New Title 1 (5 page)

It’s because I’m black,
he felt convinced when Goon stomped his belly. Too Hot faked a near-rupture of the abdominal wall.
White oppression, racist motherfuckers.
Goon, then, pulled a full body splash off the ringpost, and Too Hot followed the script, rolling away just in time. The crowd cheered when he jumped up and landed a perfect drop-kick to this mastodon called Goon. He hit the canvas, covering Goon for the three count.

“You gotta hit me harder,” Goon whispered, then jerked his shoulder up just before the last count. They hauled each other up in a clinch.

Weird voice,
Too Hot thought, their heads locked. Kind of faggy. And how could he hit him any harder without knocking him out? “I did hit you hard,” he whispered back.

Goon broke away then whipped brass knucks from his trunks. But Too Hot’s expert side roll smacked Goon hard to the mat, and he twisted the knucks from the huge fingers.

“Real hard, right in the head,” Goon whispered, faking his own shock. “You’re grappling like a pussy.”

Too Hot didn’t like that. When Goon charged, he belted him a little too hard. Goon staggered but then charged again, locking up.

“What’s the matter with you?” came the weird whisper. “These fans didn’t pay to see paddycakes. Hit me hard with those knucks. Otherwise I’ll turn this into a shoot and kick your ass for real.”

“Think you can, asshole?”

Goon laid a chest slap that cracked through the arena like a gunshot. Too Hot lost his breath for a moment.

“What’s your problem, shithead?” he hissed in the next clinch.

“You,” Goon replied. “This is supposed to be a wrestling match, and all you’re doing is prancing around like some home-boy shuck and jive nigger.”

Too Hot’s teeth clenched. “You better watch that shit.”

“What? Nigger? Sorry, I meant to say porch monkey. Bet your mama’s cookin’ cornbread in some project, got about fifty welfare kids, huh?”

“You really want it bad, don’t you, you big white piece of shit?”

“Yeah, I want it bad, so give it to me. I fucked your sister last night—what’s her name? Lawanda, Sharonda, Linolium, some nigger name like that? She turns tricks at truck stops, ten bucks a pop. Lets nigger dealers knock her up so she can get more welfare. Or I should say
mo’ weffair.
What’s your favorite chicken, by the way? KFC or Popeye’s? Lub dat dickin’ at ‘Op-eyes!”

By now Too Hot was burning up. Goon was goading him, the insidious whisper inaudible to the fans at ringside but each word stinging Too Hot like a slap across the face. Why was Goon doing this?
I could kill this guy with one solid punch in the head,
he realized. And if he heard the word
nigger
one more time, he just might do it.

“Got no balls, huh? Same as all you spooks,” Goon continued to whisper. “I’m calling you a nigger to your face and you’re not doing anything about it. Typical yellow-belly, no-balls cornbread-eating
nigger.
No wonder your people were slaves for three hundred years, no balls to do anything about it. Took a white man to get you out of the cotton fields. Ask me we oughta nuke all your goddamn nigger ghettos, get rid of all them crack babies and players selling coke to nine-year-olds, raping white women ‘cos the nigger women are all three-hundred pound street cows slapping jive and buying sirloin with the welfare money whites give ‘em. You’ll be on welfare too, Sambo, after I break your knees so you can’t wrestle anymore.”

Too Hot seethed. “Call me nigger one more time and I’ll crack your coconut with these brass knucks.”

“Nigger. Why don’t you go back to the ‘hood, shoot some hoop, mug white people and panhandle in your $150 sneakers, and walk around like an asshole rubbing your crotch listening to gangsta cop-killer songs just like all the other useless, drop-out, thieving, crack-dealer niggers. Hey, blood, what up? Where dah white wimmins at? Where dah cornbread? Where 2-Pac?”

The red veil dropped. Prison would be next more than likely, or at the very least the final end to a career he’d already half-flushed down the toilet. Too Hot reeled back then—

crack!

