Blood Red Turns Dollar Green, no. 1

by Paul O'Brien

  Danno did all he could from taking out his gun and blowing the back of his head off as he stooped.

  “Why all the hostility, Danno?” Proctor wondered as he slid the keys back into Danno's pocket.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Is it true that you're not going to drop the belt to my boy at Shea? I mean, I waited all this time for you to pay me back and now I hear you're going to fucking weasel me out of the payoff.”

  Danno was very careful to frame his next words. Not because he didn't think he was right to do whatever he wanted to this man after all that was done to him, but because this was all wrong. Pitch dark, in his own driveway at three in the morning. Strange noises amplified by the situation he found himself in.

  Anyone would have to be careful to measure his or her answer.

  “Fuck you.” Danno said as he continued toward his house. He prayed that he made it another step as he walked with his back to Proctor.

  “Well, it's not going to happen that way.”

  Danno was absolutely afraid to turn back around. “Why is that?” he asked as he continued to walk.

  “Because I have your guy.”

  Danno immediately thought of the giant and how unhappy he was with all of this. Did he jump?

  Proctor continued, “Oscar Dewsbury jumped to Florida. He's working for me now.”

  Danno, confused, stopped. There was no logic in Proctor's reply. Oscar was never more than a mid card act for Danno. He was handy to run errands and drive him around from time to time, but was never going to make money. Oscar was the reason he was so confident?

  “What?” Danno slowly turned to see that Proctor was right behind him.

  “I didn't think you were going to actually pull out of our deal. I wanted to ask your big fucking fat face, myself. And even after I got you all this.” Proctor shook his head in disgust and looked around at Danno's mansion.

  “You think I don't know that your guy didn't get to Merv? Huh? You did nothing to get me this.”

  “Whatever it is you’re planning, you stop it now. You drop the belt to my boy or Oscar tells the good people from the government anything they want to know at those hearings.”

  Proctor stood in Danno's face to emphasize his point. “I'll make sure he points directly at you and tells them how crooked you are. You hear me? You drop the belt.”

  Danno knew he was in serious trouble. If Proctor was being straight with him and Danno couldn't get to Oscar, then he was fucked.

  “Do you really think a testimony by someone on the inside of the business isn't going to spread your way eventually?” he meekly countered.

  Proctor laughed. “We do things the old fashioned way in Florida, Danno. The last thing I have to be worried about is a politician.”

  Proctor began to leave. He cheerfully whistled like a man out for a stroll. “Do the right thing. You made your money. It would be a shame to lose all this at your stage in life.”

  Danno unlocked his front door and closed it gently behind him. On his own, with no one around, he was convinced that he wasn't cut out for this. It was all the second-guessing, worrying, outthinking, attacks from all sides. He wasn't even enjoying what he had. This whole sorry fucking mess was doing strange things to him.

  “Hello?” he shouted from his hallway. “You there, Annie?” Danno didn't really expect an answer. A bomb would have a hard time moving his wife from her sleep.

  “Annie?”

  Danno's chest began to tighten and it became hard for him to breathe.

  “Annie,” he called up the stairs, now more panicked. “Annie?”

  It felt like a car was parked on his chest and he was unable to control the flow of air leaving his body.

  “Annie,” he called, his voice getting weaker. “Annie, wake up.” Danno threw his back against the door and slid to the floor. He ripped at his buttons and pulled open his shirt.

  He didn't have the breath to call her anymore. All that went through his head as he fought for his life was Proctor got to kill him after all.

  August 4th 1972. New York.

  Lenny's phone rang beside his bed. Bree immediately sprung up with her husband. Lenny dove on the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hello?” Lenny whispered as he peered around Danno's unlocked front door. There was no answer, so Lenny entered and quietly tiptoed into the hallway. “Hello?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Danno sitting on the edge of a seat in a room off the hallway. “Boss?”

  Danno was distraught-looking. His whole body was sickly pale and his skin showed glimmers of sweat under the light. “Thanks for coming,” Danno said in a hushed voice.

  “Are you okay, boss?”

  Danno sat in thought like a sober man looking back on his uncharacteristic behavior from the night before. “I've got to grab this situation by the neck or it’s going to kill me.”

  Lenny gently walked closer. “Is everything alright?”

  Danno was still locked into a faraway stare. “Something happened in this business with my old man. He got in his Caddy one day and never came home. He got caught in the middle, pulling all the strings. But me, I'm going to be killed by the planning of it all. Not even a fucking bullet or a knife. I'm going to roll over and choke like a fucking woman at the thought of it. Huh. No wonder he didn't give me the business.”

  Lenny gently sat down beside Danno. “Something happen, boss?”

  Danno turned and looked Lenny in the eye. “I'm trusting you to look after this house and my wife in it until we get this deal done, Lenny,” Danno said as stood with a wild look in his eye. “Every night, whether I'm here or not. And I don't want her to know you're around. It would only make her nervous.”

  Danno walked for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find my balls.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  August 5th 1972. New York.

  Danno rang Ricky and gave him some instructions. There were a couple of people who needed visiting. The boss hung up before Ricky could ask any follow up questions.

