‘The Princess?’
‘Yeah, she’s The Behemoth’s ringside manager. That’s Diane; she’s going to Edinburgh with him. Max Schwartz is Axel Rodd — with two Ds — Jerry’s tag team partner.’
‘Who’s Barbara?’
‘Our publicity co-ordinator. An ace. I hired her from the opposition in the States.’
I shook my head. ‘So Daze isn’t so smart after all. He can be distracted by a woman.’
‘He can by Diane,’ he agreed, grinning. ‘So can Everett. She’s my wife.’ He set off down the corridor. ‘Come on. I’ll show you around.’ I fell into step, at his heels — well, I took three for every two of his — until he stopped at a grey door, on his right.
He pointed to the other side of the corridor. ‘All that over there is office space,’ he said. ‘Our venue booking, ticket sales, and merchandising departments are all over there. Merchandising is very big business for us. Our Superstar replica figures are collectables, then there are the imitation championship belts, tee-shirts — ’ he tapped his chest ‘- like this one, and other things, such as big foam hands for waving on camera, inflatables, and scaled down copies of the Angel’s wings.’
‘Eh?’
‘You’ll meet him later.’ The atmosphere of the place had got me. I wasn’t even surprised when he said that.
‘We’re also into video games,’ he went on. ‘We have a copyright agreement with one of the big three players, but they do the marketing of those products.’
He turned and threw open the grey door. ‘This is props. We store everything here; our ring, back-drops for television, wrestlers’ costumes and other equipment, like the special chairs and steel bins we use to hit each other with in our matches.’ He must have heard me gulp, for he added without even looking round, ‘You know how they have glass in the movies that’s made out of sugar? Same idea.’
He closed the door again and led me on down the corridor, until we stopped outside a second door. Alongside, were two lights; red, and green, which was showing. ‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘No one’s shooting right now.’
We stepped into what turned out to be a television studio. ‘We shoot all our inserts in-house,’ said Everett. ‘If you watch our shows on cable TV, you’ll see how we use them to build up the feuds between performers. Camera skills are worth a lot in this business; there are more than a few capable wrestlers who’ll never be more than jobbers because they can’t ham it up on screen for the fans.’
He reached down and pressed a button on a VCR player. ‘Let’s see what we got here.’ The monitor alongside flickered into life, and there was Jerry Gradi, The Behemoth, in full battle gear, snarling and grimacing at the camera. ‘Daze!’ he roared, his voice at maximum decibels, the gravel grinding away. ‘You want your belt back, punk? Well come on, try to get it. Bring all you got, but it won’t be enough. Ain’t dat right, Princess?’
And then she stepped into shot; the sort of woman who could start a fight in a seminary, just by being there. She had a tiara set in her lustrous auburn hair, and wore, technically, a tight-fitting sequinned evening number, with gleaming, coffee-coloured skin showing through a laced-up side panel which precluded any slight possibility that she might have been wearing underwear. On the day that bosoms were handed out, she had been at the head of the queue.
‘Oh yes, monster,’ she said, in a voice so sexy that it could have made a diabetic eat a cream egg omelette. ‘That’s right. We know what Daze’s weakness is, don’t we. You’re looking at her.’ As the camera zoomed in on her she flicked her red tongue along her top lip.
The screen went dead, but Everett kept on staring at it. ‘She ain’t kidding, boy,’ he whispered. For a moment I thought that he had forgotten I was there. I coughed, just to remind him. ‘Yeah,’ he said, still softly. ‘Let’s go. The action’s next door.’
We went back into the corridor and walked on until we reached the third door on the right. ‘All men are different,’ my dad told me once, ‘yet in some respects they’re all the same.’ That piece of Mac the Dentist wisdom came back to me as my huge guide opened the door. When you’ve smelled one ripe gymnasium, in principle you’ve smelled them all. It’s only the intensity that’s different.
