Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [222]
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he thought to himself. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
A couple of days later, Hong was invited to Connie Payton’s home, where he gladly handed over the lost jewelry. She gave him a framed photograph of her late husband, and took Hong to what once served as his hero’s private office. “I got to sit in his chair,” he said. “That blew my mind.”
So euphoric in the moment was Hong that he failed to find it odd how Connie, Walter Payton’s wife for twenty-three years, seemed to be completely unaware that the ring had ever gone missing.
Though a misplaced Super Bowl ring hardly ruined Walter Payton’s life, the symbolism of its fall through the cracks cannot be ignored.
Without a football career, without a racing career, without the potential ownership of an NFL franchise, Walter Payton often found himself suffocated by darkness. Oh, he wouldn’t let on as such. He smiled and laughed and told jokes and pinched rear ends and tried his absolute best to come across as the life of the party. Inside, however, happiness eluded Payton in the same manner he had once eluded opposing linebackers.
Facing increased pressure from Lita Gonzalez to either commit or walk, in August 1994 Payton filed for divorce from Connie in the Circuit Court of Cook County, citing “irreconcilable differences” which “have caused the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.”
The truth was, Payton neither wanted nor needed a divorce—just a piece of paper to shut Gonzalez up by showing her that he was, indeed, trying. (Said Ginny Quirk: “Being married was inconsequential to Walter. He didn’t deal much with Connie, but having her helped with his image.”) Connie, however, did not take kindly to her husband’s filing, and was especially livid when one of his attorneys leaked word of the potential split to the Sun-Times.
On November 29, 1994, Walter received a letter from Connie’s lawyer, Joseph DuCanto, demanding twenty-five thousand dollars for her attorney fees and threatening to shatter his angelic reputation. DuCanto used the correspondence to make clear that, were the details of the “no-holds-barred confrontation” to go public, Payton’s pristine image would likely find itself flushed down a toilet.
Walter read the letter, crumpled it up, and slammed his fist into his desk. He had provided Connie with everything she ever needed—and this was his reward? So what that he cheated on her for years. So what that he was an on-again, off-again father? So what? He was Walter Payton. The Walter Payton. If anyone was supposed to be making the threats, it was him. Not Connie.
Around this time, Payton actually began seeing yet another woman, a New York–based medical-supply saleswoman named Judy Choy, and encouraged her to move to Illinois so they could spend more time together. Though aware that Payton’s marriage to Connie was a farce, Choy never knew about Gonzalez. “Judy’s father was a private investigator, and he looked into Walter and found out a lot of stuff about him,” said Linda Conley, a friend of Walter and Connie, as well as a former Studebaker’s employee. “That was it. She was a strong woman, and she had pride.” Months after being dumped, Payton hired his own private investigator to locate Judy, but to no avail. She had moved and disconnected her phone, and wanted nothing to do with him. Gonzalez, on the other hand, stuck around, hoping Walter could change. “It was a joke,” Quirk said. “Walter was Walter. For good and for bad, there was no changing him.”
He turned forty-three in 1996. By now, the stories had grown stale and tiresome. That first game against the Colts. The 275 yards against the Vikings. Battles against O. J. Simpson and Earl Campbell and Eric