"All right. I'm getting carried away, but I'm still not going to mess with it."
"Even if it meant saving your own skin and getting the team away from my father?"
"It wouldn't be right," Bobby concluded.
"There's Craig!" Scott pointed at the television screen.
Sure enough, there was number seven in cowboy garb, riding a spotted horse.
"Must be an old video," Christine said. "That's Temptation, his favorite Appaloosa. That coloring is called the leopard pattern."
On the screen, a grinning Craig Stringer sat astride a white horse with dark spots.
"See that big spot on her haunch," Christine continued. "Craig always said it looked like the map of Texas. You can't see her hooves, but they're striped, like she's wearing old-fashioned socks." Christine grew silent a moment. "God, Craig was heartbroken when she died in the fire with the rest of the horses."
Bobby stood and started clearing the breakfast plates. "Luckiest thing that ever happened to him."
"What!" Christine nearly dropped her coffee cup.
"Stringer was overextended. The race horses were eating up his capital along with their oats. Did you know he had to sue the insurance company to get paid?"
"He told me the company was just playing hardball."
Bobby laughed. "Yeah, they tend to do that when somebody burns down their own barn."
"Arson? Are you saying Craig killed his own horses?"
"It's not me saying it. It's the insurance investigator. They just couldn't prove it. Stringer won by claiming the fire started in the barn by spontaneous combustion."
"What's that, Dad?" Scott asked.
"Spontaneous combustion happens when you rub a million dollars in horseflesh up against a four million dollar insurance policy."
Scott laughed, but Christine scowled at Bobby. "I'll never believe that," she said. "Craig might be vain, arrogant, and selfish, but he'd never do that, not to Temptation."
On the screen, Stringer and his late Appaloosa were replaced by a commercial for a beer that will apparently attract bikini-clad young women to play volleyball on the beach.
"That was his defense," Bobby said, "and it worked. But knowing Stringer, I think that's the proof that he did it. If he'd taken Temptation out of the barn that night and just killed the other horses, it might arouse suspicion. So he sacrificed the horse he supposedly loved to prove that he didn't do it. It's just like Craig, superficially clever but thoroughly cold and calculating."
Christine looked at the television, studying Craig Stringer's face, as if she could divine the truth behind the plastic smile. "That's so Macchiavellian. I can't believe it. He hasn't ridden a horse since the fire. He says he can't bear to have any reminders of Temptation."
"He probably feels guilty," Bobby said. "Maybe he even dreams about her. Nightmares of getting stomped to death."
"Omigod, you're right!"
"What?"
"Craig told me he dreamed about Temptation. Not getting stomped, but riding her across a stream. It's too deep and she drowns while Craig swims away."
"Fire into water. Wouldn't Freud have a ball with old number seven?" Bobby said.
"Maybe we can use it somehow," Christine said. "Maybe between now and kickoff, you can get to him and-"
"No," Bobby said. "Weren't you listening?"
"There's a lot we could do, Dad.. Maybe we tell Denver's D-Line to yell 'Temptation' when Craig is calling signals. Maybe we do something with the horses in the halftime show. Maybe we start a fire under the bench, I don't know."
"For the last time, no!"
"Your father's right," Christine said.
"But you just said-"
"We're not going to tamper with the game," she said, firmly.
"Okay, okay. Whatever you guys say."
"Good," Christine said. Then, as Bobby turned toward the dishes in the sink, she winked at her son. "We'll never do anything your father forbids, okay Scott?"
"You got it, Mom," he said, winking right back.
"It would be easier to bribe the President of the United States and the entire Senate and Congress than to fix a Super Bowl."
— Sonny Reizner, Las Vegas bookmaker
45
Yesterday's ice sculptures had become today's dirty dishes. All the stone crabs, smoked shrimp cakes, and Swedish meatballs had been eaten. All the street festivals, Fortune 500 shindigs, blimp rides, bay cruises, alligator wrestles, and golf tournaments were over. The sports page blather and TV yackety-yack had wound down, the commentators seizing on "focus" as this year's Super Word: "The team that keeps its focus should win today."
The bookies, hookers, and hucksters had finished their business, though pickpockets, souvenir hawkers, and scalpers were still working the parking lots and access roads. The schmoozing, networking, freebie glomming, and manufactured gaiety were coming to an end with the last of the pre-game bashes. All the gaudy TV spots were in the can, ready to be unwound at forty-five thousand dollars a second.
It was time for The Game.
Super Sunday for America and a super day for me, Bobby thought. Denver had a decent chance of covering the four-point spread. He had his wife and child back, and his heart was a cup overflowing with infinite possibilities. He and Christine could end up owning the franchise and running the team. Scott would bask in their love and thrive. The boy could become a physicist or the best oddsmaker in Vegas, it didn't matter. Sun Life Stadium was filling up, seventy-five thousand fans by kickoff, but it seemed unusually quiet to Bobby during pre-game warm-ups. Too many corporate bigwigs, too few true fans. Too many helicopters buzzing like mosquitoes, dropping off celebs and wannabees at the "corporate hospitality village," a classic oxymoron. Too many limos-more than one thousand-lined up outside the stadium, including one sad, sagging Lincoln that Bobby had piloted with Christine and Scott in the back. And too many quiche and Chardonnay fans in the party tents surrounding the stadium, too few boilermaker and bratwurst guys inside.
Bobby wore chinos and running shoes with a Channel 9 windbreaker and figured he looked liked he belonged on the sidelines, which is where he was, the appropriate credentials dangling from a chain on his neck. Christine and Scott were in Kingsley's suite, and Bobby couldn't help wondering what the wind chill factor was between father and daughter. On the field, pre-game warmups were almost completed. Under the stands, Christina Aguilera was warming up her vocal cords to warble the National Anthem.
Bobby watched Mike Skarcynski head toward the tunnel with the rest of the Denver offense. Back to the locker room for a few minutes before kickoff. He'd been sharp in warm-ups, tossing bullets to the wide receivers. "Go get 'em, Skar!" Bobby yelled, just a short down-and-out from the QB.
Skar responded with a thumbs-up sign. "Gonna rope those Mustangs!"
"He'd better," a voice said.
Bobby turned to find Vinnie LaBarca. "I only got a sideline pass for pre-game, so I'm going up to the club seats. You got everything under control, Gallagher?"
"Nothing to control. You hedge your bet?"
"And then some. I need the Pats to cover." LaBarca blew his nose into a handkerchief with the sound of a foghorn. His eyes were rimmed with red. "Damn allergies."
"We're on the same side today," Bobby said. "We both want Denver to win or lose by less than four."
"Right. So what else you got going? Did you poison the Mustangs' pre-game meal? You gonna stick a hypodermic full of barbs in Stringer's ass on the way out of the locker room?"
"Nothing like that, Vinnie. We're just gonna let them play."
"What! You said-"
"C'mon Vinnie, it's a beautiful day. The sun is shining. A breeze is blowing."
"Yeah, blowing pollen and melaleuca shit right up my nose."