Crooked
Daniel Ocean
WARNING: I own neither Zoids or the concept. This whole story is based upon the 1919 World Series. And nobody owns that.
Amanda stood sixty feet above the tarmac in the hangar, looking down upon the arriving company-the governor, the owner, and a couple of bodyguard. "Why, hello down there," she said sweetly. "It was nice to have decided to come." They were quite late; Larissa was not at all happy at this, and did not needed to be reminded. "Your paycheck, Ms. Supardi."
"Why, did that seem malicious? I apologize." She slid down a rope to them. "Just unfortunate that it could not be an hour, just thirty minutes, so we can only cut the trip in half. But I digress. This above you, of course, is the Pteros. This, my own Zoid, is a combination of a hundred thousand components, joints, support wires..." Amanda was hoping she was as boring as she thought she was. She could lull the kid to sleep. "Seeing that the championships are but eight days away, we have technicians working twenty-four hours-" A ring was heard. After a brief search for a phone, Amanda found one in her pocket. "Excuse me." She listened for what seemed to be two full minutes; she hung up again without speaking back. "I'm sorry. I must go on an important business venture outside of here, uh, I'll go get a mechanic to go with you for the rest of the half hour."
Larissa stewed. "Can't you get back to it later?" asked she.
"I'm afraid I cannot." She looked around and saw backup Charles Golem. "You must recognize your sixth pilot, he will finish the tour for you. Have a nice day, it s a pleasure seeing you again." She turned and walked away swiftly.
"I didn't authorize that," said Larissa.
Amanda walked a little bit more swiftly.
Arthur Roman had been awakened from his afternoon nap by a phone call, labeled "important." The butler who had brought the phone to him said it was from a gentleman named Marion who had a business proposition.
He listened for a few moments. "You can't possibly say that. You can't do that, it's simply impossible...a mole with Southern Star? Is he the only one with the team in?...the only one you know. I see. well, I will get back to you upon this matter, thank you for calling." He hung up and typed in two more numbers into the phone. "Hello, Michael? I would like you to take down the transcript of that last call. Nothing important, just a nut on the phone. Do that, would you? Good bye."
He hung up, returned the phone to the sliver platter and rolled back over to return to sleep.
Michael was Michael Fallence, a slowly rising member in the Roman gambling family. He sighed and hit a button on the main computer; it spat out a full transcript-which did not even take up a full page-and filed it amongst the others. To rise in the business, one had to do a little bit of sucking up to AR, like being his personal secretary.
When Rich Marion was still playing with magnetic die in low gravity, Roman was the richest man on Zi. He had owned a Zoid team, but was muscled out by the other owners because he used too much of his money, making his team unstoppable. It was ten times worse than Southern Shore, even if it had money pouring in. It was owned by a new, to say the least, owner, who made frequent small mistakes. It evened out the playing field a little bit.
Roman did not get rich from being young and stupid.
He graduated law school at 22, a year younger than any other graduate of the school. He spent ten years as a round of the mill lawyer, until one case changed his life.
It was a case of a man who had owned an illegal gambling ring. He had been hired to defend the case. Most of the time, he sensibly kept emotion out of the case. But when he looked into the case further, he realized that his client was going to be guilty. And here's the thing-he was very close to having a perfectly legal business that just happened to be based upon games of chance. And indeed, his client did get the guilty verdict and was sent to jail for three years. Soon afterward, Roman quit and decided to open a casino.
It was very much the same route as Marion, just Roman had much more money to start with. It was added to the fact that he began to invest in other companies. Furniture factories-so he could make poker tables for consumers with the name of his casino(s). A novelty company for making playing cards with his logo. More and more money kept on being poured in, and even more flowed out as profit. Rich Marion was wealthy, but he poured most of his money back into his games. Roman was not afraid to have a healthy profit for himself. His yearly salary was as much as Marion was worth.
