29

ONE MORE WALK DOWN THE AISLE AND THE WORLD would think James Brimstone was a runaway bride.

“Ladies and gentleman. We are at our final match, your evening’s main event!” The crowd was back to piss-warm status and the announcer was trying to ramp them up. “However, there has been a change in the match. Due to severe injury, Kodiak Slim will not be able to compete in tonight’s tag-team extravaganza.”

A dark booooo filled the world. They weren’t indifferent. They were hungry for the kind of real suffering I’d given them in the first match. The hunger for blood and pain that helped stain the sands of gladiatorial arenas, fed the Samurai Ikki-uchi, and the spectators around the world’s fighting pits.

They hungered for blood and horror. And they were going to get it. Just a different flavor.

“Instead, tonight’s match will be a handicap match!”

The audience grumbled approval as I tied my right boot tight, keeping my wallet safe for the beating I was about to lay down.

“Introducing first! He comes from Parts Unknown!” A mild titter. “Weighing in at two hundred and seventy-five pounds.” I thought of Jack’s physique of caked-up muscle on an already-taxed frame and figured the announcer was once again full of shit with reading of the scales. “He is the Master of Disaster, the Monster of Monstrosity, the Human Killing Machine. . . the Assassinatoooor!”

The curtain swayed before me. I cracked my knuckles in each hand, then yanked the curtain open like Batman tossing his cape.

“Flex,” Herc had said to me as we walked to the launch position. “And keep moving. Jack was best known as a skinny baby face who couldn’t sit still, but he was popular because of the muscles he’d injected.”

I did my poor-man’s Charles Atlas routine while spinning 360 degrees on my heel, realizing how puny my natural physique must look to those who were expecting Jack Lumber. Breathing in the crowd’s cheers, I was also smacked with a wave of sickly nostalgia for my last case, where I also ended up in a mask and a pit, on a porno movie set that damn near cost me my life and birthed a demon that would have turned these spectators into an opiate-fed trough of goodies for nightmares yet unborn.

“I love my job!” I screamed, then ran to the ring. I strutted around the floor before reaching for the ropes, the crowd’s mixture of excitement and hunger for something with more blood and guts giving me gooseflesh. They were brooding, angry, and lit—a three-day pimple waiting to pop, but holding their time until the juice was right.

I waved to the deadly granny brigade. “Tonight, I dedicate my victory over two dead men to you two beauties!” Three, two, one—

“Fuck you, faggot,” said the lead one, hatpin in her brutal fingers, but she was smiling. “And make that deviant Bikini kid and his boy-toy pay for their sins!”

How people could hate men or women whose only crime was finding comfort with their own sex was something I never understood, except if it was a form of self-hatred.

So I smiled. “Tell you what, Beautiful. I’ll do it for you, and for all your girlfriends!”

The Century Sam-smoking fellas behind them cackled in delight until the Elder Women’s Auxiliary of Wrestling drew their pins and turned their attention to the lesser chromosome before stabbing the space between them. I waddled around doing triceps flexes until I came upon the glazed and confused countenance of Kevin and his crew. “Wake up, kids! The main event is here!”

Kevin, the only lucid one, smiled. “Good luck topping the first match.”

I gesticulated wildly with histrionic poses. “Those chumps? They’ll only be talking about me in tomorrow’s sports pages.” You know, if local papers actually covered wrestling. “Watch and learn, junior!”

“Our money’s on Bikini and Dynamite!”

I slid through the ropes, reasonably certain that Kevin didn’t know it was me. Which boded well for the con of the match. Either way, with what I had planned for Bikini and Dynamite, this would be my very last match. It would make Kodiak’s jaw look like a skinned knee.

The stains on the canvas were like oil blots on a popcorn bag. A little blood slicked things, but there was no shit-and-ash tang of Black Lotus here. The drug had started and, I expected, would end the night. Herc had come to the ring and pushed me toward the corner, checking my trunks and boots.

“If they turn this work into a shoot,” Herc said, “I’ll tear them five new assholes.”

