A Piece of the Action

Two

January 2, 1958

NYPD patrolman Stanley Moodrow sat before a full length mirror in the boys’ locker room of Robert Lehman High School and watched while his trainer, Sergeant Allen Epstein, wrapped his huge hands with a narrow strip of white gauze.

“Tighter, Sarge,” he hissed. “A little tighter.”

“You sure?” Epstein answered, dropping the gauze bandage to reach for a roll of white surgical tape.

“I gotta go six tonight. I don’t wanna hurt my hands in the first round.”

“You can’t hurt your hands punching air, Stanley. This guy’s fast.”

Moodrow tried to frown, but found himself grinning instead. Punching air? The phrase summed up his whole career. “Punching air” and “too damned big.” It was funny, in a way. The last fight of a boxer’s career wasn’t supposed to be held in a Brooklyn high school. And it wasn’t supposed to be the most important fight of that career. The last fight was supposed to come after a career filled with main events in Madison Square Garden, with championship belts held aloft, with popping flashbulbs and crowds of reporters.

Moodrow turned away from Epstein and curled his hands into fists. Satisfied, he studied himself in the mirror. Or, at least, he studied that portion of himself visible in the narrow glass. If he wanted to see the whole of his six foot six, 245-pound frame, he’d have to stand on the other side of the locker room. But he didn’t want to see his chest or his shoulders. Stanley Moodrow was looking into his own eyes, looking for any sign of indecision.

“Too damned big,” he thought. That’s what his first serious trainer, Sammy Turro, had told him. “You’re too damned big, Stanley. Ya stay in the fight game, ya gonna get your ass kicked.”

Moodrow had begun his fighting career in 1948, when he was fifteen years old. Most kids take up boxing because they’re afraid, but not Stanley Moodrow. He was always the biggest kid in his class, always a head taller than the tallest student. Maybe that was why, despite his good grades, he was cast as a dummy, a dope. The other kids made fun of him and he reacted, as kids will, by beating the crap out of them. That ended the teasing, but it hadn’t made him popular.

No, the end result of his schoolyard victories was that the losers, the hoods and the dummies, came to admire him, while the rest of the school left him entirely alone. Stanley Moodrow knew all about losers-growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was no way to avoid them-and he wanted no part of their lives. Lost in arrogance, they hung out on every street corner, sucking on bottles of beer, dreaming of easy scores and easier sex. Right up until the day a judge sent them up the river.

“These are bums, Stanley,” his father, Max, had explained again and again. “All of them. They don’t want to work, so they take what they need from the people. Better to be a dog than a bum. God willing, I’ll live long enough to spit on their graves.”

God, apparently, hadn’t been willing. Max Moodrow fell off a ladder at a Bronx construction site four days before his son’s fifteenth birthday and died on the way to the hospital.

But that didn’t end the lectures. Moodrow’s Uncle Pavlov took up the theme before his brother was in his grave. “I hear you’re fightin’ in school, Stanley,” he counseled. “It’s okay to be tough. Ya gotta be tough to survive down here. But don’t be stupid, all right? Don’t be a bum. Ya wanna fight, go in the ring where it’ll do ya some good.”

Uncle Pavlov, a ten-year veteran of the NYPD, just happened to be in charge of the P.A.L.’s Lower East Side boxing program. He also just happened to be smart enough to act surprised when his brother’s kid turned up a month later.

“Hey, Stanley, fancy meetin’ you here.”

“I thought I’d give it a shot, Uncle Pavlov. I mean boxing. I wanna try it out.”

Try it out? The truth was that fifteen-year-old Stanley Moodrow wanted to be a champion. Like every other kid who put on the gloves. And his first twenty fights did nothing to discourage him. It wasn’t just the power in his right hand. Stanley Moodrow, like all good fighters in the early stages of a career, simply refused to lose. He found a way to win, even when overmatched, to eat the pain and keep on coming. If his fists weren’t good enough, he beat his opponent into submission with the sheer force of his will. The pain-and there was plenty of pain-was a badge of honor.

