In that moment, she decided she was through with love. Look where it had gotten her so far. A husband who self-destructed before her eyes and a semi-fiance who wanted to set scoring records on and off the field. Suddenly, she needed to talk about it. She wished she could turn to Bobby, but how could she, after what happened in court today? Alone, adrift, she needed to talk to a man, but no, not Bobby.
Daddy was at practice with Scott, but she would wait for him in the quiet of his hotel suite, five floors above Craig's. Daddy had taught her strength and self-reliance, but there was only so much she could do alone. He would understand.
Her father had given her an extra key to his suite, and as she let herself in, another thought came to her. With the game two days away, Daddy would insist that she put off any explosive scenes with Craig. She imagined what he would say.
"Darling, you can't be upsetting Craig's fragile ego right before The Big Dance."
She had no illusions about her father's reaction to her plight. He would put the game ahead of her feelings because they were, after all, only feelings. They weren't real, like a glistening trophy you can park on the mantle.
But how could she ignore what had happened? How could she smile and pretend that she loved that fake, that womanizer Craig Stringer, just so he won't be upset and throw into double coverage?
As she closed the door behind her, a sound came from the suite's second bedroom, which had been turned into a study. "Daddy?" she called out.
No answer.
It could be housekeeping, someone tidying up while listening to an iPad to drown out the drudgery of the task.
She headed through the living area, a 1960's sunken room with white leather sofas, an aquarium with tropical fish, and a gas-lit fireplace, useful in case of snow in Miami Beach. A plaque on the wall boasted that Frank Sinatra, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Muhammad Ali had all stayed in the suite, though presumably not at the same time. From this height at the top of the hotel, the ocean, viewed through floor-to-ceiling windows, was a calm sheet of aquamarine.
As she neared the study, she saw a shaft of light under the closed door. "Hello," she called out. "Anyone there?"
She stopped and listened a moment, but there was only the white noise of the air conditioning. Telling herself it was foolish to be alarmed, she turned the knob and opened the door. A man sat at the desk, reading a sheaf of papers, his scarred face hideously lit by a desktop lamp. Calmly, he looked up and nodded, as a priest would to parishioner. "Howdy, Christine," Houston Tyler said. "Why don't you come in and sit for a spell?"
39
Christine did not sit down. Instead, she walked closer to the desk, hardly believing this was the man she had known nearly all her life. When she was a small child, she thought he was a member of the family. The Tylers were constant guests in the Kingsley home. Her mother played golf with Corrine, and the two men were partners for nearly 20 years until the Texas City refinery fire tore them apart and sent Houston Tyler off to prison.
Her memories of her father's partner were strange and conflicting. There was the broad-shouldered man who laughed uproariously and gave her piggy-back rides in the swimming pool. There was the profane, hard-drinking man who cursed her father in language she'd never before heard. And there was the weeping man who comforted her after her mother died.
But the man sitting in front of her was none of those. His head was shaved and loose folds of skin hung from his goose-slim neck. His skin was the color of warm milk, and when he smiled, a purple scar that ran from cheekbone to scalp slid into the folds of his face. His left eye was chalky white and seemed to look in an entirely different direction than the right. She felt herself staring at his scar.
"Guess I don't look too pretty," he said.
"It isn't that. I just never expected to see you in my father's room. What are you doing here, Mr. Tyler?"
"Hell, Christine, you can call me Ty. You used to call me Uncle Ty, remember?"
"Does my father know you're here?"
"Hell no, and he wouldn't like it one bit. Your old man would like to see me dead."
"I'm sure that's not true. He was very sorry about what happened to you."
Tyler growled his disagreement, the sound of water gurgling down a pipe. "I'll say this for your Daddy, though. He was always a good record keeper. Me, hell I never wrote a memo in my life. Hated meetings and business lunches. I'd just tromp around in the fields and find the oil so your Daddy could dicker over mineral rights and sew up the deals that would make us rich. Or at least make one of us rich."
"Mr. Tyler, what's going on?"
"Here, look at this," he said, holding up a file folder. "Your Daddy carries around some interesting reading material in his briefcase. Player contracts under negotiation, loan extensions, licensing agreements, and then there's-"
"You have no right to be going through his things." She closed the distance between them and snatched the file away. On top was a legal document with "Escrow Agreement" written in fancy script. She hadn't seen it before and had no intention of reading it, but the "party of the second part" caught her attention.
Robert C. Gallagher.
The "party of the first part" was her father.
The escrow agent was her father's bank.
The subject of the escrow was two per cent of the stock in the Dallas Mustangs.
What in the world!
"You still wrinkle your forehead when you're thinking just like you did when you were a little girl," Tyler said. "Well, what do you think about all that legalese? I ain't no Philadelphia lawyer or even a Corpus Christi lawyer, but it seems to me your father's bet the farm on a football game."
Her first thought was that it was a forgery, an elaborate fake. Maybe Houston Tyler brought the document here. Maybe he was setting Daddy up. But she recognized both signatures. What had Bobby told the night he was beaten up at the party?
"Your father doesn't care what you want! He doesn't care what Scott wants! He's a megalomaniac who wants to control everyone around him. He's immoral and corrupt! He's even betting on the Super Bowl."
She had laughed at him and asked how Bobby would know.
"Because the bet is with me! It's for five million dollars."
She had called him a liar. Dismissed everything he had said about her father and Craig. She'd been such a fool. For the second time today, she felt betrayed. First by her fiance, then by her father. Her throat was constricted, her windpipe tightening up. Her limbs felt stiff and brittle, as if they might shatter like the stems of wineglasses.
"Looks like your Daddy's fixing to win himself five million dollars," Tyler said.
"I don't know anything about it." She wondered what other secrets Daddy and Craig shared,
Oh Bobby, I need you now!
"I'm glad to see that Martin's getting creative, seeing how he owes me the five million dollars that's in the pot. I just wonder what that old fox is gonna due if he loses."
40
The house was simply too quiet.
It had only been hours, but how he missed his son. What would it be like next week, next month, next year?
If there is a next week.
Bobby lay in a hammock strung between a red poinciana tree and a scraggly palm in the backyard of his cottage just off Tigertail in Coconut Grove. It was an old Cracker house made of Dade County pine with a sloping tin roof and a ragged coral rock wall surrounding the property. The mesh hammock was torn in several spots, and Bobby threatened to tumble to the ground like a fish slipping out of a net. He reclined in the darkness, listening to the night birds, sipping his third Samuel Adams, thinking it was time to take action. But what?