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junker-town · 5 years

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The Ticket

Sinners, Scalpers and the Search for God: One man’s descent into the underworld of sports

This story is being published in partnership with Epic Magazine. Names have been changed throughout.

2014 World Cup - Porto Alegre, Brazil

I ducked behind a food stand, checked my burner phone, and stashed $20,000 in my money belt. The churrasco smoke made for good cover.

A drunken choir of Dutchmen poured into the stadium chanting their national anthem. They howled over the shoulders of the riot policemen guarding the gates, the orange lions on their replica jerseys waving in the wind. The louder the Dutchmen sang, the tighter the Brazilian security forces gripped the muzzles of their automatic weapons.

The Australian fanatics were next, draped in Southern Cross flags and kangaroo swag. Soon their own inebriated chant rang through the air: Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oy! Oy! Oy!

The fans who needed tickets stood out. We called them “straights” because they stand straight up in a crowd protecting the cash they’re unused to carrying, hands stuck in their pockets, and you could make a few thousand dollars in a couple of hours if you knew how to spot them. The game was to sell your tickets for as much cash as the straights could cough up.

I had 30 tickets left with 20 minutes to kickoff. If I didn’t sell them they’d be worthless — deadwood. But with undercovers swarming the stadium, the risk of arrest swelled with every sale. Ticket scalping in Brazil carried a multi-year prison sentence, and I couldn’t speak Portuguese, so I had to be careful. Avoiding capture meant closing deals quickly and moving every five minutes. These were techniques my mentors taught me on street corners, outside the track at the Kentucky Derby, in the parking lots bordering the Masters, the hotel lobbies by the Super Bowl.

I slipped behind a well-dressed straight and whispered, “Tickets? Entradas?” He answered in the affirmative. I nodded my head toward the nearest barbeque stand. I was always surprised when people followed me, a complete stranger.

My clean-cut Mormon looks usually closed the deal, but there were also critical soft skills — a smile, counting money slowly, a somber nod — that eliminated doubt if the straights were hesitant.

I was down to 20 tickets when I spotted a repeat customer. I went over to him and nodded. He knew the drill. I slipped him two tickets. He passed me the money. We shook hands.

My clean-cut Mormon looks usually closed the deal, but there were also critical soft skills — a smile, counting money slowly, a somber nod — that eliminated doubt if the straights were hesitant.

Then someone grabbed my arm.

“Cambista!” he hissed.

The guy had jet-black hair, a leather coat, and sunglasses. I didn’t know if he was a cop, a competitor, or a disgruntled customer.

“Don’t touch me,” I said calmly.

He pulled me close and flashed his handgun. Behind him, the Brazilians working the barbeque stand motioned for me to run. I was in trouble. A cop.

The man with a gun shoved me onto a bench and unzipped my bag of tickets. His face spread with a smile.

“Cambista,” he whispered.

My repeat customer slumped on the bench beside me, hanging his head. Clearly, he’d ratted me out. In plain view, the detectives in the parking lot started divvying up my tickets. Another man reached in the front pocket of my jeans and pulled out the ball of Reals from my last 10 sales. My money belt was still hidden.

A tall man opened the back door of an unmarked car and shoved me inside. We drove along a river overhung with lush tropical trees. A cross hung from the rearview. I watched it bounce to the rhythm of potholes. Houses splashed with graffiti hugged the river trails. I doggedly fought the idea that an undercover would kill me over a few grand as we drove past kids between cars begging for money.

As the stadium shrank in the haze behind us, I wondered about Brazilian prison conditions. I wondered about extradition treaties. But mostly, I wondered what my dad would think.

1997 Final Four - Indianapolis, Indiana

When I was 12, I made a deal with my father. If I beat him in one-on-one basketball, he’d take me to a Final Four game. It was the second biggest deal I’d made that year. The first was with the Mormon church.

Twelve is an important age for a Mormon. That’s when, if you promise to obey the church’s commandments, you’re given a distinction called the Aaronic priesthood, which bestows the authority to prepare, bless, and pass the sacrament in church on Sundays.

It’s basically the beginning of a bargain: If you do what the church tells you to do, they promise you’ll get into heaven. At least, that’s how I understood it at the time. But as a lunatic sports fan, I had a very different idea of paradise.

Growing up, my father inhabited the world of my dreams: Super Bowls, Final Fours, National Championship Games. He was athletic director, and blockbuster events were networking meccas for men with entry-level jobs in college athletic departments. When he would come home, he’d unzip his luggage and hand out shirts, highlight DVDs, and Nerf balls with team insignias. Then he’d whisper with my mom about which universities had openings in their athletic departments.

Dad was good at networking. As a result, by the time I turned 12 we’d moved five times to four different states — and I eventually won the bet I’d made with him as a newly-minted priest, and he kept his word. I guess he thought that at 14 years old I was ready to see a world beyond church.

We couldn’t afford a hotel room in Indianapolis, so we split one with Dad’s friends. When we got to the Holiday Inn, his buddies Darryl and Cliff towered over a bed staring at what appeared to be piles of cash. Before I could get a closer look, my dad pulled me away. One of the men noticed.

“Probably didn’t think you and your boy would be sharing a hotel room with the Kentucky Six, did you, Pete?” Darryl said.

My dad laughed.

“Who else is in the Six?” he asked.

“Well, me and Cliff,” Darryl said. “Then there’s another guy in Lexington we work with named Pain, my two cousins, Jerry and Frank. And Redd. We’re the best ticket scalpers in the country.”

My dad laughed again. I’d never seen him laugh like that at church or around the house. I wasn’t sure what a scalper was, but Darryl and Cliff were already the most interesting men I’d ever met. And my dad didn’t dismiss them or tell me not to pay them any attention like he did when I hung out with non-Mormon kids. He was just as interested in The Kentucky Six as I was.

We woke up early the next morning. My dad put on a three-piece suit and we packed into a taxi. The cab stopped at a nice hotel in downtown Indianapolis and Dad opened the door. I wasn’t invited.

“You might have better luck getting autographs on your own,” he said. “What do you think?”

I was a gawky kid with acne. Leaving Dad to roam the city on my own sounded terrifying and perfect.

