IT WAS TIME TO start raising money if I was going to get serious about the fight game. Fifty thousand dollars was what John B. said we needed. But I couldn’t have Teddy know I was going after that kind of money, or he’d want it all for himself.

That night I had to drop by Rafferty’s, to look at invoices. And since the place was usually crawling with wiseguys and union officials, I figured it might be a good time to renew old contacts and see about getting a little work for my contracting business.

I spotted Paulie Raymond, a guy who I knew had union connections, sitting with his brother Albert the hunchback at a round table. I went over to join them.

They looked like they were having the time of their lives. It was the first night we had Foxy Boxing and Hot Oil Wrestling at the club. Since topless dancing wasn’t allowed at bars in Atlantic City, Teddy decided to have the girls fight instead. Paulie had a ringside seat. He was all red, like a lobster, and every time you saw him he was wearing another piece of jewelry. This night, he had on a gold bracelet with his name spelled out in diamonds. Even though he was over sixty, the skin was tight around his jaw and lizardlike down his neck, as if he’d just had plastic surgery. It didn’t matter though; he still looked like an old fag you’d see hanging around the bus station late at night. It was hard to believe he’d been a detective with the Atlantic City Police Department for more than thirty years.

But Paulie was one of those cops who act more like wiseguys than wiseguys. The badge was just a license to steal. He was into everything: money laundering, ripping off drug dealers, securities frauds, insurance swindles. And on the side, he’d also gotten himself into a position where he was a go-between for Teddy’s crew and one of the local construction unions, where his uncles and cousins were all members. You had to treat him with respect because he had access to half the major building contracts in town.

“You’re lookin’ good, Paulie.”

“Yeah?” he said, watching the girls fight in the makeshift ring we’d set up.

A greased-blonde in a string bikini was throwing a body block on this busty redhead in a green one-piece bathing suit.

“I told that fuckin’ doctor to do something about my hands,” Paulie said.

“He’s got hands like an old woman,” said his brother Albert the hunchback. Albert was a quiet guy who liked to listen to classical music and go out with seventeen-year-old girls.

Paulie held up his hands. The knuckles were raw and the backs were well-mapped with blue and green veins.

He was wearing a fresh coat of clear nail polish and I thought of my mother lying there in the casket with her hands folded, after the last pill overdose. The memory made me gag and I had to stop myself from throwing up right there at ringside with the girls tossing each other around.

“It’s amazing what they can do with hands now,” Albert was saying. “They can give you another guy’s prints even. I swear, they had that when I was young, I wouldn’t have never had no record.”

“Larry felt bad about his hands too,” Paulie said, putting down his champagne glass.

“Who’s this?” I waved for the waitress to bring me a ginger ale.

“Larry DiGregorio, he had a carting business over in Brigantine,” said Paulie, looking right at me. “He was always looking at his hands and saying ‘How come I never hauled a piece of garbage in my life and I always look like I got dirt under my fingernails?’”

He shrugged and turned all the way back toward the girls in the ring. The redhead was biting the blonde’s arm now, even as the blonde had her in a headlock. Their bodies shined and rubbed together. I wondered if Paulie was watching them so intently just to prove he wasn’t a fag.

The waitress brought over my ginger ale. I thanked her and gave her a five-dollar tip.

“You know they found Larry in a Dumpster the other night,” said Paulie, without turning back to the table.

“Is that right?” I kept a poker face even as I stared at the spot by the bar where Vin stabbed him.

“Yeah. His son Nicky’s all hot about it. Says he’s gonna cut the heart out of the guy that did it.”

I just rubbed my fingers together and didn’t say anything.

In the ring, both girls were down on the canvas, wrestling. If you weren’t watching carefully, you’d think they were fooling around like kids in a sandbox. But as close as I was, I could see they were really grimacing and grabbing each other by the hair.

The blonde sank her teeth into the other girl’s arm. She was familiar, I decided. Thin nose and eyes just a bit too far apart. She looked a little like Shelly Francis, the girl I went with just before I met my wife. I started rooting for her for old time’s sake.

Paulie stuck his fat red claw with the gold rings into the popcorn bowl on the table. “So what’s your business with me?” he said. “I know you didn’t come over to inquire about my health plan.”

I acted insulted that he wanted to get to the point so quickly. “I was just interested. I heard Teddy wasn’t happy about Lenny Romano getting that job fixing the parking lot over at City Hall.”

He stuffed the popcorn into his mouth and just stared at me as he crunched it. I wasn’t sure if he knew what had happened with that contract. Normally the way it worked was that Teddy would have Paulie or one of his other contacts at the union threaten to throw a strike if one of Teddy’s phony construction firms didn’t get hired by a builder.

But in this case, that didn’t happen. I’d tried to get the contract legitimately. I went before the City Council with estimates for price, labor, and material, showing I could bring the job in for under three million dollars. But instead they awarded the contract to cross-eyed old Lenny Romano, whose lawyer Burt Ryan was also representing half the council members in their corruption trials. So I got screwed for playing it straight. If I’d gone through Teddy, he could’ve exerted pressure and gotten me the job. But I didn’t want to be any further in his debt, so I’d never asked him to get involved. I was gambling Paulie wouldn’t know that, though, so I could bully him into helping me get another job.

“So how ’bout it?” I said.

But Paulie saw through me immediately. He started huffing and puffing, like a bellows blowing into a fireplace. “Teddy didn’t have nothing to do with the City Hall parking lot. That was Burt Ryan’s contract.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” I stirred my drink. “It’s one of the first construction sites to open up in about a year