Football Hero (2008) (17 page)

THANE PULLED INTO THE
shopping center and parked in an empty spot. The dark Crown Vic pulled in behind them, blocking them in as if to keep Thane from making a break for it.

“What the heck is this?” Thane asked, turning to Ty as he shut down the truck.

Ty couldn’t speak. His throat felt too tight. His head spun. He shrugged, making a small unintelligible sound.

Thane shook his head, huffed, and got out. Ty followed him. Agent Kline opened the back door for them on his side of the car. Thane waved Ty in first. As he slid across the seat, he became instantly aware of the size of the man in the front seat. He’d not only moved his seat all the way back but reclined it halfway in
order to accommodate his incredible bulk. Ty blinked at the long, wavy hair and the shaggy black beard.

“Mike?” he said without thinking.

Mike slung his arm over the back of the seat and swung halfway around. With a grim face he offered Ty a curt nod before turning back to face the front and somehow managing to fold his arms across his chest. Ty wedged himself behind Mike’s seat. Thane got in, followed by Agent Kline.

Agent Kline turned around and said, “Tiger, this is Agent Kemblowski. Your brother knows him already.”

Thane shot Ty a look, wrinkling his face and holding up his hands in a way that asked a question.

“He works in the bar we clean,” Ty said. “That’s all.”

“He’s an undercover agent,” Agent Kline said, slipping the car into gear and pulling out onto the road.

“We’re both with the Organized Crime Task Force.”

“How does this have anything to do with me? Us?” Thane asked.

“Let’s talk when we get there,” Agent Kline said.

“Where?” Thane asked. “Should I have my lawyer?”

“Not unless you want us to arrest you,” Agent Kline said.

Thane closed his mouth and clenched his hands, staring straight ahead, his face lined with concern. After a while he patted Ty’s leg and whispered to him not to worry, but his voice sounded strained.

Agent Kline drove through an industrial area, then turned down a broken road and pulled into a vacant lot surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence with a scroll of barbed wire, surveillance cameras every twenty feet, warning signs, and electric gates. Inside, a single electric pole shed a white cone of light down on a large construction trailer. They pulled through the gates. Broken bits of concrete and stone crunched beneath the tires.

“What is this place?” Thane asked, his body rigid.

“It’s a place where no one will see you talking to two federal agents,” Kline said, pulling up in front of the trailer. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Kind of unhealthy to be working with us when you’re dealing with these people,” Mike said. “Best to keep things on the low.”

Agent Kline got out. Mike followed, and so did Thane and Ty. The trailer’s metal steps groaned under Mike’s weight. Inside were several desks cluttered with phones and papers. In the back, a small conference table shared the room with an easel that supported a large corkboard. Photographs of various men covered the board, with index cards beneath bearing their names. Colored yarn, red or white, connected many of them. In the bottom right corner, Ty’s school picture jumped out at him. Next to it, Thane smiled back from the photo used in the Jets media guide.

Ty followed the yarn with his eyes, up the board, from him and Thane, to Uncle Gus, to Lucy, up through two other men Ty thought he’d seen playing poker at Ludi’s Meats, and finally, to “Big Al” D’Amico at the very top.

Ty gulped, trying to keep his Chicken Bacon Ranch down. He sat next to Thane, facing the two agents. Mike wore a dark blue windbreaker and, beneath it, a Rutgers Athletic Department T-shirt. Nothing suggested his status as an FBI agent, except the knowing look in his eye that Ty had recognized but until now hadn’t had a name for.

Agent Kline brushed a lock of straight blond hair from his face and stared at them with dark blue eyes. He straightened his striped tie, looked at Mike, folded his hands across the notepad in front of him, and said, “We’re pretty sure that, dollar for dollar, today was the biggest sports betting scam since the White Sox threw the World Series.”

“What the heck are you guys talking about?” Thane asked, laying his hands flat on the table.

“We’re talking about you mysteriously bailing out of today’s game when there was an eight-point spread,” Mike said in his low rumble, pointing a finger at Thane. “We’re talking about the D’Amico family and its members clearing over
seven hundred thousand dollars
in bets. Your own uncle made fifteen thousand.”

Thane shook his head, a look of disbelief plastered across his face. He turned slowly toward Ty, frowned, and said, “Is this what your fantasy football questions were all about?”

Ty’s eyes filled with tears.