“We can watch out for him,” Darryl offered, nodding in my direction.

Dad looked briefly pained, then handed me a wad of twenties. “Alright then,” he said. “Be safe.”

Seconds after he took off, Darryl and Jerry produced a dozen bundles of Final Four tickets wrapped in rubber bands. Cliff started counting out thousands of dollars on his lap. Darryl noticed me staring, cracked a big smile, and said to Cliff, “You know what? We might be able to put this kid to work.”

Darryl noticed me staring, cracked a big smile, and said to Cliff, “You know what? We might be able to put this kid to work.”

Five minutes later, we pulled up to the RCA Dome. The University of Kentucky’s Big Blue Nation marching band was parading the streets and fans had camped out overnight to buy tickets.

“You ready for some action?” Darryl asked.

He flung the taxi door open and launched into the crowd. “Who needs tickets?” he shouted. Cliff jumped out right behind him. “Who has tickets?” he barked. Redd and Jerry followed, each hollering, “Tickets!” I ran to keep up.

The Big Blue Nation horde grew denser as we neared the ticket window, pressing in from all sides. I felt a tug on my sleeve. It was Darryl. He’d cut in line. The poor guy he leapfrogged had waited all night for his spot, but Darryl was bigger, a former high school point guard with a dangerous quickness to him.

“Here’s the situation,” Darryl said, handing me an inch-thick brick of bills. “That’s four grand.” He pointed towards the ticket windows. “I want you to get in there and buy lowers, the best available.”

I’d never seen that much money in my life.

“Like lower bowl?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Darryl said. “They’ll have a map at the window. Get half-court.”

Moments later, the blinds over the ticket windows snapped open and I slipped toward the head of the line. Then I was standing in front of a window, looking at a middle-aged woman.

“I need lower-bowl half-courts,” I said.

“That’s $1,100 for two,” she said with concern. “Those are the expensive ones. You probably want something cheaper … ?”

I counted out the money.

A sign beside the window read, “Limit 2 Tickets per Person.” But I figured Darryl had given me four thousand for a reason. In a shy Kentucky drawl, I asked, “Can I get two more? For my mom and brother?”

She gave me a kind look and slid me two more tickets.

Redd materialized and grabbed them from me. “Holy shit, you got four together on mid-court,” he said, rubber-banding them to his own stack.

Darryl appeared. “What are you doing with my tickets?”

“The kid’s selling them to me. How much, son?” Redd asked.

Darryl didn’t back down. “So you’re telling me if a kid buys tickets with my money, I have to give you the tickets?”

“He just gave me the tickets.” Redd said. “Besides, you owe me. Remember that four-pack I delivered at the Marriott? What about that, you sonofabitch?”

“Do I need to put you down?” he shot back. “Because I will destroy you.”

Redd peeled four tickets off his two-inch stack and tossed them at him, disgusted. It wasn’t an admission of wrongdoing. “I gotta pay my bills, asshole.”

Darryl didn’t bat an eye. He turned to me and held out the tickets. “This what you bought?”

I nodded.

Without a word, Darryl stormed back into the crowd. I walked down the street to a hotel restaurant and sat at a table. I still had $1,800 in my pocket.

In Sunday School, we were encouraged to imagine ourselves in different situations and ask: What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do if he saw someone stranded on the road? What if he saw someone crying alone? What if he were 14 years old and a guy as big and mean and exciting as Darryl slipped him $4,000 to buy half-court seats to sell illegally?

The waitress came over and asked me what I wanted. I’d never been to a restaurant by myself before. I grinned and ordered a Coke.

2006 World Cup - Frankfurt, Germany

For the faithful, Mormonism is much more than a Sunday pastime. The church gifts its followers detailed blueprints for a lifetime of prefab happiness, seven days a week. With a divine script to follow, there can be no doubt, no sleepless nights. And for my first 18 years, I upheld my end of the bargain, primed to accept the blessings the lord would hand down one by one over decades of obedience.

After all, Mormons like to say, it works. I watched my peers who left the fold: suicide attempts, overdoses, family estrangement. By their fruits ye shall know them. Leaving the church was unthinkable. But as I approached the grown-up milestone of serving a mission, the pressure mounted. Sunday school hypotheticals were one thing, but those who questioned the tenets of the church — or even some of the more arbitrary rules — faced severe social disapproval, ostracism, and the threat of losing precious spiritual blessings.

I questioned. And I watched with mounting distress as my peers donned short-sleeve dress shirts and headed to Paris, Plano, Siberia, Sao Paulo. In Europe, you’d be lucky to convert one Catholic, but South American missions were more like pool parties. Entire neighborhoods went into the baptismal front, one after the other. I tried to at least look forward to learning a foreign language.

But my body couldn’t take it. I’d gone to church, studied the bible every day before school, prayed, expelled hate from my heart, repented, taken the sacrament, passed the sacrament, blessed the sacrament, tithed, been baptized, gone to the temple, fulfilled my priesthood duties, and abstained from alcohol. Still, I questioned. As I approached 19, I developed Crohn’s disease, and lost my faith in God. Heartbroken, sick and alone, I decided to enroll in college and delay committing to a mission for one more year.

That’s when I met Alexis. I had staples in my stomach from having a big chunk of my intestine removed, but I walked happily walked up four flights of stairs to a friend’s apartment to get to know her. She was French. Her sacraments were wine, olive oil, art, nudity, and poetry — and I was her hopeless initiate. She’d just dropped out of fashion work in Europe. I’d just dropped out of religion. Our meeting felt preordained.

We drove up to Alaska to work on a salmon boat in Juneau. I worshipped Alexis as she laughed with lifelong fishermen, operated a hydraulic crane in a storm, and shoveled ice on the aft deck in the sun. We talked about moving to Europe. Traveling. When the season was over, we moved back to Salt Lake City and took weekend trips to Nevada to gamble away our fishing proceeds.

My parents knew none of this — just that I was living in sin, haunting casinos, and writing bad poetry. My dad arranged a lunch with Darryl at a steak place in Provo. It was an intervention, and his tool, as always, was sports.

I hadn’t seen Darryl since I was 14. He looked the same, but I looked wild, sporting a big bushy beard and shoulder-length hair.

