It happened faster than I could react. A van pulled up in the parking lot where the man and woman walked side by side. The panel door slid open and a smallish guy thrust his right hand toward the woman. She fell, hitting her head on the door then didn’t move. A larger guy jumped out and did the same to the guy. He fell, but his shriek of pain and despair was unmistakable from my perch more than a hundred yards away.
They guy who fell managed to spastically tried to get up, but couldn’t. The big guy and the little guy picked her up and got back in the van. As they picked her up, I saw a faux smile on her face, a grimace from the pain. It drove off, while the guy who was with her tried to stand, but couldn’t. A taser does that to you.
They guy who fell managed to spastically tried to get up, but couldn’t. The big guy and the little guy picked her up and got back in the van. As they picked her up, I saw a faux smile on her face, a grimace from the pain. It drove off, while the guy who was with her tried to stand, but couldn’t. A taser does that to you.
* * *
When the FBI finished with me, I was summoned to Dom Crosetti’s office. Crosetti was my client, the business manager for Shelby Moore, the 23-year-old golf wunderkind who got kidnapped while I watched. Carl Clayton, her 51-year-old bodyguard was there, too. He was the man Crosetti hired me to observe. Crosetti seemed to think Carl wasn’t doing his job well. Maybe Crosetti was right.
“This is total fucking bullshit,” Crosetti yelled as he paced across the floor between us. If Patton had been an overweight, third-generation Italian who wore a suit in August in Tampa, Florida, he’d have been Dom Crosetti. “There was fucking two of you there. And a little guy and a fat guy in a fucking van snatched her from under your fucking noses.”
You can tell someone’s angry when they annunciate the final G on the end of the f-bomb. Crosetti annunciated four of them.
“I was a hundred yards away and I can’t run an 8-second hundred-yard dash.”
Crosetti turned and glared at me. He opened mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “Why the fucking fuck were you that far away?”
If they didn’t hear him in Cuba, they weren’t paying attention.
“You paid me to be that far away. I was keeping an eye on Carl, remember?” Once, I’d have responded with at least as much volume and rage as Crosetti. But you didn’t affect guys like that by out-yelling them. You did it by refusing their invitation to escalate. My words were matter-of-fact and Crosetti looked like he just ate a lemon. He turned away from me.
“Carl,” he said. “The fucking security genius. Nice how you put up a fight, you goddamned pussy.”
Carl didn’t say much, which didn’t surprise me. According to my research on him, he was a pro’s pro. He spent twenty years as an MP, retiring with a full pension before he was forty. Then he was a Tampa cop for eight more years before he went private. Now, he handled person security for some of Tampa’s biggest names, at least according to his website.
A year ago, Suncoast Management Consultants hire him to provide security for Shelby, the second most successful golfer on the LPGA. In her short career, she’d amassed a fortune in endorsements, including a clothing line sold at Target, a line of Callaway golf clubs, and nearly as many commercials as Tiger Woods. Unlike Tiger, she looked incredible in body paint in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. She’d played a bit role as a woman who got taken by the smoke monster in the first season of Lost and was rumored to be taking acting lessons during the off-season.
To have the world’s biggest female sports star snatched from him would forever make Carl Clayton’s name infamous and invalidate a three-decade career.
“You told me to give her what she wanted. She wanted to walk along the beach. I told her not to, Dom. But we did anyway.”
“Don’t fucking blame this on me,” Dom said. “There was a guy with a video camera and he got the whole thing. All you did was lay there. You didn’t even fucking fight back.”
Carl stood and took a step toward Crosetti, then turned away from him.
“What?” Crosetti said. “You want to take a pop at me? It would be a hell of a lot more than you fucking did when they took Shelby.”
Carl paced away, then stopped, closing his eyes and looking down at his feet.
“You ever been tased?” I said.
“You aren’t part of this. Shut the fuck up,” Crosetti said.
I stood. “Your muscles don’t work. You tell yourself to get up and deal with it, but you can’t. You certainly can’t—”
Crosetti took a step toward me. He wasn’t a large man, and he was overweight, and I could dump him on his ass without breaking a sweat, but he was intimidating—even if I didn’t feel threatened by him. I’d be intimidating, too, if someone stole my meal ticket and I was terrified about it.
“I said shut the fuck up,” he yelled, like a poor parent unable to control a precocious toddler. Spittle sprayed on me and he purposely crowded my space. Guys like Crosetti, in my experience, want you to react. I didn’t.
“The FBI is working it now,” he said. “You’re fired. You’re a mouthy fucking son of a bitch anyway.”
He turned to Carl. “You,” he said, saying the word as a curse. “I’m not done with you yet.”
Crosetti turned to me. “I told you you’re fired; get the fuck out of my office.”
I stood and walked past him. “I’ll have my invoice to you by close of business tomorrow.” To my surprise, he didn’t object.