In return Roman raised little "children"-he remained unmarried-to take care of his business when he died, in the form of men and women just out of law school. But the father was demanding. He rewarded his associates with latitude, if not a less menial job.
Fallence was wondering exactly how much latitude he had.
He looked at the top of the transcript and got the return phone number, and dialed. A youngish guy with a bit of irritation in his voice answered. "Hello?" He obviously had expected a go-ahead.
"This is the offices of Arthur Roman-"
"Yes?"
"-I think we can see what we can do with the proposition that you have, er, presented us with..."
"I know this is not Roman."
"So? We got three, four million between the couch cushions. We here would like to think that we keep an open mind toward various ways of business, you see."
"I don't want to get a 'kid' of his in trouble." Marion knew how Roman operated.
"Oh, oh, with results, it'll be no problem. Is three million okay?"
There was a pause. Three million was plenty.but he had promised more. Getting rejected by the players would not look particularly good with further business actions. "I...oh, what the hell? You can get three million that short of notice?"
"Sure we can. Have a mice afternoon, Mr. Marion."
"Funny, I don't recall giving you my-" Marion heard the phone hang up. He put down the phone, and got out of the slow lane. He needed a quick drive, destination: the Zoids hangars, north of the Sand Colony.
Two hours later, he was inside a pay phone booth, within seeing distance of the great buildings over the desolate landscape. In just a week or so, it would be host to the greatest of Zoid tournaments.
"Please add your money and phone number now."
"Come on, come on." No connection was as fast as the Zoid pilot grapevine. He'd had learned that when he saw pilots distant from major action on top of the latest news. Within minutes of a major upset or match, the Pilots were flinging the information to each other by e-mail, cell phone, telegraph, fax, and for all he knew, smoke signals. He needed the fix in fast, a dragging effort would add more potential for failure.
The phone rung twice, and Payne answered. "Y'ello?"
"It's Marion. Get a few more in and I can get you three million."
"Don't worry about the first; everyone's with me. I called 'Manda and she agreed, and Lefty sort of walked in, and the others kind of sucked themselves on in."
How convenient, thought Marion. "Good! Money will be available soon. I want to see how much cash we can get before the series-" He heard a mini- scuffle, and heard the booming voice of Ed Colner.
"I want one million. Before the series begins!"
"Very well." Marion jotted this down. Colner was probable Pilot of the Year if Southern shore won the championships. He was needed. "We got three million total. Half million to Lefty, Amanda and Mark, and $250,000 to the others, don't you think?"
"Hmmm."
"Get Mark back on the phone."
After a moment, a much older and wearier sounding, "Hi..."
"Mark, I've got three million. That enough? All I could raise in such a short amount of time."
"Uh, okay." He sounded disappointed. Two million had, after all, disappeared in a couple of hours. "If that's all you could find." Pause. "That's all? Thought you had friends to raise money from."
"They have a tightly shut wallet."
"All right."
"You are going to take it, aren't you? I plan on betting. What can you assure me that you're going to do this all?"
"Our...good word?"
"Not a lot for three million dollars. I want quite a bit from you. Collateral. I need something from you that I can get if this all falls by the wayside."
There was silence. "I'll feel free to pick something to do, then. Have a nice afternoon, you six. I will be putting my bets into the system later today, just to let you know a sort of...timeline in ducking out." Marion looked at his watch. It was about two-thirty. "You all have six hours to drop out. If not I will consider everything has gone to plan and I'll start contacting bookkeepers. I'll find some way to keep you in, be assured. Have a nice afternoon."
Mark hung up the phone on hi end. He wondered what sort of punishment Marion could cook up.
Did he know any sort of hitmen?
He didn't want to know. He turned to the group and smiled. "Well, three million will be our. Come on, let's go out to dinner tonight, we're rich now."
Seeing his nervousness, the team was silent for a second. Then, the five others exploded into euphoria. All of them mobbed him, hugged him, and slapped him on the back. The weary fix leader was taken out on shoulders, to the curious looks of other pilot in the tournament.
