The Franchise (56 page)

They had been searching east of the house below the bluff in overgrown pastureland, creeping and slogging through the bottomland mud and rain for an hour. Taylor had fallen several times and they were about to give up, when the roar of a big engine reached them through the pounding of the storm.

Moving toward the sound, they found they were seventy-five yards from a big, solid black Ford Bronco.

The Bronco had brought the killers in overland along the canyons of Dead Man Creek. Now, going out, they had gotten mired in the rain-soaked bottomland. The high-riding Bronco slid and slipped along the edge of a hill, trying to get around the water that overflowed the creek and filled the pasture they easily crossed earlier. The Ford engine screamed and cried, but the Bronco made little headway; it was slipping sideways.

Bob watched through his infrared binoculars.

“I make out three of them,” he said. “The driver is a guy called the Leech. Lennie the Leech. He works for the Cobianco brothers as business agent for the Laborers Union. The big guy riding in front is Tiny Walton.” Bob took the binoculars away from his face. “I can’t make out the guy in the back, but he looks bigger than Tiny Walton.”

“Jesus,” Taylor gasped, “bigger than Tiny Walton?” He patted at the heavy revolver in his poncho pocket.

“Well?” Bob was looking at Taylor. “What’s your verdict?”

“What?”

“Your verdict?” Bob repeated, wrapping the rifle sling around his arm and fitting his eye to the Starlight sniper scope. “Did they do it? Or are they just out here on a mushroom hunt?”

“They did it.”

“Okay,” Bob said, “take these infrareds and watch that Bronco. Keep track of anybody who gets out. I can only concentrate on one at a time. I don’t want any surprises.”

Bob snugged the butt of the AR-15 against his shoulder. He was in the prone position, legs splayed, elbow on the ground, the sling wrapped tightly.

Taylor put the glasses to his eyes. The car was facing them but slightly angled down the grade of the hill, and the headlights diffused into the heavy rain. Taylor could see the driver and Tiny Walton through the windshield. The hulking form in the backseat was unrecognizable.

Pop ... pop ... pop ... the rifle crackled hot death from its muzzle. Bob had barely touched the trigger.

Taylor’s ears rang. He kept the binoculars on the Bronco. Bob had aimed directly at Lennie the Leech’s sternum; the first shot shattered the windshield, deflecting the tumbling slug down into Lennie the Leech’s bowels, ripping and tearing through his intestines and blowing a large portion of his ass off as it exited near his rectum, passed through the seat and buried itself in the floorboard.

Bob raked the car with three short bursts of fire as he searched with the scope for his next target. Just as the cross hairs found him, Tiny Walton dived out the door and Bob shredded the seat with six tiny buzz saws.

Tiny’s open door turned on the interior light. The huge man in the backseat was a perfect target. Bob put three slugs into his chest, slashing the lungs and heart, shattering his shoulder blades and cutting his spinal cord.

“Where’s Tiny?” Bob was swinging the gun.

Taylor had followed Tiny with the infrared glasses. He ran and slipped and fell and splashed across the open glade. Tiny was moving with amazing speed despite his size and the condition of the terrain.

“To the left, fifty yards from the car,” Taylor said. “He’s heading for that small ridge line.”

“I can’t find him in the scope.” Bob continued to swing the rifle. “There he is. How did he get that far?”

Bob emptied the clip at the scrambling, crawfishing, running, stumbling fat man. Taylor watched the slugs kick up mud and water around Tiny. At Bob’s last shot, Tiny fell out of sight into a small ravine.

“I think you got him with that last one,” Taylor said.

“Keep the glasses on the spot you last saw him.” Bob removed and reversed the magazine, slamming the other clip into the gun, emptying it at the edge of the ravine where the fat man had fallen. Dirt and mud and rock chips flew, but Taylor didn’t see Tiny.

“Shit! He’s gone. I missed the son of a bitch. Okay, quick, check the car carefully, then go back to the house and button up.” Bob was nervous. “Move! He knows we’re after him now. I ain’t
that
anxious to kill him. Did you see him carrying anything?”

“No, his hands were empty.”

Inside the gore-splattered Bronco, they found a package bound in heavy paper and wrapped in plastic. The killers had found something. Taylor wondered how long it had taken before Tommy told them where it was hidden.

While Bob scanned the ravine once more, Taylor stuck the package under his arm and stood there in the driving cold rain.

