Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (85 page)

Who was Davey to say whose fault it was, when the police were still investigating what had happened? Davey then vowed that he’d return to the WWF to win a title in Owen’s honor.

I left Martha to go to see my own kids. Owen was their closest uncle and, like the rest of the Hart grandkids, they were taking it hard. Perhaps it was a blessing that Owen’s own children, Oje and Athena, were still too young to really understand that their dad was never coming back. When Julie comforted me, I broke down crying hard, sitting on the front steps. It felt somehow like I was responsible.

Because of my experience dealing with the media, Martha asked me to be a spokesperson for herself and her family. In the days after Owen died, I asked Marcy to relocate permanently to Calgary to run my office and be my personal assistant; I got her a ticket on the next flight out of New York. I did Good Morning America at four a.m., Calgary time, in Stu’s living room with Martha and my parents. I arrived unshaven and weary. Martha’s lawyers were there to guard against anything being said that could jeopardize her legal standing with the WWF, so I focused on how the business had strayed too far from the premise of two athletes telling a story using only their bodies. Pro wrestling had become a can-you-top-this ratings war of increasingly more dangerous stunts and sleazy storylines. Owen was no stuntman and clearly someone didn’t know what they were doing. A union for wrestlers was long overdue, I said. At least if we had one, there’d be guidelines to distinguish between wrestling and stunt work, and there would be protection when someone got hurt.

Meanwhile, Vince left me numerous phone messages pleading with me to call him back. I couldn’t bring myself to do it until I had a better idea of his role in Owen’s death.

On Thursday morning, May 27, Martha asked me to come with her to meet the plane that was bringing Owen home. We watched as the closed casket, draped with a big Canadian flag, was placed into a hearse. The next morning at the viewing, I stared down at Owen in his coffin laying there with his fingers laced across his chest. It didn’t look like him. When I kissed his cold cheek, it struck me that my little brother felt like a porcelain doll. Smoothing his hair, I kept asking, “Ahh, Owen, what were you thinking?”

I finally relented enough on the Vince front to have Carlo arrange to have Vince meet me on a park bench overlooking the Bow River where I’d spent so much time thinking about what Vince had done to me. Soon, three limos pulled up at my old house, and I led them to the park. A Calgary policeman told me, some time later, that Vince had hired him and some under-cover cops to stake out our meeting in case I got violent. Apparently Vince was wearing a wire: The cop said he heard every word of our meeting and had been impressed with my dignity.

That whole May was cold in Calgary, and the backdrop of our meeting was a watercolor sky of ashen gray and swollen, black, angry clouds that would be crying along with us before long. Vince wore a long, heavy coat. He slapped me hard on the shoulders, hugged me and told me how sorry he was.

“This is the worst thing to ever happen in the business, to the nicest guy who was ever in the business.”

He asked me if he should go to Stu’s, and I suggested that he might want to wait until after the funeral. I’d left Hart house not an hour earlier and Bruce and Ellie were still screaming for his head, but I didn’t see the need to tell Vince that. When I asked him what happened, he told me he didn’t know all the details, he was in makeup at the time. I told him that, in all likelihood, Martha would be suing him. I gave him fair warning that if he had anything to tell me, he should go ahead, but that we didn’t need to talk about it. He accepted that and seemed to relax a little.

I told Vince that I didn’t appreciate that they went on with the show after Owen died. He replied that nobody knew what to do, they were so shocked; and they were afraid the fans might riot if he stopped the show. That struck me as ridiculous, and I said that if Shane had been dropped from the ceiling, Vince would have stopped it fast. He stared out at the river and simply said, “We didn’t know what to do.”

I also didn’t appreciate them airing a replay for profit either, and I didn’t like watching Raw the day after Owen’s death, when wrestlers sick with grief were given no choice about pouring their hearts out on live TV for ratings. I said a more fitting tribute to Owen would have been to celebrate his career by showing his matches.

Then I sighed and told Vince that this never would have happened to Owen if I’d been there. Owen always came to me for advice, and I would have shot such a stupid idea down fast.

