Life's Work

Hugh Petrie didn't have the sort of office that an executive of the Cincinnati Cougars should have had. There was a regulation NFL football sitting on the couch like a big brown button, but the couch was covered in satin and the rug beneath it was a genuine kilim in pale rose. There were framed eight-by-tens on the wall, autographed portraits of famous athletes. But there was also a small photo of Jonathan Winters dressed as Maud Frickert on the corner of a chrome and glass desk, and a tryptich of the Three Stooges by the louvered windows. None of this would have been unusual in a different office; only the men who ran this business weren't noted for their sense of fun or style. They were dour La Jolla Republicans, at home at Pebble Beach, playing skins with oil money, insurance company executives, and other NFL owners. That wasn't a Three Stooges foursome. At least, it wasn't supposed to be. Sitting on the couch in the soft yellow glow of a baby spot, listening to a grandfather clock smack its lips in the corner, and staring at Curly's mad grin on one wall and Dick Butkus's even madder one on another, I could see a pattern. It just wasn't the pattern I'd expected.

I contemplated the meaning of the room for a few minutes, then the door opened and Hugh Petrie stepped in.

"Thanks for coming, Stoner," he said, without giving me much of a look. He walked over to the desk, sat down in a high-backed leather chair, and swiped at a paper clip as if he were swatting a fly. Like the office, Petrie wasn't what I'd expected in football management fashion. He should have been going to fat, potbellied, and bearded with extra chins like a middle-aged high school gym coach. But under the sports coat he was bigger, more muscular, and in better shape than some of his players. Bald on top, gray as flannel on the sides, his skull curved like a helmet above his deepset blue eyes. His lower face fit into that helmet like a hardwood dowel driven in by a hammer. He looked to be about forty-five, square jawed, steely-eyed, tough.

"Tell me all you know about football," Petrie said, peering out at me from beneath his helmetlike brow.

"I like to watch it," I said. "I used to like to play it."

"You used to play?"

"In college. I had a dream about being drafted by the pros. But the war came along. After that, playing football didn't seem that important to me."

Petrie nodded mechanically, as if my opinion wasn't all that important to him. "You know anybody on the squad?"

"No."

He sighed. "It would be better if you were closer to the game. The men you'll be dealing with are a tight-knit bunch."

"I can make my own way," I said.

He looked unimpressed. "These guys aren't ordinary people."

"They've got more muscle," I said, trying to sound unimpressed myself "And better reflexes."

"They're genetic freaks," Petrie said flatly.

"That's one way of putting it."

"Don't kid yourself," he said. "It's the only way of putting it. They're winners in a genetic crapshoot, pure and simple. Somewhere in the past there was another freak in the family, a man who was bigger and stronger and quicker than other men. He didn't earn that distinction any more than they have. He was blessed with it. Don't forget that, Stoner. No matter what you hear about how unfairly we treat them, these guys are the lucky ones. They were lucky from the start."

He sounded bitter about their chemistry, but then I guessed he hadn't figured that those select strands of DNA would also be programmed to hire agents or to demand the renegotiation of contracts. Or to snort cocaine and get caught doing it, like Carl Monroe, Nate Calhoun, and Jack Greene had done. Several months before the start of training camp, Monroe, Calhoun, and Greene had been caught in a DEA sting operation. In exchange for immunity against prosecution, they'd testified before a grand jury. All three admitted to purchasing cocaine from a Bellevue fireman named Tate. Tate got twenty years in Mansfield, and the football players got slapped on their wrists. They'd drawn the usual stiff sentences meted out to athletes -the grand jury had ordered them to spend six months counseling "troubled youths." And it had looked like it was going to end there, until the league put its foot down and suspended all three for the remainder of training camp and the first five games of the regular season. I thought perhaps that was why I'd been called in -to keep an eye on them for the Cougars until the suspensions were lifted. But I thought wrong.

"I guess you know who Billy Parks is," Petrie said.

I nodded. "Who doesn't? He's the nose guard on your football team."

"Nose guard," Petrie said dully and laughed, way back in his throat.

"If you think you've got another cocaine problem here," I said warily, "I'm the wrong guy for the job. You'd be better off contacting the league or the DEA."

"We're not sure what Bill's problem is," Petrie said.

"Have you tried asking him?"

"We can't ask him. He left camp three days ago, and nobody knows where he's gone. Or at least nobody's saying. Not his family. Not his neighbors. Not his friends. Of course, we've tried contacting him at home. And at his parents' home. But we've had no luck at all. Even his so-called agent isn't talking."

"Has he done this sort of thing before?" I asked.

"He wouldn't be on the team if he had."

"Then why do you want him back?"

"I don't want him back," Petrie said bluntly. "But the general feeling among the coaches is, with Carl, Nate, and Jack suspended until the sixth week of the season, we can't afford to lose another veteran player."

"You could probably save yourself my fee by just sitting tight," I said. "He'll come home eventually. It seems like they always do."

Petrie shook his head. "I can't run a business by 'sitting tight.' And there are only four more weeks of training camp left before it starts."

"The season?" I said.

Petrie nodded and stared past me, with a fierce, vigilant look on his face, as if he could already see it formulating itself in some recess of that odd showpiece of a room -the season, the cloud banks, the unpredictable weather of the next sixteen weeks. For just a moment, he almost looked frightened. Then he sloughed off his mood and refocused his eyes on me.

"We've had a contract dispute with Bill," he said in a businesslike voice, "which may be the reason for the walkout. But we can't find out unless we talk to him. And we can't talk to him unless we know where he is. He also has some personal problems that may have a bearing on this situation."

