The Franchise (20 page)

Hendrix pulled Red Kilroy’s car up next to a green Nash Metropolitan. “Is there any curfew tonight?” Hendrix asked. The nude cutout deodorizer twirled and spun from the mirror.

“No, no curfew,” Taylor said, looking at the green Metropolitan. Then he slowly studied the complete outside layout of the Palace and the major characters hanging around. “It seems under control.”

“That is not always a good sign,” Hendrix said.

The young quarterback moved inside the crowded dance hall. Hendrix followed behind, watching Taylor’s intimidating physical presence. The crowd parted; the receiver hobbled pleasantly in the wake.

Inside the Crystal Palace, Suzy sat at a table with Simon D’Hanis and watched A.D. dance with a counselor from El Río Frío Camp for Girls. Taylor and Hendrix joined them. Suzy was watching, looking bored. Simon was strung tight as a drum, tapping on the table and shuffling his feet restlessly. His eyes roamed the building.

Everybody seemed to be paired up, a social system already in place. The football players seemed to stand out in the crowd. They were breaking and bending the Crystal Palace Dance Hall social system. A.D. Koster was leading the charge as he bumped up against the counselor from El Río Frío. This not only pissed off Suzy but also the local bull rider, who had brought the counselor to the Crystal Palace in his new welding truck. He was planning to have himself a couple more drinks of Wild Turkey and then feed the faggot his brown alligator shoes. Taps and all.

Suzy watched A.D. and the counselor for a few more bored seconds, then looked slowly around the table at the pulsating Simon, the redhaired laconic Hendrix and finally at Taylor Rusk. She leaned over and grabbed Taylor firmly by the knee. “C’mon outside and buy me a beer. I’m tired of watching A.D. dry-hump.”

Taylor was again impressed by the strength of her grip.

“I’m staying here to make sure Simon don’t explode,” Hendrix said.

Taylor followed Suzy through the crowd outside to the barbeque stand, where Suzy ordered a chopped-beef sandwich and two beers. Taylor paid and carried the beers while Suzy ate big bites of the sandwich and walked over toward the river. Taylor followed, weaving through the people sprawled out on blankets, watching the tight white shorts and sipping from both beers. They passed two deputy sheriffs and a game warden passing around one cigarette.

Suzy found two outcrops at the bluff edge overlooking the river. They were back in the shadows, out of the lights strung from the beer and barbeque stand.

Taylor handed Suzy her beer. “You drank out of it!” She noticed the light weight of the beer can.

Taylor nodded.

“Jesus, well, goddam help yourself.”

“I bought it,” Taylor defended.

“Nobody held a gun to your head.”

“I couldn’t be sure your shorts weren’t loaded,” Taylor said.

“Hey, sonny, don’t go pulling the pin like that.” Suzy looked at him and sipped her beer, “It could go off in your hand.” She still called him sonny.

Taylor sat on a flat ledge. “Are you serious about A.D.?” he asked.

“About as serious as he is about me. You want to know if my intentions are honorable?” She wadded the barbeque into her cheek and chewed. The last of the sandwich disappeared into her pretty mouth and she crumpled the waxed paper, washing the sandwich down with beer and tossing the waxed paper off the bluff, down into the shallow white-blue water of the river.

Suzy looked around for something to wipe her hands on. They were greased with barbeque sauce. She settled on Taylor’s T-shirt and reached over and wiped her small hands clean, staining his shirt with red sauce.

“Help yourself.”

“Thanks.” Suzy bent over and wiped her mouth on the shirt.

“Code of the West.”

“I see where Cyrus Chandler’s daughter married Lem Carleton III.” Suzy frowned at Taylor. “A.D. told me she was your girl.”

“A.D. was wrong.” Taylor looked down at the river. The waxed paper was still visible.

“Sure. Sorry. Why’d she get married? Pregnant?”

“How should I know?”

“The papers said she was beautiful and looked great in Mexico on their honeymoon. The wedding cost two hundred thousand dollars. They flew everybody to San Antonio for a reception in the old brewery, then on to the South Texas ranch for a catered trail-drive breakfast.”

“She’d been engaged to the guy for a long time.”

“You were just a last desperate swing before she settled into the complacency of her wealthy early twenties?” Suzy mocked. “Oh, I see now.”

“I was just a stop on her highway of life ... another town along the road.”

Suzy smiled and slowly scrutinized the shadows of Taylor’s face, trying to discern his intentions.

