CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

 

Ricky pulled up outside his apartment and quickly got out of his car. He was shaken, panicked and fumbling around with his keys. He didn’t know what was happening or what Tanner Blackwell had told the cops. 

“Ricky?” Nestor called as he crossed the street.

Ricky stopped suddenly, and instinctively contemplated running. 

“You got a minute, man?” Nestor asked.

Ricky slowly turned. He looked around for other cops but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t even know if Nestor was a cop. But he had a strong feeling that he was.

“Can I come up?” Nestor asked as he came closer.

“Who are you?”

Nestor confirmed Ricky’s suspicion about him by pulling out his badge and flashing it.

“And what do you want?” Ricky asked.

Nestor rested himself against Ricky’s parked car. It was cold in the shadow of the building. Ricky didn’t notice.

“Things are happening. Something is going down with all your people. There’s things leaking out that are making my people very interested in you.”

Ricky could hardly contain his body from shaking. 

Nestor said quietly, “Before the day is out, they’re going to get Danno. No doubt.” 

Nestor blew into his hands and rubbed them together. “All everyone downtown is wondering now is – who else is going down with him? How fucking big is that chain across the country? You know we’ll get the evidence to find out.”

Nestor could see that Ricky was doing a fine job in holding himself together. He needed to push more.

“How do you think Ginny is going to do with you on the inside?”

That was it. That was the perfect question to get Ricky to react.

“You ever threaten me again,” Ricky said, “and I’ll … ”

“Give up Danno. Come downtown with me. Then, when all this is over, you can move somewhere else and enjoy the last of your queer years on a farm or something.”

“Are you here to arrest me?”

Nestor shook his head.

“Well then, why don’t you get back to your job and find yourself a clean cop to shoot or something?”

Ricky opened his door.

“When I get Danno I know you’re going to be coming in too. If you give him to me I can look after you … ”

Ricky slammed the door in Nestor’s face. Nestor kicked Ricky’s car in frustration.

“Fuck,” he couldn’t help but shout.

 

Eileen Dean felt bad. For most of her life she beat herself up about things she really shouldn’t have. She was getting on in years and spent most of her time in Arizona with a man who came and went, which suited her perfectly. She wasn’t close to her daughter who moved to New York about ten years before. 

Eileen did what Eileen always did – she blamed herself. She was pretty much at home with the fact that she wasn’t maternal. She just didn’t have what she just didn’t have. She fed and clothed her daughter and always made sure she was safe. Eileen just didn’t do much in the way of affection. 

And that ate her up too.

So in she flew to collect her grandkid. She wanted it to be different with him. She wanted to be the grandmother that she saw in her head. The one with the apron on, who was always tending to something delicious in the oven.

Eileen came into a little money when she sold her house, so now was the time. She invited her daughter and grandson to Disneyland. After all, that’s where happy families went. At least in Eileen’s head.

Eileen’s daughter declined but Eileen was allowed take her grandson with her.

What a fucking mistake that was.

Eileen could hardly contain how much she hated him as they walked back to her car. She had just spent five days looking after the whiniest little prick she ever laid eyes on. 

“That’s too high, Nana.”

“It’s too hot.”

“I’ve got a sore tummy.”

“I miss my Momma.”

“When are we going?”

“I don’t like burgers.”

“That mouse is scary.”

He was fifteen years old. 

Eileen was used to her own space. She thought she could manage. She couldn’t. She was terrified that if he opened his mouth once more she might punch him in his tiny, spotty face.

She tried to spend her guilt away. And she was left to drag all that guilt with her through the massive parking lot. Half deflated balloons, toys, candy, hats, buttons and two huge suitcases.

She watched with disdain as her grandson walked with trepidation across the noisy parking lot. The only time he forgot where he was, was when he caught a glimpse of himself in a car window. 

“Nana. Where is your car?”

“We’re nearly there,” she answered.

“Where is it, Nana?”

Even the way he called her ‘Nana’ she found weird and a little creepy. 

“I don’t know what it’s called. It’s beside the brown car straight ahead.”

The grandson took off into a floppy run that was embarrassing to even look at. He came up to the back of Eileen’s rental car and stubbed his sandaled toe, which propelled him face first into the trunk.

