The Franchise

by Peter Gent

  Luther Conly didn’t like hunting or football.

  Dick Conly dialed Suzy Ballard’s number. It rang and rang. Finally he called Taylor Rusk. Taylor answered on the third ring.

  “Taylor, this is Dick Conly, your general manager. Let’s go drinking and fucking.”

  Taylor held the phone away and looked at it, slightly shocked.

  “Frankly, Dick, I’ve got practice tomorrow, and Terry Dudley is here now.”

  Conly knew that before he called. “The basketball player?” he replied, acting surprised.

  “I believe he now prefers to be known as the new director of the Players Union, which he has been since Bobby Hendrix forced out your old pal, Stillman.”

  “Does he drink?”

  “Ask him yourself.” Taylor handed the phone to Terry Dudley.

  “You bet, Mr. Conly,” Dudley said. “Conflict? Hell, sounds like a major breakthrough in labor-management relations. Come on over.” Dudley replaced the receiver and began rubbing his hands together.

  “Today is our lucky day,” Terry said, staring at the phone like it was a magic lamp. “Conly has political contacts all over San Antonio and South Texas. This could move my timetable for the Union way up.”

  “You better walk soft with Conly,” Taylor warned. “He wants something.”

  “Jesus, Taylor, this guy could help us. Where’s Hendrix?”

  “Gone to Houston to be with Ginny and the boys at his father-in-law’s. Gus Savas has one of those River Oaks mansions.”

  “Did Bobby fly? I thought he was scared of flying.”

  “He flew scared,” Taylor said. “He had to talk to Savas about an oil deal with VCO.”

  “Harrison H. Harrison’s company? The father-in-law must be rich, huh?” Dudley began pacing the room.

  Taylor nodded. “Gus is a damn successful independent, a wildcatter. He found some big fields at the right time and sold them to the majors for the right price. That’s how the business works: Wildcatters find and sell oil to the majors and they hide it again.”

  “Somebody ought to kick the majors’ asses!” The seven-foot man struck out with his long sinewy leg and size-seventeen shoe. “Might be a good political position for the Union. The fans could dig that, and we’ll need the fans if we strike.”

  “Fuck the fans,” Taylor said, “and the strike.”

  “Kick the majors’ asses,” Dudley repeated. “How many owners are oil men?”

  “Too many. We’ll run out of feet long before they draw down their stock of asses.”

  “I saw A.D.,” Dudley said suddenly.

  “Speaking of asses. Where’d you see A.D.?”

  “He came to Union headquarters with a couple of walking garbage compactors. We had some drinks. They wanted to talk about Union pension insurance.” Dudley wrinkled his forehead as he moved birdlike around the room. “They kept talking to me about a big-term life-insurance-policy scheme. Not only would I not have to pay a first year’s premium, but A.D. would give me a twenty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars for finding yourself?”

  “I know, Taylor, I’m not as dumb as you seem to think. Christ, the guy is your fucking friend. I was nice to him because he was a friend of yours, but after that offer and a second look at the two jukeboxes ...”

  “The Cobianco brothers.”

  “One was Cobianco, the other was a Tiny something.” Terry shook his head, arms and hands. “I think it was Tiny Mind. Nice friends you got.”

  “They aren’t my friends.”

  “They did have one good idea about the next bargaining agreement between the Union and the League ... residuals ... like actors get ... a piece of the action.” Dudley stopped pacing and looked at Taylor. “Do you think Conly would go for that?”

  “He’d love it,” Taylor replied, “because he knows none of us have a clue how much action there is, and Conly doesn’t have to tell us.” Taylor was irritated at Dudley’s sudden obtuseness. “The Union would have to define the action and the League wouldn’t have to open the books. Forget it. Dick Conly will pick your pocket. You’ll never get rich.”

  Terry wasn’t listening. “I’m gonna ask Hendrix and Speedo ... they’ve been around and they’re the player reps. Right now I got to take a shit,” Dudley announced.

  “Well, take it home with you.”

  “Come on, I’m waiting to meet Conly.”

  “He’ll have his own.”

  Dudley disappeared down the hall just as the door opened and the Texas Pistols’ general manager stumbled inside Taylor’s apartment, holding out an empty glass.

