Paydirt

14

After Christine left his office, Kingsley packed his attache case for the flight to Green Bay. He felt the electric buzz of anticipation that always started the day before a game.

He was juiced. Hell, this is what he lived for.

My daughter, my grandson, my team. My cup runneth over.

His mind was focused on the shiny image of the Commissioner's trophy, the prize for the Super Bowl champion, when he heard a disturbance coming from his outer office. The door flew open, and Molly, his secretary of twenty-five years, tried to block the way of a tall older man who pushed by her.

"But you don't have an appointment!" she protested.

"I don't need an appointment," grumbled the man. He wore a baggy, wrinkled brown plaid suit, pointy snakeskin cowboy boots, and a white shirt with a string tie and turquoise clasp. His head was shaved bald, and he held a brown Stetson at his side. He was taller than Kingsley but sparrow thin, his neck layered with loose skin, as if he'd lost considerable weight. His left eye was milky white and unfocused. His most striking feature, however, was the line of purple scar tissue that covered the left side of his face from his cheekbone to his forehead, stopping just below his shaved scalp.

"What the hell…" Kingsley rose half way out of his chair. "Who are you?"

"You haven't forgotten your ole pardner, have you Martin?" the man said, his voice rattling like gravel down a metal chute.

"Ty?" Kingsley's voice quaked with uncertainty and fear. "Is that you?"

"Hell, no, it's the ghost of Mustangs past."

Kingsley offered Houston Tyler a bourbon, and his old partner didn't say no. Seated in a plush leather chair, he tossed down the amber liquid, swallowing with painful gasps.

"They cut up my throat," he said.

"I heard," Kingsley said, nodding solicitously.

"Took out a tumor the size of a golf ball. Guess I should be glad it wasn't a football." His laugh was dry and hoarse, like a dog coughing up bone splinters. "I don't blame you for not recognizing me. I look like shit."

"What's it been, Ty ten years?"

"Thirteen years, two months, and three days."

Kingsley winced and cursed himself. He'd been cavalier about it. To a man in prison, time is measured as precisely as gold on a jeweler's scale.

"Got the parole last week. Guess they needed the bed for someone more dangerous."

Kingsley nodded. What do you say? What can you say to a man who went to prison instead of you?

"I want to thank you for helping Corrine," Tyler said. "She told me you had your personal doctors taking care of her, and they were mighty nice."

"It was the least I could do," Kingsley said.

"Yeah Martin. It was."

"I was sorry when I heard you'd lost her."

A heavy silence settled over them. Kingsley thought Tyler resembled an old mutt that had been kicked too often. Just when you think he had all the fight knocked out of him, he would lunge for your throat. There had always been a menace to Houston Tyler, a threat of violence just beneath the surface, but now, scarred and defeated, he appeared even more dangerous. As if prison had stolen his heart but not his claws.

He'd once seen Tyler pick up a man by the shirt collar and thrust him into the blades of a ceiling fan in the midst of a barroom brawl. He'd fought with his fists, with knives, and once, with a pick axe in the oil fields. But Tyler had been twenty years younger and forty pounds heavier then. With some partners, you worried about lawsuits and double dealing. With Tyler, you worried he would shatter a long-neck on the edge of the bar and gut you. There was a dual nature to his personality. He was so honest you could shoot dice with him on the phone, and so violent you'd be afraid to cheat him.

Houston Tyler's good eye swept over the office, taking in the photos of Kingsley with various celebrities, the trophies, the signed footballs with the white-painted scores of various triumphs. A chunk of a goal post sat in one corner, mounted on a brass pedestal like some post-modern sculpture. His gaze stopped on a Stairmaster in the corner, and he looked as puzzled as a caveman staring at a locomotive.

"You bought the team just after I went away, didn't you?" he asked.

"A few months later."'

"Right after you'd bought out my interest in Ty-King Oil. Bought it damn cheap, as I recall."

Kingsley saw where Houston Tyler was headed and didn't intend to go along for the ride. "There was no market for your stock. After the accident-"

"What accident? The jury said it was a criminal act, and that I was the criminal."

"That was a horrible wrong, Ty. Tragedy compounding tragedy, but you know how it was then, the news media, the politicians, all crying for blood. If I could have done anything, I would have."

"Oh you did plenty. You stayed out of harm's way."

"I had a company to run, our interests to protect."

Tyler cleared his throat, the sound of sandpaper on wood. "I did a lot of reading in prison, Martin. History, classics, that sort of thing. Did you know you can't find Hitler's name on one document sending the Jews off to the death camps? He had plausible deniability on all his crimes against humanity."

"Surely you're not comparing me to-"

"Your name wasn't on one piece of paper that tied you to maintenance at the Texas City refinery, but you were behind every move. The Board of Directors laid off six hundred full-time employees and ordered the hiring of unskilled part-timers, but it was your doing. The plant manager reduced safety training, but that was at your direction. You put me in charge of day-to-day operations, but you vetoed new pumps because of the costs. You got fat off the profits, fat enough to buy yourself a football team, and what did I get?"

