The Franchise (10 page)

One reason Conly insisted on hiring Red Kilroy was because Red had placed ex-players and assistants throughout the League from the playing field to the Commissioner’s office. Red had a network. Conly wanted it.

The
fix
would be built into the system.

Cyrus told Lem Three about the joys of being an assistant PR man, while Conly sipped his drink and tried to think of a positive use for him—for either of them.
The kid couldn’t even be a US senator.

“I was sort of hoping for something a little ...” Lem groped for a word, confident in the face of his own ignorance, “... a little nicer....”

“Jeezus—” Conly blurted out. Cyrus held up his hand, and Dick Conly drank his glass dry. The whiskey burned back the disgust.

“It is control of the League that I am going for.” Cyrus explained Dick Conly’s plan to Lem as if it were his own. “I want my people everywhere in the League and I want the best people, and I don’t mean just on the field. I’m going to make professional football the best show for the money. Pay-TV is going to be in place in a couple of years, and that is why you need to start out in PR and learn it. Learn about media and communications.”

“Buy yourself a stable of sportswriters and broadcasters,” Conly interrupted.

“But,” Lem protested, “don’t you think public relations is rather common?”

“You bet your ass, sonny,” Dick Conly roared. “Common as cowshit. We’re making money, not playing games.” Conly splashed more whiskey into his glass. “Mass media is
supposed
to be common—the
more
common the better. We’re trying to attract an audience of millions. Those are common people and we want them. All of them.”

Lem looked confused and disappointed, his eyes traveling nervously from Cyrus to Conly to the floor. “You just want me to be assistant public relations man?” Lem was hurt. “No executive title? Wendy told me ...”

“Damn boy!” Conly roared. “Wendy Chandler doesn’t run this business; I do!” Lem winced back into the chair. “I run this son of a bitch, and if you want to go to work for me, you do what I say.”

“Now, Dick, calm yourself,” Cyrus interrupted. “Lem, you’re among friends here, and remember, all my daughter is going to be is your wife. Do you want the job or not?”

Lem was stunned by the sudden ferocity of Conly’s attack and had no idea what he had done to deserve it. After all, he was third-generation money. It wasn’t like he needed the job. He couldn’t help it if he
wasn’t
common.

“I ... ah ... well ...” Lem tried to find his voice. “Yes, certainly I want the job, but ...”

“No goddam
but’
s,” Conly said abruptly. “Don’t chase it if you can’t kill it, boy, and don’t kill it if you can’t skin it. Either way you end up with a stinking mess.” Conly drained and sloshed still more bourbon into his glass. He looked at the door as Lem Carleton III skulked out of the sumptuous office, Cyrus following him.

“Take it easy, Lem,” Cyrus soothed. “We can’t make it look like marrying the boss’s daughter is all it takes in this business.” The elevator opened at the end of the hall. A teen-age boy got out.

“I guess not.” Lem dug his toe in the thick carpet. “Well ... I’m supposed to meet Wendy now.”

“Go on,” Cyrus said. “Kiss her for me.”

Lem smiled when he left, but he was angry and humiliated and brushed past young Luther Conly without a nod.

“Mr. Chandler,” the boy asked, “is my dad finished yet?”

Cyrus frowned and looked puzzled. “Why, Luther, I’m sorry, Dick just left. He must have forgotten.”

The boy’s face fell; his eyes misted and his body trembled.

“He’s been busy as a one-armed paperhanger,” Cyrus smiled.

The boy nodded and walked back to the elevator. Cyrus returned to the office.

“You better quit drinking so much, Dick.” Cyrus watched Conly gulp down the whiskey. Cyrus’s small pointed tongue flicked across his front teeth like a reptile’s, tasting the air.

“You quit giving me shit jobs like raising your future son-in-law and carrying twenty-five thousand to that jerk-off Senator Thompson. Then, I’ll quit drinking so much.” Conly looked at his watch. He was expecting his son.

“Hell, Dick, it isn’t just for Wendy.” Cyrus leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, looking out at the fast-darkening skyline. “Lem is Junior’s boy, don’t forget. I have known him since he was that high.” Cyrus held his manicured hands two feet above the plush light-purple carpet. “He and Wendy Cy were the two cutest kids ...”

