Double Reverse

by Tim Green

  " 'Keep your money with your people,' over and over. They hammer it into these kids. They try to make them feel guilty for having a white agent."

  "Or a Latino?"

  "Oh, that's even worse! They hate Latinos!"

  "Come on," Madison said, looking up.

  "It's true," Chris said defensively. "Not as an absolute rule, but you've got to know that these are two groups that don't mix. Oil and water. And with someone like the Washington brothers calling this kid every day to remind him, I don't know if we stand a chance . . . He's very pro-black."

  "Meaning?"

  "I'm just saying," Chris replied, "that our best chance is if Luther can blow this kid away."

  "You mean you don't think he'll take my bungling his name and my inquiry about final exams as a sign of our innocence and our unassailable concern for his greater good?"

  "Funny, Madison," Chris replied as he nervously massaged the bridge of his nose.

  "Chris," she said, laying down her file and heaving forth a sigh, "let it happen."

  "Meaning?"

  "We've got clients, lots of clients. We'll get more. I know the Washington brothers are our competition, but what they're saying makes sense. It doesn't mean we give up on all the black players, but let's not get bent when we lose a few to the Wash- ingtons. They're good lawyers and good agents. It could be worse. I'd rather lose a guy to them than someone like Conrad Dobbins."

  "This guy is the big one though," Chris fretted. "He'll be the first pick in the draft. Most of our clients are veteran players.

  This would blow open the whole college scene; get the first pick of the draft, get a headliner contract, and then we can go after every first-rounder from UCLA to Syracuse."

  Madison shook her head. "You know, running through my mind was why it doesn't matter, that we're big enough, we don't have to worry about getting more clients. And then do you know what I thought of?"

  "What?"

  Madison wore a sad smile. "The money. It's true. I'm ashamed to say it, but it's true. I just thought of the money.

  "I can't help it. You can't help it," she said wearily. "Every year we do big contracts and we get a good cut. Then every year they get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and so you find yourself chasing the next big player because you think how hard you had to work to get the guys you had last year. Now this new TV deal keeps driving up the salaries and you realize that even if you don't get bigger, even if you just do as well as last year in terms of players, you're going to double your money. But it never ends. It's more money, more money, more money . . ."

  "Oh, come on, Madison," Chris said with a dismissive wave, ""tou're being too hard on yourself and me. We do good work for these guys. We get them good deals and we help them hang on to the money they make better than anyone else in the business. We're good for them. Yeah, it's good for us, but it's competition as much as it is the money. We don't want to get beat by Conrad Dobbins or the Washington brothers or anyone else. We're competitors. We want to be the best at what we do.

  "That's what it is. That's what this whole world of sports is about," he continued passionately. "Even with the players. You think it makes a difference to these guys if they make two million or three million? So they get one less Porsche. They buy a ten-thousand-square-fbot house instead of fifteen thousand. It's not the money for the money. It's the money to prove that they're worth more than the next guy. That's you and me.. We're competent competitive lawyers, not greedy agents."

  Madison tugged on her lower lip and thought about that in silence for a few moments with her head tilted down toward her desk. From the expression on her face, Chris presumed she agreed.

  Then she looked up and said, "Well, the USA Today article should help us. I talked to the writer about all the black players we've represented. Fact is, that's all he really seemed interested in."

  "You never told me how it went."

  "There's not much to tell. The guy's name was Darren Cartwright."

  "I've seen his stuff. He writes columns mostly."

  "Well, he said this was a big feature. They took a photo . . ."

  "Great," Chris said. "I'll get a bunch of copies and send it out to all our prospective guys."

  Then with a mischievous smile he added, "I'll send a copy to the Washington brothers while I'm at it. Meantime, how's your other job going?"

  "If you mean my trial practice, don't ask. I hear you tell all these football players about what a big-time trial lawyer I am, but I haven't had a big case to speak of since I can't remember when.

  "Know what this is?" she said, picking up the file and handling it like roadkill. "It's the fourth DUI for the governor's nephew. You think that's gonna go to trial?"

