by Tim Green
"Sometimes I like you like this," she said, her voice echoing off the walls of the tiled room and into the bedroom. "I can take advantage of you."
Hunter laughed in a lewd way. "I like the sound of that," he said. "Hey, Rach, while you're in there, get me one of my pills from my shaving kit, will you?"
Hunter was feeling too good about the night and the freedom from the team to even realize that he'd just blown it.
"What?" Rachel said in an angry voice. She appeared in the doorway holding up a bottle of pills she had pulled from his kit. "You said you weren't going to let them give you this!"
"All right, Rach," he mumbled, "take it easy, will ya? We're having a good time. This is our night. Take your damn clothes off and come here. We'll talk about that in the morning."
"No," she said. "We'll talk about this now."
Rachel stamped her foot on the floor and Hunter rolled over with a moan and pulled a pillow over his head. Butazolidin was a powerful anti-inflammatory drug that was known for its possible dangerous side effects. It was also the best thing Hunter had ever taken to help alleviate the pain and swelling in a damaged joint.
"We talked about this, Hunter. We agreed that you wouldn't use Butazolidin."
"OK," he said, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting there in a slumped position. "OK You saw how bad things were going in those first couple of pre-season games," he said, looking up into her eyes and then back down. This thing was killing me ..."
Hunter reached up instinctively and began rubbing his shoulder.
"It hasn't looked like it's been bothering you," Rachel said.
"It isn't," he said, "not much anyway, so long as I take the pills."
"Hunter, I can't believe it," she said, shaking her head and sitting down next to him.
They've been testing my blood every week," he said. "Everything looks pretty good so far."
She looked at him with disbelief. "Every week? How long have you been taking it?"
"After the second game in Chicago," he said. "I had to, Rach."
"You didn't have to, Hunter," she said. "You don't. We talked about this. We're going to be around together a long time after you're through with this game. At least I hope we are, but not if you take stuff like this. You know that it kills off blood cells. How do you think that could be good for you? They don't even give it to average people anymore. Don't you think there's a reason? Hunter? Talk to me."
He shrugged. "I got to be ready to play, Rach. You know that."
"Why is it that you have to be ready? If your body won't let you, then you don't play, Hunter. Other guys don't."
He looked up at her. "Not many," he said quietly.
"It's the incentive money, isn't it?" she said flatly.
"No."
"It is, Hunter, I can see it in your face. No wonder you've been acting so strange all through camp. Every time I've talked to you, you've sounded ... I don't know, but I knew something was wrong. I can't believe you'd let them put this crap inside your body. I can't believe it."
"It's not just the money," he said, looking up at her. "The money's part of it, but it's not just that. You don't understand,' honey, it's what players do. When you get hurt, you do what you have to to play. Especially when you get paid the way I do."
The way you do? They haven't paid you well for the past twelve years in this league. Now you take them to a Super Bowl and they pay you. You deserve every cent of it and more. I see what this has done to your body. I see you wince when you get up in the middle of the night. You can't even de your shoes without groaning. You've earned this money, Hunter. You don't have to prove anything."
They sat quietly for a long while. The window was open and Hunter gazed out at the night sky, feeling the ocean air on his face.
Quietly he said, "Give me the pills, Rach."
She still held the bottle, clutched tightly in her hand as if keeping them away from him would save his life.
"I'm not in the fucking mood," he said in a low guttural tone.
She heard the angry influence of his drinking and threw the bottle down next to him on the bed. She went to the other side and got under the covers, turning her back to him and closing her eyes. Hunter reached down and extracted a little blue pill, so small but so effective. He popped it into his mouth and swallowed, then fell back onto the bed with his head on the pillows. Within minutes he was breathing heavily. Rachel, however, stayed awake. She brushed away the moisture that was brimming in her eyes and turned over to cover him with the comforter. She kissed his lips and held him tight. He never knew.
