Fifty-Three

BY THE TIME I got home and went online, I already had the home page of Wolf.com all to myself—the sequence of shots that showed me throwing the right-hander that put Jack in the water running right below the headline:

SUCKER PUNCH

I was beginning to think I should be starting a screenshot scrapbook.

The photos were accompanied by Seth Dowd’s breathless first-person account of what had transpired on the dock, somehow making an argument between siblings read like the crime of the century.

I was also the lead story on the Tribune’s site. I knew that one was coming because Megan had called to give me a heads-up. I was surprised I hadn’t heard from her on the ride home from Redwood City.

“If we’re going to maintain our credibility,” she said, “I can’t give you a pass on something like this.”

“Wouldn’t expect you to. Do what you have to do. I told you the ground rules when I hired you. I’m a big girl.”

“With a pretty good right hand,” she said. “Reminded me of Ali’s daughter when she was still fighting.”

“Thanks. I hope you know that means a lot.”

“This isn’t going to make you feel any better,” Megan said, “but you are once again the number one trending topic for the entire city of San Francisco.”

Then she asked if I had any comment for the story about Jack and me that would run in the print edition.

“Just one. Here goes: ‘My only regret was when I discovered that I hadn’t broken my brother’s nose.’”

Megan’s call had been followed, almost immediately, by one from Thomas.

“I know what you’re going to say,” I said.

“No, you don’t.”

“Try me.”

“We can’t go on like this, Jenny,” he said. “And this is coming from someone on your side.”

I told him he was right, but we’d talk in the morning. I was talked out for now. “Don’t you mean punched out?” he said. Then he asked if I could manage to stay out of any more fights until then. I told him I’d try my hardest and was about to turn off my phone when Ryan Morrissey weighed in, as if the three of them had slotted their calls.

But Ryan actually got a smile out of me.

“We’re now in a pretty exclusive club,” he said. “Members of the Wolves football organization with first-round knockouts.”

“I should have known better.”

“Wait,” Ryan said, “you mean I shouldn’t have known better?”

He asked if I wanted him to stop by or meet him somewhere for a beer.

I told him I’d had quite enough photo ops for one night, thank you.

Then he said he’d almost forgotten something and asked if I’d seen the statement from the commissioner.

I told him I had not.

He paraphrased it, saying that the league office was taking both the allegations against Thomas and the ones against Ryan very seriously and that Joel Abrams was authorizing dual investigations involving the Wolves to begin immediately.

“You know who feels as if they’re under water right now?” I asked. “Me.”

The team was leaving for Denver in the morning. I told him I’d try to stop by his office before he left. He asked if it was too soon to start comparing my behavior to Money McGee’s. I laughed and cursed him out like a true Wolf and ended the call.

Jack had won today. I’d taken the bait, and that meant I’d lost. And somehow managed, by being a hothead, to make things worse for myself than they already were, if something like that was even possible at this point.

Less than three weeks from the vote by the other owners.

Jenny Wolf, trending again.

Viral again.

Now being investigated by the league. Such a dream. I was about to finally fall into bed when the phone rang one last time, but only because I’d forgotten to turn it off.

Uncle on the screen.

I’d been expecting this one all night.

He got right to it, even though his voice sounded even more hoarse than usual. It was what he did. Another reason why he was who he was, always had been, and always would be. And why I loved him the way I did, in a way I wished I had loved my father.

“Taglia la merda.”

Because of him, I knew enough Italian to know exactly what that meant. What he was telling me to cut.

I asked him about his voice, if he was feeling all right. He chuckled but didn’t respond. Then he told me to stop talking and listen as he laid out what he thought we had to do going forward—not just at the league meetings in Los Angeles but also even before I got there—if I wanted to hold on to the Wolves.

Finally, he said, “At least there is one good thing to come out of today.”

“What’s that?”

“We seem to have identified who the real enemy is,” he said.

“And who might that be?”

“You, cara.”