Authors: Jeffrey Allen

Popped Off (13 page)

BOOK: Popped Off

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I got back to my car, and my phone dinged immediately with a text. From Elliott.

Here is the number, it read, followed by a number. Just call it and leave a message. Don’t tell them you got it from me, though. And be careful. I don’t want my cousin to get hurt.

Elliott was truly afraid of these girls, or whoever they were. I knew I wasn’t taking them seriously, and I wondered if I needed to change that attitude. But it was hard to think that someone’s sorority rush chair might be so dangerous.

I called the number Elliott had texted me. A mechanical voice spoke to me over the line and told me to leave my name and number. No other information. I did as I was told.

My phone rang three minutes later, and I answered.

“Hi. This is Amber,” a bubbly voice said. “Returning your call.”

“Hi, Amber,” I said, taken aback. I knew it was supposed to be a college girl, but it was off-putting to actually hear one. “I’m not exactly sure what the procedure is here.”

“Hmmm. Well, tell me what you need.”

“I’d like to . . . use your services.”

She giggled. “That sounds mysterious!”

“Like I said, I’m new at this.”

“Well, I appreciate, like, your honesty,” she said. “The way that we do this normally is that we like to meet with you first. You know, just to get to, like, know you, okay?”

“That would be just fine. When and where?”

“You’re eager! Awesome!”

“I try.”

“Um, lemme see. I’m free in about an hour. How’s that work?”

“Just fine. Where?”

She named a coffee shop near the university. I told her I could find it.

“And I won’t be by myself, but you should be,” she said. “Know what I mean?”

“Got it,” I said. “I will be solo.”

“Awesome! I’ll be wearing a navy tank top and supercute denim shorts.”

“I’m sure I’ll be able to find you.”

“See you soon!”

The phone clicked off.

I found it hard to believe that someone who wore supercute shorts was also running some sort of sophisticated gambling and smuggling ring and holding customers hostage until they paid their debts, but I didn’t have anything else to go on. I was sure stranger things had happened, but at that moment, I couldn’t think of any. I didn’t really have a plan as to what I was going to do, so I was just planning on winging it.

SMU sits among the tony, old-money homes of North Dallas, with lots of ivy and red brick and white pillars. The school had lost its luster with the football scandal in the early eighties, but it was still viewed as a good regional school where lots of Dallas families were happy to send their kids and their money. The academics weren’t terribly rigorous, but it was still looked upon as a better alternative than some of the state schools.

I found a parking spot on a crowded street filled with small restaurants, shops, and a used bookstore. The coffee shop was on the corner, and I spotted Amber at a table on the patio. She did, indeed, have on the aforementioned tank top and supercute shorts. Her long blond hair was pulled to the side in a ponytail; her eyes were hidden behind massive mirrored sunglasses. Her legs were crossed, the top leg bouncing as she typed away on her phone.

The girl next to her wore the same mirrored shades but noticed me about the same time I noticed them. Her dark hair was pulled back in the same way as Amber’s, and there was more of it. She was chomping on gum. Her shorts were denim, but her tank top was red rather than navy. She set her pink rhinestone phone on the table and elbowed Amber as I walked to the table.

“Hi,” I said. “Amber?”

She stuck out her hand and smiled at me. “Hey. Yep, I’m Amber.”

We shook hands, and she pointed at the girl next to her. “This is Suzie.”

Suzie waved at me but didn’t smile.

“Sit, dude,” Amber said.

I sat.

Amber upped the wattage in her smile. “So . . .”

“So . . .”

“How can we help?” Amber asked.

“Like I said on the phone, I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here.”

Suzie adjusted her glasses and chomped harder on the gum. “How’d you find us?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Well, like, I’d rather you do.”

“Is that a make-or-break thing?” I said. “You need to know how I was referred or we can’t . . . do anything?”

Suzie started to say something, but Amber placed a hand on her arm. “We’re cool.”

Suzie pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.

“My friend just likes his privacy,” I said.

“Totally cool,” Amber said. “I get that.”

“Great.”

Amber glanced at Suzie and nodded. Suzie produced a sheet of paper and slid it across the table. I pulled it toward me and picked it up.

It was a tip sheet, as they call it in the gambling world. And nearly everything was on there. MLB, NFL, NBA, NASCAR. Whatever I wanted to bet on, it looked like they had it.

“Local on the other side,” Suzie mumbled.

“Local?”

She made a flipping motion. I turned the tip sheet over.

And there it was. Teams from communities all around Dallas. I recognized the names of many of the soccer teams in our Rose Petal Youth Soccer Association. In fact, my Mighty, Fightin’, Tiny Mermaids were favored by two in this Saturday’s game.

It was all I could do not to scream, “What the hell?”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s interesting.”

