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was at noon the same day of the fight, with the fights to go off at ten that night. Hoolie was staying in the same hotel where the fight’s going off. He wants to eat at five, but not in the hotel, where at lunch he was pestered by people after his autograph. He’s a big man in Mexico, what with him being born down there and making it in the States.
    He asks me about seafood and if I know a good place to eat in town. I tout him on La Costa, but tell him it isn’t cheap, and he says no big thing. So many people eating, it had to cost Hoolie a bundle. I wondered why he was paying for people who weren’t family or working his corner, but he paid the tab without a bitch. No problem, until the waiter collected and counted Hoolie’s money. I could tell from the waiter’s face that Hoolie had stiffed him. So now I got to wonder if he’ll do the same to me. I slip the waiter thirty dollars for himself. With the tank of gas I had to buy, I was working for nothing, right?, since the adrenaline I know I’ll be using on Hoolie’s cuts later that night has already cost me another seventeen dollars and change. But what am I going to do? I’d known these waiters for years, and I can’t let them get stiffed on my call.
    Some fighters cut all the time, others hardly ever. Hoolie’s a bleeder, it’s what you call a fighter who cuts easy. Guy like that can make for a long night. It’s not something he can do anything about, being a bleeder, any more than a guy with a glass jaw can do something about not having a set of whiskers. I don’t know if it’s the bone structure around the eyes of a bleeder, or something to do with the elasticity or the thickness of the skin, but some of them get cut damn near every fight. It doesn’t take long for a bleeder’s eyes to droop from severed nerves, or before they develop a monkey look around the eyes from the buildup of scar tissue. Hoolie’s got the monkey look. Nature builds up scar tissue to protect the eyes, but in boxing it’s often the scar tissue that’s the problem—the soft skin next to the scar will tear free from the scar because of the difference in texture between the two.
    It was in the second round that Hoolie’s eyes started to bleed. I kept him going, but the cuts in his eyelids got worse as the fight wore on. But as long as Ike and I could get him ready for the next round, he was standing up at the ten-second warning and waiting for the bell. Little shit, he recuperates between rounds better than anyone I ever saw. Punch by punch, he wore Pedroza down. Pedroza went after Hoolie’s eyes, twisting his fists on impact to tear open the cuts even more. Hoolie stayed close, went to the body with shots to the liver, ribs, and heart. The liver shots made Pedroza gasp, the heart shots made him wobble.
    Pedroza was a local boy, a good fighter with the will to win. The crowd was clearly in his corner, and so was the ref, who took a point away from Hoolie by calling a phony low blow. In Mexico, if somebody is cut, they tend to let the fights go longer than in the U.S. But if you happen to be the guy from out of town—and you’re the one who’s cut—and if the promoter is looking to get a win for his boy—you know you better knock him out in a hurry, because they’ll stop the fight on you as soon as they figure the local boy’s ahead on points. The ref kept calling time and looking at Hoolie’s cuts, but I stopped the blood and the ref couldn’t stop the fight.
    I repaired Hoolie’s eyes after the third and the fourth. After the fifth I did it again, then swabbed his nose with adrenaline to jack some energy into him through the mucus membrane. Hoolie punched himself on each side of his face and slid out to the center of the ring, his hands intentionally down low. Before Pedroza could get off on what he thought was an opening, Hoolie caught him with a sneak right-hand lead that stunned him. Then he caught him with a short left hook to the liver that paralyzed him.