I nodded, keeping my plan to myself, wondering what the hell I was going to do when Herc saw me turn this work into a shoot. I’d had my fill of assholes.

“And his opponents,” cried the MC.

The whole place lit up as blazing guitars drenched in more fuzz than a shag carpet in a pimp’s five-star penthouse tore through speakers I hadn’t even realized were in the Olympic. I couldn’t tell if it was one of those spooky metal bands like Black Sabbath or Dust or the ridiculously named Grand Funk Railroad, which some of the gang at the Thump & Grind would sometimes blare while the girls did a busty routine with a lot of ass and shake, but that didn’t matter. All the kids screamed louder than the disapproving hisses and tsks of their elders.

“From Venice Beach, California!”

I laid my back against the ropes, realizing that Shemp wasn’t a bad promoter. He’d saved this trick for the last, and sure as shit the audience was already forgetting the blood and thunder an hour before.

“Weighing in at three hundred pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal.”

Music. Rock and roll. The dangerous outlaw image. Rock and wrestling were natural bedfellows, and if Shemp could reach the youth through spectacle that spoke to them, wrestling had a future. Which meant guys that didn’t look like their daddy’s wrestlers.

Guys like . . .

“And your Western U.S. Heavyweight Champion of the World . . .”

“Western U.S. world champ?” I said. “As if the world needed another non-sequitur from people it considers illiterate.” Herc shrugged. “All the best names were taken.”

“Bikini Atooooll!”

I walked to the center of the ring and made the gimmie-gimmie motion, half-expecting them to run out like Kodiak did, Black Lotus running through them like high-octane fuel.

While heavy metal thunder turned every kid into a shaggy haired victim of electrocution, heads banging back and forth as the song picked up steam, Bikini’s massive hands parted the curtain, and before I could yell, “Oh shit,” Herc said, “Fuck me.”

Bikini walked slow, a six-foot-six slab of muscle, sweat dripping off him as if he’d just stepped out of a shower. Like me, every muscle was flexing. Unlike me, it looked as if each muscle group had been pumped full of cement. He wasn’t so much bigger than before, just more solid, dense. The slow, careful walk and the slab arms rustling back and forth like the tether from a stray hot-air balloon gave the impression of a man who flicked Buicks into the sky with his fingers.

The crowd adored this god of concrete and deadlifts. This was how cults started, I thought. Charismatic image, confident with indifference. Bikini’s attire had made him the ridicule of the old guard in the back, dressing in a bikini bottom that barely contained his dirty Roscoe. The closer he got, the bigger one part of him flared. Not the trunk-arms or mastodon thighs. Not the bull neck or monster chest. His eyes. Bugged out. Cartoonish. Intense and ridiculous and visible all the way back in the cheap seats.

“His partner. From the corner of Haight and Ashbury, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, he is the One-Man Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, Dynamite Hippieeee!”

Dynamite ran out wild, throwing his mane and baring his teeth as he circled the slow-walking Bikini, hands like claws, imitating a wild coyote that had contracted rabies. I couldn’t help but think of the old French phrase,plus ça change.

If our first dance was Davey and Goliath, this was the next chapter: the big man and the wild man. Batman and Robin. Green Hornet and Kato. Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Which made me Humbaba, the monster they came to slay. But unlike that sad sack who’d been made from promises of vengeful gods, they were stuck with a PI who had only one mission: to break them into submission until they leaked the truth.

I yawned dramatically, making loud movements with my hand to indicate how tired, bored, and pathetic I found the two sucking the attention of the room into a dual focus. No one noticed.

Finally, they made it to the stairs. Whatever form of Black Lotus they had in them, it wasn’t driving Bikini mad, and I wasn’t sure if Dynamite was always this lit or if he was racing on an accelerant. Either way, I didn’t care. They were going to talk. Everyone talks eventually. Everyone has a breaking point. Edgar had taught me that.

Herc stood between us as he ran through the patter about a good clean fight, for the unlucky slobs who thought what was about to happen was not crooked.

