by Paul O'Brien
They all rode along silently. The arena was drawing closer and the tension of delivering the match began to rise.
“I need to pee,” Gilbert announced desperately.
Lenny kept driving. He was sure that Danno and the crew were already asking where he was. “We'll be there in less than five minutes.”
Lenny took 72nd on Roosevelt and saw the long, dark road open up in front of him. Gilbert began to hop around in the van. “I need to pee, I said,” he screamed.
Babu needed his own space. He was never this late to a building before and he had his pre-match rituals that he needed to get done. Looking at Gilbert was just pushing him closer to violence, and if there was violence in the back of the VW, there would be no match. He angrily pulled his towel over his face and closed his eyes and tried to zone out.
“Did you hear me?” Gilbert shouted at Lenny.
Lenny put his foot down to the floor and switched on the radio. No one was going to say that he couldn't get his job done. Both men would arrive in good time and surely he would get the credit for getting Gilbert there too.
“I fucking said I need to piss,” Gilbert screamed as he threw his bottle at Lenny.
With a dead clunk, the unopened bottle bounced off the back of Lenny's head. He immediately slumped forward onto the wheel and the van shaved the sides off a couple of parked cars. It slammed off the side of an exterior wall and shot Lenny and the icebox out through the windshield and Gilbert from the back to the front. Babu tried to stand up in the toppling van, but was slammed head first off the ceiling as it turned over and smashed into the leg of the railway bridge.
All three men were out. All that could be heard was the singing of the radio.
September 30th 1972. New York.
“Are you coming out to have a look?” Ricky asked Danno as they both stood by the entrance to the Shea Stadium field.
“Maybe later.”
“It's something the old-timers who did this before you could only dream of, boss. There are people out there who have crossed the country; left other territories to come to yours.”
The wild cheers grew larger as the bell rang for the finish of the first match.
“Listen to that,” Ricky said in awe. “They fucking sound happy to me.”
“Is the champ around?” Danno wondered.
“He's probably waiting in the locker room with the Boys.”
Ricky put out his hand for Danno to shake. “I was going to wait until later.”
“What?” Danno asked as he shook Ricky's hand.
“You beat the Beatles' record here. Sixty five thousand, four hundred and seventeen tickets sold.”
Danno was impressed, but didn't really feel like celebrating. “That's great.”
“I'll see you out there,” Ricky said as he left.
September 30th 1972. New York.
Babu crawled from the van. He could hear the sirens growing closer. Lenny was passed out on the ground close to him, and Gilbert was on the sidewalk at the other side of the road.
Babu looked for any witnesses as he lifted Gilbert over his shoulder and ran as fast as he could with him. Protect the business at all costs. That's what mattered more than anything here. If they both were seen together, then questions would be asked as to why two men who were about to go to war were giving each other a lift to the battlefield.
There was already too much of a light on the business, so Babu ran and laid Gilbert in the first alley he could find that was just far enough away.
He laid him down on the trash bags and rifled through Gilbert's pockets for money.
The lock on the gate to the alleyway was gone, but Babu didn't have time to think about that. The cops were nearly on him. He entered a phone booth and rang the Shea Stadium box office. It was the only number he knew, having dialed it a hundred times to see if they were sold out.
Well, they were, but Babu knew he wouldn't get to see it.
“Tell Danno Garland that Chrissy said the match is off. Little Proctor is hurt bad. It's important that he gets this message. Do you hear me?”
The woman on the other end of the line promised he would.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
September 30th 1972. New York.
Danno stood in the empty hallway in Shea stadium. He was straddling between internal panic and external patience with a disorientated Lenny on the other end of the line.
“It's not a fucking difficult question unless you have a super van that’s suddenly after magic-ing itself into a maze. Is that what you have? A van with magic powers?”
“No, sir.”
“Well then, If he's not in the seat, he's not in the van.”
Danno finished his sentence with a few thumps of the receiver off the chipped walls in Shea.
Lenny turned away from all the flashing, noisy distractions in front of him. He was sure there was a simple and logical step to all that he was missing.
“I'm sorry. I was knocked stupid myself, and I can't even really remember what happened. I would do anything to make this right, boss. You know that.”
Lenny waited for a response. He was fully aware that saying that he'd do anything for Danno Garland was a dangerous offer at this stage in the game.
“Are you still on the phone?” Danno asked calmly. Too calmly.
Lenny paused, unsure of what to do.
“Fucking find him. Do you hear me? You've got ten minutes to get them both here, otherwise do you know what will happen? The...”
Danno was stunned by the silence of the phone going dead. “What the fuck is going on?” he wondered to himself. “Hello?” he called down the dead line in disbelief. “Hello?”
Danno beat the phone off the wall several times in sheer frustration. Now he wanted someone to be looking so he could lay into them for just being there.
“Ricky?” Danno cried down the hallway. “Ricky?”
The bell time was drawing closer. Danno paced in his ‘office’ as Ricky sat quietly.
“I need to send a car out there now, boss. If the main event doesn’t go ahead there is going...” Ricky stopped short when he realized the obviousness of his statement.
