The Franchise (71 page)

Middle linebacker Margene Brinkley would talk Red Kilroy out of calling plays by Sunday or, as he had in the past, would simply ignore him.

Red would not remember. The stereo played.

          
... my soul cried out for rest

          
and the end is not in sight ...

L
AMAR
J
EAN
L
UKAS
stayed around Taylor’s apartment, reading magazines and books, watching Chandler Cable and Chandler Communications’ new subscription Pay-Per-View channel, sending out for food and answering the telephone.

The telephone calls were the most fun, and whenever a caller seemed gullible, Lamar pretended to be Taylor. He said all sorts of things to all sorts of folks. He gave consolation, advice or encouragement on a variety of subjects, but lack of Super Bowl tickets was the nagging complaint. He heard many sad, urgent tales about Super Bowl tickets not being available.

Taylor Rusk watched from the penthouse as Super Sunday approached and Lamar Jean Lukas evolved into the Super Bowl quarterback. The Franchise. The object of millions of fantasies: idealistic, realistic, nihilistic. Lunatic.

Lamar’s quotes began accompanying Taylor’s photo in the newspapers and on television. Lamar/Taylor would only grant telephone interviews. Lamar was good copy. He expressed thoughts about the condition of society.

Lamar made a fascinating Taylor Rusk, predicting in an early phone call to Brent Musburger that the Pistols would beat Denver by twenty points or more.

Robbie Burden called A.D. Koster, ordering the fast-fading Pistols general manager to “protect the integrity of the League in the public eye and muzzle any talk about point spreads.”

A.D. told Red at the office. Red told Taylor at the practice field. Taylor phoned Lamar that night.

“Taylor Rusk, Super Bowl Quarterback,” came Lamar’s voice on the line. “It’s your quarter: Shoot.”

“Taylor who?” The quarterback disguised his voice.

“Rusk, Taylor Rusk. Winner of the Heisman Trophy.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Taylor? Is that you?”

Taylor watched the clouds. “Any news? Good or bad?”

“There is no good news. Nobody in the world has any tickets to the Super Bowl. Ten jillion people have called for tickets; even the governor’s office called. I told them I’d only talk to the governor.”

“I know.” Taylor nodded his head. “I read about it in the ‘Capitol Grapevine’ section of the paper. You’ve turned me into a pretty colorful guy, Lamar. Just don’t tell where I am and stop talking about point spreads or betting.”

“Understood. Maybe I’ll talk about how poor I was as a kid, stuff like that,” Lamar said. “Movie people are always looking for stories like that. Maybe I’ll give myself a wooden leg.”

“Terrific.”

“Maybe invent some childhood tragedy. A favorite dog that died a long, suffering death; the cats ate your baby duck in front of your little eyes.”

“Did I get any messages, Lamar?”

“Only requests for tickets and death threats. You are popular with a wide range of persons. I’ve talked to people who merely want to hear how you sound, to crying young girls who begged me to visit their junior high schools and to sportswriters who are so desperate for a daily story to file, they’ll believe anything.”

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“No, just that fat guy that killed Hendrix. Boy, he pisses me off. I need to shoot him.”

“I think you better remember he may shoot back.”

“Not the way I do it.” Lamar chuckled. “Well, he calls in a threat or two a day. I’m sure he’s got money down against you. How come no beautiful young chicks call up and come over or something?”

“They don’t need Super Bowl tickets,” Taylor answered. “They’re the ones who have them all.”

“Well, being you isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Lamar Jean complained.

“It’s sure not what you’re cracking it up to be, Lamar. You have to stop believing your own stories.”

“If I didn’t make something up, you wouldn’t get any pussy or have any fun.”

“I don’t see how the war record you gave me in the
Sporting News
story will hold up against any scrutiny. You say I saved an ambassador’s life?”

“Pretty good story, huh?”

“It read like ‘Gunga Din,’ ‘The Knute Rockne Story’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ ”

“I said it was a godless system that made people read anything as boring as
Das Kapital.
”

“All that’s fine. Just don’t talk about betting or Tiny or the Cobianco boys to the papers unless you got forty Montagnards fully armed and in the room with you.”

