Double Reverse

by Tim Green

  Cody sniffed and wiped his upper lip on his sleeve. "Salt," he said again. "I'm makin eggs."

  "Cody," she snapped, "what makes you think I know where the salt is? If we don't have salt in the shaker, we don't have salt. Check the pantry."

  "I checked."

  "Then we don't have any."

  "That's total bullshit," Cody said disgustedly. He wiped his face one more time on his sleeve and walked away.

  Madison told herself he could go pound sand--or salt, for that matter. She shot back down into the bed and snapped the comforter up over her head to ward off the coming dawn. She wanted to get at least twenty of her thirty minutes back. That was something anyway. Instead, her mind began to chew on the subject of her marriage. She loved Cody, but they were so opposite.

  Opposites attract. That she knew. They were attracted to each other. That was true. But from the beginning it had been tempestuous, and it hadn't changed. If anything it was worse.

  The more money she made, the more notoriety she got, the more he seemed to expect that she play the role of housewife. If she brokered a twenty-million-dollar deal during the day, she knew damn well she better stop at the grocer's on the way home for a pint of heavy cream so she could make a chocolate mousse that night. Cody liked mousse, and it was one of the few skills she still possessed that proved she was a good little homemaker.

  All week people had been talking about the coming of her big USA Today article. So today he was mad because in the commotion she forgot to make sure there was salt in the house. On the other hand, her training as a lawyer taught her to look at every situation from both sides. It had to be hard for Cody, she admitted, teaching and coaching at the local high school, a lifetime away from his days as a star player in the NFL when the money and the attention had been his.

  She knew about his resistance to living a lifestyle that only her kind of income could support. Still, she found herself constantly circumventing that resistance, booking exotic first-class vacations, redecorating the house, buying herself new cars, new clothes, membership at the club, nice jewelry, even purchasing expensive clothes for Cody that he would only wear on special occasions. It wasn't that Madison was a spendthrift, far from it. She lived well within her means. But her means had grown substantially over the past few years since she'd become an agent. At the beginning it hadn't seemed to bother him as much. But lately his resentment had grown, and it sickened her to have to sneak around hiding the way she spent her hard-earned money.

  As a statement of protest, Cody still drove an old pickup truck, typically dressed in ragged sweats, and battled her every time she made dinner plans at any place fancier than Pizza Hut. It was also rare for three months to go by without him suggesting that they move to a more modest neighborhood. And despite her mild protests, he typically cut the lawn the day before the gardener came, washed his truck and her car in the driveway on Saturday morning, and unloaded the dishwasher before Bess, their housekeeper, began her day at seven-thirty.

  Still, Madison loved him with real passion. She admired his stubborn sense of pride, even if it confounded her at times. He was handsome and strong, although certainly not in the same shape as he had been during his playing days. He worked hard as a teacher and a coach and he cared about his kids. Most importantly, he cared about Jo-Jo, Madison's son from her first marriage- Cody had made him his own.

  Recently they had begun trying to have another child, but to no avail. Madison knew that only added stress to their marriage. Cody hadn't mentioned it specifically and she wasn't going to bring it up, but for almost a year now they hadn't used any kind of birth control and still Madison wasn't pregnant. She was beginning to fear it was something with her, and she wondered now if Cody wasn't having the same sort of self-doubts. Maybe that's what was creeping to the surface in the form of anger over things like salt. It was something she'd have to talk with him about when the time was right.

  Madison gave up on more sleep. She threw back the covers, showered, and changed into an olive business suit with a cream blouse before descending to the kitchen. Cody was there with the paper. So was Jo-Jo.

  "Morning, Mom," her son said. He was ten, but tall enough to pass for twelve.

  "Morning, love," she said, kissing him. "How were your eggs?"

  Jo-Jo gave her a puzzled smile.

  "Madison . . . I'm sorry," Cody said gently.

  "Oh, don't worry," she told him, waving her hand and heading to the refrigerator for some orange juice.

