A Practicing Sleuth, Bray Solves Briggs in Decision : Boxing: Heavyweight, who moonlights as private investigator, advances to final after strong third round.

Amateur heavyweight boxer John Bray likes the job description. He can sleep in when he feels like it and the hours are flexible.

Sometimes, there are times when he gets to mix business with pleasure. All part of the job for Bray, budding private eye and bodyguard.

“One time, I had to escort one kid into a drug rehab center,” said Bray, 21, of Van Nuys. “He was not gonna go.

“Here’s a guy who’s 17 years old, weighs about 130 pounds and is a crack addict, and he takes a couple of swings at me. I just ducked and grabbed him.”

Bray knows when to duck and when to fight back in his other occupation too. Bray advanced into the gold-medal bout in the 201-pound heavyweight division of the L.A. Olympic Festival boxing competition Saturday with a decision over Shannon Briggs of Brooklyn at Loyola Marymount.

Bray (6-foot-3, 201 pounds) hammered Briggs in the third and final round to earn a 25-16 decision that was closer than the electronically scored point total indicated. In fact, most believed that Bray, a bright-eyed and articulate graduate of Van Nuys High, trailed a fitter and more muscular Briggs entering the final round. The two had never before faced each other in the ring.

“Going into the third, I had Shannon Briggs leading slightly, mainly on jabs,” Bray said candidly.

Bray then shifted into third gear and beyond, and bullied Briggs inside in the final round. Bray landed several combinations to open the round, and by the one-minute mark, both boxers were standing in the middle of the ring, whaling away.

“I didn’t expect him to be that fast,” Bray said of Briggs, 6-foot-4, 200 pounds. “When you haven’t even seen a guy fight, that can kind of throw you.”

But it took Bray six minutes of ring time to start ringing Briggs’ bell, which might have something to do with his after-hours vocation and its instruction in the powers of observation.

For the past two years, Bray has served as an apprentice private investigator. Bray started at L.A.-based Superior Investigations when his longtime financial adviser and the firm’s owner, Joe Bradley, agreed to give Bray a part-time job as a server of subpoenas.

Bray soon moved on to heavier roles.

“One time, I worked as the bodyguard for the granddaughter of the Shah of Iran,” Bray said. “She thought people were following her, she thought people were going into her house at night. She was very paranoid.”

Sometimes, Bray works nights at boxing. Bray’s training went into overtime Friday night, when he learned that he was close to exceeding the 201-pound limit. Friday at midnight, Bray could have been found jogging through the streets of Westchester, trying to lose a few ounces.

He was up at 5:30 a.m. Saturday, “chewing gum and spitting, because I still had about an ounce-and-a-quarter left to lose.” By the 7 a.m. weigh-in, Bray was at 201 pounds.

Bray also has learned that similar attention to detail is necessary in the street. At times, there isn’t much difference between slipping punches and dodging estranged spouses.

“The surveillance work is kind of fun,” he said with a grin. “Mostly it’s just husbands and wives cheating on each other.

“It’s interesting work. It keeps the brain working.”

How, perchance, does someone as big as Bray manage to go incognito?

“I pull it off, believe it or not,” said Bray, the defending national amateur champion and the 1989 Festival champion. “I hide in a lot of bushes, stuff like that.”

Experience in flora and fauna should help Bray in the final, where he is scheduled to battle a tree trunk with arms.

Bray (97-10) will face Melvin Foster of Washington, D. C., for the gold medal at the Forum on Tuesday night at 9:30. Foster outpointed Javier Alvarez of San Antonio, 26-10, in the other semifinal.

Although Bray and Foster have never boxed, they recently shared a room at the U.S. Olympic Training Camp headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“Me and Bray are close friends,” said Foster, who is 6-foot, 199 pounds and resembles a pudgy Joe Frazier. “That’s real odd that we’ve never fought. We’ve been in training camp and we’ve never even sparred.

“It should be worth watching.”

Bray long ago established that he is good at doing just that, in the ring or on the street.