“I haven’t seen it either, but you’re welcome to join me when I take a look at it over at the TV station. I’m going to do that tomorrow morning.”
They set a time and Wendt rang off.
Brewer thought he’d handled that as well as he could. Before doubt could creep in, he pulled out the police directory and found the number for the M.E.
An assistant answered. Brewer told him his precinct had received additional info about the Mitchell case and that Detective Wendt had asked him to check it out.
The chief examiner was still at lunch, but the subordinate gamely pulled the file.
“I hear he took an actual beating,” Brewer said.
“Yeah, but so do football players. It was the slash that killed him.”
“Were there any other razor cuts aside from the one that severed the artery?”
“Uh, yeah, the M.E. says there was another small slice near the hairline that he took to be a hesitation cut. If there were any more, they’ve been obscured by the breaks in the facial skin from the blows he forgot to duck.”
“What about the razor?”
“The evidence guy showed it to us to make sure it was consistent with the wounds. And it was not a razor blade per se, just a tiny sliver cut off the corner of a blade, a fraction of an inch in size, with a piece of adhesive tape exposing a small portion of the edge.”
“Enough of an edge to do him in?”
“Evidently. You know the head is pretty vascular. It doesn’t take much to get a flow.”
“Where’d they find it?”
“Tossed under the ring. His blood was on it.”
“His blood must have been on just about everything. Wasn’t there any attempt at the arena to stop the bleeding?”
“Well, the so-called doctor on hand was just a part-time trainer, really. He pressured the bleeding with a wad of gauze and got the kid responsive with smelling salts, but then he left him to hold the pressure by himself while he taped somebody else’s ankle. The deceased must have passed out as soon as the trainer walked away and let go of the compress. By the time the hack came back to stitch the kid up, Mitchell had bled out. They called an ambulance, but he was DOA.”
“And you guys definitely believe both these cuts were self-inflicted? And by that same blade?”
“That’s what it says here. Why? What’s this new info?”
Brewer did not want to be evasive with someone who’d helped him. He said, “We have at least one spectator with a different story from the wrestling groups. Just checking it out. Is the body ready to be released?”
“By the end of the day. The kid’s old man was in this morning for the ID. Funeral parlor’s already called.”
Brewer could see how Bud might believe the finding on Chuck’s demise had been prepackaged. Wendt obviously accepted the M.E.’s report as solid proof of an overzealous, self-inflicted blade job. So naturally, they had not thought to look for a second blade; and the assault... well, maybe that had not been as extreme as Bud had perceived it.
Thursday — 3 P.M.
Brewer took a chance and drove to Smiley Rose’s office without calling first. It was in the older commercial district, where mostly two- and three-story brick buildings harbored gilt-lettered storefronts with small professional offices above. The address he’d been given, however, was occupied by a single-story bike shop with an echelon of refurbished girls’ and boys’ bikes nosing forlornly against the inside glass. He thought he’d been misinformed until the owner responded with a morose nod toward the rear of the shop. Navigating a bicycle graveyard in the dark hallway, Brewer drew closer and closer to a male voice upraised behind a thin partition.
Opposite the lavatory was a door upon which someone had tacked a stenciled oak-tag sign: “International Wrestling League World Headquarters.” He knuckled the panel and went in without waiting for a response.
He entered a dingy, ten-foot-square space impregnated with the stink of flatulence and chewed stogies. A man was on the phone, sitting in the only chair in the room behind a battered desk piled up with crap. He was talking hard and fast at someone, perhaps a vendor. He made vigorous shooing gestures that made his chair squeak, no doubt taking Brewer for a solicitor or bill collector.
Brewer showed his badge. The unpleasant face scrunched up in a manner that reminded him in more ways than one of Benito Mussolini, except for the comb-over.
No windows in this crypt. The big ass of a droning, old air conditioner protruded from the rear wall, sounding asthmatic and impure. A single bare bulb hung down through a gap in the drop ceiling, from which several tiles were missing. Others had brown-bordered water stains and bulges that had dried just short of the bursting point. Dangling close by the dusty wire of that lone point of illumination was a fly strip stippled with desiccated black dots.
If ever a business survived on parsimony, this had to be it. Brewer looked around at walls with framed photos of men in trunks who seemed built more like blacksmiths or circus strongmen than modern-day wrestlers. Amongst the photos hung old poster boards advertising wrestling cards that were probably as ancient as the casts of silent films. On the floor at his feet was a heap of newer stuff touting the big night in Winsdale on the twenty-third. Bundles of single-fold programs wrapped in rubber bands weighted down the top poster. He stooped as if to tie his shoe, slipped one of the programs out, and stuck it in his inside pocket before rising.
The man slammed the phone down and looked at Brewer without getting up. “What?” he said, like the cop was a pesky kid tugging at his sleeve.
“Irwin Rosenfeld?”
“Don’t be a smartass. Wouldja ask for Bernard Schwartz if you were lookin’ for Tony Curtis? The hell do you want?”
Brewer saw the irony in the nickname “Smiley.”
“I’m here to ask a few follow-up questions about Chuck Mitchell’s death.”
“That wasn’t a Homicide badge you showed me.”
“Detective Wendt is tied up, and this is very routine.”
“Coulda called if it was routine.”
“Well, we have someone who alleges Delaney was dealing the kid real blows with his fists and a chair, and maybe made the cut that killed him.”
Rose gave him a cockeyed look. “Whattaya mean, ‘real blows’? This is professional wrestling, not the ladies’ sewing circle. You’re one of those ‘wrestling is fake’ types. I should have one of my boys show you how fake it is.”
“This is that kayfabe stuff, right?”
“Listen, Brower...”
“Brewer.”
“Whatever... Marty Delaney was doin’ his job, and the kid was too big-headed to admit he couldn’t work at the same level. He wasn’t too good with listenin’ to directions in general. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut, he coulda heard better.”
“Well, I’m told they worked just fine together in the first few minutes of the match, which calls for skill and cooperation on both parts, doesn’t it?”
“What’d Delaney say when you as’t him?”
“He’s being questioned by someone else. We’ll compare notes later. I thought you — having your finger on the pulse here at World Headquarters...”
“Ah, I get it now. Mitchell’s drunk old man came in with some fairy tale that goes against what everybody else in the world saw, so they send you along to do their scut work and cover their ass.”
People had spoken down to Brewer before. His reaction to it was always on a case-by-case basis. This time he decided he would ignore it versus Wendt getting some unproductive flak about an uppity messenger boy.
“You may have a point there, Mr. Rose. But Mitchell Senior was once a professional wrestler — one of yours for a while, right? — and seems to know what should have happened in that ring. He caught the whole thing on TV. We have to check out his contention.”