“You mean in the room with
you
,” Lamar corrected. “Can I say you killed Hitler? Hand-to-hand combat with flamethrowers?”

“Fine.”

“And you got to screw a lot of women?”

“Okay. Just don’t talk about gambling, injuries or point spreads. Okay?”

Lamar hung up without a reply.

Taylor decided he might have given Lamar too much latitude and tried to call him back.

The line was busy.

T
HE TELEPHONE RANG
five times before Lamar Jean Lukas could return from the kitchen to the living room. He snatched up the receiver. “Taylor Rusk.”

“Did that chickenshit come back there yet?” It was Tiny Walton.

“Hey, Fatso, he ain’t back, but get your blubber on over here and we’ll shoot some.”

“I ain’t got time to waste on fleas and ticks. I’m just going to kill the dog. Did you give him the messages?”

“I certainly did. He said you would probably get hit by a bus ’cause you are so
fat
.”

“Tell him he can’t hide forever. He has to walk out on that field Sunday.”

“But you won’t be there. Fatso.” Lamar’s anger rose with the words in his throat. “Because, you scumbag slob,
I am the bus
and you are a crippled fat cat in the express lane.”

“Why don’t
you
come to the Super Bowl?” Tiny asked. “I’ll be there in a skybox with the high rollers. You know what I look like, now you know where I’ll be. I can get both of you on one expense account. Come get me.”

“I ain’t got a ticket.”

Tiny began to laugh. “Big man Taylor Rusk can’t even get his stooge a ticket to the Super Bowl.” Tiny laughed, wheezing and coughing.

Lamar Jean Lukas was losing control. Being a Pistol season ticket holder was like Chinese water torture. After all the shit Lamar had gone through, he still couldn’t get a ticket to the Super Bowl that was being played in the Dome he’d paid five thousand dollars to help build. Tiny Walton had a ticket. A two-bit hoodlum, hired muscle, he had a skybox ticket.

“I tell you what, dimwit”—Tiny stopped laughing—“I’ll send you a ticket. I bet you don’t show. The Pistols may not even show. And I’ll bet that if they show, they lose.”

“I don’t have any money.” Humiliated, Lamar spoke through tightly clenched teeth. “I’ll just bet. No money. Just a bet.”

“Jerk.” Tiny laughed and slammed the phone down.

Tiny Walton sent Lamar Jean Lukas a ticket to the Super Bowl. A courier service delivered it within the hour. Tiny provided opportunity and victims to a man with many motives and methods to commit murder. The Super Bowl ticket fused the furious elements of Lamar’s badly scattered and scarred mind on Super Sunday at the Pistol Dome.

T
AYLOR
R
USK WORE
the glitter T-shirt Randall gave him at Christmas to the morning meal.

“Taylor Rusk?” A short, bald writer from the Denver
Post
stopped the quarterback in the hall outside the dining room. The small man had his pad and pen ready.

Taylor nodded and slowed almost to a stop, watching the writer’s eye take in and his pen quickly note the glitter-T-shirt solution for world hunger blazed across his chest in six-inch Day-Glo sequins:

EAT THE RICH

“Taylor?” The small writer seemed to be stuck on the first question.

Taylor stopped completely and looked down at the reporter. “Yes, Jerry?” He was good at remembering names and faces. Balding Jerry had covered the Bowl Game in Taylor’s senior year. Jerry had had more hair then. “Come on, hurry up. I have to eat so I have something to throw up besides my stomach lining.”

The small reporter rocked back slightly, looking up at the six-five quarterback of the heavily favored team. Sixteen points of favor.

“I wanted to ask you about your article in yesterday’s
Times.
You said that the commissioner has shown you all the indications of a man who does not masturbate enough?”

“I said
that?
In print?”

“The
Times
,” the writer said.

“Did I offer any disclaimers?” Taylor looked anxiously past the writer to the continual lobby crowd. He shifted his body weight from foot to foot. “Did I say the evidence is purely circumstantial but based on stains or forearm size or anything like that?”

The writer glanced through his Xerox of the newspaper story.

“I don’t see anything in the story,” the writer said. “It was a telephone interview. The reporter called you at home.”

