Paydirt

33

Friday, February 3

Craig Stringer backpedaled while scanning the field in front of him. His right hand cocked behind his ear, he whipped the arm forward. The ball rocketed toward the sidelines, an apparently errant pass. Suddenly, Nightlife Jackson who had been streaking upfield from his wide receiver position, planted a foot in the turf and cut hard toward the sidelines without losing any of his sprinter's speed. He turned his body back toward the quarterback and raised his arms and the ball was there in a tight spiral, settling into his hands. He had run to the spot where the ball was supposed to be, had cut and turned at the correct millisecond in time, and there it was. Craig Stringer had thrown the perfect pass at the precise moment to the exact spot.

"Timing!" boomed Martin Kingsley. "All life is timing."

"And practice," Coach Chet Krause added. "We've run that play about a thousand times since two-a-days in August."

Several reporters stood around the sidelines, searching for news angles, as the Mustangs went about their drills. Kingsley had declared the first thirty minutes of practice open to the press. Then, the pesky reporters would be shooed away, and the team would work on new plays and formations. At the moment, Kingsley was a happy man. He was on the verge of his greatest triumph. He could feel the Commissioner's Trophy in his hands, could imagine himself being doused with champagne in the locker room, being interviewed live, his face appearing in hundreds of millions of homes around the world, the President calling to congratulate him. The victory would clean up several other loose ends. He'd win the bet, pay off that maniac Tyler, and go home a hero, taking Scott along. Christine would marry Craig Stringer and would forget all about her ex-husband. By the end of the game on Sunday, Gallagher would be a broken man. No career, no wife, no child.

Busted, disgusted, and can't be trusted.

Kingsley still hadn't decided whether to let LaBarca use him as chum on a deep-sea fishing trip. Maybe just a thorough thrashing to whip the piss and vinegar out of him would do. Revenge is a sweet meat, indeed.

He'd spotted Gallagher earlier, hanging out with Murray Kravetz, the local sportscaster with the bad toupee. At first, it aggravated Kingsley that his ex-son-in-law was here, but on second thought, to hell with it. Let the prick see the Mustangs juggernaut up close. Let him get trampled in the hooves of the stampede.

On the field, the offense continued to work on its passing game. Craig Stringer hit the tight end over the middle after pumping once as if he were throwing long. On the next play, he went deep, hitting Jackson in mid-stride for a thirty-yard gain.

"Stringer looks sharp," one of the reporters said.

"Sharp?" Kingsley replied. "Hell, he's a saber honed to a fine edge. He's a polished diamond, a laser beam. I'd bet you he gets three hundred yards passing, at least, but the Commissioner won't let me bet."

The reporters chuckled. Kingsley had seen Stringer in the locker room, and his future-son-law hadn't looked so good up close. Red-rimmed eyes and a leaden look as if he'd been up all night. Kingsley just hoped he wasn't popping pills again. But the QB was practicing great all week, and today, he was drilling the passes through defenders' arms outstretched arms right into the receivers' hands.

"How about a prediction?" someone else asked.

"I'd tell you what I think, but then Denver would be putting the clippings up on the locker room wall. I learned a long time ago to save my breath for breathing and not to put my jaw in a sling because I was apt to step on it."

"What about reports that Skarcynski has a sore arm?"

"I don't know anything about it," Kingsley said, shrugging. What else could he say?

He doesn't have a sore arm. He's so scared shitless, his asshole puckers up when he throws the ball.

"We want to beat their best with our best," Kingsley said, trying to sound sincere. "I'm sure when that whistle blows, Skarcynski will forget all about what ails him. Do you remember the time Jack Youngblood played with a broken leg? Just taped a couple of aspirin to it and played a whale of a game."

He was on a roll, basking in the light of a tropical winter day. Everything he had worked so hard to accomplish was about to come to fruition.