“Since when did who had the cutest kids make a shit, Cyrus?” Conly banged his glass on the solid teak coffee table that Cyrus had brought from China on the company plane. “You squeezed Junior out of the Wanda June Field when Lem was only five years old and a lot cuter. And I’ll be goddamned, but my kids are cuter than yours or Junior’s and I don’t even get to see them.” Conly poured himself another drink. “Where the hell is Luther? We had a movie date.” He checked his watch. “It’s always been too easy for you, Cyrus. I make it too easy and it’s hard on me and mine.”

“Maybe so, Dick. Maybe so.” Cyrus looked over at Conly and shrugged. “Maybe I feel guilty.” He suddenly changed the subject. “A guy told me I can put over two million tax-free into my pocket when we get to the Super Bowl. So let’s move. We scalp the Super Bowl tickets, only pay taxes on the face value and pocket the rest. It’s foolproof.”

“It’s stupid. A guy told you? What guy?”

Cyrus didn’t answer.

“Nothing is foolproof,” Conly reminded Chandler. “The word does not apply to you. You attract an inordinate number of fools.” He pointed at the chair Lem Three had occupied. “We have fools marrying into the business and the family.”

“We can use Don Cobianco’s operation to help move tickets,” Cyrus urged. “He’s been anxious to do me some favors.”

“Is that where you got this harebrained idea? I’ll
bet
he’s anxious to do you some favors. Listen, Cyrus, don’t ever put us in bed with the Cobianco brothers. Ever. They’re penny-ante thugs.” Dick Conly spent a lot of his time protecting Cyrus from people like the Cobiancos. He had killed a couple, protecting Amos. “Scalping tickets involves the IRS. It’s stupid. Don’t ever do deals with people who got less to lose than you.”

“I like the idea, that’s all. It’s fun.” Cyrus laughed. “Now, what about the Anglo-Bahamian Bank in Freeport? I need a stash for the scalping money.”

“We have to get to the Super Bowl first.” Conly decided to stall. “By then we’ll be making so much money, we’ll have no reason—”

“Scared, Dick?” Chandler cut him off. “I have a plan. If you can’t ...”

“Everybody has a plan, you asshole,” Conly yelled at Cyrus Chandler. “Now listen to me. I already checked and the Anglo-Bahamian Bank is a CIA front.”

“Oh, Jesus ...” Cyrus turned white. “What’ll we do? We can’t use that bank.”

“It’s the safest place to be. You stupid bastard, the CIA isn’t going to tell
anybody
what they’re doing, especially the IRS.”

“They won’t?” Cyrus had broken into a fine cold sweat.

“No.”

“They can’t turn me in?” Cyrus giggled.

Conly shook his head. “They might
threaten
to tell the IRS ...”

“But they’re illegal too!” Cyrus began a high-pitched cackle as the sweat ran from his armpits. “They won’t endanger their own operation over a couple of million, right?”

“Yeah, but don’t do it. The Cobianco brothers could leave your ass hanging out between them and the CIA. You’re gambling billions against a few million.”

“We’ll see,” Cyrus said. “A million here and there adds up.”

“Don’t do it. I’m warning you. This could hurt Chandler Industries; Mob and CIA connections are not the best of international associates.”

Dick Conly checked the time again and sighed. “I gave Luther a thousand-dollar watch for his birthday and he’s half an hour late.”

“I’ll bet he just forgot. Dick. You know these kids nowadays.” Cyrus grinned, his eyes small and mean.

“No, I don’t, Cyrus. Thanks to you, I never see my kid. Well, I better get Red Kilroy in here: We have a franchise to build.”

Dick Conly drank far into that night and many other nights, carrying out his plans and thwarting Cyrus’s disastrous schemes.

Conly never did figure out how he and his boy, Luther, missed connections that night on the movie. Neither did Luther. They missed others, many more.

Finally all.

T
AYLOR
R
USK WATCHED
Lem Three arrive at the Water Carnival rehearsal while Terry Dudley listened raptly to the guy in the blue blazer, white pants and shoes who was using a bullhorn to assign numbers to floats.

“Number twenty-six, that’s the Dekes.... Number twenty-seven, the Kappa Sigs.... Number twenty-eight....”

Taylor Rusk watched Wendy Chandler and Lem Carleton as they began to argue.

“Number thirty-two is the ROTC Queen’s float....”

Lem took Wendy behind the bleachers, erected strategically for the University and Park City officials and honored guests to see the floats while also being seen themselves. Taylor watched as the tide of the argument turned quickly against Three.

