“Compassion, Mr. Victor. Our sole motivation has been compassion towards one who once held, after all, the highest office in our land.”
“Which he left, in a manner of speaking, one jump ahead of the bank examiners.”
“Nevertheless, his fall moved us deeply.” Putnam ignored my cynicism. “When he held power, he had been sensitive to my associates’ interests, and so there was-—and is—an obligation to cushion his fall from grace. Knowing how fondly he looked back on his college football days, aware of his ongoing interest in the sport, what better tribute to occupy his mind than a professional football team based in Whittier.”
“Why Whittier? Why not the San Clemente Plumbers, or even the Washington Watergates?”
“Ooh!” Stephanie writhed. Her hand was a fist now, buried in the sleek red pubic curls. “Ooh!”
Putnam disregarded my alternatives. “Our tribute, however, has backfired. The Stonewalls, as you pointed out, are a professional football joke. In the two years of their existence, they are zero for thirty-six. That zero, by the way, does not only stand for games won. It also is the number of points they have scored to date. This record has pushed the statesman they were to honor into a deep and desolate depression worse than any he has ever experienced. He walks the streets of your city muttering bitterly to himself about six crises, a catastrophe, and now this!”
“In New York nobody will pay attention. They’ll think he’s just another subway rider.”
“This is not a time for levity, Mr. Victor. It is affecting his health. My associates are concerned. Something must be done about the Stonewalls!”
“How about a new team?”
“Exactly, Mr. Victor. And where would you start?”
“Quarterback, I guess. You had eight last season and not one of them ever completed a pass. Two of them broke the all-time league record for being sacked.”
“Right, Mr. Victor. Now how would you go about getting a competent quarterback?”
Pondering the question, I glanced at Stephanie. Humankind, the anthropologists used to say is distinguished from animals by the opposing thumb. It is this which grants human beings the dexterity to evolve. At the moment, Stephanie was evolving by using one opposing thumb to hold wide the swollen purple lips of her pussy in order to strum her protruding, rigid red clitoris with her other opposing thumb. The smile on her lips was both anguished and ecstatic.
“Draft picks.” I answered Putnam’s question.
“Four of this year’s Whittier quarterbacks were first round draft picks.”
“You’re supposed to scout them first.”
“We did scout them. And we just discharged the scouts and hired new ones. Indeed, one of those hired is a friend of yours, Mr. Victor, a former professional football defensive tackle known as ‘Rhino’ Dubrowski. Christian name, Elmer.”
“How did you know that Rhino is a friend of mine?”
“More than a friend, surely, Mr. Victor. He was a Marine serving in Vietnam when you were there on assignment for me just before the final excrement hit the helicopter blades. He saved your life as Saigon was falling. You are eternally grateful to him. It’s our business to know these things, Mr. Victor.”
“I thought you said you were retired.”
“Old habits die hard.” Putnam’s laugh was as dry as a peanut butter sandwich in a sub-Sahara drought. “In any case, your friend Dubrowski claims to have discovered a sensational young quarterback playing sandlot football in Little Rock, Arkansas He says that this quarterback can pass, fake and run—all to perfection. The name of the quarterback is Terry Niemath.”
Stephanie was lying on her back now, her sleek legs stretched straight up in the air at a very wide angle. The candle from the night table (I always keep a candle handy in case of sudden blackouts; with Con Ed you never know) was clutched in her hands, moving in and out of her like a piston. She was bouncing so energetically that the undersides of her breasts were slapping against her rib-cage. The nipples stuck up like miniature markers signaling quivering red lust.
“Terry as in Bradshaw?” I asked Putnam.
“That’s correct.”
“Namath as in Joe?”
“Not quite. It’s spelled N-i-e-m-a-t-h.”
“Close enough if you believe in omens.”
“Mr. Dubrowski says this quarterback is as good as Terry Bradshaw and Joe Namath put together,” Putnam told me.
“Well, Rhino should know. When he played pro tackle he could never lay a hand on either one of them.” I watched Stephanie bouncing and groaning, moaning and bouncing. Then she was suddenly quite still, the candle buried in her quim, poised on the razor-edge of orgasm. It was disconcerting. “If the guy’s that good, then what’s the problem?” I forced my attention back to Putnam.
“Sex.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Unfortunately, I cannot. Your friend Mr. Dubrowski refused to go into detail. He said he wanted to consult with a sex expert and he suggested you. We were in effect faced with a choice of either discharging him or acceding to his request. Needing a quarterback so desperately, we opted for walling you, Mr. Victor.”
“And if I didn’t agree to help you,” I realized, “Rhino would be canned. But just what is it that mu expect me to do?”
“Proceed to Little Rock immediately. See Mr. Dubrowski. Determine what the sex problem involving the quarterback is. Devise a plan for dealing with it if you can. Then come to San Francisco and report to us.”
“All right,” I agreed. Hell, the money was good and I really did owe it to Rhino. I exchanged a few more words with Putnam and then I hung up the phone.
“AAARRRGGGHHH!” Stephanie screamed ecstatically. “I'M COMING! I’M COMING! I’M COMING!” It sounded familiar.
“And so the final score is Raiders twenty-seven, Eagles ten,” Merlin Olsen summed up. So much for my bet.
“I CAME! I CAME!”
“You might have waited for me.” I was pissed.
“I might have. But I didn’t. It’s like my favorite feminist, Flo Kennedy5 , said: ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.’ “
“Fuck you!”
“Sorry,” Stephanie trilled. “Too late!”
She was right. It was too late. As with the Superbowl XV, I’d missed the climax.
CHAPTER TWO
“Anal defecation!” On the other side of the picture window of the motel bar the Monday night traffic of Little Rock, Arkansas, was light as it zinged its way towards the fun part of town. “Kidney fluid!” Rhino Dubrowski wasn’t paying attention to the traffic. His mind was on his own problems. “And corruption!” he finalized, downing another in a long line of bourbons.
Rhino wasn’t happy. When Rhino wasn’t happy, he drank and he cursed. He drank pretty much the way everybody drinks. His cursing, however, was uniquely his own.
A former Marine, a former pro football lineman, at six-foot-six and two-hundred ninety pounds, walking away from you, Rhino looked like the back end of a steamroller. From the neck up he resembled the rhinoceros for which he had been nicknamed, except for his eyes, which were pure basset hound with an alcohol problem. The problem affected his cursing style slightly, but it didn't really change it.
“Cohabitating pain in the anus!” he mumbled, pouring another bourbon from the bottle he’d had the bartender leave at our table. Marine or not, pro tackle or not, Rhino had been brought up to watch his language, and the upbringing stuck. Four-letter Anglo-Saxon words never crossed his thick, blubbery lips. However, the impetus—the sentiment and the fury—was there for Rhino as it is for all of us when Fate sneaks in a particularly low blow. “No-good phallus-ingesting quarterback!”
The customary curses were translated in this fashion before they crossed Rhino’s lips. The snarling tone with which they were delivered, however, left no doubt that they were as heartfelt as their locker-room equivalents. And, given Rhino’s brawn, nobody was about to criticize the translations as being sissified.