Million Dollar Baby Read Online Free Page B

Pedroza went down on his face from an uppercut and then twisted into a tight ball of hurt. The timekeeper and the ref stretched the count, but they could have counted to fifty for all it mattered.
    The crowd was howling and throwing beer into the ring. We got to the dressing room as fast as we could. The shower and the toilet were in the same closed cubicle within the dressing room. All of Hoolie’s people crowded in while Ike and I were pumping fluids into him and trying to towel him down. We were all happy and toothy. It’s always like that when you win. The press was polite, and Hoolie’s fans pushed in to shake his hand. A bottle of tequila was passed around, an uncommon thing, and Hoolie took a couple of hits. Tweety positioned himself inside the crapper, turned off the light in there, and closed the door so he couldn’t be seen.
    Two minutes later the Commission doctor pushed through the dressing room door, followed by the promoter, whose number-one boy Hoolie had just dropped. With a smug look, the doctor held up a plastic specimen bottle. Ike glanced over at me, rolled his eyes.
    “La-la-la,” said the doctor, sure he’d busted Hoolie.
    If Hoolie fails the test, the promoter’s boy doesn’t suffer the loss on his record, and the promoter doesn’t have to pay Hoolie. Hoolie doesn’t get paid, neither does Ike, neither do I. Hoolie took the piss bottle with a smile. He pulled open the door to the toilet so it covered half his body. It also blocked Tweety from the doctor. Hoolie dropped his trunks and cup to his knees and stood where the doctor could still see his bare ass. From my position, I watched the action. Hoolie handed the bottle inside the toilet to Tweety, who already had his dick out. Tweety pissed into the bottle while Hoolie made a piss face and jerked his arm around like he was shaking his dick. Tweety gave the bottle back to Hoolie, and after closing Tweety in, Hoolie passed the hot bottle back to the doctor. Hoolie’s gangster pal stood in front of the door picking his nose.
    From Hoolie’s relaxed attitude, and from the heat of the specimen bottle, the doctor was no longer so sure that he’d nailed a drug offender. The promoter saw the doctor’s face and began talking to himself.
    The reason behind what the doctor and the promoter tried to do disgusted me, not the piss test. But the game Hoolie and Tweety ran got to me even more. I love boxing almost as much as I love the Sacraments. You play by the rules. You never throw a fight, and you never throw intentional low blows … unless the other guy does it first. When I realized that Hoolie was still smoking dope, I got out of there as soon as I could.
    “Hoolie,” I said, “I got to go. How about takin care of me.”
    “I’m broke until the promoter pays me, man.”
    “When’s that?”
    “Tomorrow morning when the bank opens, homes. Hey, I’m good for it, you know me, man. I don’t see you around, I’ll give your piece to Ike so he can take care of you, what you say?”
    “It’s only a hundred.”
    “I’m broke, man, that’s why I took this shit fight, and my wife’s knocked up, man.”
    I took off. I saved a doper’s ass, and it cost me money. I knew then I’d never get my hundred. I saw Hoolie ten times in the gym in L.A., but he never once mentioned my money. It wasn’t enough to shoot him for, so I let it go.
    It was 1:00 A.M. when I got back to the U.S. border. Since the fight was on a Friday night, there were long lines waiting to get across. Venders selling hats and serapes and pottery stood along the Mexican side of the road. Groups of eight- and ten-year-old boys begging for change flowed like alley cats along the lines of cars; haggard women with scrawny kids sat by the roadside with their hands out. A stunted three-year-old boy stood rigidly between two lines of traffic. Tears streaked his dusty little face, snot ran down over his lips. He wailed a senseless little song and beat two small pieces of scrap wood