by Peter Gent
Cyrus left the boy with the nanny and took a short walk down Fifth Avenue to Venture Capital Energy Plaza. Cyrus rode the elevator fifty-seven floors to the executive suite of Venture Capital Offshore. He had a pleasant chat with his longtime friend, college classmate and fellow member of Spur ’39, Harrison H. Harrison. Mr. Harrison was president and CEO of Venture Capital Offshore, a wholly owned subsidiary of Venture Capital America. Mr. Harrison’s father controlled the parent company. Cyrus and Harrison talked briefly about Bobby Hendrix and Gus Savas. It didn’t take much. “Still the same old cockroach,” Harrison said.
Cyrus was back in the apartment, playing with Randall, by the time the shoppers returned.
Lem and the women insisted on modeling and displaying all their purchases. Cyrus held his grandson on his knee and wondered at the jerk that was his son-in-law, who was doing a slow turn in his new full-length mink coat to the squeaks and applause of the women. They flew back to Texas the next day.
Taylor Rusk went back to his apartment and stared at the wail, waiting for Wendy to return from New York City. It was generally agreed in the sporting press that he had made Texas a Super Bowl contender.
Virtually overnight.
Texas Pistols season tickets sold out the first day they went on sale. People camped out in front of the ticket offices for days to be the first in line. The Franchise finally had its fans. Things were changing fast. Too fast.
THE FAN
IT WOULD BE UNFAIR to characterize Lamar Jean Lukas as your average fan. Unfair to the average fan and unfair to Lamar Jean. Lamar Jean Lukas had followed the Texas Pistols from the day Cyrus Chandler announced he was bringing the Franchise to town and was signing Red Kilroy and Taylor Rusk from the University. Lamar Jean struggled with the Texas team through that first difficult 4–10 season when Kimball Adams was the quarterback. It was a hard season on Lamar Jean, but the second season at 9–7 was a little better. He was joyous when they won, despondent when they lost. Lamar spent a lot of those first two seasons feeling pretty low. It was tough to go to the gas station on Mondays after a loss. But when the Pistols won, he was a ball of fire. That made the final half of that second season pure joy. Working at greasing a car or changing a tire, he would also be describing and redescribing the game highlights. A great catch by Bobby Hendrix, an awful sack on Taylor Rusk or Kimball Adams and the subsequent retaliation by Ox Wood. A good lead block on a sweep by Simon D’Hanis. And all the time Lamar would say, “When Taylor Rusk is ready, he will take the Pistols to the Super Bowl. Taylor Rusk is the Franchise. We’re friends, you know.”
The year Red Kilroy traded away the top three draft choices for the next five years for old veteran players, Lamar argued long and hard in favor of Red. It had not been a popular move with the press and the armchair quarterbacks. But what did those guys know? Lamar Jean Lukas really paid attention. He kept track. He knew.
“These guys got experience. They are proven men,” Lamar said, “not some glamour college kid who ain’t had his back broke yet. You’ll see. Me and Red know what we’re doing. We are getting Taylor some protection, and when we get enough, we are going to the Super Bowl.”
And Lamar was right.
The television was on in the boss’s office at the Exxon station, and the noon news was showing film of the lines of season ticket buyers in front of the Texas Pistols office.
“Hey, Lamar,” the boss asked, “how come you ain’t down, waiting in line?”
“Because,” Lamar grunted, struggling with a double-rim truck tire, “I already got my season ticket. I went down and bought one the first day they come to town.” He grunted, sweated and struggled with tire and rims. “Now I get preferential treatment.” With a mighty heave he broke the tire free and pried it from the metal.
“There.” He puffed a little. “They already sent me my season tickets in the mail, ’cause I was one of the first fans. I been with ’em since the beginning and I’m gonna be with ’em at the Super Bowl. I told you Red and I were right about trading off them draft choices and getting us some experience.”
“Did Red call you before he made the trades?” the boss teased.
“You know what I mean,” Lamar shot back. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirt sleeve. “You were all pissin’ and moanin’ about how Red done screwed up the whole thing and I told you he was right back then. And I’m the kind of guy who tells you I tol’ ya so. And I tol’ ya so.”
