by Peter Gent
That the entire sum of $5,000,000, which represents the price of Taylor Rusk’s services for five years, is guaranteed and will be paid regardless of Mr. Rusk’s ability to perform as a professional football player.
“I made him put that in especially,” Doc Webster said with a huge grin. “I believe it is what is called a no-cut contract. Have you ever seen one before?”
Taylor slowly exhaled loudly. “Well, I’ll be damned—the mythical no-cut contract.”
Doc Webster went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Herradura tequila.
“How about a toast? First, to Razmus, the economics professor that the University fired five years ago for screwing and smoking dope in his office. He advised the Portus kid.” He held the bottle out to Taylor.
Taylor uncapped the bottle of distilled maguey. “Thanks, Doc.” He took a small drink. The professor took the bottle and held it up.
“To you, Taylor. Now that you have five million dollars, I hope you can get what you really want.” Doc tilted his head back and let the tequila run over his lips and tongue and down his throat. He drank several ounces and handed the bottle back to Taylor.
The big quarterback held up the bottle.
“Here’s to life, real control, the razor’s edge, Wendy Chandler Carleton and my son, Randall. I want them all and, by God, I’ll have them.” Taylor Rusk took great gulping drafts of the burning tequila. “This is only the beginning.”
By noon both men were roaring drunk and swimming fully clothed in Panther Hole.
Wendy Chandler Carleton stood up on Coon Ridge and watched the two men howling and laughing and falling into the cold creek water. Randall Ryan stood silently at her side, holding her hand. Finally she pulled him gently back toward the car.
“We’ll have to come swimming another day, Randall,” she said.
The small boy trudged along obediently. When they reached the car he asked, “Is it because of those two crazy men that we can’t go swimming?”
“Yes, sweetheart. It’s because of those crazy men. They’re nice men, but they are crazy.”
“I know that big man, don’t I, Momma?”
Wendy nodded.
“He waved at me when we flew in that big airplane down to that hotel that had the big swimming pool. We didn’t get to swim then, did we, Mom? Does that man always keep us from swimming?”
“No, not always.”
Wendy Chandler Carleton started the car and drove back down the caliche road across the pasture and through the cattle guard.
“Mom,” Randall said when they reached the highway, “the next time I see that big man, I’m going to ask him to let us go swimming. Okay?”
“Okay, sweetheart.” Wendy’s eyes welled with tears.
“Mom? Why was Daddy so mad at Grandpa Chandler this morning?”
“What rnades you think Daddy was mad at Grandpa?”
“He yelled at him on the phone. I heard him. He said bad words to Grandpa.”
“Well, sometimes men yell at each other.”
“Like those two crazy men in the water?”
Wendy nodded.
“I like that big man, Momma. I wish I could go swimming with him.”
“Maybe you can someday, Randall.” Wendy took a hand from the steering wheel and wiped her eyes quickly.
“Mom?” The small boy stood in the seat and leaned against his mother’s shoulder. “You are my sweetheart. I’ll never yell at you.”
The small boy wrapped his soft arms around Wendy’s neck and pulled himself against her in a hug. The tiny fingers tickled her neck as he rubbed his soft cheek against hers.
QUALITY TIME
KIMBALL ADAMS CONVINCED Bobby Hendrix that he should take Ginny and the kids to Cozumel. Adams told his old receiver about his new travel agency.
Kimball couldn’t keep from bragging. “The Cobianco brothers put up the money for junkets to Las Vegas and the Super Bowl. I made a ton on the Super Bowl last year.” He trusted Hendrix; they had been friends for twenty years. Hendrix wished Kimball wouldn’t trust him quite so much. “We took five chartered DC-9 jets to Los Angeles at two thousand dollars a pop, including hotel rooms and game tickets. I had one thousand tickets and they all went for five hundred dollars apiece in the package. Jesus! The travel business is great. It’s like stealing.”