I looked around; it must have covered at least a quarter of the total floor area of the unit. An impressive array of exercise machinery lined the far wall, while nearer to where we stood, there was a row of heavyweight static cycles, and two treadmills. Off to our right two punch-bags and two speed-balls hung from steel supports. Half of the equipment was in use; I glanced around and counted a dozen people. Four were smaller than the rest; it took me a couple of seconds to realise that they were women. In the centre of it all there was a practice ring; its canvas floor was about five feet high, and the area all around was covered in matting. Inside the three ropes, two men were circling each other, threateningly.
‘This is the work-room,’ said Everett. ‘This is where the boys train, and the girls too. The GWA is a team operation, and that’s how we train, like a football squad. . only harder.’ He nodded towards the ring. ‘Those two guys are in our headline match in the Newcastle Arena on Saturday. The big guy is Darius Hencke: ring name the Black Angel of Death. He’s German. The small fellow is Liam Matthews, from Dublin: real name and ring name. His ring persona is a cocky little bastard. He’s pretty much like that in real life too.
‘They’re choreographing their fight. It’s for The Transcontinental Title, our secondary championship belt. Come on over and meet them.’
As we walked towards the ring, Matthews hurled a flying karate kick at the Angel of Death, who caught him in mid-air, lifted him above his head, and threw him out of the ring over the top rope, sending him crashing down on to his back from a height of at least ten feet. The smack as he hit the rubber mat echoed around the gym, but no one took the slightest bit of notice: except me. I winced, expecting the paramedics to appear automatically, but the Irishman simply picked himself up. ‘I can take higher than that, Darius,’ he called up to the Angel. ‘As high as you can fuckin’ throw me, I can take.’
‘How about as high as I can throw you?’ Everett’s voice was hard all of a sudden. I had never heard Daze speak before.
Matthews grinned. ‘You got to catch me first.’
‘That time will come, my man.’
Then he was the bloke in the suit again, the fellow who had visited me up in our tower. ‘Liam, Darius,’ he said, nodding down at me. ‘This is Oz Blackstone. I’m thinking about giving him a try-out as our new ring announcer.’ As the two wrestlers glanced at me, I hoped that I had managed to keep my astonishment from showing.
Darius Hencke stepped clean over the top rope, and jumped down on to the gymnasium floor. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, with a thick accent. He must have been at least six feet ten, a grim, glowering figure. Dark, I thought, for a German; but then he smiled, and all at once he didn’t look like Death at all. Liam Matthews said nothing, he simply threw me the briefest of grins. He wasn’t much taller than me, just over six feet, but in terms of muscular development he looked like a scaled-down version of Everett. He kept bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet; clearly, this was the sort of guy who was incapable of standing still. He seemed to radiate energy in waves.
‘Darius and Liam are two of our top attractions, Oz,’ Everett went on. ‘We’re a European organisation so it’s important that our squad is largely European too. Jerry, Diane, Barbara, Max and I are all Americans, and we have five others, including two of the women specialists, but other than that it’s an EU operation. It has to be anyway, or we’d have work permit problems.’
He turned to the wrestlers. ‘How you guys doing?’
‘We getting there,’ said Darius. ‘You just saw the start of the climax. While Liam is on the ground, I climb on top of the ring-post and dive at him, but Dee Dee pulls over a crowd barrier and I land on that.’
Everett frowned. ‘You sure you can do that? Even with one of the special alum
inum barriers?’
The Angel nodded. ‘Sure. The centre section will geev a little under my weight to cushion my fall, but it will still protect Liam.’
‘Who’s Dee Dee?’ I asked lamely.
‘Dee Dee Rocca,’ Everett answered, ‘Liam’s ringside manager. Used to be mine too. Their job is to run interference with referees and opponents.’
He looked back at Darius. ‘And that’s end of match?’
‘Yes, the referee disqualifies Liam, so he keeps the belt. The transmission fades with me on the barrier, him underneath and the medics rushing in.’
The big man grinned. ‘Okay, you sold me. But rehearse it as often as you can. How many of those aluminum barriers do we have in stock?’
‘Half a dozen,’ said Liam, ‘I checked.’
‘Use at least three in rehearsal,’ Everett ordered. ‘But Liam, you don’t go underneath till we see how the first one reacts to the hit from Darius. Understood?’
