Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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Madden didn't much care for the quality of the spiel, or the beer—and he spat the latter all over Bieler's pinstriped suit. Owney determined he would open his own brewery. He told Bieler to tell that to Schultz. To start out as a bona fide bootlegger, though, he had to get rid of Eugene O'Hare (a fellow Irish American), that Schultz had installed in Madden's territory after he was sent up the river. Within weeks, O'Hare's dead body was found on an empty scrap of land on the Lower West Side.

Gould, meanwhile, was soon to play a role quite a deal more important than driving a Packard to Sing Sing for Dutch Schultz. In the course of boxing history he would not have envisaged a role much grander than that—but for his association with Owney Madden. Gould was the manager of James J. Braddock; Owen had a large piece of Max Baer. And one day they would collide.

Braddock, born in Hell's Kitchen, raised in New Jersey, was just another “Irish” fighter as the thirties got underway, a good one among thousands, but not exceptional. He fought often—and often he fought with cracked ribs, sore knuckles, and not much food in his belly. But, as was the norm, he had to do business with people who put a better gloss on their reputations than was deserved.