  “You drank it,” Taylor said without moving.

  “Hell of a place, Taylor,” Conly said. “Hell of a place, but with what we’re paying you, you could afford better.”

  Down the hall the commode flushed and Terry Dudley returned, buckling his belt. Dick Conly still held out the empty glass.

  “Bloody Mary,” he said.

  Dudley took the glass without saying a word and disappeared into the kitchen. He fixed the Bloody Mary and returned. Conly took the glass into the dining room.

  “Well?” Dudley looked at Taylor. “Are you going to introduce us?”

  “I know Dick Conly. You want to meet him? Go fucking meet him. What the hell kind of a Union politician are you? Get in there and let him beat your brains out.”

  Returning to the room, Conly held out his empty glass for a refill. Dudley took the glass from Conly’s hand and returned to the kitchen. The general manager watched the new Union director intently as he walked away.

  “What the fuck does he want?” he asked Taylor.

  “His fair advantage, Dick, just like everybody. He just wants what he’s got coming.”

  “He ought to be careful; he just might get it,” Conly said. “You, too, Taylor.”

  Taylor got to his feet. “Well, Dick, you can be certain you won’t get it.”

  “Let’s go to Hollywood,” Conly said. “Get a bungalow at the Beverly Hills, play with the stars and starlets.”

  “I am a star,” Taylor replied, “and I’m going to Colony Stadium and play with myself.”

  Dudley returned with the Bloody Mary.

  “You want to go to Hollywood, fella?” Conly asked.

  “Sure, but I just wanted to meet you and sort of listen to what you had to say.”

  “About what?”

  “Politics, business, government, labor, stuff like that.”

  “It’s all the same; what can I possibly tell you?”

  Dudley shrugged. “Inside stories, secrets ...”

  “Here’s my only secret; You live in a country where wealth is its own reward. Money means freedom, and freedom means no rules, and man cannot live without some rules. Even if only to break them. Get me another drink.”

  Dick found Taylor’s phone and dialed Suzy Ballard’s phone number. She answered on the fourth ring; she had sat next to her phone and watched it ring the first three times. She told Dick to come right over. He was gone when Terry Dudley returned with the Bloody Mary.

  “Aw, shit.” Dudley drank the tomato juice and vodka in one long gulp. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

  MOUSE FOOD

  COLONY STADIUM, AN ANCIENT, crumbly cement structure, was used for the black high school south of Park City. The blacks lived south in a small clump of houses between Park City and the redneck cotton-gin town-soon-to-be-suburb of Clyde. The black area wasn’t incorporated and didn’t provide city services, but it did have a football stadium. The area was called the Nigger Colony, and the Texas Pistols used Colony Stadium for practice the first year in the League. It was one reason why the Pistols had such a large black following in the early years, much to Cyrus Chandler’s dismay.

  Dick Conly had originally made a quiet arrangement with Lem Carleton junior to lease some extra space from the University for a practice field and locker-room facility, but when the issue came before the athletic board for routine authorization. Athle
tic Director T. J. “Armadillo” Talbott vetoed the plan.

  Armadillo demanded that Red Kilroy return the University football slush fund. “You tell that sneak thief Kilroy we want our three hundred thousand dollars back,” Armadillo ordered.

  “What three hundred thousand dollars?” Red had replied.

  So the first season the Pistols practiced in Colony Stadium. The final practice of the season was extra long and hard. Red wanted to win the final game against New York.

  “A win will give us momentum for next season,” Red claimed.

  “Only if the first game is by Groundhog Day,” Taylor Rusk said sourly.

  “You’ll be out here till then if you don’t shut up and throw some more decent passes,” the coach shot back.

  “Goddammit, Red, we’ve thrown too much already. My arm hurts.”

  Red kept them working another forty-five minutes before sending them to shower.

  “I’m afraid Harlowe’s going to get rattlesnake-bit,” Simon said to Taylor as they walked off. “She’s a good retriever. She’s ready to work quail and I got twelve thousand acres leased up past Childress. But until Harlowe’s snake-trained I’m not taking her out. A damn shame, too, ’cause I got bobwhite and blue quail out the old whazoo up there.”