You got them? You got them on video?" Bobby couldn't believe it was true. His night had been such a disaster. Did Shari Blossom rescue him? "What'd you do, Murray, hide in the closet?"

"Not exactly," Murray Kravetz said. "I was on the balcony most of the night. A triple feature fuckfest with two intermissions."

Bobby's heart was hammering like a hummingbird's. This could be what he needed. Even sleepless, Craig Stringer was a helluva quarterback. But how would he be after Christine lowered the boom? Bobby couldn't wait to show her the tape and prove he'd been right.

Just look at your sensitive, horse-loving Casanova now.

There's no way she'd tolerate the bum's infidelity. She'd toss the ring back at him, and he'd see his meal ticket float away. A two-bagger, a way to foul up the Mustangs and get Christine back, too.

"How did you get it? Did they leave the lights on?" Bobby asked.

"Nah. Stringer made her turn out the lights."

"Do you have a low light camera?" Suddenly, he was worried. Murray was not adept at getting his facts straight or doing his homework. If he had been, he wouldn't be stuck on the weekend slot at a local station for twenty years.

"Hey, this ain't the CIA," Kravetz said, self-consciously adjusting his toupee. He wore a Madras sport jacket that went out of fashion long before several of the Mustangs were born and he kept an unlit cigar in his mouth. "I was lucky to have one of the station's camera's overnight. The tape's a little dark. To tell the truth, it's very dark, but you can tell there's some serious screwing going on, I mean, you can hear Stringer shouting "Hallelujah" and Shari says his name, but the video looks like a couple of black cats at the bottom of a coal mine."

"I've got to see it," Bobby said.

Okay, so maybe Kravetz wouldn't get the Oscar for best cinematography. But with the audio-Shari and Stringer had distinctive accents-Christine would get the drift.

Practice was over, and the players were giving impromptu interviews, so the press room was empty when Bobby tried to hustle Christine inside.

She pulled away from him. "What do you want?"

He figured he had five minutes to convince her, five minutes to change his life. "Bear with me, Chrissy, please. There's something you've got to see."

She regarded him suspiciously. "What is it?"

She was wearing a long, A-line dark skirt that emphasized her height and a short-sleeve jersey. Her Super Bowl credentials hung around her neck, competing for space with a simple strand of white pearls. He grabbed her by the elbow and guided her toward an editing booth.

"Don't pull me," she said, twisting out of his grasp. "What's your big hurry?"

"You've got to see this now. Our future depends on it."

"Our future is in the past," she said.

"I refuse to lose you to that phony, Bible-quoting bull slinger."

"You lost me all by yourself with no help from Craig or anyone else."

Bobby refused to let her resistance discourage him. He guided her into a small editing booth with two monitors and a control panel with a jumble of wires. He popped a video cassette into a slot, pushed a button and waited. A sizzle of static criss-crossed on of the monitors, which then went to black and then color bars. Then Murray Kravetz' TV baritone could be heard in a whisper. "The place, a balcony of the Fontainebleau, the date, February 2, the event, the Super Bowl of Fornication. Now, let's get up close and personal with our contestants."

"Bobby, what is this?" Christine protested. "Did you drag me in here to see some stupid porno film?"

In that moment, the screen came to life with a blurry creaminess. A second later, a woman's naked body was visible from the waist down.

"That's Shari Blossom," Bobby said.

"Really?" Christine asked, archly. "How would you know?"

"Aha," Kravetz whispered on the tape as Shari's tapered blonde bush filled the screen. "Now here's a commercial for Gillette that could really sell some shaving cream."

"Bobby, this is disgusting!" Christine said. "You're acting like a college sophomore."

"Hold on. This is important."

"Why? How?"

"As we say in the law, 'I'll tie it up, Your Honor.'"

The audio track rumbled as Shari opened the sliding glass door to the balcony. "There we are hon," she cooed to someone in the room. "Just feel that salt air. Ain't it refreshing?"

