The commission's checklist ran to one page, and the last line was the price.
*Surety bond, $10,000. Fingerprints. Two references, one from a licensed person in good standing. Interview with an investigator, in person, Friday.*
Jo wrote the bond check at the desk at 8:05 on Friday morning, October 2, out of the $41,000 that was supposed to be her cushion. It left a number she did not say out loud. Pop's stopwatch ticked on the ring post behind her.
Who in this building was licensed, and would put a name next to hers?
The commission sat on the second floor of a county annex that smelled of toner and floor wax. Investigator Vinnie Okonjo had a gray cardigan, a steel desk, and the unhurried manner of a man who had never once been late for anything. He gave her a form on a clipboard.
"Fingerprints are done," he said. "Bond is posted. I have one reference. Mrs. Fitch writes a very clean letter." He turned a page. "I need a second, and it has to come from a licensed second, cutman, or trainer."
"I have one downstairs," Jo said.
Augie had driven her. He sat in the hallway on a molded plastic chair with his knees apart and a cotton swab behind his ear, and when she held out the pen he looked at it the way you look at a bill.
"Augie. One signature. You've known me my whole life."
"Yeah."
"You're licensed. You're Pop's oldest friend."
"Yeah." He put his hands in his lap. "I won't sign it, Jo."
She waited for the rest. There wasn't any. The hallway hummed. A clerk went by with a coffee, slowed, and sped up again.
"Give me one reason. Even a bad one."
"I made somebody a promise once." He studied his shoes. "That's all you get."
Jo capped the pen. Her face did what she told it to do, which was nothing, and she was grateful for the practice. Inside the open door, Okonjo wrote a single word on his pad. She could not read it from there.
Mulcahy Grady came off a job at noon in a canvas vest with a voltage tester clipped to the pocket. He was thick through the shoulders, with the flat nose of a man who had once fought for Mick and lost more than he won. Jo had called him from the stairwell.
His mother's furnace had been put in by Mick, when Mulcahy was nineteen. He read the form standing up, signed on the line, and slid his license across the steel desk for Okonjo to copy. He said nothing at all. At the door he touched two fingers to his eyebrow, the way fighters did after a good round, and was gone.
Okonjo squared the paper. "That's two."
"That's two," Jo said.
"A conflict question, then. Standard." He folded his hands. "Do you have, or have you had, any agreement, written or verbal, with a promoter in connection with this boxer?"
"I had a letter of intent. Exclusivity, with a buyer for the building." She had practiced this. "I terminated it Monday. Certified mail."
"Do you have proof?"
She held up her phone. The photo was a little crooked: a green receipt, a tracking number, a red thumbtack in the corner of the frame. Okonjo took the phone and read the number slowly, once, from top to bottom.
"Sent Monday, September 28," he said. "Delivered to a P.O. box. Which is not the same as read."
"It's terminated. It says so in the letter."
"Mm." He gave the phone back. "I believe you. I'll say this once, because I say it to everyone. If that turns out not to be true, it isn't a fine. It's revocation, and a referral to the attorney general."
"Understood."
"Good." He did not smile. "Then I'll ask you the other thing."
He opened a thin folder. Jo knew what it was before he turned it around. Amateur federation, Region One, a photocopy gone soft and gray with age. Her name at the top, in a girl's handwriting, with a mark in the margin where someone had drawn a small star.
"I pull files on everyone," he said. "Yours is short. The last entry is the national final, Saturday, March 17, 2012, Rockport Armory. You were seventeen." He tapped the line. "You did not fight again."
"No."
"For the record, Ms. Kowalczyk. Why did you stop boxing?"
The building hummed. Jo looked at the old photocopy, at the small star, and she kept her hands flat on her knees so they would stay where she put them.
At Rockport, between rounds, she had looked down at her corner stool. The bucket, the towel, the water bottle. Nobody.
"My corner was empty," she said. "I decided I didn't need one."
Okonjo wrote. She watched every stroke of the pen.
"Was that accurate?" he said.
"It was accurate."
"Thank you." He turned the page over and did not look up. "That's all the form wants."
The license came through at 4:51 p.m., a PDF on her phone, stamped and numbered, on the bench outside the annex, nine minutes inside the line. Augie sat beside her without speaking, and she did not look at him.
She had won something. For one sentence, in the cold afternoon air, Jo let herself have it.
The gym was too quiet when they came in. Noor sat on the apron of the ring with her gloves in her lap and a half-eaten banana on her knee. Frankie stood in front of her holding his phone in both hands, as if it might spill.
"Chief." His voice cracked on it. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"What is it?"
"The sparring tape. From Monday." He swallowed. "I put it on the gym's page, for the socials, like I said. It's everywhere. I didn't know it would go anywhere, I swear I didn't."
Jo took the phone. There she was, small and clear, with a time stamp across the corner: Noor, in round six, dropping her right hand to bait the body, and Inez Brava turning the liver hook into the hole. Somebody had circled the opening in red.
Beneath it was a repost from Kell Promotions. One word.
*Six.*
Noor read it over Jo's shoulder, chewed, and swallowed the banana.
"They know," she said. "Everybody knows now. Sasha's camp watched it already. They're counting."