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.