The Franchise (72 page)

Taylor turned and walked quickly to the elevator, riding it to nine. He disembarked and used his key for the private penthouse elevator.

Taylor Rusk disappeared.

He no longer attended team meetings. Instead the quarterback would meet with Greg Moore, Amos Burns, Speedo, Danny Lewis and Ron Savage, the tight end, after curfew in Red Kilroy’s room. They knew Denver’s defense better than Denver, thanks to R.D. Locke. The backs and ends discussed routes—and studied automatic adjustments. He met with Ox and the line at Red’s early in the morning before breakfast. The preparation was in quiet, patient exhaustive detail.

All practices were closed.

Major Jack “Pat” Garrett of Security Services, Inc., lost command of the practice-field security. Offensively Texas added nothing. They just practiced execution and mental toughness. They spent their time bringing plays to a high polish, planning for the unexpected.

Jerry from the Denver
Post
wrote a column the next day about his meeting with Taylor Rusk and how the Pistols’ quarterback had explained that the press had been duped. It went out on the wire.

The media went wild. There were stories about “alleged meetings” and “an alleged man in a hallway.” There were mathematical analyses proving that Taylor had not yet been born when he claimed to have killed Hitler. Taylor Rusk’s imposter became
the
story of the Super Bowl.

Taylor stayed in his suite on twenty-five. He called the apartment, but Lamar Jean Lukas never answered. Taylor knew he was there, but Lamar no longer pretended to be Taylor Rusk. He was too busy planning his Super Sunday.

T
AYLOR TOOK A LONG
bath in the eight-foot-square black marble tub. Four whirlpool jets pummeled his tired body. The water was hot and deep, and the quarterback stretched out full length, floating in the primal warmth.

Breathing deep and slow, he concentrated on the small red spot that appeared when he closed his eyes, emptying his mind of all thoughts, watching the spot grow larger while muscle tissue released stored emotional and physical tension in twinges and twitches.

No longer embodied, Taylor drifted through this inner universe in a free-floating consciousness. A distant ringing slowly brought him back. He began to lose the rhythm of his breathing. The red spot grew smaller, the ringing louder. He finally opened his eyes to remember who and where he was.

And why.

The phone was conveniently mounted on the wall next to the tub. Taylor reached it, having to move only his left arm.

“Yeah?” Taylor answered on the fifteenth ring.

“What took you so long?” It was Bob Travers, Wendy Chandler’s bodyguard, calling from the car. “Where were you?”

“Damned if I know.” Taylor shifted slightly so one of the water jets pounded on his right shoulder. “A long way off.”

“We’ll be at the hotel in fifteen minutes,” Bob continued. “Miss Chandler has a key to the elevator and we’ll come right up. The boy is asleep. You might want to get his bed ready.”

“Fine.” Taylor still floated weightlessly in the hot swirling water. “Make certain no one sees you use the elevator. The press has the hotel staked out, trying to find us.”

“Anybody sees us, I’ll kill them.” Bob hung up, leaving Taylor to wonder if he meant what he said.

Taylor put down the phone and picked up the playbook from the shelf next to the tub. He leafed through the book, looking for any plays that had been left out of the game plan that might be useful. He found no additional plays. The plan he and Red had designed was well thought out and now depended on Sunday’s execution. Taylor only had to pull the biggest rabbits from his hat, faster and in greater numbers than ever before.

Taylor studied the interesting work that Randall had done with his felt pens and crayons all through the book. In some places the boy had merely tinted various colors on the
X’
s and
O’s
or added additional marks, more
X’
s,
O’
s, sometimes lines and arrows, even a couple of flowers.

On the backs of other pages Randall had drawn pictures: houses and cars, horses and cows, airplanes and clouds, several different-sized and -colored guns, cats and dogs and stick people of various shapes, sizes and questionable gender.

On the page illustrating the Power Sweep with pinch block adjustments for the tight end, Taylor found a green crayon drawing of three stick people holding hands: one small child, a medium-size woman and a tall man wearing what appeared to be a football helmet. It took the quarterback a moment to realize that he was looking at Randall’s conception of his family and that he had included Taylor.

