The Franchise (45 page)

“They got brand-name stuff over there to wear on camera.” Kimball reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a toothbrush and a comb and a small tube of Crest. “I brought this for you. You’ll only be there overnight. You’ll fish in the morning, then they’ll fly you back tomorrow and pick up Fresh Meat Rusk.”

“Okay, Kimball, you call Ginny.” Bobby reluctantly stuffed the toilet items in his shirt. “If I never see Charlie Stillman, it’s too soon.”

“He probably won’t even be there.” Kimball relaxed. “This will all be a false alarm.”

Charlie Stillman was waiting outside the terminal. He wasn’t hard to spot in his white shirt and shorts and white straw hat, chainsmoking, pacing up and down the pavement. His skinny white legs lacked muscle tone and his walk was a controlled stumble.

The VW pulled up and Kimball and Bobby got out.

“Come on, boys, we’re losing the light,” Stillman said. Charlie sent a boy scampering ahead through the small terminal and out onto the runway apron, where a blue and white twin-engine plane waited. The boy yelled at the pilot, who quickly began his preflight check.

The heavy man sitting in the shade of the wing lifted the sixteen-millimeter Arriflex camera and climbed into the plane through the huge gap left where the door had been removed.

“Where’s the door?” Bobby slowed his pace.

“They took it off to give the cameraman a better field of vision to shoot,” Stillman said, climbing in ahead of Bobby and taking the copilot’s seat. The thick man with the camera took the seat farthest from the opening, leaving Bobby Hendrix the seat next to the door.

“Come on, we have to hurry,” Stillman said to Kimball, leaving it to him to prod Bobby Hendrix into the plane.

“You sit there by the door, Bobby,” Stillman said. “That way you’ll be in the pictures of the Tulum ruins. Crank it up, Gonzolo.” Stillman made a twirling motion with his finger.

“Damn, Bobby, I didn’t know they were gonna make you ride on the outside.” Kimball helped him into his seat by the open doorway. “Hey, Stillman, why don’t you ride here? Bobby ain’t that crazy about flying.”

“We want
him
in the film, Kimball.” Stillman was curt, rude. The pilot turned over the port engine. It roared quickly to life. “The network guys want faces, famous faces, not pretty pictures of old rock buildings.” Stillman turned around and asked Bobby, “You ever see the ruins at Tulum?”

Bobby shook his head. The starboard engine growled to life, blasting Kimball Adams with air. The plane lurched forward and Kimball was quickly left behind.

Bobby considered jumping out of the plane, but the runway pavement was flashing by. Bobby tightened up his seat belt and looked over at the fat cameraman, who looked vaguely familiar. He wore dark glasses, baggy white pants and a red and yellow floral-print shirt.

The frightened, arthritic, aging receiver smiled and nodded at the man behind the glasses, who was holding the big black Arriflex across his lap. The man smiled and nodded.

“I’m Bobby Hendrix.” The slender, freckled man extended his hand. His stiff red hair whipped his face and neck as the wind ripped through it. They shook hands. Bobby was certain he had seen the man before.

“Just call me Tiny,” the cameraman yelled over the roar of engines and wind.

The runway flashed beside Bobby Hendrix, then the plane lifted off. The island quickly fell away and there was nothing beside him but the sky.

Cars, vans, trucks and Jeeps became toys and people turned to insects. Hotels looked like whitewashed alphabet blocks. They were quickly out over the spectacular blue-green Caribbean sea. The water’s tones and shades varied with the sky and the contour of the reef and coral. A giant stingray was flying through the crystal-clear water. The bottom sank from sight, the water turned a deep, dark blue and the Caribbean was a profound sapphire.

The Yucatán peninsula loomed ahead; the ruins of the ninth-century Mayan city of Tulum stood gray and brooding at the ocean’s edge.

The photographer spoke to the pilot in Spanish.

Gonzolo, the pilot, put the plane into a tight turn, and Bobby could see
turistas
scrambling over the ancient ruins like ants. The plane swung in over the jungle and then back out over the ocean. The photographer yelled more instructions, making hand signals for the tighter, steeper turn.

Grown over, Tulum was a good-size Mayan city, and Bobby could see where the white bones of exterior city walls stuck up farther out in the jungle, up along the coast and inland.

