The Franchise (24 page)

“Wendy, this is Taylor.”

“Yes?” Her voice turned distant and cold.

“Buffy’s on her way home. Can you get over there and meet her?”

“Well, I suppose I can.”

“Good. Do it.”

“Why?”

“Because she needs help and you’re a goddam Pi Phi.”

“Is it the baby?” Wendy’s voice was suddenly urgent, frightened.

“I don’t know what it is, Wendy. I don’t know anything at all.”

“You never did,” Wendy said, and hung up.

T
HE RIOTS HAD BEEN
going on for several days and the game had been postponed from Saturday to Wednesday.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that it was now Wednesday and the city still burned and people had been murdered around the stadium.

“We have to play.” Simon was scratching his head with his massive hand. Simon and Buffy had made up and his mood was better. He didn’t seem as much like the old Simon, but there had been an improvement.

“Why do we have to play, Simon?” Bobby Hendrix asked. The lanky redhead was stretched on his bed, watching the live television coverage of the riots. “We’re not getting game checks; we’re playing for free.”

A black man was televised live dashing from a looted store with a table-model TV. The TV camera was in a helicopter and a woman announcer was doing play-by-play as the man dashed over the rubble around burning buildings until he disappeared into a warren of still-standing slums. Then they did the replay.

“Look,” Taylor said. “Stop-action looting.”

“Well,” Margene “Meg” Brinkley, sitting at the desk, said, “it’s a charity game, isn’t it?” The defensive leader was, due to a lost rodeo weekend in Bakersfield, covered with tattoos. Sitting cross-legged and barefoot, he was now picking his toenails and smelling them.

“Can you really smell?” Taylor looked at Margene’s nose, smashed across his wide face.

“Sorta.” Brinkley sniffed at a toenail.

“Don’t mind him, Taylor,” Kimball Adams said. “Meg is the result of years at a school that uses the same system developed in Yuma to escape the territorial prison in the 1800’s.”

“What system is that?”

“You pay big bucks.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Simon asked.

“Nothing, if you don’t get caught,” Hendrix said. “Get caught and there is a peculiar process. The college slaps its own wrist.... Coaches deny any knowledge, then move to better jobs with $200,000 salaries and $500,000 Bowl Games with schools that haven’t been caught lately. And of course they
nuke the jock
. The NCAA makes an example of someone who is really no one. Big bucks for everybody but the twenty-year-old who let some scumbag recruiter buy him a sport coat. The jock is still wearing the same sport coat ten years later in the unemployment line.”

“That’s the beauty of cash,” Kimball said.

“Bullshit,” Hendrix shot back. “There’s no beauty in a system that corrupts young athletes for nickels and dimes while the NCAA and the networks make millions. They give players room and board, books and laundry, and call the split even.”

“Here comes the Union speech,” said Kimball. “Bobby you’re still pissed ’cause you weren’t smart enough to get extra money in college.”

“Smart? It don’t take smart,” Taylor Rusk added. “Just turn your umbrella upside down, ’cause it is raining money.”

“I’ll tell you how dumb I was,” Margene Brinkley said, his eyes on the televised riot. “The first school I visited offered me money, which frightened me and I left. But when the second school offered me money and I left, they chased me outside, apologizing for such a measly offer, and began to up the ante. The faster I walked, the higher the price went. Finally, when I reached the car, it was ten thousand dollars cash, a new car, university jobs for my parents and sister, plus a rent-free house. So my advice to this year’s high school blue-chipper is park a
long way
from the coach’s office and don’t talk.”

“Is this a charity game tonight or not?” Simon watched the live riot.

“Yeah. It’s a charity game,” Hendrix sneered. “They give
our
salaries to charity, otherwise the split is the same. We have to get the Union to get us paid for exhibition games.”

“I’m gettin’ paid,” A.D. Koster said.

“You’re getting paid out of your regular season money,” Hendrix said. “They must figure you’re gonna make the team.”

A.D. grinned.

“I don’t see what you’re so happy about,” Hendrix said. “They’re getting five free games a year out of us. They sell tickets and TV rights to those games. They make money off the games, but we all do it for free. We should at least make them put exhibition-game money into the pension fund.”

“Did I tell you?” Kimball looked smugly at Taylor.

“You ain’t made the team until training camp is over,” A.D. said, “so why should they pay you?”

“Because, asshole, people pay to see
us
, not Cyrus Chandler.”