“Nana,” he squealed.

Eileen used one of the bags to cover her face while she laughed as the image of him falling played over in her mind.

“Coming,” she said between convulsions. 

She tried to hurry with all her branded, plastic and sugared cargo. “Coming.”

Eileen knelt down beside him. “Did you have an accident?” 

“You saw it,” he answered back.

“No, an accident.”

Eileen sniffed the air and her stomach turned at the smell wafting around.

“No,” the grandson answered very matter-of-factly. 

“Smells like you did,” she said as she stood.

Then he began to smell it too. It was strong and pungent. And close. Eileen seemed to know instinctively that there was something wrong. The scent brought her to the brown Plymouth parked beside her. She cupped the windows and looked in.

“What is it Nana?” he asked.

She shushed him and continued her inspection of the car. His voice and they way her called her ‘Nana’ was making her stomach worse. 

She noticed the car inside was messy in general and there was muck on the floor, but nothing to legislate for the type of stifling odor around them.

“It’s coming from the trunk,” he said, still sitting on the floor.

 

Ricky knew somewhere at the back of his head that it was going to end like this. Danno just wouldn’t give up and that put them all at risk. The way the business was set up was - if anyone from outside the business got access - then it was only a matter of time before the whole business went down.

Their web-like setup was what made them so strong and, now that they were breached, it was that web-like setup that could put them all away.

      Ricky Plick didn’t have the time or the knowledge to hide what needed to be hidden. He wasn’t familiar enough with the office to know what was legit and what should never be seen.  

He just knew that somewhere in this office there was a lot of stuff that should never be seen by anyone outside the business.

And that’s why he stood at the door of Danno’s office on West Forty-Second with a canister of gas and a pocket full of matches. 

He could feel the weight of his decision begin to settle down onto him. He walked the floor of the New York Booking Agency knowing that this office made Danno who he was. This room laid claim to the territories and the wrestlers. In their world, the contents of this office made Danno the boss.

Outside of their world, this office made them all criminals and thieves and match fixers. Outside of their world, the New York Booking Agency could end it all for everyone across the Americas. 

And Ricky couldn’t stand by and let that happen.

He chugged out the gas along the floor and dowsed the filing cabinets with it also. He threw it liberally left and right as he shimmied backwards towards the door. 

He knew that the match he struck meant that they couldn’t build a case against Danno based on his own records. He also knew this meant that if Danno couldn’t lay claim to his territories and his champion, then anyone could.

With a strike of his match Ricky both saved and ruined Danno Garland.

He also threw the red meat of a vulnerable business to the men who wanted it all along. But what else could he do with the cops moving quickly in?

Ricky Plick, longtime right-hand man to both Danno and his father before him, threw the lit match and quickly closed the door to separate him from the quick and intense heat. 

The only thing he brought with him was the contents of Danno’s safe. He figured that would get him and Ginny out of the way for a while. Just ‘til all of this settled down into whatever shape it was to take next.

 

The call came in and sent a concentrated pulse through Captain Miller. He couldn’t stick to a fast walk. He burst into a sprint along the corridor. 

“What the fuck is going on?” he shouted to no one in particular.

All the initial information pointed to it being Proctor King in the trunk of the brown Plymouth. The height, age and skin color matched. Danno was picked up in that same airport just the night before. 

A few days prior, Ricky took five grand from Danno’s safe. He didn’t like that so many backstabbing snakes knew where all the evidence was. In an effort to clean up, Ricky personally threw Danno’s gun in the Hudson and gave Mickey Jack Crisp the five grand to go back to Bear Mountain and move Proctor’s body. 

Mickey was halfway through this job when Danno contacted him to go to Texas. 

But all Captain Miller knew was the snitch on the phone was good. The tip-off was reliable. They now had a serious case. They just needed Danno.

Miller just had to make sure one person didn’t step in and fuck it all up - everything he built. 

“Chapman. Get me Nestor Chapman,” he shouted to anyone who passed him. “I don’t want him anywhere near Danno Garland.”

“He’s not here sir,” a passing officer replied.