by Michael Pool
What she said?
"God's not the only one with a plan."
[Pause.]
That was when I noticed the three policemen coming down our row of booths. Father Richard led them. He walked with his hands in his pockets, with his head carried low. The officers and the detective with their backs straight, shoulders cocked. Unhurried in a weird way, but still alert.
I told Marcy they were heading toward our booth and she asked me if I knew what communion meant. I was too thrown to possibly find an answer so Marcy told me it comes from the Latin word communis. "Means to share," she said. "Same Latin word we get community from." She repeated the word. Community. "Like a tribe," she said.
I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. So I just kept eating.
"Detective Chauncey looks tired," Marcy said.
I told her that there had to be some sort of development. Why else would they be there?
And she said— [Hough clears her throat.]
She said the funeral home probably called them.
I asked why, but Marcy didn't seem to hear me. She just looked over to the playground, watched the kids running around. There were only a few left by that point.
"What you're supposed to be thinking about," she said, "is the gracious gift of Christ."
I stopped chewing, my mind stuttering.
Because I hadn't said anything, Marcy glanced over her shoulder at me. "At communion, I mean." Her eyes returned to the approaching police and Father Richard. Her hand scratched at that arm again, where I'd seen the sauce stain earlier. But now, the inside of the sleeve was a cluttered ladder of red. Erratic, blurry red lines, layered side-by-side from mid-forearm up her bicep almost to her armpit.
Dread built and bubbled in the pit of my stomach. I knew then that something was happening—something awful. I could feel it around me, like the world's turning had slowed.
"You know," Marcy said. "You were wrong before. What you said about Michael."
I didn't—I wasn't sure what she meant.
"Michael's not looking down on me," she said.
I lowered the fork in my hand back into my basket of rigatoni. I stared at her, hollow with that swelling heartache. "Mar," I started to say.
But Marcy just lifted a hand. "He's not looking down on me," she repeated. She waved vaguely to the surrounding booths, the people still moving about. "He's all around me now." Finally, something like a smile crept along her lips. Again, she looked at me. "He's even standing right in front of me." And then her eyes dropped to the rigatoni in my hands.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
The Kompanski Incident
by Joseph Rubas
I read somewhere last night that Krusher Kompanski's going to be inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame next September. The headline said something like: CONTROVERSIAL PRO WRESTLER NOMINATED. The article went on to talk about his life and the "suspicious circumstances surrounding his death."
Suspicious my ass.
There's no ambiguity about it; I shot the motherfucker in his fat, ugly head, and everyone who gives a damn knows it. It was front page news when it happened. It was 1985, after all, right in the middle of the 1980s wrestling boom, so of course a wrestler getting blown away by a booker backstage was big news. What happened beforehand was big news too.
Let me back it up. In 1973, I was twenty—a tall, lanky kid with evil eyes and genius-level street smarts. I dropped out of high school when I was sixteen to work for my uncle, Anthoney DeNocco. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should: He was a captain in the Los Angeles Crime Family. They called him Tony Knocks. In September '73, Tony bought out a wrestling promotion based in Barstow called the Mojave Wrestling Federation (MWF). It was a popular act, had thirty guys and its own arena. Hell, it even had a lucrative Saturday morning timeslot on TV.
The owner, a fat little guy named Bill Watkins, was a gambler though, and most the money his company made went on the table, if you know what I mean. Every couple weeks, he'd drive out to L.A. and place bets with Uncle Tony. More often than not, he lost. Uncle Tony was a patient guy, and whenever Watkins couldn't pay, Tony'd give him a pass. Finally, he called in his debt, and man, was it a debt. I can't remember the exact figure, but it was a lot. Watkins said he'd have to close down shop and file for bankruptcy and still not have enough.
So Tony cut him a deal. Hand over the MWF and he'd call it even.
Watkins obliged.
Anyway, after they signed the paperwork but before Uncle Tony went out to Barstow, he gave me a call, and we met in the back of this lounge he owned in Newport Beach. He was a tall guy, lean and mean, with graying black hair and hard, blue eyes.
