The Franchise (44 page)

Taylor was about to start the Jeep when he heard A.D. Koster’s voice so plainly and clearly he thought A.D. was standing next to him. But the new general manager was out on the water, talking from the deck of a big cruiser moored near the galleon. Taylor saw the lights but could not make out who else was aboard. A.D. seemed to be doing all the talking.

“Tiny solved the problem this afternoon. I’m certain that’s where McNamara was getting his information. Come on, Charlie, we got to get back to town.”

Taylor watched the two shadows go over the side of the big cruiser and into a small rowboat. He sat in the Jeep and watched the rowboat creak toward the shore in the full moonlight. When the two men stepped out, Taylor started his Jeep, flipped on his one headlight and roared up next to A.D. and Charlie Stillman.

“Hey, A.D., what you up to?” Taylor said, stopping the Jeep right beside the two startled men. “I see you still aren’t careful about who you associate with.” Taylor looked toward Charlie Stillman, who was terrified. “A.D., now that you’re a general manager, you can’t let people see you hanging around with players’ agents like Charlie here. The fans will begin to think something’s wrong, and the next thing you know, they’ll quit believing you and Charlie and the commissioner. And once they quit believing, it’s a short drop to where they’ll quit watching; then we’ll
all
be out of work.”

A.D. tried to speak several times before finally regaining his self-control, which had drained away the moment Taylor had roared up in the Jeep, out of the night.

“Taylor. Taylor. I heard you were on the island. Good to see you. Hell of a place, isn’t it?”

“It’s okay if you like water and rock.”

Charlie Stillman started easing away from the Jeep.

“Where you going, Charlie?” Taylor asked.

“Uh ... I was gonna get the car.”

“Good idea,” A.D. interrupted. “You go on ahead and I’ll ride into town with Taylor. You
are
going into town, aren’t you, Taylor?” A.D. began to climb into the Jeep.

“Yeah. I’m going to get Bobby Hendrix,” Taylor said. “His wife and kids are waiting for him back at the hotel.”

Taylor saw Charlie Stillman grimace, then quickly turn and walk away. A.D. almost lost his grip on the Jeep.

“You haven’t seen Bobby, have you, A.D.?” Taylor watched his old roommate’s face. It looked set in stone. A.D. fell into the passenger seat and stared straight ahead. He said nothing.

“I asked you if you saw Bobby Hendrix, A.D. He was with Kimball when he left the hotel this afternoon.” Taylor nudged A.D. with his elbow. Koster seemed lost in a trance. Taylor nudged him again.

“Ah, no, I haven’t seen him, but if he was with Kimball, they’re probably with Dudley and the network guys at the hotel. I’ll show you the way.” A.D. continued to stare through the windscreen. The wind blew warmly off the water and the ships groaned and creaked at their moorings.

“Whose boat were you on out there?” Taylor asked, watching A.D.’s face.

“Ah, friends of Charlie’s. I don’t know their names.” A.D. stared straight ahead. “Come on, let’s get going if you want to find your buddy Hendrix.”

“Who’s Tiny?” Taylor asked. The Jeep was idling roughly. “Tiny Walton?”

“I don’t know any Tiny,” A.D. said. “Come on, let’s go. I got another appointment.”

“I thought I heard you say something about Tiny taking care of some problem with McNamara,” Taylor said. “Would that be Tommy McNamara, the Kinky-Headed Boy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A.D. finally turned and looked Taylor Rusk in the face. Even in the moonlight Taylor could see what he had to see.

“You’re lying, A.D.”

“Believe what you want, Taylor. Now, either take me to town or I’m gonna get out and hitch a ride.” A.D. looked back to the windshield. “If you want to find Hendrix, I can show you Kimball’s hotel. I’m sure he’s there with Dudley and the network guys, planning tomorrow’s shoot. They’re planning to go over to the mainland, I hear.”

Taylor Rusk let the clutch out slowly and the Jeep lurched ahead.

“Who’d you hear that from, A.D.?”

“Charlie.” A.D. looked back at the harbor as they pulled away. “Charlie Stillman told me.”

Taylor watched the harbor in the rearview mirror and marked the lights of the cruiser that A.D. had been aboard. “Terry Dudley has gone soft in the head to think he can make deals with Charlie Stillman.”

“Stillman got a hell of a deal with the network,” A.D. said. “Big bucks, Taylor, big bucks.”

“You always liked those big bucks, didn’t you?”