They were swimming with sharks.

T
AYLOR DROPPED THE
package on the kitchen table. Toby locked all the doors and secured the shutters before turning on a light.

“Shouldn’t we call somebody?” Wendy said. “Doc finally went to the trouble to put a phone in here—”

“Lines are cut,” Toby interrupted. “Already checked. I can get on the car radio, but I doubt I can raise the sheriff with the storm.”

“Never mind, Toby,” Bob cautioned his partner. “Let’s think a minute. Tiny Walton is out there somewhere. Scout around the house and make sure the fat bastard didn’t circle back here.”

Bob turned the light off. Toby opened the kitchen door and slipped out into the rain. The lightning and thunder had begun again.

Bob turned the small table lamp on again. The three people remaining in the kitchen looked at the bulky brown package.

“Should we open it?” Wendy looked first at Taylor, then at Bob.

“If we open it”—Bob looked intently at the package—“we can never tell the law that we found it. We got enough explaining to do.”

Taylor touched the wet plastic and thought of the ravaged body hanging from the beam in the bunkhouse, flesh ripped, burned away, ears and fingers cut off. Taylor slowly tore the plastic wrapping away and then split the brown paper.

Inside the package were hundreds of copies of internal documents from Chandler Industries, Inc.; The Texas Pistols Football Club, Inc.; The Football League Commissioner’s Office, the newly formed Domed Stadium Authority and Cobianco Brothers Construction, plus personal business correspondence from officials of the various companies, the commissioner, US Senator Thompson, Cyrus Chandler, Don Cobianco and various other people. Some of the names Taylor recognized, others he didn’t.

Across the top of the stack was a small scrap of paper with the words “Tommy ... This here is how it all works and why. You can’t say I’m not a clever son of a bitch. D.T.”

“Deep Threat,” Bob said. “It’s what they were after. If Tiny survives tonight and gets back to the Cobianco brothers, they will assume that
we
got the package.”

“You think they knew what was in this?” Taylor shuffled through copies of letters to Kimball Adams’s travel agency from the commissioner offering five thousand tickets to the Pistol Dome Super Bowl at $450 per ticket. Four hundred dollars over the face value. The letter explained how Kimball could then package Super Bowl trips by block-booking hotel rooms before the commissioner announced the Super Bowl location, then chartering airplanes from New York, LA and Las Vegas. Kimball would charge $100 more per Super Bowl ticket and $200 extra a room. He was to split that profit with the commissioner in cash and assume the tax liability.

League Commissioner Robbie Burden cleared $2,750,000 in cash just from the deal with Kimball Adams Travel.

Two other letters outlined similar deals with travel agents in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The commissioner would walk away from the Pistol Dome Super Bowl with a total cash rake-off of $8,250,000. At the bottom of one of the deal letters was scrawled the name and numbered account in a Bahamian Bank.

The Bahama Freeport Bank Ltd.... Acct. #23765 ... He will carry it aboard the Cobianco brothers’ boat
Momma
in Corpus Christi after the game, straight to Freeport, drop the money, then cruise a few islands while planning next year’s deal. I think the Cobiancos get a carrying charge.

The note was initialed “D.T.”

“Eight and a quarter million dollars. My God.” Wendy sat down heavily in the creaking wooden captain’s chair.

“That’s tax-free cash.” Bob perched on the wobbly stool. Taylor paced back and forth in the kitchen, then walked into the living room and tossed another mesquite block on the fire.

“Taylor. Taylor,” Wendy called from the kitchen, “look what Bob found.”

Taylor returned to the kitchen, where Bob was unfolding a large paper diagram of the interlocking connections between the professional football teams and the various organized crime families around the country.

“We should show this to League Security,” Wendy said. Taylor and Bob looked at each other.

