He opened the door when I knocked and I liked the looks of him. He shook hands and that gave me a chance to see that he had thick, square hands with strong bones. Good wrists. He was one of those boys with a small head set close against his shoulders, a big chest, no hips at all and a springy way of walking. Outside of a vague suggestion of a shelf over the left eye and a little knob on one ear, he wasn’t marked. He had a snub nose, a nice grin, and cold grey eyes.
“I’m happy to know you, Mr. Watson,” he said quietly.
There was a big table in the room and it had books opened on the top of it, a pencil next to an open notebook, a slide rule. He saw where I was looking and said: “When I got out of the army, I got into school and they took six months to toss me out. I couldn’t concentrate. I’m learning the hard way.”
I sat on the bed. “Very interesting. What sort of stuff are you doing?”
“Mechanical engineering.”
“What is it, a hobby?”
“Sort of. With the way the schools are jammed, and with my record of busting out, I haven’t got a prayer of getting back in.”
We stared at each other. He laughed nervously and said: “Barney told me about this deal of his. I feel like a chorus girl applying for a job.”
“You like fighting?”
He frowned. “That’s a toughie, Mr. Watson. I hate it until I get into the ring and get a glove in my face. Then the only thing I want to do is drop the other guy; I hate him until I hear that ten count and then he’s just another guy.”
“That’s a good way to be, Spencer. If you haven’t got that, you never make much of a fighter. The press boys call it the killer instinct.”
He grinned. “That’s a harsh word.”
“You want to make a career of fighting?”
“No. A man hits his optimum mental efficiency at age forty-five. You can’t keep fighting much beyond thirty-two or three; your reactions go bad.”
“How old are you now?”
“Twenty-four.”
I added it up in my head. Nine years with a good boy. Maybe champ in another year or two. He seemed as open and honest as the day is long, but there was something about him, some coldness in those grey eyes of his that told me to be on guard.
“You can get fights for me?” he asked.
“Sure. I can get fights. I’ve spent a few years doing favors for the right people and I can get fights. How many of those knockouts of yours were setups?”
He frowned again. “The first five. Then Whitey found out that in two cases I had put the boys away before they were ready to drop. He tried three level ones and I got a decision in one and knockouts in the other two. From then on I was on my own. It cut expenses and gave me better training. I didn’t like the setups; it made me feel ashamed. But Whitey said they were necessary.”
“I don’t like ’em myself. Once in a while it’s okay with a fading bum that you want to ease into a big bout so he can grubstake himself for the future. But it hurts the business in the long run.”
“You make sense,” he said. “I hope the deal goes through.”
The deal did go through. I went out to Toldeo and sat in his corner. In the fifth round Bruin dropped his left shoulder a fraction of an inch too far. Spencer Leslie put a right down the slot and followed it up with a left hook that bounced Bruin off the ropes. As Bruin bounced, his arms limp, Leslie put two meaty rights and a left on the button. Bruin landed face down and they could have counted up to seventeen hundred.
Whitey had made some tentative arrangements for the future and I followed them up. In the swing we got a decision over Bannock in Detroit, Stankiewitz in Chicago, a knockout off Dormer in Memphis and a technical over Hailey in Atlanta. I nearly needed a suitcase to carry the dough in. We came back to New York and the press boys were screaming about my boy. No wonder. Perfect timing, a perfect build and good endurance. I saw my legal eagle and he got Myrna to accept a cash settlement instead of alimony. I bought eight or nine complete outfits, paid my income tax, and put a few hundred in a checking account. All was well with the world.
The next go-round was with Angel Adams in the Garden and it was two weeks away. The only bad habit I had found in my boy was the bug on engineering.
On the second day I ran into Whitey and said “Sure was tough about you losing that boy.”
He grinned at me in a nasty way and said, “You think so? Brother you have been lucky, you don’t know how lucky. Maybe you haven’t heard, but I’ve got the Tailor. There’s a boy I like.”
I angled him over against the wall of a building. “What are you driving at, Whitey?”
“Nothing, kid. I just said you’d been lucky as hell. My timing was off. I should have held him another two months before the switch.”
“I thought you lost him.”
“Did you? Gowdy made an easy five bills pulling the switch.”
“Damn it, Whitey, what’s wrong with Leslie?”
“Why don’t you ask him, sucker? Or maybe you could try to fix him up to train at Stayman’s Gym.”
He wouldn’t tell me any more. I went to see Ike Stayman and said that I wanted to make arrangements for Spencer Leslie to train there. Ike snickered. “You keep that crazy man the hell away from here.” He would not tell me any more.
I went to Leslie and asked him what was up. He said, “I thought you’d heard, Danny. I didn’t want to bring it up; I just get a little excited when I get sore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I sort of lose control of myself.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I can’t Danny. It isn’t very clear in my mind. I got sore a couple of times when I was training at Stayman’s, and Ike said I couldn’t use the gym any more. I guess I hit a couple of the wrong people or something.”
They call him Angel Adams because he is the dirtiest fighter known to man. He makes the referee earn his money. There was a good crowd at the Garden, not packed, but a nice house to add up in your head. In order to get a shot at the champ, we’d have to lick Angel, and then Stick Mobray and then Kid Willows.
We were the final, and Leslie was nice and loose in the dressing room. He got a good hand when we came down the aisle and he bounded in, scuffing his feet in the resin, grinning at the public.
After the words of wisdom in the middle of the ring, where my boy looked like beauty and the beast along beside the swarthy scowling Angel Adams, Leslie came bounding back. The stool had been yanked and the second took the robe. He grabbed the top ropes and it made me feel good to see those long, loose muscles in his shoulder. At the bell, he whirled, ran out and touched gloves with Angel and started to feel with his left.
Angel stamped on his foot and swung a booming right into the breadbasket. Les managed to get in a high hard left to the head before the clinch. In the clinch, Angel rubbed the laces up across Leslie’s nose and gave him a good butt on the cheekbone.
Artie Mosher, the ref, pulled them apart and told Angel to cut it. I saw that Les had turned a little pale.
In the next mixup, they got over near the ropes. Angel grabbed the top rope with his right hand and used the leverage to drive a heavy left into Leslie’s throat. In the next clinch Angel spun fast, jamming a hip into Leslie’s cup. When Les bent over, Angel chopped him behind the ear and Les went down hard on his face.
The bell sounded just as Les came up to his feet. Angel walked away. Les looked after him for a few seconds, then turned and came back to his corner like a sleepwalker.
I jumped up and, while Joe was working on him, I said; “Don’t let him rile you, boy.”
“Shut up!” Les snarled. I noticed that the cords of his neck were taut and strained. His face was still white.