“Ignore A.D., he’s already management,” Taylor said. “Got his beady little eyes on a job with the Franchise. A player coach? No chance. Maybe assistant PR man. Lem Three smell of blood, A.D.?”

A.D. crossed and recrossed his legs, checked his fingernails, then glanced at the televised civil war, which showed a complete city block disappear in flames and smoke. It was a time-lapse replay with background music.

“Jesus,” Simon said, “is that the stadium there?” He leaned forward for a closer look.

Everybody else was watching A.D. Koster’s face.

“Take the drop to management, A.D.,” Taylor said. “You’re the kind that belongs there. Red won’t keep you much longer. But Cyrus Chandler will have all sorts of jobs for a guy that don’t mind getting his hands dirty up to the armpits in other people’s bowels.”

“And one of those jobs, you asshole,” Bobby Hendrix interrupted, “is convincing people that management is the show. Well, the players and coaches are the game and the game is the show! No one can
own
the game. If we give up that fight, then the game will become whatever Cyrus Chandler, Dick Conly and the Macaroni family decides.”

“It’s Marconi, and remember, Mr. Union Man,” Kimball Adams said, “if the Union gets to decide who the players are, there ain’t much difference.”

“I heard the Marconis were being forced out by the commissioner,” Margene Brinkley said.

“Giving up Los Angeles without a fight?” Kimball Adams flicked the remote control and ran through all the channels. “I doubt it.” The television flashed up two car ads, a game show, two soap operas, a catfood ad with a celebrity cat, another game show, a skinny fag who used to be a fat fag explaining the difference and a mail-in life-insurance policy that seemed tailored for a person who thought this was his last trip to the post office.

“Give up LA without a fight?” Kimball brought back the riot. “What’s Burden got on them?”

“I heard it was a drug thing, a border bust,” Brinkley said.

“Come on, the players?” Kimball was highly skeptical. “Nobody on the West Coast steps across the line in their right minds. Do they? The last guy that went out there alone was Gary Cooper in
High Noon
.”

“A family problem. Daughter,” Meg explained. “Well, they got it quieted down. The guy that sold her the coke snitched her down. It was that Investico guy, J. Edgar.”

“No shit?” Bobby Hendrix sat up on the bed. “He set her up for the commissioner?”

“Nobody knows. But the Marconis are forced to sell to a fella named Portus—a crony of Cyrus Chandler, as well as the commissioner.”

Kimball seemed stunned. He had spent one season in Los Angeles, then was traded suddenly in the off season. “You sure it was Betsy? The daughter?”

Margene nodded. “J. Edgar set her up and they were waiting. She had two ounces in her box. They skin-searched her.”

“Only two ounces?” Kimball frowned and exhaled through his nostrils. “I can’t believe they found it. I lost a Pro Bowl wristwatch and a championship ring in there one night.”

On the screen the television camera had picked up on the progress of an upright freezer. It was a pastel blue and picked up sharply as an electronic image.

“Look at that.” Taylor Rusk pointed at the television. “That guy has got a freezer all by himself.” Everyone watched the progress of the lone black man and the upright freezer as he started up the front steps of an apartment building with the blue freezer. It was a mighty struggle between that black man, eight narrow, crumbling red brick steps and the great pastel-blue freezer.

“Just to teach you a lesson, I’ll bet ten dollars,” Kimball said to A.D., “that the nigger whips the freezer and gets it up those steps.”

“It’s too heavy,” A.D. said. “He can’t make it alone.”

“Bet?” Kimball wanted to know.

A.D. nodded.

It took the black man about twenty minutes, with a lot of yelling and screaming at the television from the ball players, before the blue freezer disappeared into the apartment building with a last-gasp effort and exceptional body English from Kimball, who was up off his bed, yelling, “Get mad, nigger! Get mad!”

“Did you learn something?” Kimball asked as A.D. paid off for the second time that morning.

“Yeah. I learned not to gamble with you.”

“Anything else?” Kimball put the second ten dollars with the first.

A.D. shook his head.

“This ten dollars is why we’ll go in tonight and play that game.” Kimball put the money in his pocket. “It is a point of honor and trust. The bets have been laid, and there are lots of folks depending on this action.”

“You make it sound like Mom, hot dogs and apple pie,” Hendrix said.

“As American as bootleg whiskey, horseracing and whorehouses.”

