by Paul O'Brien
“If you want to bring Jimmy in to see his brother, I can collect him there in a couple of hours. I’d love to see Luke, myself.”
“Are you sure? You know what parking is like,” Bree said.
“No problem. I’d love to see my oldest grandson.”
“When Jimmy gets, you know, just...”
“I’ll just drop him back off to you.”
Bree hugged Edgar. “Thank you for everything.”
“My pleasure. I’ll follow you into the city when I get done, here.”
“Okay,” Bree’s voice was further away.
Edgar stood at his door, until Lenny could hear the sound of the car engine outside fade away.
“Mr. Long?” asked a new male voice.
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Tad Stolliday, and I’ve been assigned to your son, a Mr. Lenard Long.”
Nevada.
Joe ordered the meeting, and the other bosses followed. The room was quiet, but full, except for one chair. The room was dark and smoky, just how Joe liked it. It reminded him of the younger years of the National Wrestling Council, when he had been surrounded by some of the most ruthless promoters of all time, unlike this new batch.
These promoters weren’t nearly as plugged-in to what was happening. The new NWC was made up of a few older, more tired bosses, and the rest were subpar relations of the bosses who were no longer around.
Joe couldn’t have planned it any better for himself.
“Where is he?” Gilbert King, the Florida boss, asked.
Joe shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders. He remembered in a flash Gilbert’s father, Proctor King, who had been dangerous and wily. Gilbert was his pampered son—not the same animal, at all.
“How much longer are we going to wait?” asked Hal Yellow from Texas. He reminded Joe of a train inspector, but he didn’t particularly like him.
“I will call his room now,” Joe said, as he left the table.
Joe walked to the back of the room, and picked up the pay phone. He pantomimed dialing a number, and put the phone to his ear.
This was the kind of game that Joe Lapine had come up on. When he had been a young man at the NWC table, he’d watched boss after boss get eliminated from the game by stealth, technicality, or sheer politics.
Force was the tool of the ignorant, to Joe.
He much preferred to ruin someone the good old-fashioned way: from the shadows.
Tanner awoke alone in his hotel room. Long flights had used to knock him out before he’d gotten sick, but now they nearly killed him. His phone had been ringing for about a minute before he came around and answered it.
“Yes?” Tanner said.
“Your wake-up call, Mister Blackwell,” said the nearly undecipherable accent on the line. “Your group are waiting for you downstairs.”
Tanner hung up the phone. He dropped his legs over the side of his bed, and let his rough, wrinkly face hang down freely. He felt around his cheekbone, where Lenny Long had slapped him the day before. It was still tender and sore.
He wasn’t a big eater, anymore. He’d used to prefer a coffee in the morning, but now he didn’t really feel like having anything to eat or drink. The cancer must have been in his stomach, too, he decided.
He shuffled around, and farted as he bent over for his socks, which were on the floor. There had been a time in his life when he could pick up his socks with his toes, and place them in his own hand. Now he spent many more days just slipping his bare feet into his shoes—it was easier, that way.
His belt told him that he had lost even more weight; it was rapid now, and a difference could be seen every day. He was wasting away more and more. Sometimes he pitied himself, but often he was too tired for even that. On other days, he bullied himself for being a fucking sissy who had gotten sick.
Tanner had known that this day was going to come. It was something he had thought, and he’d even talked about it with Minnie, when she was alive.
It was a day he knew that he deserved.
He put on his coat, even though he knew he wasn’t going outside. His back was hunched, his reflection was frail, and his body was dying. Tanner Blackwell checked his fly one last time before he opened his door to see a concierge waiting for him.
It was then that he knew for sure.
“They’re waiting for you downstairs, Mister Blackwell.”
Tanner nodded, and walked ahead. The concierge followed behind him silently. Tanner couldn’t rush, even if he wanted to, so he and a man half his age moved slowly down the hallway.
“That’s some accent you got there,” Tanner said.
“It’s a little hard for you people to understand sometimes, alright,” replied the concierge.
Tanner’s body was leaving him, but his mind was still very much his own.
“You been working here long?” Tanner asked.
“About a month only.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They approached the elevator, and Tanner couldn’t help but notice the squeak that was coming from the concierge’s shoes.
“That’s out of order, I’m afraid, sir,” the concierge said.
Tanner smiled to himself, before feeling a little insulted.
“The stairs?” Tanner asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Tanner turned toward the stairwell door, and began his slow steps.
“Can I smoke?” Tanner asked, as he stopped and reached into his jacket for his cigarettes.
“You’ll be late, sir.”
“I’m not rushing to get there, and you know what I mean.”
The concierge lit his lighter, and Tanner put his cigarette to it. The smoke bounced off Tanner’s face as it rose towards the ceiling.
“You can tell Joe that I understand,” Tanner said.
The concierge opened the door to the stairwell. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
The young man’s accent just served to remind Joe that he was a long way from home.
“You know, I always wanted to come to Ireland.”
