The Franchise (8 page)

A
T MIDNIGHT THAT
night Taylor walked across the deserted drag and onto the campus, tossing a small onion from hand to hand. Reaching the statue of an Indian warrior of undetermined tribal affiliation, Taylor heard something behind him.

A giant apparition, at least seven feet tall, lunged out of the shadows of the new economic-geology building, scuffling and snickering, with a long loping stride, closing on Taylor quickly.

Taylor squared off, tensed himself and waited.

The seven-foot-two-inch-tall apparition was Terry Dudley, grinning and laughing at Taylor. He had been All-American center on the University basketball team five years before and had played professionally for San Antonio.

A B.S. in poly sci, Terry Dudley was back at the University to finish his law degree.

“Jesus, man, you sure got a small onion.” Dudley ruffled Taylor’s hair and slowed his seven-foot gait so six-foot-five-inch Taylor wouldn’t have to strain to match it.

“You mean how big the damn thing is matters?” Taylor shook his head. “What the hell ... ?”

“Bigger onion is sweeter.” Dudley reached up and casually plucked leaves off a branch that was at least nine feet off the ground. “I imagine we’re gonna have to eat it, don’t you think?”

“I
didn’t
think. I don’t think.” Taylor was becoming doubtful about the whole evening.

“Oh, that’s right. You never joined a fraternity.” Dudley was a Sigma Nu. “You and your two Park City pals have your own little group.”

“They never force me to eat onions,” Taylor said.

“Tonight it’ll be the same old frat-rat bullshit,” Dudley said. “You bring the bra and panties?”

“No.” Taylor looked up scornfully at Dudley, who let out a long sigh.

“Aaah. The big boys are out tonight and the whole campus is tingling with energy,” Terry Dudley teased. “Can’t you just feel the whole contact high? Thirty-five thousand other students waiting on tonight’s ritual. Who? Who is somebody? Tonight we find out. Little hearts a-pounding ... loins inflamed ...”

“What’s this guy Lem Carleton like?”

“Three?” Dudley seemed surprised. “They picked Lem Three?”

Taylor shrugged. “I heard that.”

“He’s Junior Carleton’s kid. That’s probably why they picked him. He’s IFC. Lem Three just wants to get along with everybody.” Dudley pointed at the Tower. “He’s a fair politician. Not as good as I am, though. Not as good a compromiser as me ... get along ... go along.”

“You are misinterpreting Sam Rayburn and the value of a good fight as a negotiating device,” Taylor said. “I prefer to fight rather than agree.”

“What if the other guy agrees with you?”

“Then I’ll change.”

Terry Dudley was the player who kept finding the money in his shoes after games. The cash totals always worked out to five dollars a rebound and two dollars a point. Terry figured the ratio out quickly. What he couldn’t figure was how the money got in his shoes so fast.

“I had to call the campus police last night again,” Dudley said. He was tearing a leaf into strips.

“Another girl?” Taylor tossed his onion and looked up at Dudley.

“Two,” Dudley said. “They were already nude and in my bed when I got home. They came in through the bathroom window.” Dudley looked down at Taylor. “That’s
never
happened to you?”

Taylor shrugged. “I’ve always lived off campus and I keep my windows locked.”

“I live on the fourth floor.”

“I’ll bet that cuts down on the fat girls.”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve met some determined fat women. It drives me crazy,” the basketball player said. “I mean, shit, one of those gals last night was pretty good-looking. I
know
this has to be wreaking terrible damage to my sensibilities as a human being, not to mention as an artist.”

“I know what you mean.” Taylor flipped his onion behind his back and caught it over the opposite shoulder.

“No you don’t.” Dudley stopped. “You didn’t even know about eating the onion. We have different souls and destinies, Taylor.”

“Yeah.” Taylor nodded slowly. “And you are a lot taller.”

“And I’m a lot taller,” Dudley agreed.

Dudley walked again, turning thoughtful. He snatched another leaf out of the upper branches of a live oak. They passed the big statue of the Old Cowboy, heading toward the iron bridge.

“Anyway, it’ll be the usual hazing horseshit. I know most of the guys who are in Spur now. They aren’t
too
bad. I don’t think any of them are dangerous.” He paused. “But of course they never are at this stage, are they, Taylor?”

“Ask me a question I can answer, for Chrissakes.” The quarterback was getting progressively hostile. He didn’t like surprises, but he was prepared to deal with them. He rolled the onion over his heavy knuckles.

