"And I know who's superstitious and who loses his play book and who falls asleep in squad meetings," Scott said.
"They have vulnerabilities," Bobby continued, picking up the beat. "Craig Stringer's likely to leave his best work in a cheerleader's hotel room. Nightlife Jackson could get arrested. Buckwalter Washington could gain twenty pounds at the hotel snack bar."
"So you're just gonna hope they get in trouble?" Goldy sounded skeptical.
"No, we're gonna lead them into trouble," Bobby said.
"Together, we know how to get to them," Scott added.
"You're sure about this?" Goldy's interest was rising.
"You bet," Uncle Goldy.
"Hold on second boychik. You're talking about sabotaging your grandfather's team."
"So?" Scott's face was a portrait of blue-eyed innocence.
"What Goldy means," Bobby said, "is that you've been a Mustangs fan since the day your Mom brought you home from the hospital and decorated your crib in silver and blue. You love the Mustangs."
"Sure I do, Dad, but not as much as I love you."
PART THREE
28
Thursday, February 2
Three Days Before the Super Bowl
Let the madness begin. Christine Gallagher surveyed the surreal scene outside the stadium where a radio station had set up a ten-foot high heap of cow manure. A man who won a drawing-or had he lost? — was about to leap into the fetid pile of crud from a diving board in hopes of rooting out a pair pf fifty-yard line seats to the game. The bullshit would be thick inside the stadium too, she thought, as the interminable press conferences had begun.
The hoopla and hype, fueled by a media blitz, had spread across South Florida. Overhead, a plane pulled a banner advertising an all-nude Super Bowl Cruise, featuring the talented lap-dancing ladies from Club Plutonium. There were street festivals, bay cruises, blimp rides, private jets, and theme parties with rivers of bloody Marys and mountains of stone crabs. Outside the stadium were corporate tents for manufacturers of soft drinks, athletic shoes, muscle cars, and even a little elastic bandage that goes across the nose and is supposed to prevent snoring, a handy device in the event of a typical Super Bore of a game.
A paean to capitalism run amok, Christine thought, then chased away the heretical notion. She was, after all, the marketing director of a Super Bowl team. With contract renewals coming up for the team's official soft drink, shoes, cars, sports drinks, candy bar, bank, and phone carrier-everything but jock itch powder-a victory could boost rights fees by millions of dollars a year.
Showing her credentials to a security guard at the press gate, Christine passed a pit full of alligators and crocodiles attended to by Miccosukee Indians in colorful garb. Entering the stadium, she wondered vaguely what other rapacious reptiles she'd be dodging all week.
On the field, more than two thousand reporters from two hundred countries jostled each other and moved in little clusters, like herds of well-fed sheep, from one player. The reporters, bobbing and weaving, tried to avoid bumping their heads on hundreds of video cameras, peering like cyclops, at the Mustangs, dressed out in uniforms without pads. There was a pecking order here, Christine knew, with the largest clump of sheep surrounding number seven, the quarterback who was as quick with the quip as he was in hitting the tight end over the middle. Now, the reporters circled Craig Stringer, alternately taking notes on small pads, then looking up to ask questions, their heads bobbing like bidders at an auction.
"I know you fellas like baseball," Stringer was saying to a Japanese camera crew, "but it's an undisputed fact that football players are smarter. In baseball, they got a diamond showing them where to run, and still, they gotta have coaches at first and third base telling 'em which way to go. If not, some fool would get a hit and run all the way to the right field wall."
The Japanese interviewer dutifully nodded while others in the cluster scribbled notes.
"Has football gotten too big?" a pretty young TV reporter asked.
"Heck no," Stringer replied, smiling for the cameras. "If God didn't intend man to play this ole game, why would he have shaped testicles like footballs?"
The TV gal was rendered speechless, and the others-lacking a philosopher or urologist among them-also remained silent, so Stringer rolled on, extolling pro football's charitable contributions and other good works. "The game brings together black and white and brown, men and women and whatever."
Murray Kravetz from Channel 9 squeezed through an opening between a Dutch photographer and a Sports Illustrated reporter, adjusted his toupee, then slipped a microphone under Stringer's nose. "Craig, you've been criticized for throwing the long ball too much. Any chance, you'll go more to your backs in this one?"
Stringer gave the old reporter an icy stare. "I wonder if y'all ever heard the definition of a sportswriter. It's someone who would if he could, but he can't, so he tells those who already can, how they should."
A ripple of laughter ran around the ring of reporters, and Stringer turned his back on Kravetz. The quarterback surveyed the throng surrounding him, spotted Christine, gave her the thumbs-up sign, then turned his megawatt smile back to the reporters. He was smooth, a marketing director's delight, Christine thought. He was driven to succeed in everything he did, and she liked that.
Naked ambition and he looks great naked, too.
But sometimes she wondered what lurked behind the perfect smile and twinkling eyes.
How does he really feel about me?
Christine had been aware from an early age that she was damn near irresistibly attractive to men. She had the looks, the brains, the personality. But, she also had the burden of money, and that attracted more than a few suitors by itself. The money made no difference to Bobby. If anything, he didn't like it. They'd both been struck by the lightning bolt, the thunderclap of love, and that's all that mattered.
But what about Craig Stringer? What was his agenda? What did he really want, a loving wife or a boost to the next level of business success? She couldn't read him.
And how do I really feel about him?
She didn't know. She set a personal deadline. By the final gun of the Super Bowl, she would decide whether to go through with it, whether or not to marry Craig. Sure, it sounded silly, but she worked best under pressure. She'd already semi-accepted his proposal but told him not to tell anyone until after the game, and she kept the ring in the little black velvet box.
I didn't even try it on.
It had upset Craig, of course. And what would a shrink say about her unwillingness to test the feel of the ring on her finger? Not a damn thing, because a shrink would never hear about it, she told herself. A Kingsley doesn't need help from anyone else. Hadn't her father taught her that?
But when Craig showed me the ring, why was my first thought of Bobby?
Before she could answer the question, she spotted her ex-husband, press credentials looped around his neck, wearing khaki shorts and running shoes and a Channel 9 polo shirt.
What's he doing here?
Christine watched Bobby float around the periphery of reporters who surrounded Nightlife Jackson, just next to the crowd around Stringer. Nightlife looked relaxed with a silver and blue 'do rag on his head, his gold earring sparkling in the Florida sun as he extolled the virtues of the South Beach clubs. The weasel. Christine prayed that he wouldn't victimize any star-struck young women on this trip, but what could she do about it? Her father had told her that she couldn't solve all the world's problems, and maybe lately, she'd stopped trying.