  Small rivulets of sweat worked their way through Simon’s heavy whiskers and dripped from the underbrush that covered his brow ridge without break from side to side. He had stripped his six-foot-four-inch frame to Pistols practice T-shirt and jock. His body had grown hulking with muscle definition.

  Taylor unlaced his shoe and noticed a slight twinge in his elbow. “Goddam Red. I told the son of bitch we were throwing too much today.” He worked the sore arm, trying to feel the nature of the ache.

  “Let’s go kick his ass.” Simon was dead serious. “It’ll make him easier to handle later on ... make him flinch a little.”

  Taylor shook his head. “Red is nuts enough. He might start flinching too much.”

  “That’s what worries me about Harlowe.” Simon returned to the danger of rattlesnakes while quail hunting up near the Oklahoma border. “This guy from Dallas who’s on the lease with me has a German shorthair. He’s lost two dogs already. Diamondbacks bit their heads while they were on point.”

  Taylor pulled off his second shoe and worked his arm. The ache had lessened and so had Taylor’s anger and panic. “What’s a lease cost now?”

  “I don’t pay,” Simon said. “I couldn’t afford it. You get the whole year for a dollar an acre with a limit of six guns. I get it for practically nothing ’cause they think I’m gonna win Rookie of the Year.”

  “Jesus, twelve thousand dollars to go hunting.” Taylor dropped his shoe and stared openmouthed into the tiny locker; a small mouse was hunched in the corner chewing contentedly on Taylor’s chin strap. The quarterback wiped his face with a dirty towel and yelled over his shoulder. “Any hot water in there yet?”

  “No!” came Bobby Hendrix’s reply, echoing from the shower. “But it’s only December if you want to wait.”

  “Taylor ...” Simon stopped and stared into the quarterback’s ancient locker. “Taylor, Taylor,” Simon was whispering, “there’s a mouse eating your chin strap.”

  “I know. I think he likes the salt from my sweat.”

  “Yeeech ... that’s disgusting!” Simon tossed a sock into the locker and the mouse disappeared into a hole in the back.

  “Hey! Simon! Leave my mouse alone.”

  The old stadium locker was cold and dark and dank and was home to creatures with little interest in professional football. They cared only about the Pistol Franchise as a source of food. Rats, mice, scorpions, spiders, mosquitoes, lizards—creatures that scurried noisily through the walls or sat quietly, eating the leather ear pads out of a helmet or sucking the blood out of players and staff.

  “Anyway”—Simon kept his dark hooded eyes on the locker—“I want Harlowe ready for next quail season up there. She’s a great dog—soft mouth, hell of a nose, and she already follows hand signals. She is that once-in-a-lifetime dog, and I don’t want her sniffing up to some six-foot diamondback and getting bit in the head.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “So I want to take her out and snake-train her after the season. You wanna go?” Simon asked. “Harlowe likes you and I could use some help.”

  “If you quit harassing my mouse.”

  “Deal,” Simon said. “Now I gotta go pump up.” He headed for the weight room.

  Bobby Hendrix, pale white and freckled, topped by a shock of red hair, hobbled heel-and-toe out of the shower, dabbing at his shivering naked body. He moved gingerly but stiffly on the cold cement. His movements belied the grace with which he controlled his battered body on the football field.

  “Bobby?” Taylor was working his complete arm. “Didn’t you think we ran too many routes today? We had skeleton, one-on-one, full-team passing, and then ended with individual routes.”

  “Way too much.” Bobby limped over. “Red can’t keep me on my feet that long. I’ll leave my game on the practice field. Does your arm hurt?”

  “Elbow aches; not bad, it just pisses me off. He kept us out there because he knew we didn’t think he was right. One of his fucking mind games.”

  “I’m walking off next time,” Hendrix announced. “If I can walk.”

  “Well ...” Taylor’s next few words were drowned out by the explosion. Everybody tensed, ready to run if the stands began collapsing into the locker room. Dust boiled out of the weight room, followed by a string of profanities screamed in rage by Simon D’Hanis.

  “What was that?” Hendrix was calmly rubbing his hair dry. He had been in the League too long to be surprised by anything.