"What kind of problems?" I said.

Petrie fished through the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a manila folder. He eyed it with distaste and tossed it over to me. "Take a look," he said.

I picked the folder up and glanced through the Xeroxes inside. They were copies of arrest reports filed against Billy Parks, all-pro. There were four different cases, the earliest dating back to 1978, the latest in January of this year. All four arrests were made for assault and battery. All four victims had been young women. Photostatic snapshots of the ladies were attached to the report. It was difficult to tell from the snapshots, but the women looked badly beaten up, especially the last one, a pretty girl with blond hair. Both of her eyes had been blackened, her lower lip was split, and there were wads of stained cotton in her nostrils. She stared indignantly into the camera, as if the cops were taking a mug shot rather than an evidentiary photo. I searched through the report and found her name. Candy Kane. Her profession was listed as "dancer." Probably a stripper, judging from the stage name. Her address was the Caesar Apartments in Clifton.

I put the folder back on the desk and looked up at Petrie. He was trying to force a smile, only it didn't wash as a smile. It was a grimace, a look of utter embarrassment, as if he held himself responsible for what I'd seen under this particular rock.

"On average, they make about a million and a half dollars over their careers," he said, with that sick, incredulous smile on his face. "Enough to buy a house, to take care of their parents, to start a family, to prepare for their life's work ..." His voice died off and his mouth shut abruptly, like a puppet's.

"There are good and bad in any profession," I said.

"I'm not in any profession," Petrie said with so much indignation that he impressed me.

Of course, I reminded myself, his indignation wasn't completely righteous. It was just good business to expect his players to plan for a life ahead. It made it easier to justify cutting them when they grew old and tired. And it was good business to become outraged when they did something like what Parks had done. It confirmed the somewhat convenient belief that if it weren't for a genetic accident they wouldn't have deserved a break in the first place. But practical considerations aside, there was a part of me that had been struck just as speechless as he had by those photographs -a part that was just as indignant as he seemed to be. I didn't own a football team, but I held a rooting interest. And while I'd never bought the crap about football players being models for youth pillars of a society, that would be pretty damn strange, if you thought about it- I didn't believe that they should beat up young women and get away with it, either.

"Didn't any of these ladies file charges against Parks?" I asked.

Petrie shook his head. "The first three cases were settled out of court or dropped outright. In the most recent one, the girl didn't want to prosecute, but the cops filed for her." He laughed grimly. "I guess even the police have had their fill of Billy at this point."

I flipped the folder open and took another look at the rap sheet. It was pretty skeletal, even by a beat cop's standards. In fact, all that was indicated was that the arresting officer, a Sergeant Phil Clayton, had been summoned to the girl's apartment on the evening of December 31 of this past year. Parks had been arrested there on an assault charge, booked, and released on bond the same night. There was no indication of who had filed the complaint or who had pressed the assault charge against Parks. I studied the girl's battered face. That was why she'd looked so disgusted. She'd wanted to take her beating and forget about it, but the cops wouldn't let her do it. They must have talked her into cooperating. Either that or they had an eyewitness to the beating. Otherwise, I couldn't see how they could prosecute the case.

"When is Parks supposed to go on trial?" I asked.

"At the end of training camp. The police gave Billy that much leeway."

"There are four weeks of training camp left. If the trial is the reason he skipped camp, why would he do it now?"

"We just don't know," Petrie said.

I closed the folder and told him, "I'll take the case."

"Good. Find Parks and get back in touch. We'll handle it from there."

"I'll want to talk to some of the players."

"We'll take care of it," he said. "But do it quietly. They're still in training, and we want to maintain a semblance of order, if that's still possible after what we've been through."

"Is there any one player Parks was particularly close to?"

"He's roomed with Otto Bluerock for the last four years."

"Could you arrange a meeting with him? Today, if possible."

Petrie nodded. "You ought to know that Otto isn't the most easygoing guy in the world."

"Tough?"

Petrie smiled as if I'd named one of his children. "As store-bought nails. Plus he's got a little something extra to be steamed about."

"What's that?"

"We're going to cut him tomorrow," Petrie said mildly. "And he knows it."
 

Petrie let me take the folder with me when I left, along with an autographed portrait of everybody's hero -Bill Parks. He'd been a rock during the Super Bowl year, an all-pro who'd deserved the honor. He'd been off his form in 1984 and 1985, but so had the team. At twenty-nine, with a new season coming up, he should have been at the top of his game, peaking as an athlete and a player.

I studied his picture when I got out to the Stadium lot. I wasn't used to seeing him without the gridwork of a face mask, and he looked older than I'd expected. Pros are funny that way. Some of them always look like brooding Pillsbury Doughboys and some of them look wizened from the start -middle-aged and beaten down, as if they'd never known what it was like to be young. Thinking back, I didn't remember Parks as one of the youngold man types. He'd been one of the Doughboys, the kind with huge arms and a huge chest and a face so fat and featureless that he didn't seem to have a pair of eyes -just a black crease between nose and brow. Eight years of pro football had changed that. He still had a brow like a rolled roast, and his arms, neck, and chest were enormous. But the crease had opened up, the jaw had sagged, the chin looked misshapen, and the fat had hardened and cracked, leaving a netting of wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. His curly red hair had begun to thin at the temples, receding on either side of a V-shaped forelock. In the photograph, he looked ten years older than twenty-nine. He also looked crazy.