New Title 1 (10 page)

“They exaggerate a little. Once they’re in the ring, the really do look larger than life. Almost like gods.”

Gods. Gimme a break.

Melinda seemed keenly focused, staring at this bleached blond icon. Under her breath, she even commented, “I can see why all the ringrats are nuts about him. He’s really…hot.”

Straker frowned hard. “He looks like a broken-down jalopy. What is he, sixty?”

“He’s forty five, but twenty years of bodyslams, suplexes, and drop-kicks to the face will wear anybody down. At least Dare’s aged with grace.”

“Oh, make me puke,” Straker countered. “What did he do, dig up Liberace for the robe? Oh, and I love his hair. I hope this guy can write hair bleach off on his taxes. And, Jesus Christ, look at that hammy tin-foil belt.”

“Captain Straker,” Melinda coyly suggested. “Do I detect a hint of jealousy?”

Straker laughed. “What have I got to be jealous about? That guy’s a busted loser.”

“Yeah? Well that busted loser has probably made ten million dollars in the last twenty years.”

Straker paused and gulped. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“He’s the most successful wrestler of all time. In his heyday he could write his own ticket, he was the biggest draw in the sport.”

Straker’s face pinched up.
Ten million dollars? These guys make that kind of money for this phony farce?

“And just wait till you see him in the ring,” she added.

Eventually Dare broke from his pretentious stance, then strutted to the ring as the crowd’s roar rose. Melinda grabbed Straker’s arm again, and he secretly gasped. Just being touched by her, however cursorily, sent a line of prickles up his back…and through his groin.

“What?”

“See that guy there, standing just at the locker room entrance?”

Straker glanced. A big beefy guy in a black shirt, short dark hair and a goatee. “That’s Goon?” he questioned.

“No, no, that’s Felander, Goon’s manager, he used to wrestle as one of the Riders with Dare, and the Druid, and Rex Ruger. He was The Pain Doctor,” she whispered. “That’s the guy who’ll lead us to Goon and the evidence you need to put him away.”

Straker didn’t get it. He still couldn’t reason why they didn’t get federal help in to go after Goon directly; after all, everything said this guy was a serial-killer. But now the crowd was in such an uproar, Straker could scarcely hear his thoughts much less dwell on the reason he was here.

The ring announcer’s voice jerked Straker’s attention back up. Then a wash of heavy-metal guitar riffs, like chainsaws buzzing in unison, cut through the air.

“And tonight’s opponent, ladies and gentlemen, entering the ring accompanied by his manager—at six feet seven inches tall and weighing in a 350 pounds! Hailing from parts unknown!
Gooooooooooon!
”

Straker shuddered at the crowd’s response: a deafening meld of boos, jeers, and cheers. A shadow which seemed immense lingered at the entrance, and Straker could only stare at its size. But suddenly Melinda’s hands were on him again.

“Stand in front of me,” she whispered. “I don’t want him to see me.”

“What? You mean you’ve met this guy?”

“No, but when I finally do meet him, I want to be a fresh face. I don’t want to be just another rat he’s seen at every card.”

Straker guessed she had a point. He stood in front of her, letting her essentially hide behind him. The line of ringrats opposite them actually recoiled when the shadow emerged. “Go home Goon!” one yelled and threw a cup. Another yelled: “Don’t you hurt Dare!” And another, “If you hurt Slick Dare I’ll kill you!” Straker’s brow rose at their seeming conviction; fake or not, these people were getting into this no less enthusiastically than if it were an NFL playoff game. But Straker’s brow arched even further when he got a look at…

Goon,
he thought.
Holy motherfucking shit…

Straker doubted that he’d ever seen a more physically awesome—or dangerous—human being in his life. The six-seven was no lie, and neither was the 350. In spite of the barrel belly, this was all muscle. Legs like carven tree trunks flexed beneath black full-length tights. Pectorals popped, the size of tortoise shells, and his arms were probably larger and stronger than the average man’s legs.

