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so I believed that Ike was telling me the truth about what Hoolie told him about the purse … but I knew some things about Hoolie, and who could tell what kind of truth he was telling Ike? Let me tell you, Hoolie was a hell of a fighter, a tough little bastard who’d meet you in the middle of the river and fight you. He had an underslung jaw and a hooked nose that pointed off at an angle. And scar tissue. At twenty-nine he was losing his hair, so he shaved his head. Tattoos from jail and from every country he’d fought in, roses and daggers, same old shit. Fought for a title his third fight out of the joint, where he did time for assault with a deadly weapon. Not his hands, he didn’t want to hurt his hands, he pistol-whipped some guy who smiled at his wife. He almost won his title shot, but he got tired late, and the other guy came on in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. Hoolie, like always, was cut up, but the cuts didn’t become a factor. After the title fight was over, Hoolie failed his piss test. They found traces of marijuana in his specimen and suspended him in California for a year, and held up his purse as well. It means Hoolie can’t fight anywhere else in the States that counts because most state boxing commissions honor each other’s ban.
    But Hoolie was a good draw; promoters from all over wanted him because he was so tough and because of the blood. That’s why Hoolie had to fight outside the States for short money—in Australia, in Latin America, in the Philippines, wherever there are little guys. And to stay busy, so he could be ready for his next shot at another belt.
    So after Ike made three phone calls, I settled for a hundred. I took it because Ike was a longtime friend, and because it gave me an excuse to go down to a seafood restaurant there in TJ named La Costa, a place you can get some of the best camarones rancheros in the world—shrimp in a hot sauce with garlic, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and cilantro. Wash it down with a couple of Bohemias. For appetizers, they serve deep-fried freshwater smelt with fresh salsa and limes. I say an Act of Contrition every time I leave the place. Been going to La Costa thirty years.
    I also took the fight because once the suspension is lifted, Hoolie’s was sure to get another title fight. He uses me, I can make a little money. Ballpark, I get first cut of the purse, 2 percent. Some guys get more, some less. It’s business. On a fifty-thousand-dollar fight, that means a thousand for me. But maybe my boy doesn’t get cut at all, so I just sit ringside and watch. But I still get paid. Bigger fights, I try to get the same 2 percent if I can, or I charge a flat fee. But a four-round prelim boy, he needs a cut man same as a champ, right? So if I’m going to be at the arena with another boy anyway, and I like the prelim boy and his trainer, or maybe I feel sorry for a scared kid, a lot of times I don’t charge—the prelim boy’s only making four hundred bucks in the first place. Out of that, he’s got to pay his trainer 10 percent off the top, and his manager another 33½. Ike doesn’t charge his prelim boys.
    But this is a game of money, right? So I got to be careful. I charge too little at the start, some boys won’t respect me, and then they don’t want to pay more when they make more. And some will stiff you, even after you save their careers.
    Before I left Ike at Slayton’s, I told him that the Tijuana Commission would look for any way to disqualify Hoolie, and he should warn Hoolie that they’d be sure to make him take a piss test if he won.
    “You right, you right,” said Ike. “Damn.”
    “Is he clean?”
    “Say he is.”
    In TJ, Hoolie’s got his wife, his mother, and two brothers he’s got to feed; he’s got to feed Ike and me, and Ike’s backup corner man. There are two more as well: a homeboy member of Hoolie’s Frogtown gang, and a black kick boxer, a kid called Tweety, who’s as polite and well-spoken as a Jesuit. The weigh-in