Authors: Gini Hartzmark
At the conclusion of the service we made our way out of the church between police lines three men deep. Chrissy said it made her feel like the wife of an about-to-be-deposed Latin American dictator. Jeff just huddled in his coat, looking shell-shocked and oblivious. Four days earlier he thought he’d reached the end of his rope when he told his father that he was leaving the Monarchs. Now his father was dead, he owned the team, and he was so vilified by the fans that they were pelting him with garbage. If he were a prisoner, I would have had him placed on suicide watch. I made a mental note to speak to Jack about keeping an eye on him when they were in L.A.
At the cemetery it felt like February. Darkness clung stubbornly to the edges of the day while the clouds let loose a steady stream of freezing drizzle. Most of the mourners had not made the trip to River Hills for the burial. A few friends clustered beneath dripping umbrellas. The entire Monarchs team was there, no doubt Bennato’s doing. They stood together, silent and gigantic, like a stand of rain-washed sequoias.
Whatever meager semblance of restraint the press had managed at the cathedral was immediately abandoned in the open air of the cemetery. The clicking of camera shutters punctuated the archbishop’s final benediction, and at least one cameraman found a perch on an adjacent headstone in order to capture the most affecting shot of Beau Rendell’s casket being lowered into the earth. I don’t care what the ACLU lawyers say; the framers of the Constitution, when they contemplated freedom of the press, could not have possibly imagined such gall or such intrusion.
When it was done, we went back to Beau’s house and braced ourselves for the onslaught of mourners. Instead, we found ourselves barricaded in Beau’s house, under siege by the press, and abandoned by most of the people that Chrissy and Jeff had once counted as friends. Under other circumstances it might have been funny. What if you threw a wake and nobody came? But it was all too clear that the news that Jeff might move the team had set into motion the complex phenomenon of shunning.
It was interesting to see who did show up. The Bennatos came, either out of a sense of loyalty to Beau or because the coach knew full well that the Monarchs were the only team in the NFL that would have him. The others who came were largely out-of-towners, league officials, sports luminaries, and broadcast executives who’d made the trip from places like New York and Los Angeles and were for the most part oblivious to the exigencies of what was going on in a place like Milwaukee.
Of course, the other owners came, not just to pay their respects, but to welcome the newest member to their select fraternity. Taken together they were a strangely geriatric group sporting, in several notable cases, surprisingly bad toupees. There was no question they were men for whom dollars now made do for testosterone, a fact that their female companions seemed to bear out. I thought of the owners’ meetings that were held several times a year and felt a sudden pang of sympathy for Chrissy.
As at the cemetery, the team was there to the man, whether out of loyalty to the franchise, the coach, or merely to do what they could to protect their highly paid jobs was hard to say. Seeing them in Beau’s living room made me realize that television does not do justice to football players. To really appreciate what sets them apart you need to stand next to them. Even after years with Stephen Azorini, who was six foot five, I found some of the players, especially the offensive linemen, nothing short of astonishing. Standing together near the bar, they seemed almost like a portrait of hugeness in repose—meaty arms that hung from their impossibly broad shoulders like thick-jointed clubs, hands that looked like they could crush coconuts as easily as peanut shells, necks like tree stumps. Collectively they seemed to evoke as many thoughts about the evolution of the species as they did about the evolution of football.
Suddenly the group shifted and Jake Palmer caught my eye. He was dressed in what looked like a Brooks Brothers suit on steroids, and he had a pair of delicate wire-rimmed glasses on his nose that lent him the air of the world’s largest poet. At the sight of me his face broke into a broad, gap-toothed grin and he excused himself from his teammates to come over and talk to me. He shook my hand, and for an instant it seemed to disappear up to the elbow. I was relieved to discover that today he smelled of aftershave, not whiskey, but I was astonished to find that if anything he seemed even bigger sober than he had drunk.
“I just wanted to say thank you for the other night,” he said. “You have to tell me what I can do to pay you back for your hospitality and all—you know, tickets, autographs, anything. You just name it.”
“How about you just promise to stay out of The Baton for a while,” I suggested.
