The Franchise (9 page)

“What kind of fucking country we have here?” Conly mumbled. “Idiots.” It saddened him that a US senator was so stupid as to think making Dick Conly wait in the expensively paneled outer office made Thompson seem less greedy. All it could do was piss Dick Conly off. Which it did. That was seldom a good idea. He despaired for his country. Sort of.

“The senator will see you now, Mr. Conly.” The slightly fleshy, attractive, fortyish secretary stood in the open doorway to the senator’s inner office.

“It’s about goddam time.” Conly lurched out of the chair and snatched up the crocodile briefcase. “Does the son of a bitch want to take a goddam bribe or not? I have important people to corrupt.” Conly brushed past the secretary and into the office, confronting the small white-haired man, the senior United States senator from the solid South. Bailey Bradley Thompson chaired several important committees and subcommittees. He had been in the Senate since before the war and had access to the Mexican vote in San Antonio, El Paso and South Texas to the Rio Grande Valley. They
all
voted for Bailey Bradley Thompson. Alive or dead. Several times.

“You want the payoff or you just want to jack off?”

The secretary’s mouth dropped. She looked quickly at the senator for some indication of how to react.

“Don’t look so shocked, honey,” Conly said. “If he ain’t laying pipe on you and keeping you up-to-date on his business, I don’t want to bribe the son of a bitch anyway.” Conly leered at her. “I’m at the Mayflower.”

“Dick, you old joker.” Senator Thompson stood to his full five-foot-eight inches and stuck out his hand. He motioned the secretary out with his eyes. “And hold my calls,” he yelled after her.

Conly didn’t even bother with the senator’s extended hand. He just flicked the latches on the attache and dumped the twenty-five thousand dollars out on the senator’s desk.

Dick Conly had figured the exact combination of small bills that would not only total twenty-five thousand but would fill the briefcase. It spilled out onto the senator’s desk and looked like
a lot of money.

“Goddam,” Senator Thompson gasped involuntarily. “Goddam.” His eyes grew large and he ran his hands over the pile of old bills.

Conly watched the little man and wondered how in God’s name the government worked if senior senators were this overcome by such piss-ant little amounts of money. Dick Conly had special contempt for a man who so obviously hungered for the actual bills, the pieces of paper with the meaningless denominations printed on them. An IOU from a government a trillion dollars in debt wasn’t money. Not
real money.
Real money was a concept, a brilliant scheme, seizing the opponent’s weak point, taking the high ground in an elaborate power play.
Power
—that was wealth. Changing the rules, changing the game. Not pieces of paper.

Senator Thompson began stuffing the paper into his desk drawer.

“We get the right ruling out of your subcommittee on this bill. Senator,” Conly said. “That’s the deal. The money for the ruling and the votes.”

“Yes, certainly.” The little gray senator never took his eyes off the bills. “I’m a man of my word.” He kept shoveling the bills into the drawer. “Couldn’t be a US senator if my word wasn’t my bond.” He put in the last packet and locked the drawer, using a key he carried on a gold watch chain tucked into his waistcoat pocket. “Now, how about a drink, Mr. Conly?” Senator Thompson looked up to find an empty room.

Dick Conly was already gone.

“Well ... I’ll be goddamned.” Senator Thompson was puzzled. It was like Conly hadn’t been there at all. Bailey Bradley Thompson’s confusion slowly turned to action as the senator took the key from his vest pocket and reopened the drawer to make certain that it all
had
happened. The paper bills were still there; he called his secretary to count them and fill his briefcase. He thought again about Conly’s abrupt departure.

Senator Thompson looked around the richly appointed office, then spoke to his secretary.

“Hell, you’d think Conly thought he was too good to drink with a United States senator.”

The secretary smiled, nodded, and lost count. Ten-cent dollars.

Later she met Conly at the Mayflower.

Two weeks later a Senate communications subcommittee, chaired by Senator Bailey Bradley Thompson, ruled the Football League must accept the franchise application before it from a certain Texas city or run the risk of being investigated by the FCC and possibly being found in violation of antitrust laws.

The franchise application at the League office had been filed by Dick Conly for Cyrus Chandler.