He got out of the tub, dried off, tore the page from the playbook and taped it to the mirror over the sink. The quarterback smiled at himself in the glass and walked to the adjoining bedroom to pull on a gray sweat suit.

He was a very happy man.

With his quarterback in seclusion, Red Kilroy refused to cooperate with anyone who wanted to find Taylor. Various threats of League sanctions, Franchise reprisals and bad press relations rolled off like rain on a tin roof. Suzy and A.D. threatened to fire him. Robbie Burden threatened to fine him and the press threatened to crucify him. But Red refused to make his quarterback appear for scheduled press sessions. He also told his other players to hide out as much as possible, promising to pay any fines. Daily threats were issued, trying to force the Pistol players to be more cooperative in the week-long pregame carnival of hype.

“Distractions can lead to destruction,” Red warned. Many of the players, while staying registered in the hotel, returned secretly to their homes and families.

Red took all the heat for his players, knowing it was vital to steer them safely through the week-long minefield.

Taylor waited for his family in the penthouse.

Earlier he’d ordered an avocado-and-bean-sprout sandwich but had only eaten half. Now, clearing the old glass, plates and soft-drink bottles, Taylor put them on the room service tray and set the tray in the hall.

The day the players arrived at the hotel, Bob Travers had convinced Red to put a man in the kitchen to check the employees and oversee the preparation of players’ food.

“A little ptomaine goes a long way, Red,” the bodyguard had warned.

Bob brought in a friend from the Bexar County Health Department as a dishwasher to watch the food service and pick up information.

A computer check uncovered a newly hired cook with a felony arson conviction who two weeks earlier had been a pizza chef at a Cobianco restaurant. Bob arranged to have the cook kidnapped and held in the Piedras Negras jail until after the game.

Dick Conly paid to put two more men and a woman in the hotel kitchen to secure the food supply Conly flew in fresh from New Mexico daily.

The Cobianco brothers never knew what happened to their pizza chef.

When the private penthouse elevator started, Taylor walked through the huge suite of rooms to the large bedroom on the west side. He pulled back the covers on the king-size bed, fluffed up a pillow, drew closed the drapes and lit a Snoopy nightlight.

Taylor returned as the elevator doors slid open. Toby carried Randall. Taylor pointed him toward the bedroom and Toby crept off with the sleeping child.

Wendy followed them off the elevator, giving Taylor a hug and a kiss, which he bent to receive, an awkward motion that was difficult because of their height difference and his increasingly weakened back.

Bob got off last, his eyes reading Taylor’s face, then quickly glancing around the room. He followed Toby to the boy’s room, then began his ritual search of the huge penthouse. Bob Travers was paid a large salary to be carefully observant.

Wendy brushed past Taylor and walked into the sitting room, carrying the evening paper. She stood at the window, staring to the south, looking for the dark shape of the Pistol Dome.

“It’s still out there. I saw it this afternoon.” Taylor understood her intense gaze. “It’s moving closer but has yet to make its intentions known. It may have to be destroyed before it reproduces.”

“Where are we?” Wendy kept her eyes searching south. “The Twilight Zone?”

“The Ozone.” Taylor studied a page of the game plan shaded in blues and reds with
Randall
scrawled on the bottom in purple.

“The paper has the Pistols at fifteen while the Greek says fifteen and a half.” She waved the paper at him. “How do you score half a point?”

“Concentration and execution. Kimball Adams may have been the last quarterback good enough to do it.”

Wendy turned and looked at him, her pale-blue eyes wide; finally she blinked, gazing back outside. “How much are you paying for the Ozone?”

“Twenty-five hundred a day. It’s got six bedrooms and baths, a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view and its own elevator. What more could an American hero want?”

“You’ll lose money.” She looked around the room. “It costs more to stay here than you’ll make for playing in the Super Bowl. Win or lose.”

“Yeah.” Taylor nodded. A frown tightened his face, his mouth a line curved down at the ends. The pull flattened his nose slightly. “I was never good with money. That’s why Doc handles it.”

“Do you know how much you have?”

Taylor shook his head. “I’m scared of the damn stuff.”

