I opened the door into Jason’s office, only to walk straight into his outthrust hand, one finger held up in the universal sign for ‘silence.’
Like a cartoon character trying to be quiet, I took exaggerated steps from the door over to the French press. With dramatic care for the noise I made I lifted the press and selected a mug.
“I’m afraid our rates are non-negotiable,” he was saying. His phone buzzed as the other person on the line spoke.
“I respect your position, Mr. Gogarty,” he said. “But I can’t budge on that.”
More buzzing I couldn’t hear. He looked at me, speculatively.
“I think that idea has some potential.” He nodded, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, reaching for the pad of paper on his desk, and taking up a pen. He began writing with quick strokes, the pen audibly scratching against the paper. “Yeah. That sounds good. Sure, we’ve got a fax. He can start inquiries as soon as you make that deposit. Yeah, today, absolutely. Dent-Clark looks forward to working on your behalf.” He hung up.
“Well,” he said, “looks like you’ve got another job.”
I poured my coffee. “I’m not a bodyguard.”
“No, but for a gig that could last weeks or months like this one, you can figure out how to fake it.”
“Meaning what?” I added my preferred yellow packets and dollop of dairy, probably half-and-half rather than the whole milk I would’ve preferred.
“Meaning once we get you kitted out, no one’ll be able to tell you aren’t the god damned Secret Service.”
I took a sip of the coffee and tried not to roll my eyes. He always had the good stuff, at least.
“Does this mean I have to…”
“Yes, you’re carrying a company piece while you’re on this job. And we’re getting you a vest.”
“I’ve got a vest. A couple, actually. One fleece, one down…Eddie Bauer. It’s great. Keeps me warm but leaves my arms free to whip hell out of bad guys.”
He eyed me over his glasses.
“Nobody is gonna shoot at me at a wrestling show, man.”
“Better to wear the vest and not need it than…”
I couldn’t see a percentage in arguing. I took a seat.
“You don’t really want this, do you? Do I need to put Brock on it?”
“We already know that getting shot doesn’t bother him,” I said. I regretted the words even before Jason’s face darkened. “I’m sorry,” I said, raising a hand immediately. “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”
“Yeah, but you’re my asshole. And besides, we both know this is a bona fide mystery—and you won’t be able to let go of it before you figure it out.”
“Don’t even know what ‘it’ is yet,” I said. “Haven’t seen any of the threats or been filled in.”
“Company owner…that’s Oscar Gogarty, who I was on the phone with…is going to send over everything they’ve got so far.”
“What was the negotiating about?”
“He was looking for ways to lower the rates.”
“And what’d you settle on?”
“Regular hourly rates with enough retainer for two weeks,” Jason said. “But no expenses.”
“No expenses? How the hell do I make any money on the job then?”
He held up that ‘silence’ finger again. “You’re gonna be traveling with the company, staying in hotels with the company, eating with the company…his point was that they’d be floating all your expenses anyway, so there was no need for it.”
“That’s fair, I guess…but what do I do about food? Eat at craft services every night?”
“They’ll give you the same per diem they give employees.”
“What kind of employees? Crew? Creative? Talent?”
“I did not ask. Besides, how much does a jar of peanut butter cost you?”
“Some of the peanut butter I eat? More than you’d expect.” I finished the coffee with my usual gulp, since it hadn’t really been hot to begin with. “I don’t know what to make of this thing at all. Seems like Grant just has a character that pisses some of the crowd off and somebody wrote a dumb letter.”
“And you will be diligent in tracking down said dumb letter writer and exposing their nefarious plot for all the world to see. And as it might take a few weeks, you’ve got the chance to make some real money.”
“My lifestyle is cheap.”
“How’s your girlfriend like the boat?”
A couple of protests surged up. First about the word girlfriend, but that had been pretty thoroughly settled just a couple of nights ago. The other was to ask what that had to do with anything, but then I realized the implication.
“I’m not moving to dry land. Not to any of the dry land I can afford, anyway.”
“You’re nothing if not committed to the aesthetic. Go on out and grab a desk and start a file. I’ll give you whatever they send over.”
* * *
I had the case file open and the various principals and locations cross referenced before I heard anything from Delmarva Wrestling. Jason CC’d me an email that had a PDF. Once I got it open, it looked like a PDF scan made with somebody’s phone of a fairly wrinkled piece of paper.
In irregular but legible cursive, the letter read:
The South is a proud place and Our Heritage will not be subjected to the insults of your company’s U.S. Grant. He had better never perform in Virginia again. Not in Norfolk or Virginia Beach. Not in Richmond or Bristol nor anywhere in between or there will be serious consequences.
It was signed The Knights of the South. There was some kind of mark on the paper next to that name, but the paper had been so wrinkled and the scan so bad I couldn’t really make out what it was.
“Oh, boy,” I muttered. I spent a couple of minutes lamenting the state of history education in the country over the past several decades that had allowed anyone to believe specious bullshit about the south’s ‘heritage’ in regards to the Civil War, and all its symbols.
Frankly, my sympathy was entirely with the guy tearing up the rebel flag.
I did some searching for The Knights of the South. The hits were so many and varied that I decided to try narrowing it via some official lists of hate groups published by various watchdogs. Nothing there. I narrowed my searches and spent the next hour wading through some of the worst web design and dumbest ideas I’d ever seen.
There were plenty of groups that had similar names or similar motifs—lots of Crusader Crosses, or imitation Crusader Crosses. Lots of Celtic crosses with bad spiral knot-work in the circles. But nothing that jumped out at me; no exact match for The Knights of the South associated with any of the locations named in the letter, or even Virginia in general. The letter was not getting me anywhere.
By the time I’d looked into all that, I had several more emails. The first one I opened was a massive wall of text of different fonts. For a moment I was put in mind of the classic movie ransom letter where all the words are cut out of different sources.
Then I realized what I was looking at was a series of comments cut and pasted from various wrestling message boards, press releases, and articles about Delmarva Wrestling and U.S. Grant in particular.
I read a few of them.
So stiff in the ring…
Seems like a real asshole…
His gimmick is gonna get him killed if they ever go to the Deep South…
Going to hurt someone with that finisher…
I stopped about halfway down the first page. I wrote a quick email to Jason.
“I’ll do a lot of things for this job. But I’m not going to spend hours reading the damn comments.”
I paged through the rest of what they sent me. A poor recollection of a threatening call they’d gotten at a show in southern Maryland. No details to work with, just the hourly worker who’d picked up the phone at company HQ recalling someone had said they didn’t want to see Grant performing that character again, and that there’d be trouble if he did.
I made a note on the file: ask for audio. No way of knowing if they had it, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.
That was it. That was all I had to go on. I summarized my findings in an email to my boss and thought about the upcoming week, and my least favorite holiday.
For me, Thanksgiving was beneath Earth Day, Arbor Day, Flag Day, and goddamned Garbage Ape Day if they ever declared one.
The following Saturday, now that was a day I cared about. That was a day I could spend with people I enjoyed seeing. And lately things had been going too well, and I’d been in too good a mood to deal with it.
I made the executive decision to skip it entirely, and I passed the next day ignoring any and call phone calls. Since none were from Gen, Dani, or Jason, I spent the entire day cleaning the boat, making sure it was winterized, and thinking about Saturday.
For my own personal Thanksgiving dinner, I had a third of a bottle of Wigle bourbon and about half a jar of Wild Friends Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter, which seemed the most seasonally appropriate thing in my cupboard.