The Hurting Circus

by Paul O'Brien

  In that instant, he launched from his stooped and subservient position to crack the face of his assailant. Bang. Bang. Bang, bang, bang. Lenny was releasing it all: every thought and every clogged tear and word that he’d held in his head. Bang. Bang. His attacker’s lips opened to bleed, and his cheekbones became contorted and swollen. Bang, bang, bang. Lenny’s arms struck like pistons, freeing him from his daily stomach-churning fears, his years of being nothing. The face in front of him was beaten softer with every strike of his fist, until Lenny could do nothing but hit himself and his own chest as he roared and wailed over his unconscious cellmate. The power of beating someone else for a change, and the raw, unabashed option of murder—that permanent problem-solver—was there, in Lenny’s hands. In turn, this brought calmness and understanding to him. He dragged the cell’s bunkbed toward the door. He wanted all the other inmates to see him as he kicked his feet up and rested them between the bars, his vicious handiwork unconscious under him. Lenny didn’t know whether this feeling was going to last, but there and then, in that moment, he knew that he was a bad motherfucker.

  Such a notion made him smile for the first time since he had arrived there.

  He threw a cigarette into his mouth and lit a match, old-school, along the coarse wall. He leaned back and he drew into him the most pleasure-filled intake of smoke that he had ever inhaled. Lenny Long hadn’t suddenly become stronger, or more skilled, or deadly. He knew that he’d get beaten again, and he knew that his fighting wasn’t nearly over. But he also knew that whoever was the next to grab his throat would be grabbing the throat of a man who knew he was done being pushed around.

  And that man was the man nobody wanted to fuck with.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1984.

  Three months later.

  New York.

  Lenny Long was useful to wrestling again, so it was time to put him back into play. After years of silence toward Lenny from the National Wrestling Council, he now found himself walking to another meeting with an NWC representative. Lenny wished the setting were different, but all he could offer by way of a meeting place was the visitation area of the Attica Correctional Facility. The NWC chose a man who knew New York well; a man who had known Lenny’s boss well. He was also someone whose life had changed forever when Lenny pulled the trigger on Danno.

  Troy Bartlett looked around and knew that he was one dodgy deal away from being on the other side of the thick, dirty glass himself. As he waited for “the boss” of New York to be escorted to him, he couldn’t help but think of how far he had fallen. Since Lenny had gone inside, Troy’s business had been ripped open by the NYPD and the federal government; the investigation had bled Troy dry. As a lawyer of dubious moral boundaries, he couldn’t withstand the forensic investigation that followed Danno’s death. None of Troy’s remaining clients liked new attention from the cops, so one by one they jumped ship until there was just one client left: the New York Booking Agency.

  In the real world, the New York Booking Agency was the parent company that housed a professional wrestling company. In the wrestling world, the New York Booking Agency was the legally recognized company name of their New York territory. It was a legitimate front to make illegitimate cash.

  Troy’s part in all of this was his possession of the legal document that clearly stated Danno had signed his New York Booking Agency over to Lenny Long. The ownership of the company was even used as evidence in Lenny’s trial, with the prosecutors submitting it as a possible motive behind Danno’s murder.

  Lenny was the boss on paper. And now that paper mattered.

  Troy stood as Lenny sat down in front of him. “The offer is sixty thousand, this time,” Troy said. “I can make the deal and we can all just move on.” Lenny was unresponsive; he could hardly look up from the floor. Seeing again how much Troy had aged just made Lenny more aware that time was marching on without him. Troy continued, “The New York Booking Agency has other financial considerations, which the buyers are also willing to take on as part of the deal. I think you should kiss their feet, personally. This is money to you for absolutely nothing.”

  Lenny cleared his throat, as he hadn’t spoken to anyone he didn’t have to in days. “Why?”

  “Why, what?” Troy asked.

  “Why have they raised their offer?” Lenny asked.

  Troy rubbed the prison phone receiver on his cheap suit jacket. “Why?” he asked in disbelief. “Because who gives a fuck why?” Troy waited for some appreciation; it didn’t come. “You know,” he said, “you can earn sixty-fucking-thousand to sign your name.”

  Lenny smiled. “You’re telling me that it’s as simple as that?”

  Troy shuffled his chair closer. “Mr. Long, I get the distinct impression that this is the last time these people are going to ask. Do you understand? They will get this territory one way or another. Now, word is that your family isn’t doing very well financially at the moment. Even if you don’t want the money, I’m sure that your ex-wife could do a lot with it.”

  Lenny interrupted. “I’m done.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve served enough time in here. I want out,” Lenny said. He wanted to bring that money home; he wanted to be the one who handed it to Bree.

  Troy smiled at the steepness of Lenny’s request. “How do I do that?”

  “I didn’t fight the charges, or anything that anyone said in the trial,” Lenny said. “I deserved everything I got. But I’ve paid enough, and I want to try to go home. I’ll only consider any deal from here on out with that stipulation attached.”

  Troy wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. He didn’t want to leave without an agreement. That would make him useless to proceedings. “Lenny, this isn’t a bargaining position you’ve got here,” Troy said. “You’re not exactly sitting in a position of strength here.”

