One Fall 08.14.11: Chapters 31 & 32

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapters 6 & 7
Chapter 8
Chapters 9, 10, 11
Chapter 12
Chapters 13 & 14
Chapters 15 & 16
Chapters 17 & 18
Chapters 21 & 22
Chapters 23 & 24
Chapters 25, 26, & 27
Chapters 28, 29, &30

And now…

CHAPTER 31

Steve’s alarm woke him at nine in the morning, three hours earlier than normal for a Tuesday. The business library at Northeastern Illinois opened at ten, and he intended to be there when the door was unlocked.

He had posted his most uninspired Tuesday Hangover in memory a little before midnight and gone to bed. Usually, he posted the column just before dawn, after an entire night of crashing the bulletin boards, watching the tapes, writing and re-writing. Last night he threw together one draft of generic opinion in less than an hour and didn’t bother to re-read it before posting. It probably was riddled with errors, but Steve didn’t want to know. He put it up for the world to judge, and decided to get on with it. He had already committed himself to Mr. Anonymous’s scavenger hunt. If it led nowhere, so be it. The damage was already done. Might as well let it all hang out and hope to get lucky.

There was a new email:

To: Steve Garcia
From: [email protected]

Dear Steve,

Anonymous

Steve had printed the email but forced himself not to dwell on it yet. One thing at a time. He had never heard of Dr. Harold Claven. The information was so random, in fact, that thinking about it led him closer to believing again that this was all an elaborate hoax, which was too painful to consider. At least Mr. Anonymous had acknowledged Steve’s anger that he’d missed out on the Zeke Thunder story.

Parking at Northeastern was a bitch. Three laps around a massive campus, only to find a metered space a good ten minutes from the library. Steve put four dollars into the meter, buying himself two hours. After a trek across two parking lots and a courtyard, he entered the library with a ratty backpack strewn over his left shoulder.

His previous jaunts to the library had taught him where to find what he was looking for. He went down one flight of stairs and across an array of bookcases to reach the periodicals. Six computer terminals arranged in a semicircle faced him in front of the book stacks. He sat at one and opened the library’s search software. He typed “Calgary Financial Telegram,” and reached his first dead end. “Not in subscription database.” The publication was too obscure for this library.

Undaunted, Steve grabbed a scrap piece of paper, wrote down “Calgary Financial Telegram,” hiked back to the first floor and approached the information desk. A teenage boy with horn-rimmed glasses and matted hair sighed as he pulled his head out of a hardback copy of Dune.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“I’m looking for an issue of a financial newsletter that isn’t in your subscription base,” said Steve, showing the boy his scrap of paper.

“Calgary Financial Telegram,” the boy read to himself, then shook his head. “You say it’s a newsletter? I don’t think you’re going to find it.”

A slacker himself, Steve recognized that the boy only wanted to get rid him. “Well where else can I try?”

“I don’t know. Have you checked the Internet?”

“Yes,” said Steve. “Listen, I really, really need to get my hands on a copy of this newsletter. Is there somewhere else I can look?”

The boy blew air out of the corner of his mouth. His breathe smelled like coffee. “Just a second,” he said, then picked up a phone on the edge of the desk.

“Mary, hi, this is Paul. There’s a guy here who’s looking for a copy of a really obscure financial newsletter that we don’t subscribe to and isn’t on the Internet. Is there any other place he might find it? Mm-hmm. Alright. Thanks Mary.

“Okay, come on,” the boy, Paul, said as he stood up. Paul led Steve across several aisles of bound periodicals to a bay of computer terminals.

“Double-click on that icon that says Ilib,” said Paul, pointing to a square icon on the screen. Steve clicked on the icon.

“This is the library system of all the state universities of Illinois,” said Paul. “If you can’t find your newsletter here, you won’t find it anywhere in this library.”

“Thanks,” said Steve. He waited for coffee-breath Paul to leave, then entered a search for “Calgary Financial Telegram”.

The hard drive spun. A task bar appeared, and said, “Searching…” Steve sat back in his chair. He waited. And waited.

