Private (Private 1)

I HAD BIG NEWS, but not necessarily good news, to tell.

It was dark when I pulled up to my uncle’s huge Italianate manse in Oakland. I parked at the top of the circular drive and trotted up the walkway.

Fred’s second wife, Lois, came to the door and was joined by my boisterous eleven-year-old cousin, Brian, who tackled my thighs like the All-American linebacker for Southern Cal he was sure he was going to be one day.

I rolled around and groaned in fake pain as Brian whooped and did a white-boy sack dance in the foyer. My little cousin Jackie stooped down and patted my head as if I were a golden retriever.

“Brian is a big fat brat, Jack. Are you hurt bad?”

I winked at her and told her I was okay, and she pulled my nose.

“Did you eat, Jack?” Uncle Fred asked, giving me a hand up, then throwing an arm across my shoulders.

“I wouldn’t say no to coffee,” I said.

“How about coffee and a slice of banana cream pie?”

“Sold.”

I grabbed a chair at the dining table, and the kids pelted me with questions—about the earthquake, if I’d nailed any bad guys lately, the fastest I’d ever driven my car.

As soon as I answered one question, they loaded up and fired again.

Normally, I’d have grabbed one kid under each arm, taken them into the media room, and watched a Spider-Man or a Batman movie, but tonight I was thinking of the time, how little of it was left before the Sunday schedule of games, one game in particular.

I caught my uncle’s eye and patted my breast pocket. He nodded and said to Lois, “I’m going to steal Jack for a few minutes.”

I followed Fred to his study, a beautiful mahogany-paneled room with two walls of trophy cases and a sixty-eight-inch flat-screen hung like a trophy over the fireplace.

“I’m going to drink,” Fred said.

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

Fred poured J&B over rocks, and I shoved the flash drive into his video setup. I gave him the desk chair so he could have the better angle. Fred Kreutzer was a complicated man. I couldn’t guess at how he would react to the unfortunate movie I had to show him.

His high-def screen was first-rate, a perfect match for our NASA-grade cameras.

We began to see images captured from outside the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, looking in.

A red light winked on a telephone.

A man in a suit, his back to the camera, picked up the receiver, punched in some numbers, and collected a message.

Behind him, Victor Spano took a Heineken out of the fridge and turned on the television.

I took the remote control off Fred’s desk and sped the action forward, then slowed it as the man in the suit turned his face for his close-up.

It was Anthony Marzullo, the third-generation boss of the Chicago Mob bearing his family name.

On camera, he said to Spano, “Get the door.”

Spano did, and two men walked in: Kenny Owen, referee and crew chief with twenty-five years of experience on the field, and Lance Richter, a sharp young line judge who clearly saw that his financial future lay in queering the game, not playing by the rules.

My uncle Fred drew in a breath, then let out a string of curses.

Onscreen, hands were shaken, and the refs filled seats opposite a man who had taken on the heretofore impossible task of corrupting modern-day pro football.