Passenger(56)

A minute later, I’m in the backseat of the Devine brothers’ burgundy Lincoln, the spangled lights of Fell’s Point shrinking in the rear windshield. The white vinyl upholstery exhales an aroma of marijuana and eucalyptus incense as I shift in my seat. My hands buried in my lap, I sit with my head slightly back against the headrest, somewhat woozy. I expect the brothers to click on some music but they don’t. They don’t roll down the windows, either, but they each light up a cigarette and, in seconds, fill the interior with smoke.

The Lincoln takes a few more turns and we’re now trolling a dark, rundown industrial area near the docks. The buildings are squat and windowless, concrete structures wrapped tightly in cyclone fencing topped with coils of razor wire. Here, even the streetlamps don’t work. Skeletons of cannibalized automobiles are stacked along the foot of the docks. Across the water, lights glitter and the prongs of industrial smokestacks reach up into the sky. I am shocked at how empty the streets are.

I realize it is New Year’s Eve.

We step from the Lincoln into air that reeks of sulfur. In the distance I hear a dog barking and the Jacob Marley rattle of chains. We have parked along an unpaved street with the fecal-smelling water on one side and a row of abandoned warehouses on the other. Farther up the street I can make out an electric sign above a liquor store and, beyond that, what appears to be a seedy nightclub called The Gulf of Lion.

Smoking fresh cigarettes, the Devine brothers cross over to The Gulf of Lion and loiter around the entrance until their smokes burn to the filters.

“Come on,” Maxwell beckons me, and I follow them inside.

It is a small club with few lights casting a purplish hue on the tables, the countertops, the limited number of drunkards propped in corners and slouched against payphones. Despite the chill, a ceiling fan pulls slow revolutions above my head; I surmise it is more for dispersing cigar smoke than for regulating temperature. Somewhere, Willie Nelson plays low and like a distant memory. A sleek, black-lacquered bar clings to one wall. Big-haired, excessively painted, a chubby female bartender strains inside a starched white tuxedo shirt and suspenders.

One of the Devine brothers places a set of fingers between my shoulder blades and propels me forward. We dip down a tight corridor with peeling black walls, past restrooms and an ancient cigarette machine that looks like it could be a prop in some science-fiction movie, and pause at the end of the hall. I am standing before a closed door so heavily coated in splashes of dried, rubbery neon paint, it looks like it could bend down the middle without breaking.

“Amazing new invention,” Dougie says at my back. “You turn the knob and open it. Call it a door.”

What appears before me, after I open the door, is a flight of wooden stairs. They disappear into the darkness below; I cannot make out the floor.

Suddenly, I am nervous.

Suddenly, for whatever ridiculous reason, I think they are going to kill me.

Again: those fingers at my back, urging me down the stairs. I go, although my feet are somewhat hesitant and do not lift fully off the floor; rather, they drag, and it seems to take forever to reach the bottom of the staircase.

The three of us are in a low-ceilinged cellar, poorly lighted, with concrete walls and exposed beams and wiring above our heads. The floor is crushed gravel, crushed nearly to a coarse white powder, and clouds of the stuff puff up around my ankles as I walk. It looks like the type of place you’d expect to find a nest of vampires. I hear the distant din of a cheering crowd, of hands being clapped and feet being stomped, and the occasional whistle. A set of metal double-doors stands at the far end of the cellar, a trim of yellow light tracing its perimeter. That is where we go: into the room.

The noise hits me first—the boisterous shouts and jeers of countless men pushed hotly together in the crowded space, thrusting fists into the air, some crouched over, hands on their knees, shouting and flicking spittle from their lips. It is oppressively hot. The air is saturated with body odor and the deeper, sick-sweet scent of feces. The men are crowded together in a circle, and although I cannot see it from where I stand, it is quite evident something is happening in the middle of that circle.

“Dog fight,” Maxwell mutters as he brushes past my ear.

The men are all white, except for a small gathering of Asians at one end, and most of them are dressed in dreary shirts and ties, their sleeves cuffed to the wrist, many of them in trench coats and winter gloves. Their fat faces are flushed from shouting, their throats hoarse and raw. Their individual words are indecipherable but their collective chants suggest a litany of worship.

Then I hear the dogs: the deep-throated snarl and sudden bark that snaps the air and rises like a missile above the noise of the crowd. I can almost hear the patter of frothing saliva whipping the cinderblock walls.

Some men shift and I am able to make out the ring at the center of the room. It is a small structure with raised walls, like a pustular crater on the surface of the moon, the floor nothing but packed earth slick and blackened with what at first is assumed to be grease or oil but what I realize, following closer inspection, is blood.

I am not familiar with dogs, with breeds of dogs, but the two going at it in the ring are stocky with muscular necks and backs and bowing hind legs. They could be miniature dinosaurs. One is black with a white muzzle; the other is a mottled brown and tan. Both animals have been split in places along their hides and face and legs like a pillow bursting with stuffing. Black streams of blood spill out from ruptured pockets of flesh. They collide like waves, jaws snapping, spit spraying everywhere, and they seem to gnash their teeth together. Their front paws cling to the other’s back, a parody of dance. They go for several minutes more. The fight is not stopped until the black dog tears at the jugular of the mottled one. Blood patters to the packed earthen floor. The mottled dog cannot make a sound; still alive, it scampers backward as someone pulls taut its chain, its throat torn open and spilling blood, its tongue thick and fat and pink and lolling out of its gaping maw. Black blood spills from its mouth and nose. Its legs go weak and, a moment later, it collapses.