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The commissioner hadn’t called me when he saw the story on theTribune’s website about us working out McGee. He’d called Thomas instead, sounding as if he’d gone into labor, according to my brother, threatening to suspend Money McGee all over again and maybe the whole Wolf family along with him.

“For what?” Thomas said. “Regularly attending AA meetings? Hell, that could get me suspended, too.”

Somehow, Thomas said, the conversation devolved from there, finally ending with Joel Abrams yelling, “Tell her to keep digging!”

On the field, Billy McGee rolled out to his right, chased by Andre DeWitt, stopped right before he reached the sideline, then threw a ball fifty yards to Calvin Robeson, our best and fastest wide receiver.

Thomas had come in by then and was standing next to me.

“Just so you know, we’re getting creamed all over again on social media.”

“Kind of our thing at this point.”

“I think we did better with your badass self on the front page,” he said.

“Thank you for that.”

“Just saying.”

“I trust our coach,” I said. “You know the real badass around here is him.”

“I trust him, too,” Thomas said. “But he better be right about this guy.Webetter be right.”

“If you look at this strictly as a football decision, which is all it is for the time being, we have just made a significant upgrade at backup quarterback.”

“Is that really all we’ve done?” Thomas said.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that you don’t trust Ted and I don’t trust Ted and neither does Ryan,” my brother said. “We’re not signing this guy just to back up Ted Skyler. We’re signing him because you guys think he gives us a better chance to win before the season is over, provided we can keep him out of the lockup.”

“First we need to get him into a game. That would be helpful.”

“Obviously Ryan thinks he can still play,” Thomas said.

“Healwaysthought that. And he’s convinced that the guy is more motivated than he’s been since he first got to the pros.”

“Because this probably is his last lifeline?” Thomas said.

“Because he’s dead broke.”

“What happened to all the money he made?”

I looked at him. “Rhetorical question?”

“He didn’t have a rainy-day plan?”

“You spoke with him downstairs. What do you think?”

There was a rap on my door then. The intern who’d become my full-time assistant, Andy Chen, poked his head in.

“Somebody here to see Mr. Wolf.”

Ben Cantor didn’t wait to be announced. He just slipped past Andy Chen and into my office and looked at Thomas, giving him a little two-fingered salute before firing off a question.

“How come you didn’t tell me you were at the yacht club the day your father died?”

Thirty-Five