24

I RAN, HOLDING BACK THE GYM BAG AS IF DAVID had upgraded his slingshot since beating Goliath. I turned the corner, hard, and even started to mutter Tyger Tyger in case I’d need a joyride to take on a room full of fake and real fighters.

But the sight stopped my fears.

A card table lay knocked over, four hands of mixed value at gin rummy splayed near the shining boots of six wrestlers. Near the table stood more muscle per ounce than even Achilles had to brag about. His abdominal wall was an eight-pack of lean muscle, surrounded by hulking lats; his broad chest was crisscrossed with throbbing veins. His left hand—which could have gripped a small meteor—was attached to a thick cut of a wrist, leading to a biceps bigger than my head, and rolling shoulders made of solid rock. His right hand was trapped behind his back, and whoever was responsible was hidden by the titan’s muscle. Atop the thick neck was a mop of long, blond hair that hung down to his chest where each pectoral slab was tattooed with a mushroom cloud. I was a lousy detective, but would have bet against the odds at Cactus’s casino that this was Bikini Atoll.

“Get off me, maggot.”

Most of the six beer-guts-and-biceps crew were smiling, laughing, and pointing. Amid the muttering jibes, I could hear what I’d already deduced. The big man couldn’t counter a hammerlock. Dr. Fuji would have laughed as Bikini tried in vain to reach behind him. As I watched Bikini struggle, a hand slapped my shoulder. The hand belonged to a guy with an enormous black beard and wild curly hair, who stared down on me from a height nearly a foot above mine. “Betcha he calls for momma before he cries uncle.”

I smiled. “I never bet on the misery of grown men.”

“Then you must be new.”

“Shemp!” Bikini said. “Get these animals off me!” Then his arm was free, and by god, those biceps had to be twenty-three inches all the way around.

The big beard laughed. “You dodged a bullet.”

I smiled. “Better than catching it.” I offered my hand, preparing for ten different kinds of wrist locks or stretches to tear me apart. Instead, the callused bear paw grasped mine. “Kodiak.”

Bikini shook off the pain. “Laugh it up, has-beens. You guys just made an enemy today. I’m the only one these people are coming to see. You wanna see who’s got stroke with the boss? You’ll be walking my bags to the airport before we get to San Diego.”

I noticed a little guy in a referee’s uniform in the corner. He caught my eye until Bikini paced over, stood before me, and blocked the view.

“Who the fuck is this pipsqueak?” There it was: an ashen aftertaste under his beer breath and the cloying scent of tanning oil on his hulking frame, a taste of magic. Black Lotus.Just under the surface.

“This here is Jack’s replacement for the main event,” Kodiak said, smug. “A real shooter.” He didn’t mean good with a six-gun, with which I was passable. A shooter was a wrestler who knew real submission holds, guys who could break your wrist as easy as a desiccated chicken bone. “Probably knows more holds than you.”

I smiled at Kodiak. Thanks a lot for the invitation to the initiation, I thought.

Bikini shook his mane. “No way. Not this vanilla midget. Not funny, Kodiak.” His finger was the size of a bratwurst and jabbed me with malicious intent. “Who trained you?”

“Dr. Fuji, master of a thousand holds,” I said, grinning from ear to ear like a complete mark.

Another poke of his bratwurst hit my chest. “Who the fuck is that? Some no-account Jap from the carnival circuit?”

My grin hid, I hope, an intense desire to rip out his tongue and staple it to his head like a fleshy combover. “Oh, you’ve heard of him!”

The grapplers chuckled and hooted, except one. “Teach him some discipline, Bik!” His hair was thinning beneath his beaded headband, and he wore a suede leather vest that ended in fringe. He wore tights so baggy they looked like a skirt, and across his strong but less-cultivated chest in the faded blue of prison tattoos was a lightning bolt. Ladies and gentleman, the Dynamite Hippie. “Learn him,” the Hippie said, as if he, not Bikini Atoll, had the confidence of a real fighter.

“Try a hammerlock!” someone yelled out, and the laughter crashed.

Bikini grabbed my imitation luxury jacket, yanked me close. I dropped my bag, flexed my knuckles until they cracked.

“What the fuck are you faggots doing?”

Shemp filled in the door and everyone shut up and went back to pushups, stretches, or lacing their boots. Bikini’s nostrils flared like a dragon’s about to spit fire before his mammoth mitts popped open, oh so dramatically, and he extended himself back to stare me down. “Just do the job, mark. Take the bumps. Do what you’re told. And keep your smart mouth shut. Or you’ll see what kinda hell I can unleash.”

