The Franchise (34 page)

Winners got $3,000, losers got $1,800. Everybody got a free room plus twenty dollars a day. Twenty dollars didn’t go very far so it was
easy
not to confuse it with the Super Bowl. When Bobby Hendrix complained to the Union about the players being forced to play the charity games, Terry Dudley, the director, told him it was good for the players’ image.

Taylor and Bobby were sharing a third-floor room. Rain had canceled that afternoon’s practice. Hendrix dialed the phone as Taylor walked to the window. The rain had since stopped, but it was still windy and cloudy. Threatening weather. Red never practiced during threatening weather in Texas because he always watched the complete practice from his metal tower, which stood above the practice field like a lightning rod.

“I don’t believe in God,” Red said, “but why give the son of a bitch a free shot? He may not believe in me either. You never know: God might think he’s Vince Lombardi.”

Taylor looked out the hotel window down at the abandoned swimming pool. Rows of empty wooden chairs waited for greasy, fat, old people to come stretch out in the promised Florida sun, bake themselves juicy-brown and talk through their noses about New York and New Jersey.

Hendrix lay on his bed in his underwear, talking on the phone to his wife, Ginny. The first season, Ginny had moved the whole family to her daddy’s Houston place in River Oaks. They had lived there ever since, with Bobby joining them in the off-season.

Ginny Savas had been born and raised in wealthy River Oaks and met Bobby when he came to play scholarship football for Rice. Ginny Hendrix’s father, Gus Savas, a Houston wildcatter with a River Oaks mansion, was the son of Savas Savas, which in Greek means Sam Sam, a name given by some immigration bureaucrat who was baffled by the number of letters in Pouloupodopoulus.

Ginny was Gus Savas’s only child, and Gus doted on her. After her mother died, she often accompanied her father to the elaborate parties of the oil-rich. The parties were dazzling and fascinating, always interesting, sometimes scary. There were always a few European counts and chinless ladies doddering about in jewels by Cartier. There were sleek, handsome South Americans and Mexicans, the wickedly exciting sheiks and shahs and princes. Ginny Savas watched the antics of her friends and neighbors with fear and delight. She saw power and what it did and she was afraid of it. She knew she would never marry among her friends and she didn’t. She refused to debut in Houston society. She married Bobby Hendrix their senior year at Rice. They moved to Cleveland, where he caught passes and she raised children. She
liked
Cleveland.

Bobby and Ginny had four boys. The two oldest were sixteen and nineteen. The two youngest were four and six. Bobby reminded Ginny of her father. He was gentle and subtly powerful through the command of his skills. It thrilled her to watch that combination of gentleness and power work on a football field. It thrilled Gus too. Ginny was correct in assessing the similarities of her husband and father and they became a family. Gus brought Bobby into the oil business and made him a little money. Guys like Bobby from the Old League didn’t get much from the new pension plan. It was for the new players. Though he had played eighteen years, only six of the years came under the new pension. Bobby could never quite understand how the pension fund seemed to be getting smaller.

“Now that the Cleveland property is sold,” Hendrix said into the phone to his wife in River Oaks, “tell Gus to go ahead and talk the drilling deal with Harrison H. Harrison at Venture Capital Offshore.... You too.... Okay.... Ginny, kiss the kids for me. I’ll try and get to Houston right after the game. This damp, cold weather here is killing my knees, and the goddam Butazolidin keeps making me sick.”

Harrison H. Harrison? ... VCO? ... Spur? ...
Taylor thought he had better warn Bobby as he continued to listen, dropping his gaze down to the empty pool.

A small child in jeans, tiny cowboy boots, a rough-cut jacket and a silverbelly hat toddled out. A woman followed the child into the pool area. A plastic partition mounted on the sea wall protected the pool and patio from the direct blasts of the ocean wind. The child slowly made his way toward the pool, winding in and out of the rows and rows of empty wooden chaise longues.

“I don’t even know if I’ll play Sunday,” Hendrix was saying into the phone. “If Gus can push Harrison’s VCO deal through, I don’t think I’ll play after next year. I’m taking a lot of shit from Conly about being the Union rep. I’m tired and lonely and want to come home.” Hendrix crossed his stringy red-haired legs.

Taylor looked over at the freckled man for a moment to see if he meant all that. Hendrix nodded he did.

