The Distance: A Crime Novel Introducing Billy Nichols - Hardcover

Muller, Eddie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743214439 ISBN 13: 9780743214438

Publisher: Scribner, 2002

Synopsis

In 1949, San Francisco sportswriter and boxing devotee Billy Nichols becomes caught in a dangerous web of deceit, betrayal, and desire when he comes to the aid of heavyweight boxer Hack Escalante, who has killed his manager. A first novel. 12,500 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Eddie Muller, son of the famed San Francisco boxing writer of the same name, grew up in newsrooms and boxing arenas. He is the founder of the San Francisco Historical Boxing Museum, an honorary member of the World Boxing Hall of Fame, and the author of Dark City Dames; Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, for which he received Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Award nominations; Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema; and the forthcoming The Art of Noir: Posters and Graphics of the Classic Film Noir Period. Muller lives in the San Francisco Bay area. The Distance is his first novel. Visit the author's Web site at www.noircity.com

Reviews

In his first crime novel, Muller gives an authentic if depressing view of San Francisco's downtrodden neighborhoods in the late '40s, when boxing was the way to fame and fortune. Billy Nichols, sportswriter for Hearst's Inquirer (aka "Mr. Boxing"), knows something is wrong when he finds promoter Gig Liardi's apartment door cracked open. Inside is rising fight star Hack Escalante, who has just beaten his manager to death for some unexplained insult to his wife. With the crime and the criminal apparently known at the outset, the two "go the distance" together and bury Liardi's body in Golden Gate Park. Nichols then shields his young prot‚g‚ from the police until the final championship bout. Det. Francis O'Connor works slowly and deliberately, while we meet numerous minor characters from the "fistic fraternity," most with little connection to the case. There is romance, graphically described, when Nichols has an affair with Escalante's wife during the young boxer's brief Navy stint. Muller knows Frisco's boxing scene well, and takes us through seedy arenas and nightclubs as his narrator (and maybe the reader) get "lost in the circuit" of unsavory bookmakers, gamblers and politicians exploiting young men eager to be written up in Nichols's columns, excerpts of which are interspersed between chapters. Those with an interest in boxing and a desire to know better the grim ambiance of the ring and locker room will be intrigued, but for others, the technical terms and sleazy characters in this sordid underworld may be too much to fathom. (Jan. 18)City: The Lost World of Film Noir, among other noir-related titles.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Son of a boxing writer and no stranger to newsrooms and boxing rings, Muller (Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of Adults Only Cinema) brings gritty authenticity to his first novel, set in San Francisco in 1949 and featuring boxing writer Billy Nichols. When Billy walks in on a crime scene a manager accidentally killed by his heavyweight protage, Hack Escalante he decides to protect Hack by concealing the crime. Slowly, he realizes that Hack is indeed innocent and that the killer is still out there. While searching for the real bad guy, Billy still manages to turn out his boxing column and play a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with a detective who is convinced that he committed the murder. Muller has written extensively about film noir, and it shows: exuding toughness and moral ambiguity, his fiction debut is crawling with down-and-out strivers who do what they must to survive. Recommended for public libraries. Marylaine Block, formerly with St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, IA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

San Francisco, 1947: Billy Nichols, head sportswriter for the San Francisco Inquirer, the flagship of the Hearst Empire, gets punched around by a split-second decision he makes to cover for a boxer who murdered his manager. The murder took place in manager Gig Liardi's apartment, moments before Nichols showed up on a visit. Boxer Hack Escalante convinces Nichols the killing was accidental, and sportswriter and boxer then bury the body. Nichols finds that the cover-up places his job--and then his life--in danger. Muller, a film-noir expert (see his 1998 nonfiction work, Dark City), perfectly captures the feel of noir drama--the fast-paced descent into paranoia, the tightening noose of circumstance around the doomed hero's neck. He also brings to life old-time ringside, late-night joints, streets lit by buzzing red neon, along with the earthshaking clamor of the newspaper composing room. Wonderfully evocative. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Something was seriously wrong. I tipped to that as soon as the door to Gig Liardi's flat cracked opened. Gig's fighter, Hack Escalante, peered through the gap, eyes rimmed red and puffy. When he saw who it was, he stepped back and let me in. Hack had been crying, and still hadn't managed to pull himself together.

"Where's Gig?" I asked. Loud enough, but a little shaky.

Hack turned away and pointed. My gut went into free-fall when I saw the blood smeared across his knuckles. Whenever I wrote about Hack's hands, I called them paws or mitts. Bunched into fifteen-inch fists, they'd cracked the bones of half a dozen opponents. From ringside I'd heard Johnny Hubbard's rib snap when Hack nailed him with a short hook above the liver.

Hack was pointing to the floor. Gig was lying between the chesterfield and the coffee table. He wasn't down there looking for dropped change.

"I think he's dead," Hack said.

I knelt and shook Gig's shoulder. I'd stared into my father's lifeless face, lying on the wet pavement, seconds after he'd died. Gig's eyes had the same dry, absent look.

"What the hell happened?" I pulled back from the body, arms at my sides, fighting the shakes that were coming on strong. Gig had phoned not more than thirty minutes before, begging me to drop by. Had something big to run past me. Probably another spiel on how he wanted to make Hack with Joe Louis, bring the fight to San Francisco, and pull the biggest gate in California history. His voice was practically ringing in my ear.

"I hit him." Hack gazed at his mitts again, like he couldn't believe they belonged to him.

The blinds were open. It was dark. Across the alley, I could see right into another flat that was all lit up. Some woman ambled down a narrow hallway, past the bright kitchen. I stepped around Hack and yanked the blinds shut.

