The Franchise (32 page)

“Here’s how it works.” Simon had stopped the Bronco in Taylor’s apartment parking lot. Luther and Harlowe were sitting side by side in the passenger seat. The snake was curled up, cold and quiet in his cage in the back. “First I put the electric collar on Harlowe.” Simon followed his own directions. “Then when we get her and the snake out in the field; I let her get a look, a smell, and maybe the sound of the rattles. Then I punch this button here on my remote control and give Harlowe a good jolt of electricity.”

“Aversion therapy?” Luther asked.

“Snake-training.” Simon looked at the remote dials and button. “I better make certain this thing works before we get way out in the country.”

Simon slid his fingers beneath the electric collar around Harlowe’s thick gold neck. She was a big, beautiful golden retriever, with a shiny coat and long feathers of hair streaming from her legs and tail. A once-in-a-lifetime dog—bright-eyed, friendly, alert and smart—Simon wasn’t going to lose Harlowe to some fucking rattlesnake. He kept his fingers under the collar and turned on the remote, dialing the power output to Low. Harlowe didn’t move and Simon’s fingers felt nothing. He slowly turned the dial and pushed the button, still getting nothing as he reached Medium. By the time he got to High, Simon knew the remote was broken.

“Let’s go inside and see if Taylor’s got a screwdriver.” Simon stepped out of his new Bronco. Harlowe sat upright and alert in the front seat.

“Maybe it’s the batteries,” Luther offered, walking around the Bronco. “This sure is a great car.”

“Just got it.”

“The upholstery work is beautiful.” Luther followed Simon toward Taylor’s apartment.

“For two grand extra it better be beautiful.” Simon rapped on the door and walked inside. Taylor never locked his door. It was a habit he would break as things got going faster and growing bigger.

“Hey, Luther.” Taylor sat on the floor, doing yoga stretching exercises. “How’s the old ball boy?”

“He’s great, Taylor, just great,” Simon answered. “Except I banged into him with my new Bronco.”

“I banged into you, Simon.” Luther turned to Taylor. “Simon said I could come along.”

“It’s okay with me.” Taylor assumed the lotus position, breathing deeply, trying to align his spine for more power.

“My electric collar is fucked up.” Simon held up the remote control. “You got a screwdriver?”

“In that drawer there.” Taylor stood up and took several deep breaths. The quarterback walked over to the table where the big guard had begun to disassemble the remote control.

“The kid was crying like a baby in the parking lot.” Simon opened the remote and looked in bafflement at the colored wires and copper connections. “I went by the offices to see if you were still there. He’d gone over to meet his dad and Dick wasn’t there.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Taylor watched Simon tinker with the wires, then push buttons and turn dials.

“This is basic research. I got no idea what I’m doing.” Simon shook his head and turned the output dial up to High and punched the shock button about ten times.

Taylor watched Simon twirl the dial from High to Low, punch the shock button again, wiggle a few wires.

Taylor looked at Luther, who seemed smaller, frailer, than in training camp. Luther walked over to watch Simon work on the remote for the electric collar. The long antennae wobbled and whipped as Simon applied the larger-hammer theory of repair.

Taylor walked to the kitchen and filled his glass from the spigot. “You want a drink of water?”

Luther shook his head.

“What’s the trouble between you and Dick?” Taylor asked.

“I just want to know him. I like him and we’re never together. It’s always going to be later. He pushes me farther from him.”

Simon looked up from his tinkering with the remote. “You got any D batteries? These are brand new, but I’ll try anything.”

Taylor put down his glass and dug through a drawer, finally tossing Simon a blister package of batteries. Simon replaced the batteries, continuing to twirl the dial and punch the shock button.

“Being a teen-ager is tough, Luther.” Taylor didn’t know why he was giving Conly’s kid advice. “But you have to keep on.”

“It’s funny. I couldn’t wait to be sixteen and I’ve never had a more miserable year in my life.”

“Things go along like this for years and then get worse. Everything comes,” Taylor said. “All that happens to survivors is they get old. Your father understands that better than most. This business is about age and infirmity. Too soon old, too late smart. Dick is frightened, like everybody else. He’s frightened of loving you, frightened of the pain of loving and committing to transitory things.”

“Like his own son?”

