I said, 'Chance? My name is Scudder.'
He turned, looked at me. His eyes were brown flecked with gold. I thought of my client's eyes, that unreal blue. He'd been at her apartment last night while I was barhopping, dropped in unannounced to pick up some money. She'd told me about it earlier, called me at the hotel around noon. 'I was afraid,'
she'd said. 'I thought, suppose he asks about you, asks me some kind of questions. But it was cool.'
Now he said, 'Matthew Scudder. You left some messages with my service.'
'You didn't return my calls.'
'I don't know you. I don't call people I don't know. And you've been asking around town for me.' His voice was deep and resonant. It sounded trained, as if he'd gone to broadcasting school. 'I want to watch this fight,' he said.
'All I want is a few minutes conversation.'
'Not during the fight and not between rounds.' A frown came and went. 'I want to be able to concentrate. I bought that seat you're sitting in, you see, so I'd have some privacy.'
The warning buzzer sounded. Chance turned, focused his eyes on the ring. Kid Bascomb was standing and his seconds were hauling the stool out of the ring. 'Go back to your seat,' Chance said, 'and I'll talk to you after the fight ends.'
'It's a ten-rounder?'
'It won't go ten.'
It didn't. In the third or fourth round Kid Bascomb started getting to Canelli, punishing him with the jab, putting a couple of combinations together. Canelli was smart but the Kid was young and fast and strong, with a way of moving that reminded me a little of Sugar Ray. Robinson, not Leonard. In the fifth round he staggered Canelli with a short right hand to the heart and if I'd had a bet on the Italian I'd have written it off then and there.
Canelli looked strong by the end of the round but I'd seen the expression on his face when the blow landed, and I wasn't surprised a round later when Kid Bascomb dropped him with a looping left hook.
He was up at three and took an eight-count, and then the Kid was all over him, hitting him with everything but the ring posts. Canelli went down again and got right up and the ref jumped between the two of them and looked in Canelli's eyes and stopped it.
There was some halfhearted booing from the diehards who never want a fight stopped, and one of Canelli's cornermen was insisting his fighter could have gone on, but Canelli himself seemed just as happy the show was over. Kid Bascomb did a little war dance and took his bows, then climbed nimbly over the ropes and left the ring.
On his way out he stopped to talk to Chance. The girl with the auburn hair sat forward and rested a hand on the fighter's glossy black arm. Chance and the Kid talked for a moment or two, and then the Kid headed for his dressing room.
I left my seat, walked over to Chance and the girl. They were standing by the time I got there. He said,
'We're not staying for the main bout. If you'd planned on watching it—'
The top of the card matched two middleweights, a Panamanian contender and a black boy from South Philadelphia with a reputation as a spoiler. It would probably be a good bout, but that wasn't what I'd come for. I told him I was ready to leave.
'Then why don't you come with us,' he suggested. 'I have a car nearby.' He headed up the aisle with the girl at his side. A few people said hello to him and some of them told him that the Kid had looked good in there. Chance didn't say much in reply. I tagged along, and when we got outside and hit the fresh air I realized for the first time how stale and smoky it had been inside the Garden.
On the street he said, 'Sonya, this is Matthew Scudder. Mr.
Scudder, Sonya Hendryx.'
'It's nice to meet you,' she said, but I didn't believe her. Her eyes told me she was withholding judgment until Chance cued her in one way or the other. I wondered if she was the Sunny that Kim had mentioned, the sports fan Chance took to ball games. I wondered, too, if I would have pegged her for a hooker if I'd met her in other circumstances. I couldn't see anything unmistakably whorish about her, and yet she didn't look at all out of place hanging on a pimp's arm.
We walked a block south and half a block east to a parking lot where Chance collected his car and tipped the attendant enough to get thanked with more than the usual degree of enthusiasm. The car surprised me, just as the clothes and manner had surprised me earlier. I was expecting a pimpmobile, complete with custom paint and interior and the usual wretched excess, and what showed up was a Seville, the small Cadillac, silver on the outside with a black leather interior. The girl got in back, Chance sat behind the wheel, and I sat in front next to him.
The ride was smooth, silent. The car's interior smelled of wood polish and leather. Chance said, 'There's a victory party for Kid Bascomb. I'll drop Sonya there now and join her after we've concluded our business. What did you think of the fight?'
'I thought it was hard to figure.'
'Oh?'
'It looked fixed but the knockout looked real.'
He glanced at me, and I saw interest in his gold-flecked eyes for the first time. 'What makes you say that?'
'Canelli had an opening twice in the fourth round and he didn't follow it up either time. He's too smart a fighter for that. But he was trying to get through the sixth and he couldn't. At least that's how it looked from my seat.'
'You ever box, Scudder?'
