Free The Boxer and the Spy by Robert B. Parker Page A

what he did the most. It was all going to mean something sooner or later.
    The phone rang. It was late. She looked at her clock—after eleven.
    “Number three again, babe. I’m going to hit the sack, but I just wanted to tell you that Bullard’s still over at Trents’ house.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Sure. I can see his car. He parked it around the corner, up the street, but I can see it from my bedroom window.”
    “I wonder why he parked it up the street?”
    “Hey, I just the spotter here, babe. You and your boyfriend s‘pposed to do the thinking.”
    “He’s not my boyfriend,” Abby said.
    “Uh-huh,” Carly said.
    “Was there space to park closer?”
    “Sure,” Carly said. “Park in the driveway like most people do who’re visiting.”
    “So what do you think?”
    Carly laughed.
    “Well, maybe they got some hanky-panky going on,” he said.
    “You think he’s visiting Mrs. Trent?”
    “Can’t tell,” Carly said.
    “Well, keep an eye on them,” Abby said.
    “Sho‘,” Carly said, and hung up.
    Hanky-panky, she thought.
    Abby sat looking at the darkness outside her bedroom window.
    We’ll find out, she thought.

CHAPTER 26
    T oday we going to do some fists of fury,” George told Terry. ”We going to move round the heavy bag to the left and we going to keep hitting it as fast as we can.... Left-right combo, bang, bang.”
    George hit the bag left-right. The second punch was almost synonymous with the first.
    “Like that,” George said. “Bang, bang.”
    Terry started.
    “Punch quicker,” George said. “The right should land a half second after the left.”
    Terry punched left-right, left-right.
    “Better,” George said.
    Terry kept punching.
    “Feel it?” George said. “There’s a rhythm to it.”
    “Bang, bang,” Terry said.
    “Keep your feet under you,” George said. “Keep them spaced, push off the floor.”
    Terry moved left as he pounded the bag. He could feel the sweat begin to gather along his arms and shoulders. George was right, once he began to feel the stuttered rhythm of the punches, they came faster. It wasn’t so much bang, bang as ba-bang, ba-bang.
    “Okay, now move round the bag to the right, same deal. Bang, bang.”
    Terry was breathing hard.
    “Easy for you,” he gasped.
    The change in direction had messed up his rhythm, and it took him a couple of circuits of the bag to get it back. Then he made one full circle of the bag in good ba-bang.
    “Okay,” George said. “Round one, take a seat.”
    Terry sat on the folding chair in the corner, his chest heaving, his arms and shoulders glistening with sweat. The sweat beaded on his face. George toweled him off and squirted a little water into Terry’s mouth.
    “Don’t want to dehydrate,” George said. “You get dehydrated and it take the zip right out of you.”
    Terry nodded.
    “Funny, just changing directions got me screwed up on the fists of fury thing,” he said.
    “Why you have to do it so much,” George said. “Get your muscles grooved into it.”
    “And nobody’s even trying to hit me,” Terry said.
    “Time for that will come,” George said. “Now we just getting grooved in.”
    “But ... I mean in a real fight some guy comes at you throwing them as fast as he can.... Don’t you kind of feel like wait a minute, wait a minute?”
    “Couple answers to that,” George said. “One, that happen whether you know how to box or not, so you may as well know. Second thing is you get enough training you can maybe weather that first couple minutes until the guy runs out of steam.”
    Terry nodded.
    “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know. Backpedal. Keep him off with your jab. Cover up.”
    “And maybe move around him a little, try not to get cornered,” George said. “He gonna be pretty tired after a minute or two. ‘Less you fighting Smokin’ Joe Frazier, your man can’t keep throwing them like you talkin’ about for very long.”
    “You ever just wanted to run?”
    George