by Paul O'Brien
On this night, the rookie knew the voice of the person that was sitting about twenty rows back. Only the ring was lit, so Kid could only make out a silhouette in the stands.
“Can we let the people in?” a staff member shouted. “They’re starting to go crazy out there.”
“No,” the man in the stands replied. “A few more minutes.”
Kid stood up and leaned against the apron of the twenty-by-twenty red, white, and blue ring. He tried to look beyond the lights. “Why don’t you come down here and show me something, old man?” he said. “It’s been a while.”
The man in the stands struck a match for his cigarette, and Kid caught a glimpse of his pained, pale face. “You okay?” Kid asked.
“I’m fine,” the man answered. He took a pull from his cigarette. “Now, there’s only four basic parts to a wrestling match: the Shine, the Heat, the Comeback, and the Finish. The Shine is where our hero starts off well, and wins a couple of small, early victories to get the crowd excited. They paid good money, so give them what they want.” He took another pull and continued.
“To start with.”
Kid moved to jump the barrier. “You can stay where you are,” the man in the stands said. Kid reluctantly stayed where he was, but he had no idea why he couldn’t go see his mentor.
“The second part of the match is the Heat,” the man said.
“I know this stuff,” Kid replied.
The man continued regardless. “And the Heat is where it begins to go wrong for our hero,” the man said. “The heel sees an opportunity to win, and he takes it. It’s the part of the match where the audience decides whether the babyface hero is worth supporting or not.”
“Seriously, man. What are you doing up there? I can’t see you,” Kid said.
“This part of the match is when bad things happen to good people.” The man stood and walked very slowly and feebly down the steps toward the ring.
“What’s the matter with you?” Kid asked.
“And, of course, the Comeback is when the babyface decides that he’s not having any more,” the man said. “He finds a reserve of strength, tenacity, and passion to lift himself off the ground, and fucking fights like a man. This should drive the crowd wild. It should lift them to somewhere higher—to some kind of belief that we can all do that, if we’re pushed hard enough.” The shadowy mentor dropped his cigarette on the floor and stomped it out with his foot.
“I’m going to start letting these people in now,” the front-of-house manager shouted from the opening door.
“The hero can never give up during the Comeback phase,” the man said. “Never.”
Tad sat at his perfectly placed desk in a small, partitioned office. It was about twelve feet by twelve feet, but it was his kingdom. He particularly liked to boss women parolees around—it made him feel good. This morning, though, his first appointment was with Lenard Long. Tad looked at his diary and noticed he had treated himself to five women in a row after Lenny.
“Next,” Tad shouted. Lenny pushed the door open a little to make sure it was okay to enter. “Come in, Mister Long.”
Lenny did and sat down opposite the greasy-haired parole officer. Tad took out a form. He had a pen holder that was populated by fifty ballpoint pens, and all of them still had their caps attached.
“Did we do a piss test the last time we met?” Tad asked.
“No,” Lenny replied.
Tick.
“Are you a homosexual?” Tad asked.
“What?”
Tad looked up from his form sternly, but broke into a smile. “Just kidding. See, this isn’t so bad, is it? Parole doesn’t have to be me all over your ass, and you, like, hating me doing that to you.”
Lenny was just going to agree to whatever he had to, if it would get him the fuck out of there. “Okay,” he said.
Tad dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair to prove that he had a rebellious streak. “Are you doing your bit, Lenard?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Lenny said.
“People always wonder what it is we do,” Tad said. “Do we just look at people pissing all day, or are we checking up on people in Mexican restaurants? Neither. We give people the option to take from society, or to give back. If you’re one of the ones who gives back, then you’ll never have to worry about Tad Stolliday. However—”
“I have a job. I have a place to stay,” Lenny replied. “I’m not doing any drugs, and I can even stay away from alcohol, if you want me to.”
Tad looked hurt that he didn’t get to finish his speech. “What job have you got?”
“I’m promoting matches,” Lenny said.
Tad laughed a little. “No, a real job.”
Lenny had thought his reply mightn’t go that well. “I’m the owner of the New York Booking Agency.”
“But my understanding is—that’s not—that company is—how do you say? Finished.”
Lenny looked confidently at Tad. “It’s nowhere near finished. Not now that I’m out.”
Tad saw a difference in Lenny—a knowing, something under the surface. “Spot checks are what works. That’s what I do: I drop in on people, and make sure that they’re keeping the promises they made to this great city. Just so you know.”
“You can drop in on me anytime,” Lenny replied.
With that, Tad packed up his rebel behavior and picked up his pen again. There was paperwork to be done.
With Babu on his way to see Joe, Lenny called Ade. She arranged to meet him on West 19th Street. It would be safe there, with not many people around, so they could talk.
“She’s just gone in,” Jimmy said to his father, who was hiding around the corner.
“Anyone with her?” Lenny asked.
“Nope.”
Jimmy was a perfect human recon machine; he was small enough to go unnoticed. Lenny looked up and down the street for anyone who could do him harm. With Ricky out of the picture, he wasn’t taking any chances.
“Okay, go in and scout the place. Make sure that it’s just her,” Lenny said to Jimmy. Jimmy nodded. He was only too thrilled to be helping out his father.
