Tangled Webs (50 page)
Authors: James B. Stewart
Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #Law, #Ethics & Professional Responsibility
Still, Bonds was again the National League MVP, and there was growing anticipation that he was poised to assault baseball’s ultimate peak, the all-time home run record. At that year’s MVP ceremony, slugger Reggie Jackson said, “Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Henry Aaron. Sooner or later they’ll have to end that list with Barry Bonds.”
During spring training in Arizona the following March, Bonds encountered a fan wearing one of the baseball jerseys personally autographed by Bonds, part of the memorabilia business his friend Steve Hoskins managed. He didn’t recognize the signature and was suspicious it was a forgery. He flew into a rage and accused Hoskins of various financial irregularities, threatening to turn Hoskins in to law enforcement authorities.
It had never been easy being Bonds’s best friend, although Hoskins had endured plenty of abuse over the years without complaint, in return for the many benefits the relationship conferred. Like Bell, he’d observed the physical changes in Bonds, including his volatile mood swings and an increasing suspicion of Hoskins, leading to frequent arguments, culminating in the latest threats. Hoskins was convinced that steroid use was to blame.
According to Hoskins, he warned Bonds against steroids and tried to dissuade him, to no avail. Hoskins was so concerned he took the issue to Bonds’s father, Bobby, hoping to enlist him in the effort to stop Bonds. But Bobby flatly rejected the possibility that his son might be using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. So, to provide the evidence that might persuade him, Hoskins arrived at the Giants’ clubhouse in March carrying a concealed tape recorder. Perhaps, with their latest dispute and Bonds’s threats fresh in his mind, he had less altruistic motives.
Anderson was in Bonds’s area, as usual. Hoskins fell into conversation with him and activated the recording device.
“You know, um, when Barry’s taking those shots, Dr. Ting [Arthur Ting, Bonds’s personal physician] said that one of, one of the basketball players . . . he was taking them shots, and doing it in his thigh . . . and he’s . . . oh shit . . . it’s fuckin’ . . .” Hoskins began.
“Oh, I know. Yeah, you can’t even, you can’t even walk after that,” Anderson said.
“Yeah, no, he said he had to go in and graft his–”
“Oh yeah, you know what happened?” Anderson interrupted. “He got uh . . .”
“He must have put it in the wrong place,” Hoskins said.
“No, what happens is, they put too much in one area, and what it does, it’ll, it’ll actually ball up and puddle. And what happens is, it actually will eat away and make an indentation. And it’s a cyst. It makes a big fucking cyst. And you have to drain it. Oh yeah, it’s gnarly . . . Hi Benito [Santiago, the Giants’ catcher, walked by] . . . oh it’s gnarly.”
Startled by Santiago, they started whispering. Hoskins steered the conversation back to Bonds. “He said his shit went . . . that’s why he has to, he had to switch off of one cheek to the other. Is that why Barry didn’t do it in one spot, and you didn’t just let him do it one time?”
“Oh no. I never. I never just go there. I move it all over the place.”
“Yeah, that’s why he was like . . .” Hoskins laughed. “He was like, tell Greg if he’s puttin’ it in one fucking place, to tell him to move that shit somewhere else.”
“Oh, no, no, no. I learned that when I first started doing that shit . . . sixteen years ago . . . because uh . . . guys would get gnarly infections . . . and it was gross . . . I mean, to the point where you had to have surgery just to get that fucking thing taken out.”
Hoskins asked about the possibility Major League Baseball would start testing for drug and steroid use. “What if they decide that . . . I think, didn’t they say they’re going to test . . . um . . . they don’t know. They’re not testing the players yet. They’re just doing random shit. So they’re just going to get a percentage. And then after they figure out the percentage . . . then if it’s high enough, then they’ll do whatever.”
“Well, what, what I understand is that, what they’re doing is they’re . . . um . . . they’re, they did twenty-five players, random, supposedly, in spring training,” Anderson replied.
“Oh, so you don’t even . . .”
“And then, so those guys have already been tested twice. They got tested, then a week later they got tested again. Same guys. So what happens is, is those guys are pretty much done for the year.”
“Okay.”
“They don’t ever have to get tested again,” Anderson continued. “Now supposedly, there’s gonna be three guys . . . excuse me, not three . . . one hundred and fifty guys tested during, random during the season . . . which he’s going to be on that list, easy. . . .”
