by Peter Gent
Buffy held the young boy to her breast and rocked him, telling him about all the things he and his father would do when Simon returned from Los Angeles.
“You know, Simon, to tell you the truth,” Dick Portus said, “when the commissioner forced me to make a deal for you, I figured”—Portus rocked back in his leather and stainless steel chair, putting his Gucci shoes up on his massive desk—“this is no shit, I figured that Cyrus Chandler and Dick Conly and the commissioner were running a dead horse in on me. I saw your wreck in Miami in the Playoff Bowl. I didn’t think anybody could come back on that knee.” Portus used his thumbs and forefingers to frame an imaginary television screen. “It looked like your leg was tom off at the knee, all twisted around like that. Then, when I saw the X-rays and your knee, I was convinced they fucked us. I think they thought they fucked us too.” Portus laughed and laughed.
Simon D’Hanis sat erect, wedging his massive body into the small cloth-and-steel chair. His hands were folded neatly in his lap. His body was coated with a thin film of sweat. He smiled slightly and nodded while Portus laughed.
“But”—Portus stopped laughing—“you came out here and did a hell of a job for us and you showed those deadbeats pride and endurance and how to play with pain. I goddam appreciate it.” Portus hit the table with a tiny fist. He was a small man at five feet six inches and 130 pounds. He dressed in white slacks and tennis sweaters. Only in his twenties, he was almost bald. “You worked hard all through camp and exhibition season. You were an inspiration to the young guys. You taught them a lot. But, taking the long view ...”
Simon felt his gut tighten and a chill ripple up his spine. The hairs on his neck stood up.
“... we did pretty good in the draft,” Portus continued. “And your teaching brought the younger guys in the line around.” Portus grimaced and shook his head. “I just don’t see where we are going to have a spot for you.”
“But,” Simon said softly, keeping his hands quietly in his lap, “I got one more year on my contract. I need that year for the pension and for the money. I don’t have much put away. I worked out every day off-season and didn’t make any money, and most of my salary is deferred. I’m broke.... Football is all I know. I got another year in me, Mr. Portus.”
“Call me Dick,” the tiny balding man said. “Well, that’s why I called you up here to explain our problem. There just isn’t going to be a place for you. We’re going with the younger guys. The guys you helped bring along, and don’t think we don’t appreciate it. That’s why I wanted to give you a chance to catch on with another club. We’re putting feelers out now....”
“But I don’t understand, if you think I’m good. I don’t know what else I got to do. I’m twice the ballplayer any of those rookies are,” Simon pleaded. “I got three kids and no savings and no job prospects.”
“You mean none of those rich Texas oilmen are football fans?”
Portus waved a hand as if batting Simon’s plea out of the air like a fruit fly.
“I’m a lineman, not some glamour back,” Simon said. “Besides, I spent all my time rehabilitating, not looking for work.”
Portus began inspecting his nails and hands. “We just aren’t going to have a spot.”
“But I’ve got another year on my contract,” Simon argued.
“That gives you the right to come to camp, Simon, that’s all.” Portus was tiring of the conversation. He swiveled back and forth in his chair and leaned forward to inspect one of his shoes. “If you’ll read that contract, you’ll see that you are required to report in physical condition to play football. That knee of yours is hardly what you would call in good condition.”
“But I played every exhibition game, Dick.”
“Call me Mr. Portus.”
The tiny man pulled his feet off his desk and sat up, preparing to end the discussion. “I just figured to showcase you, maybe trade you, but nobody wants you. Nothing wrong with your game, but your injury is no secret ... no secrets in this business.” Portus paused and cleared his throat.
Simon sat dumbfounded.
“Look, Simon. Your knee is no good. You have violated your contract just by having a bad knee. Our doctor will say so. The Texas Pistols will say so.” Portus snorted a laugh, “Christ, they should know, they fucked up the surgery. Anyway, there’s no place for you.”
“But ... what about ... ?” Simon’s mind was chaos. None of this made sense. “What should I do? I didn’t expect ... I don’t know what to do. I played hurt for you ... I just thought you would respect that and ...”
