The Franchise

by Peter Gent

  “Doing fine. Lem’s with him tonight and asked me to thank you.” She held a small walkie-talkie in her hand—a small red light glowed, showing it was on and working. She reached behind herself and set the black radio on an old apple crate. “And Randall asked me to bring you to see him. It looks like you’ve made a friend.”

  “Imagine that.” Taylor rocked the hammock slowly. “It only took me four years and I had to nearly kill him.”

  “Lem cleaned out his desk down at the Franchise and moved back downtown in the First Texas Trust Building. The gas prices are going to make it worthwhile to reopen all those wells his daddy drilled and capped during the fifties, sixties and early seventies.” Wendy yawned. “Lem and Junior will probably get rich again. Junior hasn’t been doing much since the governor made him chairman of the regents.”

  “Just dabbling in the two-billion-dollar endowment fund,” Taylor said, “up to his armpits.” Taylor continued to swing the hammock gently. Wendy took the beer bottle from his hand and drank.

  “Cyrus gave me stock in the Franchise.” She handed the bottle back.

  “Why?” Taylor replied. “The League frowns on franchises with more than one owner. The partners might squabble over their dirty laundry and the public would see backstage. The curtain protects the League’s integrity.”

  “Integrity?”

  “Yeah. Integrity—the final hiding place.”

  “It’s better than no hiding place.”

  “But it’s expensive. Integrity isn’t cheap.”

  “Or easy,” Wendy added. “After Lem and I got married. I think he was feeling guilty.”

  “Cyrus feeling guilty? I find that hard to believe.”

  “So did Dick Conly. It really pissed him off.”

  “Did he give Conly stock?”

  “No. Nobody else got stock,” Wendy said. “Except Randall. When Randall was born, Conly established a trust for Randall and put ten percent of the Franchise stock in the trust every birthday after that. Under the conditions of the trust, the principal can’t be touched and only the interest or dividends can be spent,” Wendy continued as the lightning split the darkness and the thunder rumbled and banged off the mountain and canyon walls. The rain battered the tin roof. The hail ceased. “Randall wanted toy cars, but instead the trust holds forty percent of The Texas Pistols Franchise stock.”

  “Who are the trustees?” Taylor was suddenly extremely interested.

  “Me, my lawyer,” Wendy replied, “my mother and Dick Conly. Conly created it as a shelter from inheritance tax—a charitable nonprofit trust. But if the Pistol Dome hosts the Super Bowl, the trust’ll have so damn much money ...”

  “Unless A.D., Suzy and the Cobianco boys get it first,” Taylor warned. “Once they get to the tickets ...”

  “I imagine that was extra motive for Conly to look for a place to shelter the Franchise from taxes. And from Cyrus—so Dick didn’t bother to tell Cyrus that once the trust had fifty percent, Cyrus was odd man out. Conly puts the Franchise stock for Randall in the trust where even Cyrus can’t touch it. So he finally keeps his promise to Amos through Randall.”

  “Dick is pretty clever. How much stock have you got?” Taylor asked. Another lightning bolt hit Coon Ridge with a sharp crack, like a giant pistol shot. Taylor and Wendy both flinched. It was a painful sound. A flash of fire.

  “Ten percent.” Wendy drank the last of the Mexican beer.

  “That’s the magic number—fifty percent. Your stock combined with the stock in the trust totals fifty percent on Randall’s next birthday. You and the trust will have control.”

  Taylor eased out of the hammock, groaned and stood up. “We’d be a lot smarter, safer and happier if we followed Lem’s example and got the hell away from the Franchise.” Taylor walked toward the door. “Red’s decided to put the pedal to the metal and blow past everybody before they see us in the mirror.”

  “The Super Bowl? This year?”

  “Red’s become a real go-faster.” The quarterback stopped at the door. “A too-faster. I hope you’ve learned how my circuits work. You may have some rewiring to do by the time this season ends.”

  “I’ll stock up on pennies for the burned-out fuses.”

  “Very funny. We’ll probably all burn.”

  The storm crashed and rumbled around the old stone house. In back the light was on inside the bunkhouse. The storm drowned out the sound of McNamara’s typewriter. Suddenly the wind shifted and swirled, lashing stinging drops of rain. Taylor held the door; Wendy ducked inside out of the storm to the warm glow of the fire.