“Look who’s talking.” A.D. laughed. “You and a college professor sucker a kid into signing a five-million-dollar SPC. You don’t call that big bucks?”

“Well, you better be careful.” Taylor steered the Jeep along the waterfront into town. “You’re playing with the big boys now, not forging your dead grandmother’s Social Security checks.”

“You think you’re a big shot now, Taylor?” A.D. suddenly turned angry. “You think your five million is big bucks? It’s nickels and dimes. It’s nothing. I’ll spill that much before I’m through.”

“I’ll bet you will, A.D.” Taylor smiled. “And I bet you get it all over you.”

They reached the center of town and the crowded streets. Young people dressed in bright colors, tanned and burned, lined the seawall and filled the shops and restaurants. The traffic had slowed to a crawl; motorcycles, scooters and bikes weaved around cars, exotic new four-wheel-drive trucks, rented Jeeps and ancient taxicabs as they crept along the boulevard.

“That’s the hotel over there.” A.D. pointed up the street and hopped out of the slow-moving Jeep. “See you later, Taylor. I got other business. Tell Hendrix I said hello.” A.D. disappeared quickly into the crowd.

Taylor drove the rattling, rusted Jeep up to the front of the hotel and parked next to the two VW vans that had carried them all from the airport to their hotel. A brown man in a uniform walked over with his hand out.

Inside, Taylor quickly found the bar and, in the candlelit shadows, could make out the hulk of Terry Dudley surrounded by several smaller figures in odd native garb: the network guys. The network guys huddled around the towering figure of Terry Dudley as if they were searching for warmth and protection.

Taylor walked up to the table and stood behind Terry until one of the network guys looked up.

“Oh, my God.” The guy slapped himself in the forehead. Terry turned around and jumped to his feet.

“Jesus! Taylor! How are you?” Dudley hugged him. An unusual greeting. He kept Taylor in his embrace, hugging his arms to his sides. “Goddam, Taylor, we were just trying to get up the nerve to come out there and tell you.”

Taylor wriggled free and looked at the upturned faces of the tiny network guys.

“Tell me what?”

“Bobby Hendrix,” Dudley said. “He’s dead.”

B
OBBY
H
ENDRIX AND
Kimball Adams rode in the Volkswagen van when they left that afternoon. As the grimy little bus ground away from the white hotel, Bobby craned his neck to catch a last glimpse of his wife and two youngest boys on the beach beyond the pool; the boys already in their underwear and running full blast into the gentle blue-green surf. He hoped Ginny was watching them and laughed at his worries. She raised and took care of all four of the boys—five, including him.

Bobby Hendrix was often awed by the complexity, reality and mortality of his life, his wife and four boys. The Hendrix family. Six human beings bound in life and death to past and future, yet always now, making their way in the universe.

During his childhood Bobby Hendrix learned about the myths, the fears and the broken dreams of the Great Depression in the stories that his parents carried to the dinner table. The horror of poverty. The humiliation of unemployment. The lost dream of a marketable craft.

Tales of struggle and defeat.

To avoid the humiliation of poverty, Bobby’s father had advised him to get “a good, steady job, even if you hate it ... hire on with the government or a big corporation with good insurance and a pension program, put in your thirty years and then get out.”

Bobby’s parents both retired after thirty hardworking years, thirty years of fear. The Depression hovered over them the way the bomb kept Bobby’s generation at bay.

They grew old as gracefully as one can on a pension. “So we won’t be a burden on you children,” his mother always said. They had kept their end of the long-term promise to a faceless bureaucracy.

Bobby would never do it. His father couldn’t believe he made his living playing football.

“Better get a real job,” he’d say.

“I don’t want to be a millionaire, Pop,” Bobby would say back. “I just want to live like one.”

What his parents’ Depression folktales taught Bobby Hendrix was that people survived. No matter how greedy the corporations or foolish the government or crazed the individuals, humans survived and some carried the spark of a just life—of decency, spirit, myth and dreams—to the next generation.

“It’s always been Ginny’s job,” Bobby spoke half aloud.

“Huh?” Kimball was smoking a cigar and talking to the driver in Spanish. “What did you say?” The roar and rattle, the bounce and lurch, of the German van being maltreated by the Mexican driver on the rather casual road made hearing difficult. The van bounced violently and jerked from side to side, dodging, weaving.

“I was just thinking about my family,” Hendrix said loudly. “I always assumed I would get to spend time with them later.”

