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“I just got crazy trying to get the team back.”

“Why? So you could turn around and sell it out of the family at the end of the season? No kidding, Danny, you are some piece of work.”

He grinned, as if almost desperate to somehow lighten the mood. “Thanks for saying piece ofwork.”

“What’s the matter? John Gallo doesn’t have the same benefits package you used to have here?”

“He’s worse than I thought,” Danny said.

“Not sure how something like that is even possible. He really is behind this?”

“I think there might be somebody else in this with him,” Danny said. “But before you ask me, I don’t know who. Or what. Gallo hasn’t told either me or Jack.”

“Are you under the impression that he won’t come after you as hard as he came after me?”

“I can take it,” Danny said.

“No, as a matter of fact, you can’t. Let’s get real, Danny. If you couldn’t take what Dad dished out, you’re not going to be able to stand in there against a gangster like Gallo.”

“Dad wasn’t much better.”

“Grading him on a curve? Dad was a lot better than John Gallo.”

We sat in silence now, still eyeballing each other. I sipped coffee that had gone cold. I got up and looked back down at the field and saw that practice was ending. When I turned around this time, Danny was already up and out of his chair.

“I had to at least try,” he said, and headed for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I said.

Eighty-Seven

I WAS ON THEphone with Billy and Amanda McGee, who were driving back to San Francisco from Napa on Saturday night, having managed to make it through both days up there without being discovered. I told them now not to go to the house they’d rented in the Embarcadero after Billy had signed his Wolves contract. Told them they should go directly to Thomas Wolf’s house. I’d text Amanda the address.

She was driving.

“Dude,” Billy said to me, “us staying there would creep me out.”

“Trust me—it shouldn’t,” I said. “My brother Thomas lived for drama and intrigue like this.”

I told them that if Billy needed to get some exercise in, Thomas had built himself a world-class gym that included one of those Peloton bikes.

“I didn’t fall out of shape because of the way they worked me over,” Billy said.

He sounded like his old cocky self again, despite everything.

“Funny world, though, right, dude? Now somebody has to knock me unconscious to try to get me to use.”

Then I told them both I’d see them in the morning. I also told them how Ryan and I wanted them to handle things once they arrived at the stadium. Billy swore on his love for his wife that he wouldn’t let us down.

“Dude,” he said to me one more time. “I’m telling the truth about this; you gotta trust me.”

“I explained to Amanda when I talked to her this morning,” I said. “You just took a fall for me. Literally. And let’s face it, the alternative to not trusting you kind of sucks.”

I called Ben Cantor after that and told him what I wanted to do and asked if I had permission to do it.

“Officially or unofficially?”

“Does it make a difference?”