by Jack Tunney
“Don’t.”
“Okay.”
“Ever again.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re going to get help.”
“That’s two things.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise. As soon as this Thumper business is over.”
“Good enough,” she said. “Conversation’s over.”
***
I was running on the outskirts of town, not far from where I’d found Stephan the dog. He and I were keeping up a pretty good pace. It was cool and there were a couple of clouds and on the whole it was a hell of a nice day.
I spotted the car following me about a quarter mile before I let it catch up. A big old Buick sedan. I started making like I was looking down at Stephan, but I was really looking at the Buick, which was coming closer and closer. Then I figured out there was no way Lou would hire a hit man to shoot me on an empty country road, so after a while I just stopped and bent down to pet Stephan, and let the car catch up.
It pulled past us and nosed onto the shoulder a little bit ahead. The driver’s door opened and a couple of legs poked out. Then the rest of a body.
“Holy, Maloney,” I said.
It was Stephan. The first one.
I hadn’t seen him in thirteen or fourteen years, but he looked pretty much the same. Maybe a little salt and pepper in his hair. Maybe a couple of deeper lines around his mouth.
“Hey,” he said.
I walked over. “Hey.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Him? That’s my dog.”
“What’s his name?”
“Name’s Stephan.”
“Well, that’s going to be confusing.”
“Not really. I already think of him as Stephan the dog. So you can be plain Stephan or you can be Stephan the man. Or Stephan the person, but that doesn’t sound right. What are you doing here?”
“Charlie told me where I might find you.”
“He did, did he?”
“He did. Hop in. I’ll drive you back.”
“I’m not ready to go back.”
“Have it your way.” Stephan the person got back in his car and zoomed off.
***
We were all sitting around the kitchen, me and Sue and Charlie and the two Stephans. We all had big glasses of lemonade, the human ones of us at least. Stephan the dog was gnawing on an old shoe he’d grown fond of.
It was twenty minutes later, and as soon as Stephan drove off I’d decided I really was ready to go back, but it was too late. I’d double-timed it the rest of the way and was hot and sweaty and probably stinky. I offered to go take a shower, but everyone said don’t bother.
We were standing around there and making small talk, acting as if Stephan had never been gone. For a while it was fine and then it wasn’t and I said, “Okay. Everybody stop. Stephan, what the frazz are you doing here?”
“We were worried about you,” Sue said.
“You mean about Thumper and all?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You said you would leave it to me”
“I tried. Then I couldn’t. I got worried. So I talked to Charlie. He was worried too.”
I looked over at him. He shrugged. “Kind of.”
“So, you called Stephan to come help?”
“Yep.”
“Help how?”
Charlie kind of threw his face Stephan’s way as if saying, you take it.
“I was a cop,” Stephan said. “I still know people.”
“Why’d you leave?” I said.
“Huh?”
“When you left all those years ago. Something didn’t seem right.”
He took a slug of lemonade, put his glass down, said, “I was undercover.”
“When you were here?”
Everyone looked at me like I was an idiot. Even Stephan the dog tore himself away from his shoe long enough to give me the eye.
Uncle Charlie said, “In Chicago, dodo.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Lot of corruption there,” Stephan said.
Finally I got it. “You got figured out, so you came here to hide.”
“More or less.”
I turned to Charlie. “You knew about this?”
“Course I did.”
Back to Stephan. “And when you left?”
“Friend back in Chicago said the bad guys were getting close to figuring out where I was. Didn’t want to put you in danger. So I went and hid out somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Washington State.”
Turned out Charlie knew the whole time where Stephan was. When he called to ask him what to do about Thumper, it happened to be right after the last of the people who wanted Stephan dead got put away for good. So he got in his Buick and drove straight through and there he was.
He said, “I’ve got some information about your friend Thumper.”
“And what’s that?” I said.
“His real name is, get this, Henry Thummer.”
“It is not.”
“It is, but of course when he was a kid everyone called him Thumper. At least they did until one day when he was eleven and he put one of them in the hospital with two broken arms.”
“Cause he was already big.”
“Big and mean. His juvenile records are sealed – I only found out about the thing when he was eleven by calling in a favor – but once he was eighteen he started building himself a nice little rap sheet. Mostly strong-arm stuff. He went to work for a loan shark in Cincinnati when he was twenty-one and made it to prison by twenty-two. In and out ever since. He’s been out since about eight months ago.”
It fit. That was a little before Thumper showed up.
Stephan looked at Charlie, and then he looked at me. “You want me to put a hit out on him?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Yeah, I’m kidding. But I could probably arrange an accident…”
“No.”
He tilted his head and looked at me. “Really, it would just keep him out of the ring, he could still have a long and productive…”
“No. This is my fight. I’ll handle it. Now people know him and he’s showing up in front of some decent size crowds, I think Lou’s going to stop letting him...do what he was doing. Guy he wrestled Friday night was fine. People are going to be keeping an eye on him. Wrestling magazines, too.”
Stephan stared at me for a while. Then he picked up his lemonade and drank it down. He said, “You want me to check on this Lenny Lemaire?”
