| | | Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found another e-mail from that bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California. We decided to pass it along again. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.
Chapter 23
... in which our hero assists a Super Bowl QB facing fourth-and-long.
The guy comes in and sits down, and I go over and ask, "What'll you have to drink, Mr. Warner?"
Easy enough, right?
But he looks up at me and says, "How did you know who I am?"
I tell him that a lot of people would recognize a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. Even if he has pasted a weird blond beard on his face. I look down, and I see his hand is shaking.
"Nobody is supposed to recognize me," he says.
"Hey, dude -- relax, I know that drill too, all right?" I say. "You don't want to be recognized, nobody recognizes you."
I get Warner a bottle of sparkling water and watch him sit there shaking like a leaf while I go back to what I was doing, talking to my homey Puker.
"Teahupoo, dude," Puker has been saying since yesterday at around 7 in the morning. "Outside Log Cabins."
It's a mantra. Puker wants to raise the money to buy a jet-powered ski so we can tow into some major wave action at those two spots in Tahiti and Oahu this summer. He has read about how if you can get up to 30 mph on the tow and drop in right, the sparks will fly out of your fingers if you ride and live.
"It's not just tow-in, dude," I remind him. "It's pick-up, too. In case."
We've both got some big wave boards -- 16 inches wide, seven feet and change long -- all we need is the tow.
I'm thinking it's time to give Mr. Unknown Super Bowl MVP another bubbly water, when I look up and see Kurt's hollering at some old woman who's leaning in to talk to him.
|  | | To the victor goes the spoils -- but sometimes those endorsement opportunities can come back to haunt you. |
"Get away from me! Get away from me or you'll regret it!" Kurt is yelling.
"I understand wanting your privacy, but it looked like all she wanted was your autograph," I say to Kurt when I can get over there with something that might calm him down before he does who-knows-what to the old woman.
"You obviously didn't recognize her," he says with a grim laugh. "That's my mother."
"Your mother?"
"My fake mother," he says. "The one in the soup commercial."
Kurt explains that it's an actress who has gotten so involved in her role that she thinks she is Kurt's real mother. She calls and scolds him for not calling his relatives often enough. She sends him new socks. She acts hurt if he doesn't call her every Sunday. He explains this has begun upsetting his real mother.
"Well, L.A. is the capital of people hiding out from their mothers, even fake ones," I say.
"I need more than to hide out," Kurt says. "You don't understand. She's blowing everything for me."
At first I don't get what he means. But as an athlete and as a bartender you develop a keen ability to tell when a man has been pushed to his limits. And by the way Kurt is shaking and from his blond disguise beard, I see a man nose-to-nose with the out-of-bounds marker.
"I need for this to stop. It's gotta end," Kurt says. The he mutters: "I'm supposed to meet someone here who can help."
You know how sometimes you can just guess what's in another person's mind. Or just know what's going to happen. Last week, just as an example, Janine and I went up to Lake Tahoe for some kite-skiing. And I knew exactly where she was going on the boat. And she knew exactly where I wanted to go in the air. Only, in this case we were wrong, and I had to let go of the tow rope and I flew over the lake shore and landed on the roof of one of those zillion-dollar compounds like the one Michael Corleone has in "The Godfather II." Just as an example.
It takes me a few seconds before I realize what The Unknown Super Bowl MVP QB means by meeting "someone who can help."
"So just yelling is no good with your fake mother anymore?"
"Maybe not," Kurt says, still looking miserable, "I don't think so."
He explains that the Rams still have a few connections back out here in L.A. from before they moved. The kind of people who help convince other people not to act a certain way.
"That's why nobody can know I was in here, Wheeler," Kurt says. "I was told he'd connect with me at Lore's."
You'd be surprised the things a bartender learns about. What I know, I say to Kurt, is that you would never pick this sort of a guy out for doing what he does. The kind of guy who does the kind of thing Kurt wants done -- "with extreme prejudice," as they say in the CIA -- is a guy who blends in. A guy you could look right at for an hour and not remember his face 10 seconds later. A guy you wouldn't notice if he left the room, the car or the face of the earth. A guy who has a voice you can't recall and a look you can't begin to describe to any sketch artist, because that's how plain and vanilla the dude is. Comes and goes and nobody knows.
He's invisible ink. He doesn't register.
Then I go back to Puker. Puker has awesome plans. Puker is an awesome dude. We are going to Tahiti. We will torch some eight-story swells.
Puker and I are settling down to figuring out where we will get the 40 grand we'll need to start our torching, when I look up and see Kurt's moved about three barstools down, and he's talking to a guy in a white hat with a feather.
I watch Kurt whispering with this guy. The guy exactly fits the description I gave Kurt. In other words, no description at all. He has no expression, he just nods all the time Kurt's speaking, he's completely impassive.
I watch the guy get up and leave. A few seconds later, I approach Kurt with a fresh glass and a side of Xtreme Nachos with Lima Beans and Shredded Ribs. He digs in.
"I did it, Wheeler," he says. "I met the guy, I told him what I needed, he said it'd cost me 10 grand, I paid him half now and he told me, 'Don't worry, it's done.' I've never been so scared, Wheeler, not even when I thought Dick Vermeil was about to start sobbing again."
He yanks off his beard and looks like he's ready to celebrate.
"I can relax, Wheeler," he says. "I can go to camp and make another run at the Super Bowl."
"I'm glad you hooked up, Kurt," I say. "But I have to tell you something. When I talk about a forgettable face, I mean forgettable to everybody, maybe even his mother -- but not to any bartender worth his salt."
"What are you trying to tell me, Wheeler?" Kurt says.
"I know who you just hired to get rid of your fake mom," I say.
Kurt goes whiter than a yardline.
"How the hell could you know the guy?"
"That's Jim Tracy."
"Jim who?"
"Jim Tracy," I say. "You just hired the Dodgers' manager to take care of your fake mommy."
"That couldn't be the Dodgers manager -- he looked exactly like you said he would. And he just took my money and said, 'Don't worry, it's done.' "
"You know a better alibi than, 'How could I have done it, I was sitting in the dugout?' "
"No," Kurt says.
"Consider it done, dude," I say.
We both begin shaking.
Next week: In Chapter 24, Kurt Warner pays our hero to stop an execution. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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