Читать книгу Personal Foul - Tim Donaghy - Страница 11

CHAPTER 3

Down the Rabbit Hole

“Hi, my name is Tim, and I’m a compulsive gambler.I placed my last bet on March 18, 2007.”

That’s how new members introduce themselves at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. It’s how I did it. Obviously, I didn’t just wake up one morning and realize I was a gambling addict. No, that discovery took some time. So how does a nice Catholic boy from suburban Philadelphia end up as the poster child for illegal sports gambling in America? That’s a great question.

Jack Concannon and I have known each other for a long time. During our teenage years, he was a star on the Monsignor Bonner High School basketball team in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Bonner was a big rival of my school, and we got to know each other on a casual basis. We never really hung out together; Jack was a couple of years older than me. I would see him at basketball games and around town on occasion, but that’s about it.

At 6’5”, Jack had an impressive game and led the Bonner team to the Philadelphia Catholic League Championship in 1983 and 1984. Jack was all about defense, a rugged guy who completely dominated weaker opponents. He always struck me as the kind of guy who would sink his teeth into something, or someone, and never let go. He just didn’t quit; a real determined, win-at-all-costs competitor.

Beneath the ruthless exterior, Jack was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. We reconnected in the late 1990s on a golf course, of all places. My wife and I became members of Radley Run Country Club in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1998. I had been working in the NBA for four years and the pay was getting pretty good. I always loved golf and liked the idea of belonging to a private and exclusive club. Enter Jack Concannon. Jack was also a country-clubber just down the road from Radley Run. It was common for area clubs to invite each other to golf tournaments and social gatherings, and as it turned out a mutual friend and fellow member invited Jack to play with us. I hadn’t seen him in several years, but he still looked the same, with one exception. Now in his midthirties, he had distinctive salt-and-pepper hair that complemented his boyish looks. We hit it off right away and reminisced about the good old days in high school. Jack had heard about my job in the NBA and said everyone back home was very proud of me. He had married his high school sweetheart, Ann, and they had two girls and a boy. By that time, Kim and I were a happily married couple with three girls of our own and a fourth on the way.

It was amazing how much we had in common. Jack owned a successful insurance agency and was doing well financially. He was a devoted family man still living near his Pennsylvania hometown. Jack was a huge sports fan and an avid golfer—a nouveau country club social climber. He was Catholic, with a middle-class upbringing and a real soft spot for the hometown team. All just like me. And I was about to find out that I would soon share one of Jack’s greatest passions: gambling.

While playing golf that first day, we had a blast and became fast friends. Jack and I played every chance we could, talked on the phone regularly, and even attended parties and family functions together with our wives. Kim and Ann became friends and our kids played together—the whole thing was like Philadelphia’s version of Leave It to Beaver.

Since Jack owned his own business, he could play golf anytime he felt the itch—and he was always itching for a game. I had summers off, so I was always ready to go. We became so close that whenever he called on the phone and my wife answered, she would sarcastically say, “Tim, your girlfriend is on the phone.”

Jack drove a big black Mercedes-Benz with a trunk full of Polo, Izod, and Tommy Hilfiger golf shirts. I used to call him “Superman” because he would fly into the country club parking lot, change his clothes out of the trunk of his car, play a fast round of golf, down a few beers, play some cards, change back into his work clothes, and still be home in time for dinner with June, Wally, and the Beaver.

Naturally, the golf course was where my gambling adventure with Jack began. We started out with modest wagers of $20 per hole and gradually got carried away to the tune of $200 or $300 per hole. It was exciting and a bit nerve-racking the first few times I stood over a $2,000 putt on the 18^th hole, but I quickly realized that I had a steady hand under pressure and didn’t rattle easily. After all, what could be more pressure-packed than reffing an NBA playoff game with the score tied and 1.8 seconds left in regulation? No sir, I didn’t rattle easily, and the action was a thrill.