"If you've dropped the tail on Tony Rizzo," Fellows said blandly, "why is it that you've insisted I set up this meeting?"
Cook knew Fellows Avas more than a little annoyed with his insistence on the meeting, mostly because Cook had forced the issue by bringing it up in the Saturday supervisors' meeting, which really gave Fellows no choice but to agree.
"I just think that it might pay off to have Grant Carter aware of exactly who Tony Rizzo is and to keep his eyes open to any contact he might try to make with any of his players--or anyone in the entire organization, for that matter," Cook said.
Fellows answered this with a knowing frown.
Cook was driving them in one of his task force sedans out to the Island to meet Grant Carter at the Titans' complex. It was Monday and the team was off until Wednesday, when they would begin their regular in-season routine and preparation for the opening game against the Detroit Lions. Fellows had arranged the meeting, and he wasn't telling Cook much about how the owner had received the idea.
All Cook knew was that they were going and Fellows was still holding firm on his being present to make sure that Cook stayed in line. The distaste the two men had for each other grew between them like a fungus, thick and insidious. Cook knew Fellows was delighted at his lack of progress, and in a way Cook almost wished for Washington to pull the plug on him and his task force and end the little game that was being played out between him and Fellows. As a superior the man had become so distasteful to Cook that he had begun to think he preferred failure to continuing under this malignant supervision.
The Titans' complex was singularly unimpressive. It was a single-story concrete structure that reminded Cook more of an elementary school than the home of a world champion football team. Carter's office, however, was no disappointment. It reeked of excessive opulence. Green marble covered the floor and walls. Brass-trimmed mirrors backed shelves that were laden with plaques, trophies, and photographs that chronicled Grant Carter's life in the world of sports. The furniture was all dark brown leather, overstuffed and comfortable-looking. The man's desk was a solid block of black granite, the rough-cut sides juxtaposed dramatically with the smooth, glossy surface where Grant Carter had laid his hands with their fingers intertwined to suggest one powerful appendage.
"Sit down," Carter said, making no move to rise or shake hands with the FBI agents.
There were two chairs facing Carter's desk, and Cook and Fellows did as they were told.
"How can I help you?" Carter said with the same lack of hospitality as his first words.
Fellows, normally the first person in a room to assume a tone of condescension, surprised Cook by the humility of his response. "I hope we aren't disturbing you, Mr. Carter. I am the assistant special agent in charge from the Manhattan office of the FBI. Agent Cook here is a supervisor for a specially designated task force on organized crime. We are here only to give you information. We have no' interest in inconveniencing you in any way."
Cook figured Carter must own politicians on the highest levels to be able to affect Fellows in this way.
"In the case at hand, as I said, we are here merely as a service,"
Fellows said, nodding to Cook as a cue for him to begin his pitch.
"Mr. Carter, we have been following a man by the name of Tony Rizzo." Cook paused to look for a reaction on Carter's face. There was none, so he continued. 'Tony is a member of the Mondolffi
crime family, a very prominent member."
Still Carter remained as blank and as still as the desk at which he sat.
"Well, we know that he has been seeing your daughter, and we also know that he's been to your house."
'Just a minute," Carter said, holding up one hand and picking up his phone with the other. "Susan, get me Marty Higgs . . . Now!"
Carter knew full well who Rizzo was. He'd learned that days ago. He also knew that his empire was hanging from a very precarious thread. To save himself and all he'd worked for he needed only time. Tony Rizzo was giving him that time. Carter was not about to let the FBI come into the middle of it all and start making wild conjectures. To him, the FBI was simply another government entity to be dealt with accordingly. As in every other appendage of the government, the men could be bought and sold. He knew how to handle men such as these. He would attack.
"Hello, Marty, I want you in my office . . . yes, now, I have two agents from the FBI who have violated my privacy, and I want you here so that you can know just how we can best end their careers within a month."