They reached the bridge. Taylor stopped, held his long finger to his lips and leaned over the rail, listening to the water run over the rocky riverbed.

“Beautiful sound, isn’t it?”

“Comes right out of the ground like magic.” Terry Dudley began walking again. “The Comanches thought it
was
magic.”

Dudley suddenly made a gentle fake and took a short jump shot at an imaginary basket. He retrieved the imaginary ball from the net and dribbled over to Taylor. “Did A.D. lose as much money playing cards at the Deke house as I heard he did?”

“Probably.” Taylor pressed his thumb and forefinger against the scar tissue between his eyes, making his nose ache. “Don’t tell me how much you heard. I don’t want to know.”

“It was big, big,
big
, I heard.” Dudley took another fake and hooked toward the basket, which had mysteriously moved. Dudley made a swishing sound. He seldom hit the rim.

“I told you not to tell me,” Taylor moaned.

“I didn’t tell you. There’s big and there’s big.”

“You said big, big,
big
.”

“I know, man.” Dudley moved into Taylor’s face but kept the imaginary ball on his fingertips, low and away. He wanted the drive.

“Christ, where’s he gonna get that kind of money?”

“I’m just telling you because the president of the Deke house will be here tonight. I didn’t want him to know more about it than you. A.D. lost
big.
” Terry Dudley dropped his shoulder, dribbled off the bridge and slam-dunked into the crotch of a tree twelve feet off the ground.

“I was afraid about the rent money. It was more than that?” They walked along together again.

“The rent, the milk and egg money, Grandpa’s watch, Grandma’s silver and the baby’s shoes,” Terry Dudley said.

“Shit. What am I doing here? A.D. is in trouble and on the loose. We’re talking Richter-scale disaster looking to happen. I better ...”

“Too late.” Dudley grabbed Taylor’s arm. “Much too late. You may need tonight for an alibi and these Spur assholes are witnesses.”

“I was never a joiner....”

“Come, Taylor. Your fate is waiting over in that green dildo.”

The Tower, lit up with green lights for the special occasion, glowed above the trees directly ahead of them. It was a few minutes after twelve. “Let’s just stick together,” Terry Dudley said, “and let me do all the talking when we get there. I’ll get you out of a lot of the shit. I do believe my future will eventually be in politics, you just watch.” Dudley grinned.

“We’ll do a lot of pick and roll and short dump-offs on these guys. Okay, Taylor?”

“I follow you,” Taylor agreed. “You’re the tallest.”

“Hold it
scum!
” a voice bellowed from the interior shadows of the Tower. Green lights glowed against the monolith.

“See what I mean?” Dudley whispered. “Let me do all the talking.”

“Did you bring your onion,
scum?
” said the voice from inside the Tower. Terry Dudley grinned; he recognized the voice. The ornate heavy oak door was opened slightly.

Normally the Tower was kept locked, because it was such a favorite spot for suicides and snipers. That night the door was ajar and the reedy, vicious voice demanded to see the onions.

“Let me see that onion,
scum
.” The voice attempted strength but broke. Taylor could see a flickering of candlelight through the arched granite doorway. Taylor Rusk held up his onion.

“Where are the bra and panties,
scum?
”

“We are wearing them,” Dudley said. Then he whispered to Taylor, “There isn’t a son of a bitch in there gonna want to check on
that
after I do my entrance. Now, key on me.”

“You are two and one-half minutes late,
scum.
Stop whispering.”

Terry Dudley paused, then said slowly, “We were discussing psychotic behavior and obligations.”

The voice didn’t quite know what to do with that, and there was some loud whispering inside the glowing, throbbing Tower.

“Okay,
scum
,” the voice finally said, “you may pass to join your fellow scum already gathered and waiting above. When you pass through, keep your eyes down and don’t look in our faces.”

Taylor was thinking there would have to be some pretty tall faces inside for him and Dudley to look down and not see them. But before he could think more, Terry Dudley grabbed the first person he saw inside the Tower, the student commander of ROTC—who topped out at five feet eight—and went berserk. Seized by his uniform lapels, the ROTC student flopped around like a rag doll.

“Don’t you ever call me
scum
again, you little sawed-off Nazi dog turd, or I’ll kill you.” Taylor could hear the guy’s brass rattling. “I got
pride
, you hear me?
P-R-I-D-E.
” Feigning madness, seven-foot-tall, 250-pound Terry Dudley shook the student soldier like a dirty mop.

