Johnathan-Christopher Small

Nice guys finish last.  That’s the saying, isn’t it?  We don’t like to think it’s true, but nice guys don’t become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.  They don’t become world leaders.  Nice guys get walked on and get taken advantage of because they don’t take advantage for themselves… they lose to shitheads in title match opportunities.  Shitheads that pay junkies to piss on random graves for giggles.

It doesn’t matter how hard you work, how good your technique is, or how good of a story you’re telling with your wrestling (Ai yai yai!).  If your opponent’s shoulder is off the mat when the ref calls three, you don’t win.  Simple as that.  

Conversely, if your own shoulder is ON the mat when the ref counts three, you also don’t win.  The loss to Mort still stings.  Can’t blame that one on the ref – I simply didn’t get my shoulders off the mat in time.  Nope.  Can’t blame anyone for that except myself.  It was me.  I lost to the big galoot that feeds people cockroaches and is too cowardly to piss on graves for himself.  I was so focused on being loved that I missed being hard.  

It’s time to stop being nice.

Rocky opens a TOR browser and turns on his VPN software.  The search bar of his browser highlights and the letters “idi” appear milliseconds after the sound of keystrokes.  An auto-fill form ensures Rocky is quickly taken to the idiCORE home page as he strikes enter. 

Skip tracing is an invaluable skill, for anyone, really, but especially for a journalist.  Oh sure, it’s creepy, but unless a person goes truly and completely off grid, it’s exceptionally difficult to hide.  Swipe a credit card, use a cell phone that’s tied to your name, drive a car registered to you… hell, pass by the wrong speed camera and you register a blip in the system.  Database X, payment ledger Y, and cell phone tower Z record everything a particularly enterprising human would need to find you.

Rocky’s expertise at skip tracing was honed over years of his previous career; the first step toward getting a story is finding the person at the heart of it.  In this case, he hunts for the person at the center of Jonathan-Christopher Hall – that being his amazing life partner, Vickie Hall.  

The Forever Man knocked me out of contention once before, pinning me in that triple threat with Cross, but that was… well, it FEELS like a long time ago.  I saw a lot of him (er, his fists) in that fight, but what I felt coming from him wasn’t anger or determination.  It seemed more like desperation.  He *had* to win, or… or what?  It’s not clear, but it obviously had something to do with Vickie.  Maybe I would have taken the guy if I hadn’t sprained my ankle on that Bunny Hop, but I’m not taking any chances.  Whether or not she’s in control, the dude still has moves.  One thing is clear, though – if I want to get at Hall, I’m going to need to do it through her.

“… $273.61 at the Glitter Barn … $82 at heartpantsrus.com … $102 at Slick Sam’s Body Oil Outlet?  Ugh … hotels for ReVivals … cell phone bill … there we go, rent.  Excellent.”

A graphite nub is reduced, an address appears on a scrap of paper, and a smartphone orders an Uber.  During the drive, Rocky calls Stu, provides a credit card number, and requests a booking on the next flight to Vegas out of LRD International.

—✈️—

Finding people is easy.  It’s what you do with them once they’re found that’s hard.  The good news is, there’s plenty of time to plan for that when you’re in a tin can 30,000 feet above sea level for two hours and forty five minutes.  

People don’t stop to think what a miracle flight is.  I’m sitting in a metal tube that weighs in the vicinity of 400,000 pounds, hurtling through the air at 500+ miles per hour, yet all I can think about is how I should have sprung for first class.  Apparently coach tickets get less comfy when your shoulders get broader.  Who knew?

In 37 minutes this magical cylinder will be grounded.  Another 20 or so from there and I’ll be walking past the people silly enough to check a bag while they wait another 2 hours or so for said bag to come down the chute.  They’ll know when it happens – theirs has a red tag, just like the other 8,000 people who sought to stand out by using a red tag.

Vickie would never use a red tag.  Her entire baggage collection would be neon glittery pink in a shade perfectly matching her life partner’s shorts… the shorts she almost certainly picked out for him and made him wear, because he doesn’t think for himself.  The shorts that matched theme with two other wrestlers that if not equally smitten with her, certainly follow her lead like lost puppies.  

Rocky’s Uber arrives.  He provides the driver direction and waits as Steven Tyler, or so his app profile claimed was his name, drives Rocky to a cafe about a 3 minute walk from his final destination.  “Coffee, cream, two sugars… and a slice of apple pie.  And ice cream.  And whipped cream?”  Five minutes later, two dishes slide in front of him with a smile from a lady in a blue skirt, white blouse, and a hair net.  He munches as he waits for dusk.  