“Okay, Lamar,” the boss said, “so you told us. Big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” Lamar said. “You’re sittin’ there watching television pictures of people waiting to buy tickets. That is a big deal.”
It became a bigger deal when Lamar Jean didn’t get his ticket to the Super Bowl.
Lamar Jean Lukas had only two real passions. The Texas Pistols and target shooting. He was on the base shooting team in the Marines before he got sent to Vietnam for slugging a captain.
Lamar was an old fan. The old fans were working people, lower-class blacks and whites. The new fans were more middle class and went more for the spectacle, the chance to identify with some approved mass movement. They knew less about the game and many went drunk. Lamar Jean Lukas didn’t like the new fans. He called them Nazi fans.
“Where were all those Nazi assholes when Kimball Adams was calling signals? The stadium was almost empty that first year.” Lamar was telling all this to his boss while he tightened the spark plugs on a white Chevrolet. He tightened the final plug and came out from under the hood. “There.” He slapped the fender. “American cars since 1968 have become real junk. Detroit would be Fat City if they were still making 1958-through-1968 cars.”
“I been working on ’em forty years,” the boss said. “I watched ’em change. If they made ’em good, where would you and I be?” He was sitting in his office, still watching the television. “I fixed enough of ’em that I made enough money to hire you and buy me this TV set.” He paused and then growled, “Now goddam Exxon is fucking me on my gas allotment, raising the cost on my lease. They’re trying to get my TV set.”
“They want you to have your TV set, boss.” Lamar grinned. “Don’t you know that yet? They want to keep tuned in on your brain waves so they can control you.”
“Boy,” the boss said, “you are crazy.”
The boss sneered as a Datsun pulled up to the gas pump. The driver waited patiently, then honked his horn. Both men ignored the Japanese car.
“I’m going target shooting.” Lamar went back to wash his hands.
The boss turned and glared at the driver of the Jap car, who finally got the message and drove off.
General Motors, the IMF, the networks and Exxon be damned; the boss would go broke before he would work on a Jap car.
THE BAD WHEEL
WHEN SIMON D’HANIS came to in the recovery room, Buffy was standing over his bed. She smiled at him and brushed his hair back from his thick brow ridge.
“How do you feel, honey?” She smiled her chubby smile. She hadn’t lost the weight from their first child, Dianna, before she’d gotten pregnant with the second, another girl they named Donna Mae. Donna Mae was born in August of the second season. During the third season their sex life was almost nonexistent, but now, somehow, she was nearly five months pregnant with the third child. But she hadn’t told Simon yet and he hadn’t noticed. She decided to wait until after he was out of the hospital. She wondered if she would ever lose the weight, and if she did, whether Simon would treat her better. Something had changed him, made him hard, cold.
Buffy had watched him while he slept, his right leg swathed in thick wraps and elevated by a series of slings and sandbags. His face was unlined and peaceful. He looked like the Simon she remembered from college, the man who watched television movies and memorized old actors’ names. She remembered when they married in Oklahoma; the biggest problem was dragging him away from the old Harry Carey movie on television. Now, as he regained consciousness, the lines began to reappear on his face. S
ome invisible force was drawing a mask of fear and anger on the face of a child.
It took Simon a few moments to organize his thoughts and become coherent.
“How bad was it?” Simon finally mumbled, his tongue thick and his eyes rolling in his head. He tried to move and pain slashed across his face. “Aaaahh,” he groaned involuntarily, and lay back. The haunted look returned to his once soft blue eyes; a deep line dug down from his hairline across his forehead, splitting his face between his eyes and dragging the corner of his mouth into the perpetual scowl that appeared during his rookie year.
“How bad?” he growled. “I asked you a question.” He looked down at his bandage-swathed leg. “I hope it ain’t as bad as it feels.” He glared at his leg like an old enemy. “Son of a bitch.”
“The doctor didn’t say.” Buffy brushed his hair absently. “He told me he would look in on you when the anesthesia wore off.”
