Disappearing Acts (10 page)

There followed a silence so long and so terrible, Meat closed his eyes. He could see in his mind the tight line his mother's mouth made at the mention of anything to do with his father.

“Excuse me?”

“WrestleMania ... it's a pro ... professional wrestling event.” The expression on Meat's mother's face was evidently enough to make even a police detective stutter.

Then, while Meat's hopes sank, his mother sighed. It seemed to Meat a sign of surrender, as if all the air in her body was given up to the universe. His hopes rose.

“I guess it's time,” she said.

Now Meat leaned over to Chico Jones and said, “Thanks again.”

A man in a tuxedo was in the ring. “From the Sky Dome,” he said, “the World Wrestling Federation welcomes you to WrestleMania!”

The crowd roared. The lights flashed. Blue lights flashed over the jam-packed arena.

Meat sat forward.

“Coming down the aisle from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, weighing in at two hundred and twenty-eight pounds is Koko B. Ware, the Bird Man!”

Music blared as the Bird Man came down the aisle. The Bird Man had a parrot on his shoulder, and he danced something that might have been the Chicken, pausing every now and then to slap hands with the fans leaning over the railing. The Bird Man slipped between the ropes and continued to dance in the ring.

“And his opponent, what a great athlete, weighing in at three hundred and twenty pounds, the Big Boss Man!”

Big Boss Man was in a policeman's uniform, beating a nightstick in one hand.

“Are you going to pull for your fellow officer?” Herculeah asked her dad.

“I haven't decided,” Chico Jones said, smiling.

“I'm going to pull for the Bird Man because of Tarot,” said Herculeah.

The bout itself was so quick, so violent, Meat's mouth hung open. His throat was dry.

During the next bouts, Meat got into the mood of the crowd. He booed Andrew the Giant and the Russian Tag Team. He cheered for Dusty Rhodes, the Lion King, and the Million Dollar Man. He was mad when a wrestler named Stealth stole the bag containing Jack the Snake's boa. Then, before he knew it, actually before he was ready, it was time for his father.

“And now for the championship event of the evening,” the announcer said.

“Here he comes!” Herculeah said. She grabbed Meat by the shoulder. “There he is! There he is, Meat!”

“I just wish he wasn't wrestling the Earthquake,” Meat said.

Then Meat saw him too, and he thought he would burst with pride.

“Now, coming down the aisle,” the announcer said, “from Muscle City, U.S.A., weighing in at three hundred and seventy-five pounds, one of the longtime superstars, the World Wrestling Federation Intercontinental Champion—Macho Man McMannis!”

The music that brought his father to the ring was “Macho Man,” and the crowd took it up. Meat thought, That man in the black cape and helmet and black boots laced to his knees, the man everyone is yelling Macho Man at and clapping for, is my father. Mine!

His dad stepped into the ring and threw back his cape in one motion, revealing that strong chest, those two shoulder tattoos.

The announcer said, “What a confrontation this is going to be ... power against power with a championship belt at stake. And now, coming down the aisle, weighing in at four hundred and sixty-eight pounds is the Earthquake!”

“That's not fair.” Meat was suddenly alarmed. “He's bigger than my dad.”

“This guy has sent twenty-four challengers to the hospital,” the announcer said, “but that's what happens when you have an earthquake!”

“Hospital?” Meat said.

There was thunder and lightning as the Earthquake entered the ring. He began jumping up and down, causing the floor to tremble so violently Macho Man almost lost his footing.

Chico Jones said, “The world hasn't seen thighs like that since the brontosaurus died out.”

Macho Man went to the corner and put one foot on the ropes to check his boots. The Earthquake rushed forward and jumped him from the rear.

“Unfair! Unfair!” Meat cried. “The match hasn't even started yet.”

“I think it has,” Chico Jones said.

“A right over the back! There's another right! And another! Macho Man's in trouble!”

“Oh, no,” moaned Meat.

