Jake looked for Thelma Pearl in the crowd, found her with her friend Maggie in the third row. She smiled, offered a pretty little wave. Playing the part, the boxer’s sweet little wife. It was a lot of hooey. If he lost, he’d be lucky if she didn’t leave with some bird with a fat wallet and a diamond stickpin in his tie. He grinned, tapped his glove to his forehead. Don’t worry, sugar. I’ll knock this bum out early and we’ll head over to Boodles, drink all the champagne you want.

Funny how the fight game drew women and gamblers. There wasn’t much about this wide world that Jake understood, but he knew that three things always went together—blood, sex, and money. Fighters beat the hell out of each other for money, money drew women, the people who paid good money to watch the fights wanted blood. He had seen them snarling like junkyard dogs when a fighter was almost done. Poor bastard hanging with his arms over the top rope, crucified, might as well have had nails through his palms. His nose broke, eyes battered shut, blood from his eyes and nose and mouth pouring down his chest, two or three teeth knocked out, pink welts from dozens of punches all over his chest and shoulders, the crowd screaming, Kill him! Kill him! Murder the punk! Dames were the worst, squirming their little behinds on their seats, damp between the legs at the start of a fight and sopping wet if it went fifteen rounds and blood mingled with the sweat. Some women, the fights made them sick. They’d hide their eyes and leave early. The broads who were hooked on the fight game would sit through a fifteen-round bout and then take a boxer just as he was, right there on the training table. Rubbing their bare tits on his sweaty chest, snarling for sex the way they snarled for blood, carnivorous, red-lipped predators with eyes that went the color of smoke when he slipped inside them. He knew the type because he had married one, sweet little Thelma Pearl, hard as a diamond.

Joe “Little Caesar” Roma was at ringside. The biggest mobster in Denver, barely five feet tall. With a six-foot blonde beside him. Roma caught Jake’s eye and nodded, cupping his mouth to shout: Ya gotta kill that nigger, Jake. Ya gotta kill the sonofabitch. I went heavy on youse, don’t let me down. Winking, making like it was a joke. Jake raised a glove over his head. Little bastard. I wonder how much jack he put down on me? More’n I’ll ever see in my life. The man has eyes like candles that was just blowed out.