[b]Gotham City Then[/b] Raw steak on a paper plate. Blood squirting out. Slam picked it up with one large mitt, shoved into his mouth. He chewed the bloody meat, spat it back out. Pre-fight routine. No meat, all blood. Sid said it got the animal instincts going. Sid said the Israeli commandos chewed raw steak before taking it to those [i]fakakta[/i] Palestinian pigs. Sid said Slam was a mensch. Even for a crazy goy kid with a weak chin. "Rockabye Ruiz," Sid said from across the room. Sid: Six feet two inches, fat from too many Ruebens. Years ago he boxed as the Hebrew Hammer. The Great Yiddish Hope. Fucker still had a hell of a left jab. "How you feeling about Ruiz, Sammy?" Slam spat blood. He flashed bloody teeth. "Fucker doesn't have a chance." Sid winked. "That's my Slammy." Wally the cut man wrapped Slam's hands tightly. He helped him put on the boxing gloves. Red gloves, navy blue trunks with "Bradley" on the waist in white. Sid walked up. He had two or three inches on Slam. He placed his big mitts on Slam's shoulder. He pulled him in close. "Ruiz is only getting 9-1 by the bookies, kid. If you take a dive in the third or fourth, we can make a shitload of money. I got a guy who can get the bet in before the fight. What do you say?" Where the fuck was this coming from? Sid was his trainer for almost five years now and never asked Slam to take a dive. Sid wasn't dirty like a lot of managers on the scene. Sid ran a clean ship, no dabbling with bookies or the gamblers that hung around the ring. It threw Slam off balance. He shook his head. "No, Sid. I ain't taking a fucking dive." Sid grinned. He slapped Slam's shoulders. "That's what I like to hear, boychick. Let's go kick some ass. You win big enough, I'll buy you a hooker to spend the night with tonight." -- [b]Gotham City Now[/b] Slam sipped malt liquor. The shit burned going down. Cut-rate verging on pure ethanol. He drunk straight from the bottle in the driver's seat of his car. No-tell motel across the street. Red Arrow Inn on the neon sign. Partially burned out letters made it look like "ed Ar ow Inn." His camera sat in the passenger seat. Two hours into his tail job. He followed Mr. Harold Scoggins leaving his white job and tailed him to the "ed Ar ow Inn." Scoggins snapped up room six right by the road and dashed inside. Slam snapped quick pix of the dash. He also snapped pix of a caddy pulling up to the room. Out popped a dumpy brunette in jeans and a plain blouse. She went inside room six. He snapped pix and cut odds to who the temptress in mom jeans was. Either Scoggins' coworker or neighbor. Men with wandering dicks didn't wander too far from home. The clothing indicated stay at home mom. Slam called it at even odds she lived down the block from the Scoggins house. He got lit and dozed while they did the horizontal bop. Under normal circumstances he'd go in close and snap pix of them in the act, but the curtains were closed tres tight. The lovers came out twenty minutes later. Slam snagged his camera and started popping off pix. Scoggins' zipper was down, his pants disheveled. The woman had bed head. He got them stumbling out in post-coital bliss. He got them kissing. He got in tight on Scoggins groping the woman's ass. They departed, heading in different directions while Slam thumbed through the pix on his camera's view screen. The lawyer he was working for would get the shots tomorrow morning and then Scoggins would be getting fucked for the second time in as many days. His phone rang before he could leave. "Samuel Bradley Investigations," he answered. "Slam, it's Peggy, Sid's wife." A ghost from the past. He hadn't seen Sid or Peggy in twenty years. "Peg, hey. What's up?" "It's Sid, Slam... he's dead. Somebody killed him."