“Right?” Amber said with a big smile. “Now, a couple of things.”

“All right.”

“Are you a cop?”

“Nope.”

Suzie leaned into the table. “You said that fast.”

“It was an easy question.”

“Still.”

“I’m not a cop,” I said, looking back to Amber. “Next?”

“Have you done this kind of thing before?” Amber asked.

“No.”

“You’ll need an account.”

“An account?”

Suzie hesitated, then slid a card across the table to me. It listed a Web address.

“Go there,” Amber said. “It’ll walk you through the steps to put money in the account.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Are there . . . minimums? Or maximums?”

Amber nodded. “Yes. They are on the site.”

I reached a bit. “Because here’s the deal. I’ve recently. . . come into a bit of money.”

The girls exchanged glances, and Suzie chomped harder on her gum.

“It’s play money, you know?” I said. “And I don’t really wanna turn it over to the IRS in taxes, you know?”

Amber didn’t acknowledge my comment, but Suzie nodded.

“So I’d just as soon . . . play with as much of it as possible. If you follow.”

“Totes,” Amber said.

“Totes?”

“Totally. I totally follow,” she said seriously.

“Oh. Okay.”

The two girls leaned closer together and exchanged whispers. They both nodded, satisfied.

“Let’s stick to the rules right now,” Amber said. “But then we’ll see. We totally would love to help.”

“Great. Can I ask a question?”

“Totes,” Amber said, grinning.

I nodded at the tip sheet. “The local stuff. How do you go about setting those lines?”

“We’ve got a team,” Suzie said.

“A team?”

Her mouth twitched, letting me know she was irritated with my questions. “We scout the games.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you actually scout kids’ soccer games?”

“And baseball and basketball,” Amber said. “And football is huge. Huge.”

“And people bet on those games?”

Amber leaned forward and dropped her sunglasses down her nose, exposing bright green eyes. “Dude, it’s insane. Insane. Parents love to bet on their kids.”

On one hand, it seemed crazy to me. Kids’ sports were kids’ sports. You signed your son or daughter up to give them something to do, to let them channel their energy into something. Yes, some parents harbored false hopes about the possibilities and took it too seriously, and it ended badly. But it was hard to imagine them using their kids as an avenue to money.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I could picture the angry faces, the loud mouths, the body language filled with tension of parents in the stands. I had always thought it was because they wanted their kids to do well and were a bit over competitive. If they had money on the line, though . . . maybe it made a little more sense.

I was just trying to wrap my head around it.

Suzie stood. “We need to roll.”

Amber stood, too, and readjusted her sunglasses. “So we’re good?”

I stood as well. “Yeah. We’re good. I’m in. I’ll get set up today.”

“Sweet!” Amber squealed. “This is gonna be so much fun!”

Totes.

I dialed Elliott when I got back to my car. “I met with them.”

“You didn’t mention me, did you?”

“I didn’t mention you or Moises.”

He let out an audible sigh of relief. “Okay. What do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

I explained that I didn’t want to give anything away until I got them to trust me and I saw how it all worked. I didn’t want them to get scared off if I jumped on them about Moises right away.

“Hmmm,” Elliott said. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Does he have a time frame?” I asked. “Were there any sort of threats made about what they’d do to him if he didn’t get them their money?”

“No. Not that he’s told me.”

“So you have your part of the money?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t want to say.”

Elliott still didn’t trust me entirely, and I understood that.

“Okay. What about the trophies? Do you know where those are?”

“No. I’m trying to figure it out, but I honestly don’t know.”

“Would he tell you?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know. I’m not sure he’d say in front of the girls, and they are always there when he’s on the computer when I check in with him.”

“Try to find out. Or at least think about where they might be.”

“Okay. So this means you are going to help me?”

“Yeah, Elliott. I’m going to help you.”

I expected him to thank me or sigh audibly again, but I picked up on something else.

“Elliott?”

“What is your fee?”

“We’ll worry about it later.”

“But I’m worrying about it now,” he said. “I’ve given everything I have to my cousin. I have no money. And I’m probably going to prison. So . . . I don’t know how I will pay you.”

I wondered if any cousin I had would go to bat for me the way Elliott was for Moises. I didn’t think they would. Despite all the weirdness, I liked Elliott.

“We’ll work it out,” I said. “After we help Moises.”

“Your partner did not seem okay with that.”

“I will handle him. Don’t worry about it.”

“You are much larger than him.”

I smiled. “Yes. I am. I want you to do something for me, though.”

“All right.”

“Clarify with Moises exactly how much he owes.”

“I already told you.”

“I know. But clarify with him. Just to make sure.”

“Okay,” he said, confused. “I will do that.”

I told him I’d be in touch, and we hung up.

