Sweetness (47 page)

Although on the Northern Illinois campus Pinckney gained mild notoriety for his football exploits, his true claim to fame was a most peculiar one: Mike Pinckney was a dead ringer for Walter Payton.

From the charcoal skin tone to the high cheekbones to the muscular forearms, Pinckney looked as if he were the lead singer of a Sweetness tribute band. “When I first got to camp with the Bears, fans were stopping me all the time, yelling ‘Walter! Walter! Walter!’ and asking for autographs,” said Pinckney. “At first I corrected them, but after a while I’d just write ‘WP 34.’ It made life easier.”

Pinckney found the confusion funny, if not somewhat embarrassing. Walter Payton was one of the great running backs of all time. Mike Pinckney was just trying to land a job. “I never even mentioned any of it to Walter,” he said. “Too weird.”

During camp, Pinckney’s roommate was Tim Ehlebracht, a rookie wide receiver from nearby North Central College. One night, the two players took a drive to Naperville, where a handful of bars lined Chicago Avenue. Before settling upon a final destination, Ehlebracht hatched a plan. “Pinckney, let’s do this,” he said. “I’ll introduce you as Walter and we’ll see how far it can go.”

Pinckney nodded, and as the teammates entered the first club Ehlebracht pulled aside the manager, a man he knew. “John, I’d like to introduce you to Walter Payton,” he said, pointing toward Pinckney. “Walter wanted to get away from camp for a night. He’d appreciate it if you could keep it quiet that he’s here.”

Ehlebracht and Pinckney were guided to the club’s roped-off VIP section. John showered the men with free drinks and food, but couldn’t remain silent about the legendary running back’s presence. “We sit down, and people are all over us, taking pictures, asking for autographs, pointing, shouting,” said Pinckney. “Tim had introduced me to this beautiful girl as Walter Payton, and she was all over me. At one point the two of us walked to the dance floor, and all the people parted like the Red Sea. They wanted to see Walter Payton in the flesh.”

After posing for a handful of pictures with the club’s owners, Pinckney and his new lady friend drove to his room. “We start getting it on, and quickly our clothes are off,” he said. “She’s incredibly beautiful—Latin American, hot as a person can be. A ten out of ten. At one point the woman actually screams, ‘I can’t believe it! I’m getting laid by Walter Payton!’

“Well, it’s five A.M. and I need to take her back to her car at the club. We’re driving and she’s asking me if my life is like this all the time—clubs and parties and women and all. I’m starting to feel guilty. How can I let this girl walk away thinking she got laid by Walter Payton? So before she gets out of the car I say, ‘Listen, I have to tell you something important.’ ”

“What is it, Walter?” she replied.

“My name is not Walter Payton,” he said.

“What are you talking about,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Michael Pinckney.”

“No, you’re Walter Payton, the Chicago Bear. Walter Payton.”

Pinckney opened up his wallet, removed his Maryland driver’s license, and handed it to her.

Silence.

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You fucking bastard.”

The woman stepped out of the vehicle and slammed the door.

“That’s a true story,” said Pinckney, who was cut before the season started. “One hundred percent true. The power of Walter Payton got me laid by the hottest girl I’d ever seen.”

The power of Walter Payton is the power that accompanies athletic superstardom. It’s the power fame has upon people. The power to eat for free whenever one chooses. The power to gain easy access to any club, any bar, any restaurant, any theatre. The power of Walter Payton makes people scream and squeal and leap and cry. It makes them crave access. Any access. A nod. An autograph. A handshake. One second. One hour. One night.

The Bears once traveled to London for an exhibition game. Payton anticipated a week of blissful anonymity. “Then we get out of a cab in London,” said Shaun Gayle, a Chicago defensive back, “and he was mobbed.”

“I once got Walter a Rolex that he wore all the time,” said Ron Atlas, his friend. “Well, he lost it and he was devastated. I told him I’d find out if the watch was insured. I called the place where I bought the watch, and they in turn called Rolex. The thing wasn’t insured, but two days later Rolex FedExed him a free watch. Just because he was Walter Payton.”

