CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

September 30th 1972. New York.

Danno stood in the empty hallway in Shea stadium. He was straddling between internal panic and external patience with a disorientated Lenny on the other end of the line.

“It's not a fucking difficult question unless you have a super van that’s suddenly after magic-ing itself into a maze. Is that what you have? A van with magic powers?”

“No, sir.”

“Well then, If he's not in the seat, he's not in the van.”

Danno finished his sentence with a few thumps of the receiver off the chipped walls in Shea.

Lenny turned away from all the flashing, noisy distractions in front of him. He was sure there was a simple and logical step to all that he was missing.

“I'm sorry. I was knocked stupid myself, and I can't even really remember what happened. I would do anything to make this right, boss. You know that.”

Lenny waited for a response. He was fully aware that saying that he'd do anything for Danno Garland was a dangerous offer at this stage in the game.

“Are you still on the phone?” Danno asked calmly. Too calmly.

Lenny paused, unsure of what to do.

“Fucking find him. Do you hear me? You've got ten minutes to get them both here, otherwise do you know what will happen? The...”

Danno was stunned by the silence of the phone going dead. “What the fuck is going on?” he wondered to himself. “Hello?” he called down the dead line in disbelief. “Hello?”

Danno beat the phone off the wall several times in sheer frustration. Now he wanted someone to be looking so he could lay into them for just being there.

“Ricky?” Danno cried down the hallway. “Ricky?”

The bell time was drawing closer. Danno paced in his ‘office’ as Ricky sat quietly.

“I need to send a car out there now, boss. If the main event doesn’t go ahead there is going...” Ricky stopped short when he realized the obviousness of his statement.

“Wait,” Danno said.

“If we don't act now, then the whole house comes down.”

“Wait,” Danno repeated.

“There are sixty five thousand people out there...”

Danno stopped. “Hit me.”

Ricky waited a long time to hear those words; ever since Danno backed off on Proctor after Ginny got turned over. He just never thought he'd be given permission to do so. “What?”

Danno walked to Ricky and held his shoulders. He was wild-eyed, but smiling slightly. “You have to hit me out there. We need as many people as possible to see it.”

Ricky had no idea what Danno was talking about.

“This main event isn't going to happen now, for whatever reason. We have to think past it. You have to hit me out there in front of the locker room.”

Danno grabbed Ricky and walked him to the door.

“What are you doing?” Ricky asked.

“I'm not sure, but I know this is where to start.”

September 30^th 1972. New York.

“Get someone to see if they can find out where they are,” Danno shouted before turning around to see that everyone in the company had lined up expectantly behind him.

A few bodies at the back of the room jumped up and actioned Danno's request.

Wrestlers, ring crew, refs and a few invited wives all stood silently like they were waiting to hear the dire prognosis of a loved one.

The weight of the situation hit Danno like a falling typewriter. “Alright, there's no way to sugar-coat this; our main event isn't going to happen here tonight.”

The collective dropped their heads in unison. A few deeper voices in the middle somberly cursed their luck. This was the big one for all of them. The one they had been working toward for the last few years.

“We still getting paid, boss?” a brave, but anonymous, voice asked from the back. Danno ignored the question.

“It's time to make a call on the finish. We're going for a big shmoz, clusterfuck finish with everyone in the ring. Everyone who isn't booted up – get so,” Danno told the waiting crowd. “We're going to load the ring with everyone we've got.”

Ricky Plick was leaning his stocky frame against the wall just behind the rest of the troops. “Why aren't you going to let the natural thing happen out there, boss?”

Even though Danno had given a direction, nobody on the roster moved before hearing his answer.

“No. We're going to go out there to finish,” Danno said.

Danno hurriedly grabbed a paper tablecloth from a nearby table and thrust it into the chest of a wrestler in the front of the pile. “I need a list of everyone who is ready to work. Ricky? Go and find yourself some gear.”

Ricky tried again. “If they riot then we might at least get paid after all the shit we've been through.”

“I fucking know that Ricky,” Danno snapped back. “We can still work our way out of this. Get booted up.”

“With all due respect, Danno...” No one in that room had dared to call Danno anything other than 'sir' or 'boss' before. “But this whole place paid to see Babu versus Gilbert King and I don't see either of them here.”

The pressure in the room was immense.

“You sure you still want to work this angle, boss?” Ricky asked as he approached Danno aggressively.

The crowd of spectators had grown two-fold in the seconds that passed since Ricky questioned the owner. People who just worked for the stadium were now watching too.

“I don't want to talk about it here, Ricky.”

“There's nothing to talk about, Danno.” Ricky replied. “We can't give them what they paid for, so we make sure they riot.”