I knew Elliott didn’t understand why I wanted him to double-check on the money. That was fine. There were a lot of moving pieces to this case, and I was trying to keep them from getting away from me. The one thing that I still didn’t have a handle on was the money.

I wasn’t good at math, but nothing was adding up.

I picked up Carly at camp on Friday, and Julianne came home early so we could have an early dinner. It was the one night of the month where my responsibilities as dad and husband were suspended for an evening and I got to go play with the boys.

Dorky dad poker night.

I couldn’t remember exactly how it had started, but several years back, someone suggested that we should get a poker game together. After several months of saying that sounded like a great idea, one of the dads on the soccer team finally arranged it, sent out the e-mails, and it began.

Now, one night a month, we gathered together to make fools of ourselves. We brought crappy food, beer and booze, and twenty bucks and played stupid card games until the wee hours of the morning. We made fun of one another, talked about our kids and wives and jobs, and exchanged a little money. It was a great way to forget about the daily grind and be giant goof-offs for a while once a month.

It was also a chance for them to give me grief about staying home and not working.

We rotated homes each month, and this month we were at Tom Shearer’s. We all lived about ten minutes from one another, and more often than not, I’d walk to whoever’s house we were playing at, just in case I had too much to drink and couldn’t drive home. So I dropped my cookies and my giant bag of M&M’s into my bag with my six-pack of Shiner and walked the six blocks over to his house.

As usual, I was the last one to arrive, and they enjoyed the fact that even though I wasn’t rushing home from work, I still couldn’t get there on time.

The regulars were there. Tom, Paul, Mark, Raphael, Jeff, Rich, and Brandon. We had others that might show up occasionally, but generally it was the eight of us. We considered ourselves dedicated, hard-core players.

Who regularly forgot all the rules to the games we made up.

I was five bucks down and two beers in when Paul nodded in my direction. “So . . . what’s up with soccer?”

“We’ll probably lose this week. The Red Hens are tough.”

“Not what I mean. I mean with the association.”

“What do you mean?”

Tom dealt. “He’s being evasive.”

“I’m not being evasive.”

Tom nodded. “Yeah, you are.”

“I mean, what’s going on now that the association has no money?” Paul said.

I sighed and looked at my cards. They were awful, and I folded immediately when the bet came to me.

“I truly don’t know,” I said. “And that’s not being evasive.”

“That midget dude know anything?” Jeff asked, frowning at his cards.

“That guy freaks me out,” Rich muttered behind his cards.

Raphael tossed a chip into the pot. “Midgets freak me out. Period.”

“He’s all right,” I said. “I should invite him to this.”

The room went silent.

“Kidding,” I said.

“Midgets cheat,” Brandon said.

“That’s a fact,” Mark said.

“Shut up and play,” I said. “And I really don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m trying to fix it.”

“What does that mean?” Mark asked.

“It means I’m looking for the money.”

Paul shoved two chips to the middle of the table, and several of the guys groaned. “You still like the investigating gig?”

“It’s fine, yeah.”

“But it’s not, like, a job, right?” Tom said, snickering.

“It’s a job.”

They all laughed and rolled their eyes.

“I’m benching all your kids this weekend,” I promised. “All of them.”

The night continued on like that, and I managed to hang even for a while, losing a little and winning a little. The best part of the game was that no one ever went home broke. Unless they did something really stupid and bet way over their head. There was no limit on the game, and we prided ourselves on letting each other do something absolutely ridiculous if we chose to do so.

I was down a little and full of M&M’s and chicken wings when I threw it out there.

“You guys ever hear of betting on kids’ games?” I asked.

Tom eyed his cards. “What kind of kids’ games?”

“Soccer. Football. T-ball. Whatever.”

“I bet Jeff his kid would cry before kickoff one time,” Paul said.

“And you won,” Jeff said, shaking his head.

We laughed.

“Not what I mean,” I said. “I mean on the actual games.”

“Think I bet one of the guys I work with one time,” Brandon said. “Football game. We bet ice cream or something.”

I shook my head. “No. I mean real betting.”

They all made the kind of noises grown men make when they want to make another grown man feel stupid.

So it was like a third grade PE class.

After the noises and razzing settled down, Tom said “Yeah.”

I looked at him. “Yeah, what?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about it.”

“You’re full of crap,” Paul said, perusing his cards.

Tom shook his head. “Nope.”

“Tell me,” I said.

He stared at his cards for a moment, then laid them flat on the table. “I’m out, anyway.”

The others laid their cards down, listening.

“About a year ago,” he explained, “guy at the office asked who Emma’s team was playing. I had no clue. I never know that crap.”

They all nodded knowingly. They were nothing more than glorified chauffeurs to their families on the weekends. They went where their wives told them to go.

