“Fine, we’ll help you,” you say.
“Fantastic. I knew you’d come around,” Duckett says. “I’ll tell you what. This is not business that needs to go down in the woods. Go home, get some rest. Come see me tomorrow. We can talk then. I can give you a lift back to your dorm.”
For such a fastidious man, Duckett’s car was a dump. Empty coffee cups and burger wrappers threatened to engulf the back seat. Duckett folded the portable lamp and stool that he had used while hiding in the woods for hours waiting for them to appear in the clearing and put them in the trunk and then peeled out onto the main road. He dropped them at the dorm. “The Barrow Arms, tomorrow, 9AM,” he said. He looked at them. “Let’s make it ten.”
The Barrow Arms was not exactly the most prestigious hotel on campus. In fact, it was a seedy motel at the edge of town. Students called it the “Dean Killer” because of how many university officials had ended their careers there, although the last person to be found there in scandalous repose was a provost with a different vice-provost’s wife and a bag of counterfeit scantrons. The NCAA was not exactly putting Duckett up in style. You walk up with Moods.
“Excuse me,” you say to the man at the front desk, a bald hawk-face who does not greet you so much as size you up. “We’re looking for Buck Duckett.”
“Don’t know ‘em,” the clerk said.
“He’s got a mustache and an old-fashioned hat,” you say.
“Fella, everyone here has a mustache and an old-fashioned hat,” the front desk man says. He nods his head to one side and you immediately see a guy come out of a room with a pencil-thin mustache and newsboy cap.
“Drives that absolute hunk of junk,” Moods says, pointing to Duckett’s car.
“Oh, him. Well maybe if I think about it I might be able to conjure up where he might be staying.”
“OK, do you want me to leave you my number or something?” you say.
Moods punches you in the shoulder and you look back at him. He gives you the “c’mon dude” face.
“Oh, right,” you say. You dig in your wallet and slide a five over the desk. The clerk rolls his eyes. “28 second floor,” he says. “Smooth,” says Moods.
Room 28. You knock. Duckett’s sitting at a desk writing. It’s now 10:05 after the transaction with the desk.
“You didn’t tell us what room,” you say.
“I’m going to need you to find out more than that,” Duckett says. He opens up a file and shows you a black and white picture. “‘Wump’ Magnassasson. Son of ‘Thump’ Mangassasson, and owner of Consolidated Pork Tobacco. We’re talking real money.” The man in the photo looks nothing like the absurd top hat man that Duckett posed as to snare Moods. He instead looks like a standard rich booster with a marbled forehead, an expensive looking haircut desperately clinging to his scalp, and a pair of unfashionably large glasses. Duckett takes out another picture, a map of colleges and universities across the country littered with bizarre circles and annotations. “This is a map of collegiate pants activity. As you can see, I’ve been tracing him for the last few years. But he’s quiet. He’s smooth. He doesn’t mess up. That little dead drop we did last night was only one of the ways he gets it there. He does not have associates to roll but he’s always somewhere else when the drop goes down. He’s a phantom.”
“So what do you want with us, bro?” Moods says.
“This coming Friday is the annual Squabble Ball, is it not?” Duckett says.
You hesitate. The SquabBall, organized by the wealthy Truck Finger scion Pavarotti “Nub” Bascot, Jr. (Jr.) who captained the team 20 years ago before inheriting his father’s empire of decorative middle fingers that you mount on a pick up truck and activate with complicated hydraulic lifting systems and had been featured in three Damp Bazket videos, threw an annual gala for the team at his mansion. The existence of the ball, which featured sumptuous food and featured DJs and Bascot’s personal Truck Finger Strongman Team was sort of a gray area as far as the NCAA was concerned and therefore the team had been told to deny that it ever happens.
Duckett chuckled. “Of course I know about the SquabBall and Nub Bascot. Don’t worry, I’m not going after it. Not this time. But I have a good reason to believe that Wump Magnassasson will be there, and he’ll be looking to make contact with your team. This is my best chance to figure out what he’s up to and catch him in the act. I need the player he talks to to be one of you two. Will you help me?”
You look at Moods. “Ok. We’ll do it.”
“Which one of you is going to try to talk to him?”
You'll Talk To Him
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