“Yes,” Sue said. “For Heaven’s sake, check on Lenny Lemaire. And the other guy, Varanium or whatever his name was.”
“Bart Valerian,” I said. “But they’re both dead. I know it. And Sue?”
“Yes?”
“Let’s get married.”
I grabbed one of the straw wrappers off the table, went down on one knee in front of her, took her hand.
I said, “Will you marry me?”
“You sure you’re not being a little impulsive?”
“Will you or not?”
“Of course I will, you big lummox.”
She pulled me up and threw her arms around me and gave me a big smack on the lips. I took the straw wrapper and knotted it around her finger. “This’ll have to do for a while.”
“It could do forever, far as I’m concerned. When?”
“As soon as we can. This afternoon, if we can.”
We couldn’t, but three days later we could. And did. And when we came home, UPS had brought the Samson Sanders getup. This fake fur loincloth thing, leather arm and leg bands, and the dumbest wig I'd ever seen. Sue saw it and got a laughing fit. I put it on and soon she was rolling on the floor laughing. Then I went into a muscleman pose and she pulled me down on top of her. So, the first time we did it as man and wife, I had a wig on.
ROUND 11
The TV taping in Grandville was the next Saturday. I got up way too early and left Sue in bed. Stephan the dog
and I went running. The moon was nearly full and I howled at it now and again. I think I embarrassed Stephan.
By the time we got back, Sue was up. She made oatmeal and bacon and eggs, and I stuffed myself. By the time we got there, it would be digested.
We dropped Stephan the dog at Sue’s sister’s and were on the road by seven. We being Charlie, Stephan the human, Sue, and me. Stephan insisted on driving, and he took it slow and careful. We still got to the arena with an hour to spare.
The others all went for a walk while I moseyed into the dressing room. I put on my new outfit, checked it out in the crummy old mirror, and put it away. I sat there in my underwear for a while, then put on my heel tights. I had a feeling I was going to be the bad guy in the jobber match.
Turned out I was right. Turned out the other thing I was thinking was right too.
Joe the Greek wandered into the dressing room with the card. The longest I’d ever seen, seventeen matches, enough to feed the TV audience for weeks, enough to keep any arena crowd happy even if most of the matches were squashes. I started at the bottom and looked for Samson Sanders. He wasn't there. I wasn’t surprised.
I kept scanning until I got to the first match on the card. There was my name. My real name.
Across from it was Thumper.
Lou and Thumper had got away with murder. There was probably no way anyone would ever convict them of it, but somebody had died and it was their fault. Now Thumper was on his way to superstardom, they couldn’t kill off any more jobbers. They’d be noticed too easily.
But there was a loose end. Me. I was the only one who’d shown any interest in the dead guys. The only one who’d seen anybody tossed into a car.
I didn’t know why it had happened. Maybe Thumper had gone and flipped his nut and told Lou he’d make him millions if he just got to kill somebody.
Maybe Farley was an accident. Maybe even Bart Valerian was an accident, and Lou panicked and got the guy taken away and took advantage of the fact no one knew him.
But Lenny Lemaire? Poor Lenny, who only wanted to make the people in each town feel they had someone who could stand in for them? He had to be on purpose. After one guy died by accident, there’s no way Lou would let Thumper do it again.
At least one was on purpose.
One was enough.
***
The rest of the gang began to trickle in. Everyone but Thumper. At two o'clock somebody stuck his head in and called me to the ring. I zipped up my bag and tossed it on the floor, then slowly walked out of the dressing room, then down a long walkway. The place was only about half full, though lots of folks were still streaming in.
The ring announcer did my intro, and I did my heel routine, throwing my fists up in the air, beating my chest, howling at the one or two people who'd noticed me.
The announcer drew in a deep breath. “Ladies and gentlemen…” he said. “His opponent, weighing in at three hundred and ninety pounds, from Green Meadow, Nebraska...Thumper!”
He came marching down the aisle, looking more pumped than ever, getting a huge pop from the crowd. They yelled. They screamed. Men held up their kids. Ladies fainted.
He came down to ringside, wearing a big old Green Meadow smile, one that didn’t get any higher than the bottom of his nose. This time there were metal steps, and he hopped up them – just like a bunny – and stepped over the top ring rope. He glared at me across the ring, pointed his big finger, and shouted, “You’re going down, little buddy!”
I said, “Don’t call me that.” He just laughed.
The bell rang, and there we were.
We circled the ring, right to left, each acting like we were trying to get a feel for the other guy. Pretty standard stuff, except I wasn’t acting. I really needed to find out what Thumper was about in the ring, what he could pull off. And what he couldn’t.
All of a sudden I stopped, then went the other way. Still circling. He didn’t know what to make of it at first, and then he grinned at me and went the other way too. We’d already gone without touching each other for longer than usual, but I’d found out one thing. He moved better to his left. Not a lot, but you could see it.
We stepped into each other and moved into a collar-and-elbow tie-up. Also a regular part of the playbook. Guy was so massive it was hard to put it together, but I managed. I applied a little pressure, to see how much give there might be. Also to see how tense he was. The answers were none, and not at all. He was sure about what was going to happen. Probably the only question was how quickly.
