The Franchise (41 page)

“He’s their
boy.
Robbie Burden is the owners’
man.”
Kimball coughed a short spasm of laughter. “The way Dudley tells it, the Union will eventually sign a hell of a contract with the network to use players as commentators for football and other sports, including the next Olympics, plus TV movies and a production company.”

“So the Union can steal everything they don’t get paid?” Bobby sighed.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like it was real money.”

“What’s the story on Dick Conly?” Kimball changed the subject. “Why did Chandler make that asshole A.D. general manager?”

“You remember that knockout teenybopper blonde that used to come to camp in Koster’s car that first season?” Hendrix asked.

“Oh, Jeeezus, the one that wore the tight white shorts and the T-shirt with no bra and was barefoot all the time?”

“That’s the one,” Hendrix said, “Suzy Ballard.”

“Goddam,” Kimball rasped, “I always wanted to stick my tongue in her bellybutton ... from the inside.”

“Apparently Cyrus had the same idea, ’cause she tossed Conly over for him. Now it’s Cyrus Chandler’s turn in the barrel. I think making A.D. general manager was part of the deal. Conly’s gone off to New Mexico to the mountains. Suzy’s moved with Cyrus out to Chandler’s Hot Springs Ranch. The word is,” Hendrix said, “that Billy Joe Hardesty is going to marry Cyrus and Suzy on his TV show with only close friends, which means they can broadcast from a phone booth and still have room to use the phone.”

“Well, it sounds like that little blond carhop is mo
-bile,
hos-
tile
and ag
-ile.
We get the Billy Joe Hardesty show up here on cable about two in the morning,” Kimball rasped. “It’s great to watch when you’re really drunk.”

“I’m afraid old Cyrus is in deep shit, and A.D., Suzy and the reverend are about to hand him an anchor.” Bobby Hendrix exhaled and flexed his slender freckled hands. “Family and office politics. Shit.” He felt vaguely frightened.

“You know, Junie Chandler ain’t exactly bad pussy,” Kimball said. “She ranks among the top three of all the owners’ wives I ever fucked. It just goes to show you what young girls do to old men.”

“It just goes to show something, I’m not sure what.”

“How’s the arthritis, Bobby?” Kimball asked, as if he sensed the pain in Hendrix’s fingers.

“No better, maybe a little worse.” Hendrix moved his hand gently.
“I
’m getting it bad in my neck from those chunks knocked out of my cervical vertebrae going across the middle after those wounded ducks you threw.”

“I knew you’d get them, Bobby. I’d put you up against the biggest and meanest defensive backs in the League any day of the week.”

“You already did, thanks.”

“Hey, don’t thank me, man. It was all part of the job.” Kimball laughed his evil laugh. “Have you talked to Fresh Meat lately? I heard he played out his option and is going to Los Angeles for five mill. You hear anything,about that?”

“I know he was on his option, but I didn’t hear about any five mill,” Hendrix said. “Why didn’t you ask him when you called about the fishing trip?”

“I didn’t figure it was any of my business.”

“Well, that’s the first thing you’ve ever admitted to me wasn’t any of your business,” Hendrix replied, knowing that Kimball Adams was lying. Red wanted to know about the five million dollars and had delegated Kimball to find out.

“Find out what you can, will you, roomie?” Kimball said. “I’ll see you down in Cozumel. You’ll love it, Ginny will love it and the kids will love it. Get in a little quality time with the family. Talk at you later.” Kimball hung up.

Quality time?
Bobby thought.
Quality time?

“There’s a fucking catchphrase for you,” Hendrix said aloud, slamming the phone down so hard it hurt his hand. “Never trust a man who talks about ‘quality time.’ ”

Bobby Hendrix, the aging receiver, stared at the phone in his father-in-law’s house in River Oaks. He had missed quality time with his older boys, who had had to endure the craziness of early pro ball. The oldest was already gone off to college and seldom returned, anxious to be free.

Soon Bobby and Ginny’s second son, James, would be graduating from high school. He was already talking about the Army as an alternative. Ginny had panicked at the suggestion, but Bobby kept her calm, convincing her that Jimmy’s decision was a direct result of the movies
Stripes
and
Private Benjamin.