“Great promo,” I said. “Too bad the cameras weren’t rolling.”

“Zip it,” Shemp said. “Go in the cooler and take a load off.” Bikini walked past the booker, Dynamite Hippie in tow. Shemp glared at me, thumbing his jowls so the sweat dripped free. “Kodiak? Smarten the kid up before I just give Sam her money and drop this guy where he stands. You got twenty, then you’re squashing this bastard in the ring.”

“Got it, Shemp,”

He turned and headed down the corridor to the “cooler,” which was apparently reserved for the ruling elite, leaving the rest of the area for the boys who filled out the roster. And in here? Not a lick of Black Lotus, which made me feel good for their hearts. But worry bloomed that Bikini would explode in the ring like Jack on the boardwalk.

Kodiak slapped my back. “C’mon, kid. Time to put you through the paces.”

“Kid? He hasn’t been a kid since I was breaking chains!”

The ref who had waltzed Bikini behind his back walked over to me. He was tall, thin, jaunty, walking as if he carried sixty more pounds than he really did, face shaved clean . . . that’s what threw me. That, and the gray hair, and the fact he wasn’t wearing the chains he’d worn on his shirtless, godlike physique thirty years ago.

“Hercules?”

He popped his muscles in his ref outfit as if they were still like Bikini’s, his Greek accent played up for effect. “The Original Greek God!”

Kodiak laughed. “You know this mark, Leo?” Even I didn’t know Herc’s real name was Leo.

“Of course! He was our stick!” He gripped my shoulder, hands so soft they’d be confused with a baby’s cheek in the dark. “But don’t let the son of a bitch-bitch fool you! He can work and shoot and yes, oh yes, he was trained by a bastard named Fuji!” His eyes welled up with tears. There are a lot of romances on the road, but the one Herc and Fuji had was the kind you had to keep hidden from the prying eyes of the world and management. Edgar had laughed about the two “bastards who buggered each other.” All I could see was two outcasts who found solace and happiness in a world that would rather they kill themselves.

“Great to see you, Herc.”

“Why you trading in your cards for tongs, James?”

“Long story, old friend.”

“And we don’t have time,” Kodiak said, then pointed at a bench with a stinky pair of black-and-white tights and bright-blue boots. “Get dressed and I’ll tell you how this ends. Leo, you, too.”

As I undressed in the humidity of other men’s stink, Kodiak ran through the set.

“You come out first, because you’re the baby face, a hero, because you’re pretty.”

“Aw, shucks.”

“I’ll come out second, because I’m the heel. It’s better to start the match with them hating me, going nuts, and then watch you try and fail. We’ll play the crowd like a cheap violin until we get to the main event. But I’ll spare you my philosophy on how to book a good show. What name should we give this victim?” Kodiak said to Herc.

Herc laughed, hands on his hips, a geriatric Superman. “Ha! There is only one name for him: Icarus! He came to close to the burning sun of Kodiak and fell twice as hard!”

“Good enough,” Kodiak said. I pulled on my jockstrap, not loving the moist snugness where another man’s crotch had been slung. “Just think of yourself like the school hero. You’re coming out to beat Goliath. Ha, ha! Get it? I know, I’m George Carlin. Now focus, so I don’t break your neck. When the bell rings, start swinging wild. Hit my arms with open palms or an empty fist.” He demonstrated. I was to hold my hand as if I was holding an invisible bar. “Put a little Irish on them, but don’t potato me.” I deduced that meant “keep the blows from leaving potato-sized marks on his skin,” proving once and for all I wasn’t as bad a detective as everyone thought. “I’ll grab you by the throat, lean down, and when you feel me spring up, jump with the momentum. I will lift you up then push you down. But kick up your legs and try to land with your arms extended.” He pushed his out like a modern Vitruvian Man. “Land like Christ on his cross, and the pain will shoot across all of you, not just one point.”

“Just like a bed of nails,” I said.

“Heh! See? He is one of the boys,” Herc said.

The rest of the match would consist of me being tossed around like a sack of peat moss that needed to be tenderized before it could be freshly packed in the dirt. Kodiak’s “finisher” was, go figure, a bear hug. “You’ll thrash about until Leo here sees you scream, then I’ll drop your carcass, walk back, and you get rained with boos and sharpened pennies. Got it?”

“Throw wimp punches. Jump when you say how high. Land like Jesus. Jump around and make each move seem like it’s rearranging my spine. Scream ‘uncle’ when you give me a big hug.”