“Looking scruffy there, sailor,” Darryl said.

“I’ve been running salmon from Juneau to Sitka,” I said.

“That’s hard work,” he said, smiling.

“How’s the ticket game?” I asked.

“We went international,” he said. “Killed it in France at the ‘98 World Cup. Did two and a half million in four weeks.”

I was impressed. It seemed a big step up from the operation I’d been briefly a part of eight years earlier.

“We’re putting together a new team for the World Cup in Germany. You interested? Or are you a fisherman now?”

Ticket scalping in Germany sounded safer than risking my life at sea — or worse, becoming a poet. My dad had given his blessing. So had Alexis. I didn’t hesitate.

“I’m in.”

Three months later, I landed in Frankfurt-Au-Main carrying a backpack stuffed with $30,000 in cash. Darryl had given me my instructions a week earlier.

“Keep the money in one bag,” he’d said. “Don’t put 10 grand here and 10 grand there, that’s just more ways of getting caught. Put it all in the one bag and don’t get it seized.”

Right. Don’t get it seized.

“And get a haircut. Lose the beard. And wear a collared shirt.”

Travelers could bring $10,000 into Europe without declaring the money. I was bringing in triple that. But I had also swapped my flannel and beard for the crisp suit and Eisenhower-era haircut of a Mormon missionary. I smiled as the beret-wearing customs agent waved me through the “Nothing to Declare” line. One cab ride later, I stood in front of a gothic apartment building that looked like it had survived both World Wars.

Darryl buzzed me in to the stash house. I followed him to a room on the fourth floor where two missionaries counted money on separate couches. A World Cup game played on a flatscreen in the background. More interesting to me was the desk with a half-million worth of tickets stacked in piles two-feet high. Darryl took a seat and pulled the cash out of my backpack. I thought he was going to count it. Instead, he dropped it into a suitcase on the floor beside him.

“First rule,” he said. “You don’t tell anyone how this business works.”

He leaned forward and glared at me.

“Ever.”

“You gotta be careful,” Darryl warned me. “A ticket hustler — unless he has heard of you, or knows who you work for — will rip you off. Don’t ever trust anyone. That’s rule number two.”

Darryl didn’t need to worry: I had no idea what was happening. I learned what I could between frenzied phone calls and chaotic bursts of activity. Sometimes we had to move product as fast as possible. Sometimes we’d hand-deliver to the straights. Sometimes we’d stuff tickets in FedEx envelopes. Mostly, we whittled down the piles by selling stacks to other ticket scalpers for cash. How the tickets landed on Darryl’s desk in the first place was a mystery.

I worked as a doorman, escorting guests from the street to the stash room. I greeted hustlers from Texas, New York, Tennessee, California, and England — listening as they argued over busted orders, chargebacks, flip-its, consignments, the board, blinks, and blowouts. Cliff, who had the build of a collegiate fullback, sat next to the desk of tickets, ready to pounce on anyone who made a false move. This was serious business.

“You gotta be careful,” Darryl warned me. “A ticket hustler — unless he has heard of you, or knows who you work for — will rip you off. Don’t ever trust anyone. That’s rule number two.”

On the third day, Darryl handed me 20 tickets for Mexico vs. Iran in an envelope scrawled with the name of a hotel and the name of a straight.

“I need you to take these to this hotel in Nuremberg,” he said.

“Where’s Nuremberg?”

“Do I look German?” he snapped. “Look at a map.”

I went to the Hauptbahnhof train station. Two hours later, I got off in Nuremberg, showed a taxi driver the name of the hotel, and phoned the client from the lobby. There was a mariachi band playing; Mexican fans were passing around bottles of tequila. As Darryl instructed, I asked to see a photo ID and had him sign a receipt. First delivery, done.

Satisfied, Darryl began sending me all over the country: Munich, Gelsenkirchen, Kaiserslautern, Berlin. I would leave the stash room in Frankfurt with a satchel of tickets and return with more than $100,000 in cash. On the train rides, I learned to authenticate tickets. Scalpers have a word for counterfeits: blinks. To avoid getting blinked, I studied the weight, feel, and shine of Darryl’s genuine World Cup ticket as the train rolled through blooming fields of hops.

Between deliveries, I listened to the small talk between Darryl, Cliff, and the crew. When other hustlers found out we were Mormon and didn’t smoke, drink, or curse, they trusted us. Trust helped cash deals operate smoothly. Being Mormon advanced the business, but it also made for a genuinely warm dynamic in the stash room. Cliff and Darryl asked after my dad, mom, brothers. They spoke about their own kids ruefully, lovingly. We talked basketball. They told stories from their missions in Europe and South America.

Then, after nearly two weeks, Darryl got off a phone call and noticed me sitting on the couch, waiting for my next delivery. Normally, he’d just hand me an envelope and tell me to hurry up. Now, he stared at me.

“Imagine this was your company,” he said, waving around the room. “What would you do?”

The World Cup was heading into quarterfinal play. Brazil was facing off against France in a re-match of the ‘98 final. It was a hot ticket. Face value was about 185 euros for a Category 1 seat. Darryl had buyers at 3,000 euros each.

“I’d try to pick up Brazil-France,” I said.

He reached into a suitcase and pulled out three bundles of 10,000 euros.

“Good idea,” he said. “Find some guys who are off the pulse.”

“Off the pulse” was how Darryl referred to hustlers who didn’t know the market and couldn’t track the surges in supply and demand. I took the metro into the city center and set up next to a strip of bustling bars with a cardboard sign that said “I Need Tickets” in English, French, and German.

Crowds of sweaty men chanted old songs at the beer gardens, flags around their necks like capes. Groups of women, shrouded in face paint, looked miserable as it dripped down their cheeks in the heat. I was wearing a polo shirt, khakis, and tennis shoes. We all wore tennis shoes in case we had to run.

I spotted four shirtless guys holding signs that read “Tickets” in French and English. They catcalled women who walked by, and their pants sagged. One had a mermaid tattoo. I was pretty sure these guys were off the pulse.

“Tickets?” I asked. “What do you got?”

