On the Ropes

by Tom Schreck

Overview

Duffy Dombrowski is not your average social worker. When he's not counseling sex addicts and drug users in a town outside of New York City, you can find him digging Elvis tunes, getting "Schlitzed" with his quirky friends, or fighting ex-Olympians in the boxing ring. Our less-than-perfect hero occasionally uses his mean left hook on pimps and other lowlifes, too. But at least he cares about his clients.

When Walanda, a schizophrenic, crack-addicted prostitute, is murdered, Duffy pledges to take care of her basset hound and find her missing stepdaughter, Shony. He's horrified to discover the teenager is ensnared in a web porn ring-a vile enterprise that enslaves crack-addicted women and their children.

On the verge of losing his job-and his life-Duffy also gets mixed up with a creepy doctor with ties to Pakistani extremists. Still, nothing will stop this conflicted Robin Hood from trying to save Shony and foil a terrorist plot.

Praise for On the Ropes

"The funniest book I have read in a long time. This is a genuine good read." -Harold Lederman, HBO Sports

"Not since Carl Hiassen's Tourist Season debut has there been a novel with such superb comic timing and laugh-out-loud lines." -Ken Bruen, Shamus Award-winning author of The Guards

"An Everyman with a big heart and a wicked jab, Duffy Dombrowski may well be the new Spenser. I can't wait for Round Two." -Marcus Sakey, author of The Blade Itself

"On the Ropes is sly, funny, irreverent, and one hell of a good time. Read it or be sorry you didn't. It's just that simple." -Laurien Berenson, author of Hounded to Death

"It'll put you down for the count with laughter. Tom Schreck is a contender for funniest author working in the crime genre today." -William Kent Krueger, author of Thunder Bay

"If you've ever despised your boss or secretly wanted to save the world, On the Ropes is a novel you'll devour." -Steve Farhood, Showtime Boxing

"Duffy Dombrowski-a loose-cannon social worker and a boxer-has a lot more heart than is healthy for a guy. Give him an orphaned sidekick who hasn't been housebroken (literally), jam them into the middle of a sinister murder plot that packs a surprising wallop, and you've got a winning combination." -Lee Charles Kelley, author of Like a Dog With a Bone

"One of my favorite writers...Can't wait for Duffy's next adventure." -Nancy Claus, Westchester Magazine

"It won't take long to realize Duffy doesn't run to type...occasionally over the top, but warmhearted, tough, funny Duffy makes a promising debut." -Kirkus Reviews

"Pure delight. The sharp-edged humor peppers you like a boxing master's jab, and the poignant undercurrent of theme delivers with the power of a left hook. Duffy Dombrowski is a major new contender in the world of private eye fiction." -Michael A. Black, author of A Killing Frost and A Final Judgment

"Get ready to rumble with lovable losers, misguided misfits, and a disgustingly adorable dog." -Michael "Let's Get Ready To Rumble" Buffer, the Voice of Champions

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643962801
Publisher:	Down & Out Books
Publication date:	03/28/2022
Series:	Duffy Dombrowski Mystery , #1
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Tom Schreck’s novels are based on his experience as a former director of an inner city drug clinic and a professional boxing judge. Officiating fights at Madison Square Garden and elsewhere, he appears on HBO, Showtime, and ESPN. Schreck also writes a boxing column for Fightnews.com and has contributed to The Business Review, Professional Counselor, and Catfancy. He lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt

"Hey Duff–did you hear what the Polack mom asked her pregnant daughter?" Sam from the business office said.

"Mornin', Sam," I said.

"Are you sure it's yours?" Sam laughed himself back to his cubicle. With the last name Dombrowski, I've heard every imaginable Polack joke and people like Sam made sure I kept up-to-date. I hate the routines, but I especially wasn't in the mood on this particular Monday morning.

