The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(26)

“Tell me about it.”

He smiled. He used to describe it as his cover-boy smile back when people still read magazines.

“You know you love me.”

“I just wish like hell that I liked you.”

He had only poured himself a small drink. I’d seen his car out front when I’d let him in. He drained the last of the Scotch and gave a quick look at his Omega watch—Omega being one of his endorsements.

“I have to be somewhere.”

“I’ll bet.”

“But before I go,” he said, ignoring that one, “I have to ask you something, because I am on your side, whether you trust me or not.”

I don’t know who to trust anymore.

Ted said, “You see what they’re like. Why put yourself through this if you’re going to lose the team in the end? Why not quit now?”

“I don’t quit.”

“You quit on us.”

“No,” I said, “that was all you.”

He stood up. “For what it’s worth, you did a good thing with the coach.”

“I know.”

“Man, you’re tough.”

“I’ll get the votes,” I said.

“How do you figure?”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

When he was gone, I made a call that I’d hesitated to make before this.

“I’ve been expecting to hear from you,” he said, in a voice even more gravelly than I remembered. “You finally ready to fight?”





Thirty



RYAN MORRISSEY AND I were in my office, late. It had quickly become a habit for me, sometimes staying at Wolves Stadium as long as he did, almost like a contest to see which one of us could outlast the other and work longer hours.

“I don’t mind putting in the time,” he said. “But so you know? I’m never going to be one of those coaches who sleeps in his office.”

“That’s because you don’t sleep.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he said.

I grinned.

“Warren Zevon.”

Now he grinned. “He also wrote ‘Disorder in the House.’”

“It could have been about this house.”

I had spent the past few days immersing myself in the job, doing as much as I could to block out the noise. I had even managed to stay off the front page of the San Francisco Tribune for the time being, even though I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to last.

Every morning I would check the injury lists around the league to see which players had been released and which ones had been brought in for tryouts. Including quarterbacks. Ryan and I had been talking a lot about quarterbacks the past couple of days.

“We still need a backup to Ted,” he said now, “since you may have noticed that we don’t exactly have a future Tom Brady behind your former husband at the present time.”

“Wait a second. Chase Charles is Brady’s height.”

We had ordered in Chinese food from Fang, on Howard Street. The cartons were still scattered around my desk. I mentioned to Ryan Morrissey, not for the first time, that this was the glam part of pro football that I hadn’t known existed, even when my father was still the big boss around here.

“Nothing glam about cutting players, either,” I said to Ryan.

“Maybe we don’t have to cut the kid until after the season, even though we’d be delaying the inevitable. Just send him down to the practice squad and keep him around for emergencies.”

He speared a dumpling out of the container closest to me.

“Listen, I know this could get complicated with you and Ted, but he’s nothing more than a JAG at this point in his career. You know what a JAG is?”

“Bill Parcells’s acronym for ‘just another guy.’”

“Very good.”

“Because I knew about Parcells or his acronym?”

“Both,” Ryan said.

“Let me ask you something. Can we make the playoffs with Ted as our quarterback?”

“Maybe. But only if I don’t ask him to do too much and only if he can remember not to throw it to guys wearing a different-colored uniform than his.” He blew out some air. “The problem isn’t that he’s too old. There’s a lot of aging quarterbacks in the league. The problem is that he plays older than all of them. And can’t still make the throws he needs to make.”

“But he looks in the mirror and does see Brady, just without all the Super Bowl rings.”

Ryan said, “He needs to stop looking in that mirror.”

“Are you joking? He likes all mirrors.”

“He can’t throw the ball down the field with anything on it.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“So has the other team.”

“So what do we do, Coach?”

“I may have a guy. But it might be kind of a tough sell.”

“You mean like hiring a head coach who punched out the previous head coach?” I said. “That kind of tough sell?”

“Compared to the guy I’m thinking about,” Ryan said, “I’m a Cub Scout.”

He shrugged.

“But we’re trying to win now, correct?”