B
OBBY
H
ENDRIX WAS
worried about telling Ginny that he’d lost almost all their money. Gus Savas, Ginny’s father, was a gambler: that’s what Bobby liked about him. Gus was willing to gamble right down to the last turn of the card or drill. And that’s where Venture Capital Offshore got them. Harrison H. Harrison just kept pushing money out there on the table and Gus just kept matching it.

Then, one day VCO just closed the well and called it dry.

They knew there was oil and gas down there. So did Bobby and Gus. But meanwhile VCO got a huge tax write-off, still controlled the lease and knew the oil and gas were there for the taking later.

VCO even reneged on the dry-hole money and told Bobby and Gus to sue them.

“I got ten, maybe twenty, years left,” Gus laughed and pulled out one of his big cigars. He and Bobby were riding down in the elevator after their meeting with Harrison H. Harrison. “That is an awful lot of time for an old tool pusher to get his revenge.” He grinned at his son-in-law. “Big company like Venture Capital Offshore will forget all about the fucking they gave Gus Savas in a few months. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life getting even. What are you going to do, Bobby?”

“Guess I’ll have to play another season,” the redheaded receiver said to his father-in-law. “Then maybe work for the Union.”

Gus frowned. He didn’t have much use for unions, having gotten his first job as a tool pusher in the East Texas field by climbing up on the drilling platform and whipping the current tool pusher. The fight ended when Gus hit the other man with a length of chain and knocked him off the platform twenty feet into the mud.

“You and your union,” Gus laughed. “What does it get you? Or them? A man’s gotta fight for whatever he gets.”

“It’s not what
we
get, Gus,” Bobby said, “it’s what we can get for the next generation of football players. There’s sharks in these waters, and they have been eating my teammates for twenty years. Football’s been good to me, Gus; it educated me and brutalized me at the same time. I don’t want to see players cheated ... by anyone. The Union should stand for what football should be: players looking out for each other. Football isn’t
about
life, it
is
life. So I’ll stick around and help.”

“What do you get from it, Bobby boy?” Gus looked puzzled. “More important, what’s in it for Terry Dudley? I know about unions, athletes and football. I know most are selfish, greedy. When Red Kilroy was coaching high school he would come to guys like me for money. ‘You want a football team to be proud of?’ he’d say, and I’d give him money in cash and he would get football players and win games.” Gus puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. “Then one day I decided I don’t even know how to be proud of a football team. You know what I mean?”

Bobby looked at his father-in-law’s sparkling dark eyes, the perfect match for Ginny’s, and nodded.

“I quit giving them money and never watched another game until you came along to Rice and married my Ginny. Now I’m back watching Red’s football games again and my son-in-law’s a union man.” The elevator stopped and Gus clapped a heavy arm around Bobby’s shoulder. They walked into the lobby, a structure of giant steel Tinkertoys and smoked glass.

“I never thought my Ginny would ever get married. She didn’t like the River Oaks boys or any of them fag South Americans or fake princes. God bless you for that. You been good to her. She loves you very much. You give me four grandsons. But what you gonna do with this union? We busted out in oil, but I can get us a new stake. I’m a promoter. I don’t know geology from creekology, but I can raise money to punch holes in the ground. There’s plenty of oil left out there. You’re a pretty old guy to be playing football. What’s in the Union for you, Bobby?”

“I guess the same things that you’ll get from whatever you do to Venture Capital Offshore,” Bobby said. “A sense of purpose and the possibility of satisfaction. I seldom get mad, Gus, but I always get even. A linebacker cheap-shots me and before long I come out of nowhere and tear his knees off. There have been some pretty cheap shots over the years.”

“Just don’t get clipped,” Gus warned, and rubbed Bobby’s shoulder. The answer apparently pleased him. “You are a hell of a boy, Bobby, but you be careful; you got my daughter and grandchildren. Unions can cause trouble; sometimes people get hurt and killed. Cyrus Chandler is a greedy son of a bitch, and the rich don’t share without a fight. I know, I used to be one.” Gus laughed and beat the redhead’s shoulder black and blue.

At the next negotiating session Union director Terry Dudley told the Owners Council that he would file another antitrust suit and consider calling a strike if they didn’t bring a residual offer to the negotiating table.