“But I’m not at home ... haven’t been for several days. I didn’t give that interview; it’s a mistake.” Taylor watched the lobby as a crowd of young boys in official Pistols jackets welled up in the hallway, pointing at Taylor and the writer.

“Actually,” Jerry said, “I’m more interested in the documents you talked about near the end of the story.”

“Documents?”
Taylor startled himself and Jerry. The boys in the Pistols jackets had broken away from the lobby crowd and were sinisterly moving toward Taylor like the Blob.

Taylor leaned down and put his hand on the writer’s shoulder. He peered at the article. “Documents?” Taylor whispered. “What did I say? Where?”

The writer pointed out the already-underlined paragraph. His index fingernail had been chewed to the quick, then gnawed to death.

“You told the
Times
that you had documents proving a nationwide network of ticket scalping, game fixes, gambling and income tax evasion totaling millions of dollars....” The writer squinted at the paper. Taylor’s eyes glazed over in shock.

“... You hinted at the involvement of political figures.” The small writer looked up, readied his pen.

“That all I said?” Taylor had broken into a fine, cold sweat. The
Times
had obviously gotten Lamar at a bad time. Tiny Walton had probably phoned in the day’s threats and insults and Lamar had lost it for a while. Taylor conceded to himself that it had probably not been a terrific idea to give so much responsibility to a man suffering from delayed-stress syndrome and attacks of acute paranoia.

“You refused to reaffirm earlier predictions that Texas would beat Denver by twenty points too. You said the commissioner threatened you, but you had crossed the line and it was a matter of honor and national security. You were a soldier, you said.”

“I did? A soldier? For who?”

The bald man tapped the Xeroxed sheet. “I thought telling the
Times
you were vital to national security was great. The Imperial Quarterback.”

Taylor thought back to the first training camp, when Lamar had shaken him awake in his dormitory bed to discuss his season ticket. Lamar Jean Lukas had always been half a bubble out of plumb.

“He’s out the whole bubble now,” Taylor mumbled. “Not that it matters.”

“What?” Bald Jerry held up his pad and pen.

“Nothing.” Taylor looked into the dining room; his teammates were eating at big round tables.

“Listen”—Taylor pointed at himself—“you recognize me, right?” Taylor kept his eyes moving.

The writer nodded his head.

“Okay.” Taylor kept looking, hoping no other media people would show up. “You’re the official spokesman on this.” Taylor looked nervously toward the lobby. The bitter taste of panic rose in his throat.

“Now, this is the truth,” Taylor whispered. “I haven’t talked to the press
once
all week. That’s the
truth.
That’s
the scoop.
”

The writer looked unconvinced but kept writing.

“I’ve been hiding out since last Friday, dodging the pressure,” Taylor explained. “The guy who looks after my apartment has been giving all those telephone interviews. He gets a little carried away and pretends to be me. He’s harmless. I have to have someone at my apartment to watch out for weirdos when I am so publicly away at the Super Bowl.”

The writer stopped and looked up at Taylor.

“You’re telling me that all of those interviews, all of those quotes”—he shook his small, discouraged bald head—“all of those stories, those miles and miles of column inches about Taylor Rusk—the man they call
the Franchise
—all those long explanations about how you audible without moving your lips ...” The writer wearied of listing the frauds.

“ ‘Taylor Rusk Saves the Ambassador’?” Taylor added helpfully.

“The war diary that ran in
The Sporting News
?” The writer showed a
new
capacity for shock. “You
made up
all those stories?” The writer began to show possibilities of outrage. Outraged sensibilities in a sportswriter seemed doubtful, but this was the Super Bowl—the ultimate.

“I didn’t make them up.
This guy
did,” Taylor argued. “I haven’t said anything to anybody until I started talking to you just now. This guy makes up the stories. He enjoys it. What’s the harm? It was okay with me until ...”

“Okay
with you?
Okay
with
you!
” The writer was furious; his pen was shaking against the paper, making tiny capillarylike scribbles. “Deliberate deception of the press and it’s
okay
with you! I’m supposed to accept that?”

“You don’t have to,” Taylor whispered, “but I’m going with it. Now, if you’ll excuse me while I disappear back into the woodwork to reappear refreshed and triumphant on Super Sunday ...”