The Porn Identity

Chapter 10

            The gym off Harding Street was a small square building next door to a carpet outlet center. Both buildings, in fact, looked very warehouse-like with their no-nonsense, rectangular structuring painted in basic beiges, grays, and browns. Less visually pleasing and more industrial—I could dig it. If I owned a boxing gym, I'd go with masculine colors too. Instead, I owned a dainty teashop with copious amounts of fancy tablecloths and floral teacups. Ladies loved it. Rule number one of business: know your audience.

       From the looks of this place, whoever owned it knew the only people coming around here was the rough and tumble crowd.

       And, you know, two bougie girls investigating a murder on their lunch.

       "Looks small," Alice said from the passenger seat. "This the right place?"

       "We'll find out."

       The parking lot was mostly empty since it was midday. Nothing was there but a white van and a couple of mid-sized cars. A shallow pothole had cracked open right in the entrance to the parking lot. I maneuvered around it slowly, careful not to wreck my alignment or blow a tire. Once I was clear, I went ahead and parked as far away from the other cars as possible. That earned me a stank-eye from Alice since she generally hates parking so far away from the door if she doesn't have to, but half the parked cars were all beat up and I'm not looking for my baby to be one of them.

       "Just let me do the talking," I said as we walked.

       "Of course. I'm just here to shadow, hon. I wouldn't dream of upstaging you."

       There was no signage on the building itself, and no standalone sign to tell you it was the right place, but the lone glass door that led inside had the name of their business posted in glossy white vinyl lettering: Bragging Rights

       This was the place.

       There was no guarantee that Felix Rosario was in right now but if he wasn't I was hoping to at least talk with someone who knew him. Or at least that was as far as I'd thought out my half-assed plan.

       The inside was a big square room with tan walls that had been graffitied with colorful cartoonish depictions of boxers in action and the words Bragging Rights in big bold bubble lettering across the back wall. A Puerto Rican flag hung from the ceiling near a back office.

       At the center of it all was a boxing ring. Two men pummeled each other as some terrible rock song I'd never heard blared from the speakers. One of the men outside the ring yelled at the others to keep their hands up.

       The rest of the equipment in the gym consisted of a few sparse punching bags, a weight bench, and a vending machine.

       "Can I help you?" A tiny table and chair were set up near the door. The man that sat there was middle aged, balding and chubby. He wore a sloppy collared shirt and a blue baseball cap with the emblem for the Burenville Crawdads embroidered across the front.

       "Yes. Is Felix Rosario here?"

       He pointed at the ring. "Yeah, he's in the ring."

       Alice and I walked toward it with a bit of trepidation. There weren't any seats or a general waiting area, so we hovered with our backs against a wall as we waited.

       "So, what's the plan." She said as she casually watched a man take shots at a punching bag.

       "I'm gonna ask him some questions."

       When I didn't say anything else, her face scrunched up in disbelief. "That's it? No word games? No fake identity? No espionage?"

       "Nope."