The Hurting Circus Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Paul O’Brien

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0935-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0938-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Niamh. I thank every day

  whatever random lottery put us together.

  CHAPTER ONE

  October 12, 1972.

  New York.

  Lenny knew he was dying. He knew the shrieking siren was for him. His boss was dead. Lenny didn’t know if his children were okay—he couldn’t speak to ask. His mouth was full of blood. His throat too.

  He was lifted into the waiting ambulance, a single bullet in his chest. Lenny could feel himself dying. He wanted to see his wife, hear his kids. The emergency responders worked on his body while his mind drifted home.

  Five days later.

  London, England.

  Joe Lapine walked behind the bellhop. The carpet under their feet was soft and the place was quiet.

  “How long is your stay in London, sir?” the bellhop asked.

  “Forty-eight hours,” Joe replied.

  “A flying visit, then?”

  Joe didn’t want to talk. He particularly didn’t want small talk. “Listen,” Joe said as he removed a fifty-pound note from his pocket. “There’s a Mister Tanner Blackwell staying here, too. You need to go wake him and tell him his meeting is about to start.”

  “Yes, sir,” the bellhop said as he took the money and walked quickly away.

  Once inside his room, Joe took a seat at the desk. He laid out his watch and a slip of paper that had a couple of phone numbers written on it. Those numbers were all Joe had to make everything right again. The watch was to make sure he did it in time. Danno’s death had made the spotlight on the wrestling business too bright. It had dragged an operation that thrived on secrecy into the public eye. The wrestling world was being turned over and it was up to Joe, as chairman of the National Wrestling Council, to change it back to the way it had been.

  Since 1948, all of the bosses of all the wrestling territories had met under the umbrella of the NWC. They used their monopoly to crush any likely competitors, discuss wrestler trades and match endings, and, most importantly, decide who was going to be their world champion. Now, the NWC’s most prestigious territory had a dead boss—and an investigation that was getting too close for comfort. Joe wasn’t directly responsible for any of the incidents that had set the law onto them—he wasn’t the one who had broken the wrestling business—but Joe was sure going to try to fix it. The sooner he could drag the wrestling business back into the dark rooms it thrived in, the sooner they could all start making real money again.

  On the ground, the NYPD didn’t give a fuck about wrestling, or the fact that some wrestling guys were taking each other out. What really got the law animated was the fact that a New York senator had been attacked on their streets, under their noses. Senator Hilary J. Tenenbaum was working on a bill to ban professional wrestling in New York State. He had been assaulted and stabbed in both legs the night before the hearings began. This had left the wrestling business looking more than a little suspect. Such a high-profile and shocking event wasn’t beneficial for anyone—not the wrestling bosses nor the police chiefs who ran the city. And now the main suspect, Danno Garland, had been murdered. Too much bloodshed and too many column inches provoked every badge and uniform in New York to grab the wrestling business by the throat. In all their years of existence, the National Wrestling Council had never faced anything like this before. New York, their crown jewel, was now a toxic city to them, and a scandal like this was very bad for business across the country.

  The only thing that saved the entire wrestling business from being exposed was that Danno’s right-hand man, Ricky Plick, had burned Danno’s office to the ground before anyone in uniform got to it.

  But someone like Joe just couldn’t risk assuming that Ricky had destroyed everything.

  That’s why he was sitting in front of a couple of phone numbers and a watch. He was going to use the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London to try to stem the rot that was spreading in New York. Before he could begin, though, he had to get his fellow bosses in order. And he needed to do it as far away from the growing chaos as possible.

  The phone rang, and Joe answered it to hear the receptionist: “They’re ready for you downstairs, sir.”

  About four thousand miles away, Joe had already set another pillar of his plan in place. He didn’t know the details—and didn’t want to—but was safe in the knowledge that a large part of his problem was about to be dealt with.

  The same day.

  Atlanta.

  Donta Veal was the kind of man that the wrestling bosses loved: he was loyal, he was tough, and he enjoyed hurting people. He had grown up with Joe, which meant he could be trusted when the call needed to be made. Joe couldn’t think of a time in his career when he more needed Donta to do what Donta did best.

  Joe had tried Donta in the ring about a decade before, but had quickly had to rethink his decision. Donta didn’t seem to grasp the collaborative nature of professional wrestling. Joe doubled Donta’s salary and retired him from competition. If Donta was going to hurt people, then he might as well hurt the people that Joe wanted hurt. Donta would happily bite, break, or maim anyone who tried him—and some people who didn’t. He never really gave a fuck who it was.