“Well, the goddam anesthesia has worn off.” Simon’s tongue was still thick and the words came out disjointed. “Where’s the doctor?” He raised his garbled voice.
“I don’t know, honey.”
“Well, goddam. Go find out.”
The doctor walked into the recovery room, still in his green scrub suit with paper covers on his alligator loafers. He was a big fat man who perspired constantly. He had been the team surgeon for three years and had gotten rich on his Monday-morning calls to his bookie, giving the injury status of the Texas Pistols and several other teams where his friends were the team doctors. That gave the bookie a three-day jump on the point spread before the official injury reports came out of the commissioner’s office on Thursdays.
“Well, how are we doing, Simon?” the doctor asked.
“That’s what I want to know, Doc,” Simon said. He was respectful, almost obsequious, to the doctor. Buffy noticed the difference in Simon’s tone toward the doctor compared to his treatment of her. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Well,” the doctor said to the bandaged leg, “you had a total blow out: cartilages, ligaments, the whole smear. I did a hell of a reconstruction job, but the rest is up to you. If you work hard and you want it bad enough, your knee ought to be better than before.”
Better than before? Buffy thought the doctor’s arrogance was outrageous, but she kept quiet and stood back as the doctor continued to look at the leg and talk to her husband.
“I did a hell of a job,” the doctor said. “You have to carry the ball from now on. It’s just a matter of how badly you want to get well.”
“I want it bad, Doc.” Simon sounded pitiful. Buffy cried silently as she watched her husband pleading for reassurance from this fat man wearing a sweat-soaked scrub suit and paper covers on his two-hundred-dollar shoes. “I want it real bad, Doc. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t play again.”
“Well, go for it, Simon,” the doctor said, turning to leave without ever looking at the big lineman’s face. “The operation was a complete success. I’ve done everything I can. The rest is up to you.”
“I’ll do it, Doc. I’ll do it.” Simon’s hands gripped the sides of the hospital bed. His knuckles turned white.
“That’s the spirit.” The doctor looked at his watch. “I have more surgery scheduled this morning. I better hurry if I expect to get through and still get in some golf. I’ll come look in on you tomorrow and see how you’re doing.”
The doctor nodded at Buffy without noticing, or caring, that tears streamed down her fleshy red face.
“He’ll be fine,” the doctor said, and disappeared out the door to complete a schedule of five surgical interventions of which Simon’s was the only one actually necessary. He had botched Simon’s operation by stapling the ligaments too tightly, then sweating into the open wound. This resulted in a staph infection, but nobody would ever find that out, and the doctor would always blame Simon for the failure to recover full usage of the knee.
“He just didn’t want it badly enough,” the doctor would tell Red Kilroy and Dick Conly, because Simon had failed to rehabilitate. The staph infection alone stretched the hospital stay from one week to a month and a half, as the incision refused to heal and continued to drain pus and blood.
Buffy dried her eyes and blew her nose after the doctor left.
“What are you bawling about?” Simon turned angry. “Didn’t you hear what the doc said? I’m gonna be fine. He said the operation was a success.”
“What was he going to say, Simon? That he failed?” Buffy stepped back to the bed and touched her husband’s forehead. “He’s a mechanic and he is sure not going to tell you that anything that he did went wrong.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Simon pushed her hand away. “Don’t you want me to get well?”
“I don’t want you to believe people like him,” Buffy said. “He wears alligator shoes just like A.D. Koster and I never trusted A.D. Why don’t you stop playing now, Simon, before you get hurt any worse? Daddy’ll help us. I’ve got some money. I can’t stand to see you hurt.”
“Well, quit watching, then,” Simon said. “Now leave me alone. I want to sleep.”
She didn’t tell Simon that she was pregnant with their third child until after the staph infection cleared up and he came home from the hospital almost two months later. He was weak and pale and took the news without much emotion. When a boy was born that spring, Simon’s spirits picked up and he renewed his efforts at rehabilitation, hoping to make it back.