—and landed a right hook into Goon’s temple with the brass knuckles. The crowd roared. The bell clanged, and as the ref was disqualifying him, Too Hot Romeo belly-slid out of the ring and dashed for the locker room.
Gotta get out of here! I just killed that guy!

He scrambled to dress in the locker room. Maybe he could head back to Denver, disappear and…well…sell drugs. It didn’t really matter. Two refs brought Goon in on the stretcher before Too Hot could get out.

But then Goon sat up. “Hey, Too Hot. I was just joking with all that nigger stuff. Wanted to get you riled up, you know? The crowd loved that right hook.”

Too Hot dropped his bag, stared in sheer disbelief that Goon was not only still alive but unhurt by a blow that would’ve certainly killed any man on earth.
 

««—»»

Ketchum Athletic Center. Not much bigger than a high-school auditorium, and that’s where half of DSWC cards took place—fucking high schools.
Talk about the pits,
Melinda thought. Fifteen ringrats congregated by the back door, fussing, cussing, whooping it up. Tonight’s card was over—they’d be coming out soon, some to the nearest bar, others straight to the motel with a rat on their arm. In their heyday, most of DSWC’s grapplers had lived the bigtime in WWF and WCW; Melinda had learned that much. Now they’d been consigned to this pissant federation because they were either too old or had stepped on too many toes in the bigger feds.
Goon could make a million a year in WWF,
Melinda realized,
but he’s too smart for that.
A big contract would mean huge exposure, big cities, television. But by enlisting in the Deep South Wrestling Conference, it was just a bunch of boondock towns in boondock counties. Easy to hide. Less conspicuous. And the ringrats in these parts? Fly-by-nights. The kinds of girls nobody missed. Melinda knew Goon must be taking a girl at least once a week. And in these little redneck towns? So spread out? Not to mention the fact that only one of the seven victims thus far had even been identified, and there were probably seven more out there rotting in the woods, yet to be found. No doubt Goon’s manager was taking care of body disposal, which meant that he was in on it too.

“I’m Pinkie,” came a voice.

Melinda glanced aside. Blond, late 20s probably—ringrats generally weren’t young. She chewed gum with enthusiasm, arms crossed beneath a ludicrous black-sequined top. Studded jeans, gaudy makeup. They all looked the same in a way.

“I’m Melinda.”

“Who’re you waiting for?”

“I don’t know. Anything that looks good,” she lied. Melinda needed to get close to some other rats, but she had to take it slow, gain their confidence first.

Pinkie snapped her gum, tapping her foot. “I’d like to snag Dick Dude, but I think he left after his match. I’m surprised they even put him on the card tonight. Dude’s top-name now. Ketchum usually only gets the mid-names and jobbers.”

“Hate to disappoint you, but Dude ain’t worth shit in bed.”

Pinkie gaped at her. “You—you’ve done Dashing Dick Dude?”

 
“Yeah,” Melinda informed her. “Last month in Big Rock. Couldn’t get it up to save his life. The steroids kill their dicks. Hunk Hargan’s the same way. Dead dick.”

Pinkie’s tone turned skeptical. “Hunk Hargan’s in WCW. They don’t do matches down here.”

“Back when I lived in Baltimore,” Melinda maintained the lie. “My place was two blocks away from the Civic Center. Once a month WCW’d come to town, and so would WWF—big cards too, with all the names. We’d just wait for them outside the backstage door, and they’d pick us up in limos, takes us to this great bar by the airport hotel, the Safari Club it’s called.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened in sheer envy. “Shit, I’d do anything to snag some real faces. Who… Who’d you get?”

Melinda shrugged as though it was no big deal. “Rex Ruger, The Big Bad Man, Shaun Jarrety, Undertow—a bunch. But I’ll tell you, most of those big name guys in the big feds—they’re all assholes. They’re either cokeheads or steroid gobblers. At least the grapplers in the regional conferences are humble. I did Reed the Butcher the other night—pretty cool guy but, Christ, he was too big. I was walking funny the whole next day.”

