The Franchise

by Peter Gent

  “You boys’ve just got to win the big one.” Conly held on to the door for support. He grinned at Taylor, pulling his mottled gray skin tightly across his death face. His stomach protruded, pushing his shirt away from his belt. He carried his hard, swollen, scarred liver like an unborn child to full term, and from the look of him it would not be much longer now. Dick Conly had purposely, unrelentingly, gestated death in his vitals; it had grown to killing size.

  “Can’t win ’em all—or you’d still be general manager.”

  Conly plopped down in an oversize chair surrounded with buttons, gadgets and appliances. “I make sure I win enough of the right ones.” He pushed a button on the console beside his chair and a motor quietly hummed. The chair gently changed shape, elevating Dick Conly’s feet while slightly lowering his head.

  Conly pointed Taylor to a hard, straight-back wooden chair. He nodded his head at the small white refrigerator between them. “There’s beer or whatever you want cold in there.”

  Taylor sat and slouched, uneasily trying for comfort or at least balance. The chair seemed purposely designed to foil his attempts. “I bet you don’t have much company.”

  “I get lots of visitors, Taylor-boy.” Conly grinned. “They just don’t stay long. Company and fish.”

  Conly was surrounded by an array of gadgets, books, remote controls, keyboards and consoles, a little hovel in the center of what was a forty by forty room with a pitched twenty-foot open-beam ceiling and a spectacular view of the high mountains above and the rushing white water of the spring Pecos flood below. Taylor was surprised he had not noticed the incredible sight when he first walked inside. His attention had focused on Dick Conly and his little technological hutch built in the center of the room. Conly’s chair faced away from the window.

  “Why don’t you turn your chair around, Dick?” Taylor asked, gaping at the spectacle of the Pecos Mountain spring. “Some sort of personality quirk?”

  “Most people are too polite to ask, Taylor, or observant enough to understand or just don’t give a shit.” Dick pushed a button that opened the wall and revealed a five-foot television screen. “I have me one of those big-dish antennas that takes off the satellites. I can even get dirty movies from Japan.”

  “Do you ever peek behind you, just for the hell of it?”

  “What’s the point?” Conly rattled his words out quickly. “I know what’s back there; that’s where I have been. I keep my eyes ahead, watching what’s coming, so I can identify what rips my head off.” Conly pushed another button and the chair moved to a slightly different position.

  “You should take a last look, Dick,” Taylor said, gazing out at the unbelievable mountains, the incomprehensible river.

  “Why? I saw it when I first came here. That’s why I built here.” Dick pointed a finger to his temple. “It’s all up here. I see it as clear as the day I brought that roller-skating cunt up here and asked her to marry me.” Conly took his tall glass from the holder built into the chair arm and took a long drink of the amber fluid. “You ever see that river down there when it reaches the Horsehead Crossing in Texas?”

  Taylor nodded.

  “Looks like shit, doesn’t it? I mean real shit, the color of shit. It smells like shit. Well, that’s life. The dumb, mystical, sumbitch that said the river remains the same never followed the Pecos from here to the Rio Grande.”

  Taylor leaned over and opened the small refrigerator. Inside, bottles of beer, tequila, gin and Scotch filled the top two shelves and the door racks. The bottom shelf was stuffed full with stacks and stacks of bologna and loaves of Mrs. Baird’s bread.

  “You ever see the Ganges?” Conly asked.

  “No.” Taylor stared at the contents of the small refrigerator.

  “I didn’t think so. Or the River Jordan? Shit, no ... you haven’t seen anything.” Conly squinted at Taylor, who was taking a beer but looking at the huge store of bologna. “You don’t even know that everybody likes bologna sandwiches, do you?”

  Taylor closed the refrigerator door. “It’ll take everybody to eat all that.”

  “I hope to die with a drink beside me, the television on a dirty Jap movie, a bologna sandwich in one hand, jacking off with the other.” Conly pushed a button; his feet went down and his head came up. “You should understand this without much trouble, Taylor. Didn’t you once tell me that all that had motivated you since high school was the constant urge to lie down?”

  Taylor nodded. “I’m thinking about fixing me a bologna sandwich.”