Mermaid Tattoo smiled and flashed a half-inch stack. I handed them a list of tickets and rates devised by Darryl: 50 percent below market. Mermaid’s colleague pulled out a pen and crossed off all the prices, penning in numbers closer to street value. He knew what he was doing. But there was one game he didn’t cross off: Brazil-France, 2,000 euros each. I pointed. “Four.”

“Oui,” said my mark, nodding seriously. I inspected the tickets, smudging them with my sweaty thumb. The ink didn’t run: legit. I suppressed a smile as I counted out 8000 euros and handed it across the table. We shook hands, and the trio melted into the crowd.

I may as well have skipped back to the stash house. My first-ever ticket deal was set to make the company 4,000 euros. Bursting with pride, I tossed the tickets to Darryl and waited for a handshake. But I wasn’t going to get one.

“What the hell are these?” he shouted. “Come here and read this to me!”

I took the tickets back and he stabbed them with his finger. The words “Obstructed View” were printed across the middle.

“You know what that means? It means there’s a fucking pole right in front of them. Nobody’ll buy them. They’re deadwood.”

I stood there silently, crushed. My first ticket deal, and I’d been played.

“Are you worth $10,000 to me?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Then get out of my office,” he said.

Darryl was still in a foul mood the next day. Cliff had been arrested in Cologne and the Polizei had seized all of his tickets. By the time he bailed his brother out of jail, I had prepared myself for the inevitable tongue lashing. Instead, he wanted to talk about home.

“You know, most people find God when they have a disease,” he said.

My dad had told him about my Crohn’s. My eyes welled up, and it took all of my strength not to sob in the stash room. Watching me shake, Darryl softened.

“Look, I get it. Sometimes I doubt the church and I go every Sunday. But at some point you got to give something back to your parents. My dad thought me and Cliff were losers until we hit a big lick in France. Call that rule number three. If you want to make it in the ticket game, you need to grind out enough money to earn your father’s respect.”

I was silent.

“Those French hustlers played you yesterday because you were wrapped up in the romance of the game,” he said. “I told you not to trust anyone.”

Three days later the World Cup ended and I flew home to Utah.

2010 Winter Olympics - Vancouver, Canada

Cliff and Darryl hired me full time. They could trust me with a bag of money and that was enough to overlook a five-figure mistake. For four years I worked street corners, hotel lobbies, parking lots. I darted in and out of lines at ticket windows. I was finally going to all of the events I’d dreamt of as a kid.

The danger made it all the more enticing. Every ticket I sold gave me a clearer understanding of the things people will do to fuck you over for money. There were petty tricks — blinks, fake money, bad credit cards, lying about seat locations — that could cost you thousands if you weren’t careful. Big mistakes could cost more. A busted order could cost your reputation.

Ahead of the 2010 Olympics, Cliff invited me on a trip to do market research and smuggle cash into Canada. We carried the money on behalf of our new partner, “Brent Fish”, a self-ordained concierge to the super wealthy. Fish ran an office-style brokerage in Texas offering international ticket packages through a network of country clubs. Now he needed a street presence in Vancouver. Fish agreed to cover our expenses, put up a retainer fee, and give us a backend on the profits. In return, we’d help him navigate the market, handle deliveries, and fill orders for tickets he’d already sold.

Our hotel was in downtown Vancouver. Minutes after check-in, we were circling the Olympic venues, eyeing the ticket windows. I read aloud from the Vancouver Sun as we walked: projected attendance, demand, pricing.

It was still three months before the opening ceremonies and we didn’t see any hustlers in Vancouver. Rink events — hockey, speed skating, curling — were hosted in the city but the snow events would be at the Whistler ski resort. Cliff called Darryl who said he’d call around and find out who was on the mountain.

Networking with other scalpers was an important aspect of the business. Most couldn’t resist gossiping about prices and contacts. Talking and swapping stories with them kept us on the pulse and helped us find what we were really looking for: Olympic officials selling tickets under the table.

Whistler was still open for recreation. Skiers carrying gear over their shoulders walked the iced-over cobblestone paths to the lifts. At the Olympic Village, we finally bumped into two hustlers we knew: Jessie West and Gene Hammet.

Jessie had started his career as a ball boy for the Orlando Magic — scalping tickets he got from Shaquille O’Neal — and never looked back. Gene had made a name for himself at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing by partnering with the Bunevacz family who had official Olympic ties through a hospitality company in Eastern Europe. Through the Bunevaczes, Gene procured thousands of tickets from the “vault” — a hotel room with boxes of tickets for IOC insiders only. Brokers believed he could repeat the trick in Vancouver. So Gene started taking orders — selling tickets he didn’t have yet — months in advance of the opening ceremony. He was set to make a killing.

In the spirit of camaraderie, Gene doled out burners and took us to the bank with the most generous exchange rate. Workers were stringing blue lights in the trees over the icy streets, and there was a wet snow falling on the mountains like rain. For a minute, it seemed like everything would be perfect.

It wouldn’t last. A week later, Gene’s rental car was found abandoned at the Vancouver International Airport. He’d presold three and a half million dollars’ worth of tickets to the biggest ticket brokerages in the world. But his connection to “the vault” had gone bust. When it came time to deliver, he fled, his reputation ruined and his career over for good.

That I had shook hands with Gene back on the mountain scared the hell out of me. Darryl was right. I couldn’t trust anyone.

“This baby is heating up,” Fish said.

He looked out the window of our high-rise condo. Fish had flown in from Texas with two Tupperware bins full of tickets from his concierge contacts. Prices had spiked by a few hundred percent since the news of Gene’s disappearing act broke — and having tickets in hand gave us a leg up on the hustlers who’d hitched their wagons to a man who fled the country.

We weren’t totally insulated, though. Fish had ordered about $80,000 worth of tickets from Gene and most were for the Alpine skiing downhill race — the first event. We didn’t have many options for handling refunds. Deputized to run the show, I took a wad of cash and a few pairs of emergency tickets up to Whistler to reconcile the mess Gene had put us in.

“Those customers are pissed,” Fish said as I walked out the door. “It’s going to be ugly.”