The Earthquake threw himself against the ropes and knocked Macho Man to the floor. Just as Macho Man struggled to his feet, the Earthquake did it again.

“Big trouble,” the announcer said.

Meat was on his feet, his hands clasped prayerlike over his heart.

Macho Man struggled to his feet, making an obvious effort to shake off Earthquake's blows. The Earthquake was strutting around the ring.

Macho Man recovered. The announcer said, “And Macho Man gets off a standing drop-kick. A back drop! What a beauty.”

But then the Earthquake had Meat's father's face down on the floor, his huge knee digging into his back. The referee, slapping his hand to the canvas, was counting: “One! Two!”

Before he could give the final “Three,” Macho Man twisted one shoulder free. Enraged, Earthquake pulled his father's head back, one arm around his throat. His father groaned.

Macho Man grabbed Earthquake's foot and a woman shouted, “Look out, Earthquake!” Meat glanced around in astonishment. How could anyone pull for Earthquake? That was his father! His father!

Meat turned back to the ring in time to see that Earthquake was in agony, one leg in some sort of hammerlock. Earthquake beat the floor in pain.

The announcer said, “It's a good thing that floor's reinforced!”

The crowd caught the announcer's excitement.

“Macho Man's setting him up. A beautiful back flying-drop.” Earthquake fell with such force the ground seemed to tremble.

“One, two, three!” the referee counted. “It's over! The winner and still champion—Macho Man!”

He was holding Macho Man's hand in the air for victory when the Earthquake got to his feet. With a rumbling that sounded like a real earthquake, he attacked.

Within seconds, both men were out of the ring, on the floor, fighting. Other referees tried to break up the fight, but it continued up the aisle.

Meat turned to Herculeah. “He won! My dad won! He's still—what was it?” he asked Chico Jones.

“The World Wrestling Federation Intercontinental Champion.”

“Yes, he's still that,” Meat said.

In the dressing room, Macho Man held out his arms and Meat went forward.

“Lemme see you. Lemme see what you look like.” He turned Meat around and studied him. His grin broadened, showing two gold teeth.

“Am I glad to see you. And look at you. You're like me. This is my boy, Al. Come meet my boy. Al here's my manager.”

“He does look like you. Hey, maybe you could form a tag team—father and son. That's never been done.”

“My boy's for better things, Al.”

Meat's dad was so pleased, it was as if he'd arranged the whole thing himself. But then he said, “Ah, Albie, Albie. Thank God you found me, son. How'd it happen?”

“Herculeah ... that's her—” Meat nodded to the doorway where Herculeah stood with her father—“she bought an old camera and it had pictures of us in it, you and me, and you were in your outfits in some, standing in front of a poster. Mr. Jones did the rest. You know about that.”

His dad pulled Meat against his chest and hugged him hard. Then he pulled back for another look.

“So what's going on in your life, Albie? You keeping busy?”

“Yeah, I just solved a murder.”

“Murder?”

“Yes, I found the body and then it disappeared and then I found it again and then I found the murderer.” He shook his head. “Only I could never be a real detective like Mr. Jones—he's the man who brought me here—because I felt sorry for the one who did it. It turned out to be a girl. She's going to plead guilty to accidental homicide which isn't quite as bad, and Mike Howard's pleading guilty to obstruction of justice.” Meat glanced over his shoulder at Chico Jones to make sure he had told it right. Chico's nod told him he had.

The Macho Man cleared his throat. “Speaking of disappearances, son,” he began, “I always felt bad I left the way I did.”

Meat waited.

“This doesn't justify it—nothing does—but it seems like almost every man in my family got what we call the gotta-go gene. We must have had nomads for ancestors. We can't help ourselves. One day we go out to get a newspaper or a haircut and we're outta there—just keep going. My dad dropped me off at school one morning and we didn't see him again for sixteen years.”

