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Then he said he’d almost forgotten something and asked if I’d seen the statement from the commissioner.
I told him I had not.
He paraphrased it, saying that the league office was taking both the allegations against Thomas and the ones against Ryan very seriously and that Joel Abrams was authorizing dual investigations involving the Wolves to begin immediately.
“You know who feels as if they’re under water right now?” I asked.“Me.”
The team was leaving for Denver in the morning. I told him I’d try to stop by his office before he left. He asked if it was too soon to start comparing my behavior to Money McGee’s. I laughed and cursed him out like a true Wolf and ended the call.
Jack had won today. I’d taken the bait, and that meant I’d lost. And somehow managed, by being a hothead, to make things worse for myself than they already were, if something like that was even possible at this point.
Less than three weeks from the vote by the other owners.
Jenny Wolf, trending again.
Viralagain.
Now being investigated by the league. Such a dream. I was about to finally fall into bed when the phone rang one last time, but only because I’d forgotten to turn it off.
Uncleon the screen.
I’d been expecting this one all night.
He got right to it, even though his voice sounded even more hoarse than usual. It was what he did. Another reason why he was who he was, always had been, and always would be. And why I loved him the way I did, in a way I wished I had loved my father.
“Taglia la merda.”
Because of him, I knew enough Italian to know exactly what that meant. What he was telling me to cut.
I asked him about his voice, if he was feeling all right. He chuckled but didn’t respond. Then he told me to stop talking and listen as he laid out what he thought we had to do going forward—not just at the league meetings in Los Angeles but also even before I got there—if I wanted to hold on to the Wolves.
Finally, he said, “At least there is one good thing to come out of today.”
“What’s that?”
“We seem to have identified who the real enemy is,” he said.
“And who might that be?”
“You,cara.”
Fifty-Four
IT TOOK UNTIL SUNDAY MORNING,a few hours before the Wolves-Broncos game, to set up the meeting my uncle had referenced when we’d spoken on the phone.
Thomas and me and Bobby Erlich, who ran a crisis management firm that was not just the biggest in San Francisco but also one of the biggest anywhere in the country.
As Erlich said, “You don’t say no to your uncle.”
“You knew him before this?” Thomas said.
“He did me a favor once,” Erlich said.
“I believe everyone owes him some kind of favor except Warren Buffett,” I said.
“You sure about Buffett?” Erlich said.
We were on the top floor of the town house at Fisherman’s Wharf that he’d turned into his personal office building. I had suggested that all of us meet for breakfast, but Erlich said that it didn’t help anybody for me to be seen with him in public, at least for now.