“It is stealing,” Hendrix said. He didn’t really want Kimball telling him those things over the phone. He had already heard most of it from Tommy McNamara, who was writing a newspaper story on scalping, but it worried Hendrix that Kimball was telling him because now Kimball knew that Hendrix knew. “I don’t want to know about it. This is Texas down here, not America. You should be careful who you tell. There are government agencies like the IRS who might not look so kindly and might begin to ask where you got the tickets and whether all the taxes were paid.”
“Hey, roomie,” Kimball protested, “if I can’t trust you, who can I trust?”
“You can trust me,” Hendrix said, “but I don’t know anybody else you can trust. So get out of the habit of talking about it.” Hendrix changed the subject. “How’s the coaching job working out in New York?”
“You know these guys in New York, Bobby. We won our last game last year, so the owner is keeping Bradley as the head coach. I guess he figures he’s on a hot roll. A one-game win streak. I just put my time in with the quarterbacks and draw my check.
The guy wins one more game than a dead man and they renew him for five years,” Kimball laughed. “This is a tough team to gamble on: The point spreads are almost insurmountable in either direction. Our last game against Dallas we were twenty-point underdogs. Tell me how you can bet a twenty-point spread?”
“I have no idea and I don’t want to know, Kimball,” Hendrix said. He was certain that Kimball had figured out a way and wanted to brag about it. He knew that Kimball had kept his bargain with Red Kilroy and always mailed the Texas head coach the New York game plan every time the two teams played. Kimball was part of Red’s network.
“Guess who I saw yesterday?” Kimball said. “Charlie Stillman.”
“I heard he went to New York after we forced him out of the Players Union. He still delivering the flesh for the owners?”
“By the carload. And all with multimillion-dollar contracts deferred about thirty years.” Kimball laughed. “It’s really funny, the niggers all believe their own newspaper clippings, buying themselves fur coats, houses for their mommas, rhinestone collars for their Yorkies.”
“We are all niggers and should read the contracts instead of the newspapers,” Hendrix said.
“Hell, Bobby, all of Stillman’s clients signed within ten days of the draft.” Kimball laughed his raspy laugh. “And he just signed a big contract with the network. He’s going to bring some of his clients to Cozumel.”
“What?” Hendrix was surprised. “I’m not sure I want to be on the same island with that son of a bitch.”
“Come on, you’ll be in different hotels,” Kimball pleaded. “Taylor’ll be there, and Dudley too. He claims it’ll be good for Union solidarity and image.”
“Taylor always told me that Dudley was a smart guy. It was one reason we chose him as director,” Hendrix said. “But he hasn’t shown me much except ambition. It’s stupid for the Union to cooperate with Stillman. He’s the owners’ man.”
“He’s their boy. Robbie Burden is the owners’ man.” Kimball coughed a short spasm of laughter. “The way Dudley tells it, the Union will eventually sign a hell of a contract with the network to use players as commentators for football and other sports, including the next Olympics, plus TV movies and a production company.”
“So the Union can steal everything they don’t get paid?” Bobby sighed.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like it was real money.”
“What’s the story on Dick Conly?” Kimball changed the subject. “Why did Chandler make that asshole A.D. general manager?”
“You remember that knockout teenybopper blonde that
used to come to camp in Koster’s car that first season?” Hendrix asked.
“Oh, Jeeezus, the one that wore the tight white shorts and the T-shirt with no bra and was barefoot all the time?”
“That’s the one,” Hendrix said, “Suzy Ballard.”
“Goddam,” Kimball rasped, “I always wanted to stick my tongue in her bellybutton ... from the inside.”
“Apparently Cyrus had the same idea, ’cause she tossed Conly over for him. Now it’s Cyrus Chandler’s turn in the barrel. I think making A.D. general manager was part of the deal. Conly’s gone off to New Mexico to the mountains. Suzy’s moved with Cyrus out to Chandler’s Hot Springs Ranch. The word is,” Hendrix said, “that Billy Joe Hardesty is going to marry Cyrus and Suzy on his TV show with only close friends, which means they can broadcast from a phone booth and still have room to use the phone.”
“Well, it sounds like that little blond carhop is mo-bile, hos-tile and ag-ile. We get the Billy Joe Hardesty show up here on cable about two in the morning,” Kimball rasped. “It’s great to watch when you’re really drunk.”