“You’ll have a great time here, sir.”
“How much more of it do you think I’ll get to see?”
“As much as you—”
“Tell Joe that I got the point,” Tanner pleaded. “And that I’m done.”
The concierge moved Tanner closer to the stairwell. “They’re waiting for you downstairs, sir.”
Tanner shrugged off the concierge’s attempt to move him along by the arm.
“You tell Joe to leave me alone. Tell him that I’m out. I’m gone. Do you hear me?”
The concierge could see just how agitated Tanner was becoming.
“Do you fucking hear me?” Tanner shouted.
Before the concierge could do anything more to upset Tanner, Donta Veal appeared around the corner, and tapped the young man on the shoulder.
The concierge quietly left.
Tanner tried to place Donta’s face. He knew it, but he didn’t know how he knew it. Then, it hit him.
“Fuck,” Tanner said, as he sat himself on the top step of the stairwell. Donta joined him.
“You just couldn’t leave it alone, Tanner,” Donta said, as he lit his own cigarette.
Tanner could hear the squeak of the concierge’s shoes moving away down the corridor. Knowing the way Donta worked, Tanner figured that the odds were high that the concierge wasn’t a concierge, at all. Donta would have no loose ends—no one to testify if it all went wrong.
“Every year you pushed the New York thing further and further,” Donta said.
“That’s because I knew that Joe was running it. He was telling the world one thing, and doing a deal with those snakes in New York to do the other.”
Donta slid his hand into his jacket; Tanner counted out his last seconds.
“I don’t know why, because if it was up to me, I’d kill you. He just wants you out of the business,” Donta said.
Tanner took another pull from his
cigarette, and thought about all the years he had been in the wrestling business: all the money he’d made, and all the birthdays he’d missed because he was on the road.
“Tell Joe I’m too weak to fight. I’m done.”
Donta stood, and moved behind Tanner in a deliberate attempt to frighten the frail old man some more.
“Next time, you won’t see me,” Donta said.
Tanner understood completely.
Although Donta’s orders were very clear, the setup was perfect: no one was around, and he was just an old man in a stairwell. Donta was having a hard time walking away.
“Tanner?”
He looked up from his seated position, and Donta hammer-fisted him across the face. Tanner moaned in pain as he covered himself up on the ground. Donta got a stomp or two in for his travel back to the States, and he felt better.
Nevada.
Joe knocked his knuckles on the table to call order. He acted annoyed that Tanner’s chair was still empty, but he wanted to show the other bosses that the wrestling business waited for no man.
“We’ll start without Tanner Blackwell, if there’s a consensus in the room.” Joe said.
“Where is he?” asked Gilbert King.
Joe took a second, like he was processing what he could and couldn’t say. He wanted to look political—measured—like this wasn’t personal.
“Fuck it,” Joe said, as if he had just decided to be honest. “He didn’t check in. As far as I can tell, he never even came to Vegas.”
“What?” asked Gilbert. “This guy has one of the world heavyweight champions in his territory.”
Joe shrugged his shoulders like he’d never asked his secretary to book a meeting room in Vegas for them, and a separate room out of the country for Tanner.
If Tanner became stubborn, and something had to be done with him, it would be done outside of America, especially New York, and it would be made to look like an accident.
The perception internally in the NWC would be that Joe had suspended him. This would give Joe the upper hand, no matter what the outcome was in Dublin.
One way or another, Tanner was dead and out, or suspended and out.
“To be honest with you all, this is the last straw for me. This disrespect to you, the council, and to the position of chair can’t continue. It makes us all look weak.”
Joe watched as the trained seals in front of him clapped; it was almost too easy. “If you add that to the fact that Tanner tried to secretly buy New York, again, yesterday...”
Joe waited for the outrage and mumbling, which came just on cue. “Yes, that’s why I called you here today,” Joe continued.
As the chairman filled in the other bosses, he could feel the grip that Merv used to have before him as chairman become his. Joe talked about how the sky was falling, and how he was the only one who could protect the business from it. He had them all in the palm of his hand.
Tanner was to be suspended, and New York was to be marked.
“Marked?” asked Hal, trying not to sound like the rookie owner that he was.
“Yes,” Joe explained. “We put it out there that any wrestler who works the New York territory from today on is to be blackballed by the rest of the business.”
Joe’s plan received a slow clap as everyone eventually figured out what he was doing.
“Let’s see how long they can hold their TV without any wrestlers to feature. How long will they hold their venues without any matches to put on? How long will New York survive without any workers?”
This was the grand power of the NWC: with all the other territories backing him, not a single wrestler in the country would attempt to cross the line into New York.
“We all know the rules. Most of us live by those rules. If you don’t, then we will kill you on the vine,” Joe said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
New York.
Lenny scrambled around his father’s room, and grabbed a shirt. He rushed into the bathroom to wash his face, and then he quickly cleaned up around the glued-up wound on his shoulder.
“Lenard?” called Edgar from the sitting room.