Vince finally admitted, though I didn’t know whether I could believe him, that “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret what I did to you. You need to come back and finish your career with me. I could put the belt back on you. . . . I could have a storyline for you by tomorrow morning.”

I couldn’t imagine getting back in the ring ever again, I replied, and aside from that I’d just resigned with WCW for another two years.

Vince seemed to mean it when he asked if there was anything he could do for me. When I still worked for him, we talked about doing a Best of Bret Hart video collection, but that was more than unlikely after Montreal. I didn’t have much of a history if Vince locked up everything I did in a warehouse somewhere. “Well, it would mean a lot to me if I could have access to my video history and photos whenever I need them . . .”

He cut me off, “Anything you want.”

“I don’t want to lose my legacy. I don’t want to be forgotten . . .”

He waved me off. “You don’t even need to ask. Anything you want.”

I found myself thanking him and telling him how much this simple gesture meant to me, especially under the circumstances. If the police cleared Vince, then maybe I could forgive him.

After two hours on that park bench, exchanging stories about Owen and finally even managing to laugh a little—for better or worse, Vince and I had fourteen years of shared history—we shook hands and headed back to our cars.

The WWF wrestlers and a lot of the crew and office staff made the long flight to Calgary for Owen’s funeral. The May 31Raw was already in the can, but Nitro was live and Eric left a message for me apologizing for not being able to attend. To his credit Hulk arrived in town quietly, on his own with no fanfare.

On Monday morning, May 31, I got up from my dining-room table, where I’d been writing the finishing touches of a eulogy to my brother, and went out for a walk. The Calgary sky was as gray as my mood and it cried tears from heaven on and off all day. When I got back I donned my best suit and drove over to Stu’s to meet the motorcade. A dozen perfectly polished white limousines were lined up in Stu’s front driveway, into which climbed various Harts all dressed in black. I was annoyed when I saw Ellie and Diana guiding Vince by the arm into Stu’s limo; as far as I was concerned, he was far from forgiven yet.

Tension was smoldering among the siblings. I’d heard various rumors that Diana was pissed off because I’d got so much more TV time all week than anyone else. Bruce was upset because Martha wouldn’t let him speak at the service. And Smith, who’d written a poem for Owen, was crushed when Martha told him he couldn’t read it. Martha did ask both Ross and I to speak, and she requested that I tell some lighthearted stories about Owen before she delivered her own eulogy.

Unfortunately, all these little things that I did to oblige Martha were only getting me heat from the rest of the family. It wasn’t as though I wanted to be on TV right after my brother died, and I dreaded having to be on Larry King Live immediately after the funeral. All I wanted was to be left alone to grieve like everybody else.

The line of cars grew longer with each passing mile of the procession, with media and police helicopters overhead. The WWF wrestlers followed in a bus that bore a banner proclaiming, OWEN

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE IN OUR HEARTS. All that banner really told me was that Vince was treating the funeral as much as an exercise in damage control as it was about laying my brother to rest.

This was one of the biggest funerals that Calgary had ever seen, and people lined the motorcade route, many in their finest clothes, some bowing their heads and others holding signs. The Calgary police, in dress uniforms, closed major highways and provided a motorcycle escort all the way to the McInnis ; Holloway funeral chapel, which was surrounded by thousands of people of all ages and walks of life. The chapel only held three hundred, so a separate room with TV monitors was provided for the WWF personnel and a PA system was set up outside for the public.

I remember seeing a blur of old and young battered faces. Owen’s close pal Chris Benoit stood with Killer Kowalski, The Funks, Mick Foley, Taker, Bad News, Jericho, Hunter, Chyna and a cavalcade of other wrestlers.

The next thing I remember clearly is the heartfelt vow with which Martha closed her eulogy: “There will be a day of reckoning. This is my final promise to Owen. I won’t let him down!”

The six remaining Hart brothers carried Owen’s casket out of the chapel. It was the heaviest weight any of us had ever carried.

The procession then wound its way to Queen’s Park Cemetery, where I’d so long ago raked leaves from headstones and made the decision to give the wacky world of wrestling a try. Tears filled my eyes when I saw a military officer in full dress uniform standing on an overpass at attention, saluting.