Danno wanted to address this in a stand up manner. Ricky was more about the business.

“I have no other choice now, Ricky. We stay and finish the card.”

Ricky butted his head against Danno's.

“You've done nothing but fuck this up since you got your greedy hands on it.”

Some members of the roster fired their displeasure at Ricky's disrespect.

Danno pushed his one-time student away. “Don't ever get in my face again.”

Ricky turned his back to his boss and clenched his teeth. He paused and silently looked around the room. “You people realize what's happening here? No payday. After all that's happened. The biggest pile of money we've ever seen is still on the table and he's going to give it back.”

“I'm not fucking this crowd over.” Danno continued to write out his revised card on the table. “We'll get them back again.”

“Your call, Mr. Boss Man. But I'm sick of trying to cover your fucking weaknesses all the time. You couldn't draw money with a green fucking crayon. Asshole.”

Ricky spun on his heel and sucker punched Danno hard in the side of the head. The old promoter stumbled helplessly into the tables which collapsed under his considerable weight.

Tiny Thunder, an Asian midget wrestler, grabbed Ricky around the waist as some of the roster fled to Danno's aid.

“Are you fucking crazy, man?” Tiny shouted. Ricky easily shrugged him off and moved for the exit. His strides exploded into a sprint when he saw some of the other wrestlers running toward him with bad intentions.

“Did everyone forget we're here to make money?” Ricky shouted as he bolted through the exit door.

The room melted into chaos.

Danno immediately tried to steady himself. There was a nasty gash above his left eye and a lump was already starting to form. Danno slammed his revised plan into Tiny Thunder's arms. “We go out there and finish the card. We take what is coming our way. Then we are going to rebuild. That's what's going to happen. This is the way we go.”

Danno staggered out of the silent room and used the stadium walls to escort him to the restroom where he hid in one of the stalls. He knew that there was no way this was going to remain a secret. Everyone was soon to hear the moment that Danno Garland lost the wrestling company that had been in his family since 1924.

The restroom door swung open and a panicked voice shouted, “Boss, Proctor King is looking for you.”

“You didn't tell him I was here, did you?” Danno shouted back.

“I meant, on the phone, sir.”

Danno exploded. “Well say that, then. There's a big fucking difference.”

The messenger paused. “What should I tell him?”

There's no way this didn’t look like revenge on Proctor. Danno knew that was what it looked like. How was he going to explain his way out of this one?

“Boss?”

Danno stood on his uneasy legs, opened the stall door and checked his swollen face in the mirror. “Someone fucking find me Lenny Long.”

The messenger bolted down the hallway.

Maybe Merv was right. Maybe Danno would fuck it up after all.

September 30^th 1972. New York.

Lenny pleaded and begged to make a call, but they never even acknowledged him as they threw him and Babu inside a big holding cell. Knocking out a cop for calling you ‘fake’ was a no phone call move.

The only thing keeping Lenny together was knowing that Babu was a veteran at this. Tales of his overnight stints in various lockups around the country were legendary among the other wrestlers. Every territory that Babu went, there was another story of a ten man brawl and a heartbroken woman. Babu, The Savage from South Africa, was a living myth to all the Boys in the back.

Lenny snuck a look from the corner of his eye. Maybe Babu was having an off night ‘cause he didn't look all that comfortable in this cell to Lenny.

“You okay, champ?” A few years in and Lenny was so far outside the loop, he didn't even know Babu's second name. Or even if he had one. Driving and being around backstage meant he had one foot in and one foot out, in Babu's eyes. Danno had shown way more faith in Lenny lately, and so did Ricky. Babu barely acknowledged he was alive.

Wrestling was built on paying your dues before you were allowed in. It was one of the most rigid fraternities ever constructed. So, Babu, as champion, customarily ignored his every breath.

It's hard to put your finger on just how you could get ignored by a mute, but it was happening. It could have had something to do with the fact that Lenny had plowed them into a wall under the bridge on 72^nd Street.

Yeah, but still – fuck him and his mute-ness. I'll break his big giant head and use it like a German helmet if he doesn’t brighten up soon, Lenny thought.

“I don't remember what happened, but I'm sorry. I know tonight was huge for the company,” Lenny said.

He might have been mute, but he certainly wasn't deaf. Babu followed every noise from the front of the station with focus and intent. He was on edge and it was beginning to become more evident to Lenny.

The cell was not nearly as nice as the ones on Dragnet and he hadn't seen any Joe Fridays so far. He did notice that the walls in the hallway were that pea soup green that was everywhere now. Then he wondered why he even noticed that. A little decor distraction couldn't totally drown out the reality that Danno Garland was surely looking for him.

