FEBRUARY 2020 49
cases Western New York has ever seen, unfold-
ing right there amid the afternoon coupon crowd.
In less than two hours, an arrest would be made.THE UNIFRAX
plant sits just off I-190, before the highway crosses
the Niagara River onto Grand Island, about
12 miles north of Buffalo and 10 miles south of
Niagara Falls. Lit up at night in the fast-closing
dusk, it looks like a Costco warehouse constructed
from metal roofing. One gets the feeling here of
circling the edge of the universe—black sky bleeding
into black water in the near distance, the burning
nasal sensation of an endless chill. Inside, they make
specialty fiber products; your car’s fiberglass insu-
lation might have been manufactured right here.This is where Robert Brandel worked for the
better part of a decade. Coworkers describe him
as a wiry “grandfather” type with a surprising
amount of energy for someone his age. “Bobby”
was the kind of guy who would bring in candy bars
to break up the monotony of a long shift or who, if
he saw a group of people he knew at the bar after
work, would pick up the tab. He talked about a
big family, a bum knee and a black belt in karate.
He was always available to pick up shifts. “One of
the nicest guys,” said one Unifrax acquaintance.
That affable disposition made Brandel an ideal
administrator for the annual Super Bowl squares
pool. Each of the last eight years he spread hand-
written fliers around the Unifrax plant before Super
Sunday, touting $50,000 in prizes. In early Febru-ary of 2018, days after the Eagles beat the Patriots
in Super Bowl LII, Brandel began the twin tasks of
paying winners and collecting for the next year’s
pool. He would always start collecting immediately
after each year’s title game, offering payment plans
and jotting clients’ names down in a little notebook.
Brandel would tell coworkers that he’d taken
over the pool from a bar he frequented, which
was why more than a few of the entrants’ names
were unfamiliar to anyone at the factory. It would
have been impossible for anyone to imagine this
scribbled tapestry of two worlds colliding—the full
Christian names of coworkers mixed in with the
types of sobriquets one might use at the local bar
(like “Stretch,” “The Twins,” and “Boner”) would
soon end up in a police evidence locker.A SQUARES POOL
is set up similarly to a game of Battleship: 10 verti-
cal columns and 10 horizontal rows, each num-
bered zero to nine across the top and lefthand sides.
One Super Bowl team is assigned the columns, the
other gets the rows, and each of the 100 squares
inside are purchased individually by anyone with
even the slightest interest in America’s Game. In
some pools entrants are limited to purchasing
one square; in others you can buy without limit.
Either way, at the end of each quarter, the entrant
who bought the square corresponding with the
intersection of the second (or lone) digit of each
team’s score wins a prize. For example: A 14–7
game at the end of the first quarter pays out the
owner of the square at row 4, column 7. The final
score typically pays out a higher sum. The numbers
assigned to each row and column are selected at
random, and only after every box has been sold;
that’s because some digits (0, 3, 7) hit far more
frequently than others (2, 5, 9).
Brandel’s pool, like many others, had its own
quirks. He awarded bonus money before the game
was even played to the 10 participants who landed
“matching number” squares (0–0, 1–1, 2–2), and
later for the squares sitting directly above, below
and to the left and right of each quarter’s winning
square, as well as for the square with the reverse
of the final score (like 4–7 in a 17–14 game).
The squares filled out and numbers assigned,
most participants were ready for offensive fire-
works when the Patriots and Rams met last Febru-
ary. Instead, it was a defensive slog. After a score-
less first quarter (squares winner: 0–0), Stephen
Gostkowski’s field goal held up as the only points
of the first half (winner: 3–0). In the third quar-
ter, the Rams settled for a game-tying field goal
(winner: 3–3). Finally, in the fourth, the Patriots
broke through with two long drives, yielding aCLO