“And unions,” Hendrix added.

“And show business,” Kimball retorted and sipped at his beer. He always liked to have several beers before a game. “It will be business as usual at the stadium tonight, gentlemen. The show must go on. Angry niggers or not. I have it from the Man.”

“Who’s the Man?” A.D. asked.

“If I knew, do you think I would tell you?”

Bobby Hendrix ran his freckled hands through his hair, then picked up his wad of Nutty Putty and began his finger exercises. Bobby Hendrix carried his Nutty Putty with him constantly, continually working his splendidly sure hands through a series of exercises to increase strength and cut down on dislocations of the fingers.

Kimball finished his second beer of the morning. The game had been scheduled for seven
P.M.
The old quarterback looked over at Taylor Rusk, the young quarterback, and laughed.

“You just stick with me, kid, and I’ll make a star nigger out of you.” Kimball opened another beer.

“Kimball, slow up on the beer. This is a night game,” Hendrix cautioned. “Don’t get on the wrong schedule.”

That afternoon at three they left the hotel for the stadium. Shots were fired at the bus as they left the freeway at the stadium exit.

Nobody was hit.

They played the game and, from the pressbox, fires could be seen burning all around the stadium. Texas lost by more than the point spread after Red Kilroy sent in a rookie center in the fourth quarter and on the next two possessions Kimball Adams fumbled the first snap, leading to fourteen points for the opposition.

After the game Red stopped Kimball on his way to the bus. The two men walked away from the others.

“I’m cutting the rookie in the morning,” Red said.

“Naw, Red,” Kimball said. “Those fumbles were my fault.”

“I know. But I’m covering for you because you’re getting too careless. I don’t know who owns you and I don’t care. You’re a great quarterback on the take, and I need you to make us look respectable and to keep Taylor Rusk from getting killed. I need time to get to the Super Bowl. It’s my chance to be an owner.” Red narrowed his eyes. “You teach that boy how to be the quarterback you used to be. I don’t have the time to bring him slow. Conly’s all right, but Cyrus Chandler is a time bomb. I have to win right away or I am gone. Teach Taylor Rusk what it took you twenty years to learn, and do it this year, and I’ll see you always have a job in football.”

Kimball looked straight ahead. “And?”

“Nothing else. Try to win when you can and don’t introduce Taylor Rusk to whoever owns you.” Red paused. “I’ll try to keep you from getting caught.”

“What do Chandler and Conly say?”

“I doubt that they’ve noticed yet. Besides, I’m in charge of player personnel. It don’t make a shit what they think. You bring Rusk along. You help make Taylor Rusk a quarterback who will win me a Super Bowl and I’ll send you out of football a hero and make sure you work when you retire at the end of next season.”

Kimball Adams turned slowly and looked at Red. “Retire?”

Red nodded. “You have two years left, Kimball. I need that much time to build an offensive for Rusk. Linemen and backs. I can’t let him get hurt so young. He’s a phenomenon, but we need more to go with him.... I can’t wait for the draft. I’m gonna start swapping bodies.”

Kimball stared at Red for a long time; then, taking a drag off his cigarette, he flipped the butt off into the burning night. “I ain’t got much time. I guess I better get started making Taylor Rusk the Franchise.”

Off in the distance was the sound of automatic-weapons fire. The sky glowed as the city burned.

“E
VERYBODY IS GOING
crazy.” Taylor was sitting on R.D. Locke’s bed, talking to Speedo Smith. R.D. was out.

“Don’t worry, turkey,” Speedo reassured, laughing. “It’s cabin fever. Everybody gets it by the end of camp.”

“Simon has turned into Godzilla.” Taylor leaned against the dresser.

“Get off my bed, motherfucker.” The voice came from behind, and Taylor looked up into the glaring black eyes of R.D. Locke.

The broad-shouldered, muscular veteran defensive back had come in the expansion from Pittsburgh. He was six-foot-three and was reviving the bump and run. He developed the punishing coverage style to hide his lack of speed. The rules allowed only one “bump,” so R.D. Locke made it count, often making the “run” unnecessary.

Once behind R.D. you could beat him bad deep, but it was painful exercise. R.D. Locke also forced end runs better than any defensive back in the League, crashing into pulling guards and blocking backs with a crazed enthusiasm that bordered on the degenerate. R.D. Locke was fearsome but vulnerable, which made him all the more violent, sometimes out of control.