  “Speedo Smith quit as player rep and appointed me in his place.” Taylor prodded the flames with an old branding iron.

  “Can he do that?” Wendy found a blue wool poncho and sat cross-legged on the Navajo rug between the stone fireplace and the brown couch.

  “He says he can.” Taylor tossed on two small oak logs and a big chunk of mesquite. He dusted his big hands, put them on his knees and stood up, bending his head and shoulders backward, stretching his spine. Wendy could hear the vertebrae pop and crack. There was a loud snap. Taylor coughed and stopped his stretching. He coughed again, leaning forward, hands on his knees.

  “What was that?” Wendy wrinkled her nose like he had done something distasteful.

  “I’m not sure.” He straightened up again. “Lately it’s always the one that gets me.” Taylor coughed again and pointed at his rib cage over his heart. “I knocked some ribs loose and I don’t think they ever grew back. When they snap like that it knocks the wind out of me.” Taylor frowned and shrugged. “It just got bad recently.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Not one I would trust.” Taylor coughed and spat into the fire. He tasted blood. “Anyway, it’s been this way since before we got the sting routes and pass-blocking straight; we kept missing the stunts and blitzes. Some guy from New York speared me between the shoulder blades with his headgear.” Taylor’s voice softened and slowed as he recalled the incident. He seldom reminisced. “I had set up wrong or I would have seen him coming. I paid for it and never made that mistake again. The team doctor said it was just a deep bruise. Any deeper and I’d have a hole in my chest. It gets bad at night and I think about the guy that did it.” Taylor rotated his trunk, slowly, trying to loosen muscles and unlock frozen joints. “I heard he hurt his fucking neck.”

  The guy had hurt his neck smashing his headgear into Taylor’s back. The big defensive lineman had stress fractures of two cervical vertebrae. His team doctor told him it was just a pinched nerve.

  The cold rain pounded the tin roof.

  “There’s a Union meeting in Houston soon and I’m thinking about going. Maybe stopping off and seeing Ginny Hendrix.”

  Wendy nodded and stared silently into the glowing fireplace. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Wendy hugged her legs and rested her chin on her kneecaps. She was rocking forward and backward, a slight, slow motion.

  Taylor stopped at the kitchen door and looked back at her. “I’m player rep by default and do have large and diverse interests in the game.” Taylor was trying to be rational. “My contract is causing a stir, and now you and Randall control half of the Franchise. I better go; it would be foolish to miss it.”

  Wendy was now rocking harder, her gaze fixed on the flaming oak. She knew that Bobby Hendrix had died a violent death. The facts of his death had been horrifying enough. Wendy did not want to know the details. The details of Bobby’s death in Mexico might dissuade her from the choice she had made.

  Wendy Chandler listened to the rain, watched the fire and swayed on the black rug, woven white birds in the gray center, trying to shut out the pictures and thoughts of Bobby Hendrix. She thought of Randall and what she and Taylor both owed him. She did not want to know about the Union and she didn’t want Taylor to get involved. She wanted the Franchise for her son; he’d paid for it. It was his by right of suffering. Suffering to come. She could think of no w
ords that would not cause trouble between her and Taylor, so Wendy rocked and stared into the fire.

  “Do you want to go?” he asked.

  It was the question she had feared. She liked Ginny Hendrix and enjoyed her company, but she hadn’t seen Ginny since Bobby’s death. It was fact, but until Wendy saw Ginny and looked into her face, the horror of death was not yet reality.

  “I don’t want to go,” Wendy replied. “I don’t want you to go to the Union meeting especially. Let someone else—Screaming Danny Lewis, Margene or Ox Wood—be the player rep.”

  “If you plan to take the Franchise away from A.D. and Suzy and your father, you’re going to have to deal with the Union and Terry Dudley.”

  Wendy huddled on the rug. The fire was flaming and sparking. “A.D. bought Speedo off with a new contract,” Wendy said. “Why take the job just because Speedo Smith sold out?”

