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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