"Jesus Christ Almighty, why'd you hit him?"

"I don't know. We were talkin' about the New York trip and he started in about a dream he had: he's holding up this big belt with jewels all over it and he's saying that I'd won the title, and then I said, 'How come you're holding the belt if I won the fight?'"

Hack started gulping for air and gasping out little yips and chokes. "And -- an -- an -- that set him off and he starts tellin' me that I wouldn't have nothin' if it wasn't for him and that no -- nobody's gonna cut him outta the picture -- not Jacobs, not nobody."

"That's it?"

His face twisted up. I knew there was more.

"Claire -- he started talking about Claire. He called her, he called her, he called -- "

Hack put fists up in front of his face, like he was taking a flurry. All of a sudden he's down on his knees, gripping the legs of my trousers.

"He hit his head when he fell back. On the table. It was so quick! What am I gonna do? They'll put me in jail. Take me away from my family! I got babies!"

Hack tried to pull Gig up. "Guys get up when I hit 'em harder than that. Why can't he get back up? Get up! Get up!" Gig's head just dangled.

When Hack was sixteen his father, Mario, threw him out of the house. He didn't want a boxer for a son. Hack met Gig Liardi at the Young Men's Institute on Oak Street. I was there -- 1934. Liardi circled the big raw kid like a snake, then sidled up and swallowed him whole. Gig was a spent lightweight contender with a chip on his shoulder. A chip the size of Alcatraz. Beautiful right cross with nothing behind it. Couldn't bust a grape. But he knew prizefighting and was fishing for a kid he could bring along. Hack had lived with him for three years in this dank North Beach flat, in a room just down the hall. That was before Hack met and married Claire McKenna, before she wedged herself between them and changed everything.

"I'm scared," Hack cried into Gig's dead chest. "I'm scared." He kept repeating it over and over.

"Hack, get up. C'mon."

"I never wanted to hurt nobody. Never. Why'd this hafta happen?"

"Where'd he hit his head?"

Hack turned loose of Gig, stood up, staggered, and pointed to the edge of the coffee table. There was a slight crack, and some wood splinters. Looking closer I thought I could see a bit of blood and some hair. I took the display handkerchief from my suit pocket and wiped off the edge of the table.

"Move his head," I told Hack.

Hack cradled Gig's head in his massive hands and lifted it to the side. The gentle maneuver knotted up my stomach. This boy should never have been a fighter. Now he was a killer.

There was no blood that I could see on the floor. Gig had fallen on his side and his head had lodged awkwardly between the floor and the chesterfield. Any blood had stayed in his mouth. Must have been some kind of internal hemorrhage, or maybe his neck snapped. Didn't matter. Hack hit Gig. Gig died. That's the way one story ended and that's the way a whole other one began.

"How'd you get here, Hack?"

"Drove." He snuffed his nose and brushed the back of his hand across his face.

My heart was hammering. I looked around the room, stalling while I thought about what would happen to Hack now. The kid's life had barely started, and in seconds here it was in the dumper. I tried to act calm. I was, after all, the Answer Man. The guy they always called in a pinch. Billy will know what to do. What I did was wad my handkerchief so Gig's blood was buried deep in the folds. Then I retraced the few steps I'd taken since entering the place, swabbing my prints from the doorknob, the tabletop...

"Anybody know you're here?" I asked.

Hack turned his watery eyes my way, as though seeing me for the first time. He shook his head.

"No. Nobody."

"Not even your wife?" I wiped off the floor beside Gig's head, where I'd set my hand while crouching down. I rubbed the damp palm print into a smudge.

"I don't know," the kid muttered. "No, I don't think so."

It was my job to know everything about everybody in the fight fraternity, and what I knew about Gig Liardi was that he wouldn't be missed. Not to say that he deserved this. Nobody deserved this.

"What are you doing?" Hack asked, a note of dim hope in his voice.

"Doing you a favor," I huffed. Under my breath, so he couldn't hear, I added, "Returning a favor. A big one."

*  *  *

We drove from North Beach out to the far western reaches of Golden Gate Park. When we hadn't seen lights on the road for fifteen minutes, we got out. I carried Gig's suitcase, which I'd had Hack stuff with a bunch of Gig's traveling clothes. I wrapped the handkerchief around the grip. Hack had the shovel. Gloves were pointless for him. None of Gig's could possibly fit.

The fog was so thick you couldn't see the moon and the only sound was Hack's grunting and the incessant scrape of metal in the earth.

He wouldn't let me dig. He was the muscle, after all. I was just a sportswriter, albeit Mr. Boxing. I was supposed to be the watchdog. In my pocket, I nervously juggled the rosary beads I always carried with me. With nothing better than a half-assed shovel he grabbed out of Gig's basement, Hack dug the hole in about forty minutes. To a normal person, this would have a been a brutally exhausting ordeal. To Hack, it was like training. Don't think, just run. Don't think, just hurt the bag. Don't think, just dig.

In the time it took to excavate Gig's final resting place, I had plenty of chances to turn back, play it straight, do the law-abiding thing. Put myself, once again, at a safe remove. I knew why I was doing it. Hell, covering up for the naïve fighter was more premeditated than the sudden punch that accidentally ended Gig's life. Hack, for his part, didn't have a clue as to why his fate was so important to me, or why I'd shown an extra interest in his career, ever since he was a raw amateur.

I wondered if the truth would ever come out between us.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743214439
• ISBN 13: 9780743214438
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304