“Wait,” Danno said.
“If we don't act now, then the whole house comes down.”
“Wait,” Danno repeated.
“There are sixty five thousand people out there...”
Danno stopped. “Hit me.”
Ricky waited a long time to hear those words; ever since Danno backed off on Proctor after Ginny got turned over. He just never thought he'd be given permission to do so. “What?”
Danno walked to Ricky and held his shoulders. He was wild-eyed, but smiling slightly. “You have to hit me out there. We need as many people as possible to see it.”
Ricky had no idea what Danno was talking about.
“This main event isn't going to happen now, for whatever reason. We have to think past it. You have to hit me out there in front of the locker room.”
Danno grabbed Ricky and walked him to the door.
“What are you doing?” Ricky asked.
“I'm not sure, but I know this is where to start.”
September 30th 1972. New York.
“Get someone to see if they can find out where they are,” Danno shouted before turning around to see that everyone in the company had lined up expectantly behind him.
A few bodies at the back of the room jumped up and actioned Danno's request.
Wrestlers, ring crew, refs and a few invited wives all stood silently like they were waiting to hear the dire prognosis of a loved one.
The weight of the situation hit Danno like a falling typewriter. “Alright, there's no way to sugar-coat this; our main event isn't going to happen here tonight.”
The collective dropped their heads in unison. A few deeper voices in the middle somberly cursed their luck. This was the big one for all of them. The one they had been working toward for the last few years.
“We still getting paid, boss?” a bra
ve, but anonymous, voice asked from the back. Danno ignored the question.
“It's time to make a call on the finish. We're going for a big shmoz, clusterfuck finish with everyone in the ring. Everyone who isn't booted up – get so,” Danno told the waiting crowd. “We're going to load the ring with everyone we've got.”
Ricky Plick was leaning his stocky frame against the wall just behind the rest of the troops. “Why aren't you going to let the natural thing happen out there, boss?”
Even though Danno had given a direction, nobody on the roster moved before hearing his answer.
“No. We're going to go out there to finish,” Danno said.
Danno hurriedly grabbed a paper tablecloth from a nearby table and thrust it into the chest of a wrestler in the front of the pile. “I need a list of everyone who is ready to work. Ricky? Go and find yourself some gear.”
Ricky tried again. “If they riot then we might at least get paid after all the shit we've been through.”
“I fucking know that Ricky,” Danno snapped back. “We can still work our way out of this. Get booted up.”
“With all due respect, Danno...” No one in that room had dared to call Danno anything other than 'sir' or 'boss' before. “But this whole place paid to see Babu versus Gilbert King and I don't see either of them here.”
The pressure in the room was immense.
“You sure you still want to work this angle, boss?” Ricky asked as he approached Danno aggressively.
The crowd of spectators had grown two-fold in the seconds that passed since Ricky questioned the owner. People who just worked for the stadium were now watching too.
“I don't want to talk about it here, Ricky.”
“There's nothing to talk about, Danno.” Ricky replied. “We can't give them what they paid for, so we make sure they riot.”
Danno wanted to address this in a stand up manner. Ricky was more about the business.
“I have no other choice now, Ricky. We stay and finish the card.”
Ricky butted his head against Danno's.
“You've done nothing but fuck this up since you got your greedy hands on it.”
Some members of the roster fired their displeasure at Ricky's disrespect.
Danno pushed his one-time student away. “Don't ever get in my face again.”
Ricky turned his back to his boss and clenched his teeth. He paused and silently looked around the room. “You people realize what's happening here? No payday. After all that's happened. The biggest pile of money we've ever seen is still on the table and he's going to give it back.”
“I'm not fucking this crowd over.” Danno continued to write out his revised card on the table. “We'll get them back again.”
“Your call, Mr. Boss Man. But I'm sick of trying to cover your fucking weaknesses all the time. You couldn't draw money with a green fucking crayon. Asshole.”
Ricky spun on his heel and sucker punched Danno hard in the side of the head. The old promoter stumbled helplessly into the tables which collapsed under his considerable weight.
Tiny Thunder, an Asian midget wrestler, grabbed Ricky around the waist as some of the roster fled to Danno's aid.
“Are you fucking crazy, man?” Tiny shouted. Ricky easily shrugged him off and moved for the exit. His strides exploded into a sprint when he saw some of the other wrestlers running toward him with bad intentions.
“Did everyone forget we're here to make money?” Ricky shouted as he bolted through the exit door.
The room melted into chaos.
Danno immediately tried to steady himself. There was a nasty gash above his left eye and a lump was already starting to form. Danno slammed his revised plan into Tiny Thunder's arms. “We go out there and finish the card. We take what is coming our way. Then we are going to rebuild. That's what's going to happen. This is the way we go.”
Danno staggered out of the silent room and used the stadium walls to escort him to the restroom where he hid in one of the stalls. He knew that there was no way this was going to remain a secret. Everyone was soon to hear the moment that Danno Garland lost the wrestling company that had been in his family since 1924.
The restroom door swung open and a panicked voice shouted, “Boss, Proctor King is looking for you.”
