Titans

by Tim Green

  This time, however, he welcomed the escape from New York. Since his encounter with Tony Rizzo, Hunter's days had been filled with worry. He worried about whether he should tell someone about Rizzo and what Rizzo wanted from him. Hunter was certain the guy would appear soon.

  Now, though, stuck at Brockport State College in upstate New York, Hunter had no time to think of anything but football and his nightly phone call home to Rachel and Sara. When there was any free time, he spent it reacquainting himself with his teammates. Even the time he spent with Bert Meyer in the off-season was scarce compared to the intimacy of training camp and an NFL season. During camp your teammates became your family. And during the season, especially with a winning team, the guys were bound as tightly as college fraternity brothers. They lived a secret and privileged life that few others could imagine, and one that most people on the outside envied.

  As Hunter walked slowly and stiffly from the athletic complex where they practiced to the mid-rise dorm where they ate and slept, he wondered how many people outside the league would really want to be a part of it if they knew what training camp entailed. He thought of the early morning wake-up call when Billy Knoll, the assistant equipment manager, wandered through the hallways of the dormitory sounding his air horn. That would be enough in itself for some people to turn back. But it was a fitting beginning for a day that went downhill from there.

  After a quick breakfast there was the walk across campus to the athletic complex. There you got taped and dressed quickly for practice, which lasted from eight-thirty until eleven. After a shower and lunch there were meetings to review the morning practice and prepare for the afternoon. If you were lucky, you could get almost an hour to grab a much-needed nap. If not, you'd just walk right back to the complex and dress for the three o'clock practice. After that was weight lifting, then dinner, then meetings that lasted until about ten. Hunter would then rush to a pay phone, call home, and then spend another half hour bullshitting and playing poker or dice with his buddies until eleven o'clock curfew. Then it was lights out until the next morning, when the entire schedule would be repeated, usually without a variation.

  "Hunter!"

  Hunter turned when he heard Bert's voice behind him. He waited for his friend to catch up. Bert's painful hobble made him smile. He looked even worse than Hunter.

  "Little sore?" Hunter said when his friend fell in beside him.

  Bert groaned, "That was a bitch! What got into his ass? Pop would never have run us like that. It's bullshit. I'm telling you, we don't need that kind of running. And that live goal line scrimmage. This guy thinks he's still in college!"

  Bert was referring to the new head coach, Martin Price, who'd come from Notre Dame. Unfortunately for the Titans players, Price had retained some of his hard-assed tactics from coaching college ball. These, Bert swore, included more hitting and running than any other NFL team in history. The riddle going around camp was: "What do you get when you cross a prick with a block of ice?" 'That's easy: a Price." The riddle, and the regimen, left their coach with the clandestine nickname of 'The Iceman."

  "Oh, come on," Hunter said. "It's not really that bad, is it?"

  "Huh! That's easy for you to say," Bert grumbled. "A fucking pretty-boy QB is all you are. You don't even get hit in practice! You guys go out there in your little blue jerseys so the rest of us stiffs in white won't bump into you by accident. I swear, man, when my boy grows up he's gonna be a quarterback or a fucking kicker, for that matter. What a life. You guys aren't even sore."

  Hunter snorted. "Hey, I might not have my head bashed in, but I'm plenty sore. I have to do all that running, too. Plus my damn shoulder's killing me. It's no party throwing a hundred balls a day with a bum shoulder ..."

  Bert looked at the bag of ice that was bound to Hunter's shoulder by an Ace bandage. The bag must have leaked because there was a stain from the water on Hunter's blue T-shirt that left the arm a darker shade of blue. Icy drops fell from his elbow as they walked.

  "Well, yeah, that's true. You got the bad shoulder," Bert conceded. "I forgot about that. Why the hell don't you lay off it a little?"

  "Hah!" Hunter exclaimed. "That's a damn good question, but I've got a damn good answer--Broadway Blake."

  "Oh, hell," Bert said, "he's not even in your league."

  "Not right now," Hunter said, "and I like to keep it that way. Don't you see the way Price drools when the kid throws those long balls? I swear the man has to take cold showers after every touchdown pass the little bastard throws out there. Price loves him!"