“Are you kidding?” he demanded with a chuckle that seemed to originate deep within his three-hundred-pound frame and slowly rumble to the surface. “There’s no way I’m
ever
going back to that nasty-assed place again!”
“Good. Then you’ve learned your lesson.”
“I don’t know about that, but you had better believe that those special-team assholes that brought me there have learned a lesson or two, too,” he declared ominously. “But, hey, while we’re talking, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Jeff Rendell said that you’re some kind of big hotshot lawyer.”
“Something like that.”
“So then what I want to know is what the hell are you doin’ living in a place like the one I woke up at?”
“What? You don’t like my apartment?” I asked, in mock offense.
“I didn’t say that,” he replied quickly. “It’s just not the kind of crib I’d expect for some high-priced legal talent.”
“The apartment belongs to my roommate, who’s doing a surgical residency. It’s cheap and it’s convenient to the hospital.”
“So, you’re dating a doctor, huh?” He grinned approvingly.
“No.” I laughed. “You met my roommate the other night.”
“What? You mean that little girl with the smelling
salts?”
“You better hope that if they ever pull you out of a car wreck in pieces that ‘little girl’ is the one they get to put you back together. She’s one of the best young trauma surgeons in the country.”
“I may not remember that night that well, but I do know one thing, I still owe you big time.”
“Please, don’t mention it.”
“You don’t get it,” he replied earnestly. “When I was growing up in Alabama, we lived in a one-room house with outdoor plumbing, all seven of us. There’s not one single thing I’ve got in my life that I didn’t earn myself. When I make a mistake, I take my lumps, just like when I’m on the field. When somebody does me a good turn, I pay them back.”
I thought of what I had been born into, the doors that open at the mere mention of my name, and looked up at the big man before me with a new sense of admiration. “I understand,” I said.
“Then don’t forget that I owe you one. Jake the Giant always pays up. Just ask those special-team assholes,” he added with a chuckle. “In the meantime, you remember, anything you need, anything at all, you just come to me.”
I must confess I found his offer touching—especially coming as it did from a man whose thighs were roughly the same diameter as beer kegs.
* * *
The police came calling as soon as the last of the mourners had left. Of course, I knew that they’d been watching the house. I just hadn’t realized what they’d been waiting for. Jeff was in his father’s study, gathering up some papers, so I went with Chrissy to the door. When the two detectives handed Chrissy the warrant, she passed it to me quickly, as if it had burned her hand.
I read quickly, relief flooding through me. “It’s a warrant to search this house,” I told her, trying to keep my voice neutral. I didn’t want to give Eiben and Zellmer the satisfaction of knowing that I’d expected them to come for Jeff. “They also have one for your house.” I turned to the two detectives. “Do these have to be carried out right now?” I asked. “The Rendells are exhausted from the funeral.”
“They’re not going to have to do any heavy lifting,” replied Eiben without any trace of humor. “They don’t even have to be present if they choose not to. But we aren’t leaving without executing both warrants.”
“Could you do them simultaneously?” I asked. “I could stay out here, and Chrissy and Jeff could go back to their house. That way, at least, it won’t take all night.”
“Suit yourself,” replied the detective, taking a toothpick from his pocket, examining it critically, and inserting it in the corner of his mouth as I stepped aside to let him pass.
It was a hideous ending to an unspeakable day. It was also a message from the Milwaukee Police Department, one that said, loud and clear, that the gloves were now off. I whispered what few words of encouragement I could to Jeff before he and Chrissy got into the car and headed, leading a line of squad cars, back to their house to watch while men in uniform rifled through their personal possessions.
As soon as they were gone, I slipped back into the house and checked my address book to make sure that I still had my list of Milwaukee criminal attorneys with me. I’d started keeping one after I’d gotten my first late night call from Jeff about a player who’d gotten himself into trouble. I’d never once imagined that I’d have occasion to consult it on behalf of Jeff himself.
