by Paul O'Brien
“I've already forgotten what that place was like,” Gilbert replied. “All I can say is the guy who did this to my eye is the world’s largest cock sucking fuck face penis loving gay friend to all the gay people. And I could beat his ass any day I choose.”
Everyone nodded with understanding.
“You got no bag, Kid?” Franco asked.
“What are you trying to say?” Proctor interjected.
The blood drained from Franco's face. “Nothing, boss.”
“Fuck that place. I'm all about where we're going now.” Gilbert said, roiling up his troop.
Proctor pulled the excitement level down with a grunt and said calmly, “We're going to get our belt. That's where we're going. There's business to be figured out.”
Proctor walked to his car and motioned for Gilbert to follow him. “We've got a long drive ahead of us.”
The others looked suddenly deflated.
“We drove for a day already, Kid,” Pee Chu said. “We even got you a take out,” he said as he pushed Lizzie forward.
Gilbert waited for Proctor to walk out of earshot. “I'll get him to pick me up on the way back home or something. Where will I meet you guys?”
October 27th 1971. Boston.
Danno stood silently against the old blue lunch car where he’d bought his hour-old burger. It was closed now and the parking lot he waited in was dark and empty. Perfect in one way, unnerving in another.
The smoke from Ginny's cigarette curled out through the slightly opened back window. Danno took a few short steps and peeked in to see the stacks of cash on the back seat.
Ginny was counting slowly. Danno could see him moving his lips in jumps of one as he planted every hundred-dollar note, one on top of the other.
Boston was a gold mine. So was New York. When Danno thought about it, the whole east coast was growing rapidly. In two short years, his company could run three shows a night in three different areas.
The stacks beside Ginny just reminded him of how far they had come. And also, how reluctant he was getting to losing it.
“Who are we down here to see, boss?” Ginny asked out the window.
“What?” Danno pretended not to hear to give him an extra couple of seconds to cook up a lie.
“Who are we waiting on?”
It was late and Danno was too tired to be clever. “It's nothing, I just like the burgers down here.”
Ginny continued the count. Danno grappled with the cold, heavily padded burger. He snorted with a laugh and a piece of burger lodged in his nose. “Fuck,” he said with a full mouth, looking for a napkin.
Danno blew his nose and wiped the drops of sauce from his shirt. “Fuck.”
“What?” Ginny wanted to know.
“I'm like a fucking vegetable, here,” Danno said.
A car pulled into the corner of the lot and sounded its horn. Danno threw the burger behind his car, wiped his hands, and spat out his mouthful.
Ginny knew something wasn't right. He carefully stacked the money back into the bags and reached under the back seat for the strategically placed bat.
Danno walked slowly and warily toward the waiting car. “Gimme a sec.”
Danno and Proctor sat in the front of Proctor's car. Neither man looked at each other.
“He got out today,” Proctor said.
Danno's heart sank. Ever since the deal was struck, he was dreading hearing those words.
“You hear me?” Proctor asked.
“We had a deal, Proctor. That's my word you got.”
Proctor reached across an already jumpy Danno and cracked open his glove box. Danno began to slide his hand into his inside pocket, until he saw it was only a hip flask of whiskey that Proctor was reaching for.
“You want some?” he asked Danno just before he necked down a swig himself.
Danno shook his head.
“Did you make the money you wanted?” Proctor asked.
“I did okay.”
Proctor struggled to remove his jacket in the confined space of the car. “I hear you're running triple shots now? That must be a hill of cash.”
Danno ignored his line of questioning and changed direction to future business. “I want the change to mean something.”
“Of course, that's what we agreed, didn't we?”
Danno stopped Proctor with his hand. “I want the change to mean something. I want it to happen on my turf, is what I'm saying.”
Proctor laughed. “What?”
“You heard me. I want it to happen in New York.”
It wasn't as easy to get a read on Danno as it used to be for Proctor. “Why would I allow that to happen?”
Danno turned to Proctor. “Because I fucking said so. Because that's where the money is. And because I'm only interested in the business of this thing.”
“You saying I'm not?”
Danno turned his stare back out the windshield. “I'm saying that you coming to my town and beating my champion looks good for you. So much so, that we're going to split it eighty/twenty my way.”
Proctor wiped the sides of both of his lips and took another sudden swig from his silver hip flask He knew that Danno had made New York a goldmine. Much bigger than he could offer at the moment. “Fifty/fifty. No more and no less.”
“Eighty/twenty or you can come up to my city and try and take the belt off him, yourself.”
Proctor just wanted the belt. In truth, he would give Danno a hundred percent if he wanted. But fuck him, the fat piece of shit.
“Seventy/thirty, Danno.”
Danno buttoned up his top button in preparation to leave. “I'm going to give you one more chance. And then I'm closing the door to you.”
Proctor struggled to keep himself in check. Where was all this attitude coming from all of a sudden? “Deal,” he begrudgingly muttered.
He reached into his back seat and bundled a black leather old-school doctor's bag onto Danno's lap. Proctor opened it to show Danno that there was money inside. A lot of money.