Lenny composed himself and went over his memorized script. This was the beginning of his play. Now that he had all the snakes out of the bushes, he needed to cash in quick and decisively. He weighed up the long list of things that could go wrong; he also thought about staying stuck where he was. A man with nothing. A man who couldn’t even try to go home.
Lenny was more willing to roll the dice.
A couple of minutes later, Jimmy appeared and walked past Lenny like they’d never even met. “She’s alone,” the boy whispered.
Lenny walked left as Jimmy walked right.
It was a gallery: pure white, with various pieces of art on the walls. Ade seemed to be pulled in by the giant black-and-white picture of a hand. It held a card that said in red print: I SHOP, THEREFORE I AM.
“Do you like it?” Ade asked, as if she had sensed Lenny approaching.
“No,” he replied.
She turned around. “Why not?”
“Why don’t we grab some coffee?” Lenny asked.
“Tell me your idea first. Then we’ll see if it’s worth coffee or not,” Ade replied.
Lenny took another look at the piece on the wall to buy himself that extra second so he could make sure that he was doing the right thing. She was the best angle he had; he might as well swing for the fences with it. He said, “Well, the other bosses have starved us of wrestlers, which kills our TV content, and Ricky didn’t come back to town, either.”
“He didn’t?” she said.
Lenny shook his head. “I’m hoping he’s okay.”
Ade could see that Lenny was desperately trying to adjust to being the boss. “So, what are you thinking?”
“I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to do champion versus champion,” Lenny said.
Ade was totally disappointed. This same idea had been shot down a hundred times in the last decade, and she
knew that was what Joe Lapine had in mind. She wasn’t going to go directly against the National Wrestling Council—she had already learned her lesson. “This is what you called me into the city for? They’re not going to cut us in on that deal, no matter what we offer,” she said.
“I don’t want to do business with the other wrestling bosses, Ade. I’m talking about professional wrestling heavyweight champion versus boxing heavyweight champion,” he said. “That’s why I need you.”
The idea was so out of left field that Ade had to check that he wasn’t joking. “Are you serious?”
Lenny might never have run a wrestling company before, but he knew his wrestling history. He was like an encyclopedia of past matches, angles, winners, and losers. He knew what he liked as a fan, and he knew what had drawn the big numbers in the past. Wrestling and boxing had been linked since day one—and crossing both had always meant money. “They did it in Japan before,” Lenny said. “Boxing champ versus wrestling champ. It created a ton of interest and tickets sales. It was a terrible match—most all wrestler versus boxer matches are—but we can make it better.”
Ade began to think about it. It was genius, really. This was the way to put on a match that the world would be interested in, without relying on the NWC to supply the talent on the other side of the ring. “But your champion—”
“I’ll talk to my champion,” Lenny said.
Ade continued, “No, I mean your champ would have to lose. No one is going to put Jinky Keeves in the ring against a rookie wrestler and then let the wrestler win.”
Lenny could sense they were on a roll. “I agree,” he said. “But by losing, my champion has to become a star. We’ll make him valiant and heroic; we’ll give him no chance from the start. We’ll set the story like David versus Goliath: in the end, the boxing Goliath wins, but our guy is seen and respected by millions who might want to see his next match.”
“How do we even get this sanctioned?” she asked.
“We might have to go outside the US,” Lenny replied. “All I need for now are headlines—exposure. I need my champion’s face everywhere. He has to be introduced to America with a bang. Then we’re going to have stadiums and international promoters kicking our doors in.”
“Lenny.” Ade was surprised—delighted, but surprised. “This is—I can make this work. I can make money from this. We can run the video packages on your TV.”
Lenny put out his hand for Ade to shake. “I want a press conference—I want this to look legit. I want my New York territory to come across like the crown jewel again.”
“Just one thing,” Ade said before she shook hands.
“Yeah?”
She slipped a small stack of hundred dollar bills into Lenny’s pocket. “You have to start looking like a boss if we’re to do this. If we’re going before the world, I want you to be believable.”
Lenny nodded; there was no counterargument that he could make. “I’ll repay you out of our take,” he said as he took her money.
Ade was genuinely excited. “I could kiss you.”
“Let’s wait until this whole thing is over—then we’ll see if you feel the same way.”
Babu filled the hotel elevator like rising bread in a hot oven. A couple of other waiting patrons decided to wait for the next elevator when they saw who their company would be.
Not only was Babu huge, he looked pissed. He was pissed.
When he got to the sixth floor, he stooped and walked as fast as his legs would carry him to the door at the end of the hallway. The same door that Donta Veal was sitting in front of on the floor. Babu himself had visited this door many times over the years.
“What can I do for you?” Donta asked when he saw the giant approaching. Somewhere in his bored mind he hoped that Babu’s wife had told him that he’d followed her to work.
“Where’s Joe?” Babu asked.
Donta was slightly disappointed that Babu wasn’t here to see him. “He’s not in there.”
Babu kept walking directly for the door until Donta simply had to move out of the way or be trampled. The giant shoved his shoulder into Joe’s door and it immediately collapsed. “Joe?” he shouted. “We had a fucking deal, Joe.” Babu checked every room in the suite but Joe wasn’t there. “Where is he?” Babu asked Donta.