“Oh yeah, definitely.”
“So, in that . . . after . . . but they’re going to test him once, then test him again. And then after, he supposed to be . . .”
“But do we know?”
“Do we know when they’re going to do it?”
“Yeah. Does he know?”
“I, I, I have an idea,” Anderson said. “See I gotta . . . , where, where the lab that does my stuff, is this lab that does entire baseball . . .”
“Oh okay. Oh the same . . .”
“Yeah. So, they . . . I’ll know . . . I’ll know like probably a week in advance, or two weeks in advance before they’re gonna do it. But it’s going to be in either the end of May, beginning of June. It’s right before the All-Star break definitely. So after the All-Star break . . . fucking, we’re like fucking clear as a mother.”
“Okay, so what you want . . . so they’ll . . . the guys from Major League Baseball. . . . so baseball will tell, you’ll know when they’re gonna do it, but you don’t know exactly if it’s gonna be him.”
“Right.”
“Or will you know . . .”
“He may not even get tested,” Anderson added.
“Right, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Because it’s supposed to be computerized.”
“But we just know if . . . he’s gonna be . . .”
“He’s gonna be. But the whole thing is . . . everything that I’ve been doing at this point, it’s all undetectable,” Anderson boasted.
“Right.”
“See, the stuff that I have . . . we created it. And you can’t, you can’t buy it anywhere. You can’t get it anywhere else. But, you can take it the day of and pee . . .”
“Uh-huh.”
“And it comes up with nothing.”
“Isn’t that the same shit that Marion Jones and them were using?” Hoskins asked.
“Yeah, same stuff, the same stuff that worked at the Olympics,” Anderson confirmed.
“Right, right.”
“And they test them every fucking week.”
“Every week. Right, right.”
“So that’s why I know it works. So that’s why I’m not even trippin’. So that’s cool.”
The tape ended.
Hoskins evidently dropped any plans to play the recording for Bonds’s father, who was struggling with lung cancer. As Hoskins became increasingly estranged from his former best friend, Bonds barred him from the clubhouse, fired him from the memorabilia business, and threatened to take evidence against him to the FBI.
Bonds’s relationship with Kimberly Bell also reached the breaking point that spring. Although his cash payments to her for the house in Arizona had reached $80,000, mostly conveyed in cash by Hoskins, they had become increasingly sporadic and were dwindling as Bonds pursued an affair with a model he’d met in New York. He showed centerfold pictures of her he’d taken from the Internet to teammates. In May, when Bell’s flight to San Francisco was late, Bonds was furious, put his hand on her throat, and threatened to kill her, she subsequently claimed. Other times, she says, he told her, “I’m gonna cut your head off and leave you in a ditch. And I’m glad nobody knows that you and I are tied this close together, because that way nobody will know it’s me when I kill you.”
Later that May, they saw each other in Arizona, and then Bonds called her from the airport as he was leaving. According to Bell, he told her he wanted her to “disappear . . . maybe forever.”
The next day Greg Anderson called her, evidently to apologize on Bonds’s behalf. She said she knew all about the woman in New York. Anderson asked what he should tell Bonds. Bell said she didn’t care what he told him.
In June, Bonds and his personal business lawyer, Laura Enos, met with Hoskins at a conference room in Enos’s office in an attempt to resolve Bonds’s concerns over the memorabilia business. Enos subsequently told the
New York Times
that Hoskins said, “I have three doors. If you don’t drop this memorabilia issue, I’m going to ruin Barry. Behind door No. 1 is an extramarital affair. Behind door No. 2 is failure to declare income tax. And behind door No. 3 is use of steroids. And I will go to the press and ruin Barry. His records will be ruined. He will never get into the Hall of Fame.”
New York Times
that Hoskins said, “I have three doors. If you don’t drop this memorabilia issue, I’m going to ruin Barry. Behind door No. 1 is an extramarital affair. Behind door No. 2 is failure to declare income tax. And behind door No. 3 is use of steroids. And I will go to the press and ruin Barry. His records will be ruined. He will never get into the Hall of Fame.”
Hoskins hasn’t publicly disputed Enos’s account. Within days, Bonds took his complaints about Hoskins to both the U.S. Attorney and the FBI field office in San Francisco, which launched an investigation of Hoskins.