Thane slammed his palm down on the table, filling the trailer with the echo of its crash.

“Is it?” he shouted.

TY COULD ONLY NOD
his head, biting his cheek to stop the tears.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “Honest. I didn’t want Uncle Gus to keep asking you for money and I thought he’d stop if I helped him. They said it was for
fantasy
football.”

“But when you met with Big Al D’Amico Friday night,” Mike said, glaring at Ty, “you knew it wasn’t fantasy football then.”

“Friday night?” Thane asked, arching his eyebrows.

Mike nodded. “We followed him and your uncle to one of D’Amico’s hangouts. On Saturday, all the money started to move to Cincinnati. They basically flooded the betting market, knowing that you weren’t going to play. Meanwhile, the average Joe was out
there thinking you were and betting on the Jets to win by more than eight.”

“We’d like to know if your knee is really hurt,” Agent Kline said.

“You think I faked it?” Thane asked, squinting at the agent and shaking his head in disbelief.

“He didn’t know anything!” Ty said, jumping to his feet. “They filled a tube of bloody gunk with what they took out of his knee right before the game! You can ask the team doctor. I saw it!”

“Settle down, kid,” Agent Kline said.

“I don’t care what you do to me!” Ty shouted. “You leave him alone!”

“No one’s doing anything to anyone,” Agent Kline said. “We just want your help. That’s why we’re talking to you like this instead of serving you with a warrant. If you faked it, that’s different. Giving this kind of information to those people is a crime, yeah, but not like actually faking an injury to affect the outcome of a game.”

“I would never do that,” Thane said.

“And you’d testify to that?” Agent Kline asked.

“Of course.”

“And you’ll help us in this investigation?”

“I’ll help,” Thane said.

They all looked at each other for a minute before Thane asked, “What’s this going to do to our aunt and uncle?”

“And Charlotte?” Ty said.

Mike shrugged and said, “We don’t need your uncle’s help. He’s going to go down with the rest of them.”

Thane looked down at the table for a moment, then said, “I don’t want that.”

“Hey, Tiger,” Mike said, “no offense, but this guy’s been a grade A jerk to your little brother here.”

Thane looked at Ty. Ty shrugged.

“My aunt and uncle took Ty into their home,” Thane said. “It’s what our parents asked for in their will.”

Mike stroked his beard.

“They took Ty in when we didn’t have anyone else,” Thane said.

Mike looked at Agent Kline.

“Even if you forget about Uncle Gus,” Thane said, “what about Aunt Virginia and our cousin Charlotte? What happens to them if he goes to jail? I’m not turning my back on them. If you want me, they’re part of the deal. You have to help Gus, too.”

“I don’t know if you really get what’s going on here,” Agent Kline said. “Sure, we’d like to help you out. You seem like a good guy, like you got caught up in this without really knowing. But guess what? That’s what they all say.”

“It’s true!” Ty said.

“But when the jury hears everyone singing the
same song, D’Amico, Lucy, your uncle,” Agent Kline said, “then your story gets lost in all theirs and you all look like one big pack of liars. Trust me on this.”

“You need to forget about your uncle,” Mike said.

“You need to save your own skin.”

“So, are you with us?” Agent Kline asked. “What do you say?”

“I say,” Thane said, “I need to talk to my lawyer.”

Mike threw his hands up. Kline huffed and rolled his eyes.

“I can’t promise you this deal’s gonna be here tomorrow,” Agent Kline said.

“Then it’s not much of a deal,” Thane said, standing up. “I take it we can go?”

“For now,” Kline said.

Thane put his arm on Ty’s shoulder.

“So, you’ll take us back to my truck?” Thane asked.

“Of course,” Kline said, getting up and jangling his keys.

“Tiger,” Mike said, tearing a scrap of paper off of Kline’s notepad and jotting down a number, “take this. It’s my cell phone. Have your lawyer call me. He’ll know. You come out on the wrong side of things with this and you can forget your football career. That’ll be over.”

THE AGENTS DROPPED THEM
off at Thane’s truck and peeled away quick enough to make their tires yip like small dogs. Ty climbed into the truck. Thane sat staring straight ahead, then gripped the steering wheel and rested his head on it.

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t say it,” Thane said, holding up a hand for Ty to stop. “They got you. They get people a lot older and more street smart than you, so don’t start blaming yourself.”

“They’re talking about your
career
,” Ty said.