“Well, Simon, the Union might help,” Portus continued. “You could sue, but it’s expensive and you would have to sue Texas, then LA, then the League. You’d be in court forever. Besides, we have film of you playing, and Texas took film of you doing range of motion drills on the friction table. So go out with pride and style; quit the game before the game quits you.”
Portus turned to his phone and snatched up the receiver, signaling the end of the conversation. “Diane, send those scouting reports in here, will you? And get the coach on the line.” He signaled toward the door with his eyes for Simon D’Hanis to leave. “Go away, Simon, I’m through with you.”
Simon sat wedged in the chair and looked at his sweating hands, twisting his thick fingers until they ached. Finally, slowly, he got to his feet and reached over the desk. With his right thumb and forefinger Simon D’Hanis grabbed LA owner Dick Portus by the nose, snatching him out of his seat. Portus howled, the blood vessels in the tip of his nose rupturing as Simon dragged him across the cluttered desk top, scattering contracts, letters and memorabilia.
The telephone clattered to the floor.
Simon raged and shook Dick Portus like a dirty mop. The little man’s shoes flew off in separate directions. The young owner flopped around, his face white with terror and pain. Turning loose of the mashed nose, Simon got a grip on Portus’s clothes, stretching his tennis sweater out of shape.
Then Simon D’Hanis decided to throw Dick Portus out the window of his twenty-second-floor office.
As the giant heaved Portus sailing toward the twenty-second-floor glass, the tiny man clutched desperately at Simon’s shirt sleeve, tearing it enough to change the angle of his trajectory, and Dick Portus bounced off the teakwood credenza, smashing into a Picasso print.
The next day Simon D’Hanis was listed as officially retired on the commissioner’s list.
Dick Portus’s nose required restorative surgery where Simon’s thumb and forefinger had crushed tissue and vessels.
Simon D’Hanis was now out of control.
And he was heading home.
MENTAL TOUGHNESS
RED KILROY TOOK A calculated risk that training camp. First, he successfully banned all Texas Pistols Franchise personnel except players and coaches. Even A.D. Koster, the general manager, was banned. He was the reason for the ban.
Second, Red immediately cut his roster down to sixty players. He only invited eighty to camp, and the physical examinations eliminated ten of those. After personal interviews with Red, ten more were released. The remaining players were guaranteed their salaries for the season, in return for a promise of complete loyalty to Red Kilroy.
Suzy and A.D. tried to fight both the ban and the guaranteed contracts, but Red unrolled his contract—negotiated years before with Dick Conly and Cyrus Chandler—and pointed out the clause that gave Red complete power of hiring and firing over coaches and player personnel. Violation of the clause was sufficient reason for Red to resign, at which time he had to be paid a lump sum of $1,500,000, plus additional payments of $500,000 a year for fifteen years, regardless of whether he accepted another job. A.D. retreated in the face of Red’s overwhelming numbers.
A.D. retreated for another reason.
As Taylor Rusk had predicted, the more people the Cobianco brothers moved into the Franchise, the more apparent it became that A.D. Koster was expendable. He was required to stay close to the office and protect his flanks and bac
k.
A.D. spent his free time in his skybox luxury suite at the Pistol Dome with Monique. Together they designed the Pistolettes uniforms and drew up the Pistolettes’ “code of conduct” to ensure they did not hurt the image or the integrity of the Texas Pistols Football Club, Inc.
A.D. often sent the Pistolettes to the Cobianco parties when the brothers were entertaining “associates” from out of town. A.D. hoped that those favors kept him in good stead with the Cobianco brothers. He didn’t look at it as pimping but as public relations. At one of the parties a nude, drunken, nineteen-year-old blond Pistolette drowned in the swimming pool. It took a lot of money and fast talk to keep the story out of the news. A.D. complained to Don Cobianco about the trouble.
“Trouble? What trouble?” Don snarled over his breakfast. The two men were meeting in Don’s hotel suite. “There ain’t no trouble. That’s why you got them alternates. Next time, send us some alternates.” He waved A.D. off and went back to reading the Chandler Communications, Inc., newspaper.
A.D. called Suzy Ballard Chandler out at the Hot Springs Ranch.
