The Franchise (76 page)

“Red.” Taylor sat in the beige corduroy wing chair by the glass wall. “It is twelve hours until kickoff.” Looking into his coach’s wild eyes, he wondered why he took the effort to explain.

“Can’t be, just can’t be.” The coach continued his pacing. “I left a wake-up call. I distinctly remember leaving a wake-up call.”

“I don’t doubt you left it, Red.” Taylor watched the worried man walk in tight circles and figure eights, weaving around the furniture in the large room. “Are you sure you got called back?”

The question stopped his pacing and lifted his eyes from their blind stare into the carpeting. It lasted only a moment.

“Certainly. Certainly.” The coach resumed his desperate travel. “Of course. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t got the call, now, would I?” Red looked at Taylor for reassurance.

“I guess not. Are you here for any particular reason except the roadwork?” Taylor watched his coach wander to the far side of the room. His shirttail was out and his pants hung baggy in the seat.

“Reason! Reason! Goddammit, boy, where’s your head?” Red whirled and strode directly at his quarterback, eyes blazing fire and fear. “It is goddam
game day!
We got things to discuss, noodles to work out of the offense, adjustments to make, some new wrinkles for the game plan.”

“Why don’t we make some trades?” Taylor leaned back. “Nobody else but Denver needs their players today.”

A momentary flicker in Red’s eyes betrayed the depth of thought he gave his quarterback’s suggestion; then it was gone and he saw Taylor watching him. “I thought you ordered some coffee? Where the hell is it?”

The phone rang.

“That’ll be it now. I’ve got to go release the elevator.” Taylor started for the phone, then looked back at Red, haggard and disheveled, sinking deeper into the madness of the Super Bowl. “By the way, Red, how did you get up here? The elevator’s locked.”

“I used the fire escape.”

“Jesus, you’re lucky Bob didn’t shoot you.” Taylor continued on to the phone.

“The son of a bitch wasn’t very polite, I’ll tell you that,” Red began his pacing again.

“He isn’t paid to be polite.” Taylor replaced the phone and walked over to unlock the elevator door.

“Where do you meet people like that, Jimmy?”

“Taylor,” the quarterback again reminded the coach.

Red ignored Taylor’s correction. “The thing to remember about these guys today is they put their pants on the same way we do—”

“But later in the day,” Taylor interrupted. “And they tuck their shirts in.”

“Fuck their goddam shirts,” Red said. “Fuck their pants too.”

The doorbell rang.

“That’s the coffee.” Bob was already there with his right hand in his coat pocket. It was the same waiter Randall had attacked earlier in the week with his Light Saber. The man looked nervously around the room as he set down the tray and then scurried back out.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Red asked.

“You look like a border patrolman.”

“He was running like it was Judgment Day. Hey!” The coach looked down at his bare wrist to check the time on a watch he hadn’t had since his last year at the University, when he had skipped a flat rock on the river, then stood slack-jawed, watching his six-thousand-dollar Rolex chasing the rock into the swift water.

“It must be getting close to time for pregame chapel.” Red kept looking at his bare wrist.

“It’s early yet. Have some coffee, get
really
nervous.” Taylor saw no reason to remind the coach that he had not had a pregame chapel since the year Red beat up the team chaplain for performing oral sex on a sophomore defensive tackle from Houston. By daylight, Red would forget he forgot and also remember he no longer had a watch.

Red sat back on the edge of the couch, but his legs continued to jiggle and his hand shook, spilling his coffee on the low table, staining the pages of the visitor’s guide with the cover shot of the Pistol Dome. Red pointed at the magazine. “By God, one day we’ll have a domed stadium like that.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, Coach.”

“How do you think Hendrix’ll do today?” Red asked in all seriousness.

The question hit like a fist, sinking Taylor down into his chair.

“I was thinking that if we concentrated on getting him deep while the defense is doubling and tripling Speedo ...” Red’s voice trailed off in confusion. Something was amiss, a basic truth that even in his game-day madness would not be denied. The coach’s face went white. Suddenly nauseous, he jumped to his feet.

“The bathroom?” Red gagged.

Taylor pointed across the room, but the coach was already hurrying down the hall toward Randall’s room, hands over his mouth, shirttail flapping.

“No. Red! No! This way!”