  “’Course I am.”

  “What?”

  “If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here and they wouldn’t be reaching into their dirty fucking pockets.” Lenny drew a sharp breath and looked around. “They don’t allow representation for appeals in here. You could do something about that,” he said. “The night that it happened, Danno was an intruder in my parents’ house—and it was his gun. I just disarmed him to defend myself.” Troy tried to cut in. “You’re all dirty pricks,” Lenny continued. “Who know other dirty pricks. Now, get to someone on the parole board, and get me the fuck out of here. That, plus sixty grand, and we have a deal in the morning. You fucking tell them that.”

  Troy could only shake his head in disbelief as Lenny stood. “You did nothing to earn New York, you little fuck,” Troy said. “Danno only put the business in your name because he knew you’d be the easiest one to get it back off when the time came.”

  “And how is that working out for you all?” Lenny asked. His sudden display of confidence knocked the crooked lawyer off his guard. “One more thing,” Lenny said, “I want the original copy of that contract posted here for my attention. I will only leave here when I have it in my hands. You understand?”

  Lenny hung up and walked back toward A block.

  As he worked at the laundry, Lenny had all day to think about his meeting with Troy. If he was going to let himself even dream about getting out, he wanted to make sure that he was as ready as he could be. The wrestling business was different than any other; it ran on a different mind-set, and it was a way of thinking that Lenny hadn’t used in a long time. Wrestling was all about what was happening where you couldn’t see it. It was a business where you played checkers on top of the table, and chess underneath.

  He needed to get out. It was too much knowing that his family was struggling. Every day Lenny planned the same scenario: he’d leave Attica, sign the piece of paper, and arrive at Bree’s house with enough money for a brand-new start. Maybe she might include him too. Maybe not. But Lenny wanted to find out.

  As he walked and daydreamed, he could still hear the thump of the metal press in his head as he left the laund
ry floor. He moved with the small huddle of men along the hallway toward the first of their guarded stops. They waited. Lenny looked up and saw the black sphere that was fixed on the wall, ready to dispense tear gas if the inmates started any trouble. The key was turned, and the heavy metal prison gate opened to let them through. They walked silently in line toward “Times Square,” a small section of the prison where all the corridors met. Lenny continued along the sandy brick hallway, up two steps, and then four steps down. As he heard the voices and general chatter get louder, he stayed close to the wall, as always. He ran his hands along the tall white radiators every ten or so paces and looked out the arched windows for the sun. As he got closer, the guard who smoked a pipe opened the last of their gates. The inmates filed into a single concentrated line at the door.

  The mess hall gate was different than the other parts of the prison. It had decoratively twisted bars with little ornamental curls welded on top—it was about as pretty as metal and men and prison could get.

  Inside, the room was huge, bright, and separated into three sections by giant white columns that shot from the floor to the high ceilings like clinical white oak trees. Lenny walked past the white tables and the mushroom-shaped stools that were bolted to the floor. He knew what was good and what to avoid; he knew who was good and who to avoid. Twelve years in and he was beginning to feel like a veteran, like the prison left him alone. New guys asked him questions and came to him about getting some work in the laundry. He ate his food, worked his job, wrote his letters, and read as much as he could. After the riots, the prison had gotten a little better at stocking the library and making programs available for inmates who wanted to learn.

  The only thing Lenny Long had learned was a phone number. A number that he was thinking about dialing after he finished eating. If Lenny was worried about how to protect himself from the bosses, if he could get out, then this was how he figured he could buy some time. Underneath his mattress was a magazine, and on that magazine was a number that Lenny hoped was still in use.

  “Hello?” Lenny said into the phone.

  “Yes, hello,” replied a man’s voice, “USA Wrestling Chronicles.”

  Lenny looked around to make sure no one could hear his next words. “This is Lenny Long,” he said. “The boss of the New York territory.”

  “You serious, man?” the voice asked.

  A wrestling boss calling a wrestling magazine would be like a yeti calling the National Enquirer. “Yeah, it’s me. I want to go on the record to talk about my hopes for the future. You got anyone there who’d be interested in that?”

  1984.

  Three weeks later.

  Memphis.

  Joe Lapine sat back on his jet and thought about nice things: a good wine that he’d had, a nice lady he’d met. He was feeling good, but he knew that the contents of the brown bag in front of him would ruin that. He put it out of his mind for five minutes. Five more minutes of nice thoughts before he knew he had to open that bag and read the magazine that was inside.

  Joe reached in and opened the publication to the page that had been marked for him. The first thing he saw was an old picture of Lenny Long, and then a headline that read:

  UNPRECEDENTED ACCESS: NEW YORK’S OWNER

  He saw the highlighted quote from Lenny:

  I know I’m new to the business, but I already love the intense competition from the likes of Joe Lapine from Memphis and Tanner Blackwell from the Carolinas. These guys have been around forever, and they are watching me closely. Everyone wants New York, but I know the old guys will guide me through all of this.

  With that, Joe knew the game. Lenny couldn’t be touched. It was easy to deal with someone who could disappear easily, someone no one would miss. Lenny just put himself front and center and told the world that Joe and Tanner were his rivals.