When used in pursuit of righteousness, the power of Walter Payton was a beacon of blinding light. Throughout his career, Payton visited dozens of sick children in hospitals, hugged countless strangers, brightened more days than one could count. “He was an ambassador,” said Matt Suhey, his longtime teammate. “Walter wore his celebrity and his notoriety with class and dignity. The NFL’s Man of the Year Award is named after him, and it’s very appropriate.”

And yet, the power of Walter Payton could also be utilized in less altruistic ways. Fame inevitably warps and corrupts, and the celebrities able to resist its charms are few and far between.

Once upon a time, when Payton was a struggling Bears rookie trying to survive in a foreign city, he only had eyes for his future wife, Connie Norwood. They spoke nearly every day, often for hours at a time. Her photograph adorned his locker, and even as he watched veteran teammates treat their spouses like tattered rags, he refused to follow suit. Payton, alongside teammate/ best friend Roland Harper, was a strict adherent to the teachings of the Bible, including the seventh commandment (Thou shall not commit adultery).

As the years passed and the power grew, however, Payton changed. In the spirit of the surface-deep ’80s, his image became everything. Frugal in many areas (with automobiles obvious exceptions), Walter wouldn’t think twice about dropping a couple of thousand dollars on a suit or two. He rarely (if ever) left home without his slacks neatly pressed and his shoes as shiny as new coins, and he could never have enough Rolex watches and gold bracelets (he was especially fond of a bracelet that spelled out P-A-Y-T-O-N in encrusted diamonds). His teeth were sparkling white, his skin unblemished, his mustache meticulously trimmed. “Dad was huge into fashion,” recalled Brittney Payton, his daughter. “There was a men’s store called Realta that was downtown. He would come at night and they’d open up for him. He loved to shop. He would sport his cowboy boots with jeans back in the day, or those big colorful sweaters, and he made it work.”

Most important was the hair. If one looks back at photographs from Payton’s first few years in Chicago, his miniature Afro was routinely messy and awkwardly skewed. It leaned right, it leaned left, it flopped to the front. Oftentimes, Payton merely covered his head with a state trooper’s widebrim model hat. Then, in the early ’80s, he was approached by Willard Harrell, a running back for the St. Louis Cardinals who had a side business peddling a product called Curl Alive with Pro 39. “It was mainly a moisturizer for a black man’s hair,” said Harrell, Payton’s teammate on the collegiate All-Star team in 1975. “It went on wet, it came off dry.” In exchange for the usage of Payton’s name on promotional material, Harrell gave the Bears’ star an unlimited supply of Curl Alive with Pro 39.

Payton’s Jheri curl emerged as one of
the
Jheri curls of the 1980s—moist yet not dripping; perky yet not over the top. “Dad messed up a couple of couches with his head,” said Jarrett Payton, Walter’s son. “He had that curl working.”

“He did it beautifully,” said Harrell with a laugh. “Walter’s hair was the envy of black men nationwide.”

They weren’t the only ones to notice. The wallflower Walter Payton of years past had become a more confident, more social being. He stepped with an air of importance and no longer shielded himself from the world. Payton became especially comfortable around women who, in turn, became especially comfortable around him. “Walter walked through a lobby or a casino or wherever, and very quickly he’d have five or six or seven hotel room keys put in his pocket,” said Bud Holmes, his agent. “Women sent him their photos. Naked pictures. Pictures in lingerie. He’d laugh about it, but that sort of temptation is not easy to ignore.”

When Holmes negotiated a new contract with the Bears in 1981, one of the stipulations was that, on the road, Payton be granted his own suite. The reason was simple: He wanted a place to bring back his conquests. Although Payton continued to avoid regularly socializing with teammates, that didn’t mean he failed to go out. From San Diego to Seattle, Detroit to Denver, Boston to Buffalo, Payton could often be found at the hot dance clubs, working the moves perfected on
24 Karat Black Gold
a decade earlier. Before long, Payton’s personal black book featured a bevy of women in every city. Wherever the Chicago Bears traveled, Payton had females waiting for the signal to discreetly knock on his door at the Hyatt or Hilton or Marriott.