He swung to his left and tossed me. I sold the move, hit the canvas, rolled away. I got right up and bounced up and down. Then we did it again. I was right up the second time, too. I grinned at him. He didn’t like it.
All the while I was avoiding his alien pig eyes. He was just a man, didn’t have any spooky powers, but every time I looked into those eyes I got shook, and I couldn’t afford to be shook just then.
Back into the collar-and-elbow. He tried to toss me away again. I started to go, got some momentum, put the pressure back on and tossed him instead. He didn’t go very far, but he went. Didn’t leave his feet, but he moved them.
The thing with big guys is, most of the time, the bigger they are, the less they know about holds and moves and counters. It was always the little guys who’d go flying from the top rope and smashing people with dropkicks. The big guys generally relied on power. It was what the fans expected. Someone like Andre the Giant, all he really did was lumber around the ring and throw people around. No one wanted him to do anything fancy.
The only move I’d seen Thumper make that took any skill at all was The Thump. And I didn’t expect to be seeing that. Not for a while, anyway.
As the heel, it was up to me to make the first illegal move. Once I did, he could pound me, and finally thump me.
So I kept it clean.
I tied up with him again, let him toss me once more. Then another tie-up, which turned into him having me in a headlock. Headlocks are generally rest moves, at least when you get further into the match. Somebody needs to catch a breather, they signal the other guy, and they go into a headlock or something else that doesn’t need a whole lot of moving around to pull off.
When headlocks happen in the beginning of the match, it’s usually as a setup for something else. I figured he’d crunch my head a little, then throw me off, and maybe do a crisscross, maybe one where the big face stops in the middle of the ring and the smaller heel runs right into him and bounces off and falls down onto his back. This usually led to the heel complaining to the referee. You’re watching at home, you don’t hear what he’s complaining about, but it’s usually something totally stupid like, “He pulled my hair,” along with putting a fist behind your head and making like you were being yanked.
When the move came, I was ready. Instead of letting myself get thrown away, I grabbed an arm and flipped around behind him and wrenched his arm behind his back. Normally you do that just far enough so it doesn’t hurt. You just let your opponent moan a little, maybe jerk the arm up a little to get a couple more moans, then move on to the next thing.
Thumper didn’t know what to do with it. Something I’d noticed when he faced Illegal Alien. Illegal had done this very same thing and the action ground down for a minute. Thumper had looked like he was going to throw an elbow, but stopped before he did. Probably because Lou had drilled into him that he was the good guy and Illegal had to do the first nasty thing.
And that was how it was with me. Just a little, he was starting to lose it. I could see, as different muscles tensed and relaxed, he was trying to figure out how to get out of the hold without doing something he shouldn’t. A little frustration. That was a good thing.
Something better was me letting him go, patting him on the shoulder, and stepping away.
He growled...yeah, he actually growled...and came at me. His arms were up and he was four, three, two steps away, and then he was right on top of me, and then I wasn’t there. It was a pretty standard set
up for a big guy and a smaller one. But usually when the big guy was the heel and the little one the face.
Out in the crowd, a couple of people laughed. One over to my left, one to my right.
I started moving to my right, trying to see what it was that made it easier to go the other way. He began to circle too. Something about his foot...
I stepped back to the ropes, bounced my back off, and ran for the opposite one. Thumper couldn’t help himself. He bounced himself off one of the ones running at ninety degrees to mine. A crisscross. They’re among the stupidest routines we do, and the crowds eat them up. The two wrestlers pass within a foot or two of each other and neither tries to do anything for three or four or five passes. Until someone stops and throws the other guy, or they do the thing where the heel bounces off.
I wanted to see how long I could keep it going. Because I’d already noticed a little hitch in Thumper’s breathing. Again, I had Illegal Alien to thank. He gone nine or ten minutes with Thumper and, by the time they were done, Thumper was breathing hard. He covered it up pretty good, but he was getting winded. If he was going to keep on like Lou wanted, they were going to have to work on his wind.
Course, if things went like I planned, they wouldn’t have to worry about it.
We went back and forth six, seven, eight times. Then I let my arm hang out and got close enough to Thumper so he couldn’t help but latch on. He grabbed me around the wrist and stopped short and threw me toward the ropes. Then he set up to let me bounce into him, and, if things went as they should, fall down, get up, and complain about a hair pull.
Instead, after I went off the ropes, I launched a flying dropkick.
It went perfect. I was going to nail him right in the solar plexus.
But I have to give him credit. He recovered real quick. And, just like with Farley Reilly, his arm came up, intending to flick me out of the air.
Only I wasn’t Farley. I had a lot more experience. And I wasn’t a stiff.
So when his arm came up, I went with it. I let it push my legs upward, and instead of the dropkick hitting him in the chest, it hit him in the head. My right foot mashed into Thumper’s nose and the left slid off his cheek and grazed his ear. Instead of my head hitting the canvas like Farley’s had, I came down on my shoulder and rolled and was right back up.