Another connection closed.
“That kid in the arena. That was your boy?”
“Yeah. I been to the morgue this morning. He was beat up pretty bad. What killed him was bleeding out from a cut artery in his head.”
“Bud, I’m sorry. I know Homicide checked into it. I heard it was a stunt gone wrong.”
Bud took a drag that left an ember pinched between thumb and forefinger. He dropped it into the coffee dregs and it hissed out. The bloodshot eyes locked with Brewer’s.
“Listen, the marks in the seats ain’t got a clue, and any so-called witnesses in the crew are ‘kayfabing’ your men.”
“Speak English.”
“Kayfabe is the way of life in the business. You do anything and everything at all times to promote the idea that wrestlin’ is a hundred-percent legit and on the up and up. You keep your mouth shut in front of ‘marks’ — the outsiders — and God help you if you don’t. But this was no accident.”
“Bud, you know something we don’t? I heard the kid cut his own self, which — let’s face it — you guys are crazy. I always thought you used those blood capsules, stage blood.”
Bud’s eyes wouldn’t let go. “Chuck was still a little green, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew how to get color. Marty Delaney beat hell out of him, and he was the one that cut Chuck.”
They used to say Bud’s face was like a cigar-store Indian’s, but Brewer saw the masked grief, same as when a buddy had bought it overseas and it was time for payback.
“I watched it on TV,” Bud said. “Delaney wasn’t working at the end.”
“What do you mean ‘working’?”
“He wasn’t pulling punches with his fists or the chair he clobbered Chuck with. I didn’t see the blade job, but I know he did that too.”
“Bud, like I said, the homicide detectives already looked at this. I know you’re upset—”
“They wasn’t there to see it, and even if they was, they might not have seen what I seen, crap TV or no. It ain’t like I don’t know the business.”
“I know,” Brewer said soothingly. He saw the other two plainclothesmen in the room looking their way with open curiosity. “Let’s take a walk, Bud.”
Brewer took him down the block to the Imperial Diner. Bud kept stirring his black coffee as he talked.
“I never wanted Chuck to go into the business. Whether he was trying to prove a point or what, I don’t know. This promoter, Smiley Rose, he’s a scumbag, Al. The last guy I’d want my kid working for. He stiffed me on a few payoffs, told me he’d push me up the card and never did. Once I got hurt, he dropped me like a bad habit. I mean, I’m not cryin’ about it or nothin’, but he does this crap, he uses people. For his own pleasure.”
The spoon scraped and scraped inside the cup.
“The kid and I weren’t close. His mother got custody in the divorce because I always had to move around to where the steel work was. I’m still pushin’ iron all over the place.” He looked up. “But he was my kid — and somebody’s gotta pay for this.”
Brewer felt the undertow beneath the words.
“What did you see this Delaney do that nobody else seems to have noticed?”
“Rule one in the business is you gotta protect your opponent. That wasn’t happening at the end of the match. He punched Chuck square in the face, over and over. He hit him across the face hard with that chair. Normally, you take a chair shot on your hands, like you’re trying to block it. Maybe it hits you on the front part of your skull. It wouldn’t be a hard shot anyway, but... the kid’s hands were at his sides. And then Delaney...”
Bud stared hard at the tiny whirlpool of blackness before him.
“And then he drove the kid’s head into the ringpost. That sound... like a pipe hittin’ a watermelon.”
The tired lids closed on the memory. After a moment, they opened partway, and he sounded more matter-of-fact.
“When you juice, you gotta cover it somehow so the marks can’t see you cut yourself. I showed Chuck years ago how it only takes a little nick or two. I don’t even think he was fully conscious when he got the cut what killed him.
“I know that boy could be a smartass, Al. And Rose always used what they call a ‘policeman,’ a guy who can legit straighten out an attitude problem in the ring — so I’m betting this is what happened to Chuck.”
“What sort of attitude problem brings down that kind of punishment?”
Bud’s face suffused with such a hot, coppery flush that Brewer thought he might have a stroke. The words squeezed past a collapse in his throat. “I dunno, but he... they... killed my son, Al. I need you to take care of these guys, or so help me God, I will.”
“It ain’t gonna come to that, Bud. It can’t. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Bud looked at him intently and then seemed to disappear within himself, stirring the last of his overt emotion into the coffee while Brewer wondered if his old friend could still deal like one of the four horsemen.
“Bud, let’s take it from the top.”
Thursday — 12:30 P.M.
“Why didn’t you bring him over to Homicide?” Brewer’s boss said.
“He knows me, not them. When he went by the morgue, the people there talked like the case was all wrapped up — accidental, self-inflicted, no evidence of foul play.”
“He knew better? From fifty miles away?”
“He has an educated eye. I got him to admit, though, that his TV was acting up. And he was doing boilermakers while he watched. But he’s a tough and stubborn man, and right now he’s just hanging back and depending on me to find out the truth.”
“Right, like there’s such a thing. This ain’t like you.”
“Lieutenant, I owe this guy.”
“I guess so. All right, but you gotta talk to the lead detective over there. Politics.”
Thursday — 1 P.M.
“This is Wendt.”
“Detective, Al Brewer at the Fourth. I have a favor to ask.”
“Sorry, Brew, the bowling league is all locked up.”
Wendt had a good memory for past conversations.
“It’s more important than that.”
Brewer chose his words carefully: An old army buddy and former pro wrestler, who also happened to be Chuck Mitchell’s father, thought the wrestling crew had been less than forthright during Wendt’s investigation; but Brewer immediately qualified Bud’s take on the action since it had been picked up from a crappy TV and seen from a parent’s standpoint.
Regardless, Mitchell was too good a friend to blow off. Would it be okay if Brewer revisited people Wendt had interviewed to ask a couple more questions from Bud’s inside view of things? He could tell them he was double-checking their memories in light of some new statements from the fans. It probably wouldn’t go anywhere, especially since Brewer’s boss had him on a clock.
“You’re right it won’t go anywhere,” Wendt said. “The whole thing was a comedy of errors in a freak show.” He seemed hesitant, of course, about opening up his flank to second-guessing. Then: “I got this dead housewife thing on my plate. Big uproar. So knock yourself out for auld lang syne. But if you do stumble across something relevant—”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“I’d best be.”
“And you’ll let me know if anybody cancels out of the bowling league, right?”
“Funny.” Wendt did not hang up. “Listen, you wanna look at the videotape before we turn it back to Smelly Rose?”
“What tape?”
“The Wednesday night thing. They make a tape of the live action and run it around to area stations leading up to the big fight, like the one on the twenty-third. That’s how they promote it.”
“What did you think of it?”