The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(90)



With the exception of the commissioner, they were all waiting for me when I arrived. Carl Paulson of the Bears. Rex Cardwell and Ed McGrath and Amos Lester. The annual commissioner’s party would be held later at Zoo Miami, a setting I found completely appropriate. But that wasn’t for a few hours. Still plenty of time for me to face a trial by jury.

As I looked around the room, I suddenly remembered a touring musical my mother had taken me to at the old Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco when I was twelve or thirteen years old. It was called Woman of the Year. I couldn’t even remember who played the lead. But for some reason, the lyrics to her big showstopping number have always stayed with me: “I’m one of the girls who’s one of the boys.”

But for how much longer?

When the pictures of me at Ben Cantor’s house were first published, I had gotten a call from Joel Abrams within the hour. He told me that what he called my situation would be addressed during Super Bowl week, the next time all the NFL owners would be together in one place.

Now here we all were. I idly wondered if the machinery that would get me removed from their club once and for all had been slowly grinding back to life without my officially knowing it.

Maybe I wasn’t experiencing anger or sadness—those were just ways of sugarcoating things. Maybe it was just fear, plain and simple, that they might really take the Wolves team away from me this time.

A. J. Frost offered me a drink. I said a Grey Goose on the rocks would do me nicely, thank you.

“Your father’s drink of choice, as I recall,” Frost said.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to give me a heads-up about what’s about to happen here.”

“Let’s wait until the commissioner arrives,” Frost said as he went to get me my vodka. “Then I’ll explain everything.”

While we did wait, the men made awkward small talk about Sunday’s game, between the hometown Dolphins and the Vikings. Carl Paulson congratulated me on what he called the Wolves’ “cracking good season.”

“I believe it’s the first of many. I don’t know if anybody in this room agrees, but I feel as if I know how to do this now.”

Rex Cardwell laughed and raised his own glass and said, “And them paparazzi back in your town sure know how to do you, missy!”

There was a knock on the door then, and Joel Abrams walked in. When he saw me, he said, “I was wondering if she would even have the guts to show up.”

“It was important that she see, and hear, what’s about to happen,” Frost said.

“At least we’re going to correct the mistake that was made in Los Angeles,” Abrams said.

“We think the mistake was made well before that,” Amos Lester said.

“Whatever,” Abrams said. “I’m glad you gentlemen finally came to your senses.”

I raised my glass, as if in a toast. “I’m here, guys. I can hear you.”

Frost looked around the room.

“Any of my friends want to say anything before I get to it?” he said.

“You go ahead, A.J.,” Ed McGrath of the Titans said. “It was really you who got the ball rolling on this thing in the first place.”

“Before I do,” Frost said, “is there anything you’d like to say, Jenny?”

“Do I have to defend my life again?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” Frost said.

“Then why are we all here?”

A. J. Frost walked to the window then, the lights of downtown Miami behind him, almost like backlighting, as he turned around. Before he could say anything, Joel Abrams said, “We really do need to get to this, A.J. I mean, we do have my commissioner’s party to attend.”

“Not you,” Frost said.

I was watching Abrams, who looked genuinely confused.

“What does that mean?”

“What it means,” Frost said, “is that we called you here to tell you you’re fired, Joel.”





One Hundred Seven



IT FELT LIKE THE first good news Ben Cantor had received since he’d been suspended.

“They banged the little creep just like that?” he said when Jenny called. “And he had no warning that he was in trouble with them?”

“Somehow they found out he was in it with Michael Barr and Gallo,” she said. “I don’t know how they did, but they did. And they knew damn well that he’d hired Bert Patricia to follow us instead of using NFL security, which is the protocol. But it was being in business with Barr that took him down.”

“Lie down with dogs,” Cantor said.

“Frost finally told the commish that if he was going to be this kind of whore to make sure he got his money up front next time,” she told Ben Cantor. “And then he laid into him all over again about pimping the league out to somebody like Michael Barr.”

“Pimp and whore?”

“What can I tell you? The old boy was on a roll at that point.”

Cantor said, “I thought commissioners like Abrams make more money than most players. You’re telling me it still wasn’t enough?”

“Apparently not. John Gallo didn’t think he had enough, either. Nor does Michael Barr. My father was probably the same way.”

“How’d he leave it with them?” Cantor said. “The commissioner, I mean?”

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