“The most transitory of all. You won’t be sixteen forever—one true thing in life. Things change with increasing speed.” Taylor walked to the table where Simon tinkered. “It takes forever to be born, an eternity to reach five years old, and a millisecond later you’re sixty-five, getting a gold watch for a job you never liked.” Taylor kept his eyes on Simon’s work. “I haven’t felt young since seventh grade.” Taylor looked outside at something and his eyes narrowed. “Say ... ah ... Simon? Did you get your new Bronco?”

“Yep.” Simon spun the dial and pushed the shock button on the remote control. “You should see that Leather Cowboy Interior.”

“I
can
see it. I think you oughtta come have another look.”

“Why? I gotta get this thing fixed or I’ll never get Harlowe snake-trained.”

Taylor frowned, his eyes still fixed outside the window. “I think you got that fixed.”

Simon sighed and turned in his seat, continuing to twirl the dial and punch the shock button. “How do you know?”

“Did you take the electric collar off Harlowe before you came up here?”

“Oh, my God!” Simon raced to the window.

The red Bronco sat in the lot, shiny beautiful and new. Simon’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God!” The inside of the Bronco was a Green Bay blizzard of stuffing from the leather seats, headliner and side panels whirling like snow before the wind, impenetrable to the eye. Inside, somewhere in the storm, was Harlowe, exhausted and terrified, no longer reacting to the senseless jolts of electricity that had suddenly begun shortly after Simon entered Taylor Rusk’s apartment. Before the fear and pain and confusion had driven Harlowe into nervous shock and exhaustion, she had tried wildly and vainly to claw her way through the two-thousand-dollar Leather Cowboy Interior and out of the car. Only the body metal and the seat springs stopped her.

“Oh, my God! Harlowe!” Simon raced out of Taylor’s apartment. “Harlowe, Harlowe ...” The big man lumbered down to his Bronco and opened the doors. The leather interior was shredded. The stuffing floated out into the wind and blew through the apartment complex. On top of the snake, Harlowe lay panting with her eyes rolling wildly.

The snake was dead.

Harlowe, the once-in-a-lifetime dog, underwent a year of treatment by a dog psychologist but was never the same. She seldom left the house and was terrified of red cars the rest of her life. And, of course, couldn’t ever wear a flea collar.

Taylor and Luther Conly watched the red Bronco careen out of the lot, throwing off a rooster tail of leather bits and stuffing as Simon raced to his vet. Taylor turned to Luther. “You need a ride somewhere?”

Luther shook his head. “If the snake-training is over, I don’t have anyplace to go.”

B
EFORE HE ENTERED
the meeting, Cyrus Chandler had the secretary hold all calls. Cyrus didn’t tell either Red or Dick he had cut off the phone. Dick was expecting a call from Luther. Red had scouts out with contracts, deals on the burner.

“I will
not
give all my number-one draft choices for five years,” Cyrus yelled.

Conly sat silently at his desk and watched Red and Cyrus argue. Red and Dick had thrashed the plan out the night before in the basement of Red’s house.

“No draft choices above third for five years. We’ll be gutting ourselves.” The owner’s hands shook and his voice quivered as he continued to rage. “You can’t just give away my draft choices. This is my money. My draft choices.”

“We won’t need ’em.” Red leaned back with his feet up on the coffee table. “You trade for these guys this off-season listed here, get them for a total of fifteen to twenty draft choices over five years, and we will get to the playoffs in two, maybe three, years.” Red spoke softly, explaining, “Taylor Rusk will be ready to take them.”

“Everybody builds from the draft,” Cyrus argued.

“Bullshit,” Red said. “Besides, I don’t have time.”

“We promised you all the time you needed.” Cyrus seemed hurt that Red would recall broken promises.

Red looked over at Cyrus. “You also gave me complete control on player personnel.”

“We’re not interfering or breaking our promise,” Cyrus moaned, “but we certainly have the right to question a decision that could be detrimental to the long-term prospects of the Franchise. What about my idea about Jacobi and the Catholics?”

“Knute Rockne died,” Dick Conly said.

