The Franchise (62 page)

A pause, a hesitation, now could be painful, humiliating or fatal.

“You better put the fucking gun away, greaseball, or start looking for some spaghetti sauce, ’cause I’m going to feed it to you.” Taylor was startled by his own reactions. He felt out of control, very dangerous. But he liked it. He justified it to himself, something Johnny Cobianco hadn’t considered. Taylor was being shot through with adrenaline and he enjoyed the rush. It was stupid but he fell for it. And enjoyed it.

Young Cobianco blinked and jerked back. He had never had to go further than this. People usually stopped dead at the sight of the big Colt .45 automatic, but it just made this big football player madder. Johnny Cobianco tried to think: Had he ever shot anybody? It was his sccond mistake of the day; thinking takes too long. Taylor had reached the desk.

“I’ll shoot,” Johnny said, failing to draw back the hammer. “This is a forty-five. You know how big a hole I can blow in you?”

“Are we going to have a quiz on it later?” Taylor’s jaws were tight, his nostrils flared, his eyes were wild, as he came around the desk after the wise guy sitting in A.D.’s chair, pointing the gun. “I hope Colt is your favorite flavor.”

Terrified, Johnny decided to shoot, jerking on the trigger and discovering what Taylor had already noticed: Johnny Cobianco had forgotten to cock the single-action automatic. In a fight, nothing is quite as disheartening as finding oneself unexpectedly unarmed.

With the possible exception of not being chosen acolyte when he was twelve, Johnny Cobianco experienced no greater distress in his life than when that brand-new four-hundred-dollar Colt Combat Commander .45 automatic lay in his hand and failed to do a thing.

Lunging forward, Taylor snatched the heavy automatic from Cobianco’s hand and hit him across the throat with his forearm, pinning the young brother to the chair back. Taylor Rusk jammed the two pounds of blue steel square in Johnny C.’s mouth. Blood and teeth splattered on A.D.’s big desk.

Cobianco went over backward in the swivel chair and lay half conscious on the floor, choking and gagging on his own body parts and fluids.

“My teeth! You knocked out my teeth!” Johnny wailed.

“Wait a second, I’m not finished yet.” Taylor kicked at the overturned chair, trying to scramble past it to reach the crumpled, crying, bleeding man tangled in the drapes in the corner of the room. The tortured body of Tommy McNamara hanging from the bunkhouse rafters flickered through Taylor’s brain. Bobby Hendrix splattered all over Tulum. The combat automatic in one hand, Taylor tossed the heavy furniture aside easily with the other. The swivel chair banged on the handcrafted desk, knocking out expensive divots of teakwood. He was over the edge, out of control, and didn’t care. He lost it and loved it, needed it. The crash of the chair brought anger, hatred and revenge, surging adrenaline hungering for more ferocity. The fury turned everything red. Shoving the pistol in his back pocket, then picking up the United Fund golf trophy by the marble base, Taylor pounded the whimpering Johnny Cobianco with the four-foot metal loving cup. The cup wasn’t particularly thick or heavy metal, but it had real nice sharp edges and good balance.

“You got ribs to break, lungs to puncture, a spleen and kidneys to rupture.” Tightly gripping the base of the battered trophy, Taylor hit the injured, terrified man with full baseball swings, knocking out huge chunks of flesh, bruising muscle and bone. Cobianco screamed and curled fetuslike, covering his head and neck with his hands. He took a powerful beating.

Taylor looked around on A.D.’s desk for another weapon, a blunt instrument to pound the hoodlum. The solid brass team insignia paperweight was too heavy, the full-size replica Colt was too lethal.

The creeping logic of the search for the appropriate weapon began to divert enthusiasm for inflicting damage on the seriously damaged man. So Taylor finally just gave him another halfhearted kidney fungo with the trophy.
Make the little shit piss blood for a couple of days.

The door opened and A.D. walked into his office. Taylor threw the trophy against the wall.

“What the hell ... ?” A.D. looked at Taylor, then at Johnny Cobianco, then at the gore splattered on his desk and papers. “Jesus! Taylor! Did you do this?”

“As much of it as I could.” Taylor began gasping for air and sat down on the battle-scarred teak desk. “I tire easily lately.”

Taylor’s anger was gone as fast as it came, leaving him slightly confused.

“Jesus!
Taylor!” A.D. was dumbstruck. “That’s Don Cobianco’s little brother.”