"Bastards must think they've already won," said one.
"Ed! Eddie! Eddie boy!"
The pilot looked u from his sirloin. It was another pilot...his name to him unknown. "What?"
"Is it true?"
"What 'it'?"
"That the championship has been put into a fix!"
Payne jumped back, recoiling. "Where did you hear?"
"Friend of a friend."
"Tell your friend he'll be better off one friend lighter." Payne stormed off. It was just five hours into the fix, and already rumors were flying. He wondered if he had time to get back out. No, too late. Not too late for the withdrawal. He could no longer get out without getting out without damaging the team's pride. "Dammit," he aid to himself.
Two hours later, the business man received the phone call. "Yes?" He listened for a minute. "I see. Rather..interesting. Hmmm. How much?...okay. Get the leader on the phone, please. What is his name, please? Marcus Payne? Fine. Get Mr. Payne on the phone please."
"Yes?"
"Three million dollars, is it now?"
"Oh my God." Payne was not in a happy place. "Where are all of you getting all of this? There's no fix and there's no money being involved!" He was quavering in rage and shouting; by this time, he had holed up back up in his hotel room.
"Would you like to do one? Five million dollars."
Marcus was silenced. "Well." He wondered what to do next. He didn't expect for a bidding war. "That is a good question."
"Tell me what the name of your funding source is."
"Arthur Roman, through Richard Marion."
"Marion...I believe I know of him. Thank you very much." The phone abruptly hung up.
Marcus raised an eyebrow and dropped the phone. He felt watched, and went to the window and closed the widow of his hotel room. He shared it with Lefty Stand, and both of their clothes had been laid all over. He looked at the clothes, thinking he saw something moving, and then went back to the window and opened it up, looking out. After looking in every direction and convincing himself that no one was watching, he closed the curtains again and flipped out the switch. Lefty was still out, but Marcus was going to bed. He circled the room, unhooked the phone-not wanting to be disturbed- and flipped out the light.
He pulled the covers over his head.
Daniel Ocean
WARNING: I own neither Zoids or the concept. This whole story is based upon the 1919 World Series. And nobody owns that.
Amanda stood sixty feet above the tarmac in the hangar, looking down upon the arriving company-the governor, the owner, and a couple of bodyguard. "Why, hello down there," she said sweetly. "It was nice to have decided to come." They were quite late; Larissa was not at all happy at this, and did not needed to be reminded. "Your paycheck, Ms. Supardi."
"Why, did that seem malicious? I apologize." She slid down a rope to them. "Just unfortunate that it could not be an hour, just thirty minutes, so we can only cut the trip in half. But I digress. This above you, of course, is the Pteros. This, my own Zoid, is a combination of a hundred thousand components, joints, support wires..." Amanda was hoping she was as boring as she thought she was. She could lull the kid to sleep. "Seeing that the championships are but eight days away, we have technicians working twenty-four hours-" A ring was heard. After a brief search for a phone, Amanda found one in her pocket. "Excuse me." She listened for what seemed to be two full minutes; she hung up again without speaking back. "I'm sorry. I must go on an important business venture outside of here, uh, I'll go get a mechanic to go with you for the rest of the half hour."
Larissa stewed. "Can't you get back to it later?" asked she.
"I'm afraid I cannot." She looked around and saw backup Charles Golem. "You must recognize your sixth pilot, he will finish the tour for you. Have a nice day, it s a pleasure seeing you again." She turned and walked away swiftly.
"I didn't authorize that," said Larissa.
Amanda walked a little bit more swiftly.
Arthur Roman had been awakened from his afternoon nap by a phone call, labeled "important." The butler who had brought the phone to him said it was from a gentleman named Marion who had a business proposition.
He listened for a few moments. "You can't possibly say that. You can't do that, it's simply impossible...a mole with Southern Star? Is he the only one with the team in?...the only one you know. I see. well, I will get back to you upon this matter, thank you for calling." He hung up and typed in two more numbers into the phone. "Hello, Michael? I would like you to take down the transcript of that last call. Nothing important, just a nut on the phone. Do that, would you? Good bye."
