The Franchise

by Peter Gent

  Lem looked confused and disappointed, his eyes traveling nervously from Cyrus to Conly to the floor. “You just want me to be assistant public relations man?” Lem was hurt. “No executive title? Wendy told me ...”

  “Damn boy!” Conly roared. “Wendy Chandler doesn’t run this business; I do!” Lem winced back into the chair. “I run this son of a bitch, and if you want to go to work for me, you do what I say.”

  “Now, Dick, calm yourself,” Cyrus interrupted. “Lem, you’re among friends here, and remember, all my daughter is going to be is your wife. Do you want the job or not?”

  Lem was stunned by the sudden ferocity of Conly’s attack and had no idea what he had done to deserve it. After all, he was third-generation money. It wasn’t like he needed the job. He couldn’t help it if he wasn’t common.

  “I ... ah ... well ...” Lem tried to find his voice. “Yes, certainly I want the job, but ...”

  “No goddam but’s,” Conly said abruptly. “Don’t chase it if you can’t kill it, boy, and don’t kill it if you can’t skin it. Either way you end up with a stinking mess.” Conly drained and sloshed still more bourbon into his glass. He looked at the door as Lem Carleton III skulked out of the sumptuous office, Cyrus following him.

  “Take it easy, Lem,” Cyrus soothed. “We can’t make it look like marrying the boss’s daughter is all it takes in this business.” The elevator opened at the end of the hall. A teen-age boy got out.

  “I guess not.” Lem dug his toe in the thick carpet. “Well ... I’m supposed to meet Wendy now.”

  “Go on,” Cyrus said. “Kiss her for me.”

  Lem smiled when he left, but he was angry and humiliated and brushed past young Luther Conly without a nod.

  “Mr. Chandler,” the boy asked, “is my dad finished yet?”

  Cyrus frowned and looked puzzled. “Why, Luther, I’m sorry, Dick just left. He must have forgotten.”

  The boy’s face fell; his eyes misted and his body trembled.

  “He’s been busy as a one-armed paperhanger,” Cyrus smiled.

  The boy nodded and walked back to the elevator. Cyrus returned to the office.

  “You better quit drinking so much, Dick.” Cyrus watched Conly gulp down the whiskey. Cyrus’s small pointed tongue flicked across his front teeth like a reptile’s, tasting the air.

  “You quit giving me shit jobs like raising your future son-in-law and carrying twenty-five thousand to that jerk-off Senator Thompson. Then, I’ll quit drinking so much.” Conly looked at his watch. He was expecting his son.

  “Hell, Dick, it isn’t just for Wendy.” Cyrus leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, looking out at the fast-darkening skyline. “Lem is Junior’s boy, don’t forget. I have known him since he was that high.” Cyrus held his manicured hands two feet above the plush light-purple carpet. “He and Wendy Cy were the two cutest kids ...”

  “Since when did who had the cutest kids make a shit, Cyrus?” Conly banged his glass on the solid teak coffee table that Cyrus had brought from China on the company plane. “You squeezed Junior out of the Wanda June Field when Lem was only five years old and a lot cuter. And I’ll be goddamned, but my kids are cuter than yours or Junior’s and I don’t even get to see them.” Conly poured himself another drink. “Where the hell is Luther? We had a movie date.” He checked his watch. “It’s always been too easy for you, Cyrus. I make it too easy and it’s hard on me and mine.”

  “Maybe so, Dick. Maybe so.” Cyrus looked over at Conly and shrugged. “Maybe I feel guilty.” He suddenly changed the subject. “A guy told me I can put over two million tax-free into my pocket when we get to the Super Bowl. So let’s move. We scalp the Super Bowl tickets, only pay taxes on the face value and pocket the rest. It’s foolproof.”

  “It’s stupid. A guy told you? What guy?”

  Cyrus didn’t answer.

  “Nothing is foolproof,” Conly reminded Chandler. “The word does not apply to you. You attract an inordinate number of fools.” He pointed at the chair Lem Three had occupied. “We have fools marrying into the business and the family.”

  “We can use Don Cobianco’s operation to help move tickets,” Cyrus urged. “He’s been anxious to do me some favors.”

