Jo had not slept, and the photo on her phone was the reason.
She sat on the ring apron at ten to six with the work light off, in the dark that smelled of smoke and wet tape, and she heard the key turn in the front door. Augie came in with a swab behind his ear and a paper cup of gas station coffee in each hand. He stopped when he saw her.
"You're early," he said.
"So are you."
She held the phone out at arm's length. Harbor Street, last night, a streetlight halo, a black car at the curb outside Kell's office. A door open. An old man in a tweed cap stepping out of the back seat.
"Say it fast," Jo said. "Are you selling us out?"
Augie set both coffees on the ring post beside the stopwatch. "I went to see a man. It's a free country."
"At nine o'clock at night. In his car." She stood. "You wouldn't sign my reference, and a week later you're climbing out of his back seat."
Augie took the swab from behind his ear, looked at it, and put it back.
"The note comes due December twenty-first," he said. "A hundred and forty thousand. I thought he might extend it. For an old man. So I went down and asked."
"And?"
"I put up my house." He said it to the floor. "Paid off in June. I said, take it for security, give the girl till spring."
Jo did not move. Two coffees went cold on the ring post.
"He laughed. Very polite. Then he said it was late and gave me a ride home." Augie finally looked up. "So the neighbors would see. He drove me to my own door slow. The Pelletiers were on their porch."
She had been ready for a confession. This one she had no pocket for. She picked up the nearer coffee, just to have something to hold.
"The reference," she said, more quietly. "Why wouldn't you sign?"
"I made your father a promise once."
"What promise?"
"That's all I've got, Jo." He turned his cap in his hands. "That's all I can say."
By three o'clock there were ninety people on folding chairs, eighty more than Jo had budgeted for. A woman from the harbor paper. Neighbors with children on their knees. Four old members drifting back in good jackets, pretending they had been passing.
Frankie worked the door with his phone up. "Free admission, chief, just don't tell the bank."
Inez Brava was already inside the ropes, thirty-eight and unbothered, shaking out her shoulders. Six hundred dollars a session, and Jo had written the check that morning without looking at the balance.
Noor sat on the red corner stool, humming, a rice cake in her wrapped hand until Augie took it from her.
"You saw the post," Jo said.
"I saw it."
"Then they get six. All of them, today, with the cameras on."
Noor chewed. "You in my corner?"
Nobody had asked it that way before. Jo took the water bottle from the bucket.
"Don't count the rounds out loud," Augie muttered, and rang the bell on its bicycle timer.
Rounds one through three, Jo watched from the apron, and her eyes did what she hated. Noor's feet were good. Her jab was better. Inez gave ground and stole it back with the left to the body, a flat, dull thud that carried to the back rows.
Between three and four Jo ducked under the ropes. She had not stood in a corner in fourteen years. The stool was warm from Noor. The bucket slopped against her shin.
"Breathe out the mouth," Jo said, and heard whose voice it was. "Make her pay for the room."
Noor drank, spat, nodded.
"Hands home," Jo said. "Always home." The bell rang, and she was back on the apron with her palms wet and no memory of climbing down.
Round four, Inez went to the body for three straight minutes. Jo saw the right hand start to dip, once, twice, and she saw Noor catch it. The crowd made a sound like a held plate.
Round five, Noor planted and turned the hook, and Inez gave a step.
Between five and six Noor's shoulders were heavy. Jo knelt at the stool with the towel. "She's going to the liver. She knows you're tired."
"I'm not tired."
"Then make it a lie that lasts three minutes."
The bell. Inez came out fast and did not bother with the jab.
She dug the left into the ribs, once, twice, a third, and Noor folded half an inch and the right hand sagged, a hand's width, then two. The exact hole from the clip. Jo knew where the next shot was going before Inez did.
"Home!"
One syllable, and her throat tore on it. Noor's right came up as if pulled on a string, tight to the chin, and she stepped off the line and fired the left down the middle. Inez's head snapped. She smiled through her mouthguard and covered up.
Forty seconds. Thirty. Noor held the hand high through every one of them, humming under her breath, until the last bell rang and the room broke open.
People stood. A kid ran in a circle and fell down.
Frankie came through the crowd with the phone held low against his leg. "Chief." Soft, for once, no bit. "About the other video. I'm sorry. This one's good news. I swear."
"Post it," Jo said.
Noor ducked under the ropes with her gloves hanging and a towel around her neck. She stopped in front of Jo, breathing hard.
"You said home," Noor said. "Everybody else says hands up."
"Yes."
"Okay." She looked at the floor. "Okay. Good."
She went off toward the bag room, and Jo understood she had been thanked.
By six the chairs were stacked and the last neighbor gone. Augie found her by the office, with her father's stopwatch still running on the post.
He took out his wallet, the cracked brown one, and slid something from behind the license. A scrap of cardstock, worn thin at the fold.
"I took it the night Mick died," he said. "From his wallet. So nobody would throw it out."
He put it in her hand.
A ticket stub, faded violet. ROCKPORT ARMORY. March 17, 2012. Row W.
At seventeen she had told him not to come, in the meanest words she had, and never once believed he would listen. He hadn't come. Afterward Frankie said he'd been in Port Elgin, working Mikey Marchetti's corner, three hours up the coast. For fourteen years that had been the whole story. He picked Mikey.
"Augie," she said.
"He wasn't in Port Elgin when you lost," Augie said. "He was in Row W."