In the flickering candlelight Taylor Rusk squinted into the dark corners of the octagonal first floor of the Tower. He could see humanoid shadows, motionless, stunned to inaction, paralyzed by the immense ferocity of the angry giant, the nine other outgoing members of Spur turned to furniture.

“You understand, Jack? Pride is why I’m here.” Dudley stopped shaking the man as suddenly as he had begun, his voice flat, calm. “Now, I assume you are going to want to discuss other virtues, like dedication, loyalty, honesty.”

“Don’t forget height,” Taylor added, still watching the motionless nine look at their shoes.

“Well, I’ll be glad to talk about them rationally upstairs.” Dudley was now brushing off the man’s coat and straightening his medals. “I’m sorry, buddy. I sort of lost it there ..
. pride
, you know?”

Dudley pointed up the winding staircase. “You say the other scum are up there?” The small shattered man nodded dumbly. “Hey, you okay? I’m sorry. You just sort of got to me. Let’s go, Taylor.” Dudley strode over and mounted the staircase. “Geez, man, I’m
really
sorry, but it’s like a trigger with me, my pride. I’m thoroughly embarrassed. I hope this doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, maybe do this more often.”

As soon as Terry Dudley and Taylor Rusk disappeared above the first level of the Tower, frenzied whispering broke out on the ground floor.

“I doubt they’ll be fucking with our pride anymore tonight,” Dudley snickered. “What are they going to do, throw us out? I imagine we’ll be exempted from everything, especially having to swim in the fucking river in the dark.”

Terry and Taylor stood off to the side and watched that night as the Spur initiates were tormented by the outgoing ten: ritually humiliated, tossed fully clothed into the river, forced-fed onions and generally degraded until the morning sky turned pink.

It was a wonderful ritual to watch. It had a lot of little nuances that Dudley was always quick to point out. The outgoing ten were particularly cruel to Wendy Chandler’s fiancé, Lem Carleton III, reminding Three that since he was a freshman he had run for some office and lost every year. The insult made Lem cry.

At Shelter Oaks, by the Union, they made Lem strip, then made fun of his genitals.

“Gives you a real sense of brotherhood,” Taylor said to Terry Dudley.

D
ICK
C
ONLY WAS
angry.

Senator Thompson was keeping Dick waiting purposely. The senator did not want to appear too eager to snatch the twenty-five thousand cash Conly had brought from Texas in the crocodile briefcase. Conly was slightly drunk, but the obvious sham would have irritated Dick Conly drunk or sober. He hadn’t even wanted to bring the money.

“Goddam, Cyrus, it is such a piss-ant little amount,” Conly had complained to Cyrus Chandler. “Send one of your hard-peckered boys. I was planning to go up in the New Mexico Pecos Mountains.”

“I want Senator Thompson to
think
that twenty-five thousand is a lot of money, and I do that by sending someone important—the president and CEO of Chandler industries. He’ll be suitably impressed and it will only cost twenty-five thousand.”

“Plus
my time.
Jesus.” Conly was disgusted. “The bastards sell out so fucking cheap. Twenty-five thousand measly dollars.”

Once, when Amos Chandler was alive, Dick Conly had carried two million dollars in cash to some Arab in the same crocodile attache case. Conly and the Arab got so drunk in New York celebrating the deal, they left the crocodile attache with the two million in a cab. The driver hunted them down at the 21 Club at four
A.M.
, hours later; they were still oblivious to their loss. The cabbie returned the case and the two million. Conly ended the evening by ordering separate ambulances with nurses and attendants to take him and the Arab back to their hotels and tuck them in bed.

No, $25,000 wasn’t any money at all, but Dick Conly would let Senator Thompson find that out on his own. That was known as legislative experience. On-the-job training with OPM. OJT/OPM.

A cruel curve drawn at the right corner of Dick Conly’s mouth gave every expression a sneer; his face was at an angle to the world. Dick Conly knew the world without its fashion. Long ago as a young lawyer in DC, fighting World War Two for Amos Chandler, Dick Conly saw the bear. Hell, he brought the bear to Cyrus’s suite at the Mayflower and drank Nelson Rockefeller
and
the bear under the table. He won, but now he had a drunk bear on his hands. He figured it was better than having a Rockefeller puking on the carpet. So Dick Conly learned to smile—but first to sneer, and the mark never left his face.