THE YACHT "LADY OF NUTZ"
THE DALMATIAN COAST
"You don't have to go to all this trouble, Belly," the man in the shiny suit said, gesturing to a lavish spread of caviars and fancy cheeses in the grand ballroom of the Lady of Nutz, a 148-foot yacht anchored in the Adriatic.
"This isn't for you, Jan," H.S. Belton Waynesneed, Jr. said. Belly was for his buddies, but not for Jan. "I have guests. And I told you I don't want you hanging around."
"And here I thought we were becoming such good friends," Jan said, putting his feet up on a table that cost more than his house. He had immaculately groomed stubble and an untraceable accent. "Very well, we talk business first."
"Let me see the stuff," Waynesneed said.
"I think you will find the merchandise is top quality." Jan opened a briefcase. Inside was a pair of almost impossibly fancy pants. "What you're looking at is the ultimate in luxury trouser. Fabrics so fine they are illegal in your country. Top designers. Hand-stitched. These are clean. No serial numbers, no factory labels. Untraceable."
"And you have them ready to go for the whole team? I sent you those measurements."
"To the inch. Even the... what do you call it, the kicker." Jan smiled. "You know in my country they are all the kicker."
Waynesneed handed him a steel briefcase. "You're one slippery son-of-a-bitch, I'll give you that."
Jan opened it and smiled. "May I?" he said, but he was already wrist deep in rocquefort. A shadow moved over his face from another ship gliding into the harbor.
"You make me sick," Waynesneed said. "Take the money and get the hell off my ship." The faint sound of thumping music began to oontz-oontz its way through the walls. "Sounds like my guests are here. Beat it."
The other ship started to slowly turn to face the Lady of Nutz.
"Next time it's double," Jan said, wiping off his hand. "Pants scene is getting more dangerous every day. I nearly lost my own, you know what you put on the truck..."
"I don't care what kind of sick shit you to do get me the pants. I told you I don't want to know details. I pay you for the pants... and the discretion."
Suddenly, a klaxon blared throughout the shit. "Goddamn it, I told the captain I wanted that damn aoogah horn disabled. I'm not here to get aoogahed on my own damn..."
The captain burst in. "Signore!" he said. "Signore, we need to..."
"Goddamn it I told you for the last time..." Waynesneed said, before the captain cut him off.
"Signore, it's a torped..."
NCAA HEADQUARTERS
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
"Duckett, my office." It was Quinn Chavous, the head of Duckett's N.P.I.S. (NCAA Pants Investigator Service), part of the NCAA's larger I.B.I.B. (Illegal Benefits Investigation Bureau) as part of the Joint P.T.S.J. Taskforce investigating pants, tattoos, shoes, and jewelry. Chavous answered only to bureau chief Jeff van Steve, and he only answered to Mark Emmert who only answered to God.
"I got the State Department breathing down my neck wanting to know how a goddamn NCAA asset-- your asset, by the way-- got torpedoed off the coast of Croatia," he said. "Goddammit."
Henry Smorris Belton Waynesneed, Jr. was the president of the nation's top artificial truck testicle company. It now controlled 97 percent of the artificial truck testicle market after brutally crushing or acquiring three competitors and a breakaway novelty "only the shaft" company during a decades-long war in the truck testicle industry that had cost two executives their lives and one CEO his actual testicles. But that had been H.S. Belton Waynesneed, Sr.'s war. The younger Waynensneed was raised in luxury and installed in the top job after his father's fifth heart attack. Waynesneed, Jr. at first attacked his position with the raw ambition of youth, but after a disastrous and expensive attempt to market various truck testicle characters as part of a Saturday morning cartoon and merchandise empire nearly plunged the company into bankruptcy, he was encouraged to step into a more ceremonial role while the board took over the company's everyday operations. Waynesneed, Jr. was fine with that. It left him more time for his true priority: football.
Over the past several years, Waynesneed, Jr. leveraged his enormous fortune and endless appetite for football into a position as the most powerful booster at his alma mater. And soon he found that it wasn't enough for the practice field to bear his name or for him to have a private suite with a personal touchdown bell that only he was allowed to ring. No, he wanted the players to look good. That's when he got into pants. Deep into pants.
Two years ago, Waynesneed, Jr. found himself in a steamy warehouse negotiating the sale of 109 pairs of satin lounging slacks to a mysterious, Brezhnev-eyebrowed international pants broker he only knew as Tench. That broker was actually Buck Duckett. The eyebrows were fake. They made a deal. Duckett would not report the transaction and the team would not have to vacate their win in the Online Boner Pills Sent In Discreet Packaging Bowl, but Waynesneed, Jr. would need to start getting Duckett to the source of the pants. And now he and whatever information he had was at the bottom of the Adriatic with a cache of slacks almost to sumptuous to behold.
"Duckett, I need that B.S.V.D. on my desk right now as in before I finish this goddamn sentence," Chavous said.
The Booster Source Vetting Document consisted of a folder bulging with press clippings, interviews, and a complete psychological dossier. It was currently spread out in his office as he had been staring at it all night since the news came in.
"I've seen them shot, garroted, and dropped into rotating helicopter blades, but torpedoed is a first." That was Shane Schenk, from Duckett's unit. He grinned and handed him a coffee. "Congratulations."
Schenk and Duckett met at the I.B.I.B. academy and went through Pants School together, where Duckett graduated at the top of his class, Shenk near the bottom. But Schenk knew every top booster at every program from the biggest SEC school to some NAIA powerhouses. He partied with them at their ranches and boats. He knew their biggest secrets. He slept with several of their wives.
"You want us to go out there and crack some skulls?" asked the Pordon "Backhoe" Valence as he squeezed his enormous frame into the office. Valence, a former all-American fullback and member of the NCAA's elite combat unit known as the Rhinoceros has officially killed 38 men. No one has beaten his Rhinoceros record for breaking fifteen bricks with a single headbutt. He earned a commendation for unusual valor in thirteen of the NCAA's most dangerous operations and an eye patch for a desperate scythe fight with the Wisconsin offensive line after catching them accepting an illegal crate of wheely shoes on a dock at Lake Mendota.
"We can cross-reference all apparel-related torpedo attacks in Western Europe with unsual activity from known pants hot spots," said another team member Muriel Utrecht, a woman.
Duckett looked at his team. "This is not an ordinary pants assassination," he said. "I didn't want to tell you this before because it seemed ridiculous or even impossible, but something has been gnawing at me with Waynesneed and it won't go away. I don't think he was taking us to a normal pants supplier. I think he was in something much deeper."
"What do you mean, Duckett?" Schenk said. "Shorts? Maybe even a capri?"
"Jesus christ, that sick bastard would try something like that," Valence said.
"No, I don't think this has to do with manufacturing or distribution at all," Duckett said gravely. "I think whoever it was that torpedoed Waynesneed is not after some nickel-and-dime shorts operation. I think whoever did this is trying to transform how college athletes are compensated." He swung around a whiteboard that he had been hiding in a corner. It said "N.I.L." Duckett put down his coffee and leaned forward on his desk. "I think they're trying to legalize pants."
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