The screen turned blue, and said:

1 of 1 documents found

Calgary Financial Telegram, Calgary Investors Bureau

Steve hit enter. The task status bar returned. Steve leaned back in his chair and waited it out.

120 of 120 documents found

The screen listed 120 different issues of the newsletter. Steve used the arrow keys to scroll through them, until he found Volume 8, Issue 3. He hit enter. Two minutes later a pop-up window said, “Print? Y/N”

“Paul, could you come help me?” Steve called out in a breach of library etiquette. He could hear Paul sigh from across the book stacks.

“Yes?” Paul said.

“Does it cost me anything to print this?”

Paul appeared from behind the bookstacks, looking severely inconvenienced.

“Ten cents a page and I need to see your student ID,” said Paul.

“Oh. Well, I’m not a student…anymore,” said Steve. Paul looked displeased, so Steve added, “I’m alumni.”

“Sorry dude. If you’re not a student, I can’t let you print.”

“Well, can I print to the screen?”

“Nope. Ilib only lets you print hard copies. Ten cents a page for students with ID.”

“What if I just print this, and pay you ten cents a page, and we just pretend I had my student ID?” said Steve, grinning at Paul like they were old friends.

“Nope. Sorry man. University policy. I could get fired.”

“Listen Paul, I really need to see this document. I’m just going to go ahead and print it and pay you ten cents a page.”

“No way Dude. I’ll turn off the printer.”

Was this a bad dream? So close to being a real journalist, only to be thwarted by Paul, the teenage geek with a warped sense of duty.

“Maybe it’d be best if you left,” said Paul. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“No, no. I won’t cause any trouble,” Steve held his hands up like they were potential printing weapons. He was about to stand up and leave, thinking that if this system was in every library for state universities, he’d just go to Champagne and print it out. But right before he stood, he saw his reflection in Paul’s glasses. His face was chubby and covered with stubble. Here he was, mid-twenties, trying to be a journalist, and his first attempt at a real story was going to be shut down by an 18-year-old slacker.

“Paul. I need this document. I can make it worth your while.”

Paul laughed nervously. “What?” he said.

“How about five bucks? Five bucks, plus ten cents a page, and you just pretend I showed you my ID.”

“I don’t think so Dude. Maybe you’d better–“

“Ten bucks,” said Steve, with confidence in his voice. Paul was beginning to crack.

“Twenty bucks Paul. I’m dead serious. I need this document.”

Paul looked at Steve to judge his earnestness. Then he looked around to see if anyone else was listening.

“Really? Twenty bucks?”

“I need this Paul.”

Paul took one more look around the area, then leaned over Steve’s shoulder and hit the Y key, initiating the print job.

“It’ll print out over there,” said Paul, pointing to a printer next to the far terminal. Steve walked over, and grabbed the pages as they printed. The first page was labeled, “Calgary Financial Telegram, Volume 8, Issue 3.” Steve glanced at it quickly, not sure what he was looking for. He picked up Pages Two, Three, Four, and Five. He hadn’t seen anything yet, but there was no time to look now. He put the pages in his backpack.

“See you later Paul,” he said, and headed toward the stairs.

“Hey!” Paul caught himself yelling and lowered his voice to a whisper. “My twenty bucks please.”

“Forget it Paul. I’ve got what I need and I’m done here.”

“Then I won’t let you walk out. I’ll tell the front desk you have library property.”

“Go for it.” Steve kept on walking. Paul followed him up the first flight of stairs, then stopped.

“Asshole,” Paul said as he turned around.

Steve walked out the front door of the library without incident. He felt like a king.

* * * * *

It began to rain shortly before Steve made it home. He parked in the driveway, taking his mother’s vacant spot, and covered his head with his backpack as he ran to the front porch.

Once inside, he darted up the stairs and shut himself in his room. He emptied his backpack on his bed, spread the print-outs across the mattress, and plopped down in front of them.

