The Franchise (21 page)

Leroy’s reputation as a maniac on the field, plus his pure physical size—six feet six inches, 275 pounds—plus his obvious intensity about the subject, tended to dampen any of the more vocal dissent. Kimball Adams, however, was not impressed.

“Aw, shut up, Leroy, and go on home. And take the fucking narc with you,” he growled. “We want to go get a beer.”

“I can forgive that; I can understand that,” the big black man said, his face giving the lie to his words. “You can’t admit that ...”

“I don’t want no forgiveness or understanding, Lee-roy,” Kimball mimicked angrily. “I want a fucking beer. I don’t see no coaches or management, except for dickhead over there, who took roll.” Kimball pointed to Lem Three, sunburned in his white shorts, holding the roll clipboard. “I’m going for a beer.”

“Now, wait a damn minute, Kimball. You think you’re man enough to go through this weak, God-fearing man?” Leroy slammed his huge fists into his chest. The rib cage thundered.

“Nigger, please,” Kimball said, not backing off, “you’re making an asshole of yourself.”

“I am not.”

“Come on, Leroy.” Hendrix stood up and pointed at the bewildered agent. “You are helping people like him. After years of being the rooster, you’re turning bird dog. If it wasn’t for assholes like J. Edgar Jones, cocaine would still be eight dollars an ounce. You wouldn’t have snorted your life away at eight dollars an ounce.”

“You ain’t listening, Bobby.”

“You aren’t remembering, Leroy.”

Taylor interrupted: “Speaking for low nigger on the pole, I’m leaving. I know I’m weak and Leroy’s weak and J. Edgar seems like a real turd. You guys don’t tell me how to think and feel and I’ll do the same.”

“What the fuck kind of meeting is this?” Simon D’Hanis wanted to know.

“I still ain’t seen the man that can get past me!” Leroy thumped his chest.

“Jesus, what I would give for a thirty-eight Special,” Kimball mumbled.

“Do you want ...” Ox began, but Kimball touched his arm and shook his head.

“Did this guy go to Notre Dame?” Taylor hissed to Hendrix, who nodded. “I should have known. Notre Dame, UCLA and the Big Ten. They really put weird backspin on these guys.”

“Look, turkey”—Speedo Smith gathered up his gear and started toward the door—“I don’t know what you are, but what you
aren’t
is gonna lay your hands on me. The law is supposed to protect us from people like you, not force us to listen to you talk. You ain’t no man—you are back to slaving nigger, slaving for owners. Everybody dies, man. So die, nigger. Don’t change sides at the end, just die.”

“Grab his slack, Speedo,” Margene Brinkley said.

“I’m with you, Speedo.” Taylor followed the small, belligerent wide receiver’s lead. “I have the horrible feeling that these guys’ salaries are just added on to my phone bill. Let’s get out of here.”

Speedo pushed by Leroy Weller, but Weller stood between Taylor and the door.

“I don’t know what Speedo has planned in this event,” Taylor said, “but I plan a very large lawsuit.”

Weller stood his ground. “Oh, yeah, man?”

Taylor glared into the big man’s small eyes, “You fucking touch me and I’ll sue you, Mr. Smith, J. Edgar, Robbie Burden, the League and Investico.”

At the sound of his own name J. Edgar bolted into action. He grabbed Leroy’s arms. “Well, fellas, why don’t we break it on up now. Okay?”

Ox Wood walked up to J. Edgar and Mr. Smith and Leroy Weller. “If I see you guys around my house, I’ll kill your kids.”

J. Edgar and Smith turned white.

“I can dig where you’re coming from,” Leroy Weller said.

Dick Conly looked stupid on purpose to aggravate representatives of the League Owners Council, Boyton Kink and Don Jackson, attorneys-at-law.

“If you have any specific questions ... ?” Kink asked.

“How much is this costing and do I have a choice?”

“The money is already paid as your franchise’s share of each assessment.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Besides house counsel, the League Owners Council keeps a Washington, DC, law firm of antitrust lawyers.” Jackson sold like it was Electrolux.

“The lawyers are working with the commissioner on their latest antitrust laws. We plan to move first on the Senate side, attaching a rider to a black-lung bill,” Kink continued his update. “The US Senate allows ‘non-germane’ amendments. Senator Thompson is to carry the ball for us—”

“Well,” Conly interrupted, “Bailey Thompson is about as non-germane as possible, and with all three of you working on it, I expect you will all shortly disappear up your own assholes.”