  Bert shrugged. "Yeah, but he ain't gonna put him in front of you."

  "I know," Hunter said. "I just like to look good. That kid gets under my skin sometimes. I couldn't bear to stand around watching him run with the first team."

  "Well, I'd rather have your bad shoulder than these fucked-up elbows anyway," Bert said, lifting his elbows to the sky like a big chicken, "and these fucking lumps on my forehead. You won't have the fucking brain damage I'll have in later life from all this head banging."

  "What later life?" Hunter said, staring ahead and trying to keep a straight face. "Your brain is damaged pretty good right now . If you ask me."

  Bert began to nod in agreement, then realized what he was doing and scowled. "Fuck you," he said pleasantly.

  As the two friends mounted the front steps of the large dormitory, Matt Brown, the Titans' best receiver, burst through the front doors. His eyes were wide and he looked wildly about.

  "Did you guys hear?" he said, obviously aching to tell them the news. "What?"

  "Fucking night off tonight is what!" Matt said, nodding his head to reinforce his veracity. "Can you fucking believe it? The fucking Iceman called off the night meetings. We got to listen to a couple of stiffs from the FBI about drugs or some shit, but it's only until seven-thirty, then we're actually free from this shit until eleven! What you guys gonna do?"

  Bert and Hunter looked at each other like convicts on a road crew left behind by some errant guard.

  Hunter shrugged. "Play some poker, I guess."

  "Aww, man! That's fucking pathetic," Matt moaned. "We get a few hours break from all this shit and you two hayseeds look at each other and talk about playing cards." Matt was clearly disappointed.

  "Well," Hunter said, trying to recover, "what are you doing?"

  "Me and some boys are getting the hell away from here, that's what," Matt said. "And you two better be with us if you want me to respect you in the morning."

  "Where the hell are you gonna go?" Bert asked. "We're in fucking Brockport. If you blinked, you'd miss the place. It's got only one bar in the whole fucking town."

  "And that, my man," said Matt, "is where we're at."

  Bert shrugged and so did Hunter.

  "OK," Hunter said as Bert nodded.

  "We're with you," said Bert, and the two friends hobbled into the dorm to get themselves some dinner at the cafeteria before their seven o'clock encounter with the FBI.

  Cook was disappointed. The drive from New York seemed to last forever. The PEA agent was a surly cuss by the name of Cutchins. He was a dumpy and over weight with grayish, thinning hair and a face that looked like fifty miles of hard road. He wore gray trousers with an old blue blazer and a dull pink sports shirt. White flakes of dandruff were sprinkled about his shoulders.

  The maroon cloth upholstery of Cutchins's Buick LeSabre stank from Marlboros, and Cook had to endure his smoking all the way from the George Washington Bridge until they unloaded at the Road Motel outside of Brockport. Cutchins let Cook know that he and Vince Peel had been making the trip to the Titans camp for the past seventeen years and that it was a kind of vacation that they both looked forward to. In fact, Cutchins lamented his sidekick's absence almost the entire length of Route 17. At one point Cook had tried to feign sleep, but the impervious Cutchins had simply poked him in the ribs until he opened his eyes.

  "Hey," Cutchins had said, "Peel and me never slept on each other."

  But
Cutchins was no more than an annoyance. The disappointment came when he learned that Grant Carter wouldn't be within a hundred miles of the training camp.

  "So," Cook finally said to make some conversation, "do you think we'll get a chance to sit down with Grant Carter?"

  Cutchins looked at him as though he were mad. He guffawed and smoke spewed out of his mouth and nostrils.

  "You think Grant Carter is gonna be there? In fucking Brockport?" Cutchins asked incredulously.

  "Yeah," Cook replied. "When I talked with Peel, every other word was about what a hell of a guy Grant Carter was and how much I was going to admire the man. 'A man of wealth but great perspective.' Those were Peel's words, not mine."