Pinkie giggled. “Better too big than not big enough. I got a crack at Rowdy Randy Rider right before he retired. He was great at first, put a pillow over my face, played like he was smothering me. But when I got a look—I swear!—it was only three inches! Hard!”

“Jeeze. I’ve seen bigger link sausages. Paul Smith’s pretty small too, and so is Quake.”

“Wow, you’ve done a lot of names. I never get to any of the big arenas ‘cos I ain’t got a car. Ketchum, Lockwood, Crick City—they’re about the only places I can get to hitchhiking.”

“My husband lost his job in Baltimore, worked for McCormick,” Melinda practiced her undercover spiel. “So I dumped his ass and moved down here with my sister. It’s a big difference going from WWF and WCW to this smaller fed stuff, but like I said—the big tv names? They’re mostly schmucks. I keep hoping to snag Marcus Arelius or Too Hot Romeo. I did them both a couple of times back before they got kicked out of WCW for coke.”

“What about Dare? You ever do him?”

“Naw, missed him every time, but he was losing his draw bad in WCW. I guess that’s why he turned up in DSWC. Never lost the ego trip, didn’t want to retire even though he’s pigshit rich.”

“Stylin’ and profilin’!” Pinkie mimicked.

Good,
Melinda thought. She was easing into conversation with credibility. Up ahead several rats squealed when the door opened, then a couple of jobbers walked out and took their pick. A moment later Harry Windingham strutted through the door, banned from the bigger feds for falsifying doctor’s certificates. Melinda guessed it was better to be a big fish in a little pond than to be nothing at all. What could these guys do in the real world?
Probably not even smart enough to change tires.
Right after Windingham came The Invincible Cherokee—another has-been, so fucked up from steroids he sometimes couldn’t remember his name. DSWC was the dust bin of the stars. Several more groupies paired off with them, and disappeared in low-rent hot rods.

“We’re not going to get shit here,” Pinkie regretted.

“Probably right. Too many rats and not enough grapplers.”

Melinda figured the time was right. “Has Goon come out?”

“Goon? Eeew.” Pinkie’s face screwed up. “You like Goon?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“He gives me the creeps. One night in Lockwood I was blowing Fabulous Freddie Faylor in his Taurus and he told me Goon’s the weirdest wrestler in the conference. Never talks to anyone, never goes out. He doesn’t even stay in the motels, he and his manager live in a mobile home.”

A mobile home? Hmm.
There was some news, and that explained a lot. Harder to find, harder to nail down.

“Faylor said Goon must have some kind of padding or something under the mask, ‘cos Freddie swears he hit him in the head with a chair hard enough to knock him out.”

You’d be surprised,
Melinda reserved the thought. “What else you know about Goon?”

“Zip. Oh, wait, I knew this one rat who said she talked to him once, and she said he must be queer ‘cos he had a real femmy voice.”

Believe me, honey. Goon ain’t queer.
“Know any way I might pick up on his manager?”

“Felander? Naw. Nobody ever sees him either, since he dropped the Shock and Roll Express. He managed Dare too for a little while, and the Fabulous Ghoula but dropped them the minute Goon came onto the scene. I can’t see him making more money with Goon than names like Dare and Ghoula.”

That’s because you don’t know about Goon,
Melinda thought.

“Felander was friends with Kevin the Druid back around the same time,” the girl continued. “I had Kevin once, but then he disappeared from the scene completely.”

He sure did.
Melinda looked behind her into the parking lot. “I guess Goon’s gone ‘cos I don’t see any mobile home here.”

“He always leaves right away’s what I heard.”

Shit. She’d been on this case a month now and was no closer to Goon since day one.
I’ve got to get to Felander. If I can get to Felander, I can get to Goon…