“Ya mind’s not where it belongs, Stanley.”

“Huh?” Moodrow turned to his trainer. “What’d you say, Sarge?”

“The fight, schmuck. The one you’re gonna have tonight. Get your mind on the goddamned fight.”

Moodrow stood up and kicked the stool away. He set himself in front of the mirror and began to shadowbox with his reflection. Fights, he knew, don’t begin with the opening bell. They begin the day the match is made and progress through a number of stages. Training, first, then a layoff two days before the bout, then the weigh-in, the taping of the hands, the ritual of working up a sweat, the long walk to the ring, the introductions. You could lose your edge anywhere along the way. The will to win could be sucked out of you like a malted through a straw.

“I’m gonna take this guy tonight,” he said without stopping. “It’s six rounds, not three. I’m gonna catch him and take him out.”

The thing about it was that you could control a lot of things in your life, but you couldn’t control everything. You couldn’t control the fact that you were seventeen years old and six foot five inches tall and maybe you’d kicked the hell out of YMCA competition, but now you were in the Golden Gloves and your opponents were faster and more experienced. Very few kids are full-blown heavyweights at the tender age of seventeen.

Moodrow made it to the semi-finals, despite the fact that his opponents were all in their twenties, but that was the end of it. Bobby Brown was a three-time Golden Gloves national champion. Four inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than Moodrow, he used his speed to every advantage, darting in to throw four-punch combinations, then moving back and away before Moodrow could respond. The blood began to flow halfway through the second round and the referee stopped it fifteen seconds into the third. Moodrow, back in the dressing room, tried to make an excuse.

“It was a butt,” he told the doctor sewing his eyelid back together. “A butt,” he insisted to his trainer.

Sammy Turro was kind enough to wait until the doctor finished, until there were no witnesses, before he enlightened his fighter.

“Ya too big, Stanley. Too fuckin’ big. There ain’t no champions big as you. And don’t give me Jack Johnson, neither. Guys today are scientific. They know how to stay away. You get in against one of the good ones? Eddie Machen? Zora Folley? Cleveland Williams? I don’t care how hard ya work, they’re gonna use ya for a punching bag. Lotta guys big as you, guys with your heart, they go into boxing anyway. Fifteen years later they’re sparrin’ partners for two bucks a round. They hear bells whenever they close their eyes.”

“Sammy,” Moodrow insisted, “he butted me.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t see no butt, Stanley. But if he did put his head in your eye, you oughta send him a thank-you note. Another two minutes and he prob’ly would’a killed ya.”

Moodrow, eyes riveted to his reflection in the mirror, stopped throwing punches and assumed a defensive posture, fists alongside the jaw, elbows tight against the ribs. It was the “peek-a-boo” defense used by the current champion, Floyd Patterson, who should have been quick enough to do without it. For Moodrow, on the other hand, it amounted to an acceptance of punishment. He wasn’t fast enough to slip punches, to move out of harm’s way. He was going to have to take one to give one. Or take two. Or three. Or four.

“All right, Stanley, don’t overdo it. You’re supposed to warm up, not leave your fight in the dressing room.”

Moodrow ignored him. Allen Epstein didn’t know squat about the fine art of bringing a fighter to his peak on the night of a big bout. Epstein was in it for the same reason as Moodrow, though he wasn’t dumb enough actually to be the one in the ring.