The pilot began another tight turn over the ruins. The photographer held the camera to his eye and leaned toward the door.

Bobby could feel the force of gravity pulling and sucking him toward the open door and the temple five hundred feet below. He held on tightly to his seat back and eased the strain on his seat belt. He wouldn’t depend on the belt to keep him inside the plane.

Holding the big camera, the cameraman leaned fearlessly toward the open door, trusting his seat belt totally. The pilot turned even tighter. The engines roared and the airplane was up on its side.

“Goddammit,” the cameraman yelled, “the son of a bitch is jammed.” He looked quickly around, then held the big heavy Arriflex out to Bobby. “Here, hold this for a second, would you please?”

The camera thrust into his chest, Bobby automatically turned loose of the seat back and grabbed it.

The photographer let go.

Bobby Hendrix felt the camera’s weight pull him toward the open, sucking door. Bobby’s seat belt groaned, creaked and strained. He could not hold the big Arriflex long. It was too heavy, the angle of the airplane’s bank too steep.

Bobby strained to hand the camera back as the cameraman leaned toward him. Then the large man reached out with one hand and flipped the latch on Bobby’s seat belt, while his other hand gave Bobby a hard shove.

The big black Arriflex sixteen-millimeter and Bobby Hendrix sailed out of the plane and into the white silence of free fall.

It took a long time to fall.

It took the rest of Bobby Hendrix’s life.

B
OBBY
H
ENDRIX CERTAINLY
hadn’t expected to die this way. That was his first thought.

His next thought was a simple acceptance of the end: he was soon to become ill-defined.

He made a speed of light decision to make it a full five hundred feet of life and did not waste time on screaming or any other distracting activity.

The quick ease of this decision was due to his knowledge of the seriousness of the blood disease discovered in his insurance physical; it would have killed him in another eighteen months to two years. So he reduced eighteen months to five hundred feet at thirty-two feet per second and found the difference a metaphysical question that was pointless to consider, since he had already been pushed out of the plane.

He wondered why.

Who wanted him dead?

Kimball? Charlie Stillman? The Cobianco brothers? Had someone decided Kimball Adams had talked to him too much? Was this union trouble?

He knew it was all of those and none of them.

He knew it didn’t matter.

His death was somebody’s desire for a neat solution to a complex question.

A pretty primitive solution,
Bobby thought, seeing the ancient altar of the sun rushing up to smash him to pulp.

Then Bobby Hendrix realized it was supposed to be.

I
NSIDE THE HOT SPRINGS
Ranch house the phone rang. Outside, Suzy and Cyrus were walking up from the hot springs. Wearing identical sandals, they both had their hair wrapped in blue towels and wore blue terry-cloth robes. They were about the same size, and to the nearsighted wetback who answered the phone they looked identical.

“
Senora ...”
The maid held out the phone; Suzy strode quickly over and snatched it up to her ear. She knew who it would be.

Cyrus admired his young girl friend. Her taut nude body had excited him down at the hot springs, but after the walk up the hill he was too tired to do anything. It had been a nice experience while it lasted. While Suzy talked on the phone, Cyrus decided to buy a golf cart for trips back and forth to the Indian hot springs.

The Hot Springs Ranch was one of the best swaps Cyrus Chandler’s daddy ever made. He swapped five thousand acres of leases, expected to be the middle of the biggest oil play since the East Texas field. The oil play turned out to be five wells that pumped two barrels of salt water for every one of oil, while the ranch covered 507,000 acres and fronted on thirty-five miles of the Rio Grande and some of its more spectacular canyons. Cyrus’s daddy had made a good trade.

The international operator left the line; Suzy turned and grinned widely at the old man. “Go ahead, sir.” The international operator returned to the line.

“Suzy?” It was a weak, shaky voice.

“Yes,” she said, smiling to Cyrus and pursing a kiss on her lips.

“Bobby Hendrix is dead.” A.D.’s voice cracked. He couldn’t say it fast enough.

Suzy looked at her nails and decided that they needed a manicure before she and Cyrus flew in to Presidio to a party to meet some Mexican nationals. They were friends of the Cobiancos and wanted to discuss export/import. Cyrus’s divorce was going through quickly; Junie had found a decorator she wanted to marry.

“Well?” A.D.’s quavering voice crackled with static.