  "No, not that," Cody said with a frown. "This. I'm sorry." He tapped the newspaper in front of him. He'd pulled the paper apart and the sports section was on top.

  "And the salt," he added.

  "What's the matter?" Madison asked, closing the refrigerator door without her juice and walking back to the table. She had that sinking feeling inside and the buzz in her ears that was her sixth sense telling her bad news was coming, really bad news.

  "Goddamn writers," Cody rumbled. "I oughta kick that son of a bitch's ass . . . Like Art Tally, one day he upended a writer who ripped him in the paper and put him headfirst into the trash can. Headfirst into a bunch of smelly ankle tape and gobs of snot."

  Madison looked down at the cover of the sports page. Her face, in color, fdled the center of the three-column-wide page- The headline read: CASHING IN ON COLOR. Her eyes in the photo were only three-quarters open, the precursor to a blink. The resulting impression for anyone who didn't know her was of the face of a woman who was hard-hearted, almost sneaky. A little laugh of disbelief escaped her throat as she sat down at the table to read.

  As she read, horror cinched down tight on her insides. It was all the more painful because she was caught totally off guard. She was expecting praise. A laudatory piece about a capable female attorney who reluctantly found herself embroiled in the lives and contract negotiations of NFL players around the country. A woman who served her sports clients much in the same way she served her legal ones. A woman who sometimes found they were one and the same.

  This piece wasn't simply unflattering. It was harshly and cruelly defamatory. It suggested that she was nothing more than an opportunistic racist, that while she had cashed in on representing professional athletes, half of whom were black, in her private practice she provided legal services almost exclusively for whites. While the piece conceded that wealthy whites were the most typical clients for a lawyer who worked in an expensive firm such as Madison's, it pointed out that the pro bono work she did was also drastically skewed according to race. In fact the article said that the only black man Madison McCall had represented in a criminal matter during the last two years was Luther Zom, a multimillion-dollar NFL star. "And even though Zom was then a client of Ms. McCall's," the story claimed, "she would only do so after requiring him to put down one hundred thousand dollars as a retainer."

  Of course she'd required a retainer, Madison thought; every lawyer did. And as to her pro bono work, she took pride in it. Most lawyers in her position shied away from doing anything for free. Pro bono work was something her father before her had always done, and it was a tradition she'd been determined to carry on. She had never considered the skin color of her clients. She simply looked at the circumstances and represented those defendants she felt she could most passionately serve. But this piece suggested that while she was perfectly willing to take 3 percent of an African-American athlete's ten-million-dollar contract, she was loath to represent a poor black wrongly accused of murder.

  None of Madison's existing clients were quoted in the piece. The only client quoted at all was a bitter Jacksonville player whose bogus tax claims Chris had refused to sign off on and who had subsequently left them. The only lawyers interviewed were Madison's bitter enemies--a former DA whose career she had shattered by exposing his corruption, and various other liberal defense lawyers miffed at the attention she had gotten from past high-profile murder cases as well as the monetary rewards her agency work brought her. The piece was a total surprise. During the interview, th
e writer hadn't given even a hint that his story would be negative.

  The phone rang. Cody got it. "It's Chris," he said grimly.

  "Hello," Madison said, trying to add life to her voice.

  "We'll sue," Chris told her. "It's libel. We'll sue them!"

  Madison let out a heavy sigh. "Thanks Chris, but it's not. Twisted, misleading, unfair, yes, but look at it carefully. It cites facts. The damage is in the innuendo. How much damage is it, anyway?"

  Chris was silent for a moment.

  "Be honest."

  "It's bad ... I just think about Amad-Amed and the Washington brothers. They couldn't have asked for more."

  "That's one guy, a junior," Madison pointed out.

  "Yeah, but that's how it's going to go. "Vbu said be honest. The race thing is something we've been struggling against anyway. Now, with this . . ."

  "Okay, we'll regroup," Madison said. "We'll write a letter of rebuttal to the paper's editor. We'll make calls to all our clients and prospective clients and follow up with a letter pointing out our side of this."

  "Our side?"

