by Paul O'Brien
“Get out!” shouted Babu.
Half of the people in the locker room jumped with fright, as they had never heard the giant raise his voice before. He’d never had to.
Babu got up and walked over to Kid, grabbed him by his hair, and dragged the new champion to the door.
“Get the fuck out,” Babu said again, this time throwing him out, himself.
From the floor of the hallway, Kid could see regret in Babu’s eyes. He didn’t want to do what he was doing, but he knew that the others in the dressing room would do a whole lot worse.
“Don’t ever fucking question me again,” Babu slammed the door.
Kid had a lot to learn about the wrestling business; he just had no time to learn it.
New York.
Lenny sat silently as his father drove slower than a pushbike toward his drop-off before the city.
“You sure you don’t want to see your kids?”
Lenny shook his head. “I will... just not, you know.”
“What is all of this?” Edgar cut through the bullshit. “I mean, what is everyone supposed to do now, exactly?”
Lenny looked at a man who hated change. Now he was struggling with another huge change in his life.
“Do I talk about you, or not? Do I even say that you’re out? What do I do here?” Edgar asked.
“No. Don’t say anything.”
Edgar began breathing exclusively through his nose, and he tapped the steering wheel out of frustration.
“I’m not comfortable with you in my house,” Edgar said.
Lenny had felt it, but hearing it was something else. “I have to be there, or... they’ll send me back.”
“Well, I’ll have to take the boy back to his mother’s, then.”
“Why?” Lenny asked.
“I saw you today watching that god damn window. I don’t know how you got out, or why, but I know it’s not for nothing.”
Lenny didn’t really want to answer.
“Why is he staying with you?” he asked.
“The boy?”
“Yes. I mean, I think it’s cool, but it sounded like you and Bree were saying something without saying anything. You know?”
Edgar pulled his boxy, deep blue Lada Riva in toward the curb. Lenny could tell by the clothes in the window that this was his stop.
“Bree had to move around a lot when you were inside. The youngest didn’t do so well with that. He got himself into a lot of trouble, especially since his older brother moved out.”
Lenny felt the twenty that his father put into his pocket. It wasn’t going to buy him anything fancy, but it would take the look of a convict off of him—he hoped.
“Is he just acting out?” Lenny opened his door.
“I can wait,” Edgar said, “If you want me to.”
Lenny told him that it was okay. It was only a short walk back, and Lenny wanted some time on his own: time to figure everything out. One thing that Lenny had learned in the wrestling world was that things tended to flare up and gallop toward their end very quickly.
The woman following him in the car behind could testify to that more than anyone else. She knew just how cruel and savage the wrestling world could be.
Ricky couldn’t shake the thought of coming home. He was on the verge of another twelve-hour flight, and another six-week tour. His body hadn’t even begun to heal up from the last one. If there was even a small chance that he could come back home, he owed it to himself and to Ginny to at least find out.
It would certainly do no harm just to see if he could find some backers.
This was why he was on hold, as he stood in the JFK airport. He hadn’t spoken to her in years, but he knew she had money. At one time, Ricky had handed her five hundred grand, himself. It was Danno’s money, but she had earned it.
Word was that she used that money in a smart way, and soon it doubled and doubled again, and maybe even again.
He knew that she was fucking around with him: twenty seven minutes, and she still hadn’t come to the phone. Ricky knew why.
When she lost her husband, Danno had sent Ricky to inform her of her shitty terms. When Danno tried to buy her business, he had left Ricky to explain just how they were fucking her over.
Now it was his turn to eat some shit.
Ade Schiller had always seemed like a decent enough woman. It was just that she didn’t belong in the wrestling business—except for maybe this one last time.
Ricky heard about Joe’s stroke at the NWC meeting. For TV this week, they could run a Best of, but next week was another matter. They needed something, and something big, to regain the channel’s faith. They needed it fast. Maybe they could fly in some guys from Europe and have an International Cup, or something.
There were ways and means, but all of those ways and means needed money.
As he waited, Ricky noticed a small party at one of the check-in desks: it looked like a check-in lady was retiring. He was a little jealous. They’d brought her cake, and a lot of people seemed to like her. Maybe she had saved a few dollars and would enjoy herself.
She didn’t have to ask for money over the telephone, or fly to Japan to survive.
“Hello?” said the voice on the line.
“Ade?”
“I haven’t been called that in a while. Ricky, is it?”
“Yes, it’s Ricky, here. Thanks for taking my call.”
“What have you got for me, Ricky?”
“How about New York?”
Ricky could almost hear Ade smiling over the phone. She wasn’t expecting Ricky to get to the point so quickly, and she wasn’t expecting the point to be so out in the open.
He knew that someone like Ade had been following the whole story from the sidelines: it was just in her blood. He also knew that she felt she had unfinished business in wrestling.
“I hear you’ve been doing some things in the boxing world, and I was wondering if you wanted to—”
“Who told you that?” she asked.
