The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(30)

But we’d really decided to sign him, and offer him one of those contracts loaded with incentives to get him back on the field and keep him there, after watching him throw to the kids at Hunters Point.

The commissioner hadn’t called me when he saw the story on the Tribune’s website about us working out McGee. He’d called Thomas instead, sounding as if he’d gone into labor, according to my brother, threatening to suspend Money McGee all over again and maybe the whole Wolf family along with him.

“For what?” Thomas said. “Regularly attending AA meetings? Hell, that could get me suspended, too.”

Somehow, Thomas said, the conversation devolved from there, finally ending with Joel Abrams yelling, “Tell her to keep digging!”

On the field, Billy McGee rolled out to his right, chased by Andre DeWitt, stopped right before he reached the sideline, then threw a ball fifty yards to Calvin Robeson, our best and fastest wide receiver.

Thomas had come in by then and was standing next to me.

“Just so you know, we’re getting creamed all over again on social media.”

“Kind of our thing at this point.”

“I think we did better with your badass self on the front page,” he said.

“Thank you for that.”

“Just saying.”

“I trust our coach,” I said. “You know the real badass around here is him.”

“I trust him, too,” Thomas said. “But he better be right about this guy. We better be right.”

“If you look at this strictly as a football decision, which is all it is for the time being, we have just made a significant upgrade at backup quarterback.”

“Is that really all we’ve done?” Thomas said.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that you don’t trust Ted and I don’t trust Ted and neither does Ryan,” my brother said. “We’re not signing this guy just to back up Ted Skyler. We’re signing him because you guys think he gives us a better chance to win before the season is over, provided we can keep him out of the lockup.”

“First we need to get him into a game. That would be helpful.”

“Obviously Ryan thinks he can still play,” Thomas said.

“He always thought that. And he’s convinced that the guy is more motivated than he’s been since he first got to the pros.”

“Because this probably is his last lifeline?” Thomas said.

“Because he’s dead broke.”

“What happened to all the money he made?”

I looked at him. “Rhetorical question?”

“He didn’t have a rainy-day plan?”

“You spoke with him downstairs. What do you think?”

There was a rap on my door then. The intern who’d become my full-time assistant, Andy Chen, poked his head in.

“Somebody here to see Mr. Wolf.”

Ben Cantor didn’t wait to be announced. He just slipped past Andy Chen and into my office and looked at Thomas, giving him a little two-fingered salute before firing off a question.

“How come you didn’t tell me you were at the yacht club the day your father died?”





Thirty-Five



THOMAS CASUALLY TOLD JENNY, “I got this,” and told Cantor that the two of them should take a walk.

They walked down the flight of stairs closest to Jenny’s office and then outside into the stands and made their way all the way down close to the field, where Billy McGee had just concluded his workout, finally sitting down behind the end zone at the west end of Wolves Stadium.

“You guys really thinking of signing that little criminal?” Cantor said.

“In person,” Thomas said, “he’s much bigger than he looks on TV.”

Thomas turned to Cantor, wanting to get right to it, and said, “This thing with the yacht club—it’s not what you think.”

“You being there or you not telling me you were there?” Cantor said.

“Both.”

“And I thought we were buddies,” Ben Cantor said.

“You didn’t think that for one minute.”

“Why’d you lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie,” Thomas said.

“But you didn’t tell the whole truth and nothing but, now, did you?” Cantor said.

He explained to Thomas that the regular harbormaster had just returned from racing down the coast to Catalina and back. He’d been gone since the day after Joe Wolf died. The first time Cantor had talked to him had been that morning.

“I honestly didn’t think it mattered,” Thomas said.

“Yeah, you being there does matter.”

“Not if ‘there’ means the boat.”

“Why were you there at all,” Cantor said, “on this visit that wasn’t even worth mentioning to me?”

Definitely not my buddy.

“I’d spent the night before there,” Thomas said. “They’ve got rooms that members can use. I go over sometimes for—well, you know.”

“If you mean for a night of unbridled passion,” Cantor said, “then yeah, I do know.”

Thomas grinned. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”