  Danno purposefully surrounded himself with big mouths and loose lips when he had been building the match at the start. Now that he needed some real work done, he called on the few people he could trust.

  Ricky called, and within thirty minutes, Lenny tore up the stairs of the apartment block. He wanted to make sure that he would get his part of the puzzle complete. It could visualize his rise through the ranks if he could deliver Oscar on a platter back to Danno.

  Maybe Danno would even let him be in front of a crowd.

  For once, Lenny got the tip himself. Oscar Dewsbury was usually a private person. So much so, that even the Boys – who lived in each other’s pockets – didn't know where he lived. Most of the time, the single wrestlers would bunk together in the same apartment complex and share all the bills, but Oscar never spoke of any wife or kids or of where he lived.

  Lenny drove Oscar up and down a lot of roads. He always bought Lenny's wife's sandwiches, too. It seemed the next thing he loved besides eating was talking about eating. Big, fat Oscar loved planning and scheming his food days on those long journeys from town to town.

  He once told Lenny that he loved the Thai place that just opened under his apartment. He promised to take Lenny there when they came off the road. Pongsri. Oscar said it was the best food in the whole of New York.

  And there was only one.

  Lenny hung around outside the restaurant and asked questions like Popeye Doyle. Oscar wasn't an inconspicuous type of man; within three people, Lenny was able to find out exactly where he lived.

  Lenny stood at apartment 17c and knocked lightly, but repeatedly. It was a strategy that was paying little reward after twenty-four minutes. Lenny stood back and checked to make sure he couldn't be 'fingered for the job' by any witnesses, before driving his foot into Oscar's door.

  Instant pain shot from his heel to his hip and dropped him to the ground. The steel reinforced door didn't even vi
brate.

  “You alright there, son?” an old lady asked from the sliver of openness in her door.

  Something dragged Lenny's eyes down from her cloudy grey eyes and white mustached lip. The old lady held a small handgun down low and pointed right at his heart.

  “I'll ask you again – you alright?” she said.

  Lenny slowed got to his feet. “I'm looking for a friend of mine. His name is Oscar Dewsbury. Big, fat man with a bald head.”

  “What do you want with Oscar?”

  Lenny nervously blurted out a mangled sentence, “He owes me some money. Not a lot. It's a friendly amount.”

  “He don't live there anymore.” The old lady withdrew her gun and closed the door.

  “Wait,” Lenny called after her.

  It was too late, the old lady was gone. Lenny wanted to be the one who cracked the case for the boss. He knocked on the old lady's door. “I'm sorry, it's me. Do you know where he went?”

  “I have my gun pressed about three feet up from the ground. Does that sound like somewhere you might be standing?”

  Lenny quickly moved to safety away from her door. “Please, can you tell me if you know where he's gone?”

  “Florida,” she shouted.

  August 5th 1972. New York.

  Ricky waited and waited outside the office of Senator Hilary J. Tenenbaum. He didn't know what he was going to do when he saw him, he just knew that he had to see him. Bribing a Senator wasn't something he prepared for at any stage in his life, but that's what the boss wanted him to try.

  August 5th 1972. Georgia.

  Danno choked the wheel like a man possessed. He didn't drive himself much anymore, but this was something he had to do alone. All that open time in the car just gave him a clearer sense of what he was doing and, more importantly, why he was doing it.

  August 5th 1972. New York

  “Senator?” Ricky called after the suited man rushing off down the street.

  Senator Tenenbaum didn't even look around. “My office is open for another twenty-five minutes if you'd like to make an appointment.”

  “Just a minute of your time, please.”

  The Senator stood at the side of the road and held out his arm to wave down a cab. “I'm late for an appointment.”

  “Danno Garland wants you to reconsider the hearings, Senator.”

  Tenenbaum turned around with a puzzled look on his face. “Why does that name ring a bell?”

  “The Task Force on Professional Wrestling?”

  The Senator nodded as the light came on in his head. “Well, you tell Mr. Garland that I expect to see him and his people come and give their side of the story in a couple month’s time.”

  Ricky approached carefully as a cab pulled up. He had his left hand on an envelope full of cash and his right hand on a forty-five Colt. “I am one of those people.”

  Senator Tenenbaum looked warily at Ricky for the first time and opened the cab door quickly. “Well then, I'll see you there, too.”

  The cab door slammed closed and the Senator took off into traffic.

  Ricky was too honest to use his left hand and too scared to use his right.

  August 6th 1972. Florida.

  The scorching heat took Danno's breath away as he stepped out of his car. The humidity wrapped itself around his face like a hot towel fired from a cannon. New York got sticky, but this kind of heat was a whole other world.

  He walked to the restaurant door and barreled past the front-of-house staff. At the end of the dining-room, he could see Proctor at a table with several other guests. As Danno approached closer, he could see Joe Lapine, interim chair of the NWC; Tanner Blackwell, the owner of the Carolinas, and another man he didn't recognize; all laughing and enjoying a good breakfast.

