Ernie still felt irritable. "Hell, yes, I remember. It was just two weeks ago. You make it sound like it happened six months back."
"How well do you remember it?"
"Well enough. That bum Marsetti cost me ten bucks when he dived in the sixth. He was the two-to-one favorite."
"He didn't dive."
"Yeah? You ask him?"
"No. I read the papers. He was pretty scrambled up ... in the head, I mean ... for quite a while after they brought him back to his dressing room."
"Maybe he was that way all along. Maybe they just then noticed it."
Jory laughed. "Don't get cynical, Ernie. It's a sign of old age. No. Marsetti was really out of his head. He kept going through the last round ... you know, in his mind. He did it perfect, thirty or forty times, just up to the knockout." Then he stopped and went through the whole round again.
"The doctors that examined him said that it happened because he ran into something he couldn't face."
Ernie said sourly, "Yeah. Rico's left fist."