Early this afternoon, Merdoso Donnato Pompino, representing the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, paid me a visit for a consultation. Obviously still on Naples time, he arrived twenty minutes late, and obviously a completely self-absorbed, if obviously aging jock, he nevertheless spent another ten trying to get Gretchen’s telephone number. What the hell, as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine with me – it’s his money – or FIFA’s anyway.
“Mr. Collins,” he opened as he sprawled on the couch in front of the picture window overlooking the White House, “you have heard of FIFA’s recent… ah… legal problems, I suppose?”
“Who hasn’t?” I replied. “In the middle of last week, the Swiss police arrested six FIFA executives at the Baur au Lac Hotel in Zurich, after which the US Justice Department held a press conference in New York City, where they unsealed a forty-seven count indictment citing fourteen different defendants for wire fraud, money laundering and violations of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. They’re accused of bribery and kickback schemes spanning over twenty years, starting in at least 1991. DOJ claims these gentlemen demanded pay-to-play from virtually every sports equipment manufacturer, stadium venue, radio and television company involved with international soccer…”
“Football, please!” Mr. Pompino interjected. “FIFA is no ‘soccer’ association, Mr. Collins!”
“Of course, my apologies,” I dryly responded, “make that international football. The defendants are also accused of selling the rights to host major football events, especially the World Cup, accepting huge sums under the table in exchange for favorable votes in the selection process, thus casting considerable suspicion on the upcoming 2018 World Cup games in Russia, as well as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.”
“The Americans are just angry because FIFA didn’t choose them for either one!” Pompino protested. “And because they are such sore losers, here they come, chasing after the heroic athletes who made the tough decisions! Egotists! That’s what your Department of Justice is – a nest of conniving, backbiting, scheming, egotists!”
“It takes one to know one,” I shrugged, “or at least, that’s what they say.”
“Who are they?” he demanded. “I’ll kick their [expletive] right up through their cowardly throats!”
“It’s a figure of speech,” I explained, “in English, anyway.”
“[Expletive] the English!” he spat. “They [expletive] the [expletive] of the Great Mother Whore! Even their hooligans are third-rate!”
“Consequently, I don’t suppose,” I prodded, “that you are the least bit upset that the Duke of Cambridge compared the scandal to the Salt Lake City Olympics of 2002?”
“The IOC?” he scoffed. “Those [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]? Fencing! Sailing!” he smirked as he daintily mimed, “Diving! Archery! Rowing! Table Tennis! Trampoline! Dressage! Water Polo! Volleyball! Handball! Badminton! Artistic Gymnastics! They’re bigger [expletive] than the English! [Expletive] them, too, the God damned IOC!”
“So running around in your underwear kicking a ball into a net is a real man’s sport?” I needled.
“Running a marathon in the blistering heat and humidity,” he snarled, “kicking a ball so you totally control it, and getting it into a net with eleven other men trying to stop you is most assuredly a real man’s sport, Mr. Collins!”
“In that case,” I pressured him, “what is it about this real man’s sport of yours that turns its practitioners who gain positions in its governing body into such insanely rapacious, unprincipled, dishonest, larcenous criminals?”
“Listen, Collins,” he growled, “my knees are shot, my ankles are throbbing masses of gristle, my shins are bales of bone splinters, my toes are little knots of agony, my thighs are cathedrals of seething pain, my abdomen sprouts a garden of hernias, and years of bouncing footballs off my head has turned my brain into blood pudding. I’m so messed up, I can’t even remember all the adoring women I’ve [expletive]!”
“So,” I surmised, “if somehow a bunch of guys like you get put in charge of a multibillion dollar international money machine, the real miracle is that, so far at least, nobody’s been murdered.”
A pregnant pause ensued. “Yes,” he slowly nodded, “right. Nobody… has been… murdered.”
“No one at all,” I emphasized.
“No one… at all…” he repeated.
“No one,” I reiterated, “has been murdered to further, to carry out, or to cover up… any FIFA scandal or corruption.”
“Nobody,” he slowly intoned.
“Well,” I sighed, “that’s a relief. Doing business with a bunch of corrupt jocks, one never knows, does one? How do you feel about Sepp Blatter’s sudden resignation, four days after his re-election as president of FIFA?”
“The English and the Americans forced him out!” Pompino raged. “Prime Minister Cameron, President Obama, your Justice Department! It’s a conspiracy to destroy international football, that’s what it is!”
“You really think so?” I needled.