Moodrow had never seen his desire to be a world champion as simple ambition until his third week at the Police Academy. He’d looked at the freshly scrubbed faces of the other recruits, then raised a finger to the still-pink scar on his brow. He knew things they didn’t know, things you learn by going into the ring and winning your first twenty fights. He knew, for instance, that he could have turned pro and worked himself into contention for a championship. Maybe he would never be a champion, but white boxing fans were always scouting the horizon for another Rocky Marciano, another Great White Hope. Hadn’t they taken a rank amateur like Pete Rademacher and bet him down to even money against Floyd Patterson? He, Moodrow, big as he was, could have played the part, maybe even gotten a title fight against a champion looking for an easy payday. Maybe, if he’d been real lucky …

The kids sitting alongside him didn’t understand any of it, the victories or the defeats. They couldn’t know what it felt like to give up the dream when you’d already come halfway. There were twenty-four thousand cops in the NYPD and twenty-one thousand were out there pounding a beat. Most of them would spend their entire careers on the street. Checking the backs of closed hardware stores. Directing traffic in the rain. Hoofing it from one call box to another. It would pay the rent, but it was a long way from heavyweight champion of the world.

Thank God for civil service exams. There was a way to move up in the job without the direct approval of the brass. You pass the sergeant’s exam, you’re a sergeant, the lieutenant’s exam, you’re a lieutenant, the captain’s exam, you’re a captain. That wasn’t the way Stanley Moodrow wanted to do it, but if Plan A failed, he’d go that route. Plan A was to be appointed to the detectives, to carry the Gold Shield, to spend his workdays in a suit instead of a uniform.

It was a nice dream, but there was no detective’s exam to take. Detectives were appointed by other detectives and, according to his Uncle Pavlov, there was more politics in that Gold Shield than in the rest of the Department put together. In order even to be considered for the detectives, you had to catch the attention of someone already in the detectives. Which was almost impossible, because beat cops rarely came into contact with the suits. Meanwhile, there were dozens of cops out there whose fathers, brothers and uncles already carried the Gold Shield.

“If you wanna get the attention of the suits,” Uncle Pavlov explained, “the best way to do it is by making a big collar. The kind that gets your name in the papers. But you have to be careful not to step on any toes. The rule is that detectives detect and patrolmen patrol. If you stumble onto a robbery in progress and blow the scum away, you’re a hero. If you follow a burglar for a month, waiting to catch him inside a warehouse, you’re a hotdog.”

“I understand, Uncle Pavlov,” Moodrow replied. “But what I’m hearing is that I’m never gonna get an appointment unless I get lucky. You should pardon me when I tell you that I don’t see myself as a lucky guy.”

Pavlov Moodrow tapped his nephew on the forehead. “Then why don’t you be a smart guy, Stanley. You got good grades all the way through high school. You didn’t fall down, even when your father passed over. Do yourself a favor, go up to City College and take some classes. Study for the sergeant’s exam in your spare time. If the detectives call you up, that’s great, but if they don’t, you got something to fall back on. And there’s no luck involved in it.”

Moodrow took the advice to heart. Twice a week, in addition to his duties as a beat cop on the Lower East Side, he rode the subway up to City College and sat through a boring lecture. He managed to accumulate eighteen credits in three years, a long way from the hundred and thirty he needed to graduate. But graduation wasn’t the point. The point was to make his ambition known and to memorize the Patrol Guide.

He’d been given his copy of the Patrol Guide on the day he entered the Academy. All six hundred looseleaf pages of it. The Patrol Guide was supposed to provide a step-by-step procedural guide to every situation ever encountered by any cop anywhere. Most patrolmen, on the advice of the older cops who shepherded them through their first months on the job, dumped the Patrol Guide in a closet and learned the shortcuts offered by the veterans. Stanley Moodrow, on the other hand, took sections of the Guide to work with him, studying the mechanics (and the paperwork) of police procedure. The sergeant’s exam was based almost entirely on the Patrol Guide.

Moodrow, his career on course, was just finishing his third year on the job when Sergeant Allen Epstein, newly transferred from Midtown North, found him on the corner of Clinton and Houston Streets.

“Patrolman Moodrow?”

“What’s up, Sarge?”

“Get in for a minute. I wanna talk to you.”