  “The Pistol Dome will be finished soon, thanks to the generosity and stupidity of the mayor and city council of Clyde,” Conly said, “So the next Super Bowl will be played in Clyde, Texas, under the Pistol Dome. Now, wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if the Texas Pistols made their first Super Bowl appearance there?”

  “Red already beat you to the idea. He expects to win the Super Bowl this year. Big deal.”

  “Red’s on my wavelength. Good,” Dick continued. “You’ll be favored over your opponent by many points, maybe as high as sixteen. The ever-obliging sporting press will pound that into the heads of the willing fans and bettors.”

  Conly hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Believe me, Taylor. Just as certain as I am that the fucking Pecos Mountains are still right behind me, that spread will be so big that it’ll be irresistible. This is going to look so good to the Cobianco boys that they will want it all.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Cobiancos normally start laying off bets after about five hundred thousand dollars and keep their book balanced, but this time they will be sure they can clean up. The Pistols will be favored by thirteen to sixteen points, and the Cobiancos will try and control the Pistols through A.D. and Suzy. They will be convinced the fix is in, that they have a sure thing, and they won’t lay it off. They will carry every bet on the Pistols they can get. A.D. and Suzy must make certain the Pistols lose.”

  “So?” Taylor stared blankly at Dick Conly. “A.D. and Suzy will make certain we lose.”

  “They’ll try, God bless ’em, they’ll try,” Conly said. “But I have decided to stay alive long enough to make certain the Texas Pistols win the Super Bowl by more than the spread. And of course you will have to make certain you stay alive too. No better way to render a team less than effective than to kill the quarterback.”

  “The phrase has a familiar sound,” Taylor said, “but it doesn’t ring of homecoming floats and football mums when you say it. What do you get?” Taylor asked Conly. “I know you don’t gamble.”

  “It’s a reason to stay alive another year.” Dick Conly’s face showed slight desire to live another day.

  “It’s you.” Taylor suddenly understood. “You are Deep Threat. You sent Tommy the documents.”

  Conly nodded. “I assume you’re the one who has them now, judging from the bizarre places they appear. I wish you’d use them with more effect.”

  “Everybody denies or ignores them while Investico combs the League, looking for the source. If you want to accomplish something, tell somebody that they’re your papers and you sent them to the missing and unlamented Tommy McNamara.”

  “I could do that if going to jail were what I wanted, but I have a certain result in mind: the Cobiancos betting several million against the Texas Pistols winning the Super Bowl and counting on A.D. and Suzy to deliver up the stunning upset. But instead you win and beat the spread. What I want is called revenge.”

  “If we win, and A.D. and Suzy have promised the Cobiancos that we will lose ... and the point spread is so large in the Pistols’ favor that the Cobiancos get greedy and don’t lay any of the big bets off ... they’ll be wiped out; they won’t be able to pay off. They’ll kill A.D. I’m amazed they didn’t kill him back in college, when he was just stealing the rent money.” Taylor stopped and looked over into the red, watery eyes of the brilliant, vengeful man. “They might even kill Suzy.”

  “Oh, let’s hope so,” Conly said. “I plan to
bet heavily on that result.”

  “You know they have the offices completely wired.” Dick Conly fixed himself a bologna sandwich. Taylor stood at the window, watching the Pecos River flow out of the snowcapped mountains. “Voice-activated, the latest state of the art. Cyrus had the phones tapped, but A.D. and Suzy have gone even further. She even has herself wired when she goes to owners meetings. I have copies of all the tapes.” Conly leaned back in his chair and took a big bite of bologna and white bread. He washed it down with Scotch. “I still have influence and people in the right places. The commissioner’s office, for instance. Robbie Burden is scared shitless since A.D. and the Cobianco brothers had Hendrix tossed out of that plane in Cozumel. The commissioner knows they arranged for the death and disappearance of Tommy McNamara. He’s up to his ass in tax evasion, scalping Super Bowl tickets. So far the only thing that saves him is failure of vision. The average person can’t imagine a guy making five hundred thousand dollars a year being football commissioner would steal. They can’t imagine five hundred thousand dollars but would kill to get it, as well as strike themselves deaf and blind.” Conly chewed on his bologna sandwich. “It is beyond their capacities to conceive how much cash can be made scalping Super Bowl tickets. Cash! Millions! Six to ten million dollars for the game in the Pistol Dome. All sold to out-of-town high rollers and tour packages.”