“Don’t complain to me, A.D.,” Suzy yelled over the phone. “I have enough trouble out here. The crazy old bastard wants to either give all his money to that goddam Jesus freak Billy Joe Hardesty or support the Players Union director Terry Dudley for governor. I’ll bet he’s written five hundred checks to those two. If I hadn’t burned them, we’d be dead broke.” Suzy changed hands with the telephone. Her palms were sweaty. “And he seems to be getting better. The Valium doesn’t seem to be keeping him under control.”
“He’s probably built a tolerance to the stuff,” A.D. said. “Give him more.”
“I’m giving him a hundred milligrams a day now,” Suzy whined. “It keeps him drowsy and a little confused, but now he’s talking about getting back to the city. I’m scared to death that the next time Billy Joe Hardesty flies in, he’ll take Cyrus off with him.”
“Put one of those cowboys at the airstrip with a shotgun and blow Billy Joe to Jesus if he steps out of his plane,” A.D. replied.
“Really?”
“I’m serious. We can’t fuck around anymore with that guy. I got a lot of trouble up here with the Cobiancos. They’re taking over the Franchise. Johnny is my assistant and they got all sorts of goons on the payroll.”
“Shit!” Suzy said into the phone. “What are we going to do? I don’t understand all this stuff. Most of the other companies seem to run themselves with presidents and boards of directors, but Dick Conly ran that damn franchise out of his head. You know what Cyrus has been doing?” she asked but didn’t pause. “He’s been transferring the Franchise stock into his grandson’s trust. Ten percent a year on his birthday.”
“Taylor and Wendy’s kid?” A.D. asked. “Randall?”
“He doesn’t have any other grandkids that I know about,” Suzy said. “The kid has forty percent already. It was Dick Conly’s idea, the bastard. I asked Cyrus to stop the trust and leave the stock to me, but he said he can’t do it; he doesn’t control it.”
“Jesus!” A.D. was startled by their sudden precariousness. “If he does that much longer, the trust fund’ll run the Franchise. I thought you had him under control?”
“That is what I have been saying, you jerk!” Suzy clenched her damp palms. She ached to hit A.D. one good shot in the nose, watch him bleed, his eyes water. “Since the Trust already has forty percent and Wendy Chandler’s got ten percent, we already got a standoff.”
A.D. whined. “I got trouble at both ends and in the middle. They will clean house. What the hell am I going to do?”
“They’ll try, but you don’t have to let them,” Suzy condescended. “I got my tit in a wringer down here. I may just kill the old bastard. I’m tired of fucking with him. They want to fight, I’ll fight.”
“Jesus! Wait a minute, Suzy,” A.D. cried. “Cyrus may not be ready to die—taxwise, I mean. You’ll need a hell of a lot of cash to pay inheritance taxes on that old bastard, and as far as I know he doesn’t have the cash or the insurance policies. Let’s not go looking for trouble. Let’s deal with it as it comes.”
“Well, talk to Cobianco!” Suzy yelled. “Let’s do something. I’m tired of this shit.” She slammed the phone down.
A.D. sat numbly at his desk and talked to himself. “A fucking roller-skating carhop got a covey of houses, maids, servants, a half-million-acre ranch with high-blood herds of horses and cattle, her own hot springs, God’s most spectacular Rio Grande canyons, and now she’s tired of this shit.” A.D. laughed weakly. “Shit, she called it. Shit.” He lay his cheek against his arms, folded on the desk top. “ ‘Let’s do something,’ ” he mimicked Suzy. “Fucking roller skates made her crazy. Do something? Do something? Goddam cunt, this ain’t nothing I’m doing. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something.” A.D. sat resting his head on his arms, wondering how it had gotten so complicated.
“Taylor was right,” he whined. “Years ago. He’s always right. I never did have no fucking luck with carhops.”
THE LAST OF CYRUS/THE FIRST OF THE IRS
SUZY BALLARD CHANDLER decided to double Cyrus’s Valium dosage and see if that didn’t reduce him back to the half-vegetable that spent his days doddering around the house, picking imaginary lint off his bathrobe. In the short term Suzy achieved her goal and Cyrus was quickly back to drooling and wetting himself.