Slightly burnt bean juice flows down his throat as he follows the GPS on his phone.  If the information the Jurassic Journalist obtained was good, he should be approaching the building containing the Hall Penthouse Suite.  

The Sultan of Skree sidles into the lobby, spots a vacant chair, and parks himself in it.  Unfolding a newspaper he has no actual interest in, he settles to make himself as visually uninteresting as possible.  Occasionally, he pulls out his phone and practices taking photos from angles that to all appearances mimic standard device usage.  

Around 8pm, a blaze of pink and blonde alights from the elevator.  The FDP adjusts his newspaper just so, keeping the edge of it below his eyeline to allow for monitoring of the subject.  Vickie Hall approaches a rather tall valet.  Rocky pulls out his phone and opens the camera app.  

A $20 bill and a paper ticket pass from the hands of Vickie Hall to an uncommonly tall valet.  She stands on tiptoe while grabbing his collar and pulling him down so as to look him in the eye. Vickie’s fingertips indent the poor man’s shoulder, and she ceases her graceless wiggling on the toes of her pumps, now balanced against him.  A piercing voice fills Rocky’s ears as she barks orders to the minimum wage slave while pulling him closer toward her face. Had he been dumb enough not to silence them, shutter noises would have been firing off rapidly from Rocky’s camera app.

The valet power-walks out of the building.  A few minutes later, a soft engine purr is barely audible within the building as the valet parks Vickie’s vehicle and leaves it running just outside the front door.  Rocky once again snaps several images as Vickie bounces happily at the sight of her personal whip, and the valet tries valiantly to maintain a smile and get her to just take the damn keys.

“That’ll do,” he mumbles into the newspaper.  He sips coffee and glances over the obituaries as he waits for the pinkest of Pink Ladies to vacate the foyer. Three minutes later, Rocky’s Lyft (best to use multiple methods of transport when you don’t want to be so easily tracked yourself) arrives to take him back to LAS.  He approaches the Delta counter, “I need a ticket on your next flight to Great Falls, Montana, please.”

—✈️—

JCH, by all accounts, is a pretty nice guy- a doormat for Vickie, undoubtedly, but a nice guy.  Nice guys give people a lot of leeway.  Too much, really.  But what happens when you push a nice guy to the edge and he has nothing left to give?  What happens when they think their generosity has been abused, their trust misplaced, and their unconditional love patently undeserved?  Let’s find out!  First thing’s first, though – to make a believable story, the kind that will push JCH to his edge, we need solid background data.  The best and most believable characters have well developed back stories.

A bell rings above a door as it swings open into a dim musty room.  The office appears to be about 150 square feet, at least the part that’s visible to the public, and the interior decorator for the space appears to have received one instruction – “Brown.”

“Good afternoon, sir,” a disaffected woman sits staring at a screen.  Blue light cast on her face from the LCD reflects illegible spreadsheets.  Horn-rimmed glasses rest at the edge of her nose, with jangling beads falling from the temple joint forming a connected chain around the back of her neck.  “Welcome to the Montana Department of Human Services.  How can I help you today?”

Rocky smiles and leans against the counter, “Well now, if I didn’t know any better…” Rocky glances at the name tag affixed to her lapel, “…Gladys, I’d think you didn’t actually want to help me today, but that can’t possibly be true because you look entirely too sweet to be so dour.”  

Her blue-white hair curls jiggle gently in the breeze from the window air conditioning unit.  Her eyes remain fixed to the screen.  “I gladly serve every member of the public with courtesy and respect.”  Rocky notices a printed sign behind the desk which reads “We gladly serve every member of the public with courtesy and respect.” It appears to be printed in Comic Sans.  There is clip art.

“Oh, I can see that.  You do seem very courteous and respectful.  Do you think you’ll be able to help me with something a little tricky today, Gladys?”  Light glints off canines on display.  They remain fixed, waiting for a sign of humanity to crack through Gladys’s stalwart, governmental disaffection.  She scrunches her nose to lift her glasses into place and sighs; her chest falls and the barely magnetic name tag misaligns by three degrees.  

After a pause long enough Rocky almost worries she has forgotten how to breathe, Gladys turns to face the FDP.  “I will do my best to serve you with courte-holy shit.”  Recognition flashes across Gladys’s eyes.

Rocky waits for her to blink.  She doesn’t.  “Hi.”