  “I tried to use that secret bank account number in the Bahamas.” Taylor still watched the river and mountains. “I’d leak it to one reporter after another and they would come up blank, or if they found something they would shortly lose interest.”

  “They either got bought or threatened off,” Conly said, wadding the last of his sandwich into his mouth. “The bank is a CIA front. They established a bunch of those offshore banks to finance themselves secretly, which eventually made them bankers for dope and gun smugglers, gangsters, tax evaders and Communist revolutionaries in the Caribbean. They aren’t going to give all that up just to catch the football commissioner stealing tickets and evading taxes, it isn’t un-American to steal and evade taxes. They just take their cut.”

  “Does the commissioner know the bank is a CIA front?”

  “I doubt it.” Conly drank his Scotch. “He uses Investico as his security and information people, and the CIA infiltrated Investico years ago, when everybody was falling all over each other to kill Castro and make the Kennedys and the Mob happy. No. Robbie Burden is just another highly paid cutout man. He’s expendable and they don’t tell him more than he needs to know to look good in five-hundred-dollar suits and a year-round suntan. He’d rather face the Justice Department than end up in the trunk of his car. And he’s smart enough to know that what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him nearly as bad as something he does know.” Conly coughed and held his stomach; the spasm caused him internal pain. “That’s where A.D. and Suzy are too smart for their own good. Jesus, can you imagine taping everything? Too much knowledge or too little, you can’t get by on big titties and blow jobs forever.” Conly took a deep drink. “But then, who wants to live forever?” Conly pushed a button and the chair began to vibrate. “The two of them won’t even last long enough to see the real Big Money. The FCC is falling in line, the private companies are launching their DBS satellites, the technology is all in place and shortly professional football will go to pay-television: subscription, cable, direct broadcast. I’ll bet the League launches its own satellite. You’re talking about billions. Billions of dollars to each team. Each franchise. The Super Bowl reaches between fifty and seventy-five million households now. The Pistols will eventually reach a million households, at twenty bucks a game, twenty million per game!” Conly yelled; his face turned red. “Twenty games a season is four hundred million a season, and they’ll still be fucking you guys with deferred contracts and incentive clauses.”

  “It wouldn’t be pro football if they weren’t fucking us, now, would it, Dick? I mean, that is the real game.” Taylor never turned away from the mountains and cold rushing Pecos River that Dick Conly never looked toward.

  “Taylor,” Conly explained, as if to a child, “people want it to happen. It’s the American Way.”

  “If it don’t hurt, it ain’t doing no good?” Taylor looked back over his shoulder at Conly.

  “You’ll be going pretty fast, but I think you’ll survive the jump.” Conly looked right at the quarterback. “Not the crash, though, so you are going to have to win by sixteen points or more, Taylor. We split fifty-fifty if I win my bets with Don Cobianco.”

  “Seventy-five, twenty-five,” Taylor answered. “I plan to pay the taxes on mine, and besides, you won’t live to spend more.” He always told Conly what he thought.

  “You might not either, boy,” Conly stuck out his hand. “Okay. It’s a deal.” They shook. “A Super Bowl deal,” Conly added. Helluvadeal.

  PART THREE

  “I’m glad to see you’ve got religion,

  I’m glad to see you’ve gone to God,

  I’m glad to see you’ve straightened out your lines

  and evened out your odds.”

  LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III

  “I’m Glad to See You’ve Got Religion”

  ARRANGING THE EAGLE SHIT

  BEFORE DRIVING OUT to training camp, Taylor Rusk stopped by the team offices to talk to A.D. Koster about the schedule of payments on his Standard Player’s Contract. The Pistols had been forced to match the Los Angeles offer on the SPC that foolish young Dick Portus had signed and offered Taylor.