Carter hung up the phone and looked impassively at Cook, who was beginning to sweat. Cook hadn't dreamed of something like this. When Fellows had warned him of flustering the owner, he never dreamed that such careful phrasing of the situation could prove to be upsetting. Cook had the sinking feeling he'd made a mistake. He felt like a man dumped over the side of an ocean liner. His help had already begun steaming away at full speed, leaving him alone in unknown waters.
"Mr. Carter," he began, holding up his open hands in a gesture of peace and submission, "you don't understand, sir. We're not here to give you a problem of any kind. We're here simply to inform you of who Tony Rizzo is and to ask you to call us if in any way you feel he is disruptive or potentially disruptive to your organization."
Cook looked to Fellows for help, but only received an I-told-you-so expression. Just then a middle-aged, portly man with ruddy skin and freckles about his wide-eyed face came steaming into the room. Cook assumed it was Marty Higgs. Carter motioned for Higgs to sit down in a chair behind the agents, where they could only hear his huffing and puffing. "As I was saying, Mr. Carter," Cook continued, "I merely hoped that I might be of service to you in fending off any difficult situations that might arise from Tony's presence around your team."
"Is Tony Rizzo a convicted criminal?" Carter asked coldly.
Cook looked at Fellows again for help. His boss was busy trying extricate a hangnail with his teeth and didn't appear to be paying the slightest bit of attention. Cook thought about the question. He looked over his shoulder at Higgs, who now had out a yellow legal pad and pen and was waiting patiently for his response.
"No," Cook finally said, "but..."
"Has my daughter committed any crime?" Carter said.
"No," Cook immediately replied.
"Well, then," Carter said, "I see no reason to continue this discussion any further. I won't have the FBI making accusations against me or anyone I may have associated with when there is no basis for them."
Fellows stood and opened his hands, palms up, to signal the FBI's capitulation. "Mr. Carter," he said, "we in no way meant to disturb you or make any accusations of any kind. We have no desire to trouble you. That's not why we're here. But as you know, organized crime is constantly trying to make inroads into the world of professional sports. We know that you and your daughter are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but we do think it is our duty to let you know just exactly who Tony Rizzo is. Now, that said, Agent Cook will simply leave a card with Mr. Higgs here, and we will be on our way."
"Please call me if there is anything I can do at all," Cook added before trailing his boss through the door.
"Well, Cook," Fellows said when they were in the car and on their way back to the city, "I hope you can see what I meant when I told you that men like Grant Carter aren't to be trifled with."
Cook wanted to say that if Fellows had gotten a little heavy with Carter in the first place, he might not have walked all over them, but instead he merely nodded.
'That man gave the president ten thousand dollars in his last campaign," Fellows said. That is a man that neither you nor I should trifle with in any way."
Cook bristled at this notion. He believed what they had taught him at the academy: No man was above the law. That's how Cook saw things, but he wondered how it could be true if a man in Fellows's position was so willing to concede otherwise.
Vincent Mondolffi received another phone call soon after the word spread among Cook's task force that the surveillance on Tony Rizzo would be dropped. Mondolffi was also told that in all likelihood, resources formerly expended on his nephew would be redirected on himself and other members of his organization. This was nothing but good news to Mondolffi. Tony was the weakest link in his family. As soon as he got off the phone, Mondolffi told Ears to find Tony and bring him to the restaurant that Mondolffi used as his headquarters.
When Ears found him, Tony was supervising the beating of a nightclub owner named Burke who had falsified his receipts for the past three months and thereby cheated the Mondolffi family out of its share of the profits. Tony leaned back in a comfortable leather chair that he swiveled about on its rollers. He was animated and cheerful when Ears came through the door into the back room of the establishment.
"Watch this," he told Ears with a grin.
