The Franchise (40 page)

Tears trickled out of Simon’s eyes; the pain throbbed the length of his leg. It was another twenty minutes before he could limp out of the room, using weight machines, the wall, doors and lockers to assist himself.

That night the knee swelled so large that it ripped the seam in his trousers. Simon spent the entire night on the couch, crying, with ice packs and wet towels packed around the tormented joint.

The trainer was right. Red loved the tape, showing it to the Los Angeles scout before they finalized the deal for Simon D’Hanis. Then the film went into the Pistols’ files in case Simon came back at them with an injury grievance. It was an unnecessary precaution; by then Simon was too crazy to even comprehend the injury grievance process.

T
AYLOR DROVE OUT
to Doc Webster’s ranch. He built a fire in the cold stone fireplace. It was late and Doc was asleep in the south bedroom. The flames soon blazed in colors as the mesquite burned hot.

Thoughts raged through his mind like the fire.

It seemed like the few years since he’d left college had been a complete lifetime.

Someone else’s lifetime.

He had become a great professional football player, the centerpiece of a team that had the ability to reach the Super Bowl.

He knew it was management, systems built by Red and Dick Conly, that kept continuity and created teams with the ability to win championships. But it took
great players
making
great plays
on one specific day to win the Super Bowl. Taylor never doubted his ability to perform, to make those plays and inspire his teammates to the same efforts. Texas would get to the Super Bowl and win.

But now Taylor wondered if he cared. Everything had changed.

It seemed like a hundred years ago but hurt like yesterday. Wendy was married to Lem Three and Taylor’s child belonged to someone else. A.D. Koster was gone to the front office and Simon D’Hanis was going steadily crazy.

Taylor stared into the flames. He wasn’t aware he was crying until he felt the tears drop on the back of his hand. He cried without ever making a sound or moving. The flames blurred as the tears filled his eyes, poured down his face and soaked his shirt front. When the fire began to die down, Taylor got up and added more wood. He was cold and lonely. The tears stopped, but he felt no release, no easing of the conflict that clutched his soul. All his life he had sought control of situations. He played quarterback so he could call the plays, control the game. He limited his friendships so they could be kept on track and understood, controlled. Performance and grace under pressure, never losing one’s grip on a situation no matter how difficult, frightening or painful—Taylor Rusk had always kept control; he yearned for control, he struggled for it, but it was only now that he began to realize he had never been in control of anything. It had always been someone else’s world. He had learned to react instantly to someone else’s needs and desires and had convinced himself that it was control when it was all merely reflex honed to a razor’s edge. And he walked the razor’s edge better than anyone. What he had taken for control in his life was merely excellent reflexes combined with robust health, physical size and skills in a business where those assets were highly prized by certain people for various reasons. The most important reasons being “economic rents and profit maximization,” as Doc Webster said the next morning when he walked out of the bedroom with the LA Standard Player’s Contract to find Taylor staring into a dead fire.

“Your skills provide a surplus of economic rents, which go to the owner instead of the athlete because of congressional antitrust exemptions and the structure of the League, namely the commissioner’s compensation and the option-year clause.” Doc Webster waved the contract around. “Well, I convinced
my
boy, Portus, that you deserve your fair share of the rents. That boy was always a good student.”

“Then he’ll make a lousy owner,” Taylor said. His eyes felt gritty from a night of staring into the fire and trying to come to some sort of understanding about his own life.

“They shouldn’t let kids be owners,” Doc agreed. He waved the contract again. “But it’s already signed.”

“The commissioner will never let it happen,” Taylor said. “They merged the leagues just to stop this sort of bidding for players. The free agent system is a standing joke. Nobody moves unless the owners want them to move. Robbie Burden will invoke the compensation rule.”

“Who cares? That’s a problem between Burden and Cyrus Chandler and the LA Franchise,” Doc Webster laughed. “And of course A.D. Koster.”

“A.D.?” Taylor frowned at the professor’s grin. “What’s A.D. got to do with this?”

“Cyrus Chandler made him general manager. Dick Conly quit. It was on the radio yesterday.”

“A.D. is general manager?” Taylor scoffed. “That’s insane.”

