Knockout. Erica Orloff

looked from me to Uncle Deacon, to Destiny, and back to me again. He sighed with resignation. “Fine. Deacon, you can take the girl out to the ranch. But if after hearing Jack’s little story I decide it’s a bad idea, I’m going out there to fetch her back again and take her to social services.”

      Deacon looked over at me, and I nodded. I kissed Destiny on the forehead and whispered, “I promise we’ll look after you.” Deacon gingerly carried her in his arms, came back and took her backpack and things, and left the house.

      Rob looked down at me and reached out to move my hair off my face. “You need to put ice on your forehead. You probably have a concussion.”

      “Probably. The room’s kind of spinning, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

      “Yeah…well, my head’s spinning, too. This story better be good, Jack. You have twenty minutes. Then we dial 911.”

      “Fine. And aren’t you going to ask me to marry you?” Rob asked me to marry him about twice a week. We live in Vegas, and he just wanted to go over to the Little White Wedding Chapel and have Elvis marry us. But I told him I wasn’t marrying him until my father could walk me down the aisle. And considering Dad still had four years left on his prison sentence, Rob and I looked to be semiengaged—I wore his pear-shaped diamond ring on my left hand—for a long, long time.

      “No,” he snapped, crossing his well-muscled arms. “I am not going to ask you tonight. Something about a dead body in my girlfriend’s house takes all the romance out of it. Start talking, Jack. Remember, twenty minutes.” He looked at his watch.

      “Okay,” I said. “Here goes.”

      Two nights before, I tried to avoid staring at forty pairs of perfect breasts. Naked breasts. As much as I tried to tell myself, “Jack, you’ve got two breasts, same as all of them,” it was difficult not to stare as I made my way backstage at the Majestic Casino’s show.

      And actually, that wasn’t true. I had two breasts, all right, but they most certainly did not look like any of the breasts on any of the six-foot-tall showgirls. Some girls have all the luck. Either that or all the silicone.

      I knocked on the dressing room door.

      “Come on in,” Crystal’s voice sang out from inside.

      I opened the door and stepped into a pink nightmare. It looked like someone had thrown up Pepto-Bismol on everything from Crystal’s velvet couch to the walls. Crystal sat, removing her false eyelashes—which looked like black furry caterpillars sitting on her eyes—and wearing a short pink silk kimono.

      “Jack,” she said, then turned around and flung her arms wide.

      I walked over and leaned down to hug her. “God, it’s good to see you.”

      “Did you catch the show?”

      “No, sorry. I was at the gym until late.”

      “You have to come some night. The special effects are amazing. I actually fly at one point.”

      “I thought you were scared of heights.”

      “I am. But you know, the show must go on. Break a leg. The whole nine yards. I just suck it up and do it.” The glitter on her cheeks made her look like a fairy princess.

      “How’s Destiny?” I asked, referring to her five-year-old pride and joy.

      “Oh, just great, Jack. She’s so smart. So cute. Here’s her latest picture.” She pointed and tapped with a long French-manicured acrylic fingernail at a photo taped to her mirror.

      “Wow! God, I haven’t seen her since diapers.” I leaned in to look at the little girl whose long hair was pulled into two braids; she had big brown eyes and a wide, innocent grin.

      “Yeah. She’s getting big. A lot’s changed, hasn’t it, Jack?”

      “You could say that.”

      In the nearly four years since I last saw Crystal in person, she had, as she put it, “really hit the jackpot this time,” and fallen in love with Tony Perrone—the same Tony Perrone who owned the Majestic Casino, a television station, a fleet of planes and real estate from one side of the United States to the other—whose five-carat yellow diamond rock she wore on the ring finger of her left hand, though they had never got around to setting a date, and in whose twenty-million-dollar mansion she lived. He was listed in Forbes as among the top-500 wealthiest men in America. Under his tutelage, Crystal had undergone enough plastic surgery to transform her into a walking, talking human Barbie doll. She had also been taking French lessons from a private tutor, and after this season, would quit as the star of the Majestic’s show to become a regular old Vegas housewife—albeit one who drove a Ferrari worth $200,000, had a private zoo in her backyard, complete with giraffes and Bengal tigers, and whose walk-in closet (more like a walk-in apartment) contained 862 pairs of designer shoes.

      In those same four years, my father had been sentenced to prison for racketeering, after being framed by the slimy boxing promoter Benny Bonita, and I had moved in with my uncle Deacon as everything I once owned was sold to pay for my father’s defense. Not that it did me—or Dad—any good.

      “I have to talk to you.”

      “That’s what you said on the phone, and that’s why I’m here.” I sat on a pink velvet tufted ottoman.

      “Jack,” she whispered. “The Mob is trying to get to your fighter, Terry Keenan. And if you get in the way, they’ll kill you. They’ll kill anyone who gets in the middle of it.”

      My uncle Deacon and my father were the only two brothers in boxing history to hold championship belts at the same time—my father as a middleweight, my uncle as a heavyweight. Together, the famous Rooney brothers owned a training facility for fighters nestled in the foothills of the Nevada mountains, and a gym in one of Las Vegas’s less-savory neighborhoods. When my father went to prison, I tried to take his place. I was raised in a boxing gym and know as much about fighting as any trainer. Terry Keenan was one of our fighters, and in four weeks, on New Year’s Eve, he was scheduled to box for the heavyweight championship of the world.

      “What the hell are you talking about, Crystal?” She was nursing a white wine spritzer, which sat on her dressing table. Before Perrone took her away from me and all her friends, she liked Wild Turkey.

      “Benny Bonita and Tony had a secret meeting. I heard shouting. Tony didn’t realize I was in the wine cellar. I crept up the stairs and could hear everything. Every word. They have something on Terry Keenan. I’m not sure what, but it’s big. They want him to take a dive in round five, and they don’t care who they have to kill to make this fight go the way they want it. Bonita wants to take over all of your dad’s fighters. Some high rollers and some big-time bookies want to see Keenan lose. In round five to be precise.”

      Crystal had serious conspiracy-theory issues. She thought everyone from Elvis to Liberace was beamed down in Area 51. UFOs, alien abductions, JFK, even Princess Di’s death, if there was a conspiracy theory, she embraced it. Despite Tony’s Pygmalion transformation of her, she still got most of her news from the National Enquirer.

      “Crystal, Tony Perrone has a reputation as a ruthless businessman, and there are whispers about the Mob, but I can’t see him doing business with the likes of Bonita.”

      Benny Bonita was the loudest, brashest, most crooked, most obnoxious fight promoter in the history of a sport with brash showmen—with the biggest pompadour toupee to match. He also framed my father, and I hated him with a passion. But as much as I hated him and wanted to buy into Crystal’s theory, Tony Perrone was too smart. He would be careful not to have more than a hint of the Mob around him. It would be bad for business—bad for his gaming license.

      “I’m sure of what I heard, Jack. Swear to God. Bonita said something like ‘I should have taken care of the other brother—and that kid of Rooney’s, too.’ He meant you. That’s when I panicked.”

      “Crystal,