“We all know the same people. It’s just speculation, of course.”
“Of course.”
“The last time we met, I handed you something that I hope changed your life. I was hoping you might like to put it to work, back where it came from.”
In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be someone like Ricky that Ade would choose to go back to wrestling with. He had a great ability to take money, but he had no direction. Ade thought that she might want something more from the wrestling business, this time.
As usual, though, she decided she’d figure that out on the go.
In wrestling, there was no such thing as perfect timing.
“New York?” she replied, “What’s that going to cost me?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nevada.
1968.
Before Danno was killed, before Babu was champion, before Lenny was even in the wrestling business, and before Merv died, there was Proctor King and Ade Schiller.
Proctor was the boss of Florida, and Ade was the wife of the chairman of the time, Merv Schiller.
As they sat at a large round table in a Las Vegas function room, she tried her best to not rip her husband’s eyes out, and Proctor was doing his best to not blow her husband’s brains out.
It was a typical National Wrestling Council party in that way.
At the beginning of the night, Proctor and Ade were separated by many others, but, as it went on and the band played faster and louder, they found themselves to be the only ones left at the table.
He was ten glasses deep into a bottle of whiskey, and she was sipping on soda water and lime.
He was trying to act more sober than he was, and she was trying to not watch her husband, Merv, buy drinks for every pretty girl in the room—girls he had already paid to be there.
Proctor noticed that the tables around the room were still occupied by the other bosses. It seemed to him that the only one having fun was Merv. Ade made the same observation.
She would have had
to be blind to not see that he was fucking around with other women.
In the meeting before the party, Merv had just sewn up yet another year for himself with the champion. All the other bosses looked like they were doing their best to look happy for him, but, secretly, a lot of them wondered what a wrestling business without Merv in it would look like.
“He’s a brave man,” Proctor shouted across the table.
Ade heard him, but pretended not to.
“Sorry?” she said, as she moved to sit next to him.
Proctor took a split second from studying his glass to look up.
“If it’s any consolation, it’s this business,” he continued. “It makes us all do stupid things.”
Ade shook her head in disgust. “There’s no business in the world that makes a man such a prick... such a gluttonous pig.”
Both Ade and Proctor watched silently as Merv ran his old hand up and down a young thigh.
Proctor stopped swirling his drink, and sat his glass down on the cheap paper tablecloth. “I’ve seen guys who weren’t even booked to wrestle leave their house with their bags on their shoulder. For two days, they would pretend to be working different towns just so they could fuck, fight, drive, and drink what they wanted. The wives didn’t know any different.”
“They did,” Ade simply replied.
Proctor had never thought of it from the wife’s point of view. He felt stupid now for even bringing it up.
“So, I’m supposed to be grateful that at least my husband is up front about it?” Ade asked.
“Of course not. I didn’t...”
Ade turned straight to Proctor, and asked, “Just what are you saying?”
Proctor tried to jumble together a sentence that was soothing or political or soft to hear, but nothing came quickly enough, so he raised his glass, and finished its contents.
“You’re all the same,” Ade said, as she turned away from Proctor and back toward the dance floor. Her anger was for her husband, but it was leaking out everywhere else.
Proctor shook his head. “We’re not all the same.”
“You’ve never cheated?” Ade asked.
“I’ve never cheated on my wife. I’ve cheated on just about everything or everyone in this business, but not my lady.”
Ade smiled at the honesty. She believed him, too—or, at least, she wanted to. She didn’t even know why she cared; maybe she found some solace in the notion that all the bosses were cheating, and treating their wives like shit.
“Never?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Isn’t that what you all do?”
“Men? Or wrestling promoters?”
“Both.”
“I don’t know the answer to either of those. What I do know is that people will only treat you the way you let them.”
Ade knew that what he was saying was absolutely true. She just needed to hear it, for some reason. “Really?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ade took a cigarette from her purse, and Proctor lit a match for her.
“Everything is just too perfect in your home, I bet?” she asked.
“I never said that, either,” Proctor replied, as he blew gently on the used match. “Things can be sour without being disrespectful.”
Ade sipped her drink. She didn’t even know why she was still sitting beside Proctor; there was just something in the way that he talked to her. Most of the other bosses were too scared to even look at her with Merv around.
“So, I’m letting him treat me this way?” Ade asked.
Proctor took his jacket from the back of his seat, and stood. “I don’t know you well enough to answer that, Mrs. Schiller. For all I know, I open my mouth, and then your problems become my problems.”
Proctor waved to some of the other tables.
“Nice to meet you, again,” he said as he left Ade’s table.
She watched him leave before something inside her lifted her out of her seat to follow him.
In the parking lot, she could see the beam of two headlights being switched on, followed by the roar of an engine. She moved faster, and her heart beat in rhythm with her march.
When she got closer, she could see Proctor alone in his car.
“Wait,” she said, too soft for anyone to hear. “Wait!” This time, she was louder and more confident.