“Just getting out of the shower,” Lenny replied.
Lenny entered the sitting room, and saw Tad, his parole officer, waiting for him. Edgar tried to leave.
“No, I’d like your father to hear this, too,” Tad said, as he sat down in Edgar’s sitting room with his coat on.
Lenny and Edgar took his cue, and sat down, as well.
“What happened to your face?” Tad asked.
“Oh, this? This was my goodbye present from Attica.”
Tad wasn’t sure; he never trusted anything he was told by anyone who wasn’t wearing a badge or a uniform. Despite this, he began the speech he’d prepared hours before.
“We have fifteen state parole commissioners, but two of those positions haven’t been filled. It’s these people who take on the cases of fifteen thousand inmates who are looking for an early release from prison. People like your son, Mr. Long. Do you understand?”
Edgar wasn’t expecting to be called upon. “I do.”
“Lenard?” Tad asked, “Do you understand?”
Lenny nodded.
“I need a verbal statement,” Tad said.
“I do,” Lenny replied. “I understand.”
“Okay. When people such as yourself get brought before the courts, judges do the sentencing,” Tad said, “But the real sentencing seems to be done by the Parole Board, now-a-days.” Tad looked suspiciously at Lenny. “By what criteria, I don’t know. I have no idea how these people arrive at their decisions, and who am I to second guess them?”
Neither Lenny, nor Edgar replied. They didn’t know they had to.
“That wasn’t rhetorical,” Tad said. “I have no idea how the Parole Board came to their decision, and who I am to second guess it?”
Tad wasn’t being subtle in letting Lenny know that his release from prison was raising some questions.
“I understand,” Lenny said.
“Me too.” Edgar followed his son’s lead.
Tad crossed one leg over the other.
“When a decision is reached, however, it is then up to people like me to make sure that people like you, Lenard, don’t go back into society and cause further suffering to civilians. Last year, there were one hundred and thirty-eight thousand felony arrests in New York State. I’m happy to say that only six hundred and seventy-five of those were parolees. Do you understand me?”
“I do,” Lenny said.
“Me too,” Edgar said.
“Last year, I was responsible for forty-two cases. You’re my seventieth this year, so far. I just want you to know that, because you’re special to me in that way. I’ve never had such a case load in my life, and you, Lenard Long, sit on top of that pile.”
Tad stood up. He thought that, by the engaged, respectful reaction he’d gotten, his point had been made. But fuck it: he wanted to make it again.
“They let a guy out, and he just killed a cop, and injured two more. When they looked at his record, it was discovered that his parole had not be revoked, even though he had been arrested twice and convicted once before the shooting. That makes people like me look incompetent. If you so much as get picked up for littering, I’m going to put you back inside. Do you understand that, Lenard?”
Lenny nodded again.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“I understand.”
“Me too,” said Edgar.
“Mr. Stolliday,” Tad said to Lenny.
“Mr. Stolliday,” Lenny replied.
Edgar walked Tad out though his door. He was polite, but surgical in removing the man from his house. Lenny followed behind.
Tad reached for, and produced, a perfectly cut business card from his pocket. “Monday morning, come see me. We’ll be working on making you a better citizen.”
“Can’t wait,” said Lenny.
“Or I might visit you, again,” Tad said, smiling.
“That would be lovely, too,” Lenny replied.
Tad walked away from the house, and got into his car. “Be good out there.”
Lenny nodded and smiled as Tad drove off.
New York.
It was morning, but Ricky Plick sat outside the administrator’s office in a sharp suit and tie. His forehead was glued and bandaged over, his hips were throbbing, and his knees were blue underneath the nice material of his pants. He noticed the secretary watching him.
“Is this going to take long?” Ricky asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” the secretary replied. “He’s usually very punctual.”
“Just... I’ve got a flight.”
On Ricky’s last word, the door with the sign that said ‘Administrator’ opened.
“Mr. Plick?” asked a man who looked like a middle-aged doctor.
“Yes?”
The administrator stood in his office doorway, and waited for Ricky to walk through.
Inside the office, both men sat on opposite sides of a wide desk. The office was small, but functional, and the wall behind the administrator had a mark on it from him leaning back in his chair with a head full of lacquer.
“How is he?” Ricky asked.
This most basic question seemed to catch the administrator off guard.
“He’s eh... he’s to be expected. I suppose. But we need to talk about other matters, first.”
Ricky felt like belting him across the face as he slid his hand into his inside pocket and took out a stack of cash.
“This?” Ricky asked, showing him the money.
The administrator nodded his head. “It’s just that we can’t keep doing this. It’s late every month, and short sometimes, and too much other times.”
“But it balances out,” Ricky said.
“There are other options, here, Mr. Plick. If you can’t afford your... friend’s stay here, then there’s state options that you should...”
The administrator knew from Ricky’s thunderous face that he had better stop talking.
“State options?” Ricky asked.
He wasn’t waiting for a reply.