After 18 holes of golf, it was off to the clubhouse for a shower, dinner, and a friendly game of blackjack. The country club set is always flush with cash—guys we used to call “heavy pockets.” The stakes were high and the bourbon smooth, just the way Jack and I liked it. Talk about Butch and Sundance! We were in our element and loving every minute of it; two downtown guys rubbing elbows with the uptown crowd and draining their pockets dry, at least most of the time. Winning or losing $5,000 or $10,000 at cards was par for the course. The lawyers, bankers, and traders never batted an eye. They just casually pulled a diamond-studded money clip out of their pocket and counted off the C-notes, one at a time. They’d mutter, “One, two, three, four, five,” with little or no emotion. Jack and I were a little less polished. “And a one, and a two, and a three,” speaking loudly in our best approximation of Lawrence Welk.

One of the big events at Radley Run was the Member-Guest Golf Tournament. Held every summer, each participating member invited a nonmember to join him in a two-man best-ball competition. The golf was fun and the cash prizes were sizeable. But it wasn’t until after dinner was served, the prizes had been awarded, and the three-piece jazz ensemble had played its last set that Jack and I got down to business. The real action was on a table in the back parlor. And yes, the room was smoke-filled and players swished their brandy in expensive snifters. For Jack and me, however, it was a couple of longnecks and a shot of Jack Daniels.

I walked up to the table that night with $10,000 in my pocket and a firm understanding that I would either double or triple my wad or lose it all. This wasn’t a penny-ante card game with the in-laws around the kitchen table on Christmas Eve. No, this was all about the thrill of laying our hard-earned money on the table and rolling the dice, so to speak. We took turns dealing—a very risky venture. A player loses only once per hand, while the dealer can lose as many hands as there are players in the game. Of course, the same principle applies to winning hands. Lots of upside, lots of downside, but I guess that’s why they call it gambling.

Lady Luck was fickle that evening, and I walked out of the club with two golf tees and some lint in my pocket. Sitting alone in my car, tired from the long day and emotionally drained from the nonstop action upstairs, all I could think about was finding another game the next day. Ten thousand dollars gone, just like that. The funny thing is it took me years to realize that it was never really about the money—it was about the risk, the adrenaline, the juice of standing over that four-foot putt or flipping an ace or a king over someone’s two queens. That’s what it was about for us, and Jack and I couldn’t get enough. On to Atlantic City!

Atlantic City, New Jersey, is a quick 80-minute drive from Philadelphia on an expressway paved with hope and lined with greed. Jack and his best buddies had been making the trip for years—sometimes two or three times a week—just to try their luck at the tables. Jack eventually invited me along, and I walked into a world that blew me away.

Jack’s favorite casino was the Borgata, a big, flashy monument to the excesses of the fast life. Everyone was there: the blue hairs playing bingo and nickel slots, the poor folks betting their last dime, and the high rollers indiscriminately dropping thousands in exchange for being treated like royalty by the casino. Jack’s crew fell into the last category. The casino rolled out the red carpet for Jack, giving him complimentary food, drinks, show tickets, luxury suites, and limos. He knew all the names of the dealers and the pit bosses, and they knew his. He strolled in like he owned the joint, waving to employees as if they were lifelong friends. Of course, we were all just playing a big game, but it was intoxicating and I couldn’t wait to breathe it in.

Jack had his favorite table, his favorite dealer, and his favorite seat—it was a ritual he followed religiously. The game was always blackjack and the stakes were usually high. The minimum bet was $100, the maximum bet was $5,000, and I never saw Jack bet the minimum. Our group was loud and we often attracted a large flock of onlookers. After winning a big hand on a big bet we would all scream and curse for joy, and the gathering crowd would multiply. Our table became the real show on the Boardwalk, not the transvestite cross-dresser singing Bee Gees songs in the lounge or the washed-up ’60s folk singer asking, “How many roads must a man walk down, before he knows he’s a man?” Let me tell you, the answer wasn’t blowing in the wind; it was staring Jack and me directly in the face. Should he split those 8s or double-down on a 9 when the dealer was showing a 6? You bet he should! After all, we didn’t come for the buffet; we came to play!