“That’s fine. Bye-bye.” Suzy hung up, picturing A.D. coming out of a phone booth, looking like Peter Lorre in some dismal foreign country, covered with sweat and flies. She laughed and walked to Cyrus, who stared out at the distant mountains.

“Who was that?” Cyrus didn’t turn away from the glass wall and the spectacular view.

“Girl talk.” Suzy walked up behind him, wrapping her arms around him. She lay her head on his blue terry-cloth shoulder. “What a nice stomach you have, Mr. Chandler.” She left the comparison to Dick Conly’s hard, protruding abdomen unsaid but understood.

Dick Conly would have quickly ferreted A.D. out of that phone call and drawn his connection to events in Mexico. But Conly was up somewhere in the Pecos Mountains sitting on a pile of Mexican gold pieces. Cyrus Chandler merely wondered how to ship a golf cart to far Southwest Texas for a good price.

T
AYLOR
R
USK AND
Terry Dudley were the last two left in the hotel bar, very drunk on many double Herradura Silver tequilas on the rocks. The network guys had all disappeared, first coming by the table, nodding their individual little heads at Taylor and asking Terry, “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s okay,” the seven-foot man answered each time, weaving in his seat and nodding at Taylor.

“Are
you
okay?” the network guys would then ask the totally drunk union director, whose upper-body wobble was quite noticeable.

“Yeah,” Taylor Rusk growled at them. “He’s okay.”

When all the network guys were gone and the tequila was almost gone, Taylor looked at Terry Dudley and said, “They killed him.”

“Who?” Dudley was skeptical.

“I don’t know who and I don’t know why, but I do know they killed him, Terry. Bobby wouldn’t go anywhere with Charlie Stillman, especially on an airplane. He hated airplanes almost as much as he hated Charlie Stillman, which is as much as I hate Charlie Stillman.” When Terry didn’t answer, Taylor asked, “So what do we do now?”

“Cancel the show and get quickly and quietly out of town. There’s nothing we can do for Hendrix. The network’s already been in contact with the embassy and the consul. We can clear Bobby’s body through at Mérida, which may not sound like a big deal, but it gets complicated when a man enters Mexico alive in Cozumel and tries to leave dead from the Yucatán.”

The waiter relentlessly replaced the empty glasses in front of the two big men, who relentlessly emptied them of tequila and banged them down on the wooden tabletop. Taylor drank several glasses in silence. Thinking. Wondering.

“What do you know about Harrison H. Harrison?” he finally asked Dudley.

“Harrison H. Harrison was a ’39 graduate of the University with a degree in geology,” Dudley rattled off. “Spent a while wildcatting in South America and Libya, screwed around helping to get a Republican party going in Texas. He had mixed success, mostly around the big rich cities like Houston, Dallas, Midland and Tyler. Then he went to work for his daddy at Venture Capital Offshore. The family is centered in New York. He is presently president and CEO of VCO, a company that specializes in putting together offshore joint venture deals.”

Taylor was amazed by Dudley. “Why and how do you know all that?”

“He belonged to Spur in ’39,” Terry Dudley answered quickly and surely. “I keep track of everybody who was ever in Spur unless they’re dead or listed as missing in action.” Dudley laughed in a series of hisses that convulsed his shoulders and head. “It’s a big organization, Taylor. Did you ever keep up with any of the guys that were in Spur with us?”

“The ten top onions?” Taylor’s eyes were red. “Not really. I see some names pop up in the news, like yours and mine. That’s all.”

“That was what it was for, you know, Taylor?”

“What?”

“Spur,” the seven-foot man continued. “Making and maintaining contacts with smart, ambitious, motivated people from your university. The whole
idea
is to stay in contact, to communicate consistent goals and plans for the future, not just to our generation or college but to all Texans and all Americans. We have powerful members, influential, like Harrison, Senator Thompson, the governor, Cyrus Chandler ... the list goes on. The initiation just began that night at the Tower, Taylor. It continues for years, hopefully for generations ...”

“Terry?” Taylor interrupted, “are you trying to tell me that there is an old-boy system?”

“It’s more than just an old-boy network, for God’s sake. It’s a long-term plan and you were asked to
be
part of it. You can
still
be part of it. Once a person’s been taken into Spur, he only loses his membership when he dies.”