"You're into that wrestling crap, ain't ya?" he asked.
I shrugged. "I guess." Though I didn't let on, I was a huge fan...or rather, had been growing up. My favorite was always Gorgeous George. Wore silky capes and had his valet spray perfume in the ring. Back in Jersey we had Garden State Wrestling in Trenton, which aired on Saturday nights. Sometimes, when the wind was right, we got wrestling from Albany.
Tony nodded. "Alright. Tell me about it."
"What do you want me to tell you?"
Tony shrugged. "Tell me everything."
Lucky for his goombah ass, I was the kinda fan who liked to know history and shit, so I read a lot of books. I began his history lesson telling him that pro wrestling in the US started in carnivals, and even today wrestling insiders use a lot of carnie lingo.
Wrestling broke away in the twenties or thereabouts, and every region had its own thing. I don't know if they do it anymore, but back then, it all operated on a territory system. You had the National Wrestling Association (NWA) as a governing body (then in the sixties, the American Wrestling Alliance came along), and under them you had dozens and dozens of different promotions, or companies. Think WWE or TNA today.
Promoters (bosses) only worked small patches of the country. There was Jim Crockett in Virginia and the Carolinas, Georgia Championship Wresting in Georgia, Southwest Wrestling All-Stars in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. If a promoter tried to promote himself on someone else's territory, there'd be hell to pay. You know, it's funny, but the NWA might as well have been another mob family. They did sneaky, underhanded shit, you know? This guy from Tennessee messing around in Ohio? Send someone to rough him up. Things like that.
Anyway, the MWF was strictly a California thing. Like I said earlier, it was based in Barstow, but it traveled through the desert on occasion, putting on outdoor shows during the summer. Every once in a while, it made it as far west as San Diego, but that's pretty much it.
"You know a lot," Tony said.
I shrugged. "I read books."
Tony laughed. "Be here tomorrow. We're goin to Barstow."
The next day, I met Tony at his place around eight, and we set off east on I-15 surrounded by hardscrabble flats tapering off to low, rugged mountains, Barstow's a lot like Vegas, rising up from the desert suddenly and inexplicably. It's smaller than Vegas, but just as jarring if you aren't expecting it.
That day, the sky was dusty blue and ragged clouds blew lazily across, north to south. The MWF building was on Parker Street, in the shadow of an overpass. It was a factory of some type at one time. It was two stories, had big metal rolltop doors, and big windows in the front. Inside, a long hall led out to the factory floor, which had been converted into a wrestling arena. A ring sat in the middle of the room, with metal gates blocking off the crowd seating—"seating" being just a bunch of metal folding chairs. An entrance ramp led to the backstage area. Locker rooms, toilets, some more offices.
"You must be Mr. DeNacco," someone said behind us.
We turned. The guy was short, scrawny, and balding, with big black glasses. "I'm Harold Kuntmyer. Mr. Watkins' booker."
Harold was the guy who ran the day-to-day operations of the company while Bill Watkins pissed his money away at craps and blackjack. He'd been active in the wrestling scene since the forties. He knew the business like th
e back of his hand, which pleased Tony. He had someone to take care of the heavy lifting.
We all went over to this diner across the highway and talked turkey awhile. Tony figured that after expenses (paying the wrestlers and shit) he could make about three Gs off the MWF. Half of that had to go to the big boss. It wasn't great, but it was money, and that's what the mob's all about. Better yet, it was clean money.
That was a Tuesday. The Saturday show was gonna be taped on Thursday. Me and Tony left Harold in charge of everything and returned to L.A. Thursday morning, Tony picked me up and we went back to Barstow. We met the wrestlers (all thirty of them) and watched from the sidelines as people started packing in. Attendance that night was two hundred. Not great, but whatever.
I'm not gonna go into details, but the night went good. The crowd loved it. The guys were good. The main event, pitting our biggest face (good guy) against our biggest heel (bad guy) was a real treat. Lotta blood. When the heel won and proceeded to work the crowd, shit went wild—people were throwing soda cans and popcorn boxes and everything.
"Who writes this shit?" I asked Harold.