“The guy can’t carry Taylor Rusk’s jock. Besides, I’ll find plenty of good ballplayers after the third round.” Red stabbed a finger at a name on his list. “This guy we’ll get cheap from Oakland. He raped his white girl friend and she may file. They want him out of the Bay area. We’ll be signing lots of free agents. The colleges are turning out plenty of good football players. We pay off the college coaches to steer players to us from all over the country.”

Cyrus looked over Red’s list of college players. “I don’t recognize one name.”

“They are all great college players with what I consider necessary to make it in the pros.”

“Which is?” Cyrus demanded.

“Can’t explain.”

“Why do we pay one million dollars a year into the scouting combine if we don’t take their advice?”

“Because the combine is a front to create nonexistent expenses,” Conly sighed. “The money is hidden; it’s a scam. Most of our combine money is in tax-free industrial bonds. The million is really just bookkeeping; it’s all accounted for and we can get it if we want it. As long as we don’t need it, we expense it to the combine. Every team does, except some of them actually use the information.”

“The losers,” Red added.

“How many of those big-money guys pay off? The percentages are low. We’ll have a number-one draft choice again in five years.”

“But you ...” Cyrus continued with the argument he had rehearsed the night before.

Red looked to Conly for support.

“Cyrus, Red is right. Besides, it’s his prerogative. It’s in his contract and it’s what you pay him for, anyway. Let him do his job and let me get back to mine.”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch.” Cyrus threw his pencil clear across the room. It bounced near Red.

Conly strode over and banged the latch that swung the walnut wainscotting back, revealing the fully stocked wet bar. “We can get those players on that list. We can
steal
them. We are not dealing with geniuses here, Cyrus.” Conly took a long gulping drink from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label. “We can have an experienced, talented team. Overnight.” He slammed the bottle down on the bar, suddenly looked puzzled and checked his watch. “Wonder why Luther didn’t call?”

“Back to business,” Cyrus said. “We got a job to ...”

“Give the goddam job to Red.” Conly pointed at the coach with the neck of the Jack Daniel’s bottle. “You can probably trust him. He can do it and he won’t steal much. I’m getting back to the real world for a while.”

“C’mon, Dick, calm down. Since when were you the big family man? This is the real world, you know?”

“It’s
your
world, Cyrus.” Conly started for the door.

“Don’t leave,” Cyrus said. “We have other decisions to make.”

“Let Red make ’em. I’m taking the whole spring off to become friends with my boy, who has spent the last year in his bedroom alone, smoking dope and waiting for his father.”

“You can’t,” Cyrus protested.

“Watch. It’s simple.” The door whooshed shut behind Dick Conly.

It
seemed
simple.

Red never moved. Cyrus stared at the closed door.

“Well,” Red said, “I’ll just keep this list and make the deals.” Red got to his feet and walked to the door, the list dangling at his side. “I’m pretty good. You don’t recruit high school kids for twenty years without learning how to be eating Momma’s chicken-fried steak and be lying through the cream gravy to her boy.” Red began to laugh at his own words. He laughed harder and hurried out to find an assistant coach to tell.

Cyrus Chandler sat alone in the office and listened to the retreating giggles of the head coach. He buzzed A.D. Roster’s office, looking for someone who would tell him what he wanted to hear.

A.D. was out but would oblige the moment he returned.

D
ICK
C
ONLY WENT
home and found his sixteen-year-old son, Luther, in the closed garage. The soft-faced boy was sprawled across the backseat of his mother’s brown Rolls-Royce Corniche. The engine was running and the boy was dead.

Inside the house, on his freshly made bed, there was a note:
“I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t figure out why. Luke.”

The newspaper called it a tragic accident. Cyrus Chandler saw to that. It was his newspaper.

“It was the least I could do,” Cyrus told his wife, Junie.

“It was also the most,” Wendy said. She stood in the open doorway with Lem Three. “You didn’t even go to the funeral.” Wendy walked into the living room. Her parents sat in the Pit and were drinking martinis. Wendy and Lem were dressed for the funeral. “Your absence was conspicuous.”

“Now, Wendy ...” Lem Three tried to quiet his wife from several steps behind her and was having luck commensurate with his comparative mobility.

“His family needs him.” Wendy was angry. “And you keep him at your side so Red Kilroy wouldn’t outsmart you. He is a brilliant man. Why did he have to become general manager of your goddam football team? He was busy enough cleaning up all your other business deals—”