“There you go, making a psychiatric diagnosis when we are merely trying to test economic theory.” Doc grinned. “Now, let me tell you what I think and then you go check with your friend Dudley and see what the Union thinks. I don’t expect the League will let you move either. I imagine they’ll do just about anything to stop this, but there are certain laws in this country. I think that Chandler and the commissioner will force my boy to withdraw the five-million-dollar offer either by the compensation clause with threats of taking all his number-one draft choices until the twenty-first century and all his active players over 150 pounds or by having his daddy give him a good spanking.” Doc laughed at his hyperbole. Taylor Rusk stared at him. “But that doesn’t matter because with this contract we can show in a court of law that the League has illegally conspired to reduce your salary from five million dollars. We’ll let somebody else settle the free agent movement question. Our antitrust argument is that LA, Texas and the commissioner’s office illegally conspired to deprive you of five million dollars.”

“And I spend the next ten years in court,” Taylor said.

“Maybe but not likely, even less likely now that Conly is gone. The timing couldn’t be better. I don’t think anybody in the League wants to risk this in court and have the courts setting antitrust precedents while the League is lobbying Congress for complete exemption.”

“They’ll settle?”

Doc nodded. “You’ll stay in Texas, but they’ll have to pay you five million dollars over the next five years. Nothing deferred, no big insurance policies, just plain old inflated American dollars. A million of them a year. I imagine the commissioner will make the LA franchise pay part of the cost and they’ll pay it.” He held up the SPC.

Taylor took the contract and studied it. It provided for a base salary of one million dollars beginning in May of the next year. At the end of the contract, just above the twenty-two-year-old boy’s flourishing signature, was a “Special Provision”:

That the entire sum of $5,000,000, which represents the price of Taylor Rusk’s services for five years, is
guaranteed
and will be paid regardless of Mr. Rusk’s ability to perform as a professional football player.

“I made him put that in especially,” Doc Webster said with a huge grin. “I believe it is what is called a no-cut contract. Have you ever seen one before?”

Taylor slowly exhaled loudly. “Well, I’ll be damned—the mythical no-cut contract.”

Doc Webster went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Herradura tequila.

“How about a toast? First, to Razmus, the economics professor that the University fired five years ago for screwing and smoking dope in his office. He advised the Portus kid.” He held the bottle out to Taylor.

Taylor uncapped the bottle of distilled maguey. “Thanks, Doc.” He took a small drink. The professor took the bottle and held it up.

“To you, Taylor. Now that you have five million dollars, I hope you can get what you really want.” Doc tilted his head back and let the tequila run over his lips and tongue and down his throat. He drank several ounces and handed the bottle back to Taylor.

The big quarterback held up the bottle.

“Here’s to life, real control, the razor’s edge, Wendy Chandler Carleton and my son, Randall. I want them all and, by God, I’ll have them.” Taylor Rusk took great gulping drafts of the burning tequila. “This is only the beginning.”

By noon both men were roaring drunk and swimming fully clothed in Panther Hole.

Wendy Chandler Carleton stood up on Coon Ridge and watched the two men howling and laughing and falling into the cold creek water. Randall Ryan stood silently at her side, holding her hand. Finally she pulled him gently back toward the car.

“We’ll have to come swimming another day, Randall,” she said.

The small boy trudged along obediently. When they reached the car he asked, “Is it because of those two crazy men that we can’t go swimming?”

“Yes, sweetheart. It’s because of those crazy men. They’re nice men, but they are crazy.”

“I know that big man, don’t I, Momma?”

Wendy nodded.

“He waved at me when we flew in that big airplane down to that hotel that had the big swimming pool. We didn’t get to swim then, did we, Mom? Does that man always keep us from swimming?”

“No, not always.”

Wendy Chandler Carleton started the car and drove back down the caliche road across the pasture and through the cattle guard.

“Mom,” Randall said when they reached the highway, “the next time I see that big man, I’m going to ask him to let us go swimming. Okay?”

“Okay, sweetheart.” Wendy’s eyes welled with tears.

“Mom? Why was Daddy so mad at Grandpa Chandler this morning?”

