“I wouldn’t want to try to let him know the fix was in. Hell, you can last three rounds. I can do it this way: I can tell him that it will be smart to keep out of your way, keep you working hard for three rounds and then go after you in the fourth. Lew, you’ve got nothing to lose. It isn’t your career any more. And I’m in a hell of a jam. Every nickel counts. I’m in as bad shape as you were that night that hopped-up kid had his finger on the trigger. Remember that night?”
“I remember it.”
“I want to get out of the automobile business. I’m getting sick of it. I can keep a piece of the kid. I think we’ll move back to New York. It’s going to take money. I sell the agency tomorrow, and it just about balances out — debts against my equity in it. And those tax boys are sniffing at my heels. I had to pay something, to stall for time — and now the balance is due.”
“If he can get me in the fourth, Jack, he gets me in the fourth.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. If he can’t get me then, he can’t.”
Jack stood up quickly. “You’re a damn’ fool!”
“Sure. I’m a white knight. I got a shine on my armor. And every morning I shave this face. I turn crooked, and I have to shave with my eyes shut. I might cut myself.”
“The world isn’t like that. Wake up! You got to make things pay off. The kid is going to knock you out anyway. Calling the round brings in gravy. What’s the difference?”
“None, to you. A lot, to me.”
There was a grayness about Jack’s mouth. “But look! The kid has to knock you out. I already—”
“I know about that. Fighting the kid is the last installment I owe you on a debt. Laying down would be something else again. I fight, and the books are clean. All you can do is pray the kid does what you promised. So you can collect the rest of your money, the other thirty thousand, and then sell him to the racket boys.”
“Brock told you!” Jack said accusingly. “How did he find out?”
“I’ll make a little bet. I’ll bet you already told Sheniver the fix was in.”
Jack nodded wordlessly.
Lew tucked his thumbs in his belt. “I’ll see you around. Better get a ringside ticket. It ought to be an interesting fight.”
Jack smiled uncertainly. “It’s a rib, isn’t it? You’ll make it the fourth, won’t you?”
“Buy a good seat, Jack.”
Jack went out. Lew had kept himself calm. But he could feel cool sweat trickle down his ribs. In a crazy way, that might be the answer. Let it be the fourth. Make it look good. Save yourself a beating. Keep your brains unscrambled.
The girl arrived three days later, at ten in the morning. Lew was two hundred feet out in the lake. Oliver called to him. He swam lazily back to the dock, hoisted himself, dripping, up onto the weathered boards. He guessed her age at about twenty. She was slim and very blonde and quite pretty and very nervous. She clutched a red purse in both hands. There was a battered deck chair on the dock. Lew said, “Hi! You look too nervous to be a sports reporter. Have a seat, and stop jittering.”
She sat down, smiled gratefully. “I really don’t know what I’m doing here. It’s all sort of crazy. It’s really advice I want, I guess. And Mr. Brock said you could give me advice better than he could. My name is Marilyn Schantz. I’m... well, I am or I was, engaged to Sammy Hode. We went together in school. Would you — like a cigarette?”
“Go ahead. They’re off my list. Just what did Jud say?”
“He said that you’d been through the mill. I don’t know what to think. It was like a joke — in school, I mean — Sammy fighting. But he was awfully good. Winning the intercollegiates and all, and he was half-joking about it. That Morgan man got him thinking about the money, and now Mr. Terrance. We talked, and he said in just maybe three years he could make so much money it would help us the rest of our lives. I agreed, sort of. Now it scares me, Mr. Barry, because he’s changing. He’s different. He thinks about it all in a different way, and there aren’t any jokes about it any more. Last week we quarreled about it, a nasty quarrel. You see, I keep thinking it will change him. And I’m not— I don’t feel safe any more. I talked to Mr. Brock. He said you know as much as anybody.”
She looked at him and a lot of her nervousness was gone. He said, “You mean, is Sammy doing the right thing — that’s what you want to know, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Lew studied his knuckles. “My folks were good sound people. But I was a tough, wild, unruly kid. I gave them a bad time. I got in with the wrong crowd. I broke their hearts. I was sent to a reform school. I came out and all the doors seemed to be closed. I fought for peanuts. Jud Brock saw me and took over. He’s a good man. Fighting took the bitterness out of me. I guess I needed it. For me, it was a good thing. For me it did something that perhaps nothing else could have done.”
“But Sammy—”
“That’s just it. I don’t see how it will serve any purpose for him. Can he get a job?”
“Oh, yes!” she said eagerly. “He had two good offers and I know he could still—”
“Jack Terrance will sell his contract to some rough people. They’ll see that he doesn’t get rich. What they won’t take, taxes will.”
“He won’t stop now, though.”
“He said that?”
“He said he was the best, and he would prove it and then he’ll stop.”
“When you’re the best, they make you go on proving it until you can’t prove it any more. Then you’re second-best and you got to keep trying to get to be best again until you get smart enough to realize you’re done, or get pounded around the head long enough so you don’t realize anything any more, at least not clearly.”
“That won’t happen to him!”
“It might not. I give you that. Maybe he isn’t mean enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“He looks like what they call a nice, clean-cut kid. I’m going in there with him. I’ll look at him, and before a punch is thrown, I’ll hate him. I’ll want to kill him. I’ll want to smash his face to a pulp. Maybe he won’t want to do that to me.”
She looked at him almost in horror. “He isn’t like that!”
“Maybe you’ve got to be like that. Maybe he can’t be like that. Maybe life has given him too easy a time. You’ve got to want to smash things.”
She bit her lip, looked out across the lake. She turned toward him. “Can you beat him? Can you? Jud says if you do, he’s through. He’s all done.”
“I don’t think I can beat him. I might hurt him. I’ll try to hurt him. It’s my trade to try to hurt him. But he’ll win.”
She stood up quickly. “Thank you.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“I found out what I want to know.”
“What will you do?”
She smiled. It was a twisted, wry, self-knowing smile. “Stay with him, no matter what happens. I guess that’s all I can do.”
He watched her go up the path. He slid back into the lake and swam hard for a time, swam with all his strength, winding himself badly...
Ivy came out alone on the last day of July. It was early afternoon. He was sitting on the porch, reading. He recognized her step, though he hadn’t heard the car. He tossed the book aside and stood up.
She smiled at him. “Such concentration, Lew! You look fit.”
“A man lives alone and he learns to get drunk on liquor or drunk on books. I’m a reader these days. Sit down — here.”
She sat and crossed her legs neatly and lit her cigarette and looked at him over the long exhalation of smoke. “I’ve read the papers,” she said.
“So have I. A lamb going to the slaughter. Nobody comes back. A tired old man fighting youth.”
“How is it, actually?”