Melinda peered from behind Straker’s neck. “He bench presses 600, and can squat half a ton. He cracks coconuts between his knees.”

“I believe it,” Straker muttered. But scariest of all, somehow, was the black and red mask laced to his face. Deadpan eyes glared out through the holes. Teeth glittered in the tiny mouth slit. He looked like something more than human, or something less.
I wouldn’t take that guy on with a five-shot Remington full of 10-gauge,
Straker determined. This guy was a human meat-rack, a walking chassis of convoluted muscle mass and bone structure. Even his shadow seemed awesome; it trailed behind him like a wicked mascot.

Melinda came back around once Goon stepped into the ring. The ring floor visibly wobbled under his weight. Dare strutted like a cocksure rooster, taunting Goon with drowned out braggadocio. Goon only opened and closed his ham-hock-sized fists and stared the champion down.

Dare spun around, raised his arms to the crowd, then began to remove the Liberace robe. Straker could smell the “work” a mile away. With Dare’s back turned, Goon charged, lifted him up, and pulled a hard belly-to-back suplex. Dare howled at the impact. And for the next fifteen minutes, Goon and Dare went at it with mutual pile-drives, bodyslams, armbars, and attempted sleeper holds. Straker was amazed, next, when Goon—weight and girth notwithstanding—rose into the air and fired a drop-kick to Dare’s pretty-boy face. Dare flipped over the rope, landing on his back.

“The finish’s coming up,” Melinda said. “Watch.”

Straker watched, somehow fascinated in spite of the knowledge that this whole thing was a sham. Goon stood atop the ringpost and—

“Holy shit!” Straker exclaimed.

—landed square on Dare’s chest. Straker, by now, didn’t care how fake this was. Ten feet onto cement was ten feet onto cement, with Dare between the flying rock and the hard place.

Goon jerked away, roared at the fans behind the rail, then snatched up a metal folding chair.

“The, uh, the chairs are fake, right?” Straker hesitantly queried. “I mean, like, they’re plastic, right?”

“No,” Melinda said.

Just as Goon turned, though, Dare revived himself, to the approval of the crowd. He tore the chair from Goon’s grasp, and then—

WHAP!

—smacked the seat of the chair right smack-dab against the top of Goon’s skull. Goon teetered as Dare did a loud “Wooooo!” right to his face. In another second, though, Goon had dove under the ring, and when he came back up, he was wielding a two-by-four.

The crowd shrieked. Dare backed off. Then—

Goon ran after the Wonder Boy.

The two-by-four made several audible swipes past Dare’s face. A final swipe, however, dangerously close, was caught by the 12-time heavyweight champion, wrested away, and then—

“Kill him!” several ringrats screamed.

Dare cut loose with another “Wooo!” and then—

“Bust his head!” Melinda screamed.

Women,
Straker thought,
are so violent!

Dare slammed the two-by-four in a vast arch and broke it with a
crack!
over Goon’s head. Goon fell, twitched once, then didn’t move. Dare whooped it up as the ring announcer declared him the winner.

Two guys in phony paramedic suits buzzed out, hoisted Goon onto a stretcher, and whisked him back to the locker room.

“Did you see?” Melinda asked. “Did you see how hard Dare hit him with that two-by-four?”

Straker shrugged, the energy worn off. “It was a piece of Styrofoam with woodgrain on it.”

“Yeah?”

When Melinda bent over the rail, Straker could do nothing else in the entire fucking world except eyeball her derriere.
I need to beat off again,
he thought.
Bad.

But a moment later, the reporter was handing him one broken half of the phony two-by-four.

Straker smiled but then—

What the—

Something in his gut plummeted. Yes, he’d seen how hard The Wonder Boy had broken that piece of Styrofoam over Goon’s masked head. The only problem was…

This isn’t Styrofoam.

Straker hefted the splintered wood in his hand.