Wendy slapped her leg with the rolled up newspaper. “Well, there is a certain Olympian quality about the view. Taylor Rusk, the greatest of the classical Hellenistic quarterbacks. Did you discuss the line with the gods?”

“We were kicking the spread around when Bob called.” Taylor was straight-faced. “Zeus wants to bet the spread, but Athena will bring him around. She hangs out with the oddsmaker at Delphi. They’ll bet on us, but whether they’ll help ...” Taylor shrugged. “Gods can be such vindictive assholes. Look what they did to Prometheus just for giving a guy a light.”

Wendy looked out at the darkening blue sky and the sparkling city. “All pretty epic, Taylor.”

“It beats the Armadillo Ranch.”

“Yes, it does,” Wendy agreed. “You do things in a truly heroic style.”

“This is serious ritual.”

“Well, keep yourself healthy and profound,” Wendy said. “Spend time contemplating the Pistol Dome and stretching your Achilles tendon.”

“Despite the nay-sayers among the gods and the doubts and teasing of my favorite goddess”—he glanced at Wendy—“I shall go forth on Sunday and fulfill the immortality fetish that all America has hungered for since God went on the nod. History will compare it to the parting of the Red Sea—”

“Or the parting of your hair,” Wendy cut him off, tossing the newspaper at him.
“Read.”

The headline read:

BILLY JOE HARDESTY EVANGELICAL LIFE, INC.,

SUED BY CYRUS CHANDLER WIDOW

Taylor read the copy aloud:

The widow of the founder of The Texas Pistols Football Club has filed suit against BJHEL, Inc., claiming that Reverend Hardesty used lies and fraud to persuade her late husband, Cyrus Chandler, to sign over extensive property to BJHEL, Inc.

Charlie Stillman, attorney for Suzanne Ballard Chandler, filed the suit in the Ninety-seventh District Court. Mr. Chandler, Stillman said, “was a devoutly religious man, and Billy Joe Hardesty took advantage of his trusting Christian nature to swindle him. We will prove that in court.”

“If Stillman can convince a jury my father was a trusting Christian man, anything is possible.”

Taylor returned to reading.

Rev. Hardesty claimed that the Devil was controlling Mrs. Chandler and encouraged all his followers to pray for her soul. Hardesty quoted Scripture as his support and guide:

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

“Billy Joe is explaining sky diving?”

“If I know my Scripture,” Wendy said, “that is First Thessalonians, fourth chapter, verses sixteen and seventeen, and has to do with the Rapture.”

“It sounds like an experimental ballet company.”

“It’s amazing that people believe Billy Joe.”

“In the Ninety-seventh District Court the alternative will be to believe Suzy.”

“Which reminds me, I have been giving a little thought to the issue of business. If we do business, we better
do business.
I’d like for us to meet with my lawyer.”

“So he can cut himself a slice off me?” Taylor interrupted. “No, thanks.”

“But ...”

“End of discussion,” Taylor said. “I don’t need a lawyer to explain Sunday. I will do what is right and proper at the time. I
like
being a hero.”

Taylor walked up and gripped her shoulders in his oversize scarred hands. She leaned back against him, resting her head on his chest. He could feel her warmth; the crushed-flower smell of her filled his head. She relaxed and gently fitted her soft contours against his body. He gathered her to him, his hands sliding across her back, her ribs. He bent, kissing the hollow at her neck and shoulder. Her supple, pliant body stiffened.

“What do we do with the Franchise?” she asked. “Can we take it and run?”

“I don’t know,” Taylor said. “It’s not the price we pay,” he mocked, “but the fee the lawyer earns.”

Wendy Chandler disengaged and drifted away with grace and determination. She shivered, rubbing her arms with her slender hands. It was cool out; a front had pushed out of the panhandle, clearing the air. The dying sun cast a pink glow in the high blue sky.

Taylor grabbed the playbook. “These are pretty good field notes on the culture and the kind of man who survives and thrives in this system. We could research the problem all night.” He pointed at the pages of X
’
s and
O’
s, arrows and lines. “I offer myself as your case study in athletic archaeology and anthropology.” Taylor pulled off his sweat shirt.