Blood Red Turns Dollar Green Volume 2

by Paul O'Brien

  Tanner was back to full speed in shoveling his food into his mouth. “If I link myself to Danno and he fucks me over … ”

  “You know what the field is out there at the moment. You just have to decide if it’s too hot for you. Let me know and I’ll arrange someone else to … ”

  “We should get another bottle of champagne,” Tanner said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Five months before the murder.

  Texas.

  Geraldine pulled the chicken from the oven and threw it, and the shallow pan it sat on, into the sink. “You fucking hot chicken,” she said as she sucked on her burnt thumb. She had a tendency to be literal in her cusses.

  She scraped the broken carcass from the bottom of the sink, and slapped it onto a plate, before dumping some half frozen vegetables around the broken bones.

  “Curt?” she shouted through to the front of her house.

  Because she didn’t get an answer within two nanoseconds, she shouted the same again – only louder. “Curt.”

  “Yes. Jesus,” Curt Magee replied as he walked into the kitchen with a beer in his hand. The more his business broke down, the more time he spent sleeping in his mother’s house.

  Things weren’t great for Curt at home with his own family.

  “Where’s your friend?” she asked.

  Curt knew. He just knew what she could be like.

  “Don’t,” he warned her.

  “What?”

  “Don’t.”

  Curt noticeably slowed down as he came to the window and peeked outside before walking to the table.

  “Just who are you ducking?” his mother asked, wiping the anxiety of preparing a real meal from her forehead.

  “No one. Nothing,” he replied as he sat down at the table.

  Geraldine straightened her Aztec print dress to hug her figure more. “Where did you say your friend was?”

  Shane Montrose entered perfectly on cue and Geraldine blushed a little when she realized he was behind her. His little fingers were taped up and he was unshaven and unkempt looking. He still wore a great suit but it had obviously been slept in. His eyes were red and yellow and his usual radiating tan was overpowered by a sick grey tone.

  This was not the same man who packed out venues across the country. Shane Montrose looked like a man who tried to keep up his appearance but could no longer afford it.

  Grobie Magee, however, didn’t give a fuck. He was still Shane Montrose.

  “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Magee,” Shane said as he entered the kitchen.

  “Call me Grobie,” Geraldine said with a dirty smile. “All the wrestlers call me Grobie.”

  Curt saw how hard his mother was putting her old body out there and shook his head in disgust. Over the years he’d heard things about her in the wrestling business that made him sick to his stomach. Simply put, Grobie was a Ring Rat who liked to fuck wrestlers. She was infamous for it up and down the business. Shane Montrose was kind of like her missing card to complete the set.

  “Where would you like me?” Shane asked, shamelessly flirting with practiced ease.

  “A couple of inches up in my … ”

  “No!” Curt shouted as he pounded his fist on the table. “I’m sitting right here.”

  Shane and Geraldine silently conceded that Curt had a point.

  “There’s salt on the table,” Geraldine advised her guest as she pulled herself back to civility.

  “Thank you,” Shane said as he sat at the table.

  Shane’s mere presence was enough to sicken Curt. He was only there because he’d heard through the grapevine that Danno was calling Curt with an offer. It was damn near impossible to keep anything quiet in the wrestling business.

  Curt tried everything to stay alive but, with his local TV company dropping him from their programing, it was only a matter of time before his wrestling business collapsed.

  Geraldine placed her chicken dish in the middle of the table and stood back to judge its perfection. She pushed some peas atop the mound of pinkish meat and hard vegetation and seemed finally pleased. Both men awaited her go-ahead.

  “Now, dig in,” she said, beaming with pride. “To the meal I mean.”

  Curt, well trained around his mother’s cooking, avoided the meat altogether but he happily watched Shane dig into the undercooked bird.

  Geraldine’s phone rang and Curt hopped up nervously from his sitting position. “I’ll get it,” he said, knocking over his drink and toppling his chair in his stampede to get to the phone first.

  “Jesus, Curtis,” Geraldine replied. “Do you have to be a fat fucking elephant?”

  Curt picked up the receiver and walked its long cord into the living room.

  “Hello?” Curt said, half whispering.

  “Is this Curt?” Danno asked.

  Curt could hardly contain the relief in his voice. “Danno?”

  “Yeah,” Danno answered from his office in New York. “It’s me. I got your message.”

  “Do we have a deal?” Curt asked quickly.

  Danno was surprised at Curt’s forwardness but, after struggling with his dying business for over a year, Curt was in no position to be coy.

  “Yeah, we got a deal. But this is between us. If I hear for a second that the word is out on this deal, then I pull my offer and spend my time blacklisting you,” Danno said.

  Curt wondered whether Danno meant he would blacklist him even more.

  “I just want out. Going out of business is an expensive thing,” Curt said, looking directly at Shane Montrose.

  “I’ll buy your territory Curt.”

  Curt held the phone into his palm so Danno couldn’t hear him for a second. “Thank you Jesus,” he whispered before re-engaging in the conversation.