I am a caseworker at Jewish Unified Services in Crawford, a city in upstate New York, about fifty miles from New York City. Crawford is one of those northeastern cities that goes back to the time of the Revolutionary War. Years ago, it was a city with strong ethnic neighborhoods, the Irish, the Polish, the Jewish, the Italian, and the African American. Today, the neighborhoods are a shell of what they used to be, as most of the old families have participated in the white-flight to the suburbs. Much like a smaller version of New York.

City, the actual city confines are made up largely of poorer families of black and Latino extraction.

The other thing about Crawford that distinguishes it from other cities is the wind. Something about the valley formed by the Hudson and the Catskills causes it to be the windiest city in the country. I read something one time about Crawford being actually three times as windy as Chicago. The wind is a bizarre source of city pride–the city limit signs have this humanized cartoon of the wind, an old man with puffed-out cheeks, next to the "Welcome to Crawford," and McDonough High, my alma mater and the city's public high school, has the nickname "The Mighty Wind." To this day, opposing fans chant "Break the Wind" at football games.

I handle a caseload of about seventy-five clients at the clinic. They use our agency for everything from addiction counseling to parentingskills to anger management. Most of our clients live on welfare and whatever benefits they can get out of the government. I'm not a Monday type of guy anyway, but this one was going to be an exceptional pain in the ass. I had a nine-thirty meeting with my boss, the clinical director, Claudia Michelin. Claudia is one of the educated, heartless bureaucrats that live to be in control of other people. She was well suited for the gig. She's the one who decides who gets thrown out of treatment for missing sessions or for not getting in line and doing everything she asks in just the right way. Claudia was not turning down offers from Victoria's Secret, either. She had hit her maximum density a long time ago, and I'm figuring she carried almost three hundred pounds on her considerable six-foot frame. In fact, I'm not sure if she was actually a blood relative, but she bore a striking resemblance to her namesake, the Michelin Man tire guy. She had one of those bushy, curly3 haired perms that mercifully went out of style around the demise of Studio 54. The Michelin Woman had a scowl permanently affixed to her face, and she had this tendency to shift her eyes back and forth instead of looking right at you.

She also loves the control of being the boss to me and the other case managers here. Since she took over eighteen months ago, she's done everything she could to get me to quit or, preferably, to set up a future firing. Of course, I don't help myself with some of the things I try to get away with. For one, I despise paperwork and avoid it, procrastinate it, and–I'll tell you honestly–I lie about doing it. Michelin lives for it.

My extracurricular activities can sort of get in the way too. I'm a part-time professional fighter, the type that's known in the trade as a professional opponent. Promoters call me to fight up-and-coming prospects because they know I'll lose but not look horrible in the process. I split a lot of my local, small fights, but the money is in fighting the prospects that I don't have a chance of beating. As a heavyweight, I can make ten grand getting my ass kicked by some ex-Olympian on his way up looking for an easy win. Unfortunately, I scammed some time off a month ago. I got Rudy, the doc who hangs out down at the gym, and who also happens to be my landlord, to get me a temporary disability for a condition known as fibromyalgia. It's a mostly improvable ailment of the joints that needs plenty of bed rest to get over. I was out of the office for three weeks with it, and it was all on the up and up because Rudy signed off on it.

The problem was, I was fighting on the undercard of a fight that was featured on ESPN. Not every bout on a fight card makes TV, usually only a main event and one or two of the better fights.

I'm almost never on TV. On this particular night, I was positioned in an off-TV fight scheduled to go on after the TV bouts went off. It's what's known as a "walkout" because that's exactly what all the fans are doing, but because there were three knockouts on the scheduled TV fights they moved my fight to the live telecast. There I was with my diagnosis of fibromyalgia fighting ten rounds on national television. At least I had the decency to get knocked out.

The Michelin Woman found no humor in this at all. Fortunately, because I had a doctor signing off on it, there was nothing she could do. What she could do was step up her Nazi-like review of my records, which were behind back to when Jimmy Carter was in office. I've already received "informal counseling" and "a verbal warning," which, strangely enough, I learned, comes in typed memo form. Today, I realized I was about to get the formal written warning, which is different from the written verbal warning, not by the fact that it is written, but rather by its content. In it was verbiage that amounted to saying my ass was grass and Claudia was the mower. It was an official documentation of the last straw.