Lenny wanted to go home and sleep in his own bed and eat from his own kitchen.

The silence in the front of the building was replaced with energy, which, in turn, was replaced with noise. Plenty of noise. The aggressive kind. Babu stood instinctively and cradled his severely injured forearm.

“What?” Lenny asked.

Babu acknowledged Lenny with a look of frustration. “Who do you think that is out there, you dumb fuck?”

Lenny needed a second to mentally chew on several things. One: he talks? Two: he thinks I'm a dumb fuck? And three: who is that out there that has a giant on alert?

September 30^th 1972. New York.

The end of the announcement was shouted over the ferocious boos. “And there will be refunds for anyone...” The announcer ran from ringside to avoid the avalanche of missiles that rained down in his direction.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Tiny Thunder shouted to his fellow wrestlers as he abandoned the ring. All the wrestlers ran back to the wrestler entrance.

The whole ringside area pushed forward and dismantled the retaining barriers like a swollen sea swallowing a storm wall. Pockets of fights had broken out in the huge crowds between New York and Floridian fans, each blaming their man on the no-show.

There were tunnels of people crushing and jamming themselves into all the available exits as the temperature rose to boiling point. The more scuffles that flared up, the more the peaceful people struggled to maintain their calmness and reason.

Bodies, arms, legs, chairs, bottles, barriers, shirtless people, bleeding people, angry faces, stunned children, sneaky punches, threats, and promises of beatings, all could be seen as Danno watched from a box at the top of the stadium. He nursed his eye, picked up the phone, and delicately laid it to his ear. “Hello.”

“You're doing this to fuck me over, aren't you? You were going to make sure that I didn't get that fucking belt no matter what you did. Isn't that what's happening here on my TV? Are you fucking me over, Danno?” Proctor was standing in his hotel room looking at the scenes unfold on his TV.

“No, I don't know what...”

Proctor paced his room. He was too far down the road to return in time to choke Danno in Shea. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“What do you mean, who? The boy. That's fucking who.”

“He's not my responsibility. What are you asking me for?”

Danno hadn't got the message that Babu left at the box office. The lady who took the message just rolled her eyes and moved on with her day. Danno knew that Gilbert was with Lenny, but didn't know anything more than that.

“One of my guys just rang and told me that your champion dragged Gilbert out of his room,” Proctor said.

“What?”

“You better find my boy, Danno, ‘cause if I find out that there's anything wrong with him...” Proctor paused. “Find him.”

September 30^th 1972. New York.

The ice was helping. Kind of. The ring was mostly ripped up and pissed on. A few stadium employees swept their way through the considerable amounts of wreckage and rubbish that lined the aisles. The main lights were still on and this was the deep quiet after the explosion of madness.

At the end of Row A stood an officious beige figure. Melvin Pritchard knocked the center rail with his car key to get Danno's attention.

Danno raised his weary head, ready to unload on whoever was trying to further annoy him. He thought better of it when he saw who was standing there waiting for him.

“One week, Mr. Garland. And unfortunately you can't fix the end of this matchup.” Melvin put on his hat and walked away.

September 30^th 1972. New York.

Babu looked around the cell for something, anything. His arm was in bad shape, and the pain was radiating in his elbow, shoulder and down his rib cage.

“What is it?” Lenny anxiously asked.

Babu grunted at the sheer inconvenience of Lenny being alive. He sized up the bench that they were sitting on and stomped down onto it with his giant foot.

Lenny rushed to the bars and tried to look down the hallway to see what was agitating Babu so much. A slam, again. Lenny could see shapes and figures from behind the frosted glass. It looked like the booking room was filling up fast.

On the third attempt, Babu drove his 18 5 E foot through the six-inch-thick timber bench. He dropped to his knees and tried to pull a usable sliver of wood from the broken options available.

Lenny noticed the handle begin to turn on the door at the end of the hallway.

“Someone's coming,” Lenny informed Babu.

Babu worked faster to split the wood with his one working arm. “Help me.”

His tenseness made Lenny move faster. Babu shoved a partially split piece of bench into Lenny's hand. “We're going to wishbone this. Hold it as tight as you can.”

“Are you not from South Africa then?”

Lenny's knuckles whitened. Babu abruptly yanked the wood, and as a consequence, sent Lenny flying across to the other side of the cell.

Lenny could feel a difference in his shoulder. Babu knelt down beside him and lifted him to the sitting position.

“Thanks, Babu.”

“Move it, asshole. You're sitting on the wood.” Babu reached down between Lenny's legs and retrieved it, folding Lenny in half.