  “Okay,” Danno continued. “Are you going to be in Grobie’s for a while? I have to run some things past Troy and make sure this can all be squared in Lawyerland.”

  “This line isn’t great,” Curt lied. “I got the number of the payphone down the street. You should ring me back there instead.”

  Curt turned to see if Shane could hear the conversation. Shane was watching from the table but couldn’t hear anything. He gave Curt the ‘do-we-have-a-deal?’ look.

  Curt quickly summoned his depressed and deflated face as he shook his head in reply. “No deal,” he silently mouthed.

  Shane watched Curt turn his back to him and continue to talk into the phone. He noticed Curt’s clenched fist open as he slid his hand into his pocket.

  Nobody puts their hand in their pocket when they get bad news.

  Grobie pushed Shane’s plate closer to him.

  “Eat up,” she said. “A body like that can’t run on empty.”

  Shane rose quietly from the table and walked towards Curt.

  “You don’t mind if I watch you leave?” Grobie asked.

  Shane didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to figure out if he was getting cut out of his deal. Too busy trying to calculate whether yet another promoter was trying to fuck him over. He needed his cut more than any other time in his life.

  Curt heard the footsteps move closer and he hung up and steadied himself before turning around.

  “He wasn’t interested. Not yet. He said no but I think he’s just taking time to weigh this all up. Maybe in six months or something like that.”

  Shane could only nod. The more Curt talked the more he could feel him lying. After years of watching various owners fuck him around, he had developed a pretty good bullshit meter.

  “Do we have wine?” Curt asked his mother, already knowing the answer.

  Grobie, still at the table, shook her head. Wine was for queers. Grobie Magee’s house was full of vodka, whiskey and a little something her uncle made her drink.

  Curt grabbed his jacket and keys and left.

  Ten minutes later Shane was fucking Grobie on her bathroom floor. Like most Rats Shane had sex with over the years, Grobie didn’t seem to be into it. It was like she was
somewhere else. It was only when he’d stop and try and catch her eye that she’d snap to and moan a little.

  The bathroom door was slightly open. At first Shane was worried about Curt coming back and seeing them. Now he was worried that Curt would come back and not see them.

  So Shane Montrose scuttled back just far enough to poke the bathroom door open further.

  He was sick of promoters looking at him as dull-witted. They saw the wrestlers as dullards – a necessary evil in the attraction business. There was no way Curt was going to tell him about Danno’s call. He knew there was no way he was going to get a straight story from Curt or Danno.

  But if Curt wouldn’t talk to him and Danno wouldn’t talk to him, maybe another Garland would.

  Five months before the murder.

  New Jersey.

  Shane lay naked with Annie Garland. The dingy room was small, and sweaty. Far from what they were both used to. Shane usually liked to pay for a higher-class joint, but he was now counting coins and actively avoiding people who were looking for their money back.

  Things with Curt were bad. And he smelled a rat.

  They both lay silently and Annie wasn’t even all that sure that she liked the man beside her. She wanted to blame him, all by himself, for making her do these things. These backhanded things that made her sick to her stomach.

  But, in truth she knew that Shane didn’t do anything more than make the call. She took it, entertained it and followed him.

  It was her. And her alone she hated. But she had a way of making most of that hatred disappear. Certainly for a while anyway.

  “I wish you never gave me one of these in the first place,” Annie said as she inspected the small pill between her fingers.

  Shane grabbed it and threw it into his own smoke-filled mouth.

  “I did you a favor,” he said as he blew a stream of smoke towards a ceiling that had obviously seen a lot of smoke in its day.

  Annie rolled onto her side and reached into her bag where there were plenty more pills waiting. They were organized, in a civil manner, in a nice embossed silver box. She thought it added a little class to a totally classless pursuit.

  That little metal tomb held Annie Garland totally and completely.

  “Those little things help me do what I do,” Shane said of the pills. “They let me go another week and then another year. They let me earn money. They let me walk around.”

  Annie carefully placed one in her mouth, all ladylike, and swallowed it down with a waiting drink of water.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I got two bum knees, a ripped up shoulder and the pain in my back sometimes makes me think of killing myself. What have you got, lady?”

  “There’s different kinds of pain,” she simply answered.

  Shane stubbed out his cigarette and turned to Annie, resting his head in the palm of his hand.

  “What pain does a woman like you have?” he asked disbelievingly.

  Annie could feel the warm washing comfort of her previous intake start to surround her shoulders and work its way up along the back of her head.

  “None,” she answered. “I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Shane looked her up and down – something her husband would never do. To Annie, Shane was rougher, more base, more simple. Over the years it despised her that she was attracted to him. That he was two steps away from being an animal. No tact, no manners, no plans, no strategy. Just all instinct, grabbing and aggression.

  But he looked at her. Like her husband never would.

  She imagined herself being with him. Not having to worry about him and his supper and how his clothes looked and what his mood was. She wouldn’t have to rear him and prop him up and make sure she placed his keys in the very same fucking place every single morning of their marriage because if they were two inches from that place she would have to come down the stairs and place them in his fat fucking hand.