Despite his father’s illness, the turmoil in his personal life, and the breach with his best man and best friend, during the 2003 season Bonds hit 45 home runs and was again named MVP.
At the end of the season, a clubhouse attendant found a sealed package of syringes in catcher Benito Santiago’s locker. He took them to Giants trainer Stan Conte, who said he’d “take care of it.” Conte and the other trainers discussed the implications, and decided to throw them away. Santiago was leaving the team to become a free agent in any event, and Conte said nothing further.
A
t 12:20 p.m. on September 3, 2003, a half-dozen Buick sedans ferrying twenty-four IRS agents and other investigators pulled into the parking lot of a strip shopping mall on Gilbreth Road in Burlingame, California. BALCO occupied a nondescript, one-story storefront with plate-glass windows and a stone veneer. Jeff Novitzky and two other agents entered through the front door, their handguns drawn, and moved quickly through the reception area, decorated with signed photos of some of BALCO’s clients–Barry Bonds occupied pride of place. Through an open door Novitzky spotted Victor Conte, BALCO’s founder and president, and James Valente, his right-hand man and vice president, at a fax machine. He walked up to them, told them federal agents were executing a search warrant for the premises, and asked them to sit in the reception area.
t 12:20 p.m. on September 3, 2003, a half-dozen Buick sedans ferrying twenty-four IRS agents and other investigators pulled into the parking lot of a strip shopping mall on Gilbreth Road in Burlingame, California. BALCO occupied a nondescript, one-story storefront with plate-glass windows and a stone veneer. Jeff Novitzky and two other agents entered through the front door, their handguns drawn, and moved quickly through the reception area, decorated with signed photos of some of BALCO’s clients–Barry Bonds occupied pride of place. Through an open door Novitzky spotted Victor Conte, BALCO’s founder and president, and James Valente, his right-hand man and vice president, at a fax machine. He walked up to them, told them federal agents were executing a search warrant for the premises, and asked them to sit in the reception area.
In Conte’s vivid re-telling:
Three unmarked black cars come screeching into BALCO’s front parking lot. More unmarked cars skidded up one behind the other on the frontage road. The six or seven cars were filled with a team of twenty-six IRS special agents, narcotics task force agents, FDA agents, and other armed law enforcement officers wearing flak jackets. The three of us watched in awe through the front windows as the agents rushed out of their cars, carrying assault rifles and handguns. They lined up in single file with great speed and precision and headed straight for our front door.As they came inside the lead agent yelled, “Does anybody have a weapon?” All three of us were frozen in place as the agents charged in one after another and pointed guns directly at us.They ordered us to put our hands up and walk slowly over and sit down in the three chairs along the wall in the front lobby. They instructed us to put our hands on our knees and not to move. We were swiftly surrounded by a semicircle of gun-packing police officers standing shoulder to shoulder. . . .The lead agent yelled, “We’re here to execute a search warrant.” He then commanded other officers to “secure the building.” Within seconds, we heard the loud noise of a helicopter hovering directly over the lobby entrance. The glass louvers above the front door started to rattle from the intense vibration of the chopper blades. We heard officers screaming loudly, “Anybody in there? Does anybody have a weapon?” as they stormed throughout the BALCO building. None of us had a criminal history, so the intensity of the raid was like using a laser-guided missile to kill a mosquito.
Conte concluded, “It was surreal.”
As an investigator the thirty-two-year-old Novitzky preferred to work quietly, unrecognized, out of the limelight. But his six-foot-six height and shaved head made him stand out. He’d played basketball at nearby Mills High and at San Jose State, where he majored in accounting, and his father was a high school basketball coach. But a series of injuries and then back surgery kept him out of most games. He joined the IRS as an investigator right after college and was now in his tenth year with the IRS Criminal Investigation division, which functions much like the FBI. Since tax evasion is often linked to other crimes, like drugs and extortion, he often worked with other investigators.
After making sure the offices were secure, Novitzky returned to the reception area and, according to Novitzky, showed the three officers a copy of the search warrant, based on “probable cause to believe that Victor Conte Jr. and others are involved in a nationwide scheme to knowingly illegally distribute athletic performance-enhancing drugs, including anabolic steroids, a federally controlled substance, to numerous elite professional athletes at a local, national and international level.”
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