  “Sounds like Simon.” Taylor worked his fingers. “Here he comes. Ask him.”

  The pulsing hulk of Simon D’Hanis, covered with sweat and concrete dust, walked toward the two men and the mouse gathered at Taylor’s locker. Simon’s face was contorted in fury and disgust.

  In the middle of some arcane power-lifting exercise that the weight coach had devised for the ever-willing, increasingly narcissistic lineman, Simon had torn the complete weight machine from the low-grade Colony Stadium cement. The resultant momentum had thrown the machine through the cinder block wall and destroyed the hot-dog stand in the tunnel.

  Fortunately it was not a game day or there would have been deaths and injuries. The machine blasting through the wall caused a large section to collapse, tearing loose stored weights and bars. Thousands of pounds of metal had cascaded onto the concrete floor.

  The noise was deafening and the dust heavy, but once it was learned no one was injured, everyone except Simon returned to their previous tasks, including the mouse chewing quietly on Taylor’s chin strap.

  It would not have been surprising that first year if old Colony Stadium had been ordered demolished with the Pistols inside.

  Although Taylor thought Simon overdid the steroids and bio-machine approach, Simon D’Hanis did make the All-Rookie team. Pumped up and powered by Russian hormones, a high-protein diet and hours of intense working with weights, Simon had grown to a monstrous 275 pounds.

  “Goddam, Simon,” Kimball Adams chided as the dust swirled around him, “tear down the stadium and put all us niggers out in the cold.”

  “It’s warmer outside,” Bobby Hendrix noticed. The skinny redhead shivered, his face pinched together in pain as the cold knifed right to his damaged joints and scar-tissued muscles.

  “I don’t feel like a nigger.” Simon stomped up beside Taylor.

  “You’re just on a different diet,” Speedo Smith said, walking to his locker, where he found a scorpion waiting in his shoe.

  Simon pointed at the pale, white, freckled Hendrix. “I’m sick of your Union bullshit and old-pro wisdom.”

  “He has seen the elephant,” Taylor said. “He pushed the owner to give Terry Dudley Charlie Stillman’s job. I figured you’d like anybody that got Stillman fired.”

/>   “That motherfucking Stillman sold me out!” Simon raged, and cement dust rose off his gigantic body like smoke. “Fuck Stillman, fuck the elephant, fuck Stillman with the elephant.”

  “Calm down, Simon.” Taylor pointed into the locker. “You’re keeping the mouse from eating.”

  The mouse was back on its haunches, head swiveling, watching Simon move about angrily. The big guard was not angry about anything specific, just angry—chemical aggression, synthetic fury on the loose. The mouse sensed trouble and ducked into the hole.

  The mouse understood Simon D’Hanis chemically and instinctively and got the hell out of there.

  THE WRONG NUMBER

  THE NEW YORK-PISTOLS game was one of those contests when both teams are unconcerned about the final score and are simply bent on destroying each other.

  The game was so vicious, so violent, that at halftime, Taylor watched Kimball Adams sit and bleed by his locker ... knocking back straight shots of whiskey while snorting a gram of cocaine. Leaving to start the second half, Kimball carried two more grams with him.

  The officials lost control of the field and the coaches their players, and the teams rioted within the confines of the game.

  There were fundamental rules that Taylor assimilated in his years of athletic competition and hostile relationships with crowds. This was obviously one of those situations.

  That’s why Taylor refused to go into the game.

  “What? What? What?” Red always did that three times when someone responded with an answer he didn’t want. He felt three gave the offender time to figure out the correct answer. If the next response was wrong Red would scream “What?” four times. By then the player better be right or gone.

  “Gimme a fucking break, Red. I am not going out there.” Taylor pointed as Kimball Adams took a headgear in the chest. The Pistols’ tackle had missed a stunt by the defensive end and tackle; the end hit Kimball going full speed. Kimball’s head snapped and he crumpled.

  “There isn’t a thing for me to learn out there except how to bleed and recognize the sound of broken bones and my own screams,” Taylor said. “C’mon, Kimball, buddy, get up!” he rooted. Adams staggered groggily to his feet.