“I know, A.D. Goddam, you think I did this by mistake?” On the edge of the desk Taylor sat heavily and nodded wearily. “A.D., you are so stupid ... I can’t ...” He lost the words. He was unchastened, just embarrassed at losing control, losing to chaos.

Taylor found his voice. “I just came by to tell you to send my paychecks to camp and I find this Al Pacino look-alike going through your desk, playing Baby Godfather, and then I’m looking down the barrel of this.” Taylor pulled the .45 automatic from his back pocket. “The little jerk-off forgot to cock it or you’d be scraping me off your padded and flocked wallpaper.”

“Jeeesus! Taylor!” It seemed to be the limit of A.D. Koster’s vocabulary.

The quarterback looked around the purple and white office. “Who picked out this wallpaper anyway, A.D.?”

“Jeeesus! Taylor!” A.D. was riveted to the floor.

Gasping, desperate, severely injured, Johnny Cobianco curled on the floor and bled into A.D.’s expensive white carpet.

A.D. took a wastebasket over for Johnny to bleed in. The beaten man knocked it away. The general manager of the Texas Pistols Football Club, Inc., walked back to his desk. Taylor’s breathing began to slow. Control returning, he studied the visible damage on Johnny C.

“Will you send my checks to camp, A.D.?”

A.D. Koster nodded his head, still staring at Johnny. “Jesus! Taylor!”

“Wait till my brothers ...” Johnny wheezed.

“Eat it, punk.” With good snap Taylor threw A.D.’s autographed football at the bloody man’s head, bouncing the point off his occipital bone and driving his face to the floor. Johnny curled up, whining and bleeding.

“Jesus! Taylor!” A.D. was horrified. Johnny’s blood was an ever-growing pool.

Taylor showed A.D. the boots he had used on Johnny’s ribs. “I got them at Rios in Raymondville. Cognac brown, French leather, hand-fitted. Prince Charles gets boots there. What do you think? Huh? A.D.? You like ’em?”

“Jesus, Taylor. They’ll kill—”

“Sorry about your desk and papers. The blood and teeth are his.” Taylor jammed the automatic back into his hip pocket. “Now, don’t forget the checks; send them to me
in camp.
Don’t send them to my apartment. All those goddam Investico agents you got running in and out of there will stomp all over them.” Taylor Rusk studied the general manager.

“Jeeesus! Taylor!” A.D. repeated.

Taylor opened the door, then turned back.

“You know, A.D., you and your latest carhop have gotten us all in way over our heads. This is a lot worse than Doris and the Charros. We are in serious deep shit here. This is out of my realm.... You’re breaking new and terrifying ground.” Taylor looked over at the whining, bleeding youngest Cobianco. “Why, A.D.? Why?”

“Just lucky, I guess.” A.D. watched his expensive white carpet become stained red.

Taylor started to close the door but again turned back, his face torn by confusion. “A.D., they kill people. Bobby Hendrix? Tommy McNamara? And God knows how many poor wetbacks ended up as part of the cement work in the Pistol Dome.” Taylor pointed at the man on the floor. “He was already trying your chair on for size. They don’t need you anymore, A.D., and they don’t have a waiver list. They may need Suzy to front the Franchise for them, since Cyrus is a drooling fool, but
anybody
can be a general manager in professional football.
You
proved that. You’re only really necessary to send my checks to camp.” Taylor closed the door, leaving A.D. Koster alone with the whimpering Johnny Cobianco.

“Jesus! Taylor!” A.D. said.

Johnny Cobianco continued to bleed into the white carpet. He didn’t move.

T
AYLOR CARRIED HIS
bag and portable TV down the long dormitory hall to his room. He set the television on the small built-in desk and tossed his bag on his bed. He noticed someone had left luggage on the other bed, along with a white leather Bible. Taylor opened the book and found it personally inscribed by Billy Joe Hardesty to Greg Moore.

Greg Moore was the top-notch running back from Los Angeles who Red had finagled as part of the “tampering” compensation resulting from the five-million-dollar offer to Taylor.

Taylor called Red Kilroy in the other wing of the dormitory.

“Whaddaya want?” It was the way Red always answered the phone in camp. Red thought it put the caller on the defensive.

“I want Greg Moore out of my room,” Taylor said. “I hate born-agains worse than coke heads.”

“Taylor! Welcome to camp.”

“Save the confetti and champagne and get this running back out of my room. I room alone in camp, Red—always.”

“Well, Taylor,” Red stalled, “I ... ah ... I sorta thought that if you two roomed together, he could pick up the system a little faster.”