“So he pulls it up online, off the Web site or whatever,” he continued. “Pulls up the records . . . You know how they post everyone’s wins and losses and stuff?”

Everyone nodded again. They might not have known when the games were or who the opponents were, but they knew our win-loss record for every season we played. It was a man thing.

“And he says, ‘I can get you good odds on your kid’s team,’” Tom said matter-of-factly.

“Bull,” Jeff said, frowning.

Tom shook his head. “Swear. I laughed, thought he was kidding. But then he punched in some Web site, and up it came. All the games, odds, payouts. It was all right there.”

They murmured, exchanging looks of surprise and confusion.

“And you know me,” Tom said, suddenly looking uncomfortable and shifting in his chair. “I bet on everything.”

The rest of us were amateur gamblers at best, but Tom was the pro, if we had one. He traveled to Vegas, introduced new games, and rarely missed a monthly meeting. He knew how to gamble and how to bet, and he rarely went home in the red.

“You friggin’ bet on the Mermaids?” Paul asked, his jaw hanging open.

“Three-to-one odds,” Tom said, raising an eyebrow. “We were four and two at the time, facing a team that was oh and five.”

They all grumbled for a moment, before they uttered what I knew was coming.

“The Anteaters game,” they all said in unison.

Tom winced and nodded.

I remembered the game, too. The Anteaters were supposed to be one of those teams that everyone beat. They had new players every season, a new coach every season, and it usually added up to utter chaos. They rarely scored and rarely held teams under double digits.

But that fateful day everything aligned for them. Their kids came to play, and ours . . . did not. Girls were crying, didn’t want to run, got hurt, basically forgot how to play soccer. I got so frustrated, I benched our starters and finished the game with our reserves. It was tantamount to throwing in the towel, and we lost four to three.

“We lost four to three,” Tom said, right on cue. “Four to friggin’ three.”

“Because our
coach
decided to make a point,” Paul said, his eyes narrowing in my direction.

“Hey. Your kid finished the game.”

“His kid sucks,” Rich said.

The others nodded in agreement.

“Exactly!” Paul cried. “She’s awful. We had no chance when you put in my kid.”

I rolled my eyes.

“And I lost a hundred bucks,” Tom muttered.

All eyes moved to him.

“You bet a hundred bucks?” I said, incredulous. “On the Mermaids?”

“It was the Anteaters, for Christ’s sake!” Tom said. “It was a sure thing!”

“I woulda made the coach pay,” Raphael said. “Was his fault.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said.

“Three to one on our girls against the worst team known to man,” Tom said. “Don’t act like any of you wouldn’t have done the same.”

It was quiet.

“I would’ve bet more,” Jeff finally said. “It was the friggin’ Anteaters.”

They all roared.

We settled into another game before I asked Tom another question.

“Did you place the bet, or did your coworker?” I asked.

“He did. You had to open up an account, and I wasn’t comfortable doing that,” Tom said. “I had to draw a line somewhere.”

“
After
you bet on your kid’s soccer game,” Brandon reminded him.

“I gave him the money,” Tom said, ignoring him. “He placed the bet. When we lost . . . or when
you
lost . . . the money was drafted out of his account in, like, half an hour.” He shrugged. “It was all professional.”

“Other than the preschool soccer part,” Paul said.

“Other than that. But I promise you it was real, and I guarantee you if that site is still up and running, they are taking money on this weekend’s games.”

“You don’t remember the Web site?” I asked.

Tom shook his head. “Nah. He wouldn’t let me see it. He was protective of it. He wasn’t supposed to let anyone else use it.” He raised an eyebrow. “And he said that whoever ran the thing meant business. He wanted no part of messing with them. So he always had money in his account and always followed the rules.”

That sounded familiar.

“From the way he talked, there were lots of other dads doing it,” Tom said. “It almost seemed . . . normal.”

So there was my answer. It was happening around me, and I didn’t even know it. Sometimes, even though Rose Petal was small, it felt like I didn’t know a thing about it. And if it was going on in Rose Petal, chances were it was happening everywhere. Who knew how extensive the operation was?

Well, Amber and Suzie probably did.

“When you pulled the starters that day,” Tom said, shaking his head, “I nearly came over and strangled you.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You should’ve said something.”

He burst out laughing. “Don’t blow this. I’ve got a hundy on it.”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Well, I hope that teaches you a lesson, Deuce,” Paul said, shaking his head sadly.

“And what lesson is that?” I asked. “Find out who has money riding each weekend?”

“No,” Paul said, shaking his head again. “Every game matters. Even when they are five.”

“They were four then,” Tom said.

“So every game matters,” Paul said. “And one other thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“My kid is awful.”