“You’re…”

“I am.”

“Here?”

“It would appear so.”

Gladys pauses.  She remembers to breathe and gasps, “Ramona won’t believe-”

“Wanna selfie?”  Rocky has learned at least a little bit about PR.

“Omigod YES.”  Finally, Gladys smiles, beaming widely. 

Rocky waits for Gladys to fumble with her cell phone, her grin at risk of evaporating.  “My grandson usually does this for me.”

“Here, let me…”

He gently takes the phone, opens the camera app, puts his arm around Gladys (who is entirely too dazed to look toward the camera – or at anything, really, other than Rocky), flashes a grin big enough to house Dom Deluise, and takes a series of snapshots in various poses.  “There you go.”  

“…oh my god.”  She holds the device with two hands and stares in amazement as though she just discovered a centuries’ lost religious relic.  

“Now, Gladys, I don’t want to take up too much of your time-”

“-impossible-”

“Ha, yeah, but I *am* here for a reason.  Could you just maybe help me get a birth record?  It’s for a friend of mine.  She couldn’t come here herself, and we really need a certified copy.”

Gladys blinks a very little bit, “But… I’m not supposed to give those out except to the person of record, their immediate family, or their guardian.”  

…she can’t remember to breathe when she’s looking at me, but she can remember the statutory list of people qualified to obtain copies of birth records?  The good people of Montana got a winner here.

“I sure feel like I’m family when I’m here, Gladys.  Don’t you?”  His mouth does that thing again where his lips part, you can see his teeth, and it makes old ladies happy.

“Well… I guess maybe just this once… you won’t tell anyone I helped you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Wait… could you tell LeeAnne I helped you?  Just LeeAnne.  Well, and maybe Alice…”

Rocky took a shot in the dark, “And Gertrude?”

“Screw Gertrude, that bitch.”

He missed.  “Forget Gertrude.  You could just show them the selfie, you know.”

“ICOULDSHOWTHEMTHESELFIE!!!”  Gladys’s eyes open frisbee big unblinking as she works her phone faster than anyone of her generation has ever previously managed.

“Yes yes, show them after… after, Gladys.  Please?  It’s important.  I’m- WE’re in a little bit of a hurry.”

“Oh oh oh oh oh, of course Mr. Fully Di– I mean Carlos, I mean… Rocky, I mean…”

“Call me whatever you want, darlin’.”  More teeth.

Gladys sighs, “Whose birth certificate did we need?”

“Vickie Hall.  That’s V… I… C… K… yep, yep, you got it.  That’s the one.”  Gladys prints off the requested document.  The printer begins to slowly accelerate its ancient spindle and weave a tapestry of ink on yellowed paper.

“Mr. de Leon, sir?”  Gladys asked, taking advantage of the slow technology, “…do you think just maybe you might want to come to dinner with me and the gals?”

“Rain check, Gladys.”

—✈️—

You’d be surprised how often people make assumptions about you because of your job title.  They make assumptions about your abilities (managers must be good at the jobs of the people they manage), your character (lawyers are snakes), and even your personality (movie stars are extroverts).  They think journalists ask a lot of questions and do a lot of writing.  That’s true, but they also think of us as honorable seekers of the truth and that we never lie.  

They are wrong. Hell, there are entire news channels that don’t bother to make sure what they report is true.  Truth aside, my primary function is to get information.  Presenting information is a wholly different part of the gig. 

Sometimes I tell the truth to get information.  Other times… a little social engineering comes into play.  Just because I’m a nice guy doesn’t mean I don’t know how and when to tell a white lie.  

You know what helps you get good at telling lies?  Studying and understanding liars.  Good liars keep their statements clear and simple.  They tend to tell inconsequential lies, mostly to family and friends, and generally through face to face interactions.  They are naturally confident and good performers.

All of that extends to other forms of lies like photoshopped pictures and documents, con artistry in any tangible form.  The best fakes make only minor, but important, changes.  Part of my job as a journalist is to know how to spot fakes and forgeries.  The best way, I found, to learn to spot counterfeit documents is to learn to create them.  

Rocky slides Vickie Hall’s birth certificate through his scanner.  A high resolution version of the document is saved to his laptop.  He opens the image in photoshop, then highlights the text field containing Vickie’s name using the rectangular selection tool.  Keystrokes fill the silent air as the words, “Match font” appear in the toolbar.  Selecting the best of the presented matches, he deletes Vickie’s name and replaces it.