“I’m afraid old Cyrus is in deep shit, and A.D., Suzy and the reverend are about to hand him an anchor.” Bobby Hendrix exhaled and flexed his slender freckled hands. “Family and office politics. Shit.” He felt vaguely frightened.
“You know, Junie Chandler ain’t exactly bad pussy,” Kimball said. “She ranks among the top three of all the owners’ wives I ever fucked. It just goes to show you what young girls do to old men.”
“It just goes to show something, I’m not sure what.”
“How’s the arthritis, Bobby?” Kimball asked, as if he sensed the pain in Hendrix’s fingers.
“No better, maybe a little worse.” Hendrix moved his hand gently. “I’m getting it bad in my neck from those chunks knocked out of my cervical vertebrae going across the middle after those wounded ducks you threw.”
“I knew you’d get them, Bobby. I’d put you up against the biggest and meanest defensive backs in the League any day of the week.”
“You already did, thanks.”
“Hey, don’t thank me, man. It was all part of the job.” Kimball laughed his evil laugh. “Have you talked to Fresh Meat lately? I heard he played out his option and is going to Los Angeles for five mill. You hear anything,about that?”
“I know he was on his option, but I didn’t hear about any five mill,” Hendrix said. “Why didn’t you ask him when you called about the fishing trip?”
“I didn’t figure it was any of my business.”
“Well, that’s the first thing you’ve ever admitted to me wasn’t any of your business,” Hendrix replied, knowing that Kimball Adams was lying. Red wanted to know about the five million dollars and had delegated Kimball to find out.
“Find out what you can, will you, roomie?” Kimball said. “I’ll see you down in Cozumel. You’ll love it, Ginny will love it and the kids will love it. Get in a little quality time with the family. Talk at you later.” Kimball hung up.
Quality time? Bobby thought. Quality time?
“There’s a fucking catchphrase for you,” Hendrix said aloud, slamming the phone down so hard it hurt his hand. “Never trust a man who talks about ‘quality time.’ ”
Bobby Hendrix, the aging receiver, stared at the phone in his father-in-law’s house in River Oaks. He had missed quality time with his older boys, who had had to endure the craziness of early pro ball. The oldest was already gone off to college and seldom returned, anxious to be free.
Soon Bobby and Ginny’s second son, James, would be graduating from high school. He was already talking about the Army as an alternative. Ginny had panicked at the suggestion, but Bobby kept her calm, convincing her that Jimmy’s decision was a direct result of the movies Stripes and Private Benjamin.
VCO PULLS THE PLUG
BOBBY HENDRIX WAS worried about telling Ginny that he’d lost almost all their money. Gus Savas, Ginny’s father, was a gambler: that’s what Bobby liked about him. Gus was willing to gamble right down to the last turn of the card or drill. And that’s where Venture Capital Offshore got them. Harrison H. Harrison just kept pushing money out there on the table and Gus just kept matching it.
Then, one day VCO just closed the well and called it dry.
They knew there was oil and gas down there. So did Bobby and Gus. But meanwhile VCO got a huge tax write-off, still controlled the lease and knew the oil and gas were there for the taking later.
VCO even reneged on the dry-hole money and told Bobby and Gus to sue them.
“I got ten, maybe twenty, years left,” Gus laughed and pulled out one of his big cigars. He and Bobby were riding down in the elevator after their meeting with Harrison H. Harrison. “That is an awful lot of time for an old tool pusher to get his revenge.” He grinned at his son-in-law. “Big company like Venture Capital Offshore will forget all about the fucking they gave Gus Savas in a few months. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life getting even. What are you going to do, Bobby?”
“Guess I’ll have to play another season,” the redheaded receiver said to his father-in-law. “Then maybe work for the Union.”
Gus frowned. He didn’t have much use for unions, having gotten his first job as a tool pusher in the East Texas field by climbing up on the drilling platform and whipping the current tool pusher. The fight ended when Gus hit the other man with a length of chain and knocked him off the platform twenty feet into the mud.