He hung up, returned the phone to the sliver platter and rolled back over to return to sleep.
Michael was Michael Fallence, a slowly rising member in the Roman gambling family. He sighed and hit a button on the main computer; it spat out a full transcript-which did not even take up a full page-and filed it amongst the others. To rise in the business, one had to do a little bit of sucking up to AR, like being his personal secretary.
When Rich Marion was still playing with magnetic die in low gravity, Roman was the richest man on Zi. He had owned a Zoid team, but was muscled out by the other owners because he used too much of his money, making his team unstoppable. It was ten times worse than Southern Shore, even if it had money pouring in. It was owned by a new, to say the least, owner, who made frequent small mistakes. It evened out the playing field a little bit.
Roman did not get rich from being young and stupid.
He graduated law school at 22, a year younger than any other graduate of the school. He spent ten years as a round of the mill lawyer, until one case changed his life.
It was a case of a man who had owned an illegal gambling ring. He had been hired to defend the case. Most of the time, he sensibly kept emotion out of the case. But when he looked into the case further, he realized that his client was going to be guilty. And here's the thing-he was very close to having a perfectly legal business that just happened to be based upon games of chance. And indeed, his client did get the guilty verdict and was sent to jail for three years. Soon afterward, Roman quit and decided to open a casino.
It was very much the same route as Marion, just Roman had much more money to start with. It was added to the fact that he began to invest in other companies. Furniture factories-so he could make poker tables for consumers with the name of his casino(s). A novelty company for making playing cards with his logo. More and more money kept on being poured in, and even more flowed out as profit. Rich Marion was wealthy, but he poured most of his money back into his games. Roman was not afraid to have a healthy profit for himself. His yearly salary was as much as Marion was worth.
In return Roman raised little "children"-he remained unmarried-to take care of his business when he died, in the form of men and women just out of law school. But the father was demanding. He rewarded his associates with latitude, if not a less menial job.
Fallence was wondering exactly how much latitude he had.
He looked at the top of the transcript and got the return phone number, and dialed. A youngish guy with a bit of irritation in his voice answered. "Hello?" He obviously had expected a go-ahead.
"This is the offices of Arthur Roman-"
"Yes?"
"-I think we can see what we can do with the proposition that you have, er, presented us with..."
"I know this is not Roman."
"So? We got three, four million between the couch cushions. We here would like to think that we keep an open mind toward various ways of business, you see."
"I don't want to get a 'kid' of his in trouble." Marion knew how Roman operated.
"Oh, oh, with results, it'll be no problem. Is three million okay?"
There was a pause. Three million was plenty.but he had promised more. Getting rejected by the players would not look particularly good with further business actions. "I...oh, what the hell? You can get three million that short of notice?"
"Sure we can. Have a mice afternoon, Mr. Marion."
"Funny, I don't recall giving you my-" Marion heard the phone hang up. He put down the phone, and got out of the slow lane. He needed a quick drive, destination: the Zoids hangars, north of the Sand Colony.
Two hours later, he was inside a pay phone booth, within seeing distance of the great buildings over the desolate landscape. In just a week or so, it would be host to the greatest of Zoid tournaments.
"Please add your money and phone number now."
"Come on, come on." No connection was as fast as the Zoid pilot grapevine. He'd had learned that when he saw pilots distant from major action on top of the latest news. Within minutes of a major upset or match, the Pilots were flinging the information to each other by e-mail, cell phone, telegraph, fax, and for all he knew, smoke signals. He needed the fix in fast, a dragging effort would add more potential for failure.
The phone rung twice, and Payne answered. "Y'ello?"
"It's Marion. Get a few more in and I can get you three million."
"Don't worry about the first; everyone's with me. I called 'Manda and she agreed, and Lefty sort of walked in, and the others kind of sucked themselves on in."
