Toward the end of the seventh year of Gleason’s handling of Gowal, the syndicate had to throw a bone to the dogs by giving Gowal a shot at the “ranking contender for the heavyweight crown.”
The night before the fight a few sharpies moved in on Gowal at his hotel. That’s a story that didn’t get in the paper. They slugged him, stripped him, moved him out onto the fire escape and doused him with cold water. The temperature was about ten above. At the end of an hour they brought him in and put him to bed and left.
They got what they wanted.
The next night Gowal went into the ring with a temperature of a hundred and two. Max knew he was weak and feverish and he unsnapped the leash in the first round. You may remember reading about that fight. Maybe you even saw it. Barney Jeeno wasn’t too bad a boy. He came out feeling with a cautious left which Stone slammed out of the way to plant a solid right hook under Barney’s heart. Barney’s mouth sagged open and he got on his bicycle.
Stone stalked him like a big cat. He moved Barney into a corner and rolled with the stiff left and right that Barney laid alongside his jaw. Stone looked like a man spitting on his hands before chopping down a tree. His shoulders rolling in heavy rhythm, Stone went to work on Jeeno’s middle. From my ringside seat it sounded like somebody slapping a tile wall with a wet mop.
Finally, when Barney’s arms sagged, when only the force of Stone’s blows were keeping him upright in the corner, Stone moved back a little and shifted to the head. Barney’s mouthpiece flew out in a fine mist of blood and his eyes rolled up so that there were just slits of white visible.
The bell sounded and Stone swaggered away. They dragged Barney to his corner and held him on the stool, slapping his face, dousing him with water, holding the smelling salts to his nose. Barney stirred a little. When the bell sounded, they pushed Barney up and took away the stool. Barney never took a step. He just swayed beyond the balance point and went over on his face. Barney was never able to bring himself to climb into a ring again. Stone Gowal spent the next six days in the hospital fighting pneumonia with the same brute courage that he fought everything else.
It was obvious to all of us that Stone Gowal had earned a shot at the title. But even so they stalled another six months. The angered yells of the sports scribes rose to a shrill scream and died away when the date was set.
Chapter Two
Blood Feud
Max should have known that the syndicate would move in another direction. Max should have known that Stone Gowal didn’t know the meaning of the word loyalty.
I had coffee with Max Gleason on the afternoon of the day he heard what they were going to do to him. He had a beaten look.
He made me promise that I’d keep it off the record.
It was beautifully simple. Max stirred his cooling coffee and told me how he had turned down a cash offer for Stone’s contract. The next day he had received in the mail a photostat of a statement that was going to be sent to the Commission.
It was a notarized statement, signed by Stone Gowal, and it stated that during his entire relationship with Max Gleason, he had never been permitted to receive his full legal percentage of the purses. It further stated that he had received falsified expense accounts, and that it was only with great difficulty that he had prevented Gleason from “fixing” his fights, and from giving him “mysterious medicine” before some of his tougher bouts. Appended to the statement was a second one signed by a hanger-on who had sometimes been used in Gowal’s comer. It substantiated the statement by Gowal.
“Did you talk to Stone?” I asked.
“Yes. He did it for thirty-five thousand, cash. I’ve never handled a champion and this was my chance. If I don’t accept their price, the frame goes on and I get tossed out of the business. Gowal will get suspended temporarily, but they’ll get him reinstated under their management.”
“Can’t you fight?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Fight who? And for what? I’ve made a little. I’ve still got my health. They’ll give me twenty-five thousand. A gift.” His lip curled.
At that moment Billy Lee came in and slid into the booth beside Max. She was on vacation. “Hello; Mike,” she said to me. She put her fingers on her father’s arm. “I thought I’d find you here. Did you tell Mike?”
It was good to look at her. When I was a little kid I had a picture on my bedroom wall that I had cut out of a magazine. It showed one of those Viking ships with a blonde woman standing on the bows. Billy Lee sort of reminded me of that girl. Not as beefy, of course. But just as straight and clean and — shining.
Max said that he had told me. Her eyes flashed as she looked at me. “Did you ever hear of a more stinking trick, Mike? That Gowal is a prize louse. We’ve always known he was a stinker, but we didn’t know he was that bad.”
“When do you sign him over?” I asked.
Max glanced at his watch. “In about an hour.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’m going out to the West and take another look at a boy I saw a month ago.”
“Heavy?”
“Right.”
“Bring him along to lick Gowal?”
Max doubled his fist. “I’d like to. But by the time I bring him along, Gowal will be out of the fight game.”
“Maybe I could help in that department,” Billy Lee said in a faraway voice.
I didn’t see what she could mean. Neither did Max.
Under new management, Stone Gowal did just as good. The things that Max had taught him had become such a part of his fighting pattern that he couldn’t lose them now that Max wasn’t handling him any more.
The syndicate lips, curled around cigar butts, wore wide, wet smiles. Sixty thousand is cheap for a champion.
Even so, Gowal nearly lost the big one. He stepped out when the champion was too fresh. He got arm weary before he started to land solidly, and some of the sting was gone. The champion began to cut him up. But in the closing moments of the tenth round Stone snapped back and floored the champion. The champion tried to keep out of trouble in the eleventh, but his legs were gone. Stone got him into a corner and slowly battered him to the floor. He had to do it a second time, and a third time. The third time the champion stayed down, though at the ten count he was trying to get his knees under him.
Syndicate publicity went to work on the new champion. They had pictures of him patting dogs and refereeing settlement-house bouts, and smiling at the camera. But over that wide-lipped smile, those gray eyes were as cold as the eternal tomb.
As champion he fought often, which made him popular with the folks. He did very little training. But the quality of the competition was pretty sketchy. Stone had a little gray tire around his middle and a spray of pimples on his gray back. But in the ring he stalked and killed.
Max dropped out of sight. I knew that Billy Lee had probably finished school. I wondered about the two of them. And one day they came back to town, and Max brought his new heavy with him. I met the kid and liked him at once. He had a nice grin and a good way of handling his big body. Max got him booked into the garden and I saw the bout.
Len Kennedy, his name was. For the first two rounds the excitement grew in me. He moved his hundred and ninety-something pounds with all the blazing speed of a lightweight. The opposition was Tubbs Warner, the wheelhorse who is always in there trying.
Len Kennedy was built just right. Lots of shoulders, a flat belly and dancer’s legs. And Max had brought him a long way. He could do an acceptable foot-feint, good enough to fool old Tubs. He could land his punches just where he wanted to, either coming in or going away. On defense he was something for the records. Once he let Tubs corner him and open up. Tubs swung three hard lefts, alternating with three hard rights. Two blows were caught on the arm, one on the shoulder, one in the glove, and two were clean misses.