The Cut (29 page)

The word “can't” came out in a grinding, spit-flying screech. A thousand pounds of rage delivered in one syllable.

“I beg to differ,” Sturtz said politely. This caused Palmer to think,
My God, he's trying to give the guy a stroke.
“If you recall, the arbitration hearing was for the issue of a more generous contract, not the possibility of a trade. And if I recall, not only is a trade request part of T. J.'s contractual right, it was also on the table during our last discussion in here. You said yourself, ‘It'll be expensive.' You did not say, ‘It's out of the question.' We are within our rights to make such a request.”

Again the stare and the brief check back to Palmer, who looked helpless.

Then Gray actually smiled. “I lied,” he said with a chuckle. “Okay? I
lied.
Your client is going nowhere.” His voice was so calm that, somehow, it was even more unsettling than when it was raised. “He'll be right here, on our field, in our stadium, playing his heart out for
me
.” Gray tapped himself in the chest with his forefinger. “And you,” he went on, turning that same finger outward, “you slimy little pile of Brooklyn shit, are going to be
standing on the unemployment line before this season is over
!”

This last line launched the inevitable explosion. Gray jumped out of his seat and leaned forward, the redness from his neck having spread to his entire face.

But Sturtz, with an inner peace that Palmer couldn't help but admire, simply said, “No, I'm sorry. That's not how it's going to be.” Finally, he unzipped his bag, and from inside he took out a single sheet of paper of his own.

“This is a tender offer from the San Francisco 49ers for T. J.'s services. As you will see”—he produced another copy and tossed one to each of them—“it is quite generous in terms of compensation. Draft picks, established players, even some cash to cover your losses.” Sturtz waited just long enough to add, “But, as you'll see, the latter isn't much since … well, since he's not being paid very much in the first place.”

Palmer waited for Gray to pick up his copy. When it became obvious he had no intention of doing so, the GM took his own and began reading. It took all of about thirty seconds to realize the 49ers wanted Brookman very badly and were willing to do damn near anything to get him.

“Until we get this issue resolved,” Sturtz said, purposely choosing a phrase from their original meeting, “I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist that T. J. sit out.”

Gray was impossible to read at this point. There was murder in his eyes, but no other signs of what lay under the surface. The silence returned to the room. A few seconds passed, then a few more. It stretched into a minute, then the next.

“If you continue to do this,” Gray said at last, “I will sit your boy and take one of the others. I will sit him
all year and take one of the others
!”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“What?”

“You don't
have
any of the others. You ordered Dale Greenwood to cut them this morning. Or don't you remember? Jermaine Hamilton, Corey Reese, Daimon Foster—they all received their walking papers bright and early. You remember those guys, right? The ones you used to try to screw me and my client? They're gone.
Gone.
The moment you sent them packing, they were free to do whatever they wished.” Sturtz checked his watch. “By my calculations, Foster should be inking his deal with Kansas City right about now. Hamilton is in discussions with Washington. And Reese—well.…”

The redness in Gray's face faded temporarily and was replaced by a distinct lack of coloration. Pale and ashen, he looked sick, drained out. He realized he'd been beaten. Sturtz had waited in the bushes, patiently, to spring this trap. It had been planned all along. He had effectively calculated the coach's own plan and, figuring that information into the equation, formed one of his own. He sat in the shadows until Gray removed all of his own options, then used that as the noose with which to hang him.

When the redness returned, it did so in accompaniment to the greatest explosion of temper Palmer or Sturtz had ever witnessed. It made George Brett's famous pine-tar outburst look like a pleasant conversation between friends. For the next ninety seconds, Gray covered the entire catalog of English expletives and profanities (if a censor had been there, he would've simply held down the bleep-out button for the duration) and threw out enough spittle to polish an off-road vehicle after a muddy day in the woods.

“Hey, take it easy, Alan,” Palmer said. “You're going to give yourself a—”

“I'm going to finish you,” Gray said at the end, snarling and pointing as his chest heaved from exhaustion. “I'm going to break you like a goddamn—”

Then a fourth voice entered the conversation. “You are going to do no such thing, Alan.” It was just as measured as Barry Sturtz's, but it had a bit more impact on the recipient.

All heads turned to Dorland Kenner, standing in the doorway.

*   *   *

No one said anything. No one knew
what
to say. The three men at the table were frozen in space and time, as if in a photograph that had been pasted into a scrapbook with the caption “Tense Times at Team Headquarters.”

“Dorland?” Gray said, “What the f— What are you doing here?”

Kenner came into the room and held his hand out to Sturtz. “Barry, always a pleasure to see you.”

Sturtz stood and, almost subconsciously, buttoned and smoothed his blazer. “Hello, Mr. Kenner. How are you?”

“Fine, Barry. Please call me Dorland.”

“Oh, sure.”

Then, to Gray, Kenner said, “So what's happening here? A bit of a disagreement, it seems.”

Gray put on his best ass-kisser's smile. “A little bit, but we're working it out.”

“Are you? It doesn't sound that way to me. From what I've heard, you are threatening, not compromising.”

Gray laughed. “Well, this is the way these things are done, Dorland. Sometimes you need to—”

“No, Alan,” Kenner said flatly, his voice never rising a decibel, “this is not the way these things are done. Not here.”

“Uh, excuse me, sir, but I might know a little bit more about this than you, if you don't mind my saying so. I have been—”

“I appreciate your concern for my feelings,” Kenner said, “but I
do
mind. I mind very much. In fact, I mind many things that you've been doing to this team lately.”

“What?” Gray replied, and Palmer couldn't help notice that a bit of the anger was creeping back into his voice.
Uh-oh.