  The Texas Pistols agreed to pay sixty monthly installments of $83,333.33. No money was deferred and it was all guaranteed. No cut. No trade. All compensation was cash: no “free cars,” no “incentive bonuses.” No bonuses at all.

  It was all salary. Taylor wanted A.D. to hand paychecks to him at training camp that year.

  Previously the Pistols had mailed the checks to Taylor’s apartment. With all his mysterious visitors, the quarterback didn’t like the idea of $83,333.33 checks scattered on his apartment floor under the mail chute. Lamar Jean Lukas promised to keep a particularly close eye on Taylor’s apartment, but he still didn’t want to risk his paychecks.

  A.D.’s secretary wasn’t at her desk. Taylor knocked on the general manager’s door and opened it quickly, hoping to catch A.D. and his secretary fucking on the couch. Instead he found Johnny Cobianco, the youngest brother, sitting behind A.D.’s desk, casually going through the drawers.

  “What are you doing here?” Taylor asked.

  “I might ask you the same question,” Johnny mouthed back.

  “You might, but you won’t,” Taylor replied. “I have an answer.”

  “I’m the new assistant general manager; I’m negotiating with all this year’s rookies,” the young Cobianco said. He had the same dark, hairy, square features of his brothers but he lacked their presence, their ferocity. Without his brothers Johnny Cobianco seemed incomplete.

  “Find anything interesting in A.D.’s desk?”

  “Nothing I ain’t seen before.” Johnny closed the drawer he had been rifling.

  “Well, keep on looking, don’t let me stop you. You might find an Easter egg or dirty pictures.”

  “Up yours, jerk.”

  “Hey, boy.” Taylor closed the door. “You are all alone here. Your big brothers are off somewhere, shaking down crippled newsboys. You keep mouthing at me and I’ll feed your lungs to the goddam pigeons.” Taylor advanced on the dark man behind the desk. He felt an unreasonable anger. Fury.

  Johnny Cobianco pulled a large blue steel automatic pistol from his belt.

  “I ain’t quite alone,” he grinned.

  Taylor kept moving toward him. Can’t back up now—Kimball Adams had taught him that. Make a decision quick and move on it. Life or death. Move. Fast. Something irrational in him was already justifying the violence that Taylor knew would take place. Can’t back up. Yes or no. Find the weakness and move fast. Gamble or die.

  A pause, a hesitation, now could be painful, humiliating or
fatal.

  “You better put the fucking gun away, greaseball, or start looking for some spaghetti sauce, ’cause I’m going to feed it to you.” Taylor was startled by his own reactions. He felt out of control, very dangerous. But he liked it. He justified it to himself, something Johnny Cobianco hadn’t considered. Taylor was being shot through with adrenaline and he enjoyed the rush. It was stupid but he fell for it. And enjoyed it.

  Young Cobianco blinked and jerked back. He had never had to go further than this. People usually stopped dead at the sight of the big Colt .45 automatic, but it just made this big football player madder. Johnny Cobianco tried to think: Had he ever shot anybody? It was his sccond mistake of the day; thinking takes too long. Taylor had reached the desk.

  “I’ll shoot,” Johnny said, failing to draw back the hammer. “This is a forty-five. You know how big a hole I can blow in you?”

  “Are we going to have a quiz on it later?” Taylor’s jaws were tight, his nostrils flared, his eyes were wild, as he came around the desk after the wise guy sitting in A.D.’s chair, pointing the gun. “I hope Colt is your favorite flavor.”

  Terrified, Johnny decided to shoot, jerking on the trigger and discovering what Taylor had already noticed: Johnny Cobianco had forgotten to cock the single-action automatic. In a fight, nothing is quite as disheartening as finding oneself unexpectedly unarmed.

  With the possible exception of not being chosen acolyte when he was twelve, Johnny Cobianco experienced no greater distress in his life than when that brand-new four-hundred-dollar Colt Combat Commander .45 automatic lay in his hand and failed to do a thing.

  Lunging forward, Taylor snatched the heavy automatic from Cobianco’s hand and hit him across the throat with his forearm, pinning the young brother to the chair back. Taylor Rusk jammed the two pounds of blue steel square in Johnny C.’s mouth. Blood and teeth splattered on A.D.’s big desk.