“Of course!” he bellowed. “Sepp Blatter is Swiss! How could anyone suspect a Swiss of engaging in money laundering?”
“Beats me,” I told him. “So, how can I help FIFA on this uncharacteristically cold and rainy day June day?”
“Ah yes, that,” he acknowledged. “Football is not very popular in America and frankly, America is not very popular with international football. We at FIFA know a little bit about the United States, naturally – we know, for example, that for some reason, the left wing liberals here expose their children to football at an early age.”
“So they do,” I concurred. “Primarily because, unlike tennis or baseball, it doesn’t require a whole lot of training; even spastic little liberal kids from Bethesda can kick a ball around, for Christ’s sake. And what’s more, it’s something liberal parents can involve young kids in where all the children can feel like they are participating, and go home with a trophy just for showing up, which is great for cultivating an unwarranted feeling of accomplishment and instilling gratuitous self-esteem, both of which are highly prized by liberal American parents.”
“Such prostitution of football,” he seethed, “makes my blood boil!”
“As it should,” I confirmed. “So you FIFA folks hate Americans. Nothing special there, I’m afraid. Just about everybody, everywhere, hates Americans. Funny thing, though, how many billions of them dream about coming here, even though American football teams suck eggs.”
“Eggs?” he scoffed. “American football teams suck [expletive]! They suck [expletive]! And they suck [expletive] [expletive], too! But [expletive] all that [expletive], damn it! Mr. Collins, let me stop beating around the [expletive]…”
“That’s ‘bush,’ sir, in the common American vernacular,” I clarified.
“Call it a bush if you like,” he sniggered. “I’m going to quit beating around it and drive my point home – I’ve been told you are the smartest person in Washington…”
“Which is a lot,” I remarked, “like being the tallest building in Baltimore.”
“Baltimore?” he exploded. “All those [expletive] crab-eating [expletive] idiots have is what you Americans call an ‘indoor soccer team!’ Look, Collins, they say that, in addition to being so clever, you also know about… particular things, and that’s what I’m here to find out about!”
“Particular things?” I asked in my best innocent voice. “Whatever could you mean by that?”
“In Europe, in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, hell, Collins, any place football is played,” he thundered, “except here in the [expletive] United States, FIFA knows how to handle situations like your DOJ investigation, because in those places FIFA knows who to bribe! But here in America, we don’t! So now, as you Americans say, all my cards are on the table! Give me the names, Collins! Money is no object – FIFA has more money that God! But we need to know who to give it to! Who does FIFA bribe to make this DOJ business go away?”
“If FIFA were dealing with indictments in Rhode Island, Nevada, Florida, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Illinois, Arkansas, Delaware or New Jersey,” I answered, “I could tell you. But in most other states, and definitely where the US federal government is concerned, you can’t bribe anyone to make indictments go away, buy off juries or get judges to dismiss your cases in exchange for money.”
“What?” Pompino’s face fell in an avalanche of disbelief. “There’s nobody FIFA can bribe? What [expletive] kind of [expletive] stinking country is the United States of America, anyway? Who the [expletive] does your Justice Department think they are? FIFA has bribed politicians, officials and states’ attorneys in every country in the world where football is played – since 1904, God damn it! What makes you Americans so [expletive] special, huh?”
“You have to understand,” I explained, “that at the federal level, inter-agency rivalries, jealousies and competition for funding, jurisdiction and power keep all the various law enforcement organizations vigilantly watching the others for even the slightest signs of malfeasance. And federal penalties for accepting bribes are extremely Draconian; plus, there’s no such thing as parole in the federal prison system and pardons have to come directly from the President of the United States. If nothing else, the people whom FIFA might bribe, had the indictments been handed down in France, for instance, here in America, they are simply too chicken to take them.”
“Too chicken [expletive], you mean,” he sneered. “All right, then, so tell me, Collins, how the [expletive] is FIFA going to get out of this?”
“The accepted technique here in the US,” I informed him, “is the O.J. Simpson formula.”
“Who the [expletive] is O.J. Simpson?” Pompino demanded.
“He was,” I answered, “at one time, at least, the most famous football player in the USA.”
“Impossible!” Pompino objected. “If he was, I would have heard of him!”
“You misunderstand,” I explained. “O.J. Simpson didn’t play international football. He played NFL football.”
“That half-witted, asinine [expletive]?” he growled. “With that ridiculous pointed ball, and the helmets and the shoulder pads and the cheerleaders and the brass bands, and the fools who dress up in those [expletive] costumes as the [expletive] team mascots, and the touchdowns and touch-backs and field goals and the strong safeties and the tight ends and the halftime shows and the Stupid Bowl at the end of the season?”