The minute turned into twenty as Epstein explained that he knew all about Moodrow’s amateur boxing career. He pronounced that career glorious, then went on to proclaim the glories of the Manhattan South Police Boxing Club, which, under his expert guidance, would become the finest in the Department.

Moodrow listened politely-Epstein was, after all, a sergeant-but he had less than no interest in the glory derived from beating some cop into submission. Glory was a world title, not a sweaty dance in a high school gym.

“The thing about it,” Moodrow explained, “is that I’m taking classes uptown and I’m studying for the sergeant’s exam. I don’t have the time to train.”

“How much time does it take? We’re not talking about the pros here. These guys are all in the same boat as you.”

Moodrow, hoping to end the discussion, had looked Epstein in the eye. “You go into the ring unprepared, you’re gonna lose. And you’re gonna get hurt. I don’t need that in my life. What’s the point? To prove that I’m tough? I already know I’m tough. Take a look at this.” He’d waved section fifteen of the Patrol Guide in Epstein’s face. “The only thing I’m interested in proving is that I can pass the sergeant’s exam.”

“You won’t be eligible to take the sergeant’s exam for two years. What’s the rush?”

“I wanna be ready when the time comes.”

And that, as far as Stanley Moodrow was concerned, should have been that. But a week later, Epstein was back.

“I see you’re an ambitious cop,” Epstein argued. “You wanna move up in the job. I didn’t know this last week, but I know it now. Ambition is fine with me. I understand it because I also wanna move up in the job. So, lemme ask you one question. You answer it right and I won’t bother you again. The Manhattan South boxing squad competes against other police squads and usually we get a crowd of around three hundred. Who do you think comes to watch?”

“It’s gotta be other cops, right?”

“Yeah, but what kind of cops?”

“Maybe you could just tell me what’s on your mind, Sarge. I’m supposed to report in five minutes.”

“The cops who come to the regular matches aren’t on foot patrol. Foot patrolmen are mostly young. They’ve got families to raise. It’s the older cops who show up. Lieutenants, captains, deputy inspectors. These are cops who can help you, Stanley. Who can put you into squads where you’ll make decent collars. The goddamned chief of detectives is a boxing maniac. The …”

“The chief of detectives?”

“That’s right. Matthew Halloran, himself. He fought in the amateurs twenty-five years ago. Now, he gets his kicks watching cops beat the hell out of each other. You want a gold shield, Stanley? That what you’re lookin’ for?”

“I wouldn’t complain,” Moodrow admitted.

“If you fight and win, especially when we’re up against squads from the firemen or sanitation, the chief of all the detectives in New York City will come to the locker room and shake your hand. My squad’s fighting in Brooklyn next Tuesday. Come and see for yourself.”

Moodrow did go to see for himself and while the chief of detectives was nowhere to be found, Moodrow recognized several dicks from his home precinct, the 7th. The captain of the 7th was there too, screaming for blood or victory, whichever came first.

The essential message was obvious-even if there was no glory, no thrill of victory for Stanley Moodrow, that didn’t mean there was no glory for the spectators. They reacted like they were at Yankee Stadium instead of Saint Regis High School.

Three days later, Moodrow began to train. A month later, he had his first fight and his first victory under his belt. It’d never been easier. His opponents were more concerned with attitude than winning. They stood toe to toe and slugged it out, even when they were conceding fifty pounds and a ten-inch reach advantage. They really didn’t have any choice. The few who tried to keep away from him, to dance and jab their way to victory, were booed and jeered at by their own partisans. And the judges hadn’t looked on their efforts any more kindly than the crowd.

The victories continued to come, one after another, for more than a year. And Moodrow had his sore right hand pumped by dozens of ranking officers, including an Irish inspector named Patrick Cohan with an unmarried daughter named Kathleen. Cohan, without ever saying it, became Stanley Moodrow’s rabbi, bringing him to parties and functions, bragging about his exploits, encouraging his courtship of “my darlin’ Kathleen.”