  "That I represent people according to the situation, not race.

  We'll get statements from former African-American clients I have represented: Luther for one, Yusef Williams for another. That was pro bono."

  Three years ago, Madison had represented Williams, a youth at the time, and gotten an acquittal for a murder he didn't commit. She remembered it clearly because it was that service that had serendipitously helped her exonerate Cody in an unrelated case.

  "That's good. Good idea," Chris said. "I'll get Sharon to go through your files and pull up every African-American client over the past ten years. I'll have the list by ten and we can go through it and try to contact them. This is good, a lot better than sitting around worrying about it."

  "All right, Chris. Thanks. I'll see you at ten."

  Madison hung up and turned to her husband. "How bad do you think it is?"

  "In terms of what?" he asked, taking a sip of coffee.

  "Recruiting new clients," she said. "Keeping the old ones."

  Cody nodded solemnly and said, "Well, it couldn't be in a worse paper. USA Today is what players and coaches read. Most NFL guys wouldn't have seen it in something like the Wall Street Journal. But this. . . they'll see this. It won't hurt you with the white guys, but the black guys. . ."

  Madison sat down and delicately massaged her temples. "I don't get it," she said, distracted by his words despite the gravity of the situation. "White, black, what's the difference? NFL players are NFL players. Everything's equal. Blacks get paid like whites, whites like blacks. There's no color in sports on a team."

  Cody snorted out air through his nose. "Come on," he said. "It's just like everywhere else. On the field maybe it isn't, but in the locker room, on the bus, in the hotel, the airplane? It's just like it is everywhere else. Blacks hang with blacks, whites hang with whites. For the most part they distrust each other."

  Madison shook her head as if refusing to believe. "Come on," she said dubiously.

  "Madison, you remember Carlester McGee? The linebacker for the Outlaws back when I was playing?"

  "I heard the name."

  "Yeah, well one night me and Carlester are having a beer; he and I didn't care what color a guy was, some guys are like that. But he tells me a story about how he couldn't get an apartment for himself and his wife when they were first married. They were still in school at BC and Carlester goes through the paper looking for places. He calls on the phone and asks if a place is still available. They say yes. He goes. Now he's as good a guy as you can ever find, but they see he's black, his wife is white, and suddenly the place isn't available anymore. He goes to another place, same thing, and another and another, and that's in Boston! It's supposed to be a liberal place.

  "Most black guys I knew had a mess of shit they had to go through because of race. You'd think athletes are exempt from some of the normal prejudices, but they aren't. The same guy cheering Barry Sanders in Detroit on a Sunday afternoon might be having security follow him around his store on Monday because he's black and he thinks he'll steal something. That's the way it is. So when something shows up the other way, when someone black can say no to someone who's white, someone they don't know who needs them, it's not that hard of a thing to do. An article like this just makes it that much easier. I won't lie to you: This thing stinks bad, and it's gonna be tough as hell to overcome."

  Cody got up and came around the table. He wrapped his arms around her neck, and she put her hand on his forearm.

  "Not still mad about the salt?" she said.

  "Blood pressure's too high anyway," he told her with a sympathetic squeeze.

  Chapter 17

  While summertime can be comfortable in portions of L. A., just over the hills to the north it's typically brutal. Like many summers, the one Trane Jones, joined the Juggernauts was cruelly hot in the Valley, the kind that was good for sales in air- conditioning and space fans. Hot enough to make most people there daydream about what it was like in Malibu and how they might someday get there.

  Kurt Lunden drove his Rolls up over the hills on Coldwater Canyon and wondered, in the languid way the rich sometimes do, why the people on the other side didn't get themselves out. The sun was at its zenith and soon the shadows of the hills would bring some relief. But for now the line of telephone poles up ahead was still wavering in the heat.

  Beside Lunden in the front seat was Conrad Dobbins. The agent had left off fidgeting with the radio ever since Lunden had politely asked him to stop.

  "Hey Conrad," Lunden said, glancing into the rearview mirror at Zee in the backseat. "You think I need a bodyguard?"