The Calgary Financial Telegram was apparently circulated among exceedingly honest and boring Canadian Investors. Page One was filled with a dreary article about “gold funds” as a “deflation hedge.” Page Two had a smarmy “Letter From The Editor” behooving Canadian Investors to learn from the mistakes of their neighbors to the south, who insisted on losing their shirts in market fads. Pages three through six were splattered with tidbits, little paragraphs about selected industries and financial sectors. Steve tried to read each one, certain for some reason that the info he wanted was cloaked somehow, not unlike Mr. Anonymous’s emails. The content was so dry he couldn’t help skipping along the paragraph headers. “Pullman Bearish On Bonds”; “British Columbia Utilities Bought Out”; “Skyler Holding To Reorganize”; “Bacon Futures Sizzling” – Steve’s eyes jumped back. Buried in the small text was a word he recognized, “Saxon.” He skimmed the sentence, “…liquidated assets will be reorganized under the new parent company, The Saxon Fund.” His eyes darted to the top of the paragraph:

Skyler Holding To Reorganize

On December first, Skyler Holding, LLC, will begin liquidation of its North American assets, following the buyout of all secondary partners. Founded in 2002, the holding company for seven commercial real estate interests intends to sell all properties at appraised values. The liquidated assets will be reorganized under the new parent company, The Saxon Fund, LLC.

What the hell did that mean? Steve went to his computer, brought up a search engine on the Internet, and searched for “Skyler Holding.”

He clicked on the first result, “History of Ashwood Park.”

The site was for a business campus in Calgary, apparently “constructed in 1992” and “home to three of Canada’s most exciting companies.” Steve hit control-F, and searched for “Skyler Holding.” The page found the words half-way down at the end of a sentence. “The property is owned by Corinth Realtors, a subsidiary of Skyler Holding.”

Steve went back to the search engine. He typed “Corinth Realtors.”

“0 active documents found. 1 cached document found.”

Steve clicked on the cached document. It took him to what used to be the home page for Corinth Realtors, a “commercial real estate development company founded–“

Steve’s eyes dashed down the page involuntarily. His peripheral vision had seen a name so familiar to him that it jumped out from the field of words like one’s own name in a buzz of conversation.

Steve read the name, two words, and everything came together. If that name was on this page then it all made sense. Mr. Anonymous, Skyler Holding, The Saxon Fund, even his court-ordered silence, they were all part of one story, one mega-story.

And it was his. It was his scoop.

He hoped.

Steve typed “www.wrestlingdailytribune.com” into his web browser to check in on the competition.

“Oh my God,” he whispered as their front page came up. The competition wasn’t on to his story. Unfortunately, they had scooped him on something else.

CHAPTER 32

Wrestlingdailytribune.com is proud to be the first to present you with this story, potentially the biggest in wrestling history. We have just confirmed that, as of tomorrow morning, The Global Wrestling Association will no longer exist, its name and all its property having been purchased by Revolution Wrestling. The deal will be announced on Revolution.com later today, with a press conference at Revolution Wrestling World Headquarters in New York City tomorrow morning.

Further details about this breaking story will be posted on Revolution.com in one hour (8pm eastern). These details will include an announcement regarding the final broadcast of GWA Burn and what we can expect to see.

“Holy shit,” Joey said quietly.

“I know,” said Jade.

They sat in silence, staring at the computer screen, taking in the monumental news.

“Well Baby, it looks like we’re going back to work,” Joey said.

“Maybe,” said Jade.

“What? You don’t think we’ll get a call?” said Joey.

“It says Duke is expected to have an important role in the new organization. I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad he’ll still be around, but I think things will be different. I can’t imagine him having any sway with Max Zeffer.”

“We’ll see. I wonder what’s going to happen to everyone. Revolution can’t roll over everybody’s contracts.”

“I know,” said Joey, feeling a twinge of guilt. Despite his anger toward the promotion, its president, and its veteran wrestlers, Joey still felt guilty for the recent demise of the GWA. There was no question that he would be blamed. First he kicked the world champion in the head, then he created a mess in the locker room, then he dropped the torch he was given to carry. In just over a month, the GWA had lost its biggest stars and its creative direction.

But his guilt wasn’t caused by any loyalty to the current incarnation of the GWA. Two weeks away from that septic tank had taught him one thing. It deserved to die. And good riddance.