“You didn't tell him I was here, did you?” Danno shouted back.
“I meant, on the phone, sir.”
Danno exploded. “Well say that, then. There's a big fucking difference.”
The messenger paused. “What should I tell him?”
There's no way this didn’t look like revenge on Proctor. Danno knew that was what it looked like. How was he going to explain his way out of this one?
“Boss?”
Danno stood on his uneasy legs, opened the stall door and checked his swollen face in the mirror. “Someone fucking find me Lenny Long.”
The messenger bolted down the hallway.
Maybe Merv was right. Maybe Danno would fuck it up after all.
September 30th 1972. New York.
Lenny pleaded and begged to make a call, but they never even acknowledged him as they threw him and Babu inside a big holding cell. Knocking out a cop for calling you ‘fake’ was a no phone call move.
The only thing keeping Lenny together was knowing that Babu was a veteran at this. Tales of his overnight stints in various lockups around the country were legendary among the other wrestlers. Every territory that Babu went, there was another story of a ten man brawl and a heartbroken woman. Babu, The Savage from South Africa, was a living myth to all the Boys in the back.
Lenny snuck a look from the corner of his eye. Maybe Babu was having an off night ‘cause he didn't look all that comfortable in this cell to Lenny.
“You okay, champ?” A few years in and Lenny was so far outside the loop, he didn't even know Babu's second name. Or even if he had one. Driving and being around backstage meant he had one foot in and one foot out, in Babu's eyes. Danno had shown way more faith in Lenny lately, and so did Ricky. Babu barely acknowledged he was alive.
Wrestling was built on paying your dues before you were allowed in. It was one of the most rigid fraternities ever constructed. So, Babu, as champion, customarily ignored his every breath.
It's hard to put your finger on just how you could get ignored by a mute, but it was happening. It could have had something to do with the fact that Lenny had plowed them into a wall under the bridge on 72nd Street.
Yeah, but still – fuck him and his mute-ness. I'll break his big giant head and use it like a German helmet if he doesn’t brighten up soon, Lenny thought.
“I don't remember what happened, but I'm sorry. I know tonight was huge for the company,” Lenny said.
He might have been mute, but he certainly wasn't deaf. Babu followed every noise from the front of the station with focus and intent. He was on edge and it was beginning to become more evident to Lenny.
The cell was not nearly as nice as the ones on Dragnet and he hadn't seen any Joe Fridays so far. He did notice that the walls in the hallway were that pea soup green that was everywhere now. Then he wondered why he even noticed that. A little decor distraction couldn't totally drown out the reality that Danno Garland was surely looking for him.
Lenny wanted to go home and sleep in his own bed and eat from his own kitchen.
The silence in the front of the building was replaced with energy, which, in turn, was replaced with noise. Plenty of noise. The aggressive kind. Babu stood instinctively and cradled his severely injured forearm.
“What?” Lenny asked.
Babu acknowledged Lenny with a look of frustration. “Who do you think that is out there, you dumb fuck?”
Lenny needed a second to mentally chew on several things. One: he talks? Two: he thinks I'm a dumb fuck? And three: who is that out there that has a giant on alert?
September 30th 1972. New York.
The end of the announcement was shouted over the ferocious boos. “And there will be refunds for anyone...�
�� The announcer ran from ringside to avoid the avalanche of missiles that rained down in his direction.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Tiny Thunder shouted to his fellow wrestlers as he abandoned the ring. All the wrestlers ran back to the wrestler entrance.
The whole ringside area pushed forward and dismantled the retaining barriers like a swollen sea swallowing a storm wall. Pockets of fights had broken out in the huge crowds between New York and Floridian fans, each blaming their man on the no-show.
There were tunnels of people crushing and jamming themselves into all the available exits as the temperature rose to boiling point. The more scuffles that flared up, the more the peaceful people struggled to maintain their calmness and reason.
Bodies, arms, legs, chairs, bottles, barriers, shirtless people, bleeding people, angry faces, stunned children, sneaky punches, threats, and promises of beatings, all could be seen as Danno watched from a box at the top of the stadium. He nursed his eye, picked up the phone, and delicately laid it to his ear. “Hello.”
“You're doing this to fuck me over, aren't you? You were going to make sure that I didn't get that fucking belt no matter what you did. Isn't that what's happening here on my TV? Are you fucking me over, Danno?” Proctor was standing in his hotel room looking at the scenes unfold on his TV.
“No, I don't know what...”
Proctor paced his room. He was too far down the road to return in time to choke Danno in Shea. “Where is he?”
“Who?”
“What do you mean, who? The boy. That's fucking who.”
“He's not my responsibility. What are you asking me for?”
Danno hadn't got the message that Babu left at the box office. The lady who took the message just rolled her eyes and moved on with her day. Danno knew that Gilbert was with Lenny, but didn't know anything more than that.
“One of my guys just rang and told me that your champion dragged Gilbert out of his room,” Proctor said.
“What?”
“You better find my boy, Danno, ‘cause if I find out that there's anything wrong with him...” Proctor paused. “Find him.”