This is real,
he realized.
That fuckin’ guy just broke a real two-by-four over Goon’s head…

««—»»

“Down near Cotter’s Field,” said one chain-smoking, beer-gutted Richard Kinion, a cracker, a rube, and, namely, the Chief of the Luntville Police Department. Cotter’s was an acreage of some of the finest soybean-planting land in the whole state, and Old Man Cotter and his boys sold it all to the Japs via some confalutin’ new trade agreement. Fine with the Chief, though, even though his own daddy’d had his leg blowed off in some big ass-whuppin’, fucked-up battle called Truk, some fuckin’ sam-amm-ur-eye drove his Mitsubishi plane smack-dab into the 40-mike-mike deck on daddy’s carrier, and daddy were one’a the loaders. Ain’t
no way
Chief Richard Kinion’d
ever
buy a car made by the same evil, slanty-eyed Shintu worshippin’ fucks that about
wore our asses out
in the big WW Two. “You buy yerdumbself a Dodge Colt’n—let me tell ya—you’re payin’ the same friggin’ compernee that made the friggin’ plane that tore ass on Pearl Harbor, that’s what’cher doin’,” the Chief could not help but prattle on a bit…

But back to Cotter’s Field… “Cotter’s—ya know where it is, son?” the Chief asked.

PFC Micah Hays cut a down-home shuck-and-jive hillbilly grin. “Shore do, Chief. Shee-it, Cotter’s? We used to call it Cotter’s Fuck Hole we did, ‘cos’a all the poontang we’se used ta bust out there. Yes, sir, all’s through high school all we hadda do is pick us up some white-trash splittail, a six-pack of Dixie, and next thing we know, Chief, we’se’re humping ourselfs some redneck box till Kingdom Come, and I’se do mean
come!
”

Chief Kinion smirked as though he did not approve of such scatological verbosity from a fellow officer, but it was actually because he, in his younger days, was not so rewarded by any similar availability of women. “Just cut the dirty talk, son, and let me give ya the lowdown. Just got me a call from Tritt Tuckton, you know, that booger-eatin’ cracker from up past old Grandpappy Martin’s, and he says ta me he’s walkin’ down the Route just pretty as you please, but as he come up on Cotter’s Field—”

“Yes, sir!” PFC Hays could not help but intervene. “Cotter’s Field, shee-it! I’se
laid
me some peter out there, Chief, had my dick in dirty box more times than old man Cotter had his ass in a tractor seat! The dirtier the better, ya now, and praise God fer cracker gals, yes sir! If ya cain’t smell that dirty hole a country mile away, then what good is it, tell me that? Ripe,
stanky
pussy’s the best pussy. Grows hair on yer balls, yes sir. Leaves kind’ve a sheen on yer dick, lets ya know ya been fuckin’ like a man next time ya pull’r out to have a pee. That dirty cracker pussy stank waft up and like ta
smack
you in your kisser! Says in the Bible God gives good works ta men, and He shore do by blessin’ us country boys with feisty, dirty, box-stanky cracker gals, huh, Chief?”

Chief Kinion’s stomach did a hitch, and his brow furrowed at this rather inordinate observation. In addition, he rather doubted that the Lord on High had cracker gals in mind when He thought to bestow good works upon men. Not that the Chief could very well relate to the young PFC Hays either way as he had not had his bone in any pussy—stinky or otherwise—for quite a spell. Take his wife Carleen, for example: a slim purdy pixie when he married her some twenty years ago but like most slim purdy pixies she shore as shit stopped puttin’ out about two days after she said “I do” on the altar of Grace Baptist Church. Turned to fat just as quick such that, now, Chief Kinion would often awake in the middle of the night and wonder why in tarnation there was a 1200-pound Berkshire hog snoring right next to him in bed, and farting and belching and what have you.

He gritted away the image, and belched himself then. Those jumbo barbequed ham hocks he’d socked down into his breadbasket for lunch were mighty fine. $1.99 a plate down at Miss June’s Diner, and he’s had three plates.
Eerp.
A man could tell a good hamhock from bad, by the belch. “Anyway, Hays, like I was saying, we got this call from Tritt, says he sawed something awful up at Cotter’s Field, said it were like a—”