“I would’ve preferred an Irishman,” Patrick Cohan had explained when Moodrow came to him for permission to ask Kathleen out, “but you’re tough, smart and ambitious. Lord knows, there’s no lack of tough, ambitious cops. It’s the smart ones who’re hard to find. So full speed ahead, boyo. Make her happy, if you can. Make her happy, but keep your hands to yourself. I want my daughter to come to the altar in a white gown, as pure as the day she made her first Holy Communion.”

Moodrow didn’t bother to look around when the door to his dressing room opened and Sergeant Peretti, Allen Epstein’s assistant, announced, “Five minutes, Stanley. The light-heavies are outta the ring,” but he felt his gut begin to knot up. It wasn’t the importance of this particular tournament that bothered him. It was the caliber of his opponent.

Liam O’Grady was quick, smart, Irish and a lieutenant in the New York City Fire Department. He’d mastered a strategy available to few fighters, amateur or professional-the art of hammering his opponent while moving away. On the face of it, O’Grady’s technique defied the laws of physics. A fighter had to be moving forward, to get his whole body into the punch, if he wanted to hit with power. But rules were made to be broken and Liam O’Grady had broken all of them (along with Stanley Moodrow’s nose) a year before. O’Grady had danced around the ring like a giant Sugar Ray Robinson, while Moodrow, a clumsy Jake La Motta, lumbered after him, punching air.

There were differences, of course. Sugar Ray Robinson was a consummate professional. He could stay on his bicycle for fifteen rounds and still be throwing punches at the end. O’Grady, on the other hand, was only a gifted amateur. He could stick and move for three rounds, not fifteen. And this fight wasn’t going three rounds. In deference to its importance, the bout, like every fight in this all-star tournament, had been scheduled for six. And the fighters were to wear eight-ounce gloves instead of the customary ten. Most important of all, the referees had been instructed not to stop a fight unless a fighter was out on his feet.

“You ready, Stanley?”

“Huh?”

Epstein frowned. “You’re not focused, Stanley. You’re not here.”

“Then where am I, Sarge?” Moodrow began to put on his robe. He was smiling.

“You tell me?”

“What are they callin’ this tournament? The First Annual Inter-Service Boxing Championships? The Golden Gloves and the Olympics all wrapped up in one?”

“So what, Stanley? This isn’t the first time you’ve gone up against a fireman. You’ve gotta see it as just another fight. Stop putting pressure on yourself.”

“Who’s here tonight, Sarge? Who’s out there screaming for blood?”

“This ain’t helping you.”

“The commissioner’s sitting ten feet away from the ring. The chief of detectives is right next to him. There are city councilmen out there, the borough president, a deputy mayor. If I win, I’m a hero. If I lose, I’m a bum. My daddy always told me not to be a bum. He told me bums were the lowest form of life on the face of the earth.”

Epstein draped a towel around his fighter’s neck. “I could never tell you anything,” he said. “You think you know it all.”

“You could never tell me anything, because you don’t know anything. Not about fighting. Let’s go.”

As they stepped into the narrow corridor connecting the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms with the gymnasium, the crowd in the tightly packed gym sent up a roar.

“O’Grady’s in the ring,” Epstein observed. “Now, it’s your turn.”

As if on cue, the crowd began a chant that was close to a moan. “Moooooooo-Drow, Moooooooo-Drow, Moooooooo-Drow.”

“Your fans await you.” Epstein’s smile was closer to a grimace.

“You trying to say the vampires are hungry, Sarge? That’s all that’s happening. The vampires need to be fed. My blood or someone else’s. It’s all the same to them.”

Epstein started to answer, but Moodrow turned away and marched into the gym. The room was packed, firemen on one side, cops on the other. Moodrow walked between them without turning his head, stepping up onto the ring apron and ducking between the ropes with practiced grace. Once inside, he raised his arms in premature triumph. The crowd went wild, stomping, whistling, cheering. He wondered if they even knew that Liam O’Grady had kicked his butt a year ago? Or cared, for that matter.

