The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(16)

“Just chatting, like I said.”

“I just told you that my father and I hadn’t spoken to each other in quite some time.”

“Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have reconciled and not told anybody.”

“That sounds like another way to suggest I’m lying,” I said.

“I’m just doing my job. Sorry if I’ve offended you.”

“Are you?”

“In my job, you keep pulling on strings.”

“Wouldn’t ‘jerking chains’ be more accurate?”

“You’re aware you’re starting to sound a little defensive, right?”

“Wonder why.”

“The point is, your father dies suddenly and the big winner turns out to be you,” Cantor said.

In the distance I saw some of my players in the parking lot, staring out at us. They waved. I waved. I could feel Cantor’s dark eyes still on me.

“Do you have any reason, other than an inheritance that I didn’t know was coming, for making me feel like a suspect? Or at least a person of interest?”

He smiled. “Well, you are an extremely interesting person.”

Good cop, bad cop. Same guy.

“I believe we’re done here.” I stood.

“For now,” he said. Still smiling.

I walked with him back to the car because I thought it would make me seem defensive if I simply walked away from him. As I opened the door he said, “One more thing?”

“Who are you, Columbo?”

I was behind the wheel, but the door was still open. Cantor leaned in, one arm on the roof of the car.

“You were a champion swimmer, right?”





Seventeen



THE NEXT AFTERNOON I was seated across from Joel Abrams, the NFL commissioner, at a table big enough to serve as a helipad. We were in the dining room of the presidential suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I had told him we could meet at the stadium, but I could tell he wanted this to be a command performance and on his own turf.

I had already gotten an earful about his having gone back to New York after my father’s funeral and now having had to fly back here.

I wanted to tell him that I knew he had a Learjet at his disposal. Joe Wolf had habitually referred to him as a glorified bean counter, a world-class ass kisser, and one of the phoniest people he’d ever met.

He was short and round and balding and had always reminded me of a dumpling. He nodded now at the liquor cart at the other end of the table and almost proudly said, “Dedicated concierge service.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Better to have.”

He asked if I wanted something. I said I was fine. He got up and poured himself a Chivas on the rocks, drank some on the way back to his seat.

“You can’t possibly want to do this,” he said when he sat back down.

“This?”

“Run the team.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you have never spent a day of your life being part of the football operation,” he said. “Because being a high school football coach doesn’t make you a Glazer or a Kraft or a Rooney or a Mara. And mostly because a family controversy over the team couldn’t come at a worse time.”

“And why is that?”

“We’re starting to make some progress on getting the Wolves a deal on the new stadium,” Abrams said.

It had become the longest-running sports drama in town. The city had been fighting my father on a new stadium for the past few years, putting up one roadblock after another, even as he kept telling them and anybody who would listen that he just wanted the same kind of new-stadium deal that other owners in other cities had gotten. But the board of supervisors had fought him every step of the way, getting more dug in as time went on, continuing to raise the amount they expected him to kick in to get the thing done. They said they were looking out for the taxpayers. Joe Wolf called it a shakedown. So there had been no movement from either side for months, even though everybody knew that a new stadium, once built, would mean a Super Bowl for San Francisco.

In pro football, that was the Holy Grail.

“What does this have to do with me running the Wolves?”

“Your brother can get this done,” Abrams said. “He’s quietly repairing bridges your father burned.”

“Golden Gate?” I asked. “Or Bay?”

Abrams sighed.

“How does my brother plan to come up with the money my father said he couldn’t afford?”

“Ask him.”

“Asking you, Commissioner.”

“Let’s just say he’s more amenable to outside assistance,” Abrams said. “Being transactional, so to speak.”

“It’s still a shakedown.”

“You sound just like him,” Abrams said. I could see him starting to get exasperated, as if he were conditioned to getting his own way. “He stopped negotiating in good faith a while ago, even though he knew better than anybody else how much the Wolves need a new stadium.”

“But at what price?”

He drank some Scotch.

“At whatever price it takes to get the deal done.”

“There has to be another angle here. With all due respect, of course.”