As Connie remained in Illinois caring for Jarrett, her husband was on the road, living
the life
. Those who knew him best say one of Payton’s great gifts/ills was the ability to compartmentalize. When he was home in Arlington Heights, he could be the prototypical family man. When he was elsewhere, he could do whatever he pleased. To Walter, one behavior had nothing to do with the other. If Connie didn’t know he was sleeping around, how could it possibly hurt her? As far as she was concerned, he sat in his hotel room watching TV and reading the Bible. That was her reality, and it was perfectly fine with Walter.

Not that such behavior was exclusive to road trips. Every February beginning in 1977, Walter spent a week working as a spokesman for Buick at the Chicago Auto Show. The gig was an excellent one, in that it afforded Payton a chance to casually interact with his fans. Buick set up a table, loaded it with pens and glossy photographs and had Payton sign away, talking up the virtues of Buick all the while. It was a good time for a superstar, but not necessarily an
innocent
good time. Payton always looked forward to the show, because he knew McCormick Place, the venue that hosted the event, would be overrun by young, up-and-coming models with dreams of celebrity.

Through the years, Payton’s list of sexual conquests via the show was a long one. Many of the models returned year after year, and though Payton’s reputation as a womanizer preceded him, his status and charm worked wonders. “I always felt bad for Connie, because Walter was as big a flirt as I’d ever seen,” said Donna Vanderventer, who was employed as a secretary in the Bears’ executive offices. “It was no different than Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant. These guys go out and the girls are swooning, and unless they’re strong, dedicated family men, it was all about feeding the ego. And women feed egos.”

At the 1984 auto show, Payton found himself particularly smitten by a twenty-year-old model named Angelina Smythe. Breathtakingly beautiful, with wavy brown hair, olive-oil skin, and a perky figure, Angelina initially paid Payton no mind when the two met in an elevator. She had never watched a professional football game in her life, and was hardly impressed by his celebrity status.

“Angelina wasn’t looking to meet someone,” said a person familiar with the situation. “But Walter was a charmer. He would say things to draw a woman in. Not like, ‘You’re beautiful,’ but something deeper psychologically.

“He had a big hole inside of him. He did it dishonorably. He used women—and especially younger women—for something he needed. And I’m not saying something merely physical. There was an emptiness in him. He sought out women to fill that hole. It was devilish.”

At the time, Angelina attended church most Sundays and aspired to one day meet a nice man to marry. “She wasn’t one to chase anybody,” said the person who knew her. “But she was probably a little naïve.”

Payton complimented Angelina and made her feel special. He was a sharp dresser, a fast talker, a suave mover. He had strong hands and powerful arms and wherever he went, people smiled and appeared to be moved. Everyone wanted his company, and he was giving it to her.

In the weeks that followed, Walter and Angelina engaged in a passionate affair. Sure, he was married. But it wasn’t a
real
marriage, he told her. Just for show. He contacted her when Connie wasn’t around, and Angelina excitedly took his calls. She was young, poor, and struggling. He was a bright light. “It was not a fling,” Angelina said. “Otherwise the first time I met him it would have been done and over. I think Walter tried to be my friend as a way to get me closer to him, but not for the right reasons. I wanted to get to know him, but he was like a teenage boy—very, very immature. He asked if he could call me and I let him. But I knew he was married and I saw him with other women. It wasn’t my best thinking, but I was young and naïve.”

One morning in early May, Angelina telephoned Payton. Her voice was panicked. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

Silence.

More silence.

A devout Christian, Angelina decided to keep the baby. Walter stopped calling. Stopped caring. The man who couldn’t get enough of her now wanted nothing to do with her. Without saying a word to Connie (his wife didn’t learn of Angelina until years later), he had an accountant work out a financial package that included a fifty-thousand-dollar trust and an agreement to pay child support through the child’s twenty-first birthday. The terms of the deal: Leave Walter out of it, and never let the media catch wind.