“Siddown, Stanley, lemme get the gloves on.”

Moodrow dropped to the stool and extended his left hand. His head swiveled until he was staring directly across the ring at a smiling Liam O’Grady. Though he would have liked to return the smile, to meet arrogance with arrogance, he dropped his eyes to the canvas. If O’Grady wanted to think it was going to be easy, Moodrow had no objection.

“Whatta ya say, Stanley?” Ed Spinelli was a deputy supervisor in sanitation by day and a referee by night. He’d been chosen for his experience and his neutrality. “Lemme see the gloves.”

Moodrow, without bothering to reply, held both gloves out for Spinelli’s inspection. It was going to be a long night for the little referee, though he didn’t know it. At a hundred and sixty pounds, Spinelli was too small to control a pair of determined heavyweights. He’d need the fighters’ cooperation and he wasn’t going to get it.

His gloves laced and inspected, Moodrow got up and began to move around the ring. O’Grady did the same. Both men were sweating profusely and neither wanted to cool off before the opening bell. Inevitably, they passed each other in the center of the squared circle.

“Do yourself a favor, flatfoot,” O’Grady snarled. “Fall down early.”

Moodrow let his eyes flick up to meet O’Grady’s, then jerked them away. There were no scars over the fireman’s eyes and his nose was as straight as a ruler. That was going to change. Liam O’Grady, the Fighting Fireman, might come out of this fight a winner, but he wasn’t going to come out unmarked.

“Go back to your corners,” Spinelli ordered. “They’re gonna do the intros.”

Deputy Mayor Gold was short and forty pounds overweight. Even with a cop and a fireman to hold the ropes apart, he had trouble getting into the ring. The crowd jeered, then broke into laughter. Moodrow heard none of it. He’d never been more focused in his life, never more determined. The Gold Shield was riding on the end of his right hand. Once he had it, he’d never again fight for someone else’s amusement. He’d never hit or be hit, never taste the blood running from his nose or be sprayed as he drove his fist into a cut on his opponent’s face. The glory he’d once reached for had died a second death at his mother’s graveside, two years before. He’d gotten through his mother’s death by deciding not to break down, by telling himself to “do what you have to do.” He’d been living by that rule ever since.

“In the red corner, at two hundred and eight pounds, the Fightin’ Fireman, ‘Irish’ Liam O’Grady.” Deputy Mayor Gold, drenched with sweat, waited for the roar to die away before he continued. “And in the blue corner, at two hundred and forty-seven pounds, New York’s Fightin’ Finest, Stan ‘The Man’ Moodrow.”

The referee motioned both fighters to the center of the ring and began to recite a set of instructions he’d already given in the dressing rooms. “All right, boys,” he concluded, “touch gloves and let’s have a clean fight.”

It was supposed to be a gesture of sportsmanship, but that first contact, just the touch of leather on leather, coursed through Moodrow’s body like a match tossed into a pool of gasoline. Now it was out in the open. It was war. You had to fight to survive.

When the bell rang, Moodrow moved to the center of the ring as if staking out a claim. O’Grady came out to meet him, then began to circle. Moodrow advanced at an angle, cutting the circle, and O’Grady reversed direction, then suddenly closed, throwing a quick combination before bouncing away. Moodrow took the punches, catching three out of four on his arms. The last one slammed into the narrow space between his left elbow and the top of his trunks.

Moodrow was aware of being hit, but he felt no pain. Tomorrow, he’d have trouble getting out of bed; tonight, he had a job to do. He continued to advance, forcing O’Grady back toward the ropes, throwing an occasional jab at his opponent’s dancing head, punching air.

O’Grady gave ground willingly, just as he had in their first fight. Sooner or later his back would be against the ropes and both fighters knew it. Meanwhile, he continued to inflict damage, snapping jabs between Moodrow’s gloves, following with short, vicious rights to the body, slipping Moodrow’s clumsy attempts to counter.

