28
ICARUS’S BLOODSTAINED BLACK-AND-WHITE TIGHTS and blue boots had to go, but with Jack’s costume ruined by wrestlers’ excrement, I needed new attire. Poking around the dressing room uncovered some tights and trunks in a tasteful solid black. Didn’t equal the gold-and-silver glitz of Jack’s mask, but they say you can’t go wrong with basic black. The black boots I found actually fit better than the blue ones and didn’t smell half as bad.
After donning the new duds, I sat across from the door—lights on, mask tight—and listened for the approach of another attack while my body tried to mend my tattered fleshly coat of many bruises, welts, and one or two bites. But the goon squad must have been ordered to go easy on the mark, because I saw none of the grapplers even so much as peek around the door. Not even the main attractions, Bikini and Dynamite. Wherever they were, they had no more to do with the riffraff or the masked man. After a half-hour, I was able to grab my nose and grip it shut to stop the bright red puddle from growing at my feet.
“James?”
My hand dropped.
“That’s . . .you? In the mask?”
I nodded.
Herc was at the door, pale as moonlight on milk. “Oh god, they did this to you?” He craned his head to look down the hall, color returning to his skin. “When I find out which of those son of a bitch-bitches did this I will stretch them like a torture rack and feed their bones to my mutt.”
He ducked back inside. “I should have been here.”
I waved away his guilty conscience. “Boss had something on you. I get it. Plus, I kinda deserve it.”
“No one deserves a schmoz in the dressing room. Chicken-shits should have gone at you one at a time.”
“They don’t like to lose.”
He sat next to me, and I was itching to know just what Shemp had on my friend, but alone time in the backstage of any performance is a rare and I didn’t want to bother with carny slang. “The guy who is pushing drugs. Mick Butler. You know him.”
“Yes. Drugged-out mustache and skinny bones.”
“Tell me everything.”
“He started showing up six months ago. Hangs with the dumb bells.” I assumed that meant the weight lifters who were growing in number within the ranks of the wrestling world. “I know he hung at the gym. Those guys, James, they’re not real culturists. They cheat with drugs. They pop the pills. They inject stuff like dopers. Or smoke it like hippies.” Smoke? Kodiak had gone for a smoke. I wouldn’t put it past folks in this trade to use their talent like guinea pigs. Hell, they worked them like dogs and drove them like horses, why not lab rats? “The kind of growth that takes years, especially in pectorals and lats, by god, it was growing overnight. Guys who couldn’t press their shoe size were now shaking the weight benches and demanding more.” He shook his head. “And in the ring? Lazy, dangerous. Tossing each other around without a care. No idea about holds or how to take bumps. Half the young guys are told to bow before Bikini because Shemp thinks he’s the future.”
“And he’s one of Butler’s boys.”
Herc leaned forward, cupping his hands. “He was a good kid. Dedicated. Did what I told him and saw results, but, James, this generation wants everything fast, everything now, and they don’t care how they get it. Pills. Smoke. Needles. Probably have suppositories.”
I chuckled. “Where did Butler come from?”
Herc shrugged. “Don’t know. But I bet Bikini knows. Number one customer. They probably have each other on the Rolodex.”
“Shemp?”
Herc turned to me. “Yeah. Nothing happens here without him. And I think he’s made some kind of deal with that roach.”
“Deal?”
“Most of these guys are new. Too many injuries. More and more don’t know how to shoot. Which means they’re dead in the hands of strong buffoons like Bikini. They want to be Bikini. The next Bikini. And I think they want whatever it is Bikini is taking.”
“Jack Lumber was one of them?”
Herc nodded. “He didn’t even need them. He could scrap, go long; his cardiovascular system was so strong he could have been the next Verne Gagne, but without a shitdirt personality.” His hands shook. “Instead he’s dead. And I know why.”
“Tell me.”
“Ever hear of steroids?”
“Sure. Doctors use them to help you heal after surgery. Took them after Korea while I still had near-torn knee.”
“They’ve been around even longer in gyms and bodybuilding. They’re made by big chemical companies. Made from all sorts of things, but mostly testosterone, as if these creatures need more reason to lose their marbles.” He leaned back. “But it’s not the anger that’s killing them. It’s not the rage. It’s not the giant arms. James, it’s their hearts.
“These drugs help all muscles grow. Not just biceps. Not just thighs or glutes. The heart is a muscle, the king muscle, and I think these drugs are making them grow too fast. A friend of mine, a strongman from Lithuania named Zlados the Mighty, he had a stipulation that when he died his body would be donated to a medical school. The miserable Balt made me the executor of his will, and so I had the joy of signing off on his body being torn apart and having them send the reports. I knew he’d been injecting things, the sap, but I had no idea the cost.”
He looked at me and I stopped breathing so hard through the mask. His gaze was that cold.
“It was black. Covered in scar tissue. A human heart made of scars, all to win some trophies and die before you turn fifty.” He spat, as only the Greeks can, with the accuracy of a career slob and the authority of an Athenian general.
“Heart attack,” I said. “That’s what killed Jack Lumber.”
“No man in that kind of shape should die at his age,” Herc said, “unless his heart was made of scars.”
Black Lotus was now the steroid of choice for the lab rats of the Olympic. And this new version of the ancient drug had to be refined and manufactured by someone. Someone in the pharmaceutical industry. And who was one of our guests at the Legion Hall? Alan Carruthers, of C&C Pharmaceuticals. If he was the target, the attack was set up by who? Rivals in the big business of solving all problems with a pop of a pill and swig from a sifter? But the agents of destruction had been on the drug. Maybe a black-market lab of Black Lotus? Damn. I hated when clues just made things more complicated. I needed more information.
Shemp’s waddle-steps echoed in the hall. He entered, that last twenty in his mitts, his fat face smiling. “Showtime, masked man. Go make me some money.”
Herc and I stood together and I blenched from all the ouch and ack and barf that my body was sharing with me.
“Where are the main attractions?” I said. “No one told me the match.”
“You’re spry,” he said, as I walked toward him. “They’ll call it in the ring. Just listen, do what they say, and don’t you dare go off book again. Whatever Kodiak’s problem, we can’t have a repeat performance. Get into the launch position and wait for the Assassinator’s call.”
Nose to nose, he squeezed the twenty, then thumbed the bill into his palm, snapped his finger. He stretched out his hand to reveal the bill had vanished.
“Wow,” I said. “A promoter who can make money disappear.”
He gripped my collarbone and I could feel the marrow shake. “For my next trick, I’ll make you disappear if you fuck with me again.” He let go, and I dropped to the floor.
Then he turned to make his exit, but he wasn’t as fast he used to be. He never felt my hand dart like a viper’s tongue, two fingers flitting into his sport coat sleeve as his arm swung back.
As soon as Shemp was out the door, Herc helped me up. “You were always full of brine,” he said. “But now, James, you have a death wish.”
I coughed. “Maybe.” Then I lifted my closed fist. I unfurled it to reveal the smooshed twenty Shemp had sleeved with his pretty solid vanishing act. “Or maybe I know opportunity doesn’t knock if you don’t kick her door first. Can you give this to Sam?”
Herc took the bill and shoved it down his shirt. Even Satan himself would think twice of testing the old man’s ability to protect himself. “You know they will try and hurt you. Hurt us.”
We started to walk down the concrete hallway. “Of course. Which is why I need to hurt them first.”