  Joe had had to hide Donta for a couple of years after Donta pulled out the eyeball of a bar patron in Joe’s hometown. To someone who didn’t know Donta, such a thing might sound like the act of a frenzied man. But Donta didn’t do frenzy, or any emotion for that matter. The eyeball came out as calmly as one could do that sort of thing. Joe made some calls, protected his friend, and Donta went on a long vacation, which he was happy to end when Joe made another call to put him back in the game.

  Joe usually only called if someone had stiffed him on a payment. Sometimes venues would try to pay as little as possible, or some local TV guy would move Joe’s TV time. They would get a visit from Donta. This time, it was going to be Donta’s highest profile job. Joe knew Donta could be a liability in delicate matters, but he didn’t have any choice. Joe’s problem needed to be dealt with, and the NWC chairman didn’t have the luxury of time to meticulously plan it out.

  “Mister,” said a street kid, knocking on Donta’s car window. “I got what you wanted.” Donta handed the kid a five-dollar bill and directed him toward the back of his car. The boy threw a stack of newspapers into the open trunk and disappeared.

  Donta got out of his car and walk
ed around to see that the trunk was now half-full of newspapers and magazines. He had gone from town to town, paying kids and homeless guys to buy him a few papers here and a couple of magazines there. Even with one on top of the other, it was easy to see the common face that saturated all front-page headlines: the New York senator who had been attacked, Senator Hilary J. Tenenbaum.

  Donta closed the trunk and drove as fast as he could toward Florida.

  Same day.

  London.

  They assembled downstairs in the closed-curtain breakfast room, which otherwise would have had a beautiful view of the river Thames. Not a single person around that table gave a fuck about scenery. They were interested in their money. They were interested in how their chairman was going to make this situation in New York right.

  Joe entered the perfectly ordered room feeling a little jet-lagged and stale from the flight. At the head of the table—in Joe’s seat—was Tanner Blackwell, the owner of the Carolina territory and the promoter of one of the heavyweight champions of the world. Down at the other end were Jacque Kaouet and Jose Rios, who owned the Quebec and Mexico City territories, respectively. Sitting in the chair by the window was Niko Frann, the owner of the LA territory.

  Joe started. “Thank you for being here, gentlemen. We’re all a long way from home.” He received a round of nods as he pulled out a chair for himself at the side of the table. “We need to discuss our loose ends,” Joe said. “And we need to agree on a course of action to get us through this dangerous time for our business.”

  Tanner could sense that his opportunity was slipping away. Before their world changed, Tanner had made a deal that purposely created two heavyweight champions. Their unification match—match that would pit them against each other—was to be a record-breaker, a huge windfall. A windfall that would have benefited Tanner more than anyone else in wrestling, as he owned one of the champions, and Danno owned the other.

  “Can’t we make New York have the unification match? Before we change everything, we can still get this done,” Tanner said.

  Joe eased into his reply, but not before he made sure that his tie was centered. “I’m proposing to the executives here today that we go back to basics,” he said.

  “Hear, hear,” came the response—from everyone except Tanner.

  Joe continued, “We’re going to honor our own rules, which state that all title changes and territory sales are to be sanctioned by us collectively, first.”

  Tanner jumped in again. “Listen, we can go back and get this match set up for the end of the month. We can’t have two champions out there in the long term: that hurts the prestige of both belts.”

  Joe nodded in agreement. “But look around this room, Tanner. Look at the fucking empty chairs in here,” he said. “One by one, we killed each other—for what? For New York, that’s what. If we continue down this road, that place is going to be the end of us all.”

  “I know what this is doing to our business,” Tanner replied. “Do I look like some kind of fucking idiot to you?”

  “Well, then you know what the right thing to do here is,” Joe replied. “If anyone is thinking of buying or selling territory, then it has to come here before anything else happens. We vote on what’s best for business. This whole fucking mess was made by people making deals outside of this meeting, and as chairman of this council, I am useless if I don’t know what the fuck is going on.” Joe watched the room as he was given a quiet nod from everyone in the room—everyone except Tanner.

  “No more side deals and secret handshakes,” Jose Rios said. “We’re supposed to be working the marks who buy the tickets, not each other.”

  “We work as a collective, like we used to before,” Jacque added.

  Joe looked to be doing what any reasonable and responsible chairman would do: he was putting everything back on the table, and was taking the decision-making away from the back-alley meetings and “wink-wink” deals that were killing their business. The other bosses weren’t crazy about having a leash and a muzzle put on them, but no one had a counter-argument ready—not with the unprecedented mess that was left in New York.

  “I am sick of lying low every couple of months because one of us gets greedy or stupid. Or both,” Joe said.

  “I second that,” Niko said, nodding.

  “That’s fine for you guys,” Tanner said as he picked some fluff from his trousers.

  “Why is it okay for us, and not for you, Tanner?” Jacque asked.