It was too late. Red burst into Randall’s bedroom. Taylor was on his feet, chasing his coach.

“Toby! Toby!” Taylor yelled. “It’s all right, don’t hurt him. He’s just lost! Boy, is he lost.”

Toby had spent several years as a cattle ranger and slept on the floor across the entrance to the boy’s room. When he felt the footsteps coming down the hall, he was instantly awake.

Red Kilroy came sailing backward out of the room as fast as he went in, slamming against the opposite side of the hallway and sliding slowly to a sitting position on the floor. Toby came out behind him with a trench knife in his hand and his revolver shoved in his belt. Toby preferred the knife; a wild shot could accidentally strike the boy.

“I’m sorry, Taylor.” Toby stood over Red as the quarterback ran up. “It all happened so fast. I didn’t hear you until it was over.”

“Holy Christ!” Taylor’s heart began to hammer. The quarterback knelt beside his coach, searching for the knife wound. “Did you stab him?”

“No. But I don’t think hitting that wall did him a whole lot of good. I think I felt his arm break when I tossed him.”

Red Kilroy’s eyes fluttered open and he looked at Taylor. “Jimmy! Jimmy! I’m glad you’re here.” The coach smiled and then threw up all over himself.

Taylor jumped away. “He’s all right. Puking is a vital sign for him.”

Toby slipped his fingers out of the brass-knuckle grip and slid the knife back into its leather sheath.

“Who’s Jimmy?”

Taylor shrugged and watched his coach heaving on the floor.

Randall stirred in his bed and mumbled in his sleep. Taylor went to the boy’s bed, untangled him from the bedclothes and wondered at the soft unlined face. He ran a hand across the sleep-tossed hair and kissed his son gently on his soft, pink lips. The Light Saber stood against the bedstead, at the ready.

“Red was lucky he didn’t get past you,” Taylor whispered to Toby when he returned to the hallway, where the bodyguard was crouched, checking Red for broken bones and making certain he didn’t strangle on his own vomit. “If Randall had gotten his Light Saber this man would look like a Salisbury steak.”

“No broken bones as far as I can tell, but he may have a concussion, the way he was vomiting.”

“He always vomits that way.”

“You tell ’em, Jimmy.”

Toby looked at Taylor, then down at Red. “Jimmy?” He stepped back into Randall’s room and closed the door.

Taylor helped Red to his feet and into the bathroom.

“I’ll get another sweat suit from the bedroom, Red. You are a mess.”

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” Red stuck his head in the shower cabinet and turned the cold water on full, soaking his head and shoulders and splattering the mirrors and walls.

“You stink. I’ll get you one of my other sweat suits.”

“So we can look like goddam twin faggots? This is
game day
, buddy-boy.”

“And you want to look like a wino and smell like a dead cat?” Taylor walked out of the bathroom. “You might as well piss in your pants while you’re at it.”

“Thanks, buddy-boy, I goddam just might do it.”

Taylor returned to his chair, drank coffee and looked out the window. The southeastern sky was beginning to color.

“Every day is Judgment Day, but Super Sunday comes only once a year,” Taylor said.

“Usually the Sunday after Robert E. Lee’s birthday.” Red walked out of the bathroom, drying himself with a towel. His face was red and his hair plastered flat from the cold water. His shirt and pants were horribly stained.

“You ought to send those clothes to the laundry with you in them.”

“Taylor, let us not waste our creativity on trite jokes. I expect some magic from you today. We’re going to need it.”

“If you can remember my name, Red, the least I can do is pull a few elephants out of the old headgear.”

“That’s my boy.” Red smiled and looked around. He was a different man since Toby bounced him off the wall. It would be short-lived. Game day was Red’s hell. “Now, where’s the rolls and coffee?”

Taylor pointed and Red attacked the food.

“Okay, I figure you’ll have up to three and a half seconds to throw on certain types of protection: straight dropbacks with both backs in, half rolls with the offside seal and even cup protection with both backs out, as long as they don’t blitz.” Red started on his second roll. He would vomit it all back up on the way to the game. “You got one hell of a line. They don’t make ’em like Ox Wood anymore, and the younger boys are real Nazis. They do what they’re told and they enjoy it. What kind of drugs do they use?”

