy, red beard of curly, wiry hair. There is a wide, jagged scar through his left eyebrow that kept the hair from healing back, so it looks like he has three eyebrows.

“Nice-looking guy,” I joke.

Vlad gives me a hard look. “You’ll be looking worse than him if we don’t pull this off this afternoon. So we will.”

I nod.

“Okay, visualize the Maneater,” Vlad continues. “Now visualize yourself killing him. I mean killing him. You can’t just visualize a victory, like we normally do, because that’s not going to work with his kind of fighter. It’s all or nothing. He isn’t going to wave a white flag and surrender ‘cause he has a boo-boo. It’s either you or him and we are going to make sure that it’s him. Unless he’s unconscious and not recovering, he’s not going to let you leave that cage unless you’re in a fucking body bag.”

I said I would do anything for Branna. If that means I have to kill a man, I will.