It took Moodrow more than two minutes to force O’Grady into a corner, to render his opponent momentarily stationary. He absorbed a lot of punishment in the process, but found no reward at the end of the road. Before he could take advantage of his power, before he could throw a single punch, O’Grady ducked between his arms and grabbed Moodrow’s huge chest. Now it was perfect. They’d come full circle, repeating every element of their first fight.

“New game,” Moodrow whispered to O’Grady as Spinelli tried to pull the two fighters apart. He wrapped his left glove around the back of O’Grady’s neck, pulling him forward and down, then jammed the point of his right elbow into the soft spot just behind O’Grady’s collarbone. O’Grady tried to jerk away, but Moodrow, much the stronger, held him close.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Spinelli shouted. “No holding, Moodrow. Don’t grab him.”

Moodrow let the ref tug on his arm for another few seconds before releasing his opponent. Grinning, he waited for O’Grady to move back to the center of the ring, then began to advance. For the first time, he allowed himself to look directly into O’Grady’s eyes. He was hoping to find doubt, but he settled for anger. If O’Grady lost his cool and stood toe-to-toe, it would be a very short fight.

Moodrow moved a little faster this time, ignoring the jabs, not even trying to counter. O’Grady was staying closer, waiting for an opportunity to throw his best punch. He found it with fifteen seconds left in the round, a whistling right that slammed into Moodrow’s forehead. Moodrow ignored the blow, didn’t, in fact, even feel it. He pressed forward until O’Grady’s back was against the ropes, then threw his own right. O’Grady’s head moved slightly, avoiding Moodrow’s fist, but not the forearm that followed. It smashed into the side of his skull, driving him sideways along the ropes.

Moodrow grabbed O’Grady behind the neck before he could escape and the fireman instinctively tried to pull away, lifting his body erect, opening his ribs to the right hand. The bell rang an instant before Moodrow could react to the opportunity, but that didn’t stop him. He drove his fist into O’Grady’s chest, then turned and walked back to his corner.

“You’re cut, Stanley,” Epstein said.

“Bad?” Moodrow suddenly became aware of the drops running along the outside of his right eye.

“Not yet.” Epstein took the edges of the cut between his fingers, squeezing them tightly together. He held the cut closed until the bleeding stopped, then filled the gash with a thick coagulant. “You could use a real cut man for this one. If he keeps tagging you with the jab, it’s gonna get messy.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sarge. They’re not gonna stop this one for blood.” He glanced across the ring, but O’Grady’s handlers had him surrounded.

“Look here, Stanley.” The referee’s face swam into view. “I want you to stop the bullshit. Right now. Stop grabbin’ him. Stop the elbows. I’ll disqualify you.”

“The crowd’ll love that,” Moodrow grunted. The truth was they’d probably tear Spinelli to pieces and Spinelli knew it. O’Grady was on his own.

The second round, in direct contrast to the first, was slow and dull. O’Grady got on his bicycle, staying far enough away from Moodrow to spin out before his back was against the ropes. The strategy was effective in that it prevented him from being trapped, but the distance was too great for any meaningful offense. O’Grady looked like a scared fighter and the few jabs he managed to land did nothing to change that impression. By the time the bell rang to end the round, the crowd, including a few of the firemen, was booing.

In the third round, O’Grady again reversed strategy, staying close to Moodrow, as he had in the first. Moodrow wasn’t surprised. Irish fighters were expected to be especially courageous. O’Grady would have to return to the firehouse as soon as his injuries, should he suffer injuries, healed up. He couldn’t very well go back to his buddies if he came out of this fight labeled a coward.

Moodrow led with a hard, straight right. It missed, but not by much. O’Grady didn’t bother to counter. He came inside and banged his forehead into Moodrow’s nose. Moodrow heard the cartilage in his nose snap, but he had no sense that it was his own flesh being torn. It was more like someone in another room had broken a pencil. O’Grady, aided by the referee, tried to pull back, but Moodrow held him long enough to put his glove on the fireman’s cheek and rub the laces across his face.