  She was lying beside a man who could and did look after himself. She knew he was the type of man who lied and fucked dubious women and paid more attention to what he looked like than what his woman looked like. He was attracted to shiny things and dangerous things and things that could harm him.

  And she thought she loved that. She just wasn’t sure. What she did know was that she was tired of fighting it. Tired of wondering. Tired of trying to remember what it was like to be with a man who wanted her. Who at least acted like he loved her. A man with some fight in him. A man who wasn’t ready to coast to the end.

  She was older and softer in places. But she wasn’t ready to be locked in the big house and put herself on pause until Danno came home.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked as he rubbed his hand around her ribcage and under her breast.

  “I’m thinking about my husband,” she said as she swallowed another pill.

  “Maybe you should take it easy on those.”

  Annie lay back and waited to forget. Or not care. Hopefully both, but more than likely the latter.

  “Word is he’s doing something with Curt?” Shane asked, hoping to sound more chatty than snoopy.

  “Who?”

  “Danno.”

  Annie grabbed his hand and threw it from her body. “Do you think I want you talking about my husband while you feel me up?”

  “You brought him up.”

  Annie wanted to get up and get dressed. Then she didn’t want to get up and do anything.

  “He’d have me killed if he knew, wouldn’t he?” Shane asked in a more somber voice.

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “And me too.”

  “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t have any choice.”

  “Yeah, well, if anything bad happens to you and I find whoever did it, I’ll kill them where they stand.”

  Annie turned her head and smiled at Shane’s sentiment.

  “I’m not joking,” he said.

  “I know.”

  There was a slight pause where they both weighed up the outcome of their meetings ever getting out.

  “I don’t want to talk about Danno here,” Annie said.

  Shane could see his door closing, his opportunity fading. He needed to find out if Curt was telling the truth when he said that Danno wasn’t doing a deal. For Shane Montrose, Curt selling to Danno meant there was enough money for Shane to finally gethis money.

  “He doesn’t tell me anything,” Annie said, now more relaxed about everything.

  “He’s never said anything about Curt Magee or Texas?” Shane asked.

  “What? I don’t know,” she answered as she began to melt more into herself.

  Shane didn’t believe her. He didn’t believe her at all. He started to get the gnawing feeling that everyone was about to make a lot of money. Except him.

  And not making money was an unacceptable situation for Shane Montrose. He had spent a lot of money on the promise of his slice coming through. And he knew his bankers weren’t the suit wearing kind.

  Five days after the murder.

  New York.

  Shane took in the grounds and the stables but he didn’t notice any cars in the drive. Danno’s house was huge and square and it stood still in the morning quiet outside.

  He wasn’t sure if this was a good idea as the cab crept slowly up the long driveway. Maybe Danno wasn’t here? Maybe there were fifty cars parked around the back. Who knew?

  He paid the taxi driver from a slab of folded notes. He tipped him a fifty and signed his autograph on a copy of the daily paper.

  The headline read:

  SENATOR TENENBAUM HOME AND RESTING.

  “Thank you. I saw you wrestle in The Garden many times over the years,” the cab driver excitedly told his famous passenger.

  Shane nodded politely and stood small under the shadow of the house. He walked cautiously towards the steps as his ride pulled off down the driveway.

  His breath was stale from drink – but that wasn’t a
nything unusual. His face was rough and his clothes were the same as the day before. He survived Danno and the wake. Literally. Now he wanted to find out where Curt Magee was hiding. With the bounty Danno had out, Shane knew it was only a matter of time before Danno found out first.

  And Danno wasn’t the only one who loved her at one time.

  Shane took the first, large step towards the house. The air smelt different after the rain in this part of New York. It was fresh and subtle.

  Shane took another step whilst looking around. Danno swung open his front door and marched with intent towards his visitor. “What the fuck do you want with me?”

  “I … ,” Shane struggled to piece together a sentence that would make sense.

  Danno took out his gun and jammed it against the forehead of the wrestler in front of him. It wasn’t the same gun that lay on Danno’s bed with Danno’s suit. This was a different gun, meant for other people.

  “Danno, please,” Shane begged. “Let me … ”

  “What?”

  “Let me … ”

  “Let you what?” Danno said as he grabbed the back of Shane’s head and bore the barrel of his gun in deeper.

  “I just … ”

  “You just what? Speak. You fucking tell me why you’re at my door. Tell me why I shouldn’t blow your fucking head off on these steps?”

  Danno could see it. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, but he could see it. Shane Montrose was lost too.

  “I’m sorry,” Shane simply said.

  “You keep saying that. What do you want me to say to you?” Danno tried to raise the same level of anger that he had a sentence ago, but couldn’t. He whipped the gun barrel away from Shane’s head.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” Danno warned as he turned back towards his house. He began to tremble from adrenaline. This wasn’t him. He would run from conflict a month ago. He was getting too old to be suspicious of everyone. It was wearing him down. He wanted to rip that weight from his stomach. That deadness that lay in there and twisted back and forth. That gnawing instinct to lay down and stay there.