The Irishman grinned, dismissively. ‘Sure, boss.’
The black giant nodded, and beckoned me to follow. ‘Those two guys are just about the best in the business,’ he said quietly, as we moved towards the door. ‘They got all the wrestling skills, and they’re unbelievable athletes too. Darius is as good a professional as you’ll meet in any sport. But Liam’s brashness, that I don’t like. This is a dangerous business, and a casual approach can cause accidents.’ He smiled, purposefully. ‘Some day soon,’ he muttered, in his Daze voice again, ‘the kid’s going to have a match with me. It’ll do him good.’ Somehow, I doubted that.
Everett led me out of the gym, down the corridor, and into his office. The room was carpeted, and the walls were wood-panelled, yet the feel was functional, rather than opulent. Clearly some of the furniture had been made with his size in mind, but the rest looked pretty ordinary. There were no ornaments in the room, and just a single photograph on the wall to the left. It showed a smiling, middle-aged black woman.
I pointed at it. ‘My mamma,’ Everett responded. ‘She’s been dead for a few years.’
The view from his window, facing the glass-topped table which served as his desk, was the blank grey wall of the unit opposite. Unexpectedly, part of me was inordinately pleased that there was one area in which I was one up on Daze. Jan and I had bought a big partners’ desk which we shared for our respective businesses. We had positioned it against the wall of our living area, between two windows, so that each of us, if we chose, would have a view of Glasgow to distract us.
His sharp eyes caught my glance, and read my thoughts. ‘Pretty uninspiring, eh Oz,’ he grinned, as he settled into his swivel chair, and pointed me towards one on the other side of the table. ‘The nerve centre of the mighty Global Wrestling Alliance, overlooking a factory wall in Glasgow, Scotland. My competition thought it was pretty funny too, until they saw my first year’s profit figures. Then I’m sure they took notice. This’ll do us for now, till we’ve achieved the first stage of the business plan.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked, knowing that was what was expected.
‘Buy in the redeemable equity, so that we control the business from within. I want us to be able to do that in another year.’
‘You keep saying “we”. Who are the equity-holders in the company?’
‘Diane and me, plus Jerry; that’s all.’
I’ll never be any good in business, for one reason above all others. I show my cards in my face: I can’t help it. I’ve always been one of nature’s astonished gulpers. This one was a beauty, though.
I know I’d only met Jerry Gradi briefly, in a corridor, and I know my dad’s always lectured me about snap judgements. ‘Look at their teeth, son,’ said Mac the Dentist, ‘before you come to conclusions about people. The state of the gnashers tells you a lot about a bloke.’ But even without a quick dental inspection, The Behemoth did not strike me as a corporate player. Being an honest lad, and since I knew that it was written all over my coupon, I had to say so.
‘Jerry’s my best friend in the business, Oz,’ Everett rumbled. . fortunately with a smile; I still wasn’t one hundred per cent sure of my ground with the big guy. ‘He has twenty per cent. That ain’t just for old times sake though. The Behemoth and Daze were the biggest drawing cards in the US before we came over here to start the GWA. I wanted to make sure he was tied in for stage three, and there’s no better way than to let him in on the action.’
‘So what’s stage three, then?’ I asked him.
‘That’s when the GWA goes truly Global. We go back to the States and take out our main rival, Championship Wrestling Incorporated, but not at the box office; in the boardroom.’
‘Won’t you have competition there? What about Triple W, the people you used to work for? Won’t they be a bit pissed off if you pop up as their new rival?’
The gold flecks glinted in the neon light as Daze shook his head. ‘It won’t come as a surprise. Michael has been locked in a ratings war with Anthony Reilly, the Prez of CWI, for years, operating on rival cable networks. Their programming is timed in direct opposition to each other. Though not their pay-per-view events; the networks wouldn’t allow that.
‘When Jerry and I left, Reilly thought that he’d won the war. He hasn’t, because Michael has other resources, but there’s no doubt that CWI is top dog again. Triple W can live with that, though, because they know my long-term plan. Mike and I dreamed it up together.