Taylor looked back down at the woman and child wandering in the slick desolation of the rain-blown pool area. The blue-green pool rippled with the wind. There was something familiar about the woman—in her movements and how she carried her body. She followed the boy slowly to the far side of the pool, then directed him into one of the cabanas, out of the threatening weather. The ocean was gray and white-flecked. Taylor tried to focus on the woman. He wiped the window glass clean. It was too fair to see. The boy ran in and out of the cabana, then began jumping from one wooden chaise to the next. There even seemed a familiarity about the boy.

“Red wants me to come back as player-coach.” Hendrix had the phone hooked on his shoulder. “But the commissioner and Cyrus don’t want me around because of my Union work. It won’t be much money and I’d have to take their shit.”

Hendrix suddenly stopped talking and raised his eyebrows. His wife was giving an argument. Looking at Taylor, he pointed at the phone and smiled. “No ... no ...” he interrupted, “Red could protect me, sure, but that’s not it. Playing on Sunday is the only real protection from the shit, and I won’t be playing much on Sunday anymore.” Hendrix stopped. “No. No,” he said finally.

Taylor looked back down at the woman and child out in the weather. He stared at the woman, now partially hidden in the shadows of the green-and-white-striped cabana. The boy had taken off his cowboy hat and seemed to be looking directly up at Taylor. He had long black thick hair. Taylor waved and the child waved back.

“Since when do you need a blood test to buy insurance?” Hendrix interrupted his wife on the phone as Taylor snatched up his purple and white rain jacket, which had the crossed Walker Colts silkscreened in white on the back above the four-inch letters reading
TEXAS
.

“Okay. Okay. Tell Gus I’ll have a blood test as soon as I get to Houston,” Hendrix said. “Ginny, tell the kids ...”

The closing door cut Hendrix off in mid-sentence. Taylor was heading down to the pool.

“I
HATE IT WHEN
it rains.” Suzy Ballard looked out on the rainy Atlantic from Dick Conly’s penthouse. “It makes me sad.”

“Not me,” the general manager called out from the bathroom. “Rainy days always make me feel like I don’t have to do anything. My daddy was a cotton farmer on a small scale.” Conly was shaving with a straight razor, a habit he had picked up from his father. “We were so poor, Daddy had to slice the fatback so thin, it didn’t have but one side.” He chuckled. “He farmed on a scale so small as to be downright painful. We’d get a quarter for skipping dinner, then Daddy’d steal the twenty-five cents while we slept and make us go without breakfast for losing it.” Conly had a towel wrapped around his waist. His skin was white and pale; his abdomen was flabby, almost swollen and blue-veined. “I love rainy days.” Conly smiled and continued shaving. “But then, I enjoyed World War Two.”

“Well, I hate rain.” Suzy poured another glass of champagne. She was angry at the rain and at Conly for liking it. She was just generally angry. “It’s true, you know? We’re ninety-eight percent water like the rain and that miserable gray ocean. Why shouldn’t it affect us?” Suzy snapped.

“I didn’t say it shouldn’t,” Conly said. “I just said it made me happy because on rainy days I don’t do anything but what I want, and what I want is you.” He finished shaving and looking in the mirror. He sucked at his protruding stomach with muscles that existed only in memory. He pulled the towel up higher and brushed his teeth.

“All I want is you, too, honey,” Suzy deadpanned, and stuck her tongue out at the bathroom wall. “A.D. says all the players are mad because they’re going to lose money down here and can’t afford to bring their families. The Jew guy that owns Miami is paying for everything and letting the players pocket the twenty dollars a day. And he flew the wives down free.”

Sprinkling aftershave in his palm, rubbing his hands together and slapping lightly at his face, Dick winced as the alcohol found and burned each nick of the razor. “What else does A.D. say?” Dick Conly held a hand mirror up behind his head and carefully placed his remaining hair over the growing baldness.

“He says Eddie Dolan is a shitty defensive coach.”

“And A.D. is better, right?”

“Right,” she spit back. It infuriated her when Conly so quickly uncovered her motives and plans.

“I told you, Suzybelle”—Conly shrugged into a thick blue terry-cloth robe—“Don’t try and shit a shitter. I got him the job in the front office, and Cyrus likes him, but Red won’t take him as a coach. Red doesn’t trust him. That’s why he cut him.”

“He’d make a good assistant GM,” she said.

Dick laughed. “I’ll have to think about that.”