They named the boy Simon Taylor D’Hanis, and Buffy asked Taylor Rusk to be the boy’s godfather and Wendy Chandler Carleton to be his godmother.
THE STANDARD PLAYER’S CONTRACT
“YEAH?” TAYLOR HAD BARGED through his apartment door and snatched up the jangling phone. He had been out running the golf course.
“Taylor, it’s me. Doc. I’m in Canada.”
“That’s great, Doc,” Taylor said, “but I don’t need you to phone me every time you cross an international border.” He looked around the apartment. The maid hadn’t come and it was in the usual disarray. Taylor had kept the three-bedroom apartment that he and Bobby Hendrix and Kimball Adams had shared the first year. It was too big, but Taylor was just too disorganized to move.
“This is business,” Doc Webster said.
“What kind of business?”
“Football, Taylor. Football.”
“I don’t want to talk about football.”
“Well, actually it’s about money. One of my old students has a proposition for you.”
“What kind?”
“Strictly legitimate. He knows you’re considering playing out your option this year.”
“I am?” Taylor was beginning to get cold. The air conditioner was set at sixty-five and he was still in his shorts and T-shirt. His sweat was drying stiff on his skin.
“As of May first you’re a free agent. Last season was your option year,” Doc replied, “and this boy wants you to come and play for him.”
“In Canada?” Taylor asked. “No way, it’s too cold.”
“In California. He’s Canadian, but his daddy bought him the Los Angeles franchise for sixty million dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Taylor decided. “How much do I get?”
“A whole bunch,” Doc Webster said. “Five million for five years. A million a year.”
“Tell him I accept.” The quarterback sat down, reached over and grabbed his shirt. He had begun to sweat again. “Five million?”
“This is straight. He flew me up here because he knew you and I were friends.”
“How old is this guy?” Taylor asked, pulling on the shirt.
“Twenty-two.”
“Goddam, Doc. Are you sure he’s old enough to sign contracts?”
“I have the Standard Player’s Contract right in front of me,” Doc Webster said. “He already signed it.”
Taylor laughed in amazement. “With what—a crayon? Jesus, doesn’t he know about the commissioner’s compensation rule? Robbie Burden�
��ll try and stop this by giving Texas all the LA draft choices and this guy’s firstborn child.”
“He knows and says his daddy’ll handle Robbie Burden.”
“Bring the contract, Doc. Catch the next plane. I do believe we have Cyrus Chandler over a barrel.”
A BRAND-NEW CLOWN
“CYRUS, I’M QUITTING,” Dick Conly announced as soon as he had fixed a drink and sat down in the owner’s office. “The trust for Randall is all set up and Chandler Industries is in the best shape ever.”
“Why, Dick, this is a shock.” Cyrus did not sound shocked.
“I’m tired. Everything is on line with the Pistol Dome project and the Franchise.” Conly picked up Cyrus’s fake surprise but let it drop. He didn’t care. “I’m taking a vacation for the rest of my life with Suzy Ballard. The sooner I quit, the better she’ll like it. She’s up in Taos, looking at furniture to buy for my ranch.”
Cyrus raised his eyebrows slightly, then nodded. “Gosh, Dick, I’m sorry to hear this.”
“I want out as general manager.” Conly drained his glass and poured another. “You can give the job to your son-in-law or Red Kilroy. A.D. Koster is Suzy’s choice. I would watch him, though, Red’s a better pick, but that’s your decision. I want my severance and profit-sharing money sent to Santa Fe. It’s about a million five.”
“That’s an awful lot of money, Dick.” Cyrus suddenly tried to become a negotiator. “I’m not sure I can get it that quickly or even whether you’re worth that much.” His eyes were flat, his voice dead.
“You may be right, Cyrus.” Conly took a drink and rattled the ice against the side of his glass. “Make it two million five and I want it in Mexican gold, fifty-peso pieces, in Santa Fe by the end of the week. If you even blink I’m going to three five, you dipshit.”
The phone buzzed and Cyrus pushed the intercom button. His secretary said, “It’s a call for Mr. Conly from the commissioner.”