The Cut

by Wil Mara

  His plan was not to injure Reese in any way, just to smash him good and hard. Ring his bell, as the saying goes. As he dove, he aimed for Reese’s midsection. But that wasn’t where his helmet—and, subsequently, the full weight of his 270-pound body—made impact.

  There was perhaps a half second when Reese realized what was going to happen before it did. And just like the first time, everything unfolded in slow motion. As he came down with the pass, he saw McKinney in midair. He tried to turn away—or at least he thought he did (later he wouldn’t be sure)—but quickly realized he’d never make it. He first felt the knee bend too far inward, then the dull snapping sensation—and then the fire, as if someone had doused it with gasoline and set it ablaze. In the next moment he was on the ground, his hands grasping either side of the ragged joint, struggling not to scream but screaming anyway. He pressed and prodded the muscles and ligaments in an attempt to switch off the agony, but the shock waves kept coming.

  Hamilton and Foster rushed across the field just behind the physicians. Foster knelt down, unsure what to do. Hamilton, conversely, took a swing at the baffled McKinney and landed it squarely in his stomach. The latter went down like a shot buck, and a referee signaled for Hamilton to be ejected. He couldn’t have cared less.

  “Corey, is it the knee?” asked head physician Michael Grady. Grady was forty-six, still boyishly handsome, and in his fourth year with the team.

  “Yeah … my God.…” Tears had begun streaming down his face.

  “Let me have a look. Let go for a second.”

  Grady cut the pants up the side, revealing what he feared most—the area was already beginning to swell. Not a good sign.

  “Okay,” Grady said to his assistants, “get a brace for it right away, and get the stretcher and the cart out here. He’s not going to be able to walk this off.”

  As they waited, Reese said through clenched teeth, “How bad, Mike?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to—”

  “Mike, how bad?”

  Reese stopped writhing just long enough to look into Grady’s brown eyes.

  “Bad enough,” Grady said.

  The patient was put on the stretcher, the stretcher onto the cart. Then the cart motored away.

  The crowd stood and cheered.

  Reese didn’t hear them.

  32

  “Well, sorry you boys lost,” Gray said, “but that’s the way it goes. You win some, you lose some.”

  He sat directly across from Barry Sturtz, in the same conference room, and in fact the same chair, as he had over a month ago. His fingers were laced behind his head, his feet up on the mirror-glossy mahogany table. All he needed was a big cigar and a diamond stickpin. Chet Palmer was next to him, going over the final paperwork. He was almost as giddy as Gray, but he worked hard not to show it. To the victors go the spoils … and the bragging rights … and the arrogance … and an open license to act like assholes.…

  “Yeah, I agree with you,” Sturtz said, a smile on his face and his leather shoulder bag in front of him. Both Gray and Palmer couldn’t understand why he wasn’t acting more … defeated. Denial? Smug defiance? Well, whatever the case, he could act however he wished. The cards had been played and the hand was over. Their puzzlement at this petty rebellion was a small price to pay. Still, it was irritating.

  “You’ll have to sign this,” Palmer said matter-of-factly. He glanced at the sheet one last time, then slid it over. It bumped against Sturtz’s bag before coming to a halt. He ignored it.

  “It basically tells us you have read and understood the fines that are about to be levied on your client,” Palmer plowed on. “If they were relatively minor, we could do it verbally, but considering the amount, there needs to be paperwork. You understand, of course.”

  “Of course,” Sturtz said.

  “And he is required to return to his duties immediately,” Palmer added.

  “Right.”

  An uneasy silence drifted between them, and the staring match went on. Palmer looked to Gray, whose cocky grin was fading fast.

  “Don’t you understand what’s happening here?” Gray said finally, an edge to his voice for the first time. “Don’t you know what’s going to happen to your client going forward?”

  “No, please enlighten me.”

  Gray pulled his feet from the table and moved into a sitting position so fast Palmer jumped. “I’m going to work the shit out of him. I’m going to make him pay for embarrassing me, and us, and this team. I’m going to teach him a lesson in humiliation that he won’t forget for the rest of his life. Do you understand me?”

  “I believe I do,” Sturtz said, gently setting his fingers together and swiveling back and forth in the chair.

  “Then what the hell is your problem?”

  “No problem here, Coach.” He picked up the paper Palmer had passed over, lifted it about a foot off the table, then let it fall again. It seesawed twice before coming to rest somewhere in the middle. “But this is bullshit, and we’re not going to do it.”

  Gray’s neck started turning red. Palmer had identified this barometer of his temperament long ago—he was about a second away from a full eruption.

  “What?”

  “I said we’re not doing it. No fines, no suffering, no nothing. T. J.’s still sitting out as far as I’m concerned.”

  Gray, to Palmer’s amazement, did not blow—he just sat there, staring, for what seemed like a long time. In an oddly robotic way, he turned to face his general manager, then turned back. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Are you on drugs or something?”

  “No, I’m quite clearheaded. I really appreciate your concern, though.”

  “You can’t do this. You can’t!”

  The word “can’t” came out in a grinding, spit-flying screech. A thousand pounds of rage delivered in one syllable.

