“Case!” Sadie said bravely.
The chubby cigar-smoker laughed. “Well, you got a good heart, anyway. Care to put a tenspot on that?”
“Will you give me four-to-one? If Case knocks him out?”
“IfCaseknocksTigerout? Lady, you’re on.” He stuck out a hand. Sadie shook it. Then she turned to me with a defiant little smile playing around the corner of her mouth that still worked.
“Pretty bold,” I said.
“Not at all,” she said. “Tiger’s going down in five. I can see the future.”
11
The ring announcer, wearing a tux and a pound of hair tonic, trotted to center ring, yanked down a mike on a silver cord, and gave the fighters’ stats in a rolling carny-barker’s voice. The National Anthem played. Men yanked off their hats and put their hands over their hearts. I could feel my own heart thudding rapidly, at least a hundred and twenty beats a minute and maybe more. The auditorium was air-conditioned, but sweat was rolling down the back of my neck and humidifying my armpits.
A girl in a swimsuit strutted around the ring in high heels, holding up a card with a big number1on it.
The bell clanged. Tom Case shuffled into the ring with a resigned expression on his face. Dick Tiger bounded happily to meet him, feinted with his right hand, then unleashed a compact left hook that decked Case exactly twelve seconds into the fight. The crowds—the one here and the one in the Garden, two thousand miles away—let out a disgusted groan. The hand Sadie had rested on my thigh seemed to spring claws as it tensed and dug in.
“Tell that ten to say goo’bye to his friends, beautiful,” the chubby cigar-smoker said gleefully.
Al, what the fuck were you thinking?
Dick Tiger retreated to his corner and stood there bouncing nonchalantly on the balls of his feet while the ref commenced the count, sweeping his right arm up and down dramatically. On three, Case stirred. On five he sat up. On seven he took a knee. And on nine he rose and lifted his gloves. The ref took the fighter’s face in his hands and asked a question. Case replied. The ref nodded, beckoned to Tiger, and stepped aside.
The Tiger Man, perhaps anxious to get to the steak dinner waiting for him at Sardi’s, rushed in for the kill. Case didn’t try toescape him—his speed had left him behind long ago, perhaps during some tank-town fight in Moline, Illinois, or New Haven, Connecticut—but he was able to cover up… and clinch. He did a lot of that, resting his head on Tiger’s shoulder like a tired tango dancer and pounding his gloves weakly on Tiger’s back. The crowd began to boo. When the bell rang and Case plodded back to his stool with his head down and his gloved fists dangling, they booed louder.
“He stinks, beautiful,” the chubby man remarked.
Sadie looked at me anxiously. “What do you think?”
“I think he made it through the first, anyway.” What Ireallythought was that someone should stick a fork in Tom Case’s sagging butt, because to me he looked almost done.
The chick in the Jantzen did her thing again, this time holding up a2.The bell clanged. Once again Tiger bounded and Case plodded. My guy continued to move in close so he could clinch whenever possible, but I noticed he was now managing to deflect the left hook that had devastated him in the first round. Tiger worked on the older fighter’s gut with piston-like shots of his right hand, but there must have been quite a lot of muscle left under that flab, because they didn’t seem to affect Case very much. At one point, Tiger pushed Case back and gestured with both gloves in acome on, come ongesture. The crowd cheered. Case only stared at him, so Tiger moved in. Case immediately clinched. The crowd groaned. The bell rang.
“My granny could give Tiger a better show,” the cigar-smoker grumbled.
“Maybe,” Sadie said, lighting her third cigarette of the fight, “but he’s still on his feet, isn’t he?”
“Not for long, sugar. The next time one of those left hooks gets through, it’s gonna be Case closed.” He chortled.
The third round was more clinching and shuffling, but in the fourth, Case let his guard drop slightly and Tiger hit him with a barrage of lefts and rights to the head that brought the audience to its feet, roaring. Akiva Roth’s girlfriend was with them. Mr. Rothhimself retained his seat, butdidtrouble himself enough to cup his ladyfriend’s ass with a beringed right hand.
Case fell back against the ropes, shooting rights at Tiger, and one of those blows got through. It looked pretty feeble, but I saw sweat fly from the Tiger Man’s hair as he shook his head. There was a bewildered where-did-that-come-from expression on his face. Then he moved in again and went back to work. Blood began oozing from a cut beside Case’s left eye. Before Tiger could increase the damage from a trickle to a gush, the bell rang.
“If you hand over that ten now, beautiful,” the pudgy cigar-smoker said, “you and your boyfriend will be able to beat the traffic.”
“Tell you what,” Sadie said. “I’ll give you one chance to call it off and save yourself forty dollars.”
The pudgy cigar-smoker laughed. “Beautifulanda sensayuma. If that long tall helicopter you’re with treats you bad, sugar, come home with me.”
In Case’s corner, the trainer was working frantically on the bad eye, squeezing something from a tube and mooshing it around with the tips of his fingers. It looked like Crazy Glue to me, except I don’t think that had been invented yet. Then he slapped Case in the chops with a wet towel. The bell rang.
Dick Tiger bored in, jamming with his right and hooking with his left. Case dodged one left hook, and for the first time in the fight, Tiger launched a right uppercut at the older man’s head. Case managed to pull back just enough to keep from taking it full on the jaw, but it connected with his cheek. The force of it distorted his entire face into a horror-house grimace. He staggered back. Tiger came at him. The crowd was up again, bellowing for blood. We rose with them. Sadie’s hands were over her mouth.
Tiger had Case pinned in one of the neutral corners and was hammering him with rights and lefts. I could see Case sagging; I could see the lights in his eyes dimming. One more left hook—or that cannon-shot right—and they would go out.
“PUT IM DOWN!”the chubby cigar-smoker was screaming.“PUT HIM DOWN, DICKY! KNOCK HIS BLOCK OFF!”