  "Well, you know what they say," Chris told her. "Be careful what you ask for. You might get it."

  "From your mouth to God's ears."

  Chapter 14

  Dobbins ducked into the cabin and lurched toward the bathroom. He pulled the door shut behind him and latched it before digging in his pocket for a pill. The white tile floor swayed under his feet, and the smell of the disinfectant emanating from the toilet wasn't unlike what you got on an airplane. He gulped down his own bile with a crackhead's desperation. He was wearing a white nylon sweatsuit with white tennis shoes and a black silk T-shirt. Even the smallest chunk of vomit would be impossible to hide.

  "Fuck," he said. He was damned if that whitey Lunden or any of his lackeys were going to see Conrad Dobbins chucking his shit up.

  He found the pill and stuck his mouth under the spigot to get some water to wash it down quickly. When the son of a bitch asked him to meet on his yacht, Dobbins was determined to go just to spite the racist bastard.

  "Do you mind going out on the water?" the son of a bitch had said to him.

  "Fuck him," Dobbins said to himself out loud, just at the thought. He took several deep breaths and tried to refocus his vision outside the porthole at the few puffs of clouds suspended above the angry Pacific.

  / '

  "Like a brother can't go out on the ocean," he muttered. "White fuck. How's he think we got here?"

  Normally Conrad Dobbins wouldn't have bothered with someone like Kurt Lunden. Normally he'd just tell Lunden to contact him with a number. If the number was big enough, then they could do business. But that was before Maggs. And Lunden had hinted at a scheme that could get Dobbins out of some knee- deep shit. Lunden said he had an investment opportunity of vast proportions that could pay off exponentially. If the man was for real, it was just the kind of thing Dobbins needed.

  After an ugly evening of questioning Maggs in an abandoned warehouse, Dobbins had learned that there was a groundswell building against him. Former and current clients were beginning to talk among themselves. The short version was that Conrad had lost tens of millions of dollars of his clients' money in bad investments. Most of the deals were speculative in nature. He had been given finder's fees. His clients had lost their money. His own wealth was intact and healthy, but the portfolios of almost every one of his clients were ailing badly. Even though Maggs was out of the way, Zee having slit his throat at the conclusion of their interview, that wasn't going to be an option if a group of his clients ever banded together. The unexplained disappearance of an old washout like Maggs wasn't going to generate too much heat. Zee had disposed of the body in a way that no one would find it. As far as the world knew, Maggs was just another has- been player who skipped town on his wife and kids. But Dobbins couldn't have Zee kill every client that revolted, and have them disappear, especially the more prominent ones.

  There was a rapping at the door.

  "Mr. Dobbins," came a voice through the wood. "Are you all right, Mr. Dobbins?"

  Dobbins pulled the door open violendy and glared at the silver- haired servant dressed in white-and-gold livery from collar to toe.

  " 'Course I'm all right, chump!" he said indignantly. "Why in hell wouldn't I be all right?"

  "I'm sorry, sir," the servant said quietly, "b
ut Mr. Lunden asked me to tell you he's 'on to one.'"

  " 'Bout time his sorry ass got a fish!" Dobbins said, mumbling as much to himself as to the frowning servant in front of him. "All I been hearin' is, 'sharks everywhere, so thick you have to fight 'em off.' Shit, we been drivin this big bitch boat halfway to motherfuckin' Japan an I ain't seen shit for sharks."

  The two of them walked down the hall and out into the intense sun, Dobbins with his 8mm camera dangling from his wrist like a purse. Lunden was on to one. There was no mistaking it. The arrogant bastard was making more noise than a jealous bitch, and the other men ran around the deck like something important was happening when in fact it was just some fucked- up rich white asshole getting off on killing a fish. Dobbins looked sideways at Zee. The massive bodyguard stood silently beside the cabin door.

  "Fuckin' pathetic," Dobbins mumbled as he centered the gold- nugget sunglasses on his face and brought his camera into play.

  "Brothers an' sisters," he murmured just loud enough so that it would get picked up by the 8mm's audio, "this is how the oppressive rich white man spends his time after raping you for your hard-earned money. Watch on, brothers an' sisters . . ."