“And no funny business,” he added. “Or else I’ll wipe the mat with all of you guys.”

Dynamite turned his back, and Bikini stared down at me. “This will be quick.”

I smiled. “Like you on prom night.”

Herc signaled the bell keeper, then ushered Dynamite out of the ring.

As soon as Herc’s back was turned, I landed a quick two-inch punch directly to Bikini’s balls.

Stifling a scream, Bikini cupped his family jewels, eyes electrified and wide. “Fucker!”

Seems Black Lotus couldn’t completely shield you from all pain.

Then, as he spun to go to his corner, I open-palm-slapped his ass, spanking him.

“What’s he doing?” Dynamite said from the apron. “Smarten him up, Herc!”

Herc stood between me and Bikini. “You can’t go off script either, you fucking rube.”

“Whether you like it or not,” I said, “I need to turn this work into a shoot. Now. So, either break my wrist or let me do what I need to do.”

Herc grimaced, and was yanked away from me, cast against the ropes, a doll thrown toward his toy box, gripping it with his arms to keep from popping back into the action, all while Bikini’s mitts moved faster than sin, grabbing me from a standing position and lifting me above his head like I was his backpack from public school.

“You’re going to pay for the cheap shot,” he growled from an unmoving mouth, a real ventriloquist. “You’re going to pay, big time!”

Then, I was airborne . . . above the ring . . . above the ropes . . . above the crowd, until I reached the third row behind Kevin, where I was gently caught by no one, the audience dashing out of the way like rats from a burning home. I met the floor with my chest.

“Holy fucking shit,” said one of Kevin’s girls. “Did you guys actually see that?”

“Is he dead?”

“His chest is still moving.”

“Then get him back in the ring!”

Herc was counting. “One . . . two . . .”

I got up on my elbows.

“Three.”

I looked up. Everyone was a shadow.

“Four.”

And only one face emerged from the dark.

“Five!”

“Cactus?” I said. The tough, old soldier was dressed in a blue-and-red suit like he’d wear at the Wild Card Casino. “Are you dead?”

“Not yet, idiot.”

“Six!”

“Get off your ass and find who tried to kill me.”

“Seven.”

I ran for his form and hit the iron barricade.

“Eight.”

I climbed on top of it, balanced precariously, summoning all the strength of my hamstrings.”

“Nine!”

I leapt from the rail to the apron and dove through the ropes just as Herc was about to drop his arm and count me out.

More howls from the crowd as I looked up to see Bikini tag Dynamite.

The Hippie ran in just as I got both feet on the ring floor, and I immediately found myself in a storm of knuckles and knees. Dynamite was controlled fury and whirling violence without any of the crazed excess Jack or Kodiak had tossed around. This was measured force like I used when on a joyride. Measured, but driven by a manic machine with a single intent: to cut me into pieces before a live festival audience.

I pushed hands, slid between blows, and rolled out of his way, counting my heartbeats as I breathed, just like Dr. Fuji taught me. I slowed my adrenaline rush so it would last longer as Dynamite cut the ring in half like Bruce Lee on bennies. Soreness and stiffness crept up my forearms and shins, as the bastard was pretty well-versed in Muay Thai, making me think even less of him. Not because of studying Muay Thai, but of guys like this who sleaze over to Southeast Asia to learn a few tricks, fuck prostitutes barely old enough to read, and then come back to wreak vengeance on the jocks who once stuffed them in a locker in high school. I know it made me something of a hypocrite—I was a white kid from Oakland taught by a Japanese jujitsu and taiji master, though as Fuji would always say, I was never his best student—but that didn’t make Dynamite Sleaze the long-haired creep anything like me.

A straight kick to my balls had me turning to the side.

“You’ll get tired before I will,” Dynamite said. “You’re already getting slow, old man.”

An open-palm slap came at my face, and I let it smack me.

The crowd screamed approval as I staggered back to the ropes, Dynamite on the assault. He stuck to what worked and open-palm strikes potatoed my shoulders, chest, face, guts, back, as the wheezing wrestler with the creepy hair unloaded his arsenal without dropping an inch of force, as if he could do this all day.

