'Two fights at the Y when I was twelve or thirteen years old.
Balloon gloves, protective headgear, two-minute rounds. I was too low and clumsy for it, I could never manage to land a punch.'
'You have an eye for the sport.'
'Well, I guess I've seen a lot of fights.'
He was silent for a moment. A cab cut us off and he braked smoothly, avoiding a collision. He didn't swear or hit the horn. He said,
'Canelli was set to go in the eighth. He was supposed to give the Kid his best fight until then, but not to get out in front or the knockout might not look right. That's why he held back in round four.'
'But the Kid didn't know it was set up.'
'Of course not. Most of his fights have been straight until tonight, but a fighter like Canelli could be dangerous to him, and why chance a bad mark on his record at this stage? He gains experience fighting Canelli and he gains confidence by beating him.' We were on Central Park West now, heading uptown.
'The knockout was real. Canelli would have gone in the tank in the eighth, but we hoped the Kid might get us home early, and you saw him do that. What do you think of him?'
'He's a comer.'
'I agree.'
'Sometimes he telegraphs the right. In the fourth round—'
'Yes,' he said. 'They've worked with him on that. The problem is that he generally manages to get away with it.'
'Well, he wouldn't have gotten by with it tonight. Not if Canelli had been looking to win.'
'Yes. Well, perhaps it's as well that he wasn't.'
We talked boxing until we got to 104th Street, where Chance turned the car around in a careful U-turn
and pulled up next to a fire hydrant. He killed the motor but left the keys. 'I'll be right down,' he said,
'after I've seen Sonya upstairs.'
She hadn't said a word since she told me it was nice to meet me.
He walked around the car and opened the door for her, and they strolled to the entrance of one of the two large apartment buildings that fronted on that block. I wrote the address in my notebook. In no more than five minutes he was back behind the wheel and we were heading downtown again.
Neither of us spoke for half a dozen blocks. Then he said, 'You wanted to talk to me. It doesn't have anything to do with Kid Bascomb, does it?'
'No.'
'I didn't really think so. What does it have to do with?'
'Kim Dakkinen.'
His eyes were on the road and I couldn't see any change in his expression. He said, 'Oh? What about her?'
'She wants out.'
'Out? Out of what?'
'The life,' I said. 'The relationship she has with you. She wants you to agree to… break things off.'
We stopped for a light. He didn't say anything. The light changed and we went another block or two and he said, 'What's she to you?'
'A friend.'
'What does that mean? You're sleeping with her? You want to marry her? Friend's a big word, it covers a lot of ground.'
'This time it's a small word. She's a friend, she asked me to do her a favor.'
'By talking to me.'
'That's right.'
'Why couldn't she talk to me herself? I see her frequently, you know. She wouldn't have had to run around the city asking after me.
Why, I saw her just last night.'
'I know.'
'Do you? Why didn't she say anything when she saw me?'
'She's afraid.'
'Afraid of me?'
'Afraid you might not want her to leave.'
'And so I might beat her? Disfigure her? Stub out cigarettes on her breasts?'
'Something like that.'