He was right. The first few clients I met at the Fairmont Hotel were pleasant young married couples, all wearing the same pairs of red Olympic mittens. Other than that, it was chaos. Brokers were promising to deliver tickets by helicopter and mothers of Olympic athletes who’d purchased tickets from Fish months in advance were promising to call the papers if their orders weren’t filled. I had to move fast. Fish’s company was recognized as an official hospitality company so I commandeered a Chevrolet Tahoe with Olympic insignia on the side and a security pass on the dashboard to finish delivering refunds to clients. Parking the rig on the curbs of the hotels, I noticed all the valets wore the same red mittens, too.

Around midnight before the event, I called the folks I hadn’t found yet and begged them to accept cash refunds or a morning delivery. These were millionaire businessmen who owned their own companies — or in layman’s terms, complete assholes. When I delivered their busted ticket orders, they spit on me, threw wine at my feet, and jabbed at my chest with their fingers. “Cash? You think I want cash? I gave you cash because I needed fucking tickets!”

But I had spotted the trends. The Olympic mittens I’d seen everyone wearing had sold out in department stores. Between events, I bought a couple hundred pairs. The day before the closing ceremony I stuffed my suitcase with red Olympic mittens, knowing I could double my investment flipping them online. And there, engulfed in the smell of unworn fresh-woven cotton and with Gene in the wind, I realized I’d finally seen the dark side of the business.

2012 Masters - Augusta, Georgia

I was running down a highway ramp with $4,000 worth of tickets in my mouth. Golf fans stuck in traffic gawked. A police helicopter swooped low against the tree line. “YOU’RE EVADING ARREST!” a megaphone blared from overhead.

It was Wednesday, the day of the Par 3 tournament — the most sought-after single-day-ticket in golf. It’s when the players relax, chat with the crowd, and let their wives and children carry their bags before the main event begins on Thursday. You could make $30K to $40K in four hours if you knew what you were doing.

But this morning, business was slow. Hustlers working corners beside ours hung their heads and smoked cigarettes. Cliff made calls, trying to find a spot with some action.

“No one’s picked up anything inside the course either,” Cliff said.

“What’s the move?” I asked.

“You want to work the ramp?”

“Sure.”

“They’ll grab you if they see you.”

“I know,” I said.

Traffic was heavy and the Georgia sunrise was bubbling pink above the highway. Face value for Wednesday passes was $50 and we could flip them on the highway for $400. But when you sold more than two passes the straights took forever to count the cash — and cars started honking. Ten deals in, I was set to make a killing when the police helicopter pegged me from above the canopy.

I chomped down on the tickets and leapt over a highway barricade into the Georgia pines. As I made for the forest, the rotor downdraft swirled the grass on the side of the road and puffed up my shirt. With the chopper blasting the treetops and cops fanning out, I dove under a fallen tree and covered myself in moss and dirt.

The sun filtered through ash trees. I heard the crunch of boots in the underbrush. Georgia had just upped the penalty for scalping. They could charge me with resisting arrest, public endangerment, money laundering — and that was before they tacked on any ticket charges. I could go to prison.

Moses received the Ten Commandments on a mountain, but I met God in a forest. As far as I was concerned, the woods were a great place to reflect. I closed my eyes. I was scared. Not scared enough to go back to church, but enough to ask for an assist.

“Help get me out of this, if you’re listening,” I said under my breath.

The whir of the helicopter receded. The boots trudged away. After 15 minutes, I peeked over my log. All clear. I jumped up, dusted myself off, and looked at the tickets. Some teeth marks, but otherwise still worth a decent amount. I exhaled and returned a call from Jessie West.

I stayed in touch with Jessie after Vancouver, and he’d recently offered to connect me with one of his contacts in London. The biggest ticketing company in Europe had an opening for a managerial position. The ticket game was changing. Kids with degrees were taking the business from street corners to computer servers while police in Augusta chased me through the woods. If I kept working with Darryl and Cliff, I’d never rise beyond consigliere. A good hustler knows when to walk away — and my days of selling by the side of the road were done.

Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary Show, Nov. 29, 2012 - O2 Arena, London

My final job interview was at a tapas bar in East London.

“Hi, Candice,” I said.

“Call me Candy.” She smiled. “White wine okay?”

She had green eyes and dyed blonde hair. Here in East London, she was “fit.”

“Essentially, your job would be taking brokers out and convincing them to put tickets on our site. You’d have a staff of three, and you’d be running your own department. You’re sure you could handle that?” she asked.

“Candy,” I said, “I might be the most qualified candidate in the world.”

She swirled her wine. Then she hired me on the spot to dress up the business I’d learned holding a sign on the highway.

Tickets International was the biggest player in Europe, one of the pioneers in connecting buyers and sellers online without ever physically possessing tickets. To start the “Last-Minute Sales” department, I was given a staff of three “supply executives”, a group of women in their 20s.

Julie was from Marseilles and had worked at the UN. Her je ne sais quoi inspired confidence. Faye was from Liverpool and armed with street-corner jokes. I was concerned about Rosie, who was from Brighton and had the look of an adorable scamp who could do no wrong. But then it hit me: In our Mormon garb, Cliff, Darryl, and I smuggled money past customs agents and outwitted police with ease. With her unassuming good looks, Rosie was actually perfect. And I had just the job for her.

Ahead of the Rolling Stones 50th anniversary show in London, I secured Tickets International a lease on a cocktail bar inside the O2 Arena. Entertainment giant AEG owned the O2 and we were illegally operating on their turf. If anything went wrong, I was fired. The night of the show, our company was hosting investors and journalists from around the world to showcase the new Last-Minute Sales department.

I took the tube to the arena with Rosie and Faye. The Underground was choked with Brits in leather jackets and gold chains. Lithographed red lips and tongues adorned white T-shirts. Mick Jagger was on the cover of every paper in the city. Last-minute ticket requests came in from all over: Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Moscow, Tokyo. I had an American phone, a European phone, a Secret Service-style earpiece connected to our bar security, and a few thousand pounds inside my black wool coat.

“Where’s Julie again?” Rosie asked.

“On a food truck,” I shouted — the tube under East London was so loud you had to yell to be heard.

“I beg your pardon?” Faye asked.