I stuck up my thumb. “Got it.”

“We go on in ten,” Kodiak said, leaving me behind. “I can’t be seen with baby faces or it’ll ruin the game. You’re doing a good thing, helping Sam. Just take the bumps and your check. I’ll walk you through the main event with Bikini and Dyna. Time for a smoke before the shift begins.” He waved me off, said bye to Leo, and then wandered back as the other bad guys, all older wrestlers with crunched faces, filed in to do the last of their makeup and lacing.

“He’s good people, James,” Herc said. “Kinda friends with everyone. Reminds me of you, back in the Electric Magic days.”

I smiled and we caught up quick, but my mind was on the taste of magic around Bikini, and I switched to a quieter voice and a loose carny code that was common with guys like Herc and me.

I laced the boots, shoving my wallet in the right one. I’d folded the eight remaining petals together and slipped them between two dead credit cards. After all, without the flower, I’d never get the encoder from Margarita. “So, ever see Jody rousting about?”

Jody was our word for trouble from without, a bad railroad dick or a mayor or local shithook who was sniffing around to make havoc. Herc’s big grin stayed still, but he nodded his head. “Not Jody,” he said, and that meant yes.

“I heard he was looking for work,” I said, work being the nature of trouble. “Soda Pop.” Drugs. “He used to sell them out of his car.”

Herc shook his head twice, meaning he was talking true, but the tone was reversed. “Not here, but I remember they made every kid happy, so alive and strong,” he cackled. “Hell, the way Jody sells it, it’s like he’s making them young.”

He slapped my shoulder and I had to choke back the flinch. Herc was what you called a physical culturalist. He turned his body into a vision of perfection with a combo of ancient Ikarian exercises and a cavalcade of concoctions that almost always included egg yolks and castor oil. He was a purist and believed the body was a temple that required worship, devotion, and dedication. He was also a teetotaler who once chastised me for enjoying a cherry brandy at Christmas because it “invited the three imps.” These were sloth, gluttony, and weakness. Drugs of any kind would have been the fourth horseman of the apocalypse for such a fine human specimen. And the bang he gave my shoulder made it clear there was some bad mojo here and Herc didn’t like it one goddamn bit.

“I always loved Jody’s soda,” I nodded once, so he knew I hated the idea. “Especially black cherry. Can’t get it anywhere else.”

He nodded twice, pulled his cauliflower ear, so everything that came next was to be followed in reverse. “Don’t bother looking here. All these guys, like the champion who didn’t know a hammerlock, they hate that stuff. Poison for the body they would never touch. It’s never here.”

That’s all I needed. “Then I’m glad I’m not a full-time grappler. I’m going to find a cola.”

“Concessions will give you one. Just don’t let Bikini see you. He’ll have a heart attack.”

No code was needed to know Herc wouldn’t mind if Bikini’s chest imploded. Herc was a strongman first, but along with Dr. Fuji, he knew enough holds, hooks, twists, and breaks to keep the Marine Corps from storming an enemy beachhead. “See you in the ring, Herc.”

He waved me off, then looked into locker room mirror and adjusted his bow tie. A warning. Be careful. This place wasn’t safe for an outsider.

I strutted by two guys arm-wrestling on the re-set card table, one dressed all in black with curly mutton-chop sideburns, the other wearing tights striped like a barber pole, face red and nose crunched. Their arms were thick from the labor of their job, not cut or cultivated like Jack or Bikini. If Black Lotus was here, it was only for the elite.

“Hey fellas, which way to the concession stand?”

“You can’t go out like that,” Mutton Chops muttered, hand still clasped with his opponent.

“There’s a cooler by the entrance,” Stripes said. “If there’s anything left, mark, it’s there.”

“And you’ll need a belt,” Mutton Chop said. “You’re too damn small for that tong.”

“Hence the need for a cola,” I said, heading out while the immovable hair and the irresistible test pattern battled for supremacy. Leaving the locker room, I feinted right and headed left.

At the end of a hall, a thin man in black jeans and an unassuming chambray work shirt stood at the closed door of the private VIP lounge of the gods. Under a distinctly sinister and certainly sizable nose, he sported a thick mustache styled with pomade. Dark eyebrows and the sheen of a beard made him stick out from the ragged company. Over one shoulder he carried a weathered leather satchel. But it was his tiny size that betrayed him. No one backstage was smaller than me.

I did my best to look bigger than I was, then strutted toward the man I was sure was Mick Butler, the pusher who bought out Billy Mars. The son of a bitch handling Black Lotus.