‘When I set up over here, and did my deals with the European broadcasters, I took some business from Triple W and CWI, but not enough to get their attention. CWI were probably grateful, for they’d been losing money running live events in the UK and Germany.’ He grinned. ‘They won’t be grateful when I take GWA to the States and cut a deal to run shows on their network.’
‘That’s the plan is it?’
‘Yup. It’ll work too. Triple W will make sure that my name and Jerry’s stay box office over there. The line on its programming is that we’re on sabbatical. When I go in to cut the feet from under CWI, its network will snap me up, and they’ll be out. Once I’m in the driving seat, I’ll make Reilly an offer for what’s left of his company and merge the two.’
‘What if he won’t sell?’
‘If I get that far, he won’t have much choice.’
I surprised myself by asking another sensible business question. ‘Why hasn’t Triple W tried to buy him out?’
Everett smiled. ‘Organisations like ours are made and broken by television. Suppose Triple W did buy out CWI, what would it get for its money, apart from some wrestlers’ contracts? Nothing. It couldn’t operate on two networks, that’s for sure. All it would do is help a smaller organisation make the step up to national television, and create a new and maybe an even nastier rival for itself.’ He shook his great head again, and I began to realise that there was a pretty big brain in there too.
‘No. Through his deal with me, Michael will get rid of Reilly without spending one cent.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘You’re the biggest draw in the game. Won’t you be an even bigger threat to Triple W?’
‘In theory yes; in practice, no, because as part of my network TV deal, I’ll specify that our programming will no longer be in direct competition to Triple W. They’ve always gone live on Mondays. We’ll switch to a Thursday slot. On top of that, Jerry will go back to Triple W for two years.’
‘Won’t you miss him?’
‘Personally, yes, but America’s seen our act before. On his own, Jerry will be on top dollar at Triple W, plus he’ll still have his percentage of GWA. Professionally I can handle his departure. Darius and Liam have had no US exposure. When the marks in the States see the Black Angel and the Irish Devil they’ll go crazy.’
‘What about Diane? Will she stay with GWA?’
Everett nodded, so emphatically that he created a small breeze. ‘Oh yes. We’ve discussed that.’ He smiled, vaguely. ‘We gotta start a family sometime soon, if we’re gonna.’ He glanced across at me. ‘How
about you, Oz? You got kids?’
‘Bloody hell, no. Jan and I only just got married.’
‘What the hell does that matter these days? You been living together for long?’
‘No. We’ve known each other since we were kids, but we never did live together. The fact is, until fairly shortly before we decided to get hitched, I was living with someone else, and so was Jan. But our paths crossed again, and we realised that what we wanted most of all was each other. I don’t feel very proud of leaving Prim-’
‘Who?’
‘Prim. It’s short for Primavera.’
‘She Spanish?’
‘Christ no, she’s from Perthshire. Her mother liked the sound of the word, that’s all. As I said, I don’t feel proud of leaving her, but the fact is, she’d fallen in love with someone else too.’
‘She with him now?’
I smiled, in spite of myself, at the impossibility of that. ‘No. He’s dead.’
‘Yet you still left her?’
‘Yes. She realised how I felt about Jan; and how she really felt about me, I suppose.’ Suddenly I felt awkward. ‘It’s all worked out for the best. I’m married and Prim’s off in search of her next adventure. She’s a magnet for them, believe me.’
I tried to fix a business-like look on my face. ‘So, Everett; you’ve shown me GWA and you’ve told me all about it. Now, what’s your problem?’
The big man had been looking idly out of the window. Now he spun round and fixed me with a sudden stare. ‘Like I said yesterday, someone’s out to screw me.’ He paused, as a bizarre picture flashed momentarily in my mind.
‘Our business is very profitable, but it also involves high risk. We guarantee to provide quality programming to our satellite customers. Two shows a week, Saturdays and Mondays, shot and screened as live, plus two one-hour edited segments for later screening. Everything is staged before live audiences in stadia around Europe. Also, like I told you, we do regular shows which are sold to satellite and cable subscribers on a pay-per-view basis.
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