“At least one of us can stick to their word. That's your last two hundred, you fat pig,” Proctor said as he squashed the bag into Danno's stomach.
“When?”
Danno dislodged himself from his seat and closed the door behind him. Proctor leaned over and rolled down the window.
“When are we doing this?” Proctor shouted after him.
“I haven't decided yet.” Danno answered without even turning around.
Proctor punched his steering wheel. “Answer me, Danno.”
Danno stopped and leaned back into the window. “You went too far with all of this, Proctor. I'll ring you when I'm ready to talk to you again. Apart from that, you fuck yourself.”
Ginny got out of the car and let Proctor know he was watching. Danno gave him the bag and lowered himself into the car. Proctor screamed onto the street.
October 28th 1971. New York.
Danno's phone rang beside his bed. He instinctively shot up into a sitting position and scrambled for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Boss, it's Ginny,” Folsom said in a concerned voice.
“What? Is that you, Folsom?” Danno switched on the bedside lamp and put on his reading glasses for no discernible reason.
“Yes, sir.” Folsom took a deep breath and continued. “He's been turned over. He's in the hospital, boss.”
Danno had only been asleep an hour or two. He was totally muddled as to what was going on. “What happened? Hello?”
“We think he dropped you off and then on his way home he got...”
Danno turned around to see his wife lying motionless with her mouth wide open. “Come get me.”
“I'd be there in a shot, but I can't drive... there's a car on the way.”
Danno went to hang up but caught himself just before he did. “Did... is he alright?”
“He's pretty bad.”
Danno slowly hung up. He took a couple of seconds to try and form his thoughts in the night's silence.
/>
How can you fucking sleep through that?
Annie never even moved beside him in the bed. Her smaller and smaller participation in their lives was really starting to grind on him. Danno angrily roared into her ear. “What?” she asked in a groggy drone. “Is there... is it something?”
“No,” Danno answered, acting all confused as to why she was even awake.
“Oh, okay.” Annie began to slide back into sleep.
The pills were a great help at the start. Now they were just taking over.
“Go back to sleep.” Danno said as he walked out of the room with his clothes draped over his shoulder.
Annie went back to sleep. Danno carefully walked past every dark corner of his huge house until he got to his front door.
October 28th 1971. New York.
“Who are you, anyway?” Danno asked his young – very young – driver.
“I'm Folsom's kid,” the nervous voice from the front replied. “He can't drive too good for a while.”
Danno's life had changed so much that he didn't even feel all that comfortable in a car with someone he didn't know. “Just take it slow, son.”
“My old man told me to get you down there quickly, sir.”
“What's he doing sending you? Where's Oscar Dewsbury?”
“My old man said he hasn't seen him in days. Can't find him anywhere.”
The battered, lime green, 1960 Rambler clipped the side mirror of a parked truck as they took another hairpin corner.
Danno tried to stabilize himself by lodging his hands into the ceiling and his feet underneath the seat in front of him. “No, I overrule your old man and I say we're slowing down.”
“He told me he would whip my ass if I didn't get you there as quickly as I could, sir. My daddy don't lie about them things.” the young man replied, flooring the pedal. “We're nearly there.”
The car came to screeching halt and Danno ejected himself quickly from the back. “Jesus Christ.”
“Will you tell my Daddy that I did a good job, mister?”
Ricky was waiting at the entrance door, staring squarely in the car's direction. Danno waved to catch his attention, but Ricky didn't acknowledge him. Danno was sure he saw him alright. He just wasn't responding.
“Mister?”
Danno leaned back into the window and peeled a fifty off for the kid. “Try not to die or kill anyone on the way home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Danno walked up the steps of the hospital and his ride pulled off at top speed behind him. Every step he took, he found it harder to look Ricky in the face, for some reason.
“How is he?” Danno asked as he got closer.
“He's lucky to be alive,” Ricky replied. “They fucking ran him off the road and took the money.”
Danno walked to the hospital entrance. Ricky walked the opposite way.
“Where is he?” Danno asked.
“They're doing something with him.”
Ricky just needed to get out of there before he said something that would make everything worse.
Danno walked after Ricky, but Ricky kept a noticeable pace in front. “Wait.”
Ricky stopped but didn't turn around.
“Are all the Boys here?” Danno asked.
Ricky shook his head. “I asked them to go.” Ricky took a half-empty pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one up.
“Was Oscar Dewsbury with them?”
Ricky shook his head again. Danno focused on the task at hand.
“What happened?”
Ricky quickly blew the smoke out of his way. “I thought you might know.”
“Know what?”
He looked Danno straight in the eyes. “You need to tell me what's going on.”
Danno and Ricky sat on the bench outside the hospital with cups of steaming coffee in their hands. Both men were silent, although Ricky was growing into a ball of anger.
Danno struggled with where to start and Ricky had nothing left to say until he heard what the angle was. He could tell for a long time that something was not right, but it never affected him before. Wondering what was going on wasn't part of his job.