  "Dobbins!" the man in question howled. "Come look at this monster! I told you they were everywhere! It's a great white!"

  Dobbins made his way through the throng to the stern of the boat and looked over the edge of the railing at the massive thrashing fish.

  "Motherfucker's got some teeth," Dobbins exclaimed as he high-stepped backward.

  Lunden gave him a hearty pat on the back and erupted with laughter. One of the crew hooked a gaff through the corner of the animal's mouth while another swung a boom out over the stern. A heavy hook and chain were lowered and latched around an eye on the back of the gaff's hook. Slowly the winch raised the enormous fish out of the water. It continued to thrash viciously and its pitiless eyes rolled malevolently in its head. Without thinking Dobbins backed well clear of the whole scene. The animal was at least sixteen feet long, and the more it struggled the more Lunden howled with laughter.

  When the dangerous jaws were raised well above the deck, Lunden took a large machete from his silver-haired servant and lovingly unsheathed it. In a sudden flurry of activity, he stepped forward and with a series of vicious strokes laid the shark's belly wide open. Guts spilled out into the ocean in a brilliant pink cascade. Flecks of bright gore speckled the deck and railing, and as Lunden approached Dobbins he could see that the fisherman's white pants and windbreaker were also festively decorated with random blood spots.

  "How 'bout a drink?" Lunden said, his face flushed with pleasure as he tugged his battered skipper's cap down tight and rubbed his liver-spotted hands briskly together.

  The whole thing reminded Dobbins of sex. There was all this talk, all this buildup about shark fishing, and suddenly, after a flurry of activity, the whole thing was over. He followed Lunden up a set of steps and onto a large deck where a linen-covered cocktail table waited for them under an umbrella. Fresh drinks were already waiting for them. Zee followed the two of them up but stayed near the stairs and away from the table.

  Kurt Lunden sat back in his chair and surveyed Dobbins over the edge of his glass. Dobbins popped a sliver of ice into his mouth, tasting the liquor, and surveyed right back. Lunden was over fifty, weatherworn, but tanned and in decent shape if such a thing was possible for a man carrying about forty excess pounds around the middle. He was a tall man with long legs and a barrel-shaped torso. The sandy hair on his head was long enough so that what had fallen out of the cap wafted gently in the warm ocean breeze. His blond walrus mustache was slightly crooked and drooped forlornly, giving him a roguish look.

  Lunden's empire was built on toxic waste. In the mid-seventies he had purchased the largest toxic disposal site in the world in the Nevada desert, then secured contracts with almost the entire California defense industry. With those deals in place, he had helped finance a major political movement by Greenpeace and the Sierra Club to stiffen U. S. environmental laws. When that legislation started to get tough in the seventies and eighties, Lunden cashed in. After that he made and then lost another entire fortune in footwear. Zeus Shoes was a storybook success in the mid-eighties, but plummeted in the early nineties. Currently the company was reorganizing under chapter eleven bankruptcy proceedings. From the size and staff of the boat, Dobbins knew the toxic waste money didn't get away.

  Lunden scraped a fleck of something from the edge of his bulbous red nose, examined it, then flicked it away before saying, "We can make a lot of money together, Conrad."

  "That's why I'm here," Dobbins said, "to find out how."

  "Not for the fishing?" Lunden said, smirking from behind his Porsche sunglasses.

  "Bitch had some teeth," Dobbins admitted. "An' that machete shit was different. . . but it's all about money with me. You said ya had somethin' that was megabig. That's why I'm here. I'm the mega-agent."

  "You're full of megashit is what you are, Conrad," Lunden said pleasantly. "But I've got an idea that's going to make us both more money than we need."

  Dobbins said nothing. He just stared.

  "The camera," Lunden said.

  "Yeah?"

  "Lose it."

  Silver-hair appeared with a tray and waited patiently while Dobbins shut down the camera and tenderly turned it over to him.

  "Careful with that," he warned.

  "Now your guy," Lunden said, eyeing the bodyguard.

  "Zee," Dobbins called out over his shoulder. "Go check out that fish."