“In order to be fair,” Bobby Hendrix suggested, “we would like a look at books.”

That request was absurd, but what knocked Robbie Burden backward in his chair was Dick Portus suddenly claiming he could not afford the Union demands.

Terry Dudley immediately filed with the National Labor Relations Board to have Poltus’s claim ruled bargainable—which meant a look at the books. The owners immediately filed an appeal. The commissioner threatened to fine Portus $500,000 for any more remarks.

“You’ll burn in hell before you see the books on any franchise!” the commissioner screamed at Hendrix.

Bobby almost felt sorry for him, he lost it so completely. Robbie Burden hadn’t been the same since Dick Conly left Texas. The loss of Dick Conly’s genius threatened League stability.

Bobby Hendrix argued that the players had the right to view the books because football was a quasipublic monopoly, like the phone company. That made Burden furious. The commissioner and the rest of the Owners Council got up and left Terry, Bobby, Speedo Smith, the other player reps and the federal mediator alone in the meeting room. The mediator suggested they adjourn until later. Dudley announced that the next player rep vote would probably take the players out on strike. Bobby said privately that they couldn’t afford it: There were Union financial problems. Dudley told him not to worry, it was being fixed. The network fishing show in Cozumel was going to bring in big money.

Commissioner Burden knew Hendrix meant it about looking at the books. Bobby knew they were setting up for pay television to take over professional football and that the collective bargaining sessions were the players’ only, maybe last, real chance to get information. They were the Information Poor versus the Information Rich.

But Bobby worried about football players; they were greedy and selfish and it would be difficult to sustain a strike. Speedo and several other player reps liked Hendrix’s idea of striking only Monday-night games.

“That way,” Bobby argued, “you only have to put one team on strike. The other team can go out on the field, ready to play. We pay the striking team, the owners have to pay the other one. It’s simple and cheap. But,” Bobby warned, “we need to check our own finances before we start talking strike.”

Dudley frowned and adjourned the meeting without answering Bobby’s questions about the Union finances.

Bobby knew the Union never had enough money. But maybe the Mexico trip and cooperation with the network would
really
bring in some big bucks.

Dudley said it was going to be a good deal for the Union. That had to mean money.

B
OBBY
H
ENDRIX TOOK
his wife and two youngest boys fishing in Cozumel. Bobby hadn’t told Ginny about the VCO bust out.

The Hendrix family left early for Houston Intercontinental Airport so Ginny could stop by the bank and pick up her diamonds and gold jewelry. It seemed odd to Bobby to take diamonds and gold
out
of your safe-deposit box and
into
Mexico. He let his consternation show a little too much because Ginny said something about it in the car, sitting beside him, her slender legs crossed, fumbling with the catch of the small gold and diamond bracelet that all the wives got for the playoff.

“Are you sure we can afford this?” Ginny asked, sitting back, the bracelet fastened. “Can you afford the time away from the company?”

“Yeah. I need the time away.”

The two youngest boys were arguing in the backseat over who got to stand in the middle of the seat. They were four and six years old and fought about everything and swore they never got to do anything.

“I hope Jimmy will be all right.” Jimmy, the teen-ager, had elected to stay behind. He had just discovered sex in the form of the seventeen-year-old daughter of the owner of Trans-Texas Energy.

“He’ll be fine. Gus adores him. And Jimmy’s getting his first steady pussy.”

“Hush,” Ginny said, and punched his arm.

“Gus will look after him. Teach him to rough it.”

Ginny looked at her husband and then out at the Houston skyline.

“We ought to think about this joint venture deal,” she said. “Gus is rich, but VCO is
rich.
Not a good match.”

Bobby couldn’t figure out hew to break the news about their loss. Gus had suggested he wait until they returned from the fishing trip.

“They could just suck you under. You have to be careful,” she said.

“I don’t like to fly and I don’t mind admitting it,” Bobby changed the subject. “Anybody who thinks that stuffing a couple of hundred total strangers in a tube and shooting them across the Gulf of Mexico is normal ain’t normal.”

“Just try not to think about it.”

Bobby dropped Ginny and the two boys at the airline entrance, found a place to park and wrestled the bags to the terminal.