“Yeah, she’s coming into the O2 with the Stones tickets on a food truck. We’re going to sneak the tickets up the food service elevator.”

Faye and Rosie smirked.

We got off at North Greenwich and walked into a cold and foggy night. Security greeted us at the entrance to the O2, checked our bags, and waved us in. My UK phone buzzed. Julie had texted me a picture of her smiling and smartly dressed — boxes of tickets right behind her on the cocktail bar.

Reselling soccer tickets in England is considered a felony to this day.

London was a notoriously tough place to do business. In the 1980s, law enforcement had officially blamed scalpers for the rampant violence that was occurring in England’s soccer stadiums. They outlawed the trade under the logic that soccer hooligans wouldn’t be in the stadiums were it not for the men selling tickets on the corner. Reselling soccer tickets in England is considered a felony to this day.

In response, London touts bunkered operations in back offices. On my visits to these lairs, well-spoken gentlemen offered me tea. I listened to them tell stories of relatives who’d been famous bank robbers and then I’d convince them they could make more money by selling tickets online. I loved learning the market from London touts, but I hated automating the game. It ate at me. But Candy kept me too busy to think about it much.

One day she grabbed me outside a conference room. “Your department is doing quite well,” she said. “We’re going to need you to scale across Europe.”

Soon Rosie, Julie, and Faye were collecting stuffed envelopes at cocktail bars in European capitals. We smuggled boxes of tickets down Las Ramblas in Barcelona ahead of El Clásico. We operated pickups and stash rooms in hotels in Milan and Madrid for Champions League soccer matches. We ran satellite operations in Sydney for the Australian Open, in Hong Kong for the Sevens International Rugby Tournament, and in Singapore for the F1. As the girls learned the ropes, our take-home increased. Between pickups I encouraged them to buy watches and handbags to camouflage our operations at customs. Our department grew by 300 percent.

My parents had never been happier. They mentioned me at family functions again.

2013 Wimbledon - Victoria, London

“Charlatans!” an elderly British lady shouted.

Rosie and Julie fluttered around the champagne bar offering drinks, excuses, and refunds. I’d rented a high-end spot near Buckingham Palace as a pickup point for our Wimbledon clientele. But delivery had been delayed; our usually calm, courteous customers morphed into a pack of spoiled monsters. I worried we might be evicted when a waiter in a tuxedo told me I had a phone call. It was the head of the Wimbledon box office.

“We have a customer here of yours with an invalid ticket,” he said in a clipped British accent. “We needn’t remind you that what you’re doing is illegal.”

I saw clients screaming across the lobby. My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing.

“There must have been a mistake,” I said. “I’ll send Rosie right over.”

Hours later, as the last clients left the champagne bar, Rosie rang me in a panic.

“They have me! I’m stuck in the box office, what should I do?”

“What do you mean, they have you?”

“I’m in the Wimbledon ticketing office. Security has me, and they’re calling the police. What should I do?”

“Run!”

A good hustler always runs.

Rosie got away. To reward her for her daring escape, I took her to the Men’s Wimbledon Finals. Touts we knew waved hello from their corners as we approached the grounds. Chalkboards outside all the pubs advertised Sunday roast and champagne specials. I had on a blue summer sport coat I’d bought in Paris and Rosie was wearing a white floral dress and heels.

“Hope they don’t recognize me,” she said, smiling as we entered the grounds of the oldest tennis tournament in the world.

I grabbed a couple half-bottles of champagne and two plastic flutes from a green stand between the empty grass courts. Bushy green ivy swam up the walls at the gates of the centre court stadium and we were given pins with purple ribbons to wear to show we were guests of the All England Club. I watched the eyes of the ticket takers and security guards to see if any of them recognized Rosie while we held hands and walked under the concourse.

From our seats we saw English legends, football stars, fashion designers, and old actors chit-chatting with princes and princesses inside the royal box. The ryegrass of the court was worn behind the end lines, but freshly watered. The players danced lightly on their feet, loosening their long athletic strides, warming up their swings, and judging the bounce of the ball before the first serve.

“C’mon, Andy!” Rosie shouted.

In anticipation of witnessing a proud day in their history — the first British-born tennis player to win at Wimbledon in 40 years — something spiritual welled up inside the stadium. The umpire hushed the whistling chants and the crack first serve echoed throughout the stadium. He won the first set, and then the second. Rosie clenched her fists between tie breaks. The spirit was growing and more members began to believe.

Andy won three straight sets and the teary-eyed Brits gave a standing ovation. Flags waved. With the ball boys and line judges standing in attention at the net, Andy hoisted the trophy in the air and the spirit-filled crowd burst with joy — vindicating the millions of pounds spent to see the game.

Henman Hill overlooked the Wimbledon grounds and Brits wanting to keep the party going found refuge there. I grabbed a few more half-bottles and a bowl of strawberries with cream. Plump, sunburnt tennis fanatics kicked off their shoes and twirled flags in bare feet. From where we sat on the crest of the hill, you could see the ticket office. Rosie pointed out the escape route she’d taken a few days earlier. The sun lowered over the skyline and the heat from the grass courts rose in a misty haze.

Two weeks later Candy fired me for drinking on the job. Without a company to work for, I became a hustler for hire. And hired guns had to take chances. Sometimes crazy ones.

2014 Winter Olympics - Sochi, Russia

Sochi had the feel of the communist beach town it once was. Palm trees arched over broken cement. Reagan-era, Russian-made cars were parked under blockish apartment buildings with unopposed views of the Black Sea. At night, the streets were empty apart from roaming packs of Russian policemen walking their dogs. They patrolled past Lenin statues casting angular shadows in the moonlight. It felt like if you made the wrong move you could disappear forever.

Fish thought he could make a $1M in Russia. Since Vancouver, he’d assembled contacts on the Olympic committees of corrupt countries. Estonia, Philippines, and Angola were all willing to sell under the table. Fish was also dabbling in the hotel game. He’d rented rooms on a cruise ship parked in the Sochi port and had plans to mark them up in Olympic travel packages.