"I do," he said. "For the most part. If a wrestler's big enough, he gets creative control. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes it isn't."
Boy was he right.
Like I said earlier, that was in September 1973. In November, I got busted roughing a union worker up and got three years. But in those two months, I was in Barstow every week, sort of...rediscovering my love for wrestling. Uncle Tony stopping going after the second week and used me as his eyes and ears. I passed messages on to Harold, and he got them done. It was a fucking dream. I mean, it was lucky. We inherited this great promotion and a great right hand man. Shit rarely happens that easily.
Anyway, back to prison. I did my three years, didn't talk, didn't bother anyone, and got out a little early, in July instead of October. The first place I went was Uncle Tony's.
"I don't want you out there anymore," he said, hugging me. "I want you doing something else."
That "something else" wound up being the MWF full-time. He wanted me to be the jack-of-all-trades type—to head up security, book talent, come up with storyline angles. Whatever needed doing. I wouldn't be making big money, but I was okay with that. Uncle Tony bought me a car and got me an apartment in Barstow, and that was that. I was pretty much on my own.
For the first year or so, I stuck close to Harold, learning everything I could from the guy. How to do this, how to do that. We came up with a couple angles that went big, even got us in Pro Wrestling Illustrated, the biggest wrestling mag in the country. We did brisk business. Not too much more than when we started, yeah, but we were getting by fine.
Uncle Tony came by every once in a while to make sure things were going good, and they were. In June 1977, the NWA champ (who toured all the different promotions, giving the local heroes a shot at the gold) dropped the belt to our main guy ("Punishing" Paul Perry).Suddenly the wrestling community knew who we were—and people who didn't usually give a shit about it started coming by because, hey, they won the belt. We got a second TV timeslot in 1979. Friday Night Wrestling was carried all over the Mojave and into San Fran.
That summer, we toured a little. After getting permission from the NWA and the regional promoters, we did a show in L.A. in June, and another in Vegas in August. The first brought in 10,000 fans, the second 11,000. We were making more money than ever, and Uncle Tony started taking a more active interest. By the end of 1979, he was devoting more time to the MWF than the L.A. Family.
Then Vince McMahon took the WWF national.
Remember when I said earlier that wrestling worked on a territorial system? Well, there's a reason I said "back then." In 1980, Vince McMahon, a promoter in the Northeast, started buying out other promotions and their assets (including TV time). He envisioned a huge money-making corporation spanning the country. I can't say I blame the guy, it was ambitious, but that's not how wrestling worked. He pissed a lot of people off with that.
Uncle Tony was one of them.
In March, McMahon made Tony a lowball offer to buy the MWF and turn it into a "real" promotion. Tony told him to go to hell and hung up. He was so offended that he said we should start buying other promotions and go nationwide too. Sort of a war. Anyone who knows anything about wrestling knows what happened to WCW when they went up against WWF. They made good ratings, but after a while they lost steam, and one day, old Vinnie McMahon came calling with a briefcase full of cash. I was for the idea. Let's do it, I said. Tony kinda backed down once he did the math. He did buy a couple TV timeslots from failing promotions out east. He also gave me permission to start luring McMahon's talent away. "Money's no problem on that front," he said, "because fuck that guy."
I offered top dollar to WWF guys, and most of them took it. Some of these meatheads were nationally famous by then, and people wanted to see them. We bought a few timeslots from other companies across the country, ticking off the NWA in the process. In 1981, they excluded us from hosting the NWA champion, so we scratched all the championship belts to shit, sent them to NWA headquarters, and replaced them with our own belts. In retaliation, the NWA kicked us out.
I know I've been rambling. Here's the good part:
In 1983, at a WWF event in Fresno, I got backstage and managed to talk to a few of their guys. None of them seemed interested in my offer except for a big, towering hunk of meat named Krusher Kompanski. Real name Hiram Kompanski, he debuted with the WWF in '81 after wrestling under a variety of names in the South and Midwest. On TV he was a giant, but in person he was even bigger: 6'5, 300 pounds (all muscle), and arms like fucking tree trunks. Standing next to him, I felt like a kid. He wore this black leotard and a leather mask. When he cut promos, he didn't talk, just grunted and made crushing gestures with his hands. "Crush! Crush!" he'd yell.