Conly’s laugh made Suzy mad and want to hurt someone, something. Dick Conly, maybe herself. She walked over and plopped down on the bed and went through Conly’s wallet. She went through his wallet a lot. Sometimes she took things; sometimes she just looked. She found a new business card:

R.T. TINY WALTON

CONSULTANT

It listed a post-office box in Fort Worth and an 800 number.

“Who’s Tiny Walton?” she yelled in to Conly.

“You going through my wallet again?”

“Yes. Who is Tiny Walton?”

“What does it say on the card?” Dick Conly took one last look at himself, denied what he saw and walked into the bedroom.

“Consultant.”

“Then he must consult.” He went to the bar and poured a glass of straight whiskey. He drank it down like water.

Suzy was curled on her side, Conly’s wallet open on the bed.

The general manager walked over to the window, looked down for a moment, then pulled the drapes. The room, turned dark.

“Time to quit reading and go to bed, children.” He walked to the bed and took the card and wallet, placing them on the bedside table. “Some real jerks in this world.”

“Who? Tiny Walton?”

“No. Nobody calls Tiny a jerk.” Conly pulled the bed covers back, jerking them from beneath Suzy, who sucked her thumb in the darkness. “There’s two people and a little kid down there by the pool. Got that kid out in this weather. I can’t believe some parents.” He pulled at the knotted cord of his robe and crawled, naked, into bed, groping at Suzy’s gown, pushing it up her legs.

“I can’t believe it, the Father of the Year is groping me,” Suzy said as she lay there. It was the meanest thing she could of think to say, but Dick continued as if he hadn’t heard a word. He drank constantly to blot out the picture of his dead son in the back of the car. He had almost succeeded
. Almost
.

He rubbed himself against Suzy while she lay motionless.

“I’m not in the mood.” Suzy pushed his hands away. “You want to know what A.D. said about Bobby Hendrix?”

“No, I don’t.” Conly scrambled after her across the large bed as she pushed and evaded him.

“He said Hendrix knows about Cyrus Chandler scalping tickets and not reporting the income.”

Conly immediately lost what were the beginnings of a pretty good erection. He sat up and said softly and too calmly, “What?”

“Bobby Hendrix told A.D. that Cyrus scalped tickets with the Cobianco brothers.”

“Did Hendrix say where he heard that?”

“No.” Suzy tried to look thoughtful and helpful, even if the room was dark. “But Hendrix is going to bring it up at the Union Negotiators and the Management Council’s next meeting.” Suzy smiled in the dark and was feeling better, less angry. She had hurt someone, she thought—Dick Conly. It was a lie. Not the part about scalping and evading taxes: That was true because A.D. had brought the Cobianco boys’ scheme to Cyrus. Suzy had seen the proof—notes and lists of tickets and package deals, including charter planes, block-booked hotels and tickets. It was all done through the Kimball Adams Travel Agency in New York City.

The lie was that Bobby Hendrix knew.

Suzy knew both Cyrus and Conly disliked Bobby Hendrix’s work as player representative to the Union. She felt the energy go out of the naked man next to her. He lay back and crossed his arms behind his head. Dick Conly was worried. If Cyrus Chandler was scalping tickets, after Dick had warned him not to, it was almost certain the Cobianco brothers were involved. He had cautioned Cyrus about them many times.

Suzy crawled back over to him and began to kiss and caress him.

“Come on, baby,” Suzy whispered, “don’t let it worry your old head. Let’s you and me have some fun.” She rubbed and licked and sucked, but as she had expected, nothing would happen now. Dick Conly lay impotent on the big bed. Suzy loved every second of it. “You should quit this job. Look what it’s doing to our sex life.”

“Are you sure?” Conly said weakly at one point.

“That’s what A.D. said Hendrix told him.” Suzy crouched between his legs and reveled in various vain attempts to rouse him. She stopped. “You quit this job, give it to A.D. Koster and we’ll go off together to your mountain place in New Mexico.”

Conly’s eyes unfocused. “The Pecos Mountains,” he said wistfully.

They were silent for a time. “You don’t do that, do you?” she asked suddenly.

“What?” Dick snapped back from his daydream refuge.

“Scalp tickets? Evade taxes?”

“No ... no, of course not.”

“Good. Good,” she said, cupping his genitals. “Otherwise it would be Bobby Hendrix who’d have you by the balls instead of me.”