“What about you?” Suzy took a long swallow and finished her beer, absently crumpling the can in her strong, slender hands and tossing the metal wreckage into the river. “You want to be something when you grow up?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Suzy and Taylor Rusk ended up drinking several more beers, then climbed up in a live oak to neck and escape the ticks and chiggers. They were only partially successful. Suzy got tick bites on the insides of her thighs, and Taylor had at least fifteen chiggers burrowed into his armpits. They got the ticks off Suzy by heating Taylor’s pocketknife blade. Suzy painted over Taylor’s chigger bites with her clear nail polish, leaving them to suffocate.

“It’s a better fate than they deserve,” she decided.

About midnight the Crystal Palace Dance Hall went up for grabs when the welder hit A.D. Koster right on the point of the chin, knocking him loose of the El Río Frío counselor. A.D. sailed across the dance floor and into the band, hopelessly entangled in the drum set. Simon D’Hanis hit the welder. Bobby Hendrix dove out an open window. The two deputies and the game warden charged inside.

After that the versions of the Crystal Palace Massacre vary widely. But like the Alamo, San Jacinto and the Spindletop Oil Boom, it marked the start of an era. The Franchise had arrived.

After the dance hall had been cleared out and the band finished loading their van, Hendrix called Suzy and Taylor down out of the tree. They went in search of A.D.

Everyone else had been accounted for and were long gone on the yellow school bus. A.D. was the only MIA.

They eventually found him and the welder, both battered and bruised, sitting behind the bandstand with their arms over the other’s shoulder, drinking from the same bottle of Wild Turkey and cussing women. The counselor from El Río Frío Camp for Girls was nowhere to be seen.

A.D. called the welder a “goddam nail-eatin’, ass-kickin’, woman-fuckin’, good ol’ son of a bitch.” The welder proposed a toast to A.D.’s “noble ancestor and famous Apache, Quanah Parker.”

“Quanah Parker was a Comanche,” Suzy said, picking through the wood of a broken table. “There is a difference. It was in the way they fought and treated their women.” She hefted a three-foot-long two-by-four and hit A.D. across the shoulder blades as hard as she could. The blow knocked him face-first in the welder’s lap. She had aimed for A.D.’s spine and hoped for paralysis.

“Hey,” the welder-bull rider yelled, “that’s my pal!” He struggled to rise. Suzy drew back the yellow pine stud.

“Well, say hello to him for me.” She hit the man a sideways blow across the forehead that sounded like extra bases in a game of sixteen-inch slow-pitch. The welder-bull rider went flat on his back and joined A.D. in the ozone.

It would be another seventeen days before Red gave them a second night off. It was soon enough for some and too late for others.

T
HAT FIRST CAMP
was a never-ending parade of bodies passing through the Franchise like grease through a goose. Every day saw new kickers, tackles, guards, ends and defensive backs. This was a world of hemorrhaging receivers and crippled running backs.

Names were written on adhesive tape and stuck on the front of the headgear so coaches and other players could identify the man. It was impossible to keep up with the faces.

Texas was the last stop on the inevitable drop out of professional football. An expansion team got to look at all the rejects, and they came in all colors, sizes, shapes, religions and states of mind. They were scarred, tattooed, crazed, addicted, broken, bashed, worn out, blown out, fucked up, fucked out, scared, mad, friendly, kind, courteous, loyal, trustworthy, brave, selfish, selfless. There were sadomasochists, homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, asexuals. They all had one thing in common: they were football players, and Texas was the last bounce.

After Texas it was the netherworld, the god-awful “out there” of the dead silent civilian world. They had all spent years and tremendous amounts of energy to avoid that inevitable, final fall from grace. This gave them a special kind of shared desperation in their lives, a fear of professional death that burst out in odd uncontrollable ways. Some extremely funny, some not so funny, some downright horrible.

An exceptional few combined all the traits with brotherhood, human love, courage, strength and a sense of justice. It was in those men Taylor glimpsed the greatness that would coalesce under Red’s obsessive genius. The Franchise would soon overflow with skilled, talented technicians. Red kept all the artists, the weirdos, the crazies, the lunatics.

This was all the result of Red Kilroy’s game plans and nose for talent and Dick Conly’s scheme to build winning into the system. Their tactics and strategies—combining short-term methods with long-term goals—created a timetable to the Super Bowl. It was a fast track and there were lots of wrecks. Players crashed and burned and needed replacing.

