When there was no immediate answer, Vincent slammed him against the lockers a second time. "What did he say, Elliot?"
"No. He said no."
Vincent took him by the scruff of the neck and sat him down on the bench. He ran his hands through his hair and looked across the room at the wrestlers who all stood mesmerized. "When somebody steals from us," he said evenly. "They're stealing from all of you."
"I'm sorry," Elliot blurted out. "Please, I – "
"You're out," Vincent told him.
"Yes, I – I understand. I'll be packed up and gone in – "
"Leave the table and all the product. It belongs to us now. You're gonna take your snot-nosed little nephew with you and you're gonna walk out that door and never come anywhere near me again. Cabeesh, asshole?"
Elliot nodded wearily. "All right, Vin. All right."
Vincent swung open the door to one of the metal lockers. "But first, you're gonna put your hand in this locker."
Tears welled in his eyes as his lower lip began to tremble. "But… Vincent, you don't have to do this."
"Vin," Charlie said, as if to stop him, but one glaring look from Vincent changed his mind. He spoke in Elliot's direction but found it impossible to establish eye contact. "There's nothing I can do, Elliot."
"But Charlie, we go back – "
"I'm sorry."
Vincent smiled triumphantly. "Put your hand in the locker, douche bag."
"You… you can't…"
"Make me repeat myself again," Vincent told him, just above a whisper, "and I'll beat you to death right here, right now."
Elliot made a whimpering sound and slowly slid his hand into the open locker. He took a deep breath in an effort to control himself, and then began to cry uncontrollably, like a child.
"Jesus Christ, Vin," Luther said, standing.
"Am I talking to you?" Vincent asked without looking at him.
"Come on, man, that's enough."
Slowly, Vincent turned his head to meet Luther's gaze. "Go take a shower, champ. I'll let you know if I need you."
Luther stepped forward. "In the old days, if a promoter ever talked to me like that I'd just lock the door on him."
"So lock the door," Vincent told him.
"I was hoping it wouldn't come to that."
"It just did."
"You're gonna let him do this?" he asked Frank.
Frank lit a cigarette, left it between his lips, then moved behind Elliot and covered his mouth with both hands. "I'm the one who told him to do it, Train."
After a moment, Luther nodded and turned away. "Fuck it. Ain't none of my business anyway."
Even with his mouth covered the muffled screams could be heard as Vincent slammed the door across the back of Elliot's hand three times. Frank released him and he slumped to the floor, holding his shattered hand with the other as he curled into a fetal position. "Gus," Vincent said, "get this piece of shit out of my sight before I kill him."
"Is he conscious?" Gus bent over to get a better look at him. "Well, sort of."
Charlie, white as chalk, stared at Vincent with a blank expression. "Here," he said, holding out the fifty dollars Elliot had stolen.
"You keep it."
As Frank and Vincent moved across the locker room all the wrestlers quickly occupied themselves. Luther was sitting on one of the benches, and looked up at them with a wry smile.
"Are we cool?" Frank asked him.
"We're cool." He winked at Vincent. "I didn't mean no disrespect, Vin. I was just afraid you were gonna kill him."
Vincent smiled. "What if I had?"
Luther looked at him and laughed lightly, but Frank could tell he found no humor in the question. In Luther's dark eyes he saw something new – something beyond the acceptance and respect it had taken them so many months to earn.
He saw fear.
CHAPTER 9
The digital alarm clock on the dresser read 3:18 p.m. With the shades on both windows drawn and the bedroom door open just a crack it might've been the middle of the night.
Frank rolled over, the soft mattress complying with the contours of his aching lower back. It had been unseasonably cold that night, and he'd used the top sheet when first slipping into bed, but the dense humidity typical of even coastal Massachusetts in July had returned with a vengeance. His underarms were sticky; the black hair across his chest and stomach moist and matted with sweat, and his throat was parched and mucky from too many cigarettes the night before.
It had been a quiet ride back from Connecticut. The drive home at the end of a tour always was. It seemed Frank lived a great deal of his life in cars these days, roaming the countryside like some modern day Gypsy, but any romanticism he'd associated with the lifestyle early on experience had taught him to dismiss as little more than wishful thinking. Going on tour was work – plain and simple – and it usually took a day or two to recover from it. No matter how much money the run yielded or the amount of enjoyment the participants derived from it, exhaustion eventually won out every time. Only a mark would fail to return home as limp and rung out as a used dishrag; a true professional left everything he had on the road.
As he lay there in the darkened room, still not completely awake, Frank tried to remember if a nightmare had been responsible for so abruptly interrupting his slumber. A maelstrom of varied thoughts served only to further cloud his mind, so he reached over to the nightstand for his wristwatch.
Frank heard movement in the kitchen. The bedroom door opened slowly, and Sandy entered the room wearing a top to one of her bikini swimsuits and a pair of cut-off jeans. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, held in place by a plastic clip, and her face bore almost no makeup – her smooth complexion as pristine as a child's. Frank detected the pleasant scent of her cologne as she padded barefoot across the carpeting and sat next to him on the edge of the bed.
"What are you doing home?"
"I took a personal day," she said, her hand touching his bare shoulder. "I thought it might be nice to spend a little time together. I knew you'd be spent but I didn't think you'd sleep all afternoon."
"Sorry."
"I must have been dead to the world when you got home, I never even heard you come to bed. What time did you get in?"
"A little after two."
"Wasn't the last show a matinee?"
"Yeah, but we had an end-of-tour party."
She smiled and shook her head. "You guys throw more parties than the Rolling Stones."
Frank sat up a bit and rubbed his eyes. "I'm wrecked."
"How did the tour go?"
He motioned to a stack of money he'd tossed onto the dresser the night before. "Good."
"I saw that," she nodded. "We didn't have much in the house so I took a couple hundred and went grocery shopping this morning."
"You didn't wear that outfit did you?"
"Comes in handy when I'm low on double coupons," she laughed.
Frank reached around behind her and unhooked her top. She leaned forward and it fell into her lap. His eyes consumed her before his hands did, before his mouth did, before they made love for hours, stopping only long enough to recuperate and begin again.
When it was over they remained in each other's arms despite the heat, their bodies slick and glistening. Frank listened to his chest wheeze with every breath and wondered if he'd ever quit smoking.
"Are you awake?" he eventually asked. She nodded her head without raising it from his chest. "Did you think to call the real estate agent while I was gone?"
"Uh-huh."
"Anything reasonable in house rentals?"
"Two here in town," she said in a dreamy voice. "A nice two-bedroom on Piney Nook – you know, the cul-de-sac over by the Mobile station – and another in the center of town."
Frank wiped a bead of perspiration from his brow. "I've got five days before I go on the road again. We better make appointments to look at them this week."