Proctor pressed his brakes, and reached for his gun in the glove box as he tried to make out who was approaching him. The fact that it was Ade Schiller didn’t make him comfortable enough to put his gun away.
Ade tapped the window, and Proctor leaned over to roll it down a little.
“Why are you going home so soon?” she asked.
The whiskey made Proctor a little less political than he might have otherwise been. “Because my job here is done. I congratulated your husband for successfully ripping us all off, again. I now have to go home and try to look at myself in the mirror.”
“Me too.”
“Well, Mrs. Schiller, I dare say that you’re going to have to climb a lot more stairs, and walk on nicer rugs before you get to your mirror.”
“Let’s talk,” she said. “We might both have the same problem.”
Proctor pulled his car away from Ade slowly, until he knew that she was out of harm’s way. He then floored it, because, fuck it, why not?
Portland. Oregon.
1969.
“I saw the giant son of a bitch, myself,” Proctor said, as he wolfed down the house special. The Spaghetti Factory had only opened that day, but the food was perfect, and the hospitality was great, too.
“Danno flew us all in to watch him wrestle. He’s greener than goose shit, but that giant has money written all over him,” Proctor continued.
Ade Schiller sat opposite him in the booth, and played with her meal. “And are you going to meet Danno here?”
“Yeah. It’s out of the way, and somewhere that none of the other bosses would come in a million years.”
Proctor looked intently at Ade.
“You were right that Danno’s the missing piece of our puzzle. I’m one hundred percent sure of that, now,” Proctor said.
Ade smiled and thanked him.
“Just remind me to never fuck with you,” Proctor said.
“Why’s that?”
Proctor wiped his mouth, and leaned back in his seat a little. “Cause you saw the angle long before I did. You picked Danno; you picked me.”
Ade knew what he wanted to say, so she said it for him. “And I picked that my husband should die?”
Proctor nodded, and began eating his meal, again. “It’s the right call. There’s no other way to do this, and that’s another thing you were right on. We can’t move in on all of Merv’s things straight away. Danno gets the belt first; everyone forgets, and moves on with their lives. Then we come back, and get everything we want without any heat on us.”
Proctor rubbed his last piece of bread around his plate.
He was energized from having met Ade, and from listening to her plan, as well as from the trust that went with it, and the risks of seeing it through. Proctor King hadn’t felt so alive in years.
He knew that his mouth was kind of full, but he couldn’t resist the urge to smile, regardless. “I struck a deal with Merv to vote against Danno today. My ballot pushes the numbers back to Merv. Danno’s proposal is toast in there, and he doesn’t even know it, yet. What do you think he’s going to say when I offer him the belt an hour after he gets humiliated?”
Ade smiled at Proctor’s underhandedness. She could have stayed there, talking for hours, but Proctor always made sure that they were careful. Any conversations between them were under thirty minutes, and they were always face-to-face. That meant that getting to talk to him was a rare thing. He never wrote anything down, either: he had memorized phone numbers, addresses, and people’s names.
“What about the guy,” she asked, “You know, the guy from Florida?” Ade wanted to know the answer, but she really just wanted Proc
tor to stay longer.
“Just like we discussed: he’ll go to San Francisco and take care of Merv after I get Danno signed up.” Proctor dabbed both sides of his mouth. “You better go back to the hotel. The NWC meeting is in a couple of hours.”
Proctor put out his hand, and smiled. Ade wished it was more, but a handshake would have to do, for now. She rose from her seat, and walked away from the table, as if she and Proctor had never met.
He took a matchbook with the restaurant’s name printed on it, and slid from his seat. He noticed that one of the waitresses who was taking a break had sat right up against his booth.
She politely nodded, and he returned her gesture. He was sure that she hadn’t heard anything, but not sure enough.
The NWC meeting went just as Proctor had told Ade it would. Danno’s proposal to make Babu the heavyweight champion was ruled out.
Proctor was the ‘no’ vote in the secret ballot that had killed Danno’s chances.
Voting against it did two things for Proctor: it made him more of an ally in Merv’s eyes, and it made Danno seem vulnerable, and therefore more open to a plan B.
After the meeting, when no one could see, Proctor arranged a time to meet Danno in the Old Spaghetti Factory.
This is where Ade and Proctor’s plan would come into being; this is where she would get what she wanted, and Proctor would get what he wanted. All he needed to do was get the unsuspecting Danno Garland to hold the hot potato—the world title—until Proctor was ready to take it from him.
For an opening night, this Old Spaghetti Factory sure was quiet. Danno read the menu for the second time at a table that sat below a stained glass window. His eyes skimmed around the room, and quickly counted the potential money at each table; it was a habit that he was sure all promoters couldn’t switch off. He watched through the window, as Lenny pulled the Continental into a parking spot, and walked to a payphone.
Right on time, Proctor walked through the front door, and pointed Danno out to the waitress.
“Fucking place, huh?” he said, as he approached Danno’s table.
“Have a seat, Proctor.”