“What kind you got?”

“What kind do they need?”

“Fuck them, what about me?”

“You don’t need drugs. You are a magician, remember?”

“Who says magicians don’t use drugs?”

“What do the linemen need?” Red started his third roll and Taylor resolved to stay clear of Red the remainder of the day. “I know Ox uses amphetamines and cocaine,” the coach continued, “but what about the baby Nazis?”

“They do everything Ox does except fuck Ox’s wife.”

“God, is that a great-looking woman?” Red followed the weird tangent. “You think they want to fuck her? I think about fucking her all the time. It’s hard to believe she’s forty and they been married over twenty years,” Red rambled. “Hey. Now, don’t go telling Ox.”

“Don’t worry, I live in the same huddle with the man.”

“We got to beat their pass rush, so keep them off balance with quick counts and don’t set too deep. Let the tackles push their defensive ends past you.” Red paused. “Are you sure they have everything they need?”

“Who?”

“Your pass blockers, asshole.”

“If they don’t, I’ll help you find it for them.”

“The Butazolidin Blues,” Red said slowly, absently. He was beginning to drift again. “Listen,” he suddenly snapped back. “I need a favor. I kept those media scumbag slime off you
all week
and I’m taking a lot of heat for it. You could get me off the griddle if you’d do a pregame interview with the network’s greaseball bookie.”

“Will
you
leave me alone at the stadium?” Taylor asked. “No last-minute suggestions?”

The momentary battle raged on Red’s face. “Completely alone?”

Taylor nodded. Red hesitated. It was a painful, humiliating decision.

“Goddammit, all right!” he said finally. Red’s eyes unfocused and he leaned back, wet hair plastered down and his clothes stained with vomit.

And there on the couch in the penthouse sitting room with Taylor Jefferson Rusk watching the sun rising, Red Kilroy slipped away again into the personal purgatory that was his mind on game day.

The sun was well above the horizon when Wendy walked into the room and found Red and Taylor.

They sat at opposite ends of the couch; Red leaning foward, wringing his hands, tapping his feet to some infernal silent pulse; Taylor laid back, slouched down, with his bare feet up on the low table.

They both stared silently out at the Pistol Dome, the two menhose lives had been joined for a decade of treacherously exhilarating guerrilla warfare against the powers of established authority and corruption.

They now studied the Pistol Dome, the final Bunker.

When Wendy entered, Red spoke, his voice quivering, his control tenuous.

“What do you think it will be like when we win, Taylor?” The coach’s voice broke on the last three words, ending in a raspy squeak. His legs still jiggled, his hands shook.

The coach’s whole body quivered like a cowed dog. He resumed wringing his hands. Taylor looked through the morning haze to the monument celebrating welfare for the rich and corporate socialism.

“It’ll be like winning the state championship at Park City High,” Taylor said. “When I was eighteen years old, you told me you were recruiting me for the University because I was a champion, a proven winner.”

“Well, by God, you were,” Red defended the lie that seemed true, a lie that had worked itself out.

“State champions.” Taylor pronounced it thoughtfully. “You took Simon D’Hanis that year, too, remember?”

“You made me take him,” Red replied, slightly irritated. “But Simon turned out to be a good one.” His mood improved as he ascribed Simon’s unexpected success to himself.

“Simon compared the national championship at the University to the state championship at Park City High School.” Taylor pointed out toward the dome. He purposely seemed to lose track of the conversation because he knew how much it irritated Red. Particularly on game day.

“Well?” Red was exasperated.

“Well what?”

“What did Simon say? How did it compare?”

Taylor pushed up from the couch. “It was almost about the same.” He walked away. “It’ll be almost about the same today.”

Taylor disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. Red gazed after him in quaking confusion.

It’ll be almost about the same.

Wendy returned to the bedroom and, while Taylor lay on the bed, called the defensive coordinator to come take Red away. The man arrived to find Kilroy still staring silently at the Pistol Dome.

Red left without a word. Taylor remained on the bed, lost somewhere deep in himself, his eyes dull, flat, face slack. He was searching for the horror.

It was that time again.

The plans had been laid, the deals made; they had polished their skills, honed their instincts and intuitions, executed the plays to perfection and were bound as a football team by respect forged in pain and fear and joy.