  When they were alone, Lunden rubbed a fingertip around the edge of his glass and began to speak.

  "Zeus Shoes is in eleven right now, so the common shareholders are shit' out of luck," he said. "I have some preferred stockholders that I'll cram down to common. The shares won't be worth much more than twenty-five, thirty cents."

  "Piss-poor."

  "But wonderfully piss-poor," Lunden said taking a drink. "One man's ruination is usually another man's fortune. Think of the multiples if I can get those shares to thirty dollars! That's three thousand percent, and I can do it. I've got the manufacturing facilities overseas, and with the Asian economy as sick as it is I can make product twice as cheap as before. I've got a distribution system and a sales force that can push the product out the door."

  "But you ain't got product," Dobbins pointed out. "How about them fuckin' ice-cream color shoes! How in fuck did you ever think that was gonna work?"

  Lunden shrugged it off. "You take chances, Conrad. You know that. Remember the band Ace Racers?"

  "Ace what?"

  "Ace Racers?"

  "Fuck no."

  "Exactly. They were going to be the hottest new teen band in the Western world. Disney and EMI sank ten million into the little shits. They had it all planned: albums, movies, television, it was all lined upi It was fail-safe. They were going to be the second coming of the Beatles and the whole fucking band was wearing ice-cream color Zeus Shoes. They were going to be the rage . . . you might say phat."

  "Never heard a their sorry asses," Conrad grumbled.

  "They died in a plane crash on their way into Tahoe in the winter of ninety-two, three days before their launch. It was page four news. EMI and Disney got some of their money back, but we were already eighty percent into production. We reshuffled our marketing strategy, but as you correctly pointed out, it didn't cut it."

  "So what the fuck's all that gotta do with me makin money?"

  "Conrad, we live in an age where sex, drugs, perversion, profanity, and irreverence are the hot buttons to selling anything from razors to pizza to politicians.

  "You've got a client that embodies all those things at the same time. Most people think that's not what you'd want a product to be identified with directly. They'll hint at it, but that's all. To come right out and sell something like that, people think that's too far over the top, too offensive. But they're wrong! A product openly identified with those things would sell faster than it
could be produced, and that's what I'm going to do. I want to sign Trane Jones to an exclusive endorsement contract and I want to pay you, and him, with stock options. If my plan works, it could mean upwards of who knows, twenty, thirty million dollars. Apiece."

  Lunden let that sink in before he continued.

  "I want to design a line of shoes around Trane Jones and his reputation for being bad. After all, bad is good, isn't it, Conrad?"

  "Stock options ain't worth shit if the stock don't go up," Dobbins pointed out. His voice was laced with derision. "You gonna have to pay me an my man somethin' if you want a motherfuckin' endorsement."

  "Conrad." Lunden said, removing his dark glasses and staring coldly at the agent, "your man isn't gonna make a dime in commercial endorsements without me."

  Dobbins was struck by the intensity of the white man's light gray eyes. He knew Lunden had led a life of dissipation. It showed in the way the capillaries in his face were straining toward the surface of his sagging, wrinkled skin. But the incandescence of those eyes was that of a younger man, a maverick.

  "He's got a felony record," Lunden said, ticking off on his fingers. "He's got a reputation for being abusive toward women. He's everything most companies don't want to come within smelling distance of. I'm the only person with the balls to take a character like Trane and sell that image. I'm offering the chance to make a fortune, for you both!

  "You want to fuck around with me?" he went on, nearing anger. "I'll go get Dennis Rodman if I'm going to dump money into the front end. He'll do it and he's a big enough asshole to make this thing work for me. I'll pay for him up front because he's still accepted in the advertising world and there's some demand. But your guy? Come on, Conrad. He'd have to spend a year in charm school if he wanted to be a poster boy for the Hell's Angels.

  "I'm taking a huge chance here. I'll get one shot to revive Zeus. If it doesn't work, I'm finished with shoes. If it does. . . like I said, there's big money in this. I mean big."

  "I don't want no morality clauses or any shit like that," Dobbins said sullenly.