“Super Bowl,” I corrected. “Yes, O.J. Simpson was an extremely famous player at the sport you just described. He won the Heisman Trophy, the highest football honor awarded to an individual college player, and joined the Buffalo Bills, later playing with the San Francisco 49ers. He was the first NFL running back to rush for two thousand yards in a single season and was eventually inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. After retirement from the NFL, he went on to become a sports broadcaster and motion picture actor. In 1994, however, somebody murdered his wife and her lover. Simpson was arrested, indicted and charged with the crime. His trial lasted eight months and was a nation-wide sensation in the United States.”
“So what?” Pompino interrupted, turning his palms out, gesturing dismissively and scowling with an attitude of total contempt.
“So,” I continued, “despite a virtual mountain of evidence and reams of testimony against him, he walked away Scot free from what should have been an open and shut case for the prosecution.”
At that, Pompino’s eyes lit up. “Now you are talking, as you Americans say. And I see your point. So tell me – how did this Simpson person manage to accomplish this… legal miracle?”
“Well,” I told him, “by spending a fortune on his legal defense team, for starters. He hired F. Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Uelman, Carl E. Douglas and Johnnie Cochran.”
“I have no idea,” Pompino declared, “who any of those people are.”
“No matter,” I assured him. “The point is, they were a team of top notch lawyers specializing in various aspects of the case, lead by a master showman, Johnnie Cochran, a silver tongued devil so adept at persuasion, he could talk Hillary Clinton into performing fellatio. But that was just the beginning. The real secret ingredient in the winning formula was the jury consultant – Joe-Ellan Dimitrius.”
“A jury consultant? What did she do?” Pompino curiously inquired.
“She advised Simpson’s legal team on which potential jurors to reject, and, where necessary, provided plausible reasons for doing so; thus producing a panel containing a majority of not terribly bright or well educated individuals who were massively predisposed to become bewildered.” I said.
“And then what?” Pompino pressed.
“And then, Johnnie Cochran got up in open court and confused the hell out of them!” I shot back.
“And they let Simpson go?” Pompino sought to confirm, incredulous.
“Absolutely,” I assured him. “You see, about sixty-five percent of the American public are both pathetically ignorant and woefully unintelligent. And when I say ignorant, I mean they read at a fifth grade level, commonly use a vocabulary of less than a hundred words, and can’t explain why water runs downhill. And when I say unintelligent, I mean they would score less than 85 on an IQ test. Yet if you were to ask them, ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent would agree with survey questions to the effect that they ‘know more than most people’ and are ‘above average intelligence.’ So you see, the way for the accused FIFA officials is not to use their extraordinary wealth to bribe federal prosecutors, judges or law enforcement officers, but rather to hire a team of exquisitely qualified and absurdly expensive attorneys, then have a consummate huckster like Cochran utterly bamboozle a jury of benighted morons carefully selected by an expert like Ms. Dimitrius.”
“[Expletive]!” Pompino sighed once again, throwing up his hands in despair. “If that’s the way you do it here in America, then I guess there’s no choice but that FIFA will have to go along with it.”
“It’s really not so bad,” I consoled. “Look at this this way – it probably costs the same as buying your way out with bribes, but when you’re done and you’ve gotten away with it, nobody can blackmail you afterward.”
“Oh, yeah,” he admitted, “there is that. So, okay, say FIFA takes this Simpson strategy. What do I tell FIFA they should do – specifically, I mean?”
“No problem,” I assured him. “For a… finder’s fee… of… appropriate size, I can put FIFA in touch with its very own legal Dream Team and elite jury consultant. What’s more, I’ll throw in a roster of A-list expert defense witnesses who will testify against the prosecution’s experts on every point.”
“Deal!” Pompino exclaimed as he leapt from the couch, gave me a manly hug and wet macho Italian kisses on each cheek. “Now, my friend,” he chortled in garlic breath, close to my ear, “that woman outside, your receptionist, what is her telephone number?”
“She’s my private secretary,” I coolly stated, “and it would be a violation of District of Columbia labor law for me to tell you.”
“[Expletive]!” he grumbled as he made for the heavy oak doors leading to the reception area, “I don’t suppose it’s illegal for me to ask her again on my way out, is it?”
“Not at all,” I conceded as he opened the doors. “Nothing illegal about that.”