I spoke into an intercom, said my name, a code number, and that Fred Kreutzer had sent me. A voice told me to hang on, he’d be right down.
A minute later, a wiry man with dark skin and a face shaped like a weasel’s opened the gate and said, “Barney Sapok. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Morgan.”
I followed Sapok up the stairs to the third floor, where he opened a freshly painted door and showed me into a space filled with cubicles, about twenty of them, each occupied by a man or woman with a telephone headset, a scratch pad, and a computer.
They were taking bets.
The place looked like a police command center or a telemarketing office, but in fact it was a bookmaking operation that brought in tens of millions a year. Just this branch.
Sports wagering is illegal in every state but Nevada. As a result, it’s become a cash cow for organized crime. Barney Sapok was either a family associate or he was forking over a substantial amount of money to the Mob for collection and enforcement and writing it off as a cost of doing business.
Sapok’s office was in a corner, overlooking the street. He said, “Mr. Kreutzer told me to trust you. He told me to show you some things. But nothing can leave this office.”
“I understand,” I said.
He opened a drawer, removed a spreadsheet from a file, and put it on his desk.
“I pulled this data off the encrypted network. Bettors have code names and numbers, so I spent last night decoding it for you.”
“I’m sure that will help, Barney. Thank you.”
I dragged a chair up to the desk and began to scan the list. Familiar names jumped out at me immediately, players on a dozen teams in both leagues.
“These are their bets over the past year,” Sapok said, running his finger down the columns under the names. “Notice something?” he asked.
“I see some fifty-grand bets on a single game.”
“Anything else?”
“None of the players are betting on their games.”
Sapok nodded. “If the players are putting in a fix, I don’t know about it.” He dropped the spreadsheet into a bucket of water he kept next to his desk.
The spreadsheet and all other documents in the bookie’s office were printed on rice paper. I watched the pages and the ink that was printed on them dissolve in the water.
Sapok asked, “Mr. Kreutzer is your uncle? Is that right?”
I nodded. “More like a father, actually.”
“There’s something else he thought you should see. We’ve got a certain client who’s into us for over six hundred thousand dollars. He’s in big trouble. Could have a fatal outcome.”
“A football player?” I asked.
Sapok wrote block letters on a pad of paper, turned the pad so I could read it, then ripped off the top page, which followed the spreadsheet into the bucket of water.
The rice paper dissolved, but the afterimage of those block letters hung in front of my eyes.
Sapok had written down my brother’s name.
Tom Morgan Jr.
Tommy owed over $600,000 to the Mob.
Chapter 32
I thanked Barney Sapok and left his place of business in a fury. I wasn’t mad at Sapok. That guy was trying to help by telling me about Tommy’s $600,000 debt. Clearly, Uncle Fred wanted me to know that Tommy was in trouble, and that he couldn’t help Tommy himself.
Fred and Tommy hadn’t spoken in a dozen years. I’d never known what their fight was about, but Tommy held grudges and he had a big one against Uncle Fred. I guessed that Fred had tried to stop Tom from getting into a jam like the one he was in now, and of course my brother had resented it.
I was enraged at Tommy and I was disgusted with him. And I didn’t know what to do next.
Through Tommy, I’d become familiar with the cycle of the sickness. Gamblers gamble for the rush. It goes from compulsion to addiction. They win and place another bet. They lose, which is far more likely, and the elation turns to deflation, and they bet again to cover the loss. Either way, they keep betting.
Small losses go onto their tab with their bookie. If the debt isn’t paid, the Mob’s loan sharks sometimes move in. The interest on the loan, the vigorish, is obscenely high and it’s due weekly. Too often, the bettor can’t gather enough money to pay back the principal, and when he falls behind on the vig, the threats start, and then the beatings. The next thing he knows, a Mob guy owns his business.
Tommy had a business. He was doing okay. But a weekly interest charge of 20 percent on a $600,000 loan? That was $12,000 a week before he ever put a dent in the principal.
Had Tommy borrowed against his house? His business? Was he hanging over the abyss by his fingertips, or was he already falling into a bottomless hole? Sapok had said the outcome could be fatal.
I ran up the winding stairway to my office and told Colleen that I couldn’t be interrupted.
I spent a couple of hours making calls. And then I phoned Tommy at his office.
I told his assistant, “Don’t give me any bull, Katherine. Put him on.”
Tommy’s voice came over the line. He sounded reluctant and irritated, but he agreed to have lunch with me at one o’clock.
Chapter 33
Tommy, who had always been a control freak, picked the restaurant where we would meet. Crustacean is a popular Euro-Vietnamese place on Santa Monica, a few doors down from his office.
I told him I’d be there in twenty minutes, and twenty minutes later on the nose, I walked through the front door.
I gave my name to the hostess, who walked me across the glass-covered stream of live koi and settled me with a menu in “Mr. Tommy’s booth” near the fountain.
I studied the menu, and when I looked up again, my brother was zigzagging across the floor, shaking hands along the way as if he were campaigning for office.
If anything was important in Beverly Hills, it was appearances, and Tommy was doing a fine job of keeping up his.
“Bro,” he said, arriving at the table. I stood. We hugged warily. He clapped me on the back.
“How’s it going?” I said.
“Fantastic,” Tommy said, sliding into the booth. “I can’t stay long. I’ll order.”
The waitress came over, cocked her hip, noted that we were identical twins, and flirted with Tommy. She took our lunch order from the “secret kitchen.” Throughout it all, I was pacing in my mind, trying to figure out how best to approach Tommy with what I knew.
He said, “I hear your friend Cushman is looking good for killing his wife.”
“He didn’t do it.”
“How much you want to bet?” he said.
Tommy’s business, Private Security, was an agency that placed bodyguards with celebrities and businesspeople who were looking for protection or status or both. Tommy had benefited from Dad’s contacts a lot more than I had. Tommy looked around the room, said, “As big a shit as Dad was, it would have taken us much longer to make it without him.”
“So, you’re really doing okay, Tommy? That’s good to hear.”
