The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(12)

It was already good being king.

Or queen.

Either way.





Thirteen



“WE NEED TO TALK,” Danny said to me.

I’d moved into a vacant office down the hall from his. It looked like a broom closet compared to Danny’s and had belonged to an assistant general manager he’d fired a few weeks before. If you followed the Wolves, you occasionally got the idea that Danny Wolf fired people every time he got bored.

That’s the way people thought of them in town. Not the San Francisco Wolves.

Just the Wolves.

I looked at him over my laptop.

“Unless you’re here with the Wi-Fi password, I’m thinking we’re kind of talked out at this point.”

“Still the great wit of the family,” he said.

“Low bar.”

There was no point in asking him to sit. Even if there had been more than one chair, asking him to sit would have been the same as asking him to stay. And I had work to do before heading down to speak to the Wolves players before practice.

After that I was heading to Hunters Point High, having told the principal that even though I was taking a leave from teaching, I was going to continue to coach my team.

“I just wanted to give you a heads-up that you’re going to be hearing from the commissioner,” Danny said.

“To welcome me to the old boys’ club?”

“There are women, too,” he said.

“Occasionally seen. Rarely heard.”

Danny sighed. It sounded sadder than if he’d blown a blue note on a trumpet.

“He is going to tell you that you need to give this up now. Because there’s no way you’re going to get approved by three-quarters of the owners.”

“And why is that?”

Danny said, “I’m sure he’ll explain.”

“Is that what you came here to tell me?”

“No, as a matter of fact it isn’t.”

He put his hands on my desk and leaned forward.

“What I came here to tell you is that all football decisions in this organization still run through me.”

“Maybe by you,” I said. “But not through you.”

“Why don’t you just go ahead and fire me?”

“I have no plans to fire you unless you give me no other choice. Imagine how much fun all my new friends in the media would have with that. And I was hoping we might find a way to work together.”

“Not happening.”

“Your call.”

Today was all about the Wolves. I’d already decided I would deal with my brother Jack and the Tribune later—starting with this morning’s front-page headline:





CELEBRITY FAMILY FEUD





“You can’t possibly want to do this,” Danny said.

The feud was on.

“And why is that? Because I’m a woman?”

“Because you have no experience!” he snapped. “Because coaching your little high school team doesn’t qualify you to run a pro football team! Because you’re out of your goddamn depth, and the only person in San Francisco who doesn’t appear to grasp that is you.”

Splotches of red were showing on his face. That had been happening to him since he was a little boy, every time he got upset. Or didn’t get his way.

“You’ve done everything possible to avoid being around this team or part of it,” he said. “But now you suddenly love it—and dear departed Daddy—so much that you’re going to be a boss?” He snorted. “The only people you ever wanted to boss around were Jack and Tommy and me.”

“Who knew things would come full circle like this?” I said, putting my hands out helplessly.

“Keep making jokes.”

“Who’s joking?”

“This is my team, goddamn it!”

“Dad’s team.”

“Maybe you heard,” Danny said. “He died. It was in all the papers, including yours.”

I stood up now and came around the small desk. I was suddenly tired of him looking down at me. Even in running shoes, I was the same height as he was. So we were eye to eye. It just felt more like toe-to-toe. An old-fashioned stare-down between the two of us.

Yeah, I thought, things really have come full circle.

“If he’d wanted it to be your team after he died, it would be,” I said in a quiet voice. He’d always been the shouter. “He didn’t want it to be. So it’s not.”

“Enjoy this while you can,” he said.

We really weren’t in each other’s personal space. It just felt that way.

When I didn’t say anything, he said, “This is going to be a disaster.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Why don’t you fire me?”

“Because I’m not going to make a martyr out of you. Unless you leave me no choice.”

He stared at me. His face was now almost entirely red.

“You know what the real joke is?” he said. “People always thought you were the smart one in this family. On top of that, they thought you were the nice one. But those of us who really know you know you’re more like Dad than Jack and Tommy and me combined.”