“Alan, my father was a shrewd businessman. He knew how to get things done. He studied a situation, considered all angles, and made decisions. They didn't always make everyone happy, but they were fair decisions, and people understood why he made them. He did not manipulate, he did not coerce, and he did not
threaten
.”

“I wasn't exactly threat—”

“Don't insult me. That's exactly what you were doing.”

“Well, that's how I operate,” Gray said, and this time he didn't bother candy-coating the delivery.

“Fine. Then you are welcome to operate elsewhere.”

Gray's eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“You're fired.”

Another frozen-in-time moment, and even Sturtz looked stunned.

“You may clear out your office at once.”

“You're joking, right?”

“I am not.”

“This is fucking ridiculous.”

“What was that?”

“No one fires a head coach right before the regular season starts. It's insane.”

“No, here's what's insane—we've had nothing but failure since you came here. Complete and utter failure. Now, allowing you to run this team for another season—that would be insane. The way I see it, I can leave you in your current position purely for the sake of observing tradition, and that would all but guarantee another losing season. Or I could give someone else your job, and maybe he'd do better. Maybe he wouldn't, but with you I
know
what's going to happen. So, is making a change now really insane? I don't see it that way at all. Maybe it is unprecedented—but it's still smart. Keeping you here another minute,
that's
insane.”

Gray scanned the room, realized he was surrounded by enemies, and said, “You can go to hell. I'm not taking one step out of this—”

Without hesitation, Kenner turned toward the open doorway and said, “Don?”

The Turk appeared, grim as ever. “Yes?”

“Would you be kind enough to show Coach Gray to his office, watch him pack up his things, then escort him to his car?”

“You bet.” Don Blumenthal looked to Alan Gray—the man who had treated him like a dog, had insulted him in every way and as publicly as possible—and managed his first smile in a long time.

For an instant, Gray looked terrified. Then, as Blumenthal came around the table, Gray said, “You've got big problems here, junior. Problems that you won't be able to handle without me.”

Kenner, setting his hands into his pockets, said wearily, “I'm sure we'll manage, Alan.”

On his way out of the room, the Turk holding him by the arm, Gray continued with “Do you know you have a mole? Someone is leaking everything you do to the press! I would've found the sonofabitch, but now I'm glad I didn't!”

“We'll take care of it.”

“Have a good time dealing with the Barry Sturtzes of the world!” Gray went on, even though his voice was dying in the hallway. “You'll get nowhere without me! Nowhere!”

Kenner took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. “That didn't go particularly well.”

“No, you had to do it,” Chet Palmer said swiftly. “He's been a loose cannon around here for years. You should've seen—”

“You, too,” Kenner cut him off. “Get your things and go.”

Palmer seemed genuinely bewildered. “Me? But—”

“I'm not arguing the point, Chet. You have put us deep into a hole with the salary cap. Unbelievably deep.” Kenner went on to quote figures and structures from contracts that Palmer didn't think he even knew about. It was like the guy had been living inside his head.
But I thought he didn't know any of this.

“And you lied to me, too,” Kenner went on, “on many, many occasions. You covered for Gray”—he said this in a way that sounded as though Gray had already been gone for years, which Palmer found chilling—“and you made mistakes you tried to hide. You damaged this organization with no thought for anyone but yourself. I don't tolerate that with any of my people. Now go.”

Palmer paused for a few more seconds, thought about trying to rally to defend his position, then realized it was hopeless.

Without another word, he rose, leaving all his paperwork exactly where it was, and walked out.

*   *   *

Now it was just the two of them.

The room had become eerily still. The hanging blinds were half turned, so a fair amount of sunlight was slanting in. A few birds were chirping outside, happily oblivious in the way that nature's creatures are to the boundless idiocy of men.

With Sturtz as his riveted audience, Kenner pulled out a chair and sat down next to him. “First of all, I want to apologize to you and your client on behalf of myself, my family, and all the good people in this organization for the way the two of you have been treated.”

Was this really happening?
Barry Sturtz wondered. Being understandably gun-shy, he thought for a moment this might be a ploy of some kind, where the higher echelon takes control of the out-of-hand situation and masterfully brings it back to the boundaries of reality.

But such fears were quickly assuaged when Kenner said, “I have been studying your client's contract. I have studied it thoroughly, and I have also been studying his performance since he joined this team, and it seems to me he is a remarkable young man.”

Sturtz, feeling like he was caught in an episode of
The
Twilight Zone,
said, “Yes, he is.”

“I am deeply appreciative of his devotion, his effort, his discipline, and his passion. He has carried himself beautifully, both on and off the field.”

“I agree.”

“He is an asset to this organization, and I think it's about time we made that clear in some substantial way.”

“Such as?”

“Such as a new contract. One that you and I will forge together, here and now.”

Again Sturtz was unable to find his vocabulary. This was bordering on the surreal. Somewhere in his mind he thought about how he was going to report this to T. J., then dismissed the idea because there was simply no believable way to do it.

“I am—we are very grateful.”

Kenner waved this off. “It never should have happened in the first place.” He rose again and put his hands back into his pockets. “I blame myself as much as I do Alan Gray and Chet Palmer. Gray was at least partially correct—I didn't know enough about how this whole thing worked. When my father passed away, I was entrusted with the task of running this club. He believed in me, and I have let him down so far. I've been trying to juggle ten balls at once. I thought I could do it, with my highbrow education and my family name.” He began walking around the room as if taking a stroll on a nice day. “But the truth is, I wasn't ready for it. Too much too fast. A man in my position has to have people under him he can trust. I thought I could trust Gray and Palmer, but I was naive. I see now what type of men they really are. It all comes down to the quality of the individual. I let down the people of this organization, I let down my father, and I let down the fans.”

“Well … it happens,” Sturtz said, amazed that he was part of this remarkable epiphany. “No one is immune.”