We flew from JFK to Moscow with Tupperware bins full of Olympic tickets stashed in the carry-on compartments. The Aeroflot food was inedible; I drank five or six vodkas to believe Fish knew what he was doing. If our stash house got raided, Fish was my only hope of posting bail. None of my old Kentucky Six colleagues were making the trip to the former Soviet Union.

With reports of Chechnyan terrorists bannering news channels, American hustlers had decided that working the Games wasn’t worth it. Cliff scoffed at our plan. Darryl didn’t like it, either. But they helped me secure my deal with Fish: expenses plus 30 percent on any tickets I sold in the street. Cliff reminded me to try and make money on the side and look out for myself. I teased him for being scared to work in Russia.

“You can say what you want,” Cliff said. “But there is a color over there, and when you see the Russian Police wearing it, you’ll understand you made a mistake.”

“But there is a color over there, and when you see the Russian Police wearing it, you’ll understand you made a mistake.”

“A color?” I asked, slightly alarmed at Cliff admitting to fear.

“Yeah,” Cliff said. “If you see cops wearing snow camouflage — run.”

Because they’d decided to host the Winter Olympics in a beach town, the Russian Olympic Committee had to build a 28-mile road up the Caucasus Mountains for snow events. Esquire reported that the ROC could’ve saved money if they’d paved the road with caviar — provided that caviar was not also procured through layers of oligarchic kickbacks. If the corruption wasn’t enough to deter potential clients, Sochi had gone into military lockdown two weeks ahead of the Opening Ceremony as the KGB hunted for an Islamic terrorist named the “White Widow” who supposedly wanted to blow up train stations.

Once we landed in Sochi, I took a taxi to see an Israeli broker I’d done business with in London. He was staying at Zhemchuzhina Hotel, the only five-star joint in town. Workers were laying tile in the lobby.

“I don’t think you understand. The entire event is at stake here. You might not be able to sell these at all,” the broker said, flipping through my consignments.

“C’mon,” I said.

“This is supposed to be the classiest hotel in Sochi? My contacts tell me Putin is staying here, and they’re still laying tile and hanging lights in the lobby? Now? A few days before the Opening Ceremony? Look around you. They might not have built the seats in the stadium.”

Stray dogs roamed the parking lot outside of the Zhemchuzhina, where I waited for a cab. The hopes of finding high-rolling Russian clientele looked grim. I was staying with Fish at a hotel outside Sochi, where we had 40 extra rooms. The following morning, Fish opened the Tupperware bins on his hotel bed — facing the horror of losing $1M if the tickets went unsold.

On my first night out, I met two women who were performing in the Opening Ceremonies and could speak English. I hired them as translators. To drum up business, I took them to the boardwalk along the Black Sea and we passed out business cards that had the word “tickets” printed in Russian and English with a burner phone number on the back. Fish hired local kids to answer the phones. We had a small-scale Russian-speaking boiler room up and running within 48 hours.

Each morning, I stashed the previous night’s profits under hotel furniture in my room, took a shower, had a glass of champagne, and dressed in Russian regalia to blend in with the crowds outside the stadium. Around 8 or 9 a.m., I would visit Fish’s hotel room, collect the day’s unsold tickets, arrange them in envelopes according to venue, and take a train to the Olympic Village. It wasn’t until about a week in that I first saw soldiers wearing Cliff’s color of terror.

In an act of corporate sabotage, one of Fish’s contacts started double-selling tickets on the Olympic secondary exchange without telling us. These sales voided the physical tickets we’d already purchased from him. Suddenly, the tickets I was selling outside of Olympic stadiums were invalid. I only found out when a Russian client tackled me in front of the Olympic flame.

One of the Russian oligarchs embedded in the ROC had somehow won a contract that allowed him to burn off excess natural gas via the Olympic flame. It sounded like an industrial blowtorch. While the enraged customer was rubbing my face in the sidewalk, I looked up and saw a battalion of Russian soldiers in snow camouflage holding AKs with silencers.

The battalion was slowly making their way towards the commotion. The client was dragging me towards the battalion. Before the trap closed, I jumped to my feet, counted out 10,000 rubles, slapped the bills in my client’s hand, and ran.

I fled to the Adler train station — a midway point between the Sochi and mountain venues — and caught up on emails. In the midst of sending a furious missive to Fish for supplying me with voided tickets, I saw an urgent note from my mom. My grandma had died.

Grandma grew up taking horse-drawn winter sleds to church on Sundays in Idaho. All six of her children played musical instruments and served two-year missions. I was the first relative on her side of the family not to attend Brigham Young University since it was founded. All of the values she lived for were lost on me. I walked down to the shore of the Black Sea, took off my shoes, walked into the water and cried. It was time to go home. In the business lobby of the Radisson, I booked my flight at the same public computer as a band of hustlers from Liverpool.

“Tough work this, wasn’t it lad? Beats working for wages though, doesn’t it, Trav?”

I nodded and told them it might be the last time I’d see them, because there were good chances of my flight blowing up. Russia had just invaded the Ukraine, and the only flights out of town were through Kiev.

“It’s alright though,” they said. “If it blows up, ye can scalp limbs, can’t ye? Arms? Who needs arms? Legs? Ye need a leg?”

They cackled.

On my way home, I called my dad to tell him what I’d gotten myself into. I told him about working in Sochi, the bad tickets, the brushes with the police and riot dogs, and the changing nature of the game that put my career at risk. The more I told him, the more he laughed. And then he did something unexpected. He encouraged me.

He said if I wasn’t scared to sell tickets outside of stadiums in Russia, then I shouldn’t be scared to sell tickets anywhere. If I understood the ticket business, I could start my own sports company. He wasn’t an advocate of backroom deals in foreign countries, but he’d found humor in what I’d become — and opportunity.

2014 World Cup - Porto Alegre, Brazil

The unmarked car came to a stop. The taller of the undercovers threw open my door, pulled out his pistol, and re-checked the safety. An abandoned building loomed over police headquarters. Slowly, I got out of the car.

No one spoke English inside the police station. Heavy-looking undercovers stood in a corner, barricaded with assault rifles. A uniformed cop grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down the hallway into detention. There were separate rooms — divided by glass walls — for recording statements. Trying to wiggle free from the cop I saw some hustlers I knew from Liverpool and Holland. They winked and smiled. I overheard a female detective interrogating a Liverpudlian tout in a neighboring office.

