Joe jumped down at the whistle and Les went out at the bell. Angel clinched clean the first time, but on the break he looped a high right across that staggered Les.
It happened.
Les roared like a bull and went after Angel with both fists swinging, his legs planted like oak stumps. Angel blocked a few and slipped a few but he couldn’t keep out of the way of all of them. The crowd was screaming. A right dropped Angel to his hands and knees. While he was down there, Les leaned over and hooked a left under his chin, lifting him two feet off the canvas. Artie Mosher came running over and tried to pull Les away. Les spun on him and slammed a hard right into his mouth. Artie spun across the ring and dropped. Angel was trying to get up. As he came off the canvas, Les jammed a knee into his face, knocking him back so that he hung half in and half out of the ring. By that time I was in the ring and so was Angel’s second.
Les kicked Angel in the side, toppling him out of the ring and then slammed Angel’s second through the ropes. The crowd was screaming. As I got to Les he turned and I got a quick glimpse of eyes as cold and grey as broken iron before the boom was lowered and the lights went out.
I sat on the bed holding a cold towel against my throbbing face. Jenks, my legal eagle was pacing up and down the room. Spencer Leslie sat in the corner by the windows, silent and moody. He didn’t have a mark on him except for the cut on his cheek where Angel had butted him.
Jenks said, “I’ve got the whole picture now. Net only does he knock out three of Arthur Mosher’s teeth, but he smashes Angel’s nose with his knee, fractures the jaw on Angel’s second, busts the nose on a salesman from St. Louis who had a ringside seat, closes both eyes on a bookie named Moralli — and it takes seven guys holding him hand and foot to get him boot to the dressing room. He doesn’t stop roaring and struggling until they hold him in a cold shower for ten minutes. And now he can’t remember a thing.”
I looked at Leslie. “Is that right?”
“I remember knocking Angel down but that’s all. The next thing I know some people are holding me in the shower and I still got the gloves, trunks and shoes on,” he said sullenly.
Jenks said wildly, “Judgements! Everybody’s got judgements they want. The Garden gets sued by the salesman and the bookie and Artie, Angel’s second and even Angel for that knee in the face business. And the Garden turns around and gets a judgement against you for the whole mess plus a fat fee for hurting their business. Brother!”
“The judgements’ll stick?” I asked him.
“Hell, yes. And the total will probably be around a hundred thousand.”
Without a word, Spencer Leslie got up, opened the door and walked out. He slammed it behind him. Jenks and I looked at each other. “What a mess!” he moaned.
On the Beach at four P.M. I got the sympathy usually reserved for a case of ulcers at a clambake. Dear old friends gave me the clammy paw, the sad shake of the head and the maybe-things-could-be-worse philosophy.
I had the Word inside of an hour. No more bouts for my boy. Nobody wanted to take the gamble. All of a sudden everybody seemed to know that he had blown up twice in training and that the second time the boys in white coats had to come and throw a net over him and give him a wet sheet treatment.
It didn’t help any to find that Whitey had matched Tailor Rowe with Stick Mobray and stood to clear maybe six, maybe seven.
I stood on the Beach and jingled the change in my pockets and made the habitual, unthinking appraisal of the ankles that waltzed by. Jenks had said a hundred thousand. I wondered how I’d like working on a banana boat, and if there was a fight arena in Rio. Back at the suite were my assets. Forty or so suits and a couple dozen pair of shoes. Two hundred and eighty in the checking account. Of course the leech had been paid off and that helped. But I would have traded back for the chance of climbing out from under the hundred thousand. I had even asked Jenks if I could tear up the contract with Leslie and climb out from under that way. He had given me some legal double talk about the responsibility of an agent and said no. A big no. A hundred thousand dollar no.
The shades of night were bringing out the neon when, heavy in heart, I started for the suite. I had gotten Les a single down the hall and hoped he’d be in. I wanted to get some one syllable words off my chest.
Ahead of me I saw Barney Gowdy duck into a doorway. In three seconds I had a big wad of his shirt in my left hand and I had the right drawn way back. He looked at me with his big sad, damp eyes and said, “Why slug a guy for making a buck, Danny boy? You just had your guard down. That’s all.”
He was right. I pocketed the right fist and contented myself with helping him trace his ancestry back through three or four generations. I also made a few terse comments regarding his state of personal cleanliness, his philosophy in life and his habits.
When I walked in, Les was on his back on the bed in the darkened room, staring up at the ceiling, his hands linked behind his head.
“Hello, Danny,” he said softly.
I didn’t turn the lights on. I went over and sat by the windows and looked out at the fine fancy night of Manhattan.
After a bit he said, as though talking to himself, “It’s always been that way. Since the war I mean. I was with the First Raiders and after a year I finally got it. I wasn’t wounded, really. Just blown about eight feet in the air. Shock, they called it. Six months in the hospital and a medical discharge. I think the shock had something to do with not being able to stick in school when I got in.
“Hell, the only other kind of a job I could get would be with my hands — washing dishes or swinging a pick. I know I can fight good. I could even be champ if it wasn’t for... this other thing. When I get sore something goes click in my head and I black out. I guess maybe I ought to find something to do where I won’t get sore.”
He stopped talking. All of a sudden I wasn’t sore any more. All I had for a problem was a stack of judgements coming up. I suddenly realized that Les really had a problem, that there was something in his head that frightened him and made him lonely. He was a good kid; I liked him.
“You’ve got it figured right, kid,” I said. “The fight game’s not for you. You might kill somebody in one of those blackouts. Do you ever get riled at anything else?”
“No. Just in the ring or sparring with some wise guy in a gym.”
“Look kid, I got a brother that’s head of a place where they do a lot of mechanical drawing. Drafting work. You done any of that?”
“Some. Not a lot.”
“Suppose I give him the word and there ought to be a spot for you. You could mark time there until you can get into a. college. And you’d be learning, too. Just forget the fight game. Hell, nobody’d give you a bout anyway.”
He sat up suddenly, and I heard the eagerness in his voice. “Danny, that’d be swell!”
“Okay, kid. I’ll call him in the morning.” I stood up. “Get yourself some sleep and don’t worry about it. If you saved any dough from the fights I booked for you, you might use it to help me pay off some of the hundred grand they’re going to stick me with.”
His voice sounded puzzled. “Stick you? Didn’t that guy find you?”
“What guy?”
“The guy from the insurance company.”
“Kid, you’re driving me nuts. What insurance company?”
“Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you. After the first time I went off the handle and started socking everybody in sight, I went out and paid a hundred bucks for an unlimited, comprehensive personal liability policy. Three years worth. The adjuster was here late in the afternoon looking for you. So was Mr. Jenks. The insurance company will defend the case and pay off if we lose.”