I made my way to her office, dreading every step. Not because I feared getting written up–that's happened enough throughout my life–but because I would have to listen to Claudia go through her supervisory coaching. We both knew she hated my guts, but even in reprimanding me, she went by the book, encouraging me and telling me how much she needed me to improve. It was procedure for a supervisor to present disciplinary warnings in a positive coaching manner. It would feel better if she just called me a fuckin' asshole.

"Duffy, do you know why we're meeting today?" she asked.

"I'm guessing it's not to give me a raise," I said.

"This is not a time to get flip. I have some real concerns with your work. I want you to succeed here at Jewish Unified Services but I need you to keep your records up to regulations. It isn't fair to the clients," she said.

She always threw the part in about the clients and I hated it. My clients don't give a rat's ass about their files, unless it interferes with them getting benefits, and I always made sure that those reports were done. Even when I scammed disabilities to get out of work, I kept check of my caseload, calling the folks who really needed help and making sure they were all right–which was, by the way, against regulations.

"Claudia, can't we just get on with it?" I said, knowing it would piss her off because I wasn't scared and I was taking back some of her control.

"See, it's that type of attitude that is self-defeating to you. I need you to take a look at some of the issues that get in your way," she said.

This was the psychobabble that she employed that made her come off like a robot. The words were meaningless jargon and she hid behind them because she felt it gave her some sort of power. It was one of the reasons I liked hanging out at boxing gyms. If someone there didn't like you, they told you to fuck off and tried to take your head off. It was clear and unambiguous.

"Look, Claudia, do you have something for me to sign? I realize you would prefer it if I began to shake, soil myself, and weep out of fear, but I just don't have the energy this morning," I said.

"As a matter of fact, I do. This is a written warning. Today is August 16. If in four weeks your paperwork isn't caught up, you will be terminated," she said, sliding a formal-looking memo across the desk.

"Why don't you just can me now? There's no way I can get my files caught up in a month," I said.

"That's up to you, Duffy," she said.

I left the office realizing that in one month I'd be back in her office giving her the satisfaction of firing me. That was the worst part of it. I've been fired plenty of times; I just didn't want to give her the satisfaction. I should have figured today was going to suck. It's the anniversary of Elvis's death and every year something unlucky has happened on this date. I've been in car crashes, been knocked out three times, and even caught a case of crabs on August 16. Giving Michelin the pleasure of firing me would be worse than the crabs. The crabs I had were friendlier, easier to get along with, and, frankly, better looking.

It was the start of a great week.

Editorial Reviews

Duffy Dombrowski: heart of a social worker, schnoz of a shamus. Duffy is a caseworker at Jewish Unified Services in Crawford, N.Y., a small city 50 miles north of the Big Apple. But it won't take readers long to realize Duffy doesn't run to type. Consider his approach to moonlighting, for instance-Duffy boxes. He's what's known in the fight game as a "professional opponent," which means promoters rely on him to lose respectably to their up-and-comers. During the day, Duffy exhibits negligible tolerance for the minutiae of his job (paperwork) bringing him into constant conflict with his detail-loving boss, Claudia Michelin. The cold war between them boils over when client Walanda Frazier dies violently in prison. Before her passing, Walanda, a crackhead with a "dash of schizophrenia" was the sort Claudia regarded as the epitome of inconvenience. Duffy, on the other hand, believes the beset and bedeviled Walanda embodied their reason for being. He also believes she was murdered, and that it's incumbent on him to do something about that. "Dombrowski for Hire," cop friend Mike Kelly says in a discouraging tone. But, of course, Duffy, who clearly has sleuthing in his DNA, doesn't discourage easily. And then there's the core truth he admits to only reluctantly: "I like helping people no one else wants to help."Occasionally over the top, but warmhearted, tough, funny Duffy makes it a promising debut.

Kirkus Reviews