The two East Coast lawyers smiled thinly and continued their spiel, laying out the schemes agreed to in the latest Council meeting.

Conly slid his eyes around the room. Lem Carleton III was listening raptly, his mouth ajar. Lem was slightly drunk. Alcohol insulated him from the monstrous violence of the Franchise and the League.

Red Kilroy’s grin caught the general manager’s eye. Red had invited himself to the meeting and was also drunk. Dick liked his head coach, a man who dealt in real politics with no illusions about the League, which was why he let him attend. Red would do whatever was necessary to win. He was a gutter fighter and didn’t quit, and Conly found it hard to oppose him in order to protect Cyrus Chandler’s interests. Conly winked at Red and the head coach blew him a kiss. It was right in the middle of an explanation of the latest IRS ruling on whipsawing, the practice of declaring different tax values on the same transaction so that both the buyer and seller show big tax losses. It was particularly tempting in sports-franchise bookkeeping. The head coach blowing a kiss to the general manager startled the handsome young lawyer, Jackson. He lost his place, blushed and stammered, his eyes cutting from Red to Dick.

“You were talking about whipsawing the value of player contracts and franchise fees,” Conly said sternly, enjoying the ambitious man’s discomfort. “We know all that. Tell us about how the commissioner fucked up by asking for complete antitrust exemption like baseball on the grounds it
wasn’t
interstate commerce.”

“Right. Right.” Donald Jackson, Harvard Law, collected himself. “On antitrust we’re going to have to settle for a piecemeal approach,” the lawyer said. “You have to remember we need the Union on this on the Hill. We need organized labor support for antitrust exemption. This guy Charlie Stillman is valuable.”

“Union? Organized labor?” Red Kilroy roared. “We don’t need no union or no lawyers. You’re a staid little shit. Get some real dirt under your fingernails and blood, not rhetorical blood, not flesh in the abstract, but the real gore,” Red said. “You’re getting a big fee that I could use to buy several good running backs. You want to whipsaw your intangible? I’ll goddam whipsaw your intangible, you little puny chinless Harvard fart!”

The lawyer was stunned. Red stumbled toward him, scattering chairs, finally falling.

“Aw, fuck it. I don’t want to be an owner if I got to hang around with you guys.” Red banged furniture and walls, heading out the door.

“The hell you don’t,” Conly said softly after Red had gone.

T
AYLOR
R
USK SHUFFLED
down the hall of the dormitory, wearing a Texas Pistols T-shirt, gray basketball shorts and moccasins. The afternoon workout had just ended; he was heading for his room to nap before dinner and the night meeting.

“Hey, fool,” Speedo Smith called out from his room as Taylor passed. The big quarterback stopped and looked at the black man stretched out on his bed, arms back, his head resting on his hands.

All-Pro Speedo Smith had been blacklisted by Dallas for getting involved in the Union. Bobby Hendrix had recruited him at the Pro Bowl to help get the Union back from Charlie Stillman. Alfred “Speedo” Smith then compounded his error by trying to help his teammates deal with the bureaucratic chaff of the Union and the team. He made waves and appeared to have lost a step, so Dallas placed Speedo Smith on
The List
. It was a big mistake.

Dick Conly let Dallas think that the Pistols were just going through the motions of claiming Speedo for the one-hundred-dollar waiver price “to help get that wiseass jungle bunny out of football.”

Dallas explained to the local press the wisdom of getting rid of a receiver who had just caught seventy-nine passes for eighteen touchdowns and over two thousands yards in offense.

“Smith is lazy,” Dallas’s general manager said. “He had nine-flat speed but twelve-flat hands.” The press bought it and wrote it. Several laughed at “twelve-flat hands.”

Taylor leaned against the door frame of Speedo’s room.

“You know, fool,” Speedo said, “we need to get Red to put in a system of automatic checkoffs on blitzes. The wide-outs run quick in-routes to the hole. The quarterback uses a three-step setup ... a short pass, then a footrace.” Speedo smiled. “My fans will love it. We all take our keys from the linebacker movement
after
the ball is snapped. There is no way they can defense it.”

Taylor walked in and sat on the empty bed that belonged to veteran defensive back R.D. Locke. Locke hadn’t returned from the practice field. Speedo’s roommate was a quiet, peculiar man. Big, silent, seething anger.