My junkets to Atlantic City with Jack weren’t limited to the summer off-season months. There were occasions when I was working a game on the West Coast and was scheduled to fly home the following morning for a few days off. Instead, I would finish the game and grab a taxi to the airport to catch a red-eye flight to Philly, usually arriving around 6:00 AM. As I strolled off the plane, eyes bleary from the restless flight, my good pal Jack was there to greet me with a devilish grin on his face. “Let’s go, T.D.!” he’d say. “Time’s a wasting and I’m feeling lucky!” Like a shot of black coffee on a cold Philadelphia winter morning, I immediately perked up and was ready to roll. I could already hear the sounds of the casino beckoning me to the Jersey shore for another roller-coaster ride of emotions. An hour and a half later and we would be sitting at the blackjack table, waiting for that ace to fall and our luck to turn.

At the same time, Kim was anxiously expecting me to pull into the driveway at 5:00 PM. Since I was on the road most of the month, living out of a suitcase in hotels across the country, Kim treated our rare evenings together as though it was our first date. My short stops at home were like long layovers in an airport during a winter storm. She probably thought I was still on an airplane, eating a bag of stale pretzels and sipping a ginger ale. But I wasn’t. I was in Atlantic City, drinking beer and playing cards for hours with our good family friend, Jack Concannon. That was where the lies began: secret trips to the casino when I should have been home with Kim and our girls. I always felt guilty, but not guilty enough and not for very long. I had an itch to scratch and no matter how hard I scratched, the itch just wouldn’t go away. I didn’t want it to.

Those trips all ended the same way. With our pockets full or our pockets empty, we jumped in the car late in the afternoon and arrived back in Philly just in time. As I walked into the house, Kim would give me a big hug and the girls would scream, “Daddy’s home!”

“How was your trip, honey?” she’d ask sympathetically.

“It was fine,” I would reply. “Just like all the others.”

I was back home, insulated from the world, protected by my family, and sheltered from my demons. Yeah, right—who was I kidding?

During the NBA season, I was away from home for 26 days of the month. Including the playoffs, I was a traveling nomad for eight to nine months of the year. But whether I was home for a three- or four-day break or the entire summer, gambling had begun to consume my life. The secret trips to the casino became as regular as getting a haircut, gassing up the car, or going to church. When the weather permitted, I played golf all day and cards all night. I invited gambling into my house along with Jack and some buddies for a night of blackjack in my swank subterranean game room. My daughters would take turns sitting on my lap while I dealt cards to the guys. I should have been upstairs, reading Dr. Seuss to the girls until they drifted off to sleep. But no, I was teaching them how to signal for another card by tapping the table or how to stay by waving off the dealer. It was so wrong, but I couldn’t walk away. I justified my behavior in so many ridiculous and silly ways. I actually convinced myself that we were spending quality time together, but nothing could be further from the truth. I was becoming emotionally bankrupt, willing to risk it all for one more crack at the cards. Little did I know that I was just getting started.

I suppose the highlight (or lowlight) of my casino escapades with Jack and the boys came on a beautiful summer day in—where else?—Atlantic City. I told Kim we were playing golf and would be home by 6:00 PM. She told me not to be late, as she would have dinner on the table at 6:00 sharp. But we never played golf that day. Instead, we headed straight for the Borgata, where a legend was about to be born.

Jack and I would regularly play golf with a friend of ours I’ll call George, who, like Jack, owned a company and was master of his schedule, free to jump in the car and head for the shore anytime he liked. George had both of his hips replaced during the previous couple of years and walked with a noticeable limp. Walking down the fairway or strolling through the Borgata, George looked like a toddler in diapers taking his first few steps.

As usual, our game was blackjack, and George wasted no time betting big—at times he was playing three hands of $5,000 or $6,000 apiece—and he was drunk off his ass. With each winning hand, another beer went down and we all laughed like hell. A crowd began to gather and before it was over they were 10 rows deep. He was like a cartoon character, shouting, roaring, and cursing every time the dealer had to pay.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Pay the boys, Mr. Banker!” he cackled. The joint was jumping and people were taking notice, and I’m not just referring to the pretty cocktail waitresses trolling for tips. The floor bosses didn’t think it was so funny, especially when George went up $150,000 for the day. I had just finished reading Bringing Down the House, the story of a group of MIT students who took the casinos for millions by counting cards. When the casinos got wind of their scam, the kids were escorted to a back room and roughed up.