Donta was now standing in the doorway. “Don’t know,” he said. “Now, who am I going to say is paying for that door?”
“He’ll have a lot more to worry about when I see him,” Babu said.
Donta stood into Babu’s range. “You making threats now?”
Babu took a step toward Donta. “You’re fucking right I am. Where’s Ricky Plick?”
Donta never flinched.
“I said, where’s Ricky?” Babu shouted.
Donta stepped back. “Never heard of him.”
Babu didn’t believe him. “I saw you here with Joe before. I know you know who I’m talking about.”
Donta lit himself a cigarette. “Did it ever cross your mind that maybe Ricky just stayed where he was?”
Babu didn’t have time to argue. He didn’t know if Ricky was dead or dying, but he knew in his gut that it was one or the other. If Ricky just didn’t want anything to do with New York he would have called.
“Things would be safer for everyone if you’d just deliver New York back here—like you said you would,” Donta said.
“I’m working on it.” Babu lied. He was already sick to his stomach that he and Joe Lapine had a secret handshake. He needed to find out if Ricky had tried to make contact before starting a war with a boss.
Babu promised himself as he left that if Joe broke the terms of their long-standing deal, there wouldn’t be a building in New York big enough or strong enough to keep Joe alive.
Or anyone else that tried to stand in front of him.
Atlanta, Georgia.
This was the meeting that Joe hoped nobody else in the business had heard about. This was the meeting that made New York so vital. This was the meeting that Joe Lapine had been angling for behind everyone’s back.
This was the biggest opportunity of them all.
Joe laughed at the rise of anxiety in his stomach as he waited for his host’s car to pull up and park. A driver came around to the back door, and Sean Peak exited the car.
“Joe Lapine,” Sean said with his hand outstretched, as if they had known each other for twenty years. “A pleasure.”
“Mr. Peak,” Joe replied. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Sean stopped him right there. “It’s Sean. Let’s continue as we mean to go on.” Joe smiled and nodded in agreement.
“You see that?” Sean asked as he pointed high above Joe’s head.
Joe looked up into the dark sky at the tall, red, skeletal structure that stood large above them.
“I’ve been admiring it for at least twenty minutes,” Joe said with a huge smile.
“That’s it,” Sean said. “That transponder is what gets me from coast to coast, from state to state.”
Joe had known about it and studied the power of a national broadcast, but he hadn’t wanted to think of the potential until he saw it.
“Back in Florida,” Sean said, “I ran a little station where Proctor King taped his weekly wrestling show. He was an asshole but his numbers were consistently huge. With all due respect, his piece-of-shit wrestling show outdrew everything we had there. Then one thing led to another, and Proctor never came home.”
Joe pretended that he had no idea what Sean was talking about. “I’m not sure I ever met Proctor,” he said.
Sean continued, “I’m thinking about putting professional wrestling on my station here. Making it national.”
Joe could hardly contain his excitement; this didn’t happen very often for a man who had seen all that he had seen. He knew that whoever got this chance was going to be the king of wrestling for a long, long time. Why own a piece of America when you could lay claim to it all?
“My concern is that, in the past, your busi
ness hasn’t been a united front,” Sean said. “I had some dealings with Danno Garland that damn nearly made me shit my pants.”
“Those days are gone,” Joe said. “As a matter of fact, we’re having a heavyweight title unification match in about a week’s time to solidify the whole country again. It will be one champion. One sport. And I’m the man who will be sitting on top of that promise, Sean. You can deal with me on this personally.”
“Well, let’s see how you get on, Joe,” Sean said. “I’d love to put wrestling on WSPS, but I have no interest in the old fractured way. If you can bring me the best wrestling matches, with the glam and the glitter that you guys have, I would be more than interested to put it out there for the whole country to see.”
“It’s all in hand,” Joe said with a smile. “It’s all in hand.”
“These people will buy you and sell you back to yourself,” Maw Maw Vosbury said as he stepped off the elevator. He was accompanied by Jinky Keeves, the smartly dressed heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
“I know these guys,” Jinky said. “We don’t have anything to worry about.”
Maw Maw stopped his client in his tracks. “You know the three cups scam?” Maw Maw asked. “Three cups: they mix them around, and you guess where the money is.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, these guys’ whole business plan is to pick your pocket while you’re looking at the cups.” Maw Maw started to walk again. Jinky followed.
“So what are we talking to them for?” Jinky asked.
“I attend a yearly event in Los Angeles with these people,” Maw Maw replied. “And one thing that I’ve learned is that they attract money. Big fucking money. And we like money. Do you like money? I like money.”
Jinky nodded. The men stood at the entrance of the restaurant and took in its majesty. One hundred and seven stories above the dark and twinkling Manhattan streets, Windows on the World was the place to impress. It had large glass windows intersected with white columns. There were immaculate booths and tables and freshly polished brass rails. There was soft lighting and the best view of Manhattan: the rivers and the bridges of New York City. This was a place where the world heavyweight boxing champion and his manager could talk some business, and look good doing it.