“How did you get here?”

“I fuckin’ hitchhiked,” he said.

We were more than the Brazilian police force could handle. The cop tossed me onto a chair in an interrogating office while the rest of the undercovers watched the Australia-Netherlands match on a small television above some filing cabinets.

The cop tossed me onto a chair in an interrogating office while the rest of the undercovers watched the Australia-Netherlands match on a small television above some filing cabinets.

The broadcast echoed in my interrogation room. I closed my eyes and imagined the view from mid-field. I sold a pair of tickets to a Brazilian girl with long dark hair. I could smell the fresh watered grass on the stadium floor and hear the Dutch trombonists playing behind us.

A detective began peppering me with questions in broken English. I told her, in worse Spanish, that I was a fan and not a scalper. I projected the nervousness of a straight and the innocence of a kid who attended church every Sunday.

A couple hours later, I had them convinced. I had to sign a statement written in Portuguese, and they gave me back my money in a white envelope. An undercover offered to drive me back to the hotel.

When I got to my room, I took off my money belt. It was humid so I opened a window and took off my shirt. I took two tiny bottles of whiskey from the mini-fridge and poured them into a glass with shaved ice. Burner phones buzzed on the dresser. I ignored them.

I looked up “cambista.” The direct translation was “money changer.” In 2008, during the banking crisis, a bunch of traders from Wall Street showed up in Latin America with duffel bags of U.S. bills and traded down multiple Latin American currencies by hand. I looked in the mirror and tried to understand how I was in league with the types of men I promised myself I’d never become.

Summer 2017 - Sitka, Alaska

Four clients found me holding a sign and handed me their tickets. Cold mist from the Pacific Ocean hung low over the tree line of the fjords. Mountains collided along a choppy coastline. Glacier current lipped at the docks of the cruise ship terminal. I took their tickets and we shook hands. The massive crowds emptying from the ship, walking up the boat ramp in front of us weren’t chanting a country’s name, or singing, or cursing rival fans. They were whispering and snapping pictures of bald eagles.

“What are we fishing for today?” the clients asked.

In the years following the World Cup in Brazil, ticket offices around the world shut down shop. Ticket International’s London office was raided under suspicion of corporate fraud. FIFA executives faced prison time on racketeering charges. The Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger was proving to be a monopoly, and the automation of the street corner forced ticket guys to find new work or get mauled on thin margins. So I used the hospitality skills I’d learned to get back into the woods.

“The fishing is good right now. The salmon are in,” I said.

“I sure would like to catch some honkers today,” said an overweight Texan as I knelt down to tie his river boots for him.

We hopped back in the truck armed with nets, 7-weight fly rods, and freshly punched fishing licenses. Clusters of Sitka spruce towered over us, covering the sky. Brushing back the low-hanging hemlock branches, I walked the clients onto a stone washout below the bank of the Sitka river. The dorsal fins of the salmon skated on the surface of the deep pools in the bend.

“My GAWD, boy, this is where you work?” another Texan gasped, trying to catch his breath from having walked a few hundred yards.

I lined up the clients and showed them how to cast, swing, and strip their fly through the school of salmon. They hooked trees in their back-casts, and popped off flies when they hooked up, not knowing how to fight fish. One of the Texans made small talk while I re-tied a fly to his tippet.

“Now what do we do if we see a bear?”

“There’s only one rule if you see a brown bear: Don’t run.”

After the clients returned to the cruise ship I broke down the fly rods, rinsed waders and boots, and hung them on a wooden railing outside of the fly shop. I walked down the street and sat on a bench overlooking the Old Sitka harbor. Seine fishermen mended their nets on the dock, charter captains unloaded their catch in coolers, and deckhands hosed away fish blood while deck bosses smoked cigarettes and cursed the sounds of roaming sea lions.

I was counting a wad of twenties when my phone rang.

“Cliff.”

“How’s Alaska?”

“Catching salmon.”

“So you’re a fisherman now?” he asked.

“Cruise ship clients think so. I’ve already broken an Alaskan state record,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve dunked 15 clients this season.”

“Dunked?”

“You know, fell in the water and flooded their waders. I’m baptizing ‘em up here.”

“So if I go on a trip with you I’m more likely to get wet than catch a salmon?”

“It’s 50-50.”

“How are the bears?”

“I see signs of them every day.”

“Signs? What would you do if you saw a bear?”

“I have a gun.”

“If I found out you were the one in charge of aiming the gun, I’d request a different guide.”

In the face of automation, Cliff had found a new market. At the Trump Inauguration in Washington D.C., he’d gotten in with one of Kellyanne Conway’s aides, buying reserved seats at a grand and flipping them out at a nickel apiece. He did the deals in the Capitol building, and after he’d finished with Conway’s aide, he popped his head in other senate offices to see if they had inauguration tickets, too — scalping the halls of Congress.

I walked along the water to the Pioneer Bar, 1,000 miles from nowhere and one of the only places left in America where you can still smoke inside. You could see killer whales spouting in the back of the bay, hunting underwater. It reminded me of Cliff and Darryl counting money in the early morning — their shadows on hotel room walls — the work of an underworld never seen by the fans outside stadiums.

Inside the bar were long-lining captains, bush pilots, and all manner of bickering, violent alcoholics. There were smoke-stained photos of old boats from the trolling fleet and a giant golden bell with a rope swing that fishermen fresh from sea would ring to buy a round of drinks at the bar.

There was also an old deckhand named Chaz I’d worked with when I first came up to Alaska. He’d smuggled rum in and out of Puerto Rico in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and he’d sailed in and out of the Caribbean Islands before they had electricity. He’d talk about what it was like to pull up to port in a boat plugged with illegal rum by candlelight. His hands were rope-worn and weathered. And somehow, there, amid stories of risks taken and fish that had slipped through their nets, I found God’s love in the dusty light pouring through the windows. I found it in the faces of the deckhands, sleeplessness leaving their faces at the thought of their first drink. I counted out my dollar bills onto the bar, and let myself disappear. The cigarette smoke made for good cover.

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