So there I was, watching the whole thing unfold when I noticed the pit bosses whispering to each other. But George kept winning.

“How do you like me now, banker boy?” George barked.

Okay, okay, settle down big guy, I was thinking to myself. But there was no stopping him. As George’s stack of chips grew, he stuffed them into his pockets, giddy as a schoolboy who had just copped his first feel. He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling cameras, extending his arms and pulling back his sleeves as if to say, “Nothing up here, boys!” He was actually taunting these people.

One pit boss became two, two became three…well, you get the picture. Guys with names like Vincent, Salvatore, and Dominic were staring at us, arms folded across their chests, and I was starting to sweat. I wasn’t even playing, but I smelled trouble. Just then, a stout little man with a round face and a Jimmy Durante nose walked right up to me. Damn it, why me? Did I have “NBA REF IN DEEP SHIT” written on my forehead?

“You look familiar,” he casually said while thoroughly looking me over. “Where are you from? Would you like to fill out an information card?” I pretended that my cell phone was ringing and promptly excused myself.

George’s lucky streak continued and he tossed me a $1,000 chip. I played the next hand and won. By that time it might as well have been Monopoly money. Nothing was real anymore, except the laughs and the kick I was getting from the adrenaline rush. We were eight guys at the table—eight guys with $1,000 chips up to their chins.

“Deal the cards, mister,” I cracked. “I’ve gotta be home by six or my wife will have my ass.”

With $150,000 in his pockets, George’s day was through. We shut it down and headed straight for the dining room, arms around each other’s shoulders. Supper was a veritable orgy of food and drink. Appetizers of fried calamari, oysters, clams on the half-shell, and stuffed mushroom caps were followed by fresh Brazilian lobster tails, jumbo prawns from northern California, and 16-ounce king-cut prime ribs, medium rare. The dinner bill was over $3,000 for the eight of us—compliments of the very good luck of our good friend George. We were all stuffed, collectively a modern-day tribute to the gluttony and excess of Roman soldiers on holiday in some faraway conquered land.

We crawled to our cars and drove back to Philly reliving the moments of glory ad nauseam. I pulled up to my house with 10 minutes to spare and went inside.

“How was the golf?” Kim asked.

“Good, I really kicked Jack’s ass, but George was unbelievable. He couldn’t lose,” I replied.

“Hope you’re hungry, I made your favorite: Tuna Helper,” Kim boasted.

I sat down for dinner that night with two things on my mind. First, that I couldn’t swallow another bite if my life depended on it. Second, I wondered if I could get out of the house the next day and coax the boys into another road trip. Can you believe that? I hadn’t even come down from that day’s high and I was already looking for more action. Unbelievable!

On a warm day in October of 2002, Jack and I were sitting around the clubhouse at Radley Run Golf Course after playing a big-money match against a couple of friends. It was football season and we were talking about an acquaintance of ours named Pete Ruggieri. Ruggieri had attended high school with Jack and still lived in the Philadelphia suburbs. Back in those days, he was a big football star for Bonner, a nose guard with the tenacity of a pit bull. At 5’7” and 250 pounds with orange-red hair, he definitely stood out in any crowd. Ruggieri was married with four kids, but didn’t have a job—at least not a 9-to-5 job. Pete Ruggieri was a professional gambler; that’s how he supported himself and his family. It was working out quite well for him, though. He had a nice house in a nice neighborhood and a summer home at the Jersey Shore.

Like the rest of us, Ruggieri loved to play golf, and he would frequently join us for a round of 18 holes. Jack and Pete had a much closer friendship than Jack and I did. They both belonged to the same country club and had remained friends since high school.

When we played on Fridays, Pete was constantly on his cell phone, always excusing himself to take a “business call.” I asked Jack about all the calls and that’s when he told me that Pete was a professional gambler, a bookie—and a good one at that. I knew that Jack liked to bet on college and pro football—he was always looking at the point spreads in the newspaper. He told me he would bet 15 college games on Thursday and Saturday and another 15 NFL games on Sunday.