  Dobbins snorted. "I'm a celeb and a brother," the agent said simply. "I need my man Zee to keep people at a distance. "Vbu never know what kinda crackheads are out there. Nothin' worse to most white people than a black man with money."

  Lunden nodded. He wasn't going to argue that one. He wove his way through the streets until they came to a high school in Studio City. Out back the parking lot butted up against a rusty chain-link fence that surrounded a football field and a track. Tired-looking bleachers flanked either side of the fifty-yard line, and amid the scrawl of graffiti a sagging press box bore the ghost of a purple tiger, the school mascot.

  Trane Jones saw the Rolls pull into the lot behind the bleachers and roll slowly clear of them near the ten-yard line. It stood out like a white guy on an NBA team, something you couldn't help noticing, even if you weren't paying attention. And Trane wasn't paying attention. Laced to his chest was a canvas vest that looked something like an out-of-date bulletproof vest. Twenty- five pounds of lead had been sewn into dozens of pockets meant to distribute the weight evenly throughout the garment.

  Trane held his chin high and gasped for more of the scorched dry air as he walked briskly back to the goal line. He was nearly halfway through a metabolic workout that gave him only sixty seconds between one sprint and the next. That meant he had to walk back to the goal line and get into position while the stopwatch on his wrist was running. No one was there to watch or goad him on. But to Trane the devil himself couldn't have spurred him on with any more sense of urgency than he already felt. He knew where he was in the hierarchy of life and he knew what kept him there. He was at the top. He was the best runner in football. To be the best runner in football Trane had to work. The drugs and the money and the women he enjoyed, but they all came at a price. Trane had seen it over and over, and he was damned if he would be caught in the same trap.

  The sweat ran freely down Trane's forehead and into his eyes. He bent double and wiped his face with a length of towel that was tucked into the waistband of his shorts. The lead vest chafed at his armpits. Its weight made his once separated shoulder ache like a bad tooth. He took note and pushed it from his mind. If you couldn't tolerate physical discomfort, you couldn't play football.

  Back at the line Trane glanced at his watch and bent down into a run
ner's stance. As the last seconds expired he dug his cleated shoes into the parched dirt and coiled his muscular legs. At the tiny beep from the watch he erupted into a storm of energy, dust, and speed. Straight ahead Trane ran, as if nothing mattered more on earth than reaching the forty-yard line. Sweat flew from his bare skin like a legion of insects and his lungs caught fire. The finish line and the distant memory of lunch made him nauseous, but that was something you got used to as well.

  Over and over Trane ran the forty-yard sprint while the two men and the bodyguard watched from their leather seats in the cool air that blew from the dash.

  "Works his ass off, doesn't he?" Lunden said.

  "That's what I wanted you to see," Dobbins said proudly. "Trane may be a lot a things, but lazy ain't one of 'em. I don't want you thinkin' it's all about genetics. Jimmy the motherfuckin Greek can kiss my black ass."

  "Jimmy the Greek?" Lunden said quizzically.

  "Sucker on TV that said blacks were bred for slavery an that's why we're faster than whites," Dobbins explained.

  "feah, I remember," Lunden said, nodding his head but saying nothing more. It sounded logical enough to him.

  They watched Trane run another sprint.

  "Why does he come here?" Lunden asked.

  "Motherfuckin' heat."

  "This is the place for it. But doesn't he run with the team? I thought they had trainers for this."

  "Trane already did that," Dobbins replied. "He does what they all do an' then he does some more. Rest of the team probably out golfin' or sittin' by the pool. Trane knows that. That's why my man's here. That's why he is what he is. . ."

  After his last sprint Trane staggered back to the goal line, unlacing his weighted vest as he went. When he reached the end zone he let the vest fall to the brown grass, then leaned to the side, vomited, and collapsed. The heaving of his naked chest was visible from the parking lot.

  Lunden gave Dobbins a worried look.

  "Naw," the agent said with a confident smile. "He'll be all right. He just run outta gas is all. I've seen this before."