“Christ. You spend a lot of time with your family.” Kimball puffed on his cigar and yelled in Spanish at the driver. “I couldn’t spend that much time with a wife and kids,” Kimball said. “It would drive me out of my mind.”

The driver made a hard right onto the airport road.

“Hey, Kimball, he missed,” Hendrix said. “I thought town was straight ahead.”

“It is.” Kimball looked at his aging, freckled, redhaired friend. “I told the driver to take us to the airport. Now, just give me a chance to explain....”

“I’m not getting on a plane.” Hendrix wasn’t surprised by the old quarterback’s deception. It was what made Kimball Adams a good leader. Deception. He had done it before; sometimes Hendrix had gone along and sometimes he had refused.

“You know I hate airplanes, Kimball, and I just got off one. You’re wasting gasoline, taking me to the airport.”

“Gas don’t cost nothing down here,” Kimball said. “Government owns the oil companies. I knew I’d never get you away from the hotel if I told you where we were going.”

“You mean the phone wasn’t even out?”

“The phone
was
out,” Kimball explained. “That’s why we have to go to the airport instead of the hotel. The flight isn’t definite and I was supposed to call Charlie Stillman at his hotel and check the status. He’s the producer on this thing.”

“Well, let’s go to the hotel first.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“We’re losing the light.” Kimball pointed out the window at the countryside flying by. “They want to shoot some film of the ruins at Tulum.”

“Whoa!” Bobby protested. “That’s over on the mainland. That’s the Yucatán. I don’t want to go to the Yucatán.”

“That’s why we go to the airport. If the trip is on, the network guys’ll want to leave immediately to get over there in time to shoot some film.” Kimball paused and puffed a long time on his cigar, acting as if the matter was settled.

“I’m not going on any plane.” Bobby shook his head.

“It’s just a short hop.” Kimball pointed vaguely in a direction with his cigar. “You’ll love it.”

“I’ll hate it.”

“Please, Bobby,” Kimball pleaded. “It could be a good deal for me with the network.”

“Geeezzz ... Kimball ...” Bobby didn’t want to fly, signaling Kimball he wanted out with his whine, but Kimball didn’t back down.

“Look, most likely we’ll get there and Charlie Stillman won’t; then the flight is off and we go back to your hotel.”

“But what if Stillman is there?”

“Then I’m asking you as a favor to me to get in the plane, fly up into the blue and take the pictures.” Kimball faced Hendrix. The old quarterback’s nose was swollen and reddened from drink; tiny blood vessels had shattered across his cheeks beneath the red-rimmed, rheumy eyes. “I
need
the favor, Bobby. The network guys mean a lot of money to me. They book a lot of trips and they can book through me. Charlie Stillman’s in their pockets up to his armpits and he asked me to talk you into flying there today. You’ll shoot some film flying over the ruins, spend the night and shoot fishing footage tomorrow. It’s only for one night. Charlie says they need you over there tonight with Terry Dudley. It would be a big favor to me.” Kimball concluded his heavy plea: “What are friends for?”

Bobby exhaled loudly. “Are they already over there?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kimball pressed, sensing Bobby’s weakening resolve. “Look, Bobby”—he kept the pressure on—“Stillman says the network guys’ll do business with me if I can perform for them, and I think this is the kind of thing they’ll remember: me delivering you on schedule to help them out of a bind. They’re all assholes, Bobby, but I can’t refuse to do business with assholes or I wouldn’t have any business at all.”

Bobby frowned at his long-time teammate and friend. “I can remember when you spit on Charlie Stillman.”

“I remember when I spit on Mean Joe Greene too.” Kimball Adams grinned and rasped his raucous, evil laugh. “I never made that mistake again. I’m trying not to make this one at all. I don’t like Charlie Stillman either, but damn, man—”

“Give it a rest, Kimball,” Bobby interrupted. “Let me think.” Thoughtfully Hendrix stared out the side window; finally his eyes cut back to Kimball and his freckled face split wide, showing good teeth and some gold. “I guess watching Mean Joe chase you all over the field that afternoon was one of the
real funny
things I have ever seen.” Bobby began to laugh.

“Does that mean my old target’s come through again? You’ll go?” Kimball leaned over and took his arm.

“I’d rather not be thought of as a target anymore,” Bobby said. “But I guess I can fly over to the Yucatán. Let’s hope Stillman fails to come through as usual. I don’t even have the right clothes.”