“Now, if we're going to do this, I want to be honest with you. I'm too tired for lying and you're too hurt. Okay?” Danno said stirring the drink with a stick. “I won't dress none of this up. Not even the bad stuff that makes me look like an asshole.”
Ricky was ready for some honesty. “What is it?”
Danno had one last chew on whether revealing the angle was a good idea or not. How much money would telling Ricky end up costing him? Danno quickly weighed it up and knew he could trust Ricky. He leaned in closer. “It's a work,” he whispered.
Of all the things that Ricky thought he might hear, that wasn't one of them. “A work?” Ricky caught himself and lowered his voice. “A work?”
“Well, that's the way it started.”
Danno's immediate honesty took Ricky by surprise. “What's a work?” Ricky asked.
“This thing.” Danno took a cautious sip from his cup. “I wanted to make it as real as possible. The idea was that situations would be set up to start the feud. Proctor didn't have a challenger – his boy was inside – so we had to use what we had – which was each other.”
“You were working your own company?”
Danno nodded. “We knew the parameters. Public places. Like get-togethers were okay to work the angle. Like my anniversary. If he showed up, we would work some more. Create some more bad blood to get people talking. If he showed, we worked, if he didn't, we didn't.”
“He gave you permission to put a loaded gun in his mouth?”
“Nope. But I didn't give him permission to touch my wife, either.” Danno poured his coffee into a potted plant beside him and dropped the cup on the ground. “It was a great idea that's turned fucking sour. Like a play fight that turns serious. He'd push me a little harder than we’d agreed, then I'd do it to him. In the end, we forgot we were supposed to be playing. It turned into this – people in the fucking hospital. Real stuff.”
Ricky paused and ran over all the situations that could have been a work. All the celebrations that Danno attended. His insistence on having wrestlers around. His insistence on having Lenny around.
“You knew that the wrestlers would leak what they saw or heard.”
Danno nodded. “The territory system is dying, Ricky. National promotion is the key to us making it. The only way we do that is with TV and mainstream interest. And I had to make it look like I had no control over it. I had at the start. Now I've quite clearly lost the run of this in the middle, but I've still got the belt. The finish is my call, whether he likes it or not. I'm looking at the biggest match in our history. In our city. Shea Stadium. We call the finish.”
“Do you think he did this?” Ricky asked, struggling to hold his temper.
Danno thought about it. “Maybe.”
Ricky looked at Danno with vengeance in his eye. “So what do we do?”
Danno stood up. “What do you mean?”
Ricky stood up and heaved with aggression. He wasn't an easy man to handle if he left his reasoning behind. “What are we going to do with this fuck?”
Danno was confused by the question. “What we always do – make money.”
“How do we retaliate?”
“Can't we do both?” Danno slipped a newspaper clipping into Ricky's hand.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
November 1st 1971. New York.
Danno waited patiently in his newly furnished office. His brown phone sat front and center on his hardwood desk. “You sure it was this morning?”
Ricky nodded. “That's the word we got.”
“Okay.” Danno waited for the phone to ring. “You hungry?”
“Let's just go down there and break this fucking guy’s head, boss.”
Danno shook his head. “I have no interest in making no money from this situation, Ricky. All due respect to the personal aspect of it, but you're going to have to s
tart sounding like a man that trusts I have this one.”
Danno secretly willed the phone to ring. Before Ricky even arrived, he checked to make sure the line was working at least fifteen times. He was spending more and more time acting cool when he didn't know what the fuck he was going to do next.
“How's Ginny today?” Danno asked in a throwaway manner.
“Same.”
The word was the call was going to be this morning. Danno hoped so, because he knew if Ricky didn't see something was being done, he was way more likely to go off page and do something stupid in Florida himself.
“It wasn't an approximate thing? Like, roughly this morning?” Danno asked.
Ricky shook his head. “No, it was exact. Like definitely today. This morning.”
And then the phone rang. Danno fixed his appearance as if the caller on the other end could see into his office.
“You going to answer that?” Ricky nervously asked.
“Two more rings.”
The phone rang once. They both moved closer and waited for it to ring again. Danno had rehearsed his routine in the shower fifty times since he got word it was going to happen today. One more ring and it was show time.
Danno looked bewildered at the silent phone.
“Julie?” He roared out the door.
“Yes, boss?” answered a female voice from outside his door.
The phone began to ring again. Danno immediately picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Garland. It's Melvin Pritchard here.”
Danno gave Ricky the thumbs up and settled back into his leather seat. “You were the last man on the planet I expected to hear from today, Mr. Pritchard.”
“Well, I won't keep you.”
“No, you're right – you won't.”
Danno could see Ricky settle a little easier into his seat.
Melvin continued. “Out of respect for you, good sir, I would like to inform you that the date has been set for the Senate Task Force hearings. The bill is on whether to ban professional wrestling in the state of New York or not.”
Danno twisted his pen between his teeth and prepared a notepad. “Doesn't make much difference to me one way or the other, Mr. Pritchard.”