  Tanner wet his thumb and wiped the last nuisance from his suit. “Because to sanction this approach would mean that everyone else here would have to change nothing.” Tanner turned his attention to Joe. “You know I want New York, and you know that I want that unification match. New York and I both have heavyweight champions out there. It was only a few weeks ago that we made the decision to create two titles, just so we could put them back together. Owning just one title is like having the dynamite but not the matches.”

  Joe leaned in so Tanner could see the whites of his eyes. “As of right now, this council is saying that New York is off limits. You hear me, Tanner? We’re not bringing all their chaos into the council.”

  Tanner dismissively turned away from Joe. “What do the rest of you think?” he asked the other bosses. “You all think we should leave this much fucking money on the table to rot in Manhattan?”

  “New York needs time,” Niko said. “There are investigations and cops everywhere asking about who we do business with. We’ve never had this before, Tanner.”

  All the other bosses stayed quiet. Their silence told Tanner everything he needed to know. He slowly turned back to the table and gave the chairman a slight conceding nod.

  “Do we have a plan to take the focus off New York right now, so we can go home and earn some fucking money?” Niko asked Joe.

  “I already have something in motion,” Joe replied.

  With that short statement, Joe had won the room. The NWC would close ranks and play small, but safe. New York was out of reach. Kinda.

  The next day.

  Florida.

  Donta walked across the old tough floorboards to the counter of the local store. Out of all the places he’d been in his life, he hated Florida the most. It might have been the travel, or it might have been the people. It also could have been the stationary ceiling fan above his sweaty head that made no fucking difference whatsoever to the stifling heat. In his experience, Floridians were by and large a friendly bunch who prided themselves on knowing their neighbors. This was a good thing for finding people—but it was also a bad thing if you were a stranger in their small town who didn’t want to be remembered. For this reason, he had a fedora pulled down over his eyes—not that there was anyone in the tiny store who would notice. This was a tourist spot with no tourists. It was a swampy, off-road, brown-necked, sweat-stained store that sold milk, newspapers, postcards, and stamps.

  Donta handed his purchases to the lady behind the counter so she could ring them up. She didn’t care to talk, but smiled anyway. “Keep the change,” he said as he took his postcards and stamps outside into the sweltering heat.

  It was wet, warm, windy, and humid all at the same time. He’d only been back in Florida for a day and already he was looking forward to getting the fuck out of there. He pulled his hat down further and threw the postcards in the trash outside as he marched to his car. He sat inside and opened his glove box. He took out a pre-typed, pre-sealed envelope which was already addressed:

  SENATOR HILARY TENENBAUM

  UNITED STATES SENATE

  WASHINGTON, DC 20510

  Donta carefully took his newly purchased stamps, licked them, and stuck them at the top of the prepared envelope. He looked around a little and made sure no one was watching before he opened his car door and hurriedly walked to the rickety mailbox at the side of the store. Donta made sure that his face was covered before covertly sliding the envelope into the slot.

  There was only one man who could tie the wrestling busines
s to the attack on the senator, and that man lived about five minutes from where Donta posted his letter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  New York.

  The Nightly View was a current affairs show that aired out of New York. It usually ran two or three investigative pieces with its studio anchor, Ant Stevens, directing traffic and linking one piece to the next before wrapping with an in-studio interview. This night Ant knew he had landed a big one. Both interviewer and interviewee were quiet, with their heads bowed and their faces freshly powdered, as they waited to be counted in.

  “Three … two …”

  Ant began on cue: “And now we turn back to New York, where in recent times the stories of murder, corruption, prostitution, and random acts of violence seem to grow by the day. We now live in a city where we have police dogs on the subways, whole neighborhoods are no-go areas, and not even New York’s own politicians are immune to the city’s slide. Tonight we have in studio Senator Hilary J. Tenenbaum, who was himself viciously attacked on the streets of New York only a few weeks ago.”

  Ant’s golden voice directed traffic to Senator Tenenbaum, who was sitting opposite him. “And, because of the charges levied in today’s papers about just who might be behind such an attack,” Ant said to Camera One, “we also have on the phone a wrestling promoter out of Tennessee, Mr. Joe Lapine.”

  “Thank you,” the senator said as he managed a fleeting nod of thanks.

  Ant was all business. “Senator, you say that this attack was because of your investigation into professional wrestling in New York State. You say that this sport isn’t a sport, in fact, and that everyone involved in it knows the same.”

  Senator Tenenbaum cleared his throat. “That’s correct. On the night I was viciously set upon, I was walking back to my home office to finish up some papers that I needed for the pro-wrestling hearings the following day. I was trying to get a bill together to ban professional wrestling in the state of New York. I never made it home to do so. I was warned—”

  Ant interjected. “Warned, sir?”