After Owen was lowered into the ground, the motorcade headed to Hart house, where friends and family from around the world gathered. It wasn’t long before Pat Patterson came to find me. He wanted to tell me that he wasn’t in on what happened to me in Mont-real, but he shut up when I asked coldly, “So, where were you when they brought the midget out all dressed up as me?”

Finally, after doing Larry King Live from Martha’s living room, I went home totally spent. I found a FedEx package from Carlo sitting at my doorstep among a forest of floral deliveries. I opened it to find Owen’s bloody Blue Blazer gear inside. I held up the bloodstained blue mask that’d been cut off my brother, remembering that it was originally my idea for Owen to wear a mask. I grabbed my coat, got away from the smell of all those flowers, and went for a long, long walk.

Smith’s Poem for Owen

Once you were here

What a difference you made, dearest of dear brothers.

To the hell that was raised when a dozen then played without any others.

Only heaven knows why you got chosen,

and that you’ll await us is our belief.

I smell lily and rose and read each and every heartfelt card, through flows of grief.

What is spoken is tasted

and what is heard of your greatness is felt deep within our heavy hearts and certainly all around this solemn gathering.

As I still try to write in this, the 13th hour, Owen

And search for words of praise and worth,

I sense your presence pure and sweet.

Owen, don’t think I don’t know

that you are haunting our house already.

Sadly, I’d lose more family than Owen after his death.

That Wednesday morning, tears came to my eyes reading about my brother’s funeral in the morning papers while listening to Tom Petty sing about having a room at the top of the world and not comin’

down. I’d be leaving for Missouri the next day with Martha, Pam Fischer and Ed Pipella, Martha’s other Calgary lawyer. I had no misgivings about supporting Martha, who was determined to see the WWF pay dearly for destroying her life and her husband. I also needed someone to tell me for sure that Owen had not been murdered in some way. So I swore to Martha that I would be there for her no matter what happened, but I was having a tough time trying to get some of the Harts to stop talking to the media about Owen’s death.

Still, my kids were over for a visit, and the sound of them playing lifted my spirits. I remembered how, whenever we landed in Calgary, Owen would grab his two carry-on bags, ready to race down the ramp as soon as the plane doors opened because Martha and the kids were always there waiting. As I flipped through the Calgary Herald, I couldn’t get over the smiling face of my sister Diana, looking way too happy for the occasion as she posed with a bunch of sad wrestlers flanking a deflated Stu. There was a quote from Diana in the paper that made my blood boil: “Dad is like a father figure to Vince and Vince felt like Owen was one of his sons.” Why couldn’t they just say “no comment,” at least until the criminal investigation was over and we knew whether any charges would be laid against Vince or his organization? This was what Owen’s widow had asked us all to do!

I phoned Diana and I wasn’t surprised that she turned on me like a grass fire. She blistered my heart when she tore into me about how Owen was a better wrestler than me and that I was jealous and had always held him back. She defended Vince, saying that this was no different than if Owen had hit his head in a cage match—accidents happen!

“All you have to say is no comment,” I said. “How hard is that, Diana? Vince hasn’t even been cleared of criminal charges.”

“You hold it against Vince for what he did to you at Survivor Series because you didn’t want to do a job for Shawn Michaels. You’ve got a vendetta and you’re the only one that wants to sue anybody.”

“Diana, this is about Martha. It’s her decision!”

Then Ellie was suddenly on the extension, and I shouldn’t have been so hurt or surprised when she coldly fired back, “You know, Bret, I’ve hated your guts since the day you were born and I’m glad to tell you that.” I listened to them both screaming and yelling and it felt as though someone was pouring scalding water down my back. I was trying so hard to stand up for the whole family, to make them proud, and what I was asking Ellie and Diana to do was only what Owen would have asked of them himself, if he could have. I rose, clutching the phone, and erupted in a loud, booming voice, “If you two think for one minute that you’re going to use Owen’s death to get your husbands jobs, if you don’t support Martha and Owen’s kids right now, I will never, ever talk to either of you ever again!”