  “Speedo deserves the money, the mink coat, the red convertible and Flawless Jade just for what he does on the field every Sunday from August to January. He shouldn’t have to be player rep.” Taylor shrugged. “Besides, there is power there somewhere, so I should see what it’s all about.” Taylor was tense and talking hard—not yelling, yet straining. He could taste blood again. “We have to decide who the game really belongs to. Rich promoters—men like your father and Dick Conly? Second-rate hustlers and swindlers like A.D. and Suzy?”

  “I plan on it belonging to me,” Wendy glared at Taylor. “For our son. I want it to give to him. He’s your child too. Don’t you want him to have it?”

  Taylor shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t want him to have it even if it were ours to give. Which it isn’t. It belongs to all the players who ever played anywhere who broke up, crashed and burned or were just whittled down to nothing, trying to make it and never did.” Taylor relaxed. Talking was a cure for tension, confusion and fear. “It belongs to those players who made it and never recovered from the success and sacrifice. The families that were blown apart by fame or sucked under by fear. The old players, wrinkled old beauty queens. The drunks, the maladjusted, the beaten, the murderous. Everyone who left their humanity in the game.” Taylor watched Wendy growing increasingly irritated with him. “Every player dies a little in every game. Win or lose ...”

  “The players are going to own the game?” Wendy’s question was derisive. “They are all such good businessmen.”

  “Some are stupid and greedy, but many suffer from the fatal flaw of trying to be honest and fair without learning how. It makes them the perfect victims.” Taylor paused. “The system has finally created the perfect player, right down to the brass ring in his nose. The problem is anyone, even Suzy and A.D., can grab that brass nose ring.”

  Wendy looked back to the fire.

  Taylor watched her. “I want to see how Dudley and the Union use the players. Terry could drop a loop through the brass nose ring just like anybody else,” Taylor said. “If he does, then we have more problems. If he doesn’t, we got more help. And we are going to have to know what we’ve got and what we’re going up against. This franchise is worth billions; we better know how to protect it or at least how to lose it and stay alive.

  “Only players really know what happens out there,” Taylor continued. “It’s the guys you play with and the money you leave with. I want to see what kind of guys I’m playing against and what size nose rings they wear. And why twenty-two exquisitely skilled men between the white lines can’t apply those skills outside the lines.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to.” Wendy faced the fire and spoke through clenched teeth. “Or maybe they know better.”

  “Maybe. But you’re not a player,” Taylor replied softly. “You want to be an owner. I am a player and I don’t want my son to be a player or owner. I want him to have different, better, choices.”

  “The middle-class dream.” Wendy was openly sarcastic, shaking her head and watching the fire. “The fucking All-American dream. Well, I want a little more than that in my life.”

  “That’s what Speedo said. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Taylor remained calm. “But if you want more, you have to create it; you can’t take it out of another person’s hide. If a football game is created—truly created—each Sunday, who are the creators? The players? The coaches? The guy who owns the television network? When rich people want something, they peel some bills off their roll. When an athlete wants more, he has to peel it off his hide—a very expensive price. Does he deserve a reward for that sacrifice? That price? Or is the pain its own reward?” Taylor watched Wendy glare into the fire. “If the game is played for the audience and not the player, it is spectacle. And the ultimate spectacle is death.”

  “Please spare me the moralizing on the ultimate meaning of professional football,” Wendy said. “The ultimate meaning to my old man was the tax shelter.”

  Taylor walked back to the kitchen and looked out at the bunkhouse. The light was on inside. He couldn’t hear the typewriter. The rain was still heavy. He walked back to the doorway.

  “If we start the Franchise takeover, never look back or question an order. Once the fight starts, if it hasn’t already, we do it by the numbers and the book—my book and my numbers. We can’t quit. Now, I’m going to Houston to the Union meeting and to see Ginny and her kids,” Taylor announced with finality. “I wish you would come with me.”

  Wendy slowly shook her head.

  Taylor walked to the kitchen. He gazed at the bunkhouse. Women, he thought, they want everything, all the time, no matter what the cost. Fight her daddy, fight the League, the Mob, the Cobiancos. We’ll take ’em all. Then she breaks a fingernail and the whole thing is off. “Quit?” Taylor thought aloud. “It’ll be a cold ...” He stopped, his eyes drawn to movement in the lighted bunkhouse.