She turned and twirled her pink headband around her hand, directly in front of the camera, then headed toward the bed, pausing a second to give a little butt wiggle.

"Oh, for God's sake," Christine muttered.

Okay, okay, so Shari isn't Meryl Streep.

A man's bare legs flashed across the screen in the background, then disappeared. "Shari, turn out the lights," said the faraway male voice.

"There!" Bobby shouted. "Did you hear that?"

"Yes. So what?"

"Did you recognize the voice?"

"No."

Bobby did, or thought he did. Of course, he knew who it was, and that made it easier. But Christine couldn't tell. Maybe the sound was too distant and was competing with the slap of shore break and noises from the pool deck bar far below the balcony.

"Aw sugar, doncha wanna see my face when I come?" Shari sang out in a little girl's voice.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Christine said.

"Already seen it," the man said. "Your eyes roll back like you got a concussion from a helmet-to-helmet collision."

"Did you hear that?" Bobby asked, excitedly. "He's talking football."

"So?"

"So, it's Craig Stringer!"

She let out an exasperated sigh. "Bobby, there are eighty thousand football fans in town plus all the players. That's not Craig."

The screen went dark and Shari's voice could be heard, but her pout only imagined. "Oh, all right, party pooper, but I know garage mechanics from Galveston who are more romantic than you."

After that, there were a number of sounds. Bed sheets rustling, bedsprings groaning. A feminine, "Don't stop now!" A masculine throaty growl. A few intermixed shouts and whoopty-dos, and finally silence. Then, after a moment, with his voice rising and falling in the sing-song of a country preacher, the man called out, "The lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil."

"What's that you're saying, sugar?" Shari asked.

"It's from Proverbs. Read your Bible, girl."

"That's Stringer!" Bobby shouted. "You know it is. It's your home-fried, holier-than-thou theology expert who thinks he's the fourth member of the Trinity."

Christine pursed her lips, and her forehead wrinkled in thought.

C'mon Chrissy. You know I'm right.

"Proverbs or adverbs, I still don't get it," Shari said on the tape. "How can I be strange to you, Craig?"

"There! There it is! She called him Craig!" Bobby hit the stop button. Now he had the proof. "Do you want to hear it again? It's Craig! Craig the country boy, Craig the preacher, Craig the quarterback, Craig the unfaithful."

He wanted to hug Shari Blossom for coming through. He wanted to scoop Christine up in his arms and comfort her in her time of need. But most of all, he just wanted a reaction from her.

"Let me hear it again," she said, calmly.

Does nothing perturb you? C'mon Chrissy, show some emotion.

He rewound the tape several seconds and played it again. Christine closed her eyes and listened to that voice, the voice that must have whispered endearments into her ear. What must she be feeling? Shame? Anger? Despair?

I'm here for you, Chrissy. I've always been here and I always will be.

For a moment, Bobby thought he had her. For a moment, her eyes flickered with doubt about her fiancee. But we all are capable of repressing what we fear is true, he knew. We are all capable of seeing what we want to see. Her eyes flared to life like golden tigers. "Bobby, you're despicable! My father was right about you all along."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you think I can't spot a scam? I saw you with Miss Pink Headband at Media Day and then again at the press party. I don't know who you have playing the role of Craig. Maybe it's you with that god-awful impression of a Southern accent, or maybe you recruited one of your low-life friends from the race track, but it's not Craig. He wouldn't have been there. He wouldn't have done that. It isn't him."

"Yes it is. I swear on a stack of that bastard's Bibles."

"Tell me," she said calmly. "Is it possible for you to sink any lower?"

Without waiting for an answer, Christine turned and rushed out of the editing booth.

"No," Bobby said to himself, watching her go. "This is as low as it gets."

"If Jesus were alive, he'd be at the Super Bowl."

— Norman Vincent Peale

"If Jesus were a football player, he'd play fair, he'd play clean, and he'd put the guy across the line on his butt."

— Barry Rice, former football player, Liberty University