  Proctor spotted Danno and flinched before steadying himself. Danno stopped at the foot of the table and silently stared at Proctor. Joe and Tanner began to feel like a cheating spouse who had just been caught on camera.

  “I believe you know everyone here, Danno, except my son, Gilbert – the next heavyweight champion of the world,” Proctor confidently said.

  Gilbert King stood up to shake Danno's hand. Danno blanked him.

  “He is going to be the next champion, isn't he Danno?” Proctor forcefully asked.

  Danno licked his lips and drank Gilbert's drink. He delivered his next words slowly. “Enjoy this feeling Proctor, ‘cause I'm going to fuck you as hard as I possibly can after these hearings are over.”

  Danno turned back the way he came. He slapped open the restaurant doors, slipped on his sunglasses, walked to the parking lot and pointed his car back for New York.

  August 7th 1972. New York.

  This was where the money was sown to grow again someday. Thirty-two athletic greenhorns doing sit-ups and laps till they puked. They were made up of tough guys and football players, strongmen and nightclub bouncers. All of them were sure of stardom on their first day. Usually only one or two finished. But one thing was for sure; none of them were smartened up until just before their first match, which meant they trained for real matches. And that got painful very quickly.

  All the old-timers delighted in making them squeal and quit as soon as possible. This was where the next generation would learn to love the business and more importantly, protect it.

  Ricky watched Ginny get confused from behind the glass in the small kitchen. The ring was set up across the other side of the warehouse and Ginny was taking a group of rookies through their paces, though now it was easy for him to lose his place. In a wrestling match, that was the final nail. If you couldn't remember where you were supposed to be in there, then someone was getting hurt. That was happening to him a lot since the crash. It broke Ricky's heart to see him like that.

  Danno entered the room and rooted in the brown bag for his sandwich.

  “How did the meeting with Ade go last night?” Ricky asked.

  Danno walked to the window and looked out at the new recruits in action. “She's having a terrible time getting the crowds in now. The honeymoon is over.”

  “Did she find Merv's money yet?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “That's great for the future,” Ricky replied.

  Danno nodded. “It could be. If the government leaves us a business.”

  Babu struggled to enter the warehouse through the small door. All the trainees stopped what they were doing one by one when they saw the champ walking past. He was even bigger close up.

  “Back to work, you fucking marks,” Ginny shouted as he shook the ring ropes in frustration.

  Ricky gathered together his notes and followed Danno upstairs.

  Danno, Ricky and Babu sat at an old table at the end of a dusty old room above the warehouse. There was a silence that sprung from sheer tiredness and resignation. It had been a long four years and each of the three men were coming to the end of it with little energy.

  “Are we going to do business?” Babu asked.

  “Yeah.” Danno answered.

  “We're dropping the belt?” Babu asked, looking for absolute clarification.

  Danno and Ricky both nodded.

  “Just checking,” Babu said.

  Danno threw down his sandwich, as his thoughts were putting an actual bad taste in his mouth. His whole world was haunted by the idea of Proctor being handed the belt after all he had done, and then, a week later, some asshole Senator would try to put him out of business.

  For the first time, Babu was accepting of Danno's position. He knew his boss was fighting two wars at the same time. “I'm not going to lie to you; I had a fucking blast with that belt. Made a lot of money too. It's going to kill me to see them walk out of there with it in their hands.”

  “I wish I had a run with it,” Ricky said enviously. He wasn't the only one. Only a very few people got the belt. Those who did went down in history. “And not only were you a great champ, but you were a fantastic draw just like the boss said you would be.”

  Danno opened his
sandwich to show his brain there was nothing poisonous between the bread.

  Ricky continued, “When this fucking Gilbert King bombs, the other owners are going to be crying for you to get the belt again. We just need to do this the right way and leave it clean enough for us to get it again.”

  Babu nodded. Danno's appetite was back.

  “Tickets are nearly gone. This is going to be an easy sell out,” Ricky said with a proud smile. “Most of the other owners have been ringing the office to congratulate you, boss.”

  “I must admit, I have been ringing the box office number over there a hundred times a day to see if we're sold out,” Babu said.

  Danno looked shocked that Babu would take such a risk.

  “What are they going to do, recognize my voice?”

  “True,” Danno replied.

  “I was listening to the news on the way over, they're coming from everywhere to see this.” Babu said. “Some of the news shows are even talking about it. They're expecting war to break out between the two owners before the night is out.”

  Danno tucked into his sandwich. “Well, they're all going to be very disappointed. There's no way that's going to happen. This night is all about what happens in the ring. Me and Proctor are done.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  September 14th 1972. New York.

  They met after three weeks apart in the grey forecourt of a dealership in Queens. Bree Long did her best to stop herself from crying or fighting or whatever else was on her mind.

  This was where she would get to talk to her husband. To tell him how things were at home. Swap pictures of their kids. This was their meeting place. In a forecourt. In Queens.

  This is bullshit.

  Lenny could see Bree marching toward him. “You want to take a look around the back?” Bree asked, not wanting to have an argument in the company of the oncoming salesman.