“You didn’t know,” Thane said.

“Are you sure about Uncle Gus?” Ty asked.

“No, but Aunt Virginia? That’s Dad’s sister,” Thane said. “Charlotte’s our cousin. Like it or not, Uncle Gus
is family, and no one knows better than you and me how important family is.”

“Because ours is gone?”

“Because it’s still here,” Thane said. “You and me. Nothing more important than that, right? Nothing we wouldn’t do for each other.”

Thane started the truck and pulled out of the lot.

“Where are we going?”

“Morty’s.”

“Don’t you want to call him?”

“Something like this you don’t talk about on the phone,” Thane said, heading for the highway.

Morty lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in a high-rise that looked out over Central Park. He greeted them in a pair of slippers and red-and-white striped pajamas. They followed him through the marble entryway and into the library, with its smell of books and leather furniture. Instead of going to his desk over by the big window, Morty sat down on the couch and flicked off the Sunday night game.

“Sorry you caught me like this,” Morty said, pinching the sleeve of his pajamas. “If the game gets boring, I usually end up asleep on the couch, and I hate waking up with my clothes on. What’s so urgent?”

As Thane told the story, Morty’s face grew tighter and tighter, wrinkling his brow and pinching his lips until he looked ten years older.

“Why do you look like that?” Thane asked when he’d finished. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Innocence never got in the way of ruining a public figure before,” Morty said.

“Public figure?” Ty asked.

“Someone in the news,” Morty said, “on the sports page. Someone people talk about. Just your connection to this is enough to ruin everything.”

“What do I do?” Thane asked.

Morty put his hand over his mouth and massaged his cheeks.

“We give up your uncle, make you a CI, a cooperating informant, and this whole thing can come off like you’re working
with
the FBI from the start,” Morty said. “You could come out of it like a hero.”

“I’m worried about my aunt,” Thane said. “He’s her husband. She doesn’t even work.”

“And Charlotte,” Ty said.

“I’m worried about you,” Morty said. “That’s my job. No offense to them, but it’s too bad.”

Thane thought about that for a minute, then shook his head and said, “No, we’ve got to at least try. If it comes down to it, we can give them Gus and I can help out my aunt, but I want you to try to cut a deal to save him, too.”

“We’re not in a great position to bargain here,” Morty said.

“That’s what you do, right?” Thane said. “Bargain.”

“Thane—”

“No, Morty,” Thane said, holding up a hand. “I mean it. They took my brother into their home. They’re not the greatest people in the world, but they treated him like family the best they know how. How can I not do the same thing? You’ve got to try to save them, too.”

“What if I try and I lose the deal you’ve got right now? You’d throw everything you’ve worked for away to save that…that…”

“Dork,” Ty said.

“That dork,” Morty said.

Thane just looked at him with his mouth set and the muscles in his jaw rippling.

Morty nodded and sighed. “Well, if there’s a deal to be had, you know I’ll get it. Let me have that agent’s number.”

“You going to call him now?” Thane asked.

“I work well at night, even in pajamas.”

Morty slipped on a pair of reading glasses, read the number, and dialed. He demanded a face-to-face meeting with Mike and Kline, saying that the alternative was for him to talk to a friend of his who wrote a sports column for the
Post
. He smiled as he wrote down the name and address of the place they’d meet and then hung up the phone.

“They hate the media worse than professional athletes do,” Morty said.

“I don’t hate the media,” Thane said.

“Give it time,” Morty said. “Anyway, let me try to get this worked out.”

“What should I do?” Thane asked.

“Don’t you have to get Ty back?” Morty asked. “You need to act normal. We don’t want to attract attention, especially from your uncle. Not yet.”

Thane put his arm on Ty’s shoulder and started to leave.

“Wait,” Ty said, turning to Morty. “I’ve got an idea.”

“What do you think this is, the science fair or something?” Morty asked.

“What if we give up Uncle Gus but save him, too?” Ty asked. “He could testify, but then they could let him go.”

“Problem there is the mob,” Morty said. “Uncle Gus is in on this deal. He’s their partner. If Thane testifies, that’s one thing. He’s just an innocent bystander. He’s not betraying anyone. But these people have a pretty rigid code. If your uncle sells these people down the river? They’ll kill him.”

Ty swallowed, then said, “Witness protection. What about that?”

Morty looked at Thane, who asked, “Why not?”