“League Security is run by a company called Investico,” Bob said, “which is staffed by guys from Justice, FBI, and CIA. One of those guys, J. Edgar Jones, is the liaison between League Security and Investico. They are all scumbag hired guns who try to discourage overzealous lawmen and use their old agency contacts to cover up, short circuit or obstruct any investigations by law enforcement agencies. They keep the house clean by sweeping everything and everybody under the rug. Investico is owned by Casinos International, which is divided between Mob families from New Orleans, Chicago and California. They started it as a joint venture police and terror squad to protect their casinos in Cuba and the Carribean ... nice little family business. The whole operation moved to New Orleans when Castro ran them out of Cuba. A Lebanese named Kazan is the Man. Cyrus and Dick did business with him—legitimate as far as I know.” Bob paused and thought. “The story I heard was that Old Amos got the Man into the US from the Middle East through Mexico without a passport during World War Two.... It’s just a story. The Mob families were into professional football because of the betting. In LA, Marconi would bet five hundred thousand a week at the end of the season when they had the division wrapped up. He would bet against LA, then leave star players at home.
That’s
where the money was in those days. Fixing games. But Marconi was getting hard to handle, and several owners and the commissioner wanted him out.”

Bob looked through papers to compare what he found to the chart Deep Threat made for Tommy McNamara.

“I guess calling the League office is a bad idea?” Wendy was confused.

“These are smart, thorough, mean sons-a-bitches who’ve been into this a long time.” Bob scanned the bundle. “That boy lying out in the bunkhouse wasn’t dumb, but sometimes you don’t know you’re holding a bomb until it blows.”

“Bobby Hendrix wasn’t dumb either,” Taylor said.

“I can’t believe my father would be part of all this.” Wendy seemed about to cry.

“Who knows?” Taylor said. “Gambling wasn’t what Conly saw in the Franchise. He saw an incredible tax shelter and ever-increasing TV money. Here’s a letter to Senator Thompson from Conly urging antitrust exemption to allow the second merger and Cyrus didn’t even have the Franchise yet. You think he had plans? ‘For the good of the game,’ he says.” Taylor laughed. “And here’s the letter from Thompson saying that it’s in the bag. Here’s another letter about getting complete antitrust exemptions. Thompson says that he’ll need help with liberals and labor on the Hill.... Here’s another letter about deregulating broadcast and pay-TV and abolishing the FCC.... Jesus! The foxes will be in the hen house after that!”

“They’re planning to stamp out white-collar crime by making it legal,” Bob added, and continued his search through the stacks of papers, stopping now and then to trace a name on a letter to a spot on the chart. “If this is right, there are more than a few teams in the League influenced by organized crime. The Pistols aren’t listed; Conly saw to that. He knew you couldn’t get in bed with those bastards and ever get out again.” Bob shuffled through more papers.

“Conly’s gone now,” Wendy said.

“It used to be the gambling; hell, the Memphis franchise was won in a poker game. But now the legitimate money is so good ...” Bob studied the chart. “The Kansas City Mob, the Chicago Mob, the Florida Mob, the New Orleans Mob.” Bob pulled a two-page sheet out of the stack. It was a complete financial summary of the Texas Pistols’ previous season. “Cyrus doesn’t have to fix games and beat point spreads, not with these numbers.”

“That doesn’t mean A.D. and Suzy don’t.” Taylor tapped the two pages of figures that he held. “Look at the gross revenue for the Pistols for last year alone.” His index finger hit right on the numbers. “Twenty-eight million, four hundred thousand. And the next TV contract will be double at least. A lot more from pay-television. Pay-television would mean billions of dollars. Billions! Dick Conly’s whole operation is a work of art. Greed operating in the medium of creative accounting and government relations.” Taylor handed the pages to Bob. “And the only hurdle left is one they’d hoped Charlie Stillman had handled years ago.”

Wendy had her elbows on the kitchen table, her chin in her hands and her eyes glazed at the pile of documents, letters and contracts.

“What’s that?” she asked wearily, as if in a trance.

“The Union,” Taylor said. “Hendrix got Stillman out and Terry Dudley in. These guys are so greedy that billions of dollars still won’t be enough to go around and they’ll still be squabbling and killing each other, but in the meantime they’ll want the Union back. They’ll want big labor support if they’re ever going to get these pay-TV and antitrust and deregulation schemes through Congress.”

“The Union?”
Wendy jerked up out of her trance. “Are you kidding?”

“I could take these papers,” Taylor said, “show them to Terry Dudley, have him make the financial information public, and cause all sorts of public reaction. Even Senator Thompson is ultimately responsible to the ballot box.”

“No!” Wendy interrupted. “Absolutely not. They’ll kill you too.”

“We don’t have lots of options. The fight has started and we don’t have a choice,” Taylor said. “Besides, I thought you wanted to take over the Franchise.”