The Franchise (26 page)

“Just follow the spotlight, son.” Someone slapped Simon’s pads, and the frightened young man staggered from the tunnel into the spotlight’s glare.

Simon D’Hanis was not ready for the spotlight.

He couldn’t seem to get his balance, running fearfully, surrounded by blackness in the bright-yellow vacuum, with eighty thousand people screaming damnation, hurling their fury at him from the darkness. Simon was weightless, senseless, and could only blindly stagger, watching the lighted spot on the ground, twice almost falling, to the vocal pleasure of the Cleveland fans. But Simon battled back, struggled, analyzed his problem, focused his effort at staying erect. By the time he was passing the on-deck circle, he was getting his feet back under him. He was feeling good and running fine.

The crowd roar was losing its fearsome quality. Simon’s eyes began to adjust; his running rhythm smoothed out nicely.

“Just follow the spotlight.”

A few more steps past the batter’s circle, then across the infield, on out to the football field. Eighty thousand sets of vocal cords running vibrations at him, and Simon D’Hanis was pumping up and sending some vibrations out himself. He began screaming, joyously, angrily, ecstatically.

Word was being passed to Simon D’Hanis’s adrenal glands. The surge of adrenaline pushed Simon into a full barbarian warrior running naked from Gaul to Rome. Simon, the naked warrior, was accelerating well when the pitcher’s mound leaped up in front of him out of the darkness. The cleats on his right shoe hooked on the pitching rubber. Stumbling, staggering, showing the quickness of mind and body that made him such a great athlete, Simon kept his feet until he reached the outfield, then fell, bounced and did a complete somersault, flipped back to his feet and continued to Ox Wood’s side.

Taylor heard the audience catch its breath. Simon heard a funny little click in his knee.

The crowd began cheering for Simon D’Hanis, who finished his run to midfield like a Tennessee walker.

“It’s those goddam Russian steroids,” Taylor said to Bobby Hendrix. “He’s turning into Olga Korbut.”

T
HAT FIRST SEASON
Bobby Hendrix, Kimball Adams and Taylor Rusk shared a three-bedroom apartment out by the airport, close to the practice field. Hendrix was afraid to move his family and pull the boys out of school, since he was on the Blacklist and might be out of football at any moment.

Kimball called his wife for the first time since he had arrived in camp six weeks before.

“Aren’t you coming down, honey?” Kimball asked.

“You asshole!” she screamed. “I would rather stay in Cleveland and watch Lake Erie die and the river burn than be in goddam Texas with you, you drunk, potbellied, obnoxious, rag-armed son of a bitch.”

“Honey ... honey.... We were busy ... two-a-days into the regular season. They didn’t have phones available. You know you love me.”

“Like I love vaginal itch, you schmuck!” She slammed the phone down.

Adams looked at Hendrix. “She may be a while.”

Mrs. Kimball Adams stayed in Cleveland and sold Kimball’s clothes and car. They never got back together.

Simon D’Hanis and Buffy, the proud parents of a baby girl, lived in a duplex in Park City.

“It’s a good place to raise kids,” Simon said.

“You don’t have to tell us, Simon,” Taylor said. A.D. started laughing while nodding in agreement that Park City was indeed a good place to raise kids.

A.D. stopped laughing long enough to say, “Especially somebody else’s kids.”

Simon was irritated, and he always remembered his two old roommates laughing at him for saying that Park City was a good place to raise kids. Later he would begin to believe they laughed at him about a lot of things, and when Taylor tried to tell Simon they had been laughing with him and not at him, it was too late. Simon D’Hanis had ceased laughing altogether.

A.D. Koster moved in with Suzy Ballard over by the University in the apartment complex he, Taylor and Simon had shared in college.

Suzy got a few modeling jobs and was in one national beer commercial before she took a job with The Texas Pistols Football Club, Inc., and began an open affair with Dick Conly. A.D. encouraged Suzy’s liaison with Conly. Suzy could help promote A.D.’s career in the Franchise. It was part of A.D.’s plan. A.D. and Suzy became more partners than lovers. They were a good team.

Red Kilroy also had a plan. It was Red’s plan to trade away Texas’s top three draft choices every year for the next five years. He would bring in good players who could win. All Red cared about was
winning now
.

