Seventy-Five

THE NEXT MORNING, I didn’t want to wait outside the Bordeaux Room. The owners had other business once they’d voted and might be in there awhile.

Clay Rosen had said he’d let me know how the vote had gone as soon as he could get outside and make a call.

“How long will it take?” I said.

“No way of knowing with these things,” he said. “Anybody who wants to say something before the vote is allowed to. The commish will probably weigh in, too. And A.J., because he runs the ownership committee, will probably ramble on awhile.”

“Are you going to say something on my behalf?”

“Bet your ass,” he said. “I got you on this.”

“Thank you.”

“You prepared for whatever’s going to happen?”

“I am.”

Then I said, “So the hard-liners are the ones who are going to do me in.”

“They’re so dug in it’s like they’re calcified.”

He asked where I’d be. I told him I was going to take another walk around Beverly Hills, maybe up to Santa Monica Boulevard and back. Or maybe all the way to Malibu and back. But I would try to return to my room before it was over.

He asked if I was taking my phone with me.

I said no.

He asked why.

“Not sure,” I said.

Bobby Erlich called then.

“It might be closer than we thought. But you just don’t have the votes, from what I heard last night.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

“But I’m already thinking, like, six moves ahead,” he said. “A book deal, definitely. Maybe a talk show. Maybe a reality series about you and the high school kids. Even if you lose, you win, because you’re going to be more famous than ever.”

“Just without my pro football team.”

“Who knows? Maybe you’ll be better off in the long run.”

I told him to take a long walk off the Santa Monica Pier and ended the call.

I walked up to Nate ’n Al’s, ordered a coffee to go, and sipped it as I started wandering aimlessly around Beverly Hills.

Maybe I never had a chance.

Maybe Bobby is right, and I will be better off.

But I knew that was a lie—a big fat lie—because I had found out something about myself by now: I was good at this. Damn good. I wanted this.

I didn’t know if there was anything I could have done differently with all the sharks circling me in the water—the water, I thought, where everything really started—but I couldn’t come up with a thing I could have done to change the outcome. Other than perhaps not punching my brother Jack’s lights out.

There was no appeals court for me after the decision I fully expected was coming. The vote would be final. The verdict would be final.

Money on the table.

I always thought Thomas was referring to a let-it-ride bid in poker. But today this felt more like throwing dice to me.

One roll for everything.

When I was back in my room, still an hour to go before the vote, the phone rang.

It was A. J. Frost, the Patriots owner.

“I’m in the penthouse suite,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d come up here as soon as you can.”