Victoria Leigh Lennox.

“…too uppity.”

He backspaces.  

Victoria Joy Brown.

Rocky wrinkles his nose.  “Sounds like an author, not a girl who would become a blonde wrestling groupie… wrestling harem madam?  Whatever she is.”

Feverish backspacing.

Glinda.

“Too on the nose.”

Sarah Jean Johnson.

“There we go.  Doesn’t get more Montanan than that.”  He makes sure to adjust the last names of her parents and moves on to the next piece of artifice.

Back to the web browser.  The cursor lands on the search bar as his index finger taps in the middle of his touchpad.  Keys click.  “Sample Montana Name Change Order.”

After a few minutes in Acrobat Pro, a court order which previously renamed one Homer Julius Simpson to Max Powers now shows the whole world that Vickie Hall was once Sarah Jean Johnson.

Changing focus, Rocky uploads photos from his cell phone to the laptop and opens the creeper shots he took of Mrs. Hall and the poor valet.  He begins to manipulate the images in photoshop.

“…now kiss…”

—🦖—

Rocky sits in the office at Jurassic HQ.  A stuffed manilla envelope resting in his hands is addressed to the Hall’s penthouse suite.  

“Are you waiting for it to mail itself, Rock?”

Rocky jumps at the sound of his handler’s voice.  “When did you get here?”

Stu steps closer and puts a hand on Rocky’s shoulder.  “About five minutes ago.  Long enough to watch you stare at that package like it’s an escape risk.   I see you’ve addressed it to Jonathan-Christopher.  How long have you been staring at it?”

The Master of Moonsaults glances at the clock.  “About two hours.”

“Are you planning to send it out?”

Rocky takes a final look at the envelope before tossing it in the circular filing cabinet.

“No.  No I’m not.”

I can’t do it.  I just can’t.  It’s wrong. I want to win.  I so badly want to win, but… not like this.

Just because I lost to a shitbag doesn’t mean I have to become one to win.  Just because I have morals doesn’t mean I have to be “nice.”   No, fuck that.  Bad framing, Rock.  Being NICE doesn’t equate to being a loser.  You can be nice and be aggressive.  You can be nice and still win in the ring.  Treating people with respect and dignity isn’t going to prevent me from taking a belt.  

What you can’t be and win is a doormat.  You can’t let people walk over you.  You can’t let people tell you what to do, where to do it, and how to do it – even if “people” is your wife.  The Timid Tiger has skill, but he’s not the one in control of it.  He’s given dominion over his destiny to his… it’s not right to call her a partner.  She’s his keeper.  Since he’s not going to learn before Tropical Turmoil what it means to fight for himself, he is going to learn what prehistoric cruelty looks like, because once you step inside that square there is no such thing as mercy.  I may be nice, but the pterodactyl isn’t.  It’s coming for you Jonathan.  SKREE.

The FDP and Angel Emeritus stands tall as he walks out of the office.  

—🦖—

Stu types away at his keyboard until the sound of the door to the gym slamming shut echoes through the empty halls.  He pauses long enough to ensure he is alone, then retrieves the package from the trash and sets it on his desk.  Reaching into a drawer, he pulls out and puts on a pair of nitrile gloves, then opens the manilla envelope.

“…Montana birth record for one Sarah Jean Johnson… criminal record… driver’s license… surveillance photos… ooo spicy surveillance photos… hrm.”

Stu tosses the original envelope back in the metal trash can.  He retrieves a box of matches from Cindy’s desk, confident she won’t miss one.  Cindy keeps a box of 500 for lighting a different one of her massive collection of candles every day, much to Donny’s olfactory despair.  He strikes one and throws it in the bin, grateful that Donny disabled the smoke detector in this room for his occasional cigar.  Stu watches as the envelope burns to ash.

He pulls a clean manilla envelope from another desk drawer.  Some quick keystrokes, then he places the empty envelope in the printer which spits toner in the shape of the Hall Penthouse address at utterly reasonable speed.  Stu slides the collection of forgeries and photoshops into the new envelope, seals it, applies more than ample postage, and carries it under his arm.

Stu’s keys stick a bit in the lock on the way out; the tumbler needs oiling, but Donny can’t seem to be arsed to mess with it.  Stu makes a mental note to bring WD-40 tomorrow.  As he walks home, he passes a blue metal box on the street and slides the envelope in.

“Stay clean, Rock.  Fight the good fight.  I’ll dig enough in the dirt for both of us.”