The noise and shouting was now mounting and moving toward them. Nine or ten, Babu thought. Lenny sheepishly made his way toward his cellmate. “I think my shoulder is out.”

Tyler, the aggressive officer from the crash scene, appeared with a huge spread of yellow bruising on most of his face. Lenny had never seen anything like it before. It was as if he had been hit in the face with a typewriter. He was lucky that Babu couldn't use his right arm.

The cop removed a huge bunch of keys and warily unlocked the cell door. “They let me bring some friends of yours here.”

A sense of dread and then relief hit Lenny, until he saw Babu's eyes turn to business mode. Dread flared up, then.

Several other officers dressed in riot gear marched the aggressive mob into the cell. Individuals were getting clubbed and punched, and the door was slammed shut when everyone was beaten into place.

“Enjoy,” Tyler shouted to Babu above the rising madness.

Babu sat down and grabbed Lenny by the arm to sit, too. He made himself as small as he could, pulled off his cap, and turned away.

“Who are these people?” Lenny asked.

All the cops left and the cell was filled with belligerence and drunk people. “This is bullshit, man. Let us out of here.”

In the huddle, Babu checked his arm. He could see the bone.

The cell door was rattled by several pairs of drunken hands.

“We got ripped off. Do you hear me? Let us fucking out of here.”

More and more protesting roars made their way down the hall, but they soon realized that it was for nothing.

Lenny turned more to Babu. His heart was galloping in his chest. He had never felt anything like this before. This was fear. The real kind. The meeting a black bear in your bathroom kind. He could feel a shortness of breath.

What about my kids?

The attention slowly became focused back into the cage. Instinct kicked in. Sometimes you don't have to look to know that someone is staring at you.

“What the fuck?” Some of the new visitors stopped their incoherent protest and turned to Babu and Lenny.

“Is that Babu?” one of the people in the group wondered loudly. “That's fucking him.”

Babu rose up and stood before the crowd. For years he had been provoking hatred in these very same people. Cowardly attacks. Bloodying their heroes. Burning their local team jersey. Humping the American Flag. Babu was so good at his job that when he went to Boston, they had to erect Plexiglas around the ring. He was the most hated man along the East Coast who made a lot of money on the premise that no one could beat him.

But tonight was the night he was going to get it. Finally, after years of dominance, in Shea Stadium, Babu, the South African Savage, was going to be whooped. The people could feel it. They all paid to witness it. They were promised.

Except he never showed up.

“Man, you're the biggest fucking pussy I've ever laid eyes on,” said one of the horde as he stepped forward. “What happened, did you wet your big giant panties on the way to the show?”

The mob roared their approval and the self-assigned leader was clearly enjoying the verbal battle with a mute. “Well, one way or the other, we're going to see you get bloody tonight, Babu. You fucking white nigger.”

Everyone agreed with a series of 'woohooos' and 'yeahs.' Lenny involuntarily stepped out between the crowd and the champ.

“We were in a crash...”

Babu grabbed Lenny around the face and tossed him back behind him.

The leader continued, “I ain't no Florida kid, but I bet I could break you up.”

Babu began a visceral bellow. The self-appointed leader tried to backpedal back into the collective, but he was met by a wall of anxious flesh. They all knew that when the Savage began his 'weird shit', the end was near for his opponent. The bellowing continued through the short 'tribal' dance. The bravado was gone and replaced with a vacuum. The South African Savage had arrived. He pounded his chest with his good hand and his noises became louder, his movements more confrontational. And then he abruptly stopped.

This was the part where all the bad stuff usually happened. And they all knew it.

The swarm was halfway between spectator and prey. They knew what was going to happen next, but their fandom slowed down their alarm.

Babu snapped forward and dropped two of them instantly with the same huge elbow hook. He produced his split of timber and cracked another over the head with it.

The remaining upright automatically rushed him to try and stem the momentum of hurt that was plainly coming their way. They threw everything they had: kicks, punches, biting, and nut shots, but it was like throwing snowballs at a tree.

Lenny wanted to do something. This was what he was waiting for. It was his opportunity to become one of the Boys once and for all.

He saw the giant trying, in vain, to protect his seriously injured arm while fending off a mass of out of shape attackers. Bodies were flying in all directions. Babu was kicking ass, and more importantly to him, staying in character.

This was Lenny's chance.

When he was young, Lenny jumped from the dilapidated Villa Rosa mansion into the Long Island sound. He couldn't swim. To this moment, it was the bravest/stupidest thing he had ever done. He was about to get wet again.

Lenny closed his eyes and jumped in again. He was immediately knocked out and trampled.