  “I beg to differ,” Sturtz said politely. This caused Palmer to think, My God, he’s trying to give the guy a stroke. “If you recall, the arbitration hearing was for the issue of a more generous contract, not the possibility of a trade. And if I recall, not only is a trade request part of T. J.’s contractual right, it was also on the table during our last discussion in here. You said yourself, ‘It’ll be expensive.’ You did not say, ‘It’s out of the question.’ We are within our rights to make such a request.”

  Again the stare and the brief check back to Palmer, who looked helpless.

  Then Gray actually smiled. “I lied,” he said with a chuckle. “Okay? I lied. Your client is going nowhere.” His voice was so calm that, somehow, it was even more unsettling than when it was raised. “He’ll be right here, on our field, in our stadium, playing his heart out for me.” Gray tapped himself in the chest with his forefinger. “And you,” he went on, turning that same finger outward, “you slimy little pile of Brooklyn shit, are going to be standing on the unemployment line before this season is over!”

  This last line launched the inevitable explosion. Gray jumped out of his seat and leaned forward, the redness from his neck having spread to his entire face.

  But Sturtz, with an inner peace that Palmer couldn’t help but admire, simply said, “No, I’m sorry. That’s not how it’s going to be.” Finally, he unzipped his bag, and from inside he took out a single sheet of paper of his own.

  “This is a tender offer from the San Francisco 49ers for T. J.’s services. As you will see”—he produced another copy and tossed one to each of them—“it is quite generous in terms of compensation. Draft picks, established players, even some cash to cover your losses.” Sturtz waited just long enough to add, “But, as you’ll see, the latter isn’t much since … well, since he’s not being paid very much in the first place.”

  Palmer waited for Gray to pick up his copy. When it became obvious he had no intention of doing so, the GM took his own and began reading. It took all of about thirty seconds to realize the 49ers wanted Brookman very badly and were willing to do damn near anything to get him.

 
; “Until we get this issue resolved,” Sturtz said, purposely choosing a phrase from their original meeting, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that T. J. sit out.”

  Gray was impossible to read at this point. There was murder in his eyes, but no other signs of what lay under the surface. The silence returned to the room. A few seconds passed, then a few more. It stretched into a minute, then the next.

  “If you continue to do this,” Gray said at last, “I will sit your boy and take one of the others. I will sit him all year and take one of the others!”

  “Oh, I doubt that.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have any of the others. You ordered Dale Greenwood to cut them this morning. Or don’t you remember? Jermaine Hamilton, Corey Reese, Daimon Foster—they all received their walking papers bright and early. You remember those guys, right? The ones you used to try to screw me and my client? They’re gone. Gone. The moment you sent them packing, they were free to do whatever they wished.” Sturtz checked his watch. “By my calculations, Foster should be inking his deal with Kansas City right about now. Hamilton is in discussions with Washington. And Reese—well.…”

  The redness in Gray’s face faded temporarily and was replaced by a distinct lack of coloration. Pale and ashen, he looked sick, drained out. He realized he’d been beaten. Sturtz had waited in the bushes, patiently, to spring this trap. It had been planned all along. He had effectively calculated the coach’s own plan and, figuring that information into the equation, formed one of his own. He sat in the shadows until Gray removed all of his own options, then used that as the noose with which to hang him.

  When the redness returned, it did so in accompaniment to the greatest explosion of temper Palmer or Sturtz had ever witnessed. It made George Brett’s famous pine-tar outburst look like a pleasant conversation between friends. For the next ninety seconds, Gray covered the entire catalog of English expletives and profanities (if a censor had been there, he would’ve simply held down the bleep-out button for the duration) and threw out enough spittle to polish an off-road vehicle after a muddy day in the woods.

  “Hey, take it easy, Alan,” Palmer said. “You’re going to give yourself a—”

  “I’m going to finish you,” Gray said at the end, snarling and pointing as his chest heaved from exhaustion. “I’m going to break you like a goddamn—”

  Then a fourth voice entered the conversation. “You are going to do no such thing, Alan.” It was just as measured as Barry Sturtz’s, but it had a bit more impact on the recipient.

  All heads turned to Dorland Kenner, standing in the doorway.

  * * *

  No one said anything. No one knew what to say. The three men at the table were frozen in space and time, as if in a photograph that had been pasted into a scrapbook with the caption “Tense Times at Team Headquarters.”

  “Dorland?” Gray said, “What the f— What are you doing here?”

  Kenner came into the room and held his hand out to Sturtz. “Barry, always a pleasure to see you.”

  Sturtz stood and, almost subconsciously, buttoned and smoothed his blazer. “Hello, Mr. Kenner. How are you?”

  “Fine, Barry. Please call me Dorland.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Then, to Gray, Kenner said, “So what’s happening here? A bit of a disagreement, it seems.”

  Gray put on his best ass-kisser’s smile. “A little bit, but we’re working it out.”

  “Are you? It doesn’t sound that way to me. From what I’ve heard, you are threatening, not compromising.”

  Gray laughed. “Well, this is the way these things are done, Dorland. Sometimes you need to—”

  “No, Alan,” Kenner said flatly, his voice never rising a decibel, “this is not the way these things are done. Not here.”