  “Is that where you got this harebrained idea? I’ll bet he’s anxious to do you some favors. Listen, Cyrus, don’t ever put us in bed with the Cobianco brothers. Ever. They’re penny-ante thugs.” Dick Conly spent a lot of his time protecting Cyrus from people like the Cobiancos. He had killed a couple, protecting Amos. “Scalping tickets involves the IRS. It’s stupid. Don’t ever do deals with people who got less to lose than you.”

  “I like the idea, that’s all. It’s fun.” Cyrus laughed. “Now, what about the Anglo-Bahamian Bank in Freeport? I need a stash for the scalping money.”

  “We have to get to the Super Bowl first.” Conly decided to stall. “By then we’ll be making so much money, we’ll have no reason—”

  “Scared, Dick?” Chandler cut him off. “I have a plan. If you can’t ...”

  “Everybody has a plan, you asshole,” Conly yelled at Cyrus Chandler. “Now listen to me. I already checked and the Anglo-Bahamian Bank is a CIA front.”

  “Oh, Jesus ...” Cyrus turned white. “What’ll we do? We can’t use that bank.”

  “It’s the safest place to be. You stupid bastard, the CIA isn’t going to tell anybody what they’re doing, especially the IRS.”

  “They won’t?” Cyrus had broken into a fine cold sweat.

  “No.”

  “They can’t turn me in?” Cyrus giggled.

  Conly shook his head. “They might threaten to tell the IRS ...”

  “But they’re illegal too!” Cyrus began a high-pitched cackle as the sweat ran from his armpits. “They won’t endanger their own operation over a couple of million, right?”

  “Yeah, but don’t do it. The Cobianco brothers could leave your ass hanging out between them and the CIA. You’re gambling billions against a few million.”

  “We’ll see,” Cyrus said. “A million here and there adds up.”

  “Don’t do it. I’m warning you. This could hurt Chandler Industries; Mob and CIA connections are not the best of international associates.”

  Dick Conly checked the time again and sighed. “I gave Luther a thousand-dollar watch for his birthday and he’s half an hour late.”

  “I’ll bet he just forgot. Dick. You know these kids nowadays.” Cyrus grinned, his eyes small and mean.

  “No, I don’t, Cyrus. Thanks to you, I never see my kid. Well, I better get Red Kilroy in here: We have a franchise to build.”

  Dick Conly drank far into that night and many other nights, carrying out his plans and thwarting Cyrus’s disastrous schemes.

  Conly never did figure out how he and his boy, Luther, missed connections that night on the movie. Neither did Luther. They missed others, many more.

  Finally all.

  ESCAPE FROM REHEARSAL

  TAYLOR RUSK WATCHED Lem Three arrive at the Water Carnival rehearsal while Terry Dudley listened raptly to the guy in the blue blazer, white pants and shoes who was using a bullhorn to assign numbers to floats.

  “Number twenty-six, that’s the Dekes.... Number twenty-seven, the Kappa Sigs.... Number twenty-eight....”

  Taylor Rusk watched Wendy Chandler and Lem Carleton as they began to argue.

  “Number thirty-two is the ROTC Queen’s float....”

  Lem took Wendy behind the bleachers, erected strategically for the University and Park City officials and honored guests to see the floats while also being seen themselves. Taylor watched as the tide of the argument turned quickly against Three.

  Suddenly Wendy Chandler snatched the engagement ring from her finger and threw the five-carat diamond into the tall grass of the riverbottom.

  Lem was devastated. Horror-stricken, he chased the glittering arc carved by the huge diamond in the fading skylight. He got several twinkling fixes on the trajectory and quickly triangulated
a swatch of tule as the touchdown zone, where he fell to his knees and began searching.

  Wendy spun around and began a furious march up the sloping riverbank toward the aquatic station and the parking lot beyond, leaving Three scrambling desperately in the tall grass.

  “Keys in your demonstrator?” Taylor asked Terry Dudley, who was entranced by the guy with the bullhorn.

  “Okay, the Canoe Club will serve as parade masters and carry walkie-talkies....”

  “The keys in your car?” Taylor bumped Dudley, who nodded but kept his eyes on the guy with the bullhorn.

