Cinderella Man Read Free

broad nose, square Irish face, and amused brown eyes reflecting back.
    Gould grinned. “So I’m saying it.”
    Braddock glanced out the dark window. “No you don’t. You’ll jinx it.”
    â€œThat’s ten in a row,” Gould said anyway, pulling a small brown bag from a leather pocket in the limo door. “Ten in a goddamned row.”
    Jim allowed a little smile. Knockouts, like tonight’s, were what the fight fans wanted, and Gould knew it. Sure, Jim could outmaneuver a guy for the duration, dance around his opponent all night like a ballerina, but his big right cross, his power punch, was what brought the thunderous roars and the big paydays. Jim had learned fast that pleasing the paying public was what scored dollars for the promoters—and boxers who scored serious dollars were taken seriously.
    Gould reached for a glass from a fixed gold tray and opened the fifth in the brown bag. He poured his scotch in silence, not bothering to offer Jim one. The boxerwould just decline it, like he always did. It had nothing to do with the Volstead Act, or being famously abstinent like the current heavyweight champ, Gene Tunney. Braddock would take the occasional glass of beer or wine. But he performed better off the hard sauce.
    Braddock watched Gould knock back a few. Jim waited. Then waited some more. Finally, he laughed.
    â€œWhat?” asked Gould.
    â€œJust seeing how long you could stay quiet is all.”
    Gould shot him an irritated look.
    Horns were blowing up ahead, and Jim leaned forward, curious, to peer past the lowered partition. The driver was trying to crawl through a crowded intersection. The light was green for him, but a tipsy group of partyers in fedoras, overcoats, and furs were defying their own red light. While cars honked, a giggling ruby-cheeked debutante in a headband and full-length sable began to dance the Charleston in the middle of the jammed avenue.
    As the driver carefully crawled through the crowd, Jim noticed they were passing the famous 21 Club, a restaurant and two bars now bursting with swank customers. Braddock had never been inside, but Gould had. He’d once told Jimmy the owners had created a secret chute where bottles could be tossed during a raid. Even Braddock’s wife, Mae, knew about it from one of her favorite gossip columns.
    â€œBehind Twenty-one’s doors,” she’d read to Jim one morning in a playful voice, “lovely little heiresses, the intelligentsia of Wall Street, Broadway, and Fashion Avenue gather at any hour to discuss the news of the town. The speakeasy has become the coffeehouse of our age.”
    A cop fan of Braddock’s once told him that since Prohibition started, almost nine years earlier, thirty thousand illegal bars had opened up in Manhattan. Judging from the way drunken crowds routinely plugged up traffic, Braddock figured that estimate was low.
    â€œYou’re getting stronger every fight,” Gould said as he nursed his scotch. “I been seeing it.”
    Braddock leaned back. Gould’s tone was serious, but Jimmy still quipped, “So you’re not blind, after all.”
    Gould well knew Jimmy had worked long and hard for tonight’s upset. Before they’d even dreamed of setting foot in the Garden, before Jim had become a headliner, before he’d even turned pro , he’d boxed more than one hundred matches and earned the New Jersey light heavyweight and heavyweight amateur titles—both in the same night.
    â€œYou may favor the right, sure, but you got no stage fright or nerves,” continued Gould in his assessment. “And you never been knocked out.”
    Braddock shifted his weight on the luxury seat. Not having a left was a sore spot for him, but he let it go. It hadn’t mattered tonight anyway. Like Gould said, he’d never been knocked out—and as far as he was concerned, he never would.
    Gould leaned close, took the cigar out of his