Rough Trade

up cheering for.
    Of course, I knew that Jack McWhorter would probably disagree. He would argue that football was a business, and when they bought their tickets, the fans got their money’s worth. To him the NFL was a brand, entertainment was the product, and the players, albeit overpaid, were as interchangeable as workers on an assembly line. As I worked on through the afternoon, sifting through the possibilities and weighing the alternatives, I found myself wishing that I could subscribe to his point of view.
    In the unyielding language of the balance sheet, moving the team to Los Angeles provided the easiest road to salvation. However, given the tax burden placed on the team by Beau’s death, the terms that L.A. was offering suddenly seemed less generous. But once you strayed from the realm of the merely black and white, the thought of moving the team was deeply disturbing. It was like contemplating a disfiguring amputation. You knew that you would survive, but you also knew that you would emerge from the experience forever changed.
    The other options at this point were much more difficult to pin down. An important chunk of arithmetic depended on how far Beau had gone with his discussions of a stadium renovation deal with the city. Unfortunately, I was going to have to wait until Thursday to find out.
    While never much of an option, selling the team was no longer a viable alternative. Whatever the Rendells could get for the team would immediately go to the government for inheritance and capital gains taxes. They’d end up literally with nothing.
    What the team needed, I decided, was a white knight. Someone with more money than sense who’d be willing to ride to the rescue of the team. Surely there must be a Milwaukee millionaire who would be willing to spend a chunk of change for a piece of a debt-riddled franchise in exchange for civic sainthood. I started jotting down a list of likely candidates.
    In the meantime there were still some ground balls to be run down. I still hadn’t received Sherman’s memo on likely lease issues, and there were other things I hoped to learn as soon as I received Feiss’s records. I felt like I had twenty-seven different facts in front of me; it was at the same time too many and not enough.
    Cheryl came in tapping the face of her wristwatch, reminding me that it was time to meet Stephen and the decorator at the new apartment. My mother was also coming just to round out the party.
    “You go,” I groaned. “I’m prepared to pay you handsomely.”
    “You couldn’t afford what it would cost,” replied my secretary, taking my coat from the hanger and holding it for me.
    On my way out I bumped into Skip Tillman, the firm’s f managing partner, who stopped long enough to congratulate me on landing the Monarchs as clients for the firm.
    “Norm Halperin in the Milwaukee office just called to give me the news. He was practically beside himself. What a coup! I told him you’d be in touch to coordinate about making sure that you have the manpower you need. Remember, it’s big-name clients that make us such a big-name firm,” he concluded with a knowing chuckle before moving on.
    I breathed a sigh of relief to see him go. As a rule I was much more accustomed to Tillman’s censure than his praise, and it made me nervous to suddenly find myself on his good side—especially since the new client he was so delighted with didn’t have a dime to pay us.
     

CHAPTER 10
     
     
    I hadn’t been to the new apartment in more than a week, so I was surprised when I stepped off the elevator to see that after months of hideously expensive structural work-plumbing and electrical repairs that seemed to involve more demolition than restoration—a momentous corner had apparently been turned. The plasterers had been hard at work, and most of the duplex’s walls were now crisp, flat, and straight. The floors, sanded but still unvarnished, showed warm promise from beneath a layer of plaster dust.
    I found Mother and Mimi, the decorator, already in the solarium, studying wallpaper samples and fabric swatches. Mother was dressed in her most casual clothes—a pair of slate gray Yves Saint Laurent trousers that hung on her slender frame like sculpture, a navy cashmere shell, and a pair of diamond stud earrings only slightly smaller than dimes. Mimi, who’d spent half her career decorating and redecorating Mother’s houses, wore a red St. John’s suit so old that it sagged in the seat and a