someone who shouldn't be betting anyway and whose information on injuries and inside stuff is better than ours.'
'And you decide to take Skar down?'
A waiter came into the room and cleared the table. Both men declined the offer of key lime pie. Kingsley's appetite was whetted, but not for dessert.
'I buy some insurance,' LaBarca said, when the waiter had left. 'When the bets get even bigger, my guy tells the Denver bookie to have Skar deal directly with him. We record the calls, then when Skar wins a bet, I have a guy video the hand-to-hand transfer of money. The video's so good you can see Ben Franklin's pictures on the bills. So what I'm saying is that I got Mike Skarcynski's pecker in my pocket.'
'He's agreed to…' Kingsley couldn't even bring himself to say it. The possibilities sent waves of excitement through him like the torrent of crude oil in massive strike.
'I convinced him that it's better to lose one Super Bowl,' LaBarca said, and get to play another six or seven years, than to be disgraced and unemployed for the rest of his life.'
'Then it's a lock,' Kingsley said.
'That's what I been telling you.'
'I should get some more money down on the game,' Kingsley said aloud, but more to himself than to LaBarca.
'Every last cent you got,' Vinnie LaBarca said.
Later that night, the paperwork with Bobby Gallagher was completed. Kingsley laid out 5.5 million bucks without putting up a dime. He escrowed two per cent of the team's stock, which covered the bet because the team was worth far more than $275 million, indicated by the transaction. In reality, there was no market for a minority interest in the team, so the stock was essentially worthless until the team was sold, and Kingsley had no plans to sell it.
Even if he lost the bet and the two per cent, a family trust would still own ninety-eight per cent. On Christine's thirty-eighth birthday, just 10 days away, 49 per cent of the stock now in trust would go outright to her. The Kingsley family would control ninety-eight per cent of the stock, no matter what, and a two per cent minority shareholder could not expect dividends, profits, or even free popcorn, as long as Martin Kingsley was running the show. He had snookered Robert Gallagher again, win or lose.
But I'm not going to lose, Kingsley thought. He would win and get rid of both burrs under his saddle. Let Houston Tyler take his money and crawl into the night to die. Kingsley didn't want to see his deformed face again. But Bobby Gallagher was something else again. Kingsley wanted Bobby there when the clock ticked down to zero, when every drop of blood was drained from him. There is nothing quite so satisfying, Kingsley thought, as looking into the eyes of a man you have vanquished.
30
' What we've got here, Your Honor, is a jurisdictional dispute,' J.B. (Jailbreak) Jones was saying in his best basso profundo voice. 'While the Texas court clearly retains jurisdiction over all matters pertaining to custody and visitation of the minor child, Mr. Gallagher has tried an end run, or a flea flicker if you will, in a bald-faced attempt to hornswoggle my client and rustle this case from Texas to Florida. Well, Your Honor, as we say back home, that dog won't hunt.'
Christine watched her lawyer huff and puff and spout a gusher of Texas-sized cliches, all the while embellishing his drawl with flourishes and curlicues as he tended to do whenever in front of a judge or jury. They were in the chambers of the Honorable Seymour Gerstein in the Miami-Dade County Courthouse as Christine pressed her case to have Scott returned to her care and control.
Bobby sat across from her at the conference table, looking mournfully like a hound that had been banned from the house. Next to him sat his lawyer, an attractive Hispanic woman, and Christine couldn't help but wonder if there was anything going on between them. From time to time, when Bobby became agitated, the lawyer patted him gently on the arm, and Christine felt a pang of jealousy.
Oh, damn you, Bobby Gallagher! Why can't I get you out of my mind?
Carrying Christine's spear into battle was Jailbreak Jones, a man whose enormous girth nearly matched his grandiose ego. He wore a brown plaid three-piece suit, incongruously with a Western string tie. Seated at the conference table, just back from the lunch recess, Jailbreak's stomach threatened to burst the buttons of his vest. The scalp of his bald head was pink, as were his jowly cheeks. A brown Stetson sat on the table next to him.
As Jailbreak bellowed in indignation at the judge, Christine reflected on just how much she loathed being here. She didn't want to hurt Bobby any more than she already had.
Poor, misguided Bobby. I know you love our son, and you think you're the best Dad to ever place a new ball glove in your son's crib. But Daddy is right. You'll hold Scott back.
All she wanted was what was best for her son. Let him maximize his potential. Not that she didn't have second thoughts about shipping her son off to Berkshire Prep. The separation would be heart-wrenching, but hadn't her own father sent her to boarding school after her mother died? She had cried at the airport the first time she made the Dallas-to-Boston trip, but never again. The experience had made her stronger, more self reliant. Or was she just rationalizing now? Did it make this decision easier? Would she feel less guilty working weekends or coming home at nine p.m. if Scott were half the continent away instead of waiting for her latest dinner meeting to end? She didn't know.
Life was growing more difficult every day. Not her work life. That was challenging, of course, but manageable. You set goals and then surpassed them, a straight ascending line on a flow chart from where you are to where you want to be. There were no straight lines, however, in relationships. Relationships-man and woman, mother and son-were complex, contradictory, and constantly changing. There were no road maps to lead the way.
The litigation had gotten out of hand. It began as a dispute over Scott's schooling, but her father and her lawyer had shaped it into an all-out assault on Bobby, a mechanism for restricting his time with Scott. She'd argued with them, but in the end, the two men wore her down.
'Robert has no one to blame but himself,' her father told her. 'He likes to think he's Samson tearing down the Philistines' temple, but he's just a horse's ass crapping in his own stall.'
There was nothing they wouldn't do to defeat Bobby and disgrace him. Her father waged what he called a two-front war, fighting over Scott and trying to keep Bobby from getting back his license to practice law. A private investigator had snooped in Bobby's trash, followed him to the laundry, and eavesdropped on his cellular calls.
'If I have to destroy that self-righteous prick to save my grandson, I will,' her father told her.
It had become a battle between the two men for control of her precious child. She just wanted it to end.
Now she was listening to Jailbreak Jones proclaim that Bobby was a low-life scumbag who should be thankful that his ex-wife and father-in-law were willing to take on all parental responsibilities. 'Alternatively, Your Honor, if this Court has jurisdiction,' he sang out, 'we will demonstrate on the merits that Robert C. Gallagher, a disbarred lawyer, a criminal who earns his living through illicit means, a malcontent and a miscreant, is an unfit parent, and that, while he may be entitled to certain visitation with the minor child, he should no longer enjoy the benefits of split custody, joint custody, or any control whatsoever of the boy's activities.'
She looked across the table and saw the hurt in Bobby's eyes.
I'm sorry, Bobby. I'm sorry for everything.
'We have photographs of Mr. Gallagher at the racetrack in the company of known gamblers,' Jones rumbled on, 'some with extensive criminal records. And who does this man drag along to race tracks, taverns, gambling dens and pool halls? The minor child! The man is not a father. The man is a disease!'
Pool halls? For God's sake, Scott loves to play pool with his Dad.
Bobby's face turned red and he fidgeted in his chair. Christine closed her eyes and tried not to listen to her own lawyer, tried to wish herself into another time and another place. The anguish engulfed her. Part of her wished