  “Uh, excuse me, sir, but I might know a little bit more about this than you, if you don’t mind my saying so. I have been—”

  “I appreciate your concern for my feelings,” Kenner said, “but I do mind. I mind very much. In fact, I mind many things that you’ve been doing to this team lately.”

  “What?” Gray replied, and Palmer couldn’t help notice that a bit of the anger was creeping back into his voice. Uh-oh.

  “Alan, my father was a shrewd businessman. He knew how to get things done. He studied a situation, considered all angles, and made decisions. They didn’t always make everyone happy, but they were fair decisions, and people understood why he made them. He did not manipulate, he did not coerce, and he did not threaten.”

  “I wasn’t exactly threat—”

  “Don’t insult me. That’s exactly what you were doing.”

  “Well, that’s how I operate,” Gray said, and this time he didn’t bother candy-coating the delivery.

  “Fine. Then you are welcome to operate elsewhere.”

  Gray’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re fired.”

  Another frozen-in-time moment, and even Sturtz looked stunned.

  “You may clear out your office at once.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “I am not.”

  “This is fucking ridiculous.”

  “What was that?”

  “No one fires a head coach right before the regular season starts. It’s insane.”

  “No, here’s what’s insane—we’ve had nothing but failure since you came here. Complete and utter failure. Now, allowing you to run this team for another season—that would be insane. The way I see it, I can leave you in your current position purely for the sake of observing tradition, and that would all but guarantee another losing season. Or I could give someone else your job, and maybe he’d do better. Maybe he wouldn’t, but with you I know what’s going to happen. So, is making a change now really insane? I don’t see it that way at all. Maybe it is unprecedented—but it’s still smart. Keeping you here another minute, that’s insane.”

  Gray scanned the room, realized he was surrounded by enemies, and said, “You can go to hell. I’m not taking one step out of this—”

  Without hesitation, Kenner turned toward the open doorway and said, “Don?”

  The Turk appeared, grim as ever. “Yes?”

  “Would you be kind enough to show Coach Gray to his office, watch him pack up his things, then escort him to his car?”

  “You bet.” Don Blumenthal looked to Alan Gray—the man who had treated him like a dog, had insulted him in every way and as publicly as possible—and managed his first smile in a long time.

  For an instant, Gray looked terrified. Then, as Blumenthal came around the table, Gray said, “You’ve got big problems here, junior. Problems that you won’t be able to handle without me.”

  Kenner, setting his hands into his pockets, said wearily, “I’m sure we’ll manage, Alan.”

  On his way out of the room, the Turk holding him by the arm, Gray continued with “Do you know you have a mole? Someone is leaking everything you do to the press! I would’ve found the sonofabitch, but now I’m glad I didn’t!”

  “We’ll take care of it.”

  “Have a good time dealing with the Barry Sturtzes of the world!” Gray went on, even though his voice was dying in the hallway. “You’ll get nowhere without me! Nowhere!”

  Kenner took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. “That didn’t go particularly well.”

  “No, you had to do it,” Chet Palmer said swiftly. “He’s been a loose cannon around here for years. You should’ve seen—”

  “You, too,” Kenner cut him off. “Get your things and go.”

  Palmer seemed genuinely bewildered. “Me? But—”

  “I’m not arguing the point, Chet. You have put us deep into a hole with the salary cap. Unbelievably deep.” Kenner went on to quote figures and structures from contracts that Palmer didn’t think he even knew about. It was like the guy had been living inside his head. But I thought he didn’t know any of this.

  “And you lied to me, too,” Kenner went on, “on ma
ny, many occasions. You covered for Gray”—he said this in a way that sounded as though Gray had already been gone for years, which Palmer found chilling—“and you made mistakes you tried to hide. You damaged this organization with no thought for anyone but yourself. I don’t tolerate that with any of my people. Now go.”

  Palmer paused for a few more seconds, thought about trying to rally to defend his position, then realized it was hopeless.

  Without another word, he rose, leaving all his paperwork exactly where it was, and walked out.

  * * *

  Now it was just the two of them.

  The room had become eerily still. The hanging blinds were half turned, so a fair amount of sunlight was slanting in. A few birds were chirping outside, happily oblivious in the way that nature’s creatures are to the boundless idiocy of men.

  With Sturtz as his riveted audience, Kenner pulled out a chair and sat down next to him. “First of all, I want to apologize to you and your client on behalf of myself, my family, and all the good people in this organization for the way the two of you have been treated.”

  Was this really happening? Barry Sturtz wondered. Being understandably gun-shy, he thought for a moment this might be a ploy of some kind, where the higher echelon takes control of the out-of-hand situation and masterfully brings it back to the boundaries of reality.

  But such fears were quickly assuaged when Kenner said, “I have been studying your client’s contract. I have studied it thoroughly, and I have also been studying his performance since he joined this team, and it seems to me he is a remarkable young man.”

  Sturtz, feeling like he was caught in an episode of The Twilight Zone, said, “Yes, he is.”

  “I am deeply appreciative of his devotion, his effort, his discipline, and his passion. He has carried himself beautifully, both on and off the field.”