He battered me into the ropes and Herc stood between us, shoving us both back.

“You need help?” Herc said, checking my face. “You’re swelling like a rotten piece of melon.”

“I’m fine.” Last thing I wanted was Herc involved in my business. That stain stopped with me. “Just protect yourself.”

Herc stood back and clapped his hands for the match to continue, then Dynamite drove a straight right hand to my jaw. If I hadn’t tucked things in snugly, the impact would have cleaned me out. Instead, the world shimmied before I dropped to my knees.

“You’re mine, bitch!” he said, kicking my head. “You fucked with our business? Now we’re ending your career.”

Herc counted as Dynamite ran over to the ring and tagged in Bikini with a slap. I sucked in air tasting of salt and iron. I had to get the big bastard on the ground. He wouldn’t fall for a sleeper like the first match, and Dynamite would just tear me off him if that was the case. I had to deliver a major dose of agony.

Fist gripping the middle rope, I got to one foot as Bikini slowly, slimily, grandiosely, and yet indifferently, stepped across the ring, hands in front of his crotch. “You had one shot, loser,” he said. “And now, it’s night-night.” He put his hands together as he laid his face down upon them like he was going to sleep . . . then dropped them fast to protect his pant weasel as he came within grabbing distance.

I shot-putted myself into him, ramming my shoulder into what felt like a wooden writing desk: whatever fat had once been on him had long since vanished. I hooked his leg and lifted, proving strength can’t stop momentum as we both hit the floor. He landed like a marble statue that refused to break while I scrambled on top of his body and dropped an elbow across his nose.

The anger in his eyes didn’t soften one bit.

He grabbed both my arms in his hands and started twisting them as easily as a kid would Play-Doh.

“You have no idea what you’re messing with, mark,” Bikini said as the tendon connecting my biceps to my shoulder joint threatened to snap.

I wedged my right leg between my body and his and stomped on the mat, pulling myself away as I centered my stance. My arms slipped out of his paws as I twisted my legs around his arm, locking up his wrist and forearm, then slammed myself on the canvas. I’d executed the deadliest arm lock that Masahiko Kimura ever used: the combination leg-wrap and hyper-extended submission that made him the master judoka of Japan and the teacher of a legion of great disciples, including Dr. Fuji.

The only problem was that Bikini’s arm was stronger than a starved German shepherd’s bite. Here I was, wrapped around his arm, trying to dislocate his elbow, and he was lifting me up and hammering me down against the canvas while the crowds chanted:

One!

Two!

Three!

Four!

Five!

Six!

Seven!

Eight!

Nine!

Ten!

Ow.

We were on our backs, me still locked to his arm but my spinal nerves were flashing DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! But that wasn’t all. Neck? Overloaded. I half expected cartoon birds tweeting around my skull. Blood from a half-dozen little mouth cuts drooled out of my lips. I hung on to Bikini’s arm tighter than the ropes strapping Odysseus to the mast of his ship to save him from the Sirens. The whole time he’d been ramming me like an angry spatula, my every muscle, sinew, bone, and slab of fat was angling against this arm, sneaking for the right combination on his iron-hard muscles to finally perform a move that didn’t care how big and strong you were, had no care in the world about your muscles, and felled all men equally.

I was still searching as Bikini took a knee and, to the delight of his worshippers, stood. I hung upside down from his arm like a wayward bat while he strutted around the ring dunking my head against the canvas. I just needed him to stop bending his elbow. If it was at rest, I could snap it back.

“Ain’t no way you’re going to win, chump. You’re weak, you’re lame, and this crowd will eat you alive if you pull anything.” Dunk, then he dragged my face amid the blood and spit and stains of long-lost matches. “You’re out of your league, I’m out of this world, and now we’re going to make sure you never, ever come back.”

Dunk.