Carl and Angelo were having a contest. Their jackets were laid neatly over a chair and their sleeves were rolled up to their elbows. The object was to see who could knock Burke farther across the room with a single punch. Blood streamed down Burke's face, which without connection to the body would certainly have failed to be identified as human. Except for the blood, snot, and torn flesh, Burke's head looked more like a Halloween pumpkin than anything else. He was tied to a chair, and numerous chalk marks told the tale of just how far he and the chair had been propelled by the previous blows from Tony's friends. Carl glanced up, then slugged Burke, connecting solidly with his chin and actually lifting the chair off the floor, beating the previous best mark by ten inches.
"Fuck!" Angelo exclaimed. 'That's gotta be it. I can't believe you got him that far."
Tony," Ears said, obviously unimpressed, "your uncle wants to see you. Now."
Ears's words cast a pall on the festive group. To be summoned unexpectedly by Vincent Mondolffi was somber news. Unless something extremely good had transpired that would justify special recognition from his uncle, Tony knew such a summons was usually a bad sign.
When Tony saw the smile on his uncle's face, he knew his star was rising. When his uncle rose from his plate of cheese and melon to kiss his cheek, he knew he was unstoppable. And finally, when his uncle loudly praised him in front of Ears, Dominic, and several other underlings for defeating the careful efforts of the much lauded Federal Bureau of Investigation and its special task force, Tony knew that his uncle's death and his own ascension to power would not be a long time in coming. He had weathered the storm. The powers against him had waged a campaign of stealth and deception. He could finally relax a little. They had dogged his every move, uncovered every legal and financial document that bore his name. They had come up with nothing. Tony would be perceived throughout the organization as a careful, cunning, and indestructible power. When he made his play for power, this image would be every bit as valuable as the millions of dollars he would make on the New York Titans.
Chapter 23
The pressure on the Titans was high. After being the world champions the year before, there was only one thing they could do to have their season considered a success. They had to win it all again. Anything less would be a disappointment. Hunter Logan was feeling this pressure as much as anyone. In the team's two pre-season losses Hunter had performed poorly, leaving the game after the first quarter without so much as a single touchdown. Even in the two games that the Titans had won, Hunter's performance had been less than exciting. In one, he led the offense to a single touchdown, and i
n the other, by only ten points in the entire three quarters. Without great defense, everyone knew, that game, too, would have been lost. To make matters worse, Broadway Blake, Hunter's backup, was looking like a superstar. Even Hunter had to admit that his younger understudy was playing great ball.
Now it was for keeps. The Titans faced Detroit on opening Sunday afternoon on national TV. The word around town and around the country was that Hunter Logan was a one-trick pony. He'd had a single season where he'd played above himself. What had happened in the previous year, wrote the sports writers, was dumb luck, something that was unlikely to happen again in a million years. It was obvious to everyone that the Hunter Logan who had led the Titans through training camp was not the same Hunter Logan who had taken them to Miami only five months before.
Some said Hunter was simply too old. There was talk of his bad shoulder needing surgery if he was to be revived. Others said the money had gone to his head. Still others said he'd never been that good to begin with and that he'd only cashed in on the incredible talent that had surrounded him. There were a few, however, and Hunter was among them, that knew he had merely been in a funk, one that he would pull out of now that the games were for real.
The interviews had been relentless. Across the country, football fans of all ages had their eyes on New York to see what fate held for the man who held the mantle of success. It sickened Hunter to know that there were many who wanted him to fail. He knew they were out there. He could hear it in their voices. They were the reporters who were frustrated athletes themselves and who deep down resented the hero status that was afforded to any athlete. They asked him questions like "Do you feel like you've let down your team with your performance so far this season?"
Those were ugly words and they made Hunter seethe with anger. But he held himself in check, knowing full well that if he led his team to victory against Detroit, the tide would turn in his favor and the same ones who had injured him with their insults would be lauding his greatness on Monday morning.
It was six-thirty Wednesday evening when Hunter was finally ready to leave the Titans' complex. After practice he'd done three TV interviews, talked to five writers, and given soundbites to four radio reporters. After all that, he'd spent another hour watching Detroit film until he could stand it no longer.