  “Number forty will be the Sigma Nus.... Number forty-one will be the Spur float....”

  “Save me a seat on the float.”

  Taylor turned and jogged after Wendy, catching up with her in front of the oil rig that had punched out the first oil on University property.

  “Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

  “Only if I can drive.” Wendy didn’t break stride.

  “The keys are in that blue Cadillac four-door.”

  They sped off.

  It took all night—he was eaten alive by mosquitoes and nearly bitten by a cottonmouth—but Lem Three found the flawless diamond ring.

  Taylor sat silently while Wendy squealed the big blue car through the campus and city, up over the faultline and into the hills. Finally he asked, “What were you and Lem fighting about?”

  “He didn’t like the way the future looked.” She kept her eyes fixed on the darkening road; her small hands and thin arms wrenched the big wheel of the car. They wove their way onto the limestone plateau. “So I changed it.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  Taylor Rusk nodded and remained silent for several wild miles.

  Wendy wrestled the car and kept the gas pedal to the floor. They left the road several times. She kept the car accelerating, slowing only for the switchbacks and caliche hairpins.

  The Cadillac clawed its way up the scarp and the cedar breaks stretched ahead in the twilight.

  “How come we never met before Buffy’s wedding?” She took her eyes off the twisting road.

  “I don’t get out much.” Taylor said. “Don’t know what to do. Mostly I play ball, study, eat, sleep, play ball and play ball.”

  “Real good-timer, huh?” She turned back to the road. The Cadillac ate away the pavement.

  “If you like playing ball.”

  “A.D. Koster was such a dreamboat in high school,” Wendy said. “All of us thought he was some sort of animal, like—like. James Dean.”

  “He was ... still is....” In high school A.D. rolled his Camels up in the sleeve of his white T-shirt and rode a Harley Electra Glide he had stolen in Galveston.

  “So it was you and that fat guy D’Hanis that were always with him,” Wendy said. “Your cuffs were always too short on your pants and you wore sweat socks.”

  “I still wear sweat socks. They’re free and clean and I sweat a lot. You want me to introduce you to A.D? Hell, if you’re into shoes”—Taylor pointed at his feet—“these shoes once belonged to A.D. Koster.”

  “I already saw them. They’re nice with those sweat socks.”

  The Cadillac slowed noticeably. The plateau was sinking into darkness.

  “I’m taking you to a friend’s place,” Wendy Chandler announced as the car climbed higher. “He won’t be there. You’ll like it. I have to get away from campus and think.”

  “Me too. If we take long enough, I’m certain I can think of something.”

  Taylor knew where she was going as soon as she turned off the Ranch Road pavement onto the county caliche road past Dead Man Hill. He kept quiet as she followed the roughly graded road through the rocky pastures and through the gates and cattle guards and across the fords of the shallow-flowing Dead Man Creek.

  “I was a freshman at the University and I decided to have my first affair,” Wendy explained as she drove across the third ford of the creek. “I picked this professor who was kind of old and married. It made it seem safer or less involved or something. His wife had cut him off years before over some other beef about another student, I think. Imagine that. Anyway, their kids were grown and gone. So I took a shot at him and he brought me here.”

  “Was it safer?” Taylor asked. “Less involved or something?” They topped Coon Ridge, dropped down and crossed the creek for the final time.

  “I don’t know. I guess it was or something. He’s still my best friend at school.”

  They pulled up next to the old stone farmhouse set back in the live oak motte on the bluff above Dead Man Creek.

  “He only comes up here on weekends. You’d like him.”

  “I do,” Taylor said.

  “Doc Webster? You know him?” Wendy looked at him quizzically. “He never mentions you.”

  “Everyone mentions you,” Taylor said.

  “Then you’ve been here before?” Wendy opened the car door; the interior light immediately attracted several varieties of flying insects, some quite large.

  Taylor nodded and swung halfheartedly at the bugs invading the car. “Let’s get out and into the house before the big ones come.”

  “How are Simon and Buffy?” Wendy led the way into the stone house.