I went back into the house to observe the cops as they executed their warrant. Perhaps naively, I was less concerned with the possibility of planted evidence than I was about the cops lifting pieces of Beau’s sports memorabilia. I needn’t have been concerned. As I watched the cops turning the house inside out, it was obvious that the object of their search was something small and very specific. It was nearly midnight when they finally finished removing and bagging as evidence every single key they could find.
CHAPTER 15
The next morning the mayor launched a public relations jihad against Jeff Rendell and the Milwaukee Monarchs organization. When I came downstairs, all three networks had preempted their regular broadcasts to carry his press conference (which had no doubt been timed for a live national feed and to be picked up by CNN). Mayor Robert V. Deutsch was nobody’s fool. A career politician with a reputation for fiery oratory and an unapologetically confrontational style, he was also a man with a grudge.
Beau Rendell had come out and campaigned actively for his opponent in the last election, one that Deutsch had won by the thinnest of margins. If his press conference was any indication, it appeared that this time around Deutsch was determined to improve on that margin of victory at any cost. I had wondered why he’d been so quick to cancel our meeting, but I had been too preoccupied with the funeral to figure it out. Now I knew. Whoever leaked the news of a possible Monarchs move had handed the mayor of Milwaukee an issue he could ride to victory in the next election.
And ride it he did. Clutching the top of the podium, which was jammed with microphones, he vilified Jeffrey Rendell like a revival tent minister bearing witness against the devil. Alleging that the city had been negotiating in good faith with Beau Rendell “right up to the morning of his death,” the mayor railed against Jeff’s greed and shocking lack of loyalty to the city of his birth. Somehow he neglected to mention the fact that we’d contacted him immediately after Beau’s death and the fact that he’d canceled our meeting. Maybe with so much political hay to make, it just slipped his mind.
Instead he spoke movingly of how the city had already commissioned an architect to remodel the stadium, only to have Jeffrey Rendell, before his father’s body had even been committed to the earth, threaten to treat the beloved Monarchs and their long tradition like just another rich man’s plaything. Looking directly into the cameras, his voice cracking with emotion, he vowed that he would not rest until Jeff’s efforts to move the team were irrevocably thwarted.
As soon as the courthouse opened that morning, the city was planning on filing suit against the Monarchs, alleging that any contemplated move would breach the team’s contract with the city and asking for an injunction keeping the team in Milwaukee. This was as good a piece of political theater as I’d seen, and having grown up in Chicago, I’d been raised on the best. But from the Rendells’ perspective it was undeniably a nightmare.
Chrissy was as angry as I’d ever seen her, pacing the kitchen and snapping her fingers. Her face was white except for two red spots that burned high on her cheekbones. As far as I could tell, Mayor Deutsch was lucky that he was safely downtown at City Hall. Chrissy might have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, but I still wouldn’t have given much for his chances if he found himself in Chrissy’s kitchen.
Jeff’s reaction was more complicated and harder to decipher. His prevailing emotion appeared to be disbelief, as if a part of him was just waiting to wake up and have this whole unpleasant dream be over. On another level he seemed to be trying to shake off the lethargy of the past couple of days. Although he was far from being fully engaged, he was at least willing to go through the motions to do what had to be done. My guess is there just wasn’t that much left over for being mad at Deutsch. That was okay. As far as I was concerned, that was my job.
I looked at the clock. Coach Bennato would be arriving soon to talk to Jeff about the upcoming game against Green Bay. Jeff had tried to beg off; he was due to leave with Jack McWhorter for L.A. in less than two hours, but Bennato had insisted. I suspected that Beau had been calling the shots on the field for so long that Bennato had forgotten how to take responsibility for what happened on the field.
“Why don’t you turn that thing off,” I said to Chrissy, with a nod to the TV. “It’s time to circle the wagons and make a plan.”
Chrissy nodded and picked up the remote control. The blow-dried anchor vanished in a blink. In the sudden silence the mechanical crank of the baby swing seemed unnaturally loud. I looked over at little Katharine dozing sweetly with her head resting against the pattern of little lambs that decorated her blanket and tried to find some consolation in the fact that however things turned out, at least she’d have no memory of these events.