The League didn’t like antitrust threats. They didn’t much like Dick Conly either.

In a hastily-called owners meeting, Commissioner C. Robinson Burden advised the franchise be granted immediately to Cyrus Chandler. Just in time for the draft.

Conly sent fifty thousand dollars and an override on two wells in the Wanda June Field to the League commissioner. A greedy young comer, more expensive than a senior US senator, but Robbie Burden was cheap at twice the price.

Dick Conly wouldn’t drink with the commissioner either.

The owners pooled their old and used-up players and offered them for sale to the Chandler Texas Franchise for $38 million.

Cyrus Chandler and Dick Conly bought the players and took straight-line depreciation for five years, allowing $7 million plus per year in tax-free income. Until the Franchise began to show an “unavoidable” profit, Dick Conly applied the paper losses against Cyrus Chandler’s oil income.

Dick expensed players differently, depending on base salary, deferred payments, and bonuses, but usually wrote off the player’s total salary immediately, even if deferred clauses delayed payment of substantial sums for twenty years.

The players wore out pretty fast. Football was hard on inventory. An average career was 4.6 years. New players were drafted and purchased with multiyear deferred-payment contracts, assigned dollar values and expensed currently in a never-ending cycle. If a player was getting $75,000 a year with another $100,000 deferred for 20 years, the Franchise expensed the whole $175,000 while collecting interest on the $100,000. Million-dollar contracts with deferred payments into the twenty-first century gave the Franchise huge tax breaks. It was all in how it was put down on paper. The stats.

The Franchise had purchased the right to create values and then expense them. Dick Conly assigned players big contracts, then released them, writing off the full contract value as loss.

The Franchise scheduled their first season for the following fall.

Taylor Rusk was the first player chosen in the draft. The Franchise bought him. Dick Conly put a big dollar value on Taylor. People would pay to see someone worth large sums of money, Conly knew.

Even if they were only ten-cent dollars.

T
HE LAST MAJOR
social weekend of the spring term at the University was Water Carnival.

Four consecutive days and nights celebrating water; the river magically gushing from the faultline and flowing through the campus, crystal clear and seventy-two degrees year-round. Millions of years-round.

Fraternities, sororities, honoraries, dormitories and other campus factions spent the three weeks prior to Water Carnival building floats to run down the river, through the campus and into town. The riverbank lined with crowds of students, parents, alumni, townies, the University and the city elite, plus the bums from under the Red River Street Bridge. Only during Water Carnival did people give much thought to the river.

It was a big event ranking second only to the A & M game.

Lots of parties. Drinking. Sex. Lots of changes.

At Water Carnival the new members of Spur were announced and launched down the river on a floating party barge of folding chairs covered in purple and white crepe paper. The ten top onions awash.

Terry Dudley drove his latest demonstrator over to give Taylor Rusk a ride to Water Carnival rehearsal.

The basketball player was singing as he stooped through the doorway to Taylor’s apartment.

          
When the morning comes and you gotta get up

          
How you gonna find your shoes ..
.

Dudley accompanied himself on an imaginary guitar, making all the necessary sounds with his nose, throat, mouth, and tongue. He was particularly good at imitating the sound of a steel guitar with his nasal cavities.

          
In an empty bed with an aching head

          
You know, it’s gotta give you the blues ...

The giant man turned, twisted and strummed that imaginary guitar while Taylor looked for his tan jacket. Dudley finished his song, took one last strum with his huge fingers and set down his imaginary guitar against an imaginary amplifier. “Let’s get going, Taylor. The Big River waits.”

“Why rehearse floating down a goddam river?”

Taylor was wearing an athletic department T-shirt, jeans and A.D.’s alligator shoes; he had taken the shoes when A.D. admitted he’d gambled away the rent money. Simon had moved out.

“What’s to practice?” Taylor dug through scattered piles of newspapers and dirty clothes, looking for his jacket.

“Let me handle this,” Dudley ordered. “Didn’t I get you through the initiation? Christ, what sort of social life do you have? At Varsity Club meetings, you’re known as the man who isn’t here. And you’re vice-president.”

“I’m not a joiner—”

“You told me,” Dudley interrupted.

