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I was a well-connected' Chicago attorney who knew how to keep her mouth shut. I could be useful.
    Chicago is only an hour’s drive from Milwaukee, even less if you happen to be behind the wheel of a Ferrari. It is also a much better place to party than buttoned-up Milwaukee, especially if you’re a twenty-year-old millionaire with more testosterone than common sense. In the cynical world of pro sports it is a given that boys will be boys, and the Monarchs preferred that their boys did their playing in Chicago, away from the prying eyes of the fine, upstanding citizens of Milwaukee. Unfortunately, it is also axiomatic that semiliterate, unsocialized gladiators will occasionally get themselves into trouble.
    “Oh, please,” I groaned, “no more crimes against women, not after last time.”
    “Don’t worry,” Jeff replied. “There were no women involved.”
    “What is it then? Did some hero wrap himself around a tree and get picked up for DUI? Why don’t you call Glen Morrissey? He usually handles those for you guys.”
    “I don’t think he’d come. We haven’t paid him for the last two. Besides, this isn’t a DUI.”
    “Then what is it?” I asked, scrabbling through the four days’ worth of unread mail that had accumulated on the table for something to write on.
    “A player named Jake Palmer. He’s the offensive lineman they call Jake the Giant.”
    “I don’t care what position he plays. Just tell me what he did that makes him need a lawyer in the middle of the night.”
    “I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but apparently he and a bunch of special-teams players decided to drive down to Chicago after the game and drown their sorrows over the loss to Minnesota.”
    “You guys lost again?”
    “Crushed would be a more accurate description. The final score was 27 to 3. I don’t know how Bennato has the balls to call himself a football coach.”
    “So tell me about this guy Palmer,” I prodded.
    “He and a bunch of special-teams boys drove down to Chicago and hit the bars. I guess somehow or other they ended up at The Baton.”
    “At The Baton?” I demanded incredulously. “How do a bunch of football players manage to just somehow end up at the most notorious transvestite bar in the city? I’m surprised they’d even let them in the door.”
    “Apparently not as surprised as Palmer.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “Oh, yes. I guess he started buying drinks for some dishy blonde he picked up at the bar. At some point he must have gotten sleepy, because he put his head in her lap. I gather that’s when he discovered that—how shall I put this?—things were not exactly as they seemed.”
    “And let me guess,” I practically hooted. “A disturbance broke out.” I imagined a three-hundred-pound Gulliver from the University of Alabama warding off the blows of the assembled homosexual population of Lilliput and burst out laughing.
    “It’s not going to be funny if the press gets hold of this,” cut in Jeff. “It’s not like we don’t already have enough trouble on our hands.”
    “I’m sorry. What’s he been charged with?”
    “So far nothing. They took him to the Eighteenth District, but he hasn’t been booked. One of the cops recognized him and called me. Luckily he’s a fan.”
    “I suppose you promised him fifty-yard-line seats the next time you play the Bears....”
    “Are you kidding? I’d let him bang the entire cheer-leading squad if I thought it meant keeping this out of the papers.”
     

CHAPTER 4
     
     
    The last time I’d made a trip to the Eighteenth District it had almost turned me off not only to football but the entire human race, too, when I realized that people like Darius Fredericks were a part of it. Fredericks had been the Monarchs’ first-round draft pick that season, a talented wide receiver who’d gotten himself into some kind of trouble in college—trouble that had been hushed up as he led his team to a national championship. As a pro he also did not