  BATTLING MONSTERS

  TOMMY MCNAMARA WAS dead. His face was battered and bloody, featureless, the eyes, nose and mouth caved in; white bone splinters stuck through the chopped flesh. His fingers, cut off, lay in neat rows of five on each side of the typewriter. His Santa Fe Opera T-shirt knotted around his neck, he hung from an open beam, his bare chest and stomach covered with cigarette burns and razor cuts. His ears were cut off and a large strip of adhesive tape covered his mouth.

  The bunkhouse was torn apart. His killer had searched for something, probably notes and tape recordings.

  Taylor stood outside in the driving cold rain, looking through the screen door at the battered man dangle and twist, fixing his eyes on the bony naked feet and dangling toes, just inches off the floor, an eternity away.

  “Taylor?” Wendy called from the kitchen. “Taylor? Is that you out there? What are you doing?”

  Taylor stared at the ravaged meat hanging from the beam, a pop T-shirt for a noose.

  A Santa Fe Opera T-shirt.

  “Taylor?” Wendy called again from the ranch house kitchen. “What is it?”

  “Call Bob.” Taylor opened the bunkhouse door. “Tell him to get here quick. We just lost one of the guys on our team.”

  “Oh, God. No.” Wendy said it softly, like God was there in the room with her and could be prevailed upon to change things. The radio was on the kitchen table and she called Bob Travers to the bunkhouse, then wrapped herself in her blue wool poncho and watched it all from the kitchen.

  Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. The words were typed on the paper Taylor found in Tommy McNamara’s Royal 440.

  Bob was at the bunkhouse in two minutes. Toby went to the kitchen to stay with Wendy.

  “It looks like they took a long time killing him,” Bob said as they cut Tommy McNamara down. “They must have wanted some information, or they just enjoy their work.”

  “Why do you say they?”

  “I don’t imagine this young fella cooperated any.” Bob studied the cut, burned and battered flesh. “And when you start doing this sort of shit, a fella will get plenty hard to handle. See.” Bob pointed to large half-moon-shaped contusions on b
oth shoulders. “Somebody was holding him here. Pretty big fella by the size of those bruises ... fingers made them. He was keeping your friend still while his partner was working on him. It looks like he squeezed the shoulders out of the sockets.” Bob’s flat voice rose slightly. He was surprised by the dislocations.

  “You seen stuff like this before?” Taylor was horrified, shocked, numb, calm.

  “On the border and in Mexico and South America,” Bob nodded. “And more and more frequently around here.”

  Taylor leaned over to peel the white tape off Tommy’s mouth.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Bob said. “As it is they’re gonna give us hell about cutting him down. And all you’re going to find in there are his ears.” Bob pointed to the ragged bloody stubble hacked off at the skin line. “Is this the guy that federal marshal had the subpoena for the other day?”

  Taylor nodded. “They were going to immunize him, take him to the grand jury and make him name his source. They wanted his notes and tapes.”

  “Deep Threat?” Bob asked.

  Taylor turned with surprise.

  “I read the papers, just like real people.” Bob began to run his eyes slowly around the bunkhouse. “So the feds put him between a rock and hard place. I wonder what got him? The rock? Or the hard place?” Bob continued to look over the room. “I wonder if they found what they were looking for. Or if the poor son of a bitch even had it.”

  Suddenly the wind changed, swirling through the bunkhouse and blowing the death and decay full into Taylor’s face. The smell of a man rotting away. Taylor vomited, emptying his stomach onto the wooden bunkhouse floor. He retched and coughed and spat. Bright red blood mixed in with the foaming brown Carta Blanca. Bob brought him a wet towel from the bunkhouse bathroom.

  “Chop a man up like that”—Bob looked at the body—“he’ll turn bad real quick. You’re spitting up blood.”

  Taylor nodded and wiped his face. He was soaked in sweat.

  “When it’s someone you know, that smell is too familiar.” Bob picked up a blanket from one of the other four beds and covered Tommy McNamara. “I have worked for Wendy since she started junior high school,” Bob said, looking at the abstract dead form beneath the blanket. “But ever since her father bought that damn football franchise, my work has gotten harder and dirtier every day.” He looked at Taylor. “What the hell is the matter with people in your business?”