50 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
touchdown and a field goal. L.A., trailing 13–3 with
eight seconds left, on New England’s 30, had one
last gasp: kick a field goal, recover an onside kick
and pull off a Hail Mary TD.
It was a desperation scenario for the NFC
champs but an ideal situation for any pool par-
ticipant with the 3–6 square—that is, until Greg
Zuerlein pulled his kick wide left. In Brandel’s pool,
the 3–3 square was set to pay out for the final and
third-quarter scores, as well as for the reverse of the
final, plus a pregame prize for a matching square.
Someone was in line for a whopping $22,000.
BRANDEL PULLED
around the corner and saw a truck idling outside
his house, three grown men piled inside the cab.
He knew the visitors, and he knew why they were
there. It was three weeks after Super Bowl LIII,
and he hadn’t yet paid out a dime in prizes for his
squares pool.
He also hadn’t been to work in weeks, and some
of the people looking to collect had resorted to tak-
ing days off in trying to track him down. Handoff
meetings were arranged, only to be canceled via
last-minute text: Was on my way but got pulled over
by the cops, hope they don’t find the cash! And: Sorry,
went to Tahoe to watch the PGA pro-am! Patience
had been exhausted. Three of the pool winners
had come to settle up.
Brandel recognized them and knew what was
up, so he swung down a side street. There would be
no chase through the slush-covered streets; he was
gone. Really gone. No one—not coworkers, friends
or even family members—saw or heard from him
the next day. In his absence, rumors were rampant.
He owned another property, someone suggested,
and was hiding out. He smashed his phone so he
couldn’t be tracked. He blew the money. Someone
at the factory even heard that a family member had
reported Brandel missing.
He wouldn’t be seen again until 48 hours after
the failed collection, when he rolled down the win-
dow in his pickup and started howling for help in
a supermarket parking lot.
DURING HIS TIME
on the force Moscato had developed a kind of
two-tracked mind, allowing him to take in a
story with sympathy while also chipping away
at its foundation with cynicism. Before passing
Brandel on to an investigator at the police sta-
tion in Lockport, he already had a feeling that
the sole person responsible for Robert Brandel’s
abduction was sitting in the back of his squad car.
Moscato was careful not to be too confronta-
tional. If Brandel’s story was true, he would be trau-
matized, and the kidnappers might still be at-large.
But there was no sign that anyone else had been
in the truck—no accumulation of receipts or food
wrappers that would suggest more than one per-
son—despite the kidnappers having allegedly driven
it around for nearly three days. Also, Brandel’s
pants were dry; kidnappers don’t typically make
time for bathroom breaks. And Moscato noticed
that Brandel’s goatee appeared freshly shaved.
There was one other detail that nearly forced
Moscato outside the confines of his courteous, Buf-
falonian timbre: the keys to the truck, also bundled
in duct tape, were in the pocket of Brandel’s black
sweatshirt. Brandel would have needed the keys in
the ignition in order to crack the window.
Back at the station, things soon grew clearer.
Investigator John Spero has spent his career inter-
viewing dangerous people, some of whom require
CLO
CKW
ISE FRO
M TO
P: ISTO
CKPH
OTO/
GETTY IM
AGES (2); GETTY IM
S UP E R B OWL AGES (4)
SQUAR ES
