– Hey, Pitt, it your friend.

The handlers bring the dogs together. Another man walks up carrying a cooler. He opens it and takes out a blood bag and three syringes.

– An’ that, that must be the shit you come up here lookin’ for.

The dogs are led on long wooden poles hooked to their collars. The handlers take a tiny bit of the Vyrus-infected blood into their syringes and kneel by their dogs while their assistants hold the poles. I watch a rhino as he fills the last syringe with several cc’s of the blood. He walks over to the enforcer, who struggles between his guards, eyes fixed on the needle.

Digga gives me a bump with his shoulder.

– That bitch down there, the brindle pit, that my bitch. The rot, he belong to Papa. Tonight was supposed to be some head-to-head action, but seein’ as you lead that son of a bitch up here, we thought we improvise. Purse gonna go to the dog gets the killing stroke. Braggin’ rights. How you like the look a my bitch?

– Good looking dog.

– Damn right she a good lookin’ dog. Want to get something down on this? Make some change while you up here?

– No thanks.

– No thanks? You don’t believe in my bitch? Don’t think she got what it takes? You dissin’ my bitch, muthafucka?

– Don’t like to gamble.

– Come up here an you don’t like to gamble? Coulda fooled me. Well, too late now, muthafucka, you in the casino now. Boys tell me they found close to a grand on yo ass.

He raises his hands in the air.

– Yo! Yo!

The crowd noise lowers.

– Yo! Check it! White boy say he got the fever! Got a G he want to put on my bitch! Who up for that action?

Papa raises his cigarette holder.

Digga points at him.

– There you go, Pitt, you down for a G with Papa.

He raises his arms again.

– A’ight, muthafuckas, let’s get this bread and circus shit on!

The crowd howls and shakes the chain-link, the dogs howl through their muzzles. Somewhere, a DJ fires up his turntables and bass thunders, turning the tiled cavern into a giant subwoofer.

Digga dips his head at the men in the pool. Simultaneously the handlers jab their dogs in the neck. Instantly the dogs start to tremor, voiding their bowels. The handlers whip the dogs’ muzzles off. The rot snaps and his handler loses a finger. The dogs gnash and foam, clawing at the floor of the pool, trying to chew their way up the poles to the handlers’ assistants struggling to control them.

Near the stairs, a rhino stabs his needle into the enforcer’s neck. A lump appears under his skin as the infected blood is forced in too quickly. His head starts to thrash up and down and vomit spews from his mouth. The rhinos release him and run for the stairs. The handlers’ assistants maneuver the dogs until they frame the spastic enforcer. They catch one another’s eyes and unhook, jumping for the hands waiting to pull them up out of the pool. The gate at the shallow end slams shut. And the business in the pool begins.

He might have had a chance. If they hadn’t shot him up, the enforcer might have had a chance. The action I saw from The Spaz at Doc’s was just a warm-up. That was a new fish who shot a taste too much. This is a Coalition enforcer, fed and trained, and shot full of the nastiest dope on the planet. He flails his limbs with such force, he breaks his own bones on the air. The maddened dogs, bred to the arena, retain just enough of their conditioning to stay focused on the man between them.

They jump like ticks, the Vyrus doing some unspeakable thing to their insides, warping their chemistry and powering their muscles. The enforcer dervishes on the slippery floor of the pool. Digga’s bitch flies at him and one of his arms catches it in midair and sends it into the fence. The crowd jumps back, their screams lost in the hammering bass. One of the fence poles is bent by the impact. The dog drops back into the pool and goes for the man again, one of its forelegs broken.

Papa’s rot stalks the enforcer. It’s frustrated by the speed of its movements, driven by the unfamiliar strength in its legs to bite its hindquarters. Both dogs circle the enforcer in blinding leaps and bursts. He wails and blood pours from his nose. They attack.

Digga’s bitch gets her jaws into his calf and clings there as he kicks furiously. The dog waves and snaps like a flag in a high wind. The rot comes in from behind, flying through the air and landing on the enforcer’s back, sinking his teeth into the meat where his shoulder joins his neck. The rest is just time. Too much time. The bitch is kicked free. The enforcer goes down on his back, the rot under him, but still latched on. The bitch comes back and gets the forearm that was shattered when it struck her from the air. Its bones shattered, the arm comes off in the bitch’s mouth. She drops it and goes for his throat. Her teeth go in, but he grabs her by the neck with his remaining arm and twists her head around. She lies on his chest, flopping.

The rot gnaws and chews. Eventually it’s over. When it is, the rot is clearly ruined. One side of its chest is crumpled where the enforcer caved in its ribs and its lower jaw hangs loose, broken by its own murderous assault on the enforcer’s neck.

The music changes, heavy hip-hop beats replaced by R amp;B, and Digga’s people drift away from the pool, pairing off to dance.

Papa waves two of his men into the pool. His dog wobbles and whines, but whenever they come close it hauls itself up and snorts blood. One of them pulls an old Mauser from his jacket and tries to take a bead on the dog, but it skitters about, too quick for him to get the shot.

Digga is staring at the corpse of his own dog.

– Damn. Damn, that was a fine bitch. Damn.

He looks and sees what’s going on with the rot.

– Mothafuckas. Hey! Hey!

Papa’s men look up.

– Hey! That ain’t how you put down the champeen.

He leaps, grabs the top of the fence, vaults up and balances there. He strips off his tie, his jacket, his shirt, dropping them all to Timberlands. His torso is knotted muscle.

– Get back from that dog, mothafuckas.

He jumps down into the pool, easily keeping his feet on the blood-slick, and approaches the wounded dog. The men in wraparounds look up at Papa and he signals them back. The dancing couples have returned to line the fence.

Digga walks at the dog, talking to it softly. The dog’s hackles stick straight up. Digga keeps coming. The dog goes for him, jumping at his face. Digga catches the dog in the air. They go down, Digga on his back, the dog clutched between his hands. The dog’s lower jaw flaps as he tries to bark. Digga flips over, gets the dog under him, opens his mouth wide and digs his teeth into the back of the dog’s neck. It goes limp, recognizing a superior hound, and he twists its head, breaking its neck.

Digga’s people go crazy. Papa climbs down from his perch. Digga stands, coated in dog blood.

– Papa! Don’t you worry. I send the white boy’s money to you first thing.

Papa turns away, strolls to the exit, followed by his men.

I’m led around the pool to the steps at the shallow end. Digga has stripped to his Calvin Kleins and is accepting several towels, mopping the blood from his skin and from around his mouth.

– See that? See that, Pitt?

I nod.

– That some shit, right?

I look at the dog corpses being hauled from the pool.

– I’ve killed a wounded dog before. It’s nothing to be proud of.

The music keeps playing. People keep dancing. The guys in the pool keep cleaning. But the folks around us get very quiet.

Digga slips on a clean pair of trousers.

– That so? You killed a dog? Killed a muthafuckin’ monster dog on dope like that sad beast down there? Like that champeen hound I just put down?

I don’t say anything.

Timberlands holds out Digga’s shirt and he slides his arms into it.