Heinrich backed off as Roxy got between them.

She began to count.

Neckbeard was still on his knees at three, one arm leaning against the ropes. At four he rose. By five he was on his feet.

“Give up, cherry,” Roxy said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re outmatched.”

Neckbeard shook her off. Heinrich laughed around his mouthpiece.

“Tut tut, Neckbeard, dismissing a woman, and a lesbian at that. What would all your liberal friends on Facebook think?”

Neckbeard rushed him.

Finally, I get a rise from this kid.

Heinrich blocked a strong right hook and replied with a left straight to the stomach, but Neckbeard was too angry to be stopped by that. Heinrich backed off, blocked and dodged a series of jabs and swings, letting the kid think he was turning the tables on him, letting the kid get cocky and angry. Heinrich saw several halfway decent openings, the kid was too stiff and too eager, but Heinrich was patient and waited for a good opening.

It came when Heinrich backed off half a step more than usual and Neckbeard’s right cross overextended his stance and left him wide open.

Heinrich landed a left hook on the jaw. Neckbeard stumbled, keeping on his feet from adrenaline alone. Heinrich shifted to the right and hit him with a right uppercut that the kid managed to half block, but in the process leaving him with open for the one-two punch that followed.

Neckbeard went down like a sack of peat moss. The fighters cheered.

Roxy leaned over him. “One, two…”

Heinrich studied the kid. Had he gone too far? No, the guy was down for the count but he didn’t look damaged, if you didn’t count the glazed eyes, the split lip, and the beginnings of what was going to be a beautiful shiner.

Neckbeard stirred when Roxy got to eight, but didn’t even get a knee bent before she made it to ten.

✽ ✽ ✽

Heinrich came home to his Manhattan apartment feeling much better. Seeing all that stuff in Briggs’s place had shaken him and even the fight hadn’t fully exorcized the ghosts. The sound of that hipster hitting the mat sure helped though. It rang in his ears like a beautiful melody.

As he opened his front door, he wrinkled his nose at the sight of the flaking paint and cracked tiles. He had inherited this apartment from his grandfather, the only way he could have ever afforded to live in New York these days. Unfortunately, with property taxes and the high cost of just about everything, his earnings as a private detective barely made ends meet. He had nothing left over for remodeling.

Not that he had many women over. The ones who stopped by were so trashed they didn’t care.

Heinrich spent the evening researching the gold train, sifting through a mass of newspaper articles and wide-eyed treasure hunting sites. There was a lot of contradictory information out there but they all told the same basic story. In January 1945, when the Eastern Front was collapsing in the face of a superior Soviet army, a German train filled with treasure left the fortress city of Breslau. The city had become a salient in the front, one of the many spots where Hitler had sworn never to give an inch. It wasn’t much later that the city got surrounded and a bitter siege began. Breslau held out, however, not surrendering until after Berlin had fallen in May.

The train was filled with 300 tons of gold, jewels, and rare masterpieces of art stolen from Jewish families. Briggs hadn’t mentioned the looted art, which was probably the only thing on the train that could be traced. Convenient that she had left that out. Her estimate of the loot’s worth was way low if there were 300 tons. These inconsistencies made him wonder where she got her information.

She had also added the odd detail that the train was supposed to go to Berlin. None of the accounts said that.