Ow. My grip on the hold loosened and Bikini lifted me up as if I weighed less than a bag of groceries. “Say goodbye to showbiz, mark.” He puckered his lips to give me a kiss—and I bit his lip so hard my teeth clacked together.

Bikini screamed, but I hung on to his lips with my teeth and wrapped my legs around his head. Gushing blood turned the mask crimson. When my nose sent out a spray of pink mist, the crowd ate it up with relish and mustard.

“Le go ah me!” Bikini screamed from the red shower. Herc came close, but I growled and he backed off, slapped his hands, and said “the match continues!” The audience howled in sick delight.

“Fall back!” I said, meat in my teeth. “Or I will tear your whole lip off!”

Bikini seethed, ran around the ring, selling the move, and then slipped and fell.

On the way down, I released my teeth from his lip and prepared for the one chance in hell I had of pulling off this plan. Bikini’s unwavering control was wildly staggered and the grip he had on his muscles loosened for a fraction of a second—because his arms extended to take the bump, as all wresters do—and his arm went straight.

I grinned red. Perfect.

We hit the canvas and I locked his elbow a split second before he regained command of his muscles. Thank god for the power of tradition, repetition, and body memory, because thanks to that brief moment I was able to act against his muscles. Legs fastened around his arm, locking his hand under my chin, I did something Kimura might find unethical: my fingers splayed out like spider legs and found the secret pressure points of life energy in Bikini’s arm. They dug into his flesh like in a move so vicious Dr. Fuji said it was like ripping a man’s soul from his skeleton.

Bikini screamed like a girl in a scary movie. The son of a bitch couldn’t take the pain. The crowd hushed. I didn’t ease up. “Tell me about Mick Butler!”

Bikini gasped and waved over Dynamite. His partner jumped in the ring but found Herc in front of him. “Get out!” I yelled, catching his eye. “Or I will turn his arm into a ghost limb.”

I pulled back, and a worse wail, like a kid lost in a department store, sent weird chills up my spine. Dynamite bared his teeth but went back outside. I eased off the armbar. “Tell me! What’s Mick Butler giving you?”

Bikini rolled around. “I don’t know. It’s new. It’s good. Packs on muscle. Gets you high. Not scared of nothing. Shit for pain right now—”

“Is that what he gave Kodiak?”

“We dosed Kodiak,” Bikini said. “Old stuff. Worse. Made you crazy. Mick gave me the new stuff.”

“What’s he call it? Tell me!”

“They call it Barbarian.”

Clever and cute and annoying. “Who is his supplier? Who’s making Barbarian?”

“How the fuck should—” Bikini covered his mouth, but another wussy scream pierced the eardrums of the now-silent crowd. Whatever stroke he had with the people of L.A., it was starting to fade. Slippery with sweat, I readjusted my grip, spit some of his lip blood back in the air, then pulled back to the edge of what he could handle.

“Who makes the drug?”

He punched the canvas with his free hand. “I don’t know! I never ask who makes it. But they have to be real big. This isn’t some garage chemistry set shit. Barbarian I take now? I got density and strength and focus without the wildness.”

“What about Dynamite?”

“He just takes speed. C’mon, brother, I don’t know much else.”

“Where is Butler?”

“In his car, probably with a young piece of ass.”

“If you’re lying, and you know who makes it—”

“I told you! It can’t be a local head with access to the high-school lab. This shit is industrial-class muscle builder. That takes crazy money. Most of the drugs I take are shit, but Barbarian is worth the price.”

“Including the guys it drives crazy?”

Bikini squirmed on the ground. “I don’t care what happens to others. I do this for me. I take the risk. My body. My career. Kodiak and these old timers can go fuck themselves because they know I’m the future and they just can’t compete.”

“Perhaps,” I said, then yanked so hard his elbow damn near popped out of its skin in reverse. The wide eyes of Bikini Atoll went even wider, his bronze skin now a shade of bad milk. “But neither can you. Say ‘uncle.’”

Herc ran over.

“Say it!”

Bikini shook and nodded, blond hair covering his face. “UNCLE!”

Herc screamed, “Ring the bell!”