great British bare-knuckled forefathers who developedthe manly art of self-defence; John Broughton, first to give the ring a written code, who, egged on by his impatient backer, the Duke of Cumberland, while being beaten to blindness by a powerful challenger, said, ‘Tell me where my man is and I will strike him, sir’; Mendoza the Jew, Champion of England, undersized giant-killer who fought the biggest and best his island could boast, bringing a new technique of movement to the slow, savage game; the mighty Cribb and the indomitable champion, Tom Molineaux, the liberated slave who stood up to Cribb for forty bruising rounds and would have won but for a desperate ruse; Englishmen, Negroes, the Irish, Jews, and in our time Americans with Italian names, Canzoneri, La Barba, Genaro; Filipinos, Sarmiento, Garcia; Mexicans, Ortiz, Arizmendi – all sprung from fighting stock, practising an ancient sport already old in Roman times, a cruel and punishing enterprise rooted deep in the heart of man that began with the first great prehistoric struggles and has come down through the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, the dawn of the Christian Era, medieval times, the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century renaissance of pugilism, until at last New York, heir to Athens, Rome and London, has made the game its own, entrusting it to one of its more successful sons, Uncle Mike Jacobs, unchallenged King of Jacobs Beach, perhaps the only unlimited monarch still in business, who, by crossing the boxing racket with ticket speculation has produced a hundred-million-dollars-a-year industry that Daniel Mendoza, poor old Peter Jackson or the blustering John L. would never recognise as their brave old game of winner take all.
CHAPTER THREE
Beth drove down with me to Nick’s place over near Red Bank, about forty-five minutes from New York, not very far from Mike Jacobs’ own little Versailles. In fact, if I remember right, he heard of Green Acres through Mike when he was down there for a weekend five or six years ago. It had belonged to a millionaire Wall Street broker whose marriage went on the rocks and who decided to unload it in a hurry. Nick had got it for around fifty thousand. But there must have been an easy hundred thousand sunk in it, with the twenty-three-room house, hundred and twenty acres, swimming pool, tennis court, hothouse, screened-in barbecue, four-car garage and twenty-horse stable.
It was hard to understand what the broker was thinking about when he built the house. It was neo-Gothic, if you could call it anything, an architectural Texas-leaguer that fell somewhere between medieval and modern design,a formal, urban dwelling that looked out of place in the country and yet would have looked equally incongruous in town. It was beautifully landscaped with smartly trimmed hedges bordering the well-kept lawns dressed up with circular flower beds. We drove around the house to the garage, where Nick’s chauffeur was washing the big black Cadillac four-door convertible. He was bare from the waist up, and although there was a bicycle tyre of fat around his middle, the chest, back, shoulders and over-developed biceps were impressive. He looked up when he saw me and his frank, flattened face opened in a gummy smile.
‘Whaddya say, Mr Lewis?’
‘Hello, Jock. How’s everything?’
‘Ain’t so bad. You know the wife’s home with the new kid.’
‘Yeah? Swell. How many’s that make it?’
‘Eight. Five boys and three goils.’
‘Take it easy now, Jock,’ I said. ‘You never did know your own strength.’
The chauffeur grinned proudly until his eyes, puffy with scar tissue, pressed together in the grimace of a cheerful gargoyle.
‘The boss around?’
‘He’s out horseback ridin’ with Whitey.’
Whitey Williams was the little ex-jockey who won a nice chunk of change for Nick at Tropical Park one season when he booted home forty-five winners. Now he took care of Nick’s horses for him and taught him how to ride. They were out
CHAPTER THREE
Beth drove down with me to Nick’s place over near Red Bank, about forty-five minutes from New York, not very far from Mike Jacobs’ own little Versailles. In fact, if I remember right, he heard of Green Acres through Mike when he was down there for a weekend five or six years ago. It had belonged to a millionaire Wall Street broker whose marriage went on the rocks and who decided to unload it in a hurry. Nick had got it for around fifty thousand. But there must have been an easy hundred thousand sunk in it, with the twenty-three-room house, hundred and twenty acres, swimming pool, tennis court, hothouse, screened-in barbecue, four-car garage and twenty-horse stable.
It was hard to understand what the broker was thinking about when he built the house. It was neo-Gothic, if you could call it anything, an architectural Texas-leaguer that fell somewhere between medieval and modern design,a formal, urban dwelling that looked out of place in the country and yet would have looked equally incongruous in town. It was beautifully landscaped with smartly trimmed hedges bordering the well-kept lawns dressed up with circular flower beds. We drove around the house to the garage, where Nick’s chauffeur was washing the big black Cadillac four-door convertible. He was bare from the waist up, and although there was a bicycle tyre of fat around his middle, the chest, back, shoulders and over-developed biceps were impressive. He looked up when he saw me and his frank, flattened face opened in a gummy smile.
‘Whaddya say, Mr Lewis?’
‘Hello, Jock. How’s everything?’
‘Ain’t so bad. You know the wife’s home with the new kid.’
‘Yeah? Swell. How many’s that make it?’
‘Eight. Five boys and three goils.’
‘Take it easy now, Jock,’ I said. ‘You never did know your own strength.’
The chauffeur grinned proudly until his eyes, puffy with scar tissue, pressed together in the grimace of a cheerful gargoyle.
‘The boss around?’
‘He’s out horseback ridin’ with Whitey.’
Whitey Williams was the little ex-jockey who won a nice chunk of change for Nick at Tropical Park one season when he booted home forty-five winners. Now he took care of Nick’s horses for him and taught him how to ride. They were out
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