How convenient, thought Marion. "Good! Money will be available soon. I want to see how much cash we can get before the series-" He heard a mini- scuffle, and heard the booming voice of Ed Colner.
"I want one million. Before the series begins!"
"Very well." Marion jotted this down. Colner was probable Pilot of the Year if Southern shore won the championships. He was needed. "We got three million total. Half million to Lefty, Amanda and Mark, and $250,000 to the others, don't you think?"
"Hmmm."
"Get Mark back on the phone."
After a moment, a much older and wearier sounding, "Hi..."
"Mark, I've got three million. That enough? All I could raise in such a short amount of time."
"Uh, okay." He sounded disappointed. Two million had, after all, disappeared in a couple of hours. "If that's all you could find." Pause. "That's all? Thought you had friends to raise money from."
"They have a tightly shut wallet."
"All right."
"You are going to take it, aren't you? I plan on betting. What can you assure me that you're going to do this all?"
"Our...good word?"
"Not a lot for three million dollars. I want quite a bit from you. Collateral. I need something from you that I can get if this all falls by the wayside."
There was silence. "I'll feel free to pick something to do, then. Have a nice afternoon, you six. I will be putting my bets into the system later today, just to let you know a sort of...timeline in ducking out." Marion looked at his watch. It was about two-thirty. "You all have six hours to drop out. If not I will consider everything has gone to plan and I'll start contacting bookkeepers. I'll find some way to keep you in, be assured. Have a nice afternoon."
Mark hung up the phone on hi end. He wondered what sort of punishment Marion could cook up.
Did he know any sort of hitmen?
He didn't want to know. He turned to the group and smiled. "Well, three million will be our. Come on, let's go out to dinner tonight, we're rich now."
Seeing his nervousness, the team was silent for a second. Then, the five others exploded into euphoria. All of them mobbed him, hugged him, and slapped him on the back. The weary fix leader was taken out on shoulders, to the curious looks of other pilot in the tournament.
"Bastards must think they've already won," said one.
"Ed! Eddie! Eddie boy!"
The pilot looked u from his sirloin. It was another pilot...his name to him unknown. "What?"
"Is it true?"
"What 'it'?"
"That the championship has been put into a fix!"
Payne jumped back, recoiling. "Where did you hear?"
"Friend of a friend."
"Tell your friend he'll be better off one friend lighter." Payne stormed off. It was just five hours into the fix, and already rumors were flying. He wondered if he had time to get back out. No, too late. Not too late for the withdrawal. He could no longer get out without getting out without damaging the team's pride. "Dammit," he aid to himself.
Two hours later, the business man received the phone call. "Yes?" He listened for a minute. "I see. Rather..interesting. Hmmm. How much?...okay. Get the leader on the phone, please. What is his name, please? Marcus Payne? Fine. Get Mr. Payne on the phone please."
"Yes?"
"Three million dollars, is it now?"
"Oh my God." Payne was not in a happy place. "Where are all of you getting all of this? There's no fix and there's no money being involved!" He was quavering in rage and shouting; by this time, he had holed up back up in his hotel room.
"Would you like to do one? Five million dollars."
Marcus was silenced. "Well." He wondered what to do next. He didn't expect for a bidding war. "That is a good question."
"Tell me what the name of your funding source is."
"Arthur Roman, through Richard Marion."
"Marion...I believe I know of him. Thank you very much." The phone abruptly hung up.
Marcus raised an eyebrow and dropped the phone. He felt watched, and went to the window and closed the widow of his hotel room. He shared it with Lefty Stand, and both of their clothes had been laid all over. He looked at the clothes, thinking he saw something moving, and then went back to the window and opened it up, looking out. After looking in every direction and convincing himself that no one was watching, he closed the curtains again and flipped out the switch. Lefty was still out, but Marcus was going to bed. He circled the room, unhooked the phone-not wanting to be disturbed- and flipped out the light.
He pulled the covers over his head.