  “I haven’t seen them. Simon called from the Longhorn Motel when he found out A.D. had lost the rent money again. He just came over and got his stuff and vanished into the night. Haven’t heard a word since. You talk to Buffy?”

  “We’re not that close. She was a loner and spent all her time with Simon. I was president of the house and nobody else wanted to make that horrid drive to Oklahoma.” Wendy opened the back door to the cabin.

  “You never answered my question that day.” Taylor knocked down a moth that was flying straight for his eyes. “Do you forgive and not forget ...” They stepped inside, walked through the kitchen into the living room. “... or forget but not forgive?”

  “Maybe I forgive and forget. Build a fire.” Wendy set her cloth shoulder bag on the table with a familiar clunk, then walked into the south bedroom.

  “I find that hard to believe.” Taylor looked into the cloth bag. A pearl-handled, nickel-plated, five-shot, snub-nosed .38 fit snugly in a specially sewn pocket. Grip, handle and trigger quickly accessible, she could shoot the gun without removing it from the purse. “Very hard to believe. I personally forgive but never forget.”

  “That’s nice,” Wendy called from the bedroom. “You would make a great pet elephant.”

  “The idea is to not make the same mistake twice.”

  “You’ll be easy to paper-train.”

  Taylor found kindling in a brass woodbox and began constructing a fire in the rock fireplace.

  Taylor Rusk and Wendy Cy Chandler spent several days at Doc Webster’s ranch, while back on the river their places on the floats drifted lazily, conspicuously empty in front of everyone on campus and in town.

  Hardly anyone forgot or forgave.

  RED KILROY

  “I WANT COACH and general manager.” Red Kilroy sipped his Scotch and looked into the glass while he made his demands of Cyrus Chandler and Dick Conly. “I need complete control and autonomy just like I have over at the University. I will want to bring my whole staff. I want a lot of money and a part of the Franchise, stock options based on an incentive program indexed to wins and losses. I’ll want dental, medical and a slush fund. Otherwise, why should I leave the University?”

  “We’ll meet most of your demands,” Dick Conly said, “because you are quite honestly worth it. But you can’t own any stock in the Franchise. The League prefers one owner. It eliminates the chance of public fights. Besides, I don’t want you as a stockholder. You’ll try and squeeze in deeper. I just want you to worry about wins and losses of football games, the evaluation of talent and the development of long-term program strategies and short-term tactics. That’s the job description. It pays four hundred thousand dollars base. We can work out the incentives and bon
uses. You’ll like the numbers, but no, you would make a dangerous business partner. You can never be allowed to own. You don’t understand the concepts of balance and order. You always want more, to win, to have.”

  “Then why should I leave the University?” Red leaned back smugly, dealing from a certain strength. The University job paid $200,000 plus oil-well overrides, a free house, a television show and endorsements that added another $150,000, three free cars and a slush fund—kept in his office safe—that was estimated at about $300,000, of which $100,000 went straight into Red’s pocket as cash, untaxed, yearly. There were free trips, million-dollar life insurance policies and scholarships for children. His total income with all the unlisted perks was over $600,000.

  “You’ll leave,” Dick Conly replied. “If you don’t the NCAA and the FBI are going to be in your office the first thing tomorrow, going through recruiting files and opening your safe. Try explaining three hundred thousand dollars cash. Not everybody in this state went to the University. It just seems like it. Now, do we have to get down to ear-biting?”

  “Bullshit,” Red said. “You’re in those files. You can’t turn me in and stay clean yourself.”

  “Can’t we?” Conly said. “Are you certain? Well, I certainly hope we don’t have to go to all the trouble to find out. You’ll be an employee, a valued but replaceable technician—not an owner or partner, just an employee. We will pay you well, but don’t ask for an ownership position again.”

  “Maybe,” Cyrus interrupted, angering Dick Conly, “if you get us into the Super Bowl ... maybe then we’ll talk about an ownership percentage. Until then ...” Cyrus let it hang.

  “I’ll think about it.” Red stood and left quickly.

  “Well, Cyrus,” Conly sighed, “you have done it again. You just gave Red Kilroy the one thing that I wanted that ambitious bastard stripped of completely before we hired him—hope.” Dick’s aggravation was apparent.