The Fighter Read Online Free PDF

contents with a
stained wooden paddle, remarking how the process had come a long way from some
Sicilian bambino stomping grapes with her dirty feet. This usually elicited a
laugh and soon the tour would wind back to the foyer, where his father was
waiting to usher the buyer into his office.
    How
was he expected to learn anything—osmosis?
    When
bored—this was every day, vaguely all day—Paul would shut his eyes, lay his
head on the blotter, and craft elaborate fantasies. Most frequent was the one
where his mother and father were slaughtered by vicious street thugs, spurring
Paul to embark upon a Death Wish- style killing spree. Except
instead of affluent winery owners his folks were hardworking firefighters, and
Paul became Rex Appleby, a tough-as-nails cop hardened by the mean streets of
his youth. In the final and most satisfying scene, Paul/Rex staggers from the
gang's hideout with a switchblade sticking out from his shoulder and his shirt
torn open to display his totally buff abs. He's carrying a gas can, trailing a
line of gasoline across the lawn. A thug crawls to the front door, his face
bashed to smithereens, and, snarling like a dog, he aims a pistol at Rex's
back. Rex flicks the flywheel on a burnished-chrome Zippo and drops it in the
shimmer of gasoline. A line of fire races toward the house and the thug screams Nooooo! as a fireball mushrooms into the twilight. A cinematic pan shot captures Appleby
striding from the wreckage in super-slow motion, unblinking and ultra- cool.
    "Son,
oh son of mine."
    Jack
Harris stepped into the office. He paused in the doorway, a framed
daguerreotype: tall and thickly built, dressed in a suit that hung in flattering
lines, jaw and cheeks ingrained with a blue patina of stubble.
    He
tapped the Rolex Submariner strapped to his wrist. "Make sure the damn
thing's still ticking," he said. "Or perchance you're operating on
Pacific Standard time, in which case you're hours early and I applaud your
dedication. But if, like me, your watch reads eleven- thirty, you, child of my
loins, are late."
    It
was laughable, the very suggestion that it mattered whether Paul arrived early,
late, or at all. What was the point of his being there— were break-room coffee
supplies running at dangerously low levels?
    Paul
removed the Ray Bans. "Extenuating circumstances."
    "Yee-ouch. That's a beaut."
    Jack
tilted his son's head up and poked the blackened flesh with the tip of a blunt,
squared-off finger.
    Paul
pushed it away. "Lay off, will you? I'm not a grape—don't need to squeeze
the juice out of me."
    "That's
a blue ribbon winner." Jack set a haunch on the desk's edge. "How'd
it happen?"
    "Fell
down a flight of stairs."
    "Those
stairs knock your teeth out, too? That's one mean-spirited staircase; tell me
where it is so I can avoid it."
    Jack,
veteran of many a low-county barfight, was evidently unmoved by his son's
state. Sometimes a man needed to get out there and chuck a few knuckles—it was
cathartic. Afterward the winner bought the loser a pint.
    "You
planning to see a doctor?"
    Paul
waved the question off. "I possess inner resilience. I am Zen."
    Jack
nodded. "Well, it's like they say in poker, son: can't win them all,
otherwise it'd be no fun when you did."
    "Who
says I lost?"
    Jack
laughed. Over the years he'd developed what Paul thought of as his
Businessman's Laugh: boisterous and patently phony, it began as a Kris
Kringle-ish chortle before segueing into an ongoing staccato hack that sounded
like a Nazi Sten gun. Oooohohohoho-aka-aka-ak-ak-ak! His father turned it on and off at will, like a faucet. On those rare occasions
when Paul found himself among businessmen with everybody's fake laughs
ricocheting off the walls, he got the feeling he was deep in the forest
primeval surrounded by screeching monkeys.
    Jack's
mirth subsided. "Well, if the other guy lost I guess the police'll be
showing up any minute now—you must've murdered him."
    "You're
a laugh riot."
    "Speaking
of laugh riots,