“—people join
me
,” Taylor finished.

“Yeah, I can see.” Dudley glanced around the empty apartment.

Taylor found his jacket wadded up under the rubble; it had been missing a couple of days. He pulled it on, slapping at the wrinkles, trying to smooth out the big ones. He followed Dudley down the stairs and outside.

“I go get drunk a couple of times a year with the sales manager and the dealer and give them my season tickets,” Terry explained as they drove across campus to the river. “I remember their kids, their wives, their girl friends, and keep them straight, which is something neither of them can do. In return I try out a new car every year.”

Taylor tried to straighten the collar and brushed out the deep lines in the front of his jacket. The effort released a sweet familiar smell mingled with the sour of his own sweat. Taylor savored the fragrant trace, the pleasant essence, trying to identify the scent.

“You testing the air?” Terry asked.

Taylor ignored him but lost the scent. Roses?

Terry Dudley wheeled the big Cadillac demonstrator into the lot behind the aquatic station and parked right beside a Chevrolet convertible full of girls from the Pi Phi house.

Stepping out next to Taylor Rusk, Wendy Chandler was wearing jeans, boots and a madras blouse with cardigan sweater tossed loosely over her delicate shoulders. Her left hand carried a five-carat diamond ring. Taylor’s nostrils flared as the air filled suddenly with the haunting fragrance of roses, crushed roses. Wendy smelled of crushed rose petals. Taylor took deep draughts of the sweet air.

The others walked toward the crowd gathering on the riverbank.

“Where’s Lem Three?”

“He won’t be here until later,” Wendy said. “He’s learning what his future holds.”

“How’s he doing that?”

“My daddy is telling him.”

Taylor couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm, resignation or contentment. He didn’t really care. He only cared that Wendy was there alone right then.

“Y
OU’LL START OUT
in the public relations department as an assistant to the PR director, Rickie Dixon,” Cyrus announced as Dick Conly poured himself a drink. “From there on, the sky is the limit, Lem. We’ll probably work you into the scouting combine in a few years.”

Lem Carleton III was meeting with his future father-in-law, Cyrus Chandler, and Dick Conly, Chandler Industries’ CEO. They were sitting in Cyrus’s penthouse office, discussing the football franchise and Lem’s place in it.

Dick Conly drank quietly and watched from the corner. Whatever Cyrus said, Dick Conly had to make happen. He had promised old Amos that he would look out for Cyrus. Dick Conly would do it. Cyrus would resent it and never understand it. Conly derived very little pleasure from working with Cyrus. Amos Chandler was a giant. Cyrus paled by comparison and Cyrus knew it. And he knew Dick Conly knew.

“Well, Dad Chandler ...” Lem leaned back and took in the luxury of Cyrus’s penthouse office. “You don’t mind if I start calling you Dad, do you?”

Cyrus shook his head. Conly rolled his eyes back and laid his head on the soft leather of the corner loveseat.

Conly pegged Lem Carleton III as someone merely chasing legitimacy. His father. Lem Carleton junior, the University regents chairman, had been born to minor wealth, but because Junior and Cyrus were Spur ’39, Dick Conly made him major-league wealthy with one deal in the Wanda June Field. Junior remained wealthy, burying himself in regents’ work after Cyrus squeezed him out of any further deals when Conly showed Cyrus his share increase on future ventures—without Junior. Now Cyrus would force Dick Conly to accept the task of carrying the guilt for Junior, weaning his future son-in-law on to
real life.

It wasn’t difficult to run a professional football franchise and make a good profit. The IRS bookkeeping gymnastics—plus the guaranteed television money—did that. The TV contract currently paid each team $5 million a year and was soon up for renegotiation. On the business side the Franchise would run on a $3 million budget efficiently, even paying Lem Carleton III and other front-office cronies huge salaries. Then there was a $1 million shell game they played with the scouting combine.

Additionally if they won, the Franchise would sell lots of tickets and make a
huge
profit. That was Dick Conly’s long-term plan: build the Franchise into the mechanism of the League to ensure winning continually. Programming the whole system so whatever mergers and playoff systems develop, Super Bowl efforts would be more a matter of fine-tuning—the League, not the Franchise.