  While wrestling liked to live mostly in the shadows, Lenny Long was positioning himself in the spotlight. The safest place he could be.

  North Carolina.

  Tanner shuffled around his pool with a giant cordless phone up to his ear and a copy of the same magazine in his hand. His swimming trunks were falling off his shrinking body. “What’s he playing at?” Tanner shouted into the phone.

  Troy was in a New York phone booth. “He wants to sell,” Troy said. “I spoke to him this morning.”

  “He wants to sell?” Tanner asked. “Well, what the fuck is this shit I’m reading then?”

  Troy cleared his throat. “He wants the sixty thousand,” he said. “Plus his release. He has the contract now. You guys pick him up on the morning he gets out, and he’ll do the deal.”

  Tanner could hardly speak with rage. “But he—”

  “Well then, move on without New York,” Troy said. “Forget about the place.”

  “Fucking no way,” Tanner replied. “I’ll be fucked if this business tries to forget me.”

  Troy dropped the level of his voice, as if Lenny might be able to hear. “He was smart, Tanner. Now you be smart too. Play along. You can’t do shit to him or with him while he’s in there.”

  Tanner could do nothing but throw the magazine in anger. Lenny was smart, and Tanner knew it. He had stumped the two master players, Joe and Tanner—for now. Tanner knew the only way to get New York quickly was to swallow his pride, open his checkbook, finesse his contacts, and do what Lenny wanted done.

  And then make the little prick pay for it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1984.

  One minute before Lenny got out of prison.

  New York.

  Lenny Long didn’t know where home was, not anymore. He didn’t know what state his family lived in. He figured they wanted to forget him, and he insisted that they did. He felt that it was the least he could do. But now that he was minutes from getting out he wanted to go home more than anything. He stood still, waiting for the prison door in front of him to slowly slide open. HANDS OFF read the sign on the bars. When the door was clear, Lenny stood inside the last small building that kept him from the outside world. It had a glass hatch to his left and a metal detector in front of him. Lenny wasn’t allowed to move until the automatic door that had let him in closed behind him. He had spent twelve years of his life waiting for those doors to open and close, and now there was only one more to go. He walked forward to another prison guard, who sat at a desk beside the glass. Lenny could see the cold daylight forcing its way in through the front door past the metal detector. He was steps from freedom. Lenny could see cars parked outside: real cars, of different colors. He had missed colors.

  The gray, intimidating prison walls that stood above him every day were now behind Lenny Long. They were just as bland and cold on the free side as they were on the yard side. As he looked outward with the prison to his back, there was almost too much space. The wrestling business had put him in there, and that same business had gotten him back out again. That was what he was wary of.

  He felt the small comfort of the contract in his pocket. He knew that he was a prop that went inside when they didn’t need him, and got taken back out when they did. There were no balloons, no trumpets, no waiting party. He wasn’t even given a sly smile from any of the guards who might have wished him well. No one gave a fuck. The wheel kept turning, no matter if Lenny was in or out. He didn’t tell anyone he was getting out, mostly because he hadn’t believed it would actually happen.

  The second he took his first step outside the walls was the second he knew just how valuable he must be. Lenny wanted to turn that fleeting value into lasting money. Everyone else in the wrestling business was making cash off playing the game. Lenny wanted his cut, too.

  Once outside, some people ran from Attica’s door; some strutted. Lenny meandered away from it, like someone who had just stumbled up out of a bunker. He knew that he didn’t have any right to, but he looked for his family. Time and again, over the years, he imagined that they would be pacing as they waited for him to appear. They would come running and then their arms would be around him,
and he would finally forgive himself for getting into the business—for putting them in harm’s way. For not being there. Lenny knew that after more than a decade inside, he was a changed man. If only he could convince himself that those changes were for the better. The bruising on his face and the stitches above his eye were the last marks to remind him of the hell he’d been through. Another fight. Another situation that he ran toward, rather than away from.

  Lenny didn’t know where to go, but he began to walk. Attica was like the presence of a monster behind him and he didn’t want to look back and acknowledge its existence, just in case it claimed him again. In front of him the skim of recent rain made the black tarmac shine as it led the way out to a changed world. He hoped for a normal life, but he knew that would be impossible until he made good on the deal he had made. Getting out hadn’t happened by accident, and it certainly hadn’t happened for free. Now, Lenny knew he had to pay up.

  He was told to look out for a driver; someone would make himself known when Lenny got to the parking lot. There were a few scattered cars in the designated areas, but the place was mostly silent. Nothing was jumping out at him and it was miles to the city. He only had twenty-seven dollars in his pocket, saved from his fifty-six-cent-per-day wages. A taxi was probably out of the question, so Lenny put his head down and began to walk a little faster. Maybe they had just forgotten about him. Maybe they’d decided that he wouldn’t have to sell his soul, after all. Lenny knew that was just wishful thinking as he crossed the wet grass that led to the road.

  He needed them to come. He was out, and that was great, but it was the second part of his deal—the sixty grand—that was going to get him home. As he walked, he heard the chatter of an engine come from behind. He had a feeling it might be his ride. He was right, but not in the way he’d thought.