“I get the picks from Pete,” he told me. “What do you say we go in together as partners?”

My first thought was my contract with the NBA. I was not supposed to gamble, plain and simple. I never really looked at a friendly golf wager or a trip to the casino as a big deal, but illegal sports betting was a totally different can of worms. But then I started thinking—or should I say, rationalizing: Shit, everyone on the staff bets. If gambling was so wrong, why were NBA referees regularly betting on NCAA football pools and frequenting casinos around the country? The behavior of most NBA referees was the opposite of what the league expected of us, so I convinced myself there must be nothing wrong with a little betting. I thought back to our preseason meetings where some 50 NBA refs played a high-stakes game of Liar’s Poker in a hotel bar. We all sat around the table, watching and laughing as hundreds of dollars passed hands.

Yes, Jack’s invitation was too good to pass up. Like a pot smoker moving up to cocaine, I was making a dangerous leap to the sleazy world of sports betting. The ride would be fast and exhilarating, and ultimately it would cost me everything. But that wasn’t on my mind back then. No sir, I was having the time of my life, and the odds appeared to be in my favor.

We did well that first weekend. My share of the winnings was $1,100, and I remember saying to Jack, “This is unbelievable! It’s easy money!” I was hooked, and from that moment on we bet games every weekend. In addition to football, we expanded our partnership to include baseball and hockey. We didn’t make money every week; our fortunes went up and down like a casino elevator shuttling its patrons back and forth from the slots to the cots.

I knew Jack was getting the picks from Pete—that was understood. But Pete was never supposed to know that I was placing bets along with Jack. I was a silent partner; I had too much at stake to go around telling anyone that I was a big sports bettor. I trusted Jack with my life and never imagined he would be flapping his jaw about me. Well, he wasn’t—at least not until much later when we took another huge leap.

The gambling got so infectious that we always found a justification for continuing, even when we were getting killed. If Pete gave us bad picks on three or four consecutive games, I would tell Jack, “He’s not gonna lose five in a row. Let’s triple the next bet.” We would bump the bet up to $5,000 on the game, watching every play on television as if our lives depended on it. And wouldn’t you know it, we would win and recoup our previous losses. When Pete was hot, he was smoking! The money came pouring in so fast that I could barely keep up. We had no idea what system Pete was using, and we didn’t care. Jack and I joked that it might have been, “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

For the next three and a half years, I was consumed with gambling. I made bets every day. Even at home, I was preoccupied with betting: blackjack games in my card room, analyzing the betting lines in various newspapers, or checking game scores on television and on my laptop. Heck, if the kids couldn’t agree on whose turn it was to walk the dog, we rolled dice to pick a loser. I had a short fuse in those days, pacing around like an alley cat in heat, waiting for the games to go final, calculating wins and losses in my mind. On weekends, Jack and I would be on the phone 10 to 20 times a day, sharing updates and planning our next move. Kim would say that I seemed on edge. If she had only known the kind of money—our money—I was playing around with. On edge? Baby, I was over the edge, staring into the black abyss, clinging to the magic powers of a short fat guy with red hair and hoping, always hoping, for a big score.

When we won, Jack would deliver my share before we teed off for a round of golf or over a plate of linguini in clam sauce at some cheap diner. He would give me a wad of bills under the table or wrapped in a linen napk in—sometimes as much as $5,000 or $10,000. On one occasion I met him at Philadelphia International Airport, where I was catching a flight to the West Coast to ref a game. He handed me $6,000 in twenties and fifties and I thought, How will I get this through security? I started stuffing wads of cash into my socks and underwear and quietly passed by the TSA agents with a grin on my face and a sigh of relief.

There were times I was so flush with cash that I didn’t know what to do with it. I would blow it as fast as I could on hotels, golf outings, blackjack at the casino, and any card game I could find. I bought luxury items for our house, diamonds for my wife, new suits for myself, and toys for the kids. I even purchased basketball shoes for everyone in our neighborhood. If they had only known where the money was coming from…