"The how is simple," Anderson replied. "Zusskin kept the tape in his desk drawer at ACAA headquarters in Boise. The day after the hearing, I dropped by to ask him a few questions you'd raised about the transcript. He had the tape lying on his desk but stuck it in the drawer when he saw me look at it. He told me it had been taped over, but I figured he was lying or he wouldn't have bothered to hide it. So after your little speech about me the other day, I had a friend, a former secretary of mine who I had a thing with a long time ago, borrow it for me. She also made the transcript."
"And the why?" Karp asked.
Anderson looked at him for a long moment. "The why is a little more complicated."
The old man walked over to Karp's window, which faced north into the mountains. "Beautiful view, no wonder Coach O'Toole likes it here," he said, and took a deep breath.
"I believe in the system, Mr. Karp. For most of my adult life, I've abided by its rules and regulations and believed that it had the best interests of the student-athlete at heart. A lot of good people, who believed the way I did, have worked for that organization. Yes, there have been times when the association has been heavy-handed and arrogant. However, I looked at all the good things the association did and decided the good outweighed the bad."
The coach tapped on the window and turned back to face Karp. "But I've noticed a lot of changes with the association over the past ten, even fifteen years. It used to be about the student-athlete, now it's about the association and those in charge, about the power they wield and are unwilling to give up, even when they're wrong. It's a big corporation now, with overpaid executives telling coaches that they can't give a kid money to get home for Thanksgiving or they could be suspended… And in the end, they're just a bunch of hypocrites who along with the universities rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in television revenues and ticket sales off the backs of college athletes."
"What I don't get," Karp said, "is why they went after Mikey O'Toole so hard on such a flimsy case. Even if any of it was true, and it isn't, they didn't have enough incontrovertible evidence to nail him for a parking ticket."
"That I don't know," Anderson said. "I'm aware there's some animosity there, a holdover from Mikey's brother, or maybe what the kid said at the funeral about his brother being blackballed. They got their noses out of joint on that one. Or maybe they did believe Porter based on bad fruit not falling far from a rotten tree. But a lot of it was also driven by the university-it was clear they wanted him out-and by Zusskin, but you'd have to ask him."
The coach stuck out his hand. "But I mostly brought that to you because of what you said to me about my little talk on fair play when you were a kid. I must have given that speech ten thousand times, and I believe every bit of it. You reminded me of that."
Karp shook the coach's hand. "See you Monday in court?"
"I'd rather not take the stand, if that's what you mean," the coach said. "But if you need me to, I will."
"I'll see what I can do to avoid it."
25
the two guards on duty at the Unified Church of the Aryan People gatehouse peered through their gun slots into the moonlit forest across the highway, sighting along their AR15 rifles, hoping to get a shot at the intruder. A sudden yipping on the left followed by a howl on the right had them swinging their rifles back and forth like pendulums and spurred another argument.
"It's dogs," Andy Vonderborg stated authoritatively. "Or maybe coyotes. I've heared them before on my daddy's farm in Iowa."
"It was wolves, I tell ya," Ernie Hucker replied. "They're all over this part of Idaho. Rufus told me that, and he should know. Lived here all of his life."
Hucker kept lifting and dropping his goggles over his eyes. "I don't know about you, Andy, but these night-vision goggles give me the creeps the way they turn everything green in the moonlight, especially the snow under the trees." He put them back on, looked back through the sights on his rifle, and made little shooting noises. "Pow. Pow. Boy, I'd like to get me a wolf. I'm tired of shooting at paper targets. Maybe the race war will start soon and I can shoot me some niggers."
There was a howl again off to the left and they both swung their barrels in that direction, trigger fingers itching to snap off a couple of rounds. Then something landed in the gravel to the right of the gatehouse. They looked at the flash grenade just as it went off.
The effect through night-vision goggles was about the same as someone sticking white-hot pokers into their eyes. Howling, they ripped the goggles off.
"Ernie, help me, I can't see," Andy cried.
"I'm blind," Ernie shouted. "I can't help you, I'm blind, I tell ya!"
The young neo-Nazis screamed again, once, when unseen forces clubbed them to the ground and gagged them; and before they could say 'Heil, Hitler,' they had their wrists and ankles bound together with plastic wrist cords.
"Done," Tran whispered triumphantly. "You too slow. It's those big fat Indian hands; the fingers get in each other's way. Now you owe me a dollar."
"Like hell," Jojola whispered back. "You had a head start on me and your guy is skinnier. You have hands like a girl, and why are we whispering; we checked it out, there's no bad guys within a mile of here."
The conversation stopped momentarily when Vonderborg groaned. "That was too easy," Jojola said. "These guys are the master race?"
"Doesn't exactly leave me trembling in fear," Tran agreed, toeing Hucker to make sure he wasn't dead. The skinny youth whimpered. "Still want to shoot some niggers, tough guy? Maybe I shoot you." He looked at his companion with a grin. "Just like the old days. Shall I give the signal?"
"Be my guest," Jojola replied. "I'll get the gate."
Stepping back outside the gatehouse, Tran aimed a laser pointer up the road and gave two quick flashes. Immediately engines could be heard starting up and approaching at a rapid clip. Jojola opened the gate just as the dark forms of vehicles traveling without headlights turned onto the gravel road and came to a stop next to the gatehouse.
Marlene Ciampi stepped out of the lead Hummer along with Sheriff Steve Ireland and a deputy. The next two Hummers carried the eight members of the Payette County Sheriff's Department SWAT team, who deployed as soon as their vehicles slid to a stop off to the side and took off running down the road.
"A little dramatic, aren't they," Ireland said, grinning at Marlene.
"Like their boss," she noted.
"Oh, to be young again."
The next two cars, a regular police cruiser and a pickup truck, were driven by Payette County deputies but otherwise occupied by the 221B Baker Street Irregulars. A third truck, driven by Tom Warren, held the kennels of his bloodhounds, who began to bay until he quickly got out and persuaded them to stop with doggie treats.
The scientists got out of their vehicles and stood gazing around, wide-eyed with excitement. Somebody quietly told a joke, probably Reedy, and the others laughed.
Behind the lead cars were four more vehicles, a large black minivan, and a big six-wheeled truck towing a trailer on which sat what looked like a baby bulldozer. The truck driver and the occupants of the minivan stayed in their vehicles.
That was by agreement with the sheriff, a six-foot-five, 250-pound block of granite with an immense dark mustache, who now walked over to Jojola and Tran and nodded toward the gatehouse. "I take it you two reserve deputies served the warrant," he said.
"We tried, but they resisted, sir, and are currently incapacitated," Jojola replied. "I'm afraid we'll have to serve the warrant farther up the road at the main compound, sir."
"Well, thanks for trying," Ireland growled. "Knock off the sir and let's get moving. We're wasting all of this beautiful dark."