O’Grady managed to jerk away and the referee, incensed, stepped between the two fighters before Moodrow could take up the pursuit. “I’m takin’ a point,” he shouted. “Y’understand? I’m takin’ a point for that.”

Spinelli signalled his decision by turning to each of the three judges and raising his index finger. The cops in the audience sent up a howl. They’d been fairly quiet before, not sure how to react to Moodrow’s tactics. Now they were screaming for O’Grady’s (and Spinelli’s) blood.

The bell rang a few seconds later and this time O’Grady didn’t wait to be hit. He bounced away like a puppet on the end of a string. Moodrow, standing in the center of the ring, turned to the crowd, spread his arms in a gesture of wonder, then minced back to his corner. The cops roared with laughter.

“How’s the eye?”

“Forget the eye,” Epstein nearly shouted. He pressed a hot-water bottle filled with shaved ice against his fighter’s nose, trying to spread the swelling out over Moodrow’s face. “Your nose is broken. I think it might be split.”

“I know. I can taste the blood. It’s kind of salty. Maybe we oughta save it and pour it over a hard-boiled egg.”

“You’re a funny guy, Stanley. But this ain’t The Milton Berle Show.”

“The fight’s over, Sarge,” Moodrow replied calmly. “He’s mine.”

“This I already know.”

O’Grady began the fourth round with a five-punch combination that stopped Moodrow in his tracks. Instinctively, Moodrow grabbed O’Grady and pulled him close. Spinelli, still furious, yanked at Moodrow’s left arm, tugging it back far enough to allow O’Grady to drive his right fist into Moodrow’s ribs.

Stunned at the turn of events, Spinelli let Moodrow’s arm go and started to say something to O’Grady. He wasn’t fast enough to get his message across. Moodrow grabbed O’Grady’s face with his left hand and stuck the thumb of his glove into O’Grady’s eye. Once again, O’Grady tried to pull away, but this time Moodrow’s follow-up right caught the top of the fireman’s head.

O’Grady responded by coming directly at Moodrow for the first time. And Moodrow, for the first time, began to give ground. He took a step backward, then another, then another, then set himself and put every ounce of his 247 pounds into a short left hook. O’Grady ran directly into the punch. It stopped him in his tracks, paralyzed him just long enough for the following right hand to catch him flush on the jaw. He trembled for a moment, like a sapling hit with a sledgehammer, then his body went limp and he dropped to the canvas. Moodrow, looking for any sign of consciousness, knew the fight was over when he distinctly heard the crunch of his opponent’s skull smashing into the floor of the ring.

“Jesus, Stanley. Jesus Christ.” Epstein ran to the center of the ring and tried to remove his fighter’s mouthpiece.

Moodrow, his arms raised in triumph, ignored his trainer. He walked over to the ropes and saluted the assembled brass. The cheering continued for several minutes, then finally died away. Moodrow dropped his arms, weary for the first time. The pain was coming. He could feel it in his nose and ribs, only a dull ache now, but soon it would overwhelm him. Still, he wanted to drag it out as long as possible, to imprint his victory in the minds of every cop in the crowd.

“Go shake your opponent’s hand, Stanley.”

“What?” Moodrow looked down at his trainer as if surprised to find him there.

“Go shake his fucking hand. Tell him it was a great fight. Tell him anything, but don’t leave him sitting there.”

“You’re right,” Moodrow admitted. “I forgot.”

O’Grady’s handlers had him up and sitting on his stool when Moodrow approached. The fireman stared at the bloody apparition kneeling in front of him for a moment, then nodded his head. “You fought hard, Stanley,” he said. “You deserve it. But I want a rematch. One more fight to settle the issue.”

“Sorry, pal,” Moodrow replied evenly, “but you’re gonna have to learn to live with this one. I’m retired.”