Red Kilroy looked at everybody that didn’t belong to anybody.

There was only one criterion:
Could he play?

“O
KAY, BOYS,”
M
R.
S
MITH,
the tallest of the two security men, said. “First, let’s run down the list of places the commissioner’s office has placed off limits in Texas.”

The other agent, Mr. Jones, had assembled a flip chart and stand. He held a long wooden rubber-tipped pointer in his right hand and slapped it lightly against his leg. He was wearing a dark-blue suit and brown oxford shoes with thick soles.

“Turn over to the Texas list, J. Edgar,” the tall security man said. He, too, was in a dark-blue suit, but his shoes were black wingtips with tassels. J. Edgar Jones flipped through the ring-bound cards, quickly finding the one headed “Texas.”

“Now, these are the places that
known gamblers
frequent,” the tall security man said. “And the commissioner expects you all to steer clear of these places year-round. You’ll each get a mimeo with the off-limits lists of all the League cities. Keep them with you when you travel and do not frequent any of the establishments listed.” The tall man looked around the room as if he expected questions or confessions from the players. A few coughed and shuffled their feet. Kimball stared blankly at the blackboard, ignoring the whole proceeding.

“Know the places in your city by heart.”

The phrase startled Taylor Rusk.
“By heart?”

“And don’t frequent those places. Gamblers can use any piece of information that comes from inside the locker room to give them a little extra edge. Injuries especially, but personal things, like family trouble or who is drinking too much.... That can all help the gambler to increase his edge and we don’t want to do that.”

Taylor nodded absently and wondered who the gambler increased his edge against. And why the League sent these two particular security men to explain it to the Franchise.

“Now, tonight we’ve got a special treat for you fellows ...”

“Treat?” Taylor whispered to Hendrix. “
Treat?
Who the fuck are these guys?”

Hendrix hunched over to Taylor and whispered, “Investico. A private security company hired by the League. They come around to every team every year. Investico’s owned by Casino International and they specialize in gambling security. They usually hire ex-FBI and CIA men, guys who can keep things secret, covered up. They’re the ones who’ll tap your phone if you ever get out of line.”

“... one of the all-time great defensive linesmen, Leroy Weller. Ten years in the Pro Bowl....” J. Edgar Jones got his job by catching the eldest daughter of the LA franchise owner with two ounces of cocaine packed in a condom and inserted in her vagina on a return trip from Peru. J. Edgar saved her from a major bust and his reward was half of the coke and a job in League security. The commissioner personally placed him with Investico.

The incident gave Robbie Burden the hammer he needed to force the Marconi family to put the Los Angeles franchise on the market, eventually to be purchased by the Portus family, allies of Commissioner Burden. J. Edgar liked his work. It paid well.

“... We’re talking a class guy and Hall of Famer ...” J. Edgar was stem-winding. He loved this part of the job. “... I give you a real man of courage: Leroy Weller.” The agent led the light applause.

“Jesus, Taylor, you know what this sounds like?”

“An AA meeting. No wonder Red and Dick Conly aren’t here. What the fuck are
we
doing here?” Taylor put his head down.

Leroy Weller walked stiffly to the front of the old junior-college classroom with its black chalkboard and old heavy wooden chairs and desk with thirty years of grafitti.

“Hi, fellas. I’m Leroy Weller and I’m suffering from the disease of chemical dependency.”

“Jesus, this is pitiful.”

“So who gives a shit?”

“Give the poor bastard a break,” Taylor hissed. “Confessing drug and alcohol dependence is his gig now.”

“The lousy asshole,” Hendrix whispered. “He made big dollars. Anyone in the Pro Bowl ten years made big bucks.”

Weller told the whole gory story of his fall from success and wealth in pursuit of illegal marijuana and two-thousand-dollar-per-ounce cocaine, finally running afoul of the law when “a friend” informed on him. “It saved my life,” he said. “I spent ten thousand dollars a week on cocaine alone. So don’t none of you hotshot rookies think you can handle it. I couldn’t handle it and I’m a hell of a man. I spent everything I had. I ran my home, car and children’s clothes up my nose. I started free-basing, fucking white women. I was thinking I was a big-time football player. Well, I was
shit
!” Leroy Weller began pacing and ranting like a revivalist. J. Edgar Jones stood grinning like an approving deacon.