  That's my fucking buddy Peel for you! What a fucking live wire. That's him, all right. He met Carter once when we got some locker room passes to a Raiders game for coming out here like this to talk with the team. The NFL takes good care of me and Peel. So this one game we run right into the old man himself, and I mean literally run into him. Peel steps right on the guy's Bally loafers and shits them all up with some gum that was stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Well, Peel says he's awful sorry and old Carter kinda grunts and says not to worry about it, but kinda pissed off like.

  "That was it!" Cutchins howled. "And since that day you can't talk about the fucking Titans without Peel breaking out about what a hell of a guy Grant Carter is and how you'll really enjoy meeting him. That Peel, he's a pisser.

  "I sure do wish he was here," Cutchins added just in case Cook had forgotten where he stood.

  The only silver lining in that cloud was that it eased Cook's anxiety about not having told Fellows about his trip. He had played it over and over in his mind, and he'd come up with a thin but conceivable story to tell his boss. Had he met Carter, Cook would have simply explained that he had been doing a favor for an old friend of Duffy's who couldn't make the trip, and he had inadvertently run into Grant Carter. Cook wouldn't have leaned on the owner; he would have simply asked a few harmless questions and seen where they went. Certainly he wasn't going to bring Fellows with him like a baby-sitter. But the story was moot now that Cook wouldn't be meeting Carter.

  So here Cook was, getting ready to give a talk about gambling to a bunch of pro ball players who he imagined would rather be anywhere else in the world. Cutchins, Cook could see, was unaware that the players didn't give a shit whether or not he was there. Cutchins had his speech down, and Cook bet himself that it was the same one he'd been giving for seventeen years. Cook didn't know how Peel addressed the players, but he was not one for public speaking, let alone speaking to eighty big, angry-looking ball players.

  They were in a medium-size conference room in the dorm where the players were living. It was big enough to hold the whole team, but small enough to make it hot and cramped. Cook looked out at the mostly hostile crowd and recognized a few of the big-name players like Matt Brown and Rodney Smalls, and of course the quarterback, Hunter Logan. Logan looked up from his discussion with a thick-necked lineman and gave Cook a friendly smile, an oasis in a desert of disdain. Cook was surprised. Maybe he shouldn't have been. He'd heard that sometimes it was the biggest celebrities who were the most down-to-earth people.

  Martin Price arrived and shook hands with both Cutchins and Cook. The coach was about forty-five with a slender athletic build, thick frameless glasses, and a gaunt face that was capped with a Titans baseball hat. Cook could see from the demeanor of the team as Price began to speak that his players were far from enamored with the man. He told his team to pay close attention to the speakers and that when they were done they were free from responsibilities until eleven o'clock curfew. This brought dramatic cheers, and then Price departed without so much as a nod.

  Cutchins went first. Cook wondered to himself as the decrepit DEA officer droned on about the dangers of drugs and the legal restrictions on hand guns in the five boroughs of New York whether it was better that he was speaking last. On one hand, Cutchins wouldn't be a tough act to follow. On the other hand, it gave Cook time to be nervous, and it obviously increased the audience's already inauspicious mood.

  "... I know you older guys will be disappointed that my usual partner, Vince Peel from the FBI, isn't with me this year," Cutchins finally said after asking for any questions and receiving none, "but I've brought a pretty decent guy with me to try to fill in. Gentlemen, this is Agent Cook, supervisor of a special task force on organized crime in the New York metropolitan area. Agent Cook will now talk to you about the hazards of gambling as it relates to professional athletes."

  Cutchins stood to the side and Cook stepped up to the podium. There was no polite applause or welcome of any kind. The pervasive expression was one of having already heard it all before.

  "Gentlemen," Cook began with a nervous edge in his voice, "I'm here to talk to you about something very serious ..."

  Someone in the back let out a resounding fart. Laughter erupted from all quarters, and Cook felt blood rush to his face. He stared coldly at the crowd until the last of the heckling subsided.