“What rnades you think Daddy was mad at Grandpa?”

“He yelled at him on the phone. I heard him. He said bad words to Grandpa.”

“Well, sometimes men yell at each other.”

“Like those two crazy men in the water?”

Wendy nodded.

“I like that big man, Momma. I wish I could go swimming with him.”

“Maybe you can someday, Randall.” Wendy took a hand from the steering wheel and wiped her eyes quickly.

“Mom?” The small boy stood in the seat and leaned against his mother’s shoulder. “You are my sweetheart. I’ll never yell at you.”

The small boy wrapped his soft arms around Wendy’s neck and pulled himself against her in a hug. The tiny fingers tickled her neck as he rubbed his soft cheek against hers.

K
IMBALL
A
DAMS CONVINCED
Bobby Hendrix that he should take Ginny and the kids to Cozumel. Adams told his old receiver about his new travel agency.

Kimball couldn’t keep from bragging. “The Cobianco brothers put up the money for junkets to Las Vegas and the Super Bowl. I made a ton on the Super Bowl last year.” He trusted Hendrix; they had been friends for twenty years. Hendrix wished Kimball wouldn’t trust him quite so much. “We took five chartered DC-9 jets to Los Angeles at two thousand dollars a pop, including hotel rooms and game tickets. I had one thousand tickets and they all went for five hundred dollars apiece in the package. Jesus! The travel business is great. It’s like stealing.”

“It
is
stealing,” Hendrix said. He didn’t really want Kimball telling him those things over the phone. He had already heard most of it from Tommy McNamara, who was writing a newspaper story on scalping, but it worried Hendrix that Kimball was telling him because now Kimball knew that Hendrix knew. “I don’t want to know about it. This is Texas down here, not America. You should be careful who you tell. There are government agencies like the IRS who might not look so kindly and might begin to ask where you got the tickets and whether all the taxes were paid.”

“Hey, roomie,” Kimball protested, “if I can’t trust you, who can I trust?”

“You can trust me,” Hendrix said, “but I don’t know anybody else you can trust. So get out of the habit of talking about it.” Hendrix changed the subject. “How’s the coaching job working out in New York?”

“You know these guys in New York, Bobby. We won our last game last year, so the owner is keeping Bradley as the head coach. I guess he figures he’s on a hot roll. A one-game win streak. I just put my time in with the quarterbacks and draw my check.

The guy wins one more game than a dead man and they renew him for five years,” Kimball laughed. “This is a tough team to gamble on: The point spreads are almost insurmountable in either direction. Our last game against Dallas we were twenty-point underdogs. Tell me how you can bet a twenty-point spread?”

“I have no idea and I don’t want to know, Kimball,” Hendrix said. He was certain that Kimball had figured out a way and wanted to brag about it. He knew that Kimball had kept his bargain with Red Kilroy and always mailed the Texas head coach the New York game plan every time the two teams played. Kimball was part of Red’s network.

“Guess who I saw yesterday?” Kimball said. “Charlie Stillman.”

“I heard he went to New York after we forced him out of the Players Union. He still delivering the flesh for the owners?”

“By the carload. And all with multimillion-dollar contracts deferred about thirty years.” Kimball laughed. “It’s really funny, the niggers all believe their own newspaper clippings, buying themselves fur coats, houses for their mommas, rhinestone collars for their Yorkies.”

“We are all niggers and should read the contracts instead of the newspapers,” Hendrix said.

“Hell, Bobby, all of Stillman’s clients signed within ten days of the draft.” Kimball laughed his raspy laugh. “And he just signed a big contract with the network. He’s going to bring some of his clients to Cozumel.”

“What?” Hendrix was surprised. “I’m not sure I want to be on the same island with that son of a bitch.”

“Come on, you’ll be in different hotels,” Kimball pleaded. “Taylor’ll be there, and Dudley too. He claims it’ll be good for Union solidarity and image.”

“Taylor always told me that Dudley was a smart guy. It was one reason we chose him as director,” Hendrix said. “But he hasn’t shown me much except ambition. It’s stupid for the Union to cooperate with Stillman. He’s the owners’ man.”