“That's a long time to be without a dad,” Meat said, speaking from experience. Ten years had been almost more than he could bear.

“I wouldn't have stayed at home as long as I did if it hadn't been for you.”

Meat managed a smile. “I hope you didn't pass the gotta-go gene on to me. I like where I am.”

“Well, one thing you can be sure of. Now that we found each other, son, we aren't going to let go.”

He put his arm around Meat and drew him close.

“You know,” Herculeah said to her father, “Meat doesn't seem bitter at all.”

“You expected him to be?”

She nodded. “But then I also expected he would be ashamed that his dad turned out to be a professional wrestler.” She smiled. “I guess I don't know Meat as well as I thought I did.”

“Yes, he seems very proud of his father.”

They looked at Meat. Pride showed in his face, in his stance. Herculeah slipped one arm around Chico Jones's waist, and she smiled up at him.

“I know the feeling,” she said.

Herculeah lay on her bed. It was three o‘clock in the morning. She and Meat had sat in the backseat of her dad's car, talking, all the way home. She was tired. She was talked out. Yet somehow she was troubled, which really didn't make sense.

The phone rang. Herculeah knew it was Meat, so she picked up the phone on the first ring.

It woke her mother anyway. “Herculeah, was that the phone?”

“It's for me, Mom.”

“Who's calling at this hour?”

“Probably Meat. I'll find out.” She spoke into the phone. “Meat?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

Herculeah called, “Go back to sleep, Mom. It's just Meat.” Into the phone she said, “Why are you whispering?”

“I don't want my mom to hear. My mom thinks three o‘clock in the morning is no time to call anybody.”

“So does mine,” Herculeah said. “What did your mom say about your dad?”

“About what I expected. I told her about how great Dad was and showed her his picture in the program, the one with his hands out, like he's getting ready to grab the cameraman.”

“They all looked mad at the cameraman.”

“True. Anyway, my mom looked at it and she got that expression she gets when she smells something bad, and she said, ‘Your father may be bigger and he may have fancier clothes, but he's the same man who walked out on us and don't you forget it.'”

“Don't let her spoil it for you.”

“Nobody could. It's been the greatest night of my life.”

Meat waited a moment for her to answer and when she didn‘t, he said, “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“Oh, I don't know. I feel sort of, I don't know, dissatisfied.”

“Not me. I've never felt better in my whole life.”

Herculeah shifted the telephone. “You should. You found your father
and
solved a mystery.”

“No, you found my father. It was a quest—like Hercules' search for the Golden Chalice.”

“That wasn't Hercules.”

“The Golden Fleece?”

“No.”

“Well, he searched for something golden and valuable, something nobody else in the world could find. I know that much. And I know he found it! And finding my father was something no one else in the world could have done but you.”

Herculeah smiled. “Your father is not golden.”

Meat's voice was serious as he said, “He is to me.”

“Anyway, that was an accident. I bought the camera and, let's face it, I didn't have any reason to think you and your father would be in the photos. And then it was my dad who tracked your father down. I just stood by. I hate standing by.”

“No, you found my father,” Meat said firmly.

“But you solved the mystery.”

“Is that what's bothering you—that I solved a mystery?”

“No! Oh, maybe. I guess. Meat, there's something about solving a mystery, something about putting the last piece of the puzzle in place, that is really satisfying.”

“Yes!”

She grinned into the phone. “Anyway, the next mystery is mine.”

Meat realized his enthusiastic “Yes!” had come too quickly. He thought back to the terrible parts—finding a dead body in the men's bathroom with the murderer in the next stall; hiding in a janitor's closet, alone; and then worse, with Herculeah, while a supposedly funny comic did an unfunny impression of him. And the most terrible moment of all—waiting for the knife to plunge into his heart.

He shuddered.

“The next mystery is all yours,” he said firmly. There was a pause, then Meat asked, “‘Why are you talking about the next mystery? Herculeah, do you have one of your premonitions?”