The kid answered with a jab-and-cross, tearing the tape from Joe’s cut. Joe’s eye filled with blood, which sprayed as he ducked. The kid came in to finish the cut. When they punch, left-handers tend to slide to the right. A matter of physics, one of Newton’s laws. The more tired, the more they slide out of control. Moving low for a big man, Joe slipped a hook and rose, driving arm and fist of the bluntest curiosity into the boy’s unguarded stomach and red cicatrix. The kid arched, half of him still following the parabola of his swing while the other half tried to bend away from Joe, who hit the coralroot scar again and continued to move in, staying low, pursuing the softening, collapsing midsection. In the air the kid had no place to go. Joe hooked from the ground up, his own body rising.

Inevitability came in grunts and the sound, when Joe hit him, of a stake being driven into sodden earth. When he stopped, the boy went from weightless to gravity-bound and sprawled in the headlights like a figure under water.

The suddenness of the end brought a quiet to the tent. Joe pressed the back of his hand to the blood pulsing from his cut. Ray and the MPs started collecting money. Hilario was collecting too.

He had left his clothes in the cafe kitchen. He washed, taped and dressed himself by the sink while Ray cleared the table of No. 10 cans of peaches, lard and beans, and counted the money by denominations. The enamel top of the long kitchen was covered by stacks of bills.

“Chief, you should’ve seen Shapiro and Gruber. They went through those cowboys like Gestapos, took everything but their watches. Done.” Ray took a step back from the table like a man getting a better view of a big Rembrandt. “My God, I’ve never seen this much money before. Sixty-six thousand dollars for you. That’s as good as a title fight. You should open a bank.”

“I had something else in mind.” Joe tucked his tie into his shirt and gingerly touched the tape on his brow.

“Well, here’s to Chief Joe Peña.” Ray found two glasses in the sink and filled them with Black Label. “The greatest heavyweight in the Army. Your night, Chief.”

Pollack slipped through the kitchen door. His hair was freshly straightened and looked combed with a razor. He wore a canary jacket and a diamond ring on each hand. Dressed like a man about to travel at his ease, he made a slow, respectful circuit of the table, then laid down three folded papers.

“Deed. Receipt. Liquor license.” Pollack touched a stack of green bills briefly, to establish the fact of them. “Congratulations; you own a nightclub. I wish I could stay to show you the ropes.”

“You’re leaving tonight?”