"Ty, if there's anything I can do, just tell me."

His milky white eye stared off into space. "When the pump blew and the line ruptured, the men ran. Who could blame them? For eleven dollars an hour, you shouldn't be turned into a cinder. I went into the thick of it, closed the valves with my bare hands and have the tattoos to prove it."

He held up his hands. His palms were covered with scar tissue and the imprint of a wheel. "I was standing in three feet of burning crude. My rubber boots melted onto my feet."

"I know, Ty. You're a hero, not a criminal. You saved lives. If it hadn't been for you, a hundred men would have been killed instead of seven."

"I like to think you would have done the same thing."

Kingsley kept quiet.

Tyler's smile was a jagged blade. "I know you, pardner, like I know the price of crude."

"Ty, we haven't been partners since you went away. The Board demanded that you divest yourself of your shares."

"Damn convenient for you," Tyler said, "that Board members you picked would vote that way."

"I thought I was helping you out," Kingsley said, knowing Tyler wasn't buying it. Hell, why would he? Kingsley had been a vulture, picking at his partner's bones. "There was no market for a minority share of the company. If I hadn't bought it…"

"My stock gave you control," Tyler said. "You paid me two million dollars for thirty per cent of the company and sold the whole shooting match for ninety-eight million in cash, your down payment on a shiny new toy. The Mustangs. You leveraged yourself into the high cotton by sucking my blood dry."

"I don't think that's a fair characterization, Ty. Not fair at all."

"So here you are, rich enough to air condition hell, and I'm broke," Tyler said, bitterly.

"What about the two million? What about your savings?"

"Gone! Gone to lawyers and fines and Corrine's medical bills. That's why I've come to see my ol' pardner. Oil's in my blood, Martin. My granddaddy was in Beaumont in 1901 when Spindletop blew sky high. Your Dad and mine were partners for twenty-five years and you and me for eighteen more. Now, you don't just take that away from a man, do you pardner?"

"What are you saying, Ty? What do you want?"

"My share! Not even all of it, not even a fraction of what would make up for what I've been through, but enough to get me by 'til my bones turn to dust. Five million dollars, Martin. For Christ's sake, you can take that out of petty cash."

"Everything I have is tied up in this team," Kingsley said. "I mortgaged my pecker and liened my balls to buy the team."

"Bullshit!"

"It's true, Ty. I'm asset rich but cash poor."

"Martin, don't treat me like I just rode into town on a load of watermelons."

"I swear. Even if I wanted to help you out, I-"

"No helping out! No charity! You owe me. I want five million two weeks from Monday, the day after the Super Bowl."

"Ty, be reasonable. There's no cash."

"Don't be a-peeing on my leg, Martin."

"Look, we can work something out. A job, a company car, maybe some stock options in the team."

"I had a job! And as for your stock options, the only pieces of paper I want from you better have Ben Franklin's picture on 'em."

"Ty, I don't have-"

"Get it!"

His voice reverberated throughout the office, bouncing off the wood-paneled walls. It was the old voice, a bass drum, as if he'd willed himself back in time before surgery, prison, and eternal grief. The sound sent shudders of fear through Martin Kingsley, the dread compressing his chest like a vise.

"And if I don't, Ty. Then what?"

"What do you think?"

Kingsley twitched like a fish on the line. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "You'll go public, tell where all the skeletons are buried. You'll disgrace me."

"You think I'll call a press conference like your son-in-law? Yeah, I read all about that. Not my style, Martin." He drew an embroidered white handkerchief from his suit pocket and dabbed at his wet lips, then got to his feet. "Martin, there's nothing more dangerous than a man who doesn't have anything, who doesn't care anymore. I've been stripped bare. I've got nothing to lose."

"What then, Ty? If you're going to threaten a man, lay it on the table. If I don't pay you, if I can't pay you…"

Tyler leaned over Kingsley's desk, bracing himself with his scarred hands on the fine, polished wood. "I'll do to you what was done to me. I'll burn you, Martin. I'll burn you 'til your flesh smells like pork barbecue on a Sunday night. I'll scald you 'til blisters turn you into a leper. I'll melt the skin right off your face and burn your hands into stumps, and when I'm through with you, even your own daughter won't recognize you, and your grandson will run away in fear. So don't fuck with me, pardner!"

Houston Tyler turned smartly in his cowboy boots and left the office before Kingsley could say another word.

Martin Kingsley sat motionless for a full minute, forcing himself to remain calm, to think rationally, though the fear left him with the taste of rusty steel in his mouth. He was not a man given to panic. His sense of control compelled him to push back the dread. But fear is not irrational, he thought. There are times when nothing is more damn sensible than to fear the coyote that would chew at your heart.

When he finally stood up, he finished packing his case for the trip to Green Bay, all the while ticking off the conclusions he had reached. First, Tyler was deranged, and it was futile to attempt to reason with the man. Second, Tyler would not hesitate to torture or kill him. Third, he had to find a way to pay Tyler, and if that task seemed impossible, Kingsley reminded himself of his first two conclusions.

"Losing is worse than death."

— George Allen, former NFL head coach