Inside, though, it was a different world. As soon as I stepped through the glass front door, I was face to face with my client, only this time he was in full wrestling gear. Life-size — maybe even larger than life — cardboard cutouts of Daze and his fellow superstars lined the reception area, towering over the chairs and coffee tables set out for visitors.
Happily, the receptionist was real, and normal sized too, a pleasant dark-haired girl with a Glasgow accent. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ she asked.
‘Yes please,’ I answered, still feeling oddly intimidated by the two-dimensional bruisers. ‘Oz Blackstone, here to see Mr Davis.’
‘I’ll let him know you’re here.’ She gave me a friendly grin. ‘Great name for a wrestler, that. You’re maybe a bit on the lightly built side though.’
‘I’ll have you know I’m the middleweight champion of Pittenweem,’ I retorted, as she left her office, through a door which it occurred to me was inordinately high, just like all the others I could see.
Less than a minute later, my client appeared in one of them. He had three or four inches clearance above his head so I guessed that seven foot six was the normal lintel height in his head office, and that the whole place had been designed around him. Unlike the day before he was informally dressed, in jeans and a tee-shirt. . but not a Marks and Spencer job; this one had his own face emblazoned on it, above a slogan which read ‘Ultimate Force’. Wearing that, the gentle guy who had sat in my home cum office the day before looked rather different. For openers, he seemed even bigger: his muscles seemed to be fighting for position inside the shirt. The designer specs had gone too. Instead his eyes shone in an odd way; tinted contacts, I supposed. Oh yes, and then there was his hair: for some reason flecks of gold dust seemed to have been combed through it.
The voice was the same, though, deep, warm and molasses friendly, as he thrust out a great hand. ‘Hi, Oz. Welcome to the wacky world of the GWA. Come on through.’ He caught me looking at his hair and laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t dress like this all the time, I just been shooting an insert.’
Without further explanation, he opened the door, standing aside to leave me room to step into a wide corridor. I should have known better by this time, but still I almost jumped out of my skin. The guy who stood behind him might not have been as awesome as Daze, yet he had his own aura, and it was plain terrifying. He looked to be around six feet eight. . tall, wide and deep. His dyed blond hair was cropped short, just like his nose, which seemed to be flattened into his head, he had wee eyes which reminded me of something I once saw eating turnips in a field near Crail, and his pink ears looked as if they had been made out of plasticine by a drunk. He was in the same wrestling gear as his cardboard image in reception, black tights, gold boots and a bright orange vest, with white lightning flashes all over it, all set off by a piece of white leather headgear which looked more like a scrum cap than anything else. The only thing which didn’t match the cut-out was the massive gilded leather belt which somehow made it all the way around his waist.
Everett laughed at my confusion. . okay, at my terror. ‘This is Jerry Gradi,’ he said. ‘AKA The Behemoth, the GWA World Heavyweight Champion.’
‘Pleased ta meetcha,’ rasped the cube on tree trunks, then turned to my client. ‘What time am I due at that place, Ev?’
‘Twelve midday. Are Max and Diane ready?’
‘Yeah, they went out the side door, with Barbara.’
‘Okay, you better hit the road. Time’ll be tight travelling in that camper. Give them a good show, now.’
‘Don’ we always?’The monster grinned at me, grotesquely, then crashed through the double doors.
‘They’re doing a public appearance today,’ Everett explained. ‘It’s at Murrayfield Rugby Stadium in Edinburgh. It’s a promo for our pay-per-view event next month, in the exhibition centre in the Highland Show ground. It’s the biggest indoor venue we could find there.’
I nodded. ‘It would be.’ I looked up at him, almost straining my neck in the process. ‘I thought you were the champion?’
He laughed. ‘Hell no! I’m only the boss. Daze had the belt until the last ppv event, but he got distracted by the Princess at ringside, so that The Behemoth blind-sided him and rolled him up for the pin.’
‘The Princess?’
‘Yeah, she’s The Behemoth’s ringside manager. That’s Diane; she’s going to Edinburgh with him. Max Schwartz is Axel Rodd — with two Ds — Jerry’s tag team partner.’
‘Who’s Barbara?’
‘Our publicity co-ordinator. An ace. I hired her from the opposition in the States.’
I shook my head. ‘So Daze isn’t so smart after all. He can be distracted by a woman.’
‘He can by Diane,’ he agreed, grinning. ‘So can Everett. She’s my wife.’ He set off down the corridor. ‘Come on. I’ll show you around.’ I fell into step, at his heels — well, I took three for every two of his — until he stopped at a grey door, on his right.
He pointed to the other side of the corridor. ‘All that over there is office space,’ he said. ‘Our venue booking, ticket sales, and merchandising departments are all over there. Merchandising is very big business for us. Our Superstar replica figures are collectables, then there are the imitation championship belts, tee-shirts — ’ he tapped his chest ‘- like this one, and other things, such as big foam hands for waving on camera, inflatables, and scaled down copies of the Angel’s wings.’
‘Eh?’
‘You’ll meet him later.’ The atmosphere of the place had got me. I wasn’t even surprised when he said that.
‘We’re also into video games,’ he went on. ‘We have a copyright agreement with one of the big three players, but they do the marketing of those products.’
He turned and threw open the grey door. ‘This is props. We store everything here; our ring, back-drops for television, wrestlers’ costumes and other equipment, like the special chairs and steel bins we use to hit each other with in our matches.’ He must have heard me gulp, for he added without even looking round, ‘You know how they have glass in the movies that’s made out of sugar? Same idea.’
He closed the door again and led me on down the corridor, until we stopped outside a second door. Alongside, were two lights; red, and green, which was showing. ‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘No one’s shooting right now.’
We stepped into what turned out to be a television studio. ‘We shoot all our inserts in-house,’ said Everett. ‘If you watch our shows on cable TV, you’ll see how we use them to build up the feuds between performers. Camera skills are worth a lot in this business; there are more than a few capable wrestlers who’ll never be more than jobbers because they can’t ham it up on screen for the fans.’
He reached down and pressed a button on a VCR player. ‘Let’s see what we got here.’ The monitor alongside flickered into life, and there was Jerry Gradi, The Behemoth, in full battle gear, snarling and grimacing at the camera. ‘Daze!’ he roared, his voice at maximum decibels, the gravel grinding away. ‘You want your belt back, punk? Well come on, try to get it. Bring all you got, but it won’t be enough. Ain’t dat right, Princess?’
And then she stepped into shot; the sort of woman who could start a fight in a seminary, just by being there. She had a tiara set in her lustrous auburn hair, and wore, technically, a tight-fitting sequinned evening number, with gleaming, coffee-coloured skin showing through a laced-up side panel which precluded any slight possibility that she might have been wearing underwear. On the day that bosoms were handed out, she had been at the head of the queue.
‘Oh yes, monster,’ she said, in a voice so sexy that it could have made a diabetic eat a cream egg omelette. ‘That’s right. We know what Daze’s weakness is, don’t we. You’re looking at her.’ As the camera zoomed in on her she flicked her red tongue along her top lip.
The screen went dead, but Everett kept on staring at it. ‘She ain’t kidding, boy,’ he whispered. For a moment I thought that he had forgotten I was there. I coughed, just to remind him. ‘Yeah,’ he said, still softly. ‘Let’s go. The action’s next door.’