Red Kilroy demanded his players be smarter and stronger. If they were, he made Dick Conly pay them more. As soon as they realized this, they made fewer and fewer mistakes.

“You can’t overpay good players,” the coach said. Conly agreed. Cyrus didn’t.

“This foolishness must stop.” Cyrus was in Dick Conly’s office. “I read in the paper that you gave Kimball Adams a ten-thousand-dollar bonus. What for?”

“He’s coaching Rusk, putting in extra hours, working hard,” Conly defended the bonus to Kimball.

“I have it on good authority that Mr. Kimball Adams has very unsavory friends.”

“Of course, Cyrus.” Conly was losing patience. “He plays professional football.”

“He’s friends with the Cobianco brothers,” Cyrus said.

“So are you. Kimball Adams isn’t a problem,
you
are.” Conly stood and pointed. “
You
. If I turn my back on you, we get turds in the punchbowl. So he shaves a few points; Christ, the man is forty years old and crippled. He puts on a marvelous show. This
is
show business and he sells tickets.”

Cyrus was not swayed. “He already is under contract. He’s paid a fair wage.”

“Who are you all of a sudden, Henry Ford?” Dick yelled. “Don’t give me that shit. I’m the guy who negotiates these contracts, with the singular exception when you nearly gave the whole store away, trying to outsmart Doc Webster and Taylor Rusk.”

Cyrus ignored the general manager. “There is, furthermore, to be an internal investigation started. And if Kimball is keeping company with unsavory characters ...”

Dick Conly picked up his tumbler of warm Scotch and tossed it into Cyrus Chandler’s face. Cyrus shut up immediately and took on the puzzled look of a man slapped across the mouth with a wet squirrel.

“What is this
furthermore
shit?” Conly slammed his empty glass down. “I don’t take
furthermore
from God himself. I run this franchise and Chandler Industries. You know nothing about how it all fits together!” Conly suddenly slugged the window glass with his fist. It didn’t break: Conly had long ago had glass put in that you couldn’t drive a truck through.

“Easy, Dick.” The blow startled Red.

Cyrus was still stunned, Scotch on his face, soaking his shirt.

“No, it’s too hard for you. So I have to do it!” Dick slugged the window again, harder. The window boomed and rattled and Coniy’s knuckles went numb. “Traveling the world in your DC-9 and being chauffeured in limousines to the sources of
your wealth
and attending Chandler Industries’ yearly off-site planning sessions is just too tiresome. Instead you jet to the Hot Springs Ranch with your pals from Spur 1939. Ten wrinkled dicks with the young cookies attached, swimming naked in the hot springs.

“I have to go commercial during the airlines strike and have stenographers pick me up in their Toyotas and don’t get home for two fucking months, to do what you could have done in two weeks while also learning something about why you were born rich. Something I already know because I put it together....

“So now, after tiring of private jets and limos, you have come to advise me on how to compensate Kimball Adams. Well, you screw with Adams and he’ll hit you so hard your house pets will die.”

The mention of potential physical pain seemed to give Cyrus a start; he took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and began to mop his still-dripping face. He was still dazed.

“Now you are getting to be a serious pain in the ass. You fucked Taylor Rusk around so your daughter will marry that congenital idiot Carleton kid and in the process you scramble the very delicate mind of Simon D’Hanis, our best young offensive lineman. Now you accuse Kimball Adams of the horrible crime of hanging around with
your
gambling buddies.” Dick Conly tried to kick out the window. His boot boomed against the pane, but it didn’t crack. Dick was getting Cyrus’s attention.

“What you fail to understand, Cyrus ...” Conly walked back to his desk and threw a five-pound brass duck paperweight at the window. The bang was deafening, but the glass remained unmarked. “... is that professional football is about to take a quantum leap in revenue. Billions of dollars! It is not a business that you can run because you’re rich and played high school ball at least one year. This is becoming real gangster territory, not small-time bookies.... I’m talking oil, broadcast and film companies. Real thugs.” Conly picked up the heavy brass duck and threw it again. It whirled end over end. The crash was nerve-shattering.

“I thought we had this settled a long time ago, Cyrus.” The duck bounced across the floor, Conly retrieved it. “You stay out of the Franchise operation or I hit out for the Pecos Mountains and you go to hell in a handbasket.”

