At 8:59 the badge was on the desk, face up, and Duffy Witt's face filled the laptop with nothing in it. Her whole career had come down to a square of plastic on her father's blotter. Could she keep both, the job and the gym, for one more week?
Pop's office had glass on three sides. Through the left pane Jo could see the ring, and in it Noor, humming, bouncing on her toes. Across from her stood Inez Brava, thirty-eight, retired, built like a refrigerator with opinions. Jo had hired her out of her own savings at $600 a session. The assignment was one sentence long: find the hole.
On the apron Frankie held his phone up sideways, filming. "For the socials, chief," he'd said, waving it at her on the way past. "Content."
"Josephine," Witt said. "Do you understand why we're here?"
"I do." She sat straight, the way she sat for hearings. "Two searches, one personal matter, property I now own. Section four of the handbook permits limited personal use if no client data is exposed. None was."
"The handbook says reasonable personal use."
"It says limited. Reasonable is in the preamble, which is aspirational." Witt blinked. She had him. She could feel the exact weight of it, the way you feel a lock begin to turn. "I'll submit a written disclosure today. I'll sign whatever recusal you like."
In the ring, the bell on the bicycle timer rang. Round six.
Inez came forward with her hands high, patient, a woman who got paid by the hour and did not mind. Noor threw the left. Body shot, clean, a good one.
The right hand dropped to her belt.
"Compliance will want that in writing," Witt said, "and I'm inclined, frankly, to..."
Inez stepped to her own left and threw a hook so short Jo almost missed it. It went in under Noor's elbow, exactly into the hole, and the sound came through the glass as a flat wet slap. Noor's mouth opened. Her knees folded, one, then the other, and she went down on her side and stayed there, curled around herself, one glove clawing at the canvas.
Jo stood up.
"Josephine?" Witt said. "I'm not finished."
She was already at the door. Behind her the laptop kept talking to the chair, a small tinny voice explaining the terms of her severance to nobody, and she did not turn around.
By the time she came back, the call had ended. The laptop screen was dark. Her phone was lit with a single email from Human Resources, subject line plain as a parking ticket: employment terminated, effective immediately. The badge sat where she'd left it. Nobody had come to take it.
She dropped it in the desk drawer and shut it with her hip.
Noor was in the locker room with a bag of ice pressed to her ribs, still in her wraps. The room smelled of wet tape. Jo stood in the door holding a towel she didn't remember taking.
"Same spot," Jo said. "Every time you throw the left, the right goes down. Inez found it in six rounds. Sasha Vell will find it in one."
"It's a rhythm."
"It's a hole."
"It's what he taught me." Noor chewed a granola bar with great concentration. "I'm not changing what Pop taught me."
"He taught you wrong."
"He taught me the Jojo."
The word hit Jo somewhere under the sternum, where Noor's left had been. The Jojo. Left to the body, let the right hand sag like you're tired, and when they jump into the gap, plant, step back, turn the hook. Her father had walked her through it forty times at fourteen. Done fresh, the dropped hand was bait. Done tired, it was just a hole, and Noor did it tired.
"That was mine," Jo said. Her voice came out smaller than she meant. "He gave it away."
Noor finally lifted her eyes. They were very steady.
"He didn't give it away," she said. "He said you'd come back for it."
Jo opened her mouth. Nothing was in it. She set the towel on the bench beside the ice, squared the corners, and walked out.
She wrote the letter on Pop's typewriter. Three lines, one clause number, one date. Notice of termination of the letter of intent, effective immediately. Addressed to Saltmarket Partners LLC, P.O. Box 4417. Same box as the loan.
Frankie leaned in the doorway, jingling the blue zippered deposit bag, the one he carried every Monday to the bank. Augie sat on an upturned bucket behind him, a cotton swab behind his ear, taping a new pair of wraps and saying nothing.
"Let me guess," Frankie said. "Somebody got fired."
"Somebody did." She rolled the page out, folded it in thirds, and sealed it in an envelope herself, running her thumb down the flap twice. "And you two should hear it from me. The buyer is Desmond Kell. He holds the note. If I don't end the exclusivity by Wednesday, October 7, it renews for fourteen more days and he owns my signature again."
Frankie whistled low. "Kell. Of course it's Kell." He lifted the envelope out of her hand like it was a baby bird. "Chief, the post office is next door to the bank. I'll send it certified. You've got enough on your plate."
She hesitated one second. Then she nodded. "Thank you."
He was back in an hour, humming, the deposit bag lighter under his arm. He laid the little green receipt on the blotter with a flourish, and Jo pinned it to the corkboard over the desk, next to the fight poster, with the one red thumbtack.
The man who came at ten to five wore a county badge and carried a long envelope. Hand delivery, he said. Signature required. He did not look at her face while she signed.
State Athletic Commission, the letterhead said. Re: Haddad, Noor, lightweight. Jo read it standing, the way she read everything that could hurt.
*Petition filed by Desmond Kell, in his capacity as promoter, noting that the above-named boxer has had no licensed manager of record since the death of Michael Kowalczyk. Unless a licensed manager is placed on file with this office by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, October 2, the title bout of December 18 will be awarded to the No. 2 contender.*
Friday. Five o'clock. Four days.
Jo had never held a boxing manager's license in her life.