“You better talk to Kimball Adams; he is the starting quarterback. I’m the understudy.”

“I already did,” Speedo said. “He likes the idea. If you two tell Red, he’ll do it.”

Taylor nodded. Speedo was right; dump-offs would take some pressure off the line to pickup stunts and blitzes. Now Speedo just had to control his blazing speed; otherwise he would outdistance Kimball Adams’s arm. Taylor thought he could take full setup and still overthrow Smith on a full speed-up route. He was wrong and he never did. Alfred Roosevelt Smith was the greatest wide receiver since Bobby Hendrix, and in Dallas, Speedo had revolutionized passing. Red Kilroy knew he would again. Speedo may have made waves, but he hadn’t lost a step.

“B
UFFY IS COMING
up for the scrimmage tomorrow,” Simon said. “I haven’t seen her since camp started. She didn’t want to come because she’s beginning to get real big, but I told her I had to see her. Boy, will I be glad when we break camp.”

Taylor had his eyes on the playbook.

Red Kilroy kept his team hitting and scrimmaging because he needed to see a lot of bodies in head-to-head competition and game situations. He kept lots of “live dummies” around to hit and practice blocks and tackles against.

Five exhibition games just weren’t enough to judge the number of men Red ran through that first training camp. The Texas Pistols would continue to hit and scrimmage into the regular season. Players would come and go all year long based on performances in practice as well as games. It violated the League rules, but Red had violated the college rules; he sure wasn’t stopping now.

“These are a new kind of anabolic steroid,” Simon said to Taylor, lifting a big, dark-brown thousand-tablet bottle from the forest of bottles and pill vials that covered D’Hanis’s dresser top. Simon took twenty-seven pills a day—from megadoses of vitamins to steroids.

“I got these from Melvin Wilkins, the assistant track coach at school,” Simon continued to explain as he shook several large pink pills into his hands. “He got them from a Russian weightlifter at the Tokyo Games. They really build the muscle tissue.” Simon popped the pills and washed them down with water, then began picking over the rest of the bottles. “Red told me I’m gonna need to weigh at least 265 to play guard in this league and they got me on a power-lifting program. I usually have hell keeping my weight over 250.” Simon picked out another brown bottle. “But these Russkie steroids have already got me up to 260 and climbing.”

“I heard those things made your balls shrink.” Taylor sat at the small built-in desk, still studying the playbook. He had stopped at Simon’s room while returning from the QB meeting, where Red had just added the new sting adjustment against blitzes—exactly what Speedo Smith had wanted.

“No, they don’t make your balls shrink,” Simon said. “What makes your balls shrink is all the stuff in the mashed potatoes. The Russians give steroids to their woman athletes,” Simon grinned. “Those gals got balls the size of Rio Grande grapefruit.”

After the snap, his first key was the middle-linebacker. Martha. Red designated the linebackers with women’s names.

“Have you noticed”—Taylor kept his eyes on the playbook—“that all defensive maneuvers are described in a shorthand code vocabulary that is decidedly feminine? Red must have new psychological theories.” Taylor paused. “Maybe pathological. We didn’t do this in college.” He turned to the glossary at the front of the book.

A pass-rush stunt with the defensive tackles crossing was a
Tit
; the tackle-and-end stunt was
Tits
and
Ass
or
TIA
. It was easily remembered and quickly communicated. There were several pages in the glossary, which included a definition of the term Clothesline: raking the forearm across the opponent’s throat, face or head, so as to bring tears to his eyes or otherwise obscure his vision and give him reasons to worry about his physical well-being.
In the Hole
was a clean shot at the QB with the intention of testing his manhood and durability. It
meant
kill or cripple.

“Euphemisms do take the edge off.” Taylor went back to studying his keys on the sting routes.

At the snap, Martha was his first key; then, as he backpedaled, he checked the strong side backer, Sara, finally checking the weak side,
Wendy
.

It
would
be
Wendy
.

Taylor quickly turned back to the playbook glossary, but Wendy’s delicate face began to materialize among the
X
and
O
patterns of a 93 sting against a full blitz.

It was useless: Her face was in his head. Always on his mind, throughout his body—her voice, the touch of her soft, transparent skin, her long, slender fingers slowly crawling up his back like a daddy longlegs.