“That’s your problem, Red, not mine. I need my privacy to deal with the system.”

“Come on, Taylor, think about the team. This could be our Super Bowl year.”

“That’s fine, Red. But I can’t share my time with a surfer for Christ.”

“Taylor!” Red acted like his quarterback had suggested killing babies with baseball bats. “Taylor! Don’t tell me you don’t care; we’re talking the ultimate football game.”

“You said the same about the Cotton Bowl and I’m still waiting on the rapture. Now, I want Moore out of here.”

“Taylor. Taylor.”

Taylor hung up on Red Kilroy.

Greg Moore walked into the room, grinning and glowing as only “one on the true way” can.

“Listen, Greg, I’m Taylor Rusk. Nice to meet you ... glad to have you aboard ... but there’s been a mistake ... I always room alone at camp.”

“This was my assigned room,” Moore answered. Muscular, with a California tan, sun-bleached hair and perfect smile, he was the prototypical LA player. He was beautiful.

“It’s one of Red’s mind games,” Taylor explained. “He could be doing it to you or me or both. But I need my privacy ... quarterbacking for Red is peculiar. So if you could ... ?”

Moore was sitting erect on the bed, doing curls with his barbells. He listened politely to Taylor while he did his curls.

“No. They assigned me the room. I like it.” He had a pleasant smile.

“Please?”

Moore shook his head.

“I’m the quarterback.”

Moore frowned and did curls.

“Look, Moore, you got to go. I room alone. I expect personal, career and life crises. You’ll be in the way and could get hurt. Actually I would
like
to hurt you. Now, get the hell out of here.”

“I was assigned to this room and I’m staying,” Moore replied with calm confidence. “You can threaten me all you want, but I’m hardly afraid.”

“You don’t care what I want?” Taylor said, shocked. “Even though I have to run this team?”

“If you want to put it that way”—Greg Moore plopped down on his bed and began flipping through his white leather-bound Bible—“you’re nobody special to me.”

“What if I call Ox Wood to break your fingers?” Taylor Rusk watched him for a moment. Moore was about six feet four inches and 235 pounds. Taylor was six feet five inches, 225 pounds and had doubts, even though, while Moore was reading his Bible, Taylor would hit him with all of the furniture that wasn’t nailed down. But Moore was young and powerful, and Taylor had been in one fight that day, with Johnny Cobianco. He didn’t want to deal with all the blood, adrenaline and heavy breathing, especially if it was all his.

Taylor picked up the phone and dialed Red Kilroy.

“Whaddaya want?” Red said.

“I told you, Red. I want Moore out of my room
now.
I’ll put him on the phone; you tell him to pack and move the manger on down the hall.”

“Taylor, Taylor. Give it a chance. Come on.”

“Does that mean no?”

“It just means give it a little time.”

“I’ll give it five more seconds. Do you tell him over the phone or do I throw his surfer ass through the window?”

“Maybe you ought to think about it. Moore is younger than you, Taylor.”

“He isn’t going to get much older if you don’t get him out, Red.”

“You sure you can take him, Taylor? He lifts weights year-round.” Red was beginning to enjoy needling his quarterback.
The competitive edge will sharpen under this kind of strain
, Red thought. “I mean,
can
you take him, Taylor? Ask him what he bench presses.”

Red
was
playing mind games. The certain realization helped Taylor decide on his action.

“You mean with God on his side, he also jogs and lifts weights?” Taylor looked at the fresh-faced kid thumbing through the white-covered Bible, a gift to him after an appearance representing Athletes for Jesus on the
All-American Evangelical Hour.

“Partly,” Red continued to push Taylor. “Greg Moore’s in his early twenties, with a little seasoning, just hitting stride and driven by conviction. He’s what I want at running back. He’s perfect.”

“Red, you can’t win the Super Bowl by playing mind games and using this poor fool. We
can
use him.” Taylor’s voice quieted, his tone calculating. “But if you think causing me trouble is going to be one of his jobs, you’re mistaken. We’ll see how
cabin fever
affects him.”

“What?” Red asked. “What about—?”

Taylor hung up the phone, cutting off the coach.

“You know, Taylor”—Moore kept his nose pointed into the Bible—“being a Christian athlete gives me certain advantages over non-Christian athletes. I put my life in God’s hands and dedicate my life to Christ. Knowing God has a plan, I don’t worry. I’m solid in my faith. You worry too much and will become a victim of anxiety.”