“Well”—Cyrus spoke softly, for the first time since Dick’s tirade had begun—“I just thought I might ...”

Cyrus flinched and stopped speaking as Dick Conly again hurled the duck, slamming the brass into the window.

“You think about what you want for dinner, Cyrus. That’s
it
!” Conly walked over to the paperweight, which had picked up some nicks on the bill. The glass was unmarked. Dick ran his hand across the smooth surface. “Amazing.” Then he turned back to the owner of the Texas Pistols. “Right now, Cyrus, we need Kimball Adams. He can help Taylor Rusk and in return he gets something for his old age, which started this year. You didn’t buy the use of Kimball’s courage, you purchased only his body and the minimal motor skills necessary to collect his money. So if he shaves a few points and still puts on a show that pays the tab, then all I would advise you to do is to quit betting with the Cobianco brothers.”

Dick tossed the paperweight from hand to hand. Cyrus looked at the head coach, silent in the comer, studying a file folder.

“Red?” Cyrus said. “What do you think?”

“I think my contract reads that I don’t even have to talk money other than to insist the player gets treated right. You can’t overpay a good player.”

“You can’t overpay a good player.” Cyrus repeated it like a catechism. It seemed to please him—a good cocktail-party answer.

“Well, if that settles everything ... I’ll be heading out.” Cyrus started for the door. “I’m flying to the Big Bend. I promised Junie and Wendy a trip to the Hot Springs Ranch.”

Dick Conly scowled at the closing door.

“That guy needs a ring job or a new head gasket,” the coach said when Cyrus was gone. “Does he have the power to take over here?”

“Without the knowledge the power is useless.”

“Or dangerous.” Red Kilroy laid the file folders on the desk. “I say we cut all those guys. Losing seems to agree with them.”

W
HENEVER
R
ED
K
ILROY’S
secretary called Jack the Equipment Man to clean out a guy’s locker, it fell to Jack to be the bearer of rather distressing news to men of generally larger than usual size with a high threshold of pain, a low flash point and all the resultant incumbencies, including free-floating desperation and disrespect for the human body, particularly someone else’s.

Jack often locked himself in the equipment cage to escape the rages of men “released outright” from professional football.
Released outright
was such an innocuous phrase that, to really understand what it meant, you had to be in a position like Jack the Equipment Man.

Another job that shared a certain equivalency with Jack the Equipment Man was that of the business-office receptionist—especially when a particularly incensed giant covered with tattoos and surgical scars came to the office, cursing management in a loud twang through his flat nose, searching out Red Kilroy or Dick Conly over a broken promise or an unpaid plane ticket or hotel bill. The receptionist had orders that the head coach and general manager were never to be found, and the ex-player was never to be admitted to the inner offices.

A.D. Koster got Suzy Ballard the receptionist’s job by hustling Lem Three, who, after returning from the League office, was in charge of hiring secretaries and receptionists.

“It’ll be a good image for the team.” A.D. had brought a bottle to Three’s office. They both drank while Suzy acted like she was a nineteen year-old Apache Bell from Tyler Junior College, a high-kicker. She did fine.

“I man, goddam, Three, lookie there.” A.D. had his arm around Lem. “If she’s the first thing that hits the customers’ eyes when they step off the elevator, they see style.”

Suzy had surprising success that first season compared with Jack the Equipment Man. Jack lost three teeth and had his nose broken twice. Invariably Jack would have his arms full of the guy’s equipment when the punch came.

Suzy Ballard, on the other hand, was always polite and firm in denying entry to the angry player, insisting that neither Red Kilroy nor Dick Conly were even in the building. The door was locked and could only be opened from within.

Only Abdul Jamail Willie, a 335-pound defensive lineman from southern Illinois, ever gained entry into the inner offices. Willie put his fist through the solid oak door and unlocked it from the inside. He was after Lem Three, who had weeks before relayed Red’s promises to pay Abdul Willie’s airfare and hotel bill, a total of $1,650, while Willie tried out for the team. Red then refused to pay when Abdul was “released outright.” Since Lem had made the promise, Willie planned to kill him first.

Fortunately Willie got his arm stuck in the door, allowing time for Lem Three, Red and Dick Conly to escape down the service elevator.