“You and your union,” Gus laughed. “What does it get you? Or them? A man’s gotta fight for whatever he gets.”
“It’s not what we get, Gus,” Bobby said, “it’s what we can get for the next generation of football players. There’s sharks in these waters, and they have been eating my teammates for twenty years. Football’s been good to me, Gus; it educated me and brutalized me at the same time. I don’t want to see players cheated ... by anyone. The Union should stand for what football should be: players looking out for each other. Football isn’t about life, it is life. So I’ll stick around and help.”
“What do you get from it, Bobby boy?” Gus looked puzzled. “More important, what’s in it for Terry Dudley? I know about unions, athletes and football. I know most are selfish, greedy. When Red Kilroy was coaching high school he would come to guys like me for money. ‘You want a football team to be proud of?’ he’d say, and I’d give him money in cash and he would get football players and win games.” Gus puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. “Then one day I decided I don’t even know how to be proud of a football team. You know what I mean?”
Bobby looked at his father-in-law’s sparkling dark eyes, the perfect match for Ginny’s, and nodded.
“I quit giving them money and never watched another game until you came along to Rice and married my Ginny. Now I’m back watching Red’s football games again and my son-in-law’s a union man.” The elevator stopped and Gus clapped a heavy arm around Bobby’s shoulder. They walked into the lobby, a structure of giant steel Tinkertoys and smoked glass.
“I never thought my Ginny would ever get married. She didn’t like the River Oaks boys or any of them fag South Americans or fake princes. God bless you for that. You been good to her. She loves you very much. You give me four grandsons. But what you gonna do with this union? We busted out in oil, but I can get us a new stake. I’m a promoter. I don’t know geology from creekology, but I can raise money to punch holes in the ground. There’s plenty of oil left out there. You’re a pretty old guy to be playing football. What’s in the Union for you, Bobby?”
“I guess the same things that you’ll get from whatever you do to Venture Capital Offshore,” Bobby said. “A sense of purpose and the possibility of satisfaction. I seldom get mad, Gus, but I always get even. A linebacker cheap-shots me and before long I come out of nowhere and tear his knees off. There have been some pretty cheap shots over the years.”
“Just don’t get clipped,” Gus warned, and rubbed Bobby’s shoulder. The answer apparently pleased him. “Y
ou are a hell of a boy, Bobby, but you be careful; you got my daughter and grandchildren. Unions can cause trouble; sometimes people get hurt and killed. Cyrus Chandler is a greedy son of a bitch, and the rich don’t share without a fight. I know, I used to be one.” Gus laughed and beat the redhead’s shoulder black and blue.
At the next negotiating session Union director Terry Dudley told the Owners Council that he would file another antitrust suit and consider calling a strike if they didn’t bring a residual offer to the negotiating table.
“In order to be fair,” Bobby Hendrix suggested, “we would like a look at books.”
That request was absurd, but what knocked Robbie Burden backward in his chair was Dick Portus suddenly claiming he could not afford the Union demands.
Terry Dudley immediately filed with the National Labor Relations Board to have Poltus’s claim ruled bargainable—which meant a look at the books. The owners immediately filed an appeal. The commissioner threatened to fine Portus $500,000 for any more remarks.
“You’ll burn in hell before you see the books on any franchise!” the commissioner screamed at Hendrix.
Bobby almost felt sorry for him, he lost it so completely. Robbie Burden hadn’t been the same since Dick Conly left Texas. The loss of Dick Conly’s genius threatened League stability.
Bobby Hendrix argued that the players had the right to view the books because football was a quasipublic monopoly, like the phone company. That made Burden furious. The commissioner and the rest of the Owners Council got up and left Terry, Bobby, Speedo Smith, the other player reps and the federal mediator alone in the meeting room. The mediator suggested they adjourn until later. Dudley announced that the next player rep vote would probably take the players out on strike. Bobby said privately that they couldn’t afford it: There were Union financial problems. Dudley told him not to worry, it was being fixed. The network fishing show in Cozumel was going to bring in big money.