  "Lookout, dudes," someone said in a mocking tone, "this man is bad!" Cook found the source and stared directly at him. "I'll tell you something bad," Cook said with flat malevolence. "Bad is a kid about your age that I found a few months ago in Brooklyn with his head blown apart like a rotten melon, and his girlfriend, raped and laying right there alongside him and just as dead. That's bad, motherfucker, and that's the shit I got to deal with. So if you think I'm a joke, you just take your sorry ass on outta this room!"

  There was dead silence and Cook knew he had their attention.

  "Gentlemen," he continued, "I know you hear something about gambling every year at this time. I know the league mandates that you listen to this talk, and I know you're probably sick of it. But let me tell you something. If you think that gambling isn't a part of your world, then you're wrong. Billions of dollars are made in this country every year on the business of gambling. Billions. I know you men go to great lengths to make the kind of money you make in the NFL, and it's a lot, believe me. Gambling itself may not seem like any big deal to you people. But behind it all, the machinery that makes gambling happen in this country is organized crime. I'm not talking about a bunch of benevolent Italians with guns and fedoras. I'm talking about men who will rape your wives and murder your children. Believe me, gentlemen, they're all around you. The most dangerous of them are the ones that lead you to believe they're nothing more than businessmen. You'll know them by the questions they ask you: Who's hurt? Who's mad at the coaches? How's Hunter Logan look in practice? These kinds of things seem harmless, but if someone you meet starts asking you these kind of questions, you better clam up and give my office a call because chances are they're looking for some kind of edge on their line.

  "For those of you who gamble yourselves, I'm telling you to stop. A few hundred here and there is maybe no big deal, but if you get caught up in it and you start trying to make a big comeback because you're down, well, let's just say that if you get behind on these people things can get ugly.

  "Also, if you are caught gambling on NFL games, you will be suspended and in all likelihood, depending on the circumstances, you will banned from the NFL for life. That's the league's rule, not mine, but I understand it because if you're gambling on games within this league, you're compromising yourself. This league doesn't want that, and it shouldn't.

  "Gentlemen, I know you're anxious to get out of here and I know none of you have any questions. But I'm leaving a stack of my cards here for you to take. If you have questions for me at any time in the future, or if you think you are being solicited for information that will be used in a gambling operation, please, give me a call. I am not the bad guy. I will help you gentlemen. The other guys won't. Believe me, they won't."

  Cook put a stack of white cards on the podium and walked out of the room with a bewildered and slightly peeved Cutchins behind him.

  The Titans hesitated only a moment before they realized that
the strangely intense FBI agent was through. Then they broke for the doors to make the most of their few hours' reprieve from the doldrums of camp. Amid the animated conversation and the backlog of bodies waiting to get out the door, no one noticed Hunter Logan picking a card from the podium and stuffing it discreetly into his pocket.

  By nine o'clock most of the Titans at the Ledge were half drunk. The Ledge was a rickety old building that had originally been a trading post built on the edge of the canal to take advantage of the commerce that once gave the town of Brockport a reason to exist. Now it was a dark, seedy establishment that was timelessly decrepit. It was dark inside, not so much by design but because of numerous burnt-out bulbs in the ceiling that went unreplaced. It was a place that could be described as an armpit, even in a place as dilapidated as Brockport.

  The team had spilled out onto the sidewalk, and some of the more adventurous men had even scaled the steep bank and were skipping stones into the murky canal below. They began to grow rowdy. A few beer bottles were heard to smash. The occasional pickup truck that ambled over the Main Street bridge would slow down to ponder the strange crowd before moving on into the country night.

  Hunter was inside with six or seven others, sitting in a rough circle around a battered cocktail table. A haggard waitress milled among them, picking up empty beer bottles and replacing them with freshly beaded cold ones. Someone let out a belch. The waitress went on without a blink, as though that was par for the course. Hunter folded his hand and tossed in his cards. He had nothing and Bert's intoxicated grin told him his friend was holding at least three of a kind. Bert frowned when Hunter folded. The other guys began tossing in their hands one by one. They'd played enough with Hunter to know that you couldn't go wrong if you followed his play. Bert's fifty-dollar bill went unanswered.

  "Fuck," Bert muttered, showing his three aces and scooping up the thirty-five-dollar kitty along with his fifty.