Suddenly Wendy Chandler snatched the engagement ring from her finger and threw the five-carat diamond into the tall grass of the riverbottom.

Lem was devastated. Horror-stricken, he chased the glittering arc carved by the huge diamond in the fading skylight. He got several twinkling fixes on the trajectory and quickly triangulated a swatch of tule as the touchdown zone, where he fell to his knees and began searching.

Wendy spun around and began a furious march up the sloping riverbank toward the aquatic station and the parking lot beyond, leaving Three scrambling desperately in the tall grass.

“Keys in your demonstrator?” Taylor asked Terry Dudley, who was entranced by the guy with the bullhorn.

“Okay, the Canoe Club will serve as parade masters and carry walkie-talkies....”

“The keys in your car?” Taylor bumped Dudley, who nodded but kept his eyes on the guy with the bullhorn.

“Number forty will be the Sigma Nus.... Number forty-one will be the Spur float....”

“Save me a seat on the float.”

Taylor turned and jogged after Wendy, catching up with her in front of the oil rig that had punched out the first oil on University property.

“Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

“Only if I can drive.” Wendy didn’t break stride.

“The keys are in that blue Cadillac four-door.”

They sped off.

It took all night—he was eaten alive by mosquitoes and nearly bitten by a cottonmouth—but Lem Three found the flawless diamond ring.

Taylor sat silently while Wendy squealed the big blue car through the campus and city, up over the faultline and into the hills. Finally he asked, “What were you and Lem fighting about?”

“He didn’t like the way the future looked.” She kept her eyes fixed on the darkening road; her small hands and thin arms wrenched the big wheel of the car. They wove their way onto the limestone plateau. “So I changed it.”

“Can you do that?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

Taylor Rusk nodded and remained silent for several wild miles.

Wendy wrestled the car and kept the gas pedal to the floor. They left the road several times. She kept the car accelerating, slowing only for the switchbacks and caliche hairpins.

The Cadillac clawed its way up the scarp and the cedar breaks stretched ahead in the twilight.

“How come we never met before Buffy’s wedding?” She took her eyes off the twisting road.

“I don’t get out much.” Taylor said. “Don’t know what to do. Mostly I play ball, study, eat, sleep, play ball and play ball.”

“Real good-timer, huh?” She turned back to the road. The Cadillac ate away the pavement.

“If you like playing ball.”

“A.D. Koster was such a dreamboat in high school,” Wendy said. “All of us thought he was some sort of animal, like—like. James Dean.”

“He was ... still is....” In high school A.D. rolled his Camels up in the sleeve of his white T-shirt and rode a Harley Electra Glide he had stolen in Galveston.

“So it was you and that fat guy D’Hanis that were always with him,” Wendy said. “Your cuffs were always too short on your pants and you wore sweat socks.”

“I still wear sweat socks. They’re free and clean and I sweat a lot. You want me to introduce you to A.D? Hell, if you’re into shoes”—Taylor pointed at his feet—“these shoes once belonged to A.D. Koster.”

“I already saw them. They’re nice with those sweat socks.”

The Cadillac slowed noticeably. The plateau was sinking into darkness.

“I’m taking you to a friend’s place,” Wendy Chandler announced as the car climbed higher. “He won’t be there. You’ll like it. I have to get away from campus and think.”

“Me too. If we take long enough, I’m certain I can think of something.”

Taylor knew where she was going as soon as she turned off the Ranch Road pavement onto the county caliche road past Dead Man Hill. He kept quiet as she followed the roughly graded road through the rocky pastures and through the gates and cattle guards and across the fords of the shallow-flowing Dead Man Creek.

“I was a freshman at the University and I decided to have my first affair,” Wendy explained as she drove across the third ford of the creek. “I picked this professor who was kind of old and married. It made it seem safer or less involved or something. His wife had cut him off years before over some other beef about another student, I think. Imagine that. Anyway, their kids were grown and gone. So I took a shot at him and he brought me here.”

“Was it safer?” Taylor asked. “Less involved or something?” They topped Coon Ridge, dropped down and crossed the creek for the final time.

“I don’t know. I guess it was
or something.
He’s still my best friend at school.”

They pulled up next to the old stone farmhouse set back in the live oak motte on the bluff above Dead Man Creek.

“He only comes up here on weekends. You’d like him.”

“I do,” Taylor said.

“Doc Webster? You know him?” Wendy looked at him quizzically. “He never mentions you.”