Furthermore, Joey was convinced that the promotion was headed for failure sooner rather than later. He had just sped it on its way.

Still, the guilt was there, and it came from a deep, hurtful place. It was rooted in his childhood and his memories of what the GWA once was. Growing up, Joey had watched the GWA every Saturday morning, admiring stars like Shane Walker and Red Jackson. He admired the crafty storylines of Gene Harold and Larry Jenkins, and although he didn’t know it at the time, he admired the locker room discipline Duke had instilled.

All of that was dead now. Maybe it had died long ago.

“Sweetie, you know this isn’t your fault, right?” said Jade, reading Joey’s feelings exactly.

“I know, well, it’s a little bit my fault,” he said.

“It’s not your fault at all Joey. There is much, much more here than Goliath getting injured.”

“Well, yeah. There’s also Crusader leaving, me and Jumbo missing a prime time show, the locker room in chaos. All of that is my fault.”

“Stop it. Crusader was asked to do the job to a future star. It’s tradition. It’s part of the business. If he can’t handle it, then he doesn’t deserve to be doing this. And your incident with Jumbo started well before you were even working here. You just finished what he started.”

Joey laughed, thinking it was ridiculous to say he finished anything. He landed one punch before getting knocked out cold and sent to the hospital.

“I’m serious, Joey. The GWA was doomed when Gene Harold and Larry Jenkins went to Revolution. Our storylines went to shit and Revolution’s became great. Then Shane Walker retired and Red Jackson went to the competition. They got replaced with egomaniacs like Goliath and Crusader. Then a little clique of veteran wrestlers started running the locker room like their own little racket. Joey, you’ve got to admit, our company was a mess.”

Joey nodded silently. Of course Jade was right. The GWA was falling apart well before he arrived. If only he’d known when he joined. Had he started in Revolution things would be completely different.

He thought back to the time when the choice was his to make. Wrestling for the Southeast Wrestling League, it was obvious to him and everyone around him, that it wouldn’t be long before the big boys came calling. He should have decided back then to weigh both promotions against each other, and hold out for the offer from the better one. Two years ago, it wasn’t as obvious that Revolution was going to take over the wrestling world. They were an upstart promotion wrestling in small arenas who had won a television contract through the force of Max Zeffer’s wallet. The GWA was still the ultimate goal. Bigger arenas, bigger names, a long, prestigious history.

But it took only a month before Revolution had Gene and Larry. Soon the Internet declared Revolution the more interesting promotion. Then Lucifer came onto the scene. But Joey was young, and the GWA came calling first. Duke himself showed up at an event in Nashville and found Joey backstage after the show. Duke Correlli, the most powerful name in wrestling, walked right up to Joey at an indy show and offered him a contract.

And then it all went haywire almost right away. Two months in the development territories, one dark match before Burn and it was already time to do a program with Jumbo on television. Of course the locker room would hate him. Of course the promotion would rip apart at the seams.

But if he hadn’t gone to work for GWA, he would never have met Jade.

They spent the rest of the morning in the throes of the news. Slowly, all the other wrestling web sites began posting the story that had broken on Wrestlingdailytribune.com. At half past ten, Revolution.com put up a press release, confirming the story and all the details. All GWA contracts would be up for renewal with the new company.

At noon, GWA.com posted an open letter from Duke to the fans:

To the loyal fans of the GWA,

Sincerely,
Michael “Duke” Correlli

At twelve-thirty, the phone rang. Joey and Jade were on her front porch, eating turkey sandwiches she had prepared. Jade rested her plate on her chair before going inside to answer the phone, which had been ringing all morning. Family and friends of them both were eager to hear their take on the day’s big news. When Jade came back outside with the cordless receiver in her hand, her eyes were wide with anticipation.

“It’s for you,” she said, handing Joey the phone.

“Who is it?” Joey mouthed as he took the phone.

Jade didn’t say, answering only with a hand wave that indicated Joey was to get on the phone immediately and find out.

“Hello?” Joey said into the receiver.