Of course that was all an act. He wasn't the smartest guy, but he was a lot smarter than some of the goons Tony had working for him back in L.A. He said he wasn't happy in the WWF because he couldn't develop his own character. They told him to be the big, dumb wildman or get the fuck out. Because he was popular, and his contract was (serendipitously) about to expire, I told him I'd give him more money than Vince McMahon and let him develop his own character.
We shook.
Krusher Kompanski debuted in the MWF on October 3, 1983, running to the ring to save our biggest heel (Slim Jim Robinson) from a beatdown by the good guys. I was at the announcers' table that night because I wanted to see him in action, and I'm glad I was. Kompanski was a beast. Despite his massive size, he ran quickly and silently to the ring, slid under the bottom rope, and started kicking tail. The fans recognized him right away, and started cheering their asses off. Backstage after the show, I shook his hand and said, "You're fucking great. Oh, man, that was good."
He smiled. "Thanks. I think so too."
By December, Krusher Kompanski was our main guy. In the MWF, he wasn't a big, dumb wildman—he was a psychopathic juggernaut who just liked hurting people. Our TV timeslots around the country blew up; everyone wanted to see what the wildman would do next. Would he hit a ref? Maybe. Would he snatch an announcer up and clobber him over the head? Who knows? By the beginning of 1984, me and Uncle Tony were beginning to think we'd have enough capital to go up against the WWF by 1985, maybe 1986 at the latest.
Two things stopped us.
One: Carmine Guggio, boss of the family, started demanding bigger cuts from our profit. "You guys are on TV every week," he said. "I go to look for news, I come across your guys playing tiddly-winks on Channel 3. You're making more money, so you give me more money. It's only fair."
Two: Krusher Kompanski himself. We were building our brand around the guy, and he knew it. The sneaky son of a bitch knew he was our star, and he started milking it. He wanted more money, he wanted more control, he wanted to choose his matches. He was a fucking primadonna. Poor old Harold, sixty-two and sickly, nearly lost his mind dealing with that asshole. Kompanski'd
fucking whine like a little bitch. "I don't liiiiiike that." "I don't waaaaana lose to him." Finally, Harold retired. He was dead in a year anyway, but I think he woulda stayed until the bitter end if it wasn't for that fat piece of shit.
Tony didn't like Kompanski, but he knew which side his bread was buttered on, so he gave in where he could. From October 1983 to March 1984, Kompanski didn't lose a single match. Looking back in hindsight, I guess it was a good angle. You know, crazy man just knocking out the competition. The WCW did it with Goldberg in the late nineties. That wasn't our plan, though. We were gonna have him get beat in mid-'84 by the main face (Bob Davis), but Kompanski wouldn't have it.
Things came to a head in April. Kompanski already lost to Davis the month before and he was scheduled for another loss. He bitched and moaned in my ear for three weeks. Then all the other wrestlers were bitching at me because he was so hard to work with. It was a fucking nightmare.
Anyway, on April 10, Krusher Kompanski went up against Gene Terry, a short, skinny little kid we were working as the underdog. Kompanski was going to be his first win.
The problem? When the match started, Kompanski wouldn't sell anything the kid did. That means, when Terry threw a punch (not connecting, because wrestling's fake, remember?), Kompanski just stood there, lookin at him. The kid was supposed to get Kompanski up on his shoulders and bring him down on the ring (collapsing it in the process), but when he tried, Kompanski just shoved him aside like he was flea.
"That's not in the fucking script," I said. Me and Uncle Tony were in the back, watching on a TV monitor. Finally, Kompanski snatched the kid up by his throat and gave him a real slam to the mat. You could see it on the kid's face—it hurt. Kompanski put his boot on the kid's chest, and the ref had no choice but to count one-two-three.
"That Polack motherfucker!" I tore off the headphones and stood up.
Tony put a hand on my arm. "Cool it, will you?"
"He just fucked up the match! On purpose!"