Unfortunately, one Sunday afternoon, after a lunch of Froot Loops, Cyrus Chandler choked to death on his own vomit during his afternoon nap.
As A.D. Koster had feared, Cyrus Chandler was not ready to die.
Taxwise.
The Chandler Industries were protected; Dick Conly had seen to that before Amos Chandler died. But no provisions had been made to shelter Cyrus Chandler’s personal holdings, including his remaining fifty-percent ownership of the Franchise; the Hot Springs Ranch with its buildings, fencing, airstrip, twenty-five thousand head of Santa Gertrudis, fifteen hundred purebred quarterhorses and miscellaneous vehicles; and his $2.7 million home in the city.
The will was simple, leaving everything to Suzy.
The only insurance was a $2,500 burial policy.
Two months after Cyrus died, the Internal Revenue Service presented Suzy with an inheritance tax bill of a little over sixteen million dollars.
SWIMMING WITH THE SHARKS
SUZY BALLARD CHANDLER had no idea how to raise that much cash. Nor did A.D. Koster.
Other than the fifty percent of the Franchise, the only assets with much liquidity were the purebred cattle and quarterhorses; even those showed the peculiar bind that Suzy faced. The ranch foreman had kept meticulous records of the high prices paid for the breeding stock, which the IRS used to compute the growing value of the horse and cattle herds. The actual distressed market price, however, was much lower, closer to the value of slaughter cattle and saddle horses. The foreman’s careful records had been good for depreciation but bad for depreciation recapture upon inheritance.
The shelters for tax avoidance had not yet been created to pass Cyrus Chandler’s personal wealth intact to the next generation. The taxes were staggering and pressing, since the Government was also in a liquidity crisis and the IRS insisted on prompt payment and preferred cash.
Sixteen million cash. Pronto.
It might take years to sell the ranch and the expensive mansion in the city.
Dick Conly could have extricated Suzy from the seemingly desperate cash-poor position with just a few phone calls. It wasn’t even genius-level work. But A.D. and Suzy were swimming with the sharks, and Conly merely watched.
Quite soon the IRS began making threatening noises about property seizures and attachments, and their target of first choice was the Franchise.
Even at that late date, if Suzy and A.D. found an honest lawyer, they would have been all right. Instead they called Charlie Stillman. The lawyer, union organizer, player’s agent, part owner in Cobianco Brothers Construction and counsel for the Laborers Union, said h
e would call back.
When the phone rang, A.D. Koster answered.
“It’s set,” Stillman said.
“What’s set?” A.D. shrugged his shoulders at Suzy, who was chewing the polish off her nails.
“The meet.”
“What meet?” A.D. looked to Suzy for some indication of what his response should be if he ever figured out what Charlie Stillman was saying. “What meet?” A.D. repeated. Suzy suddenly pulled her bare foot to her face and began chewing on a toenail.
“About the sixteen million,” Charlie Stillman said. “I got it for you.”
“Oh.”
Suzy and A.D. went to see Don Cobianco. He was expecting them.
“I can have the money for you next week,” the eldest brother said. “But first you will both have to take out life insurance policies in the amount of the loan, payable to me. We don’t want this same sort of problem cropping up again. It won’t cost you anything. My brother Roger has an agency that does business with one of those fast-track companies out of Detroit. They pay a hundred-and-fifteen-percent commission on the first year’s premium. So we’ll make your premium payment and keep the fifteen percent.” Don Cobianco smiled. “Don’t worry about the physicals. We got doctors.” Cobianco reached into his desk drawer and pulled out two insurance forms. “Just sign here and leave the rest to me.”
“I don’t know....” A.D. said.
“Well, if you don’t want the money ...” Cobianco began to put the sheets back into his desk.
“Goddam, A.D.,” Suzy snapped, “what else can we do?”
Cobianco pushed the papers back out in front of the two confused and desperate people. “It’s just a precaution. You’ll be able to pay me back easy with the cash flow that the Franchise will generate in the next few years. I’m charging you less than prime-rate interest. IRS charges more interest; they’re the real sharks. Where else could you get a better deal?”