Left Outer Join (or) Union which is more efficient

I am working on a search functionality where in the database is designed as shown.

I have to return the top 20 rows where

• TableA.[Column 3] OR TableC.[Column B] OR TableB.[Column X] CONTAINS the @SearchText.

This is a massive database that has several million records in each one of its tables. A full-text catalog has been created on this database with several full-text indexes.

The Search Query is as follows ...

SELECT DISTINCT
  A.ID,
  A.Column1,
  A.Column2,
  A.Column3,
  L.Description
FROM TableA A
LEFT OUTER JOIN Lookup L ON A.Code = L.Code
WHERE CONTAINS(A.Column3, @SearchText)
UNION
SELECT DISTINCT
  A.ID,
  A.Column1,
  A.Column2,
  A.Column3,
  L.Description
FROM TableA A
LEFT OUTER JOIN Lookup L ON A.Code = L.Code
LEFT OUTER JOIN TableB B ON A.Id = B.FK_ID
WHERE CONTAINS(B.ColumnX, @SearchText)
UNION
SELECT DISTINCT
  A.ID,
  A.Column1,
  A.Column2,
  A.Column3,
  L.Description
FROM TableA A
LEFT OUTER JOIN Lookup L ON A.Code = L.Code
LEFT OUTER JOIN TableC C ON A.Id = C.FK_ID
WHERE CONTAINS(C.ColumnB, @SearchText)

Questions

1) Will this Query perform better - it is very concise.

SELECT DISTINCT
  A.ID,
  A.Column1,
  A.Column2,
  A.Column3,
  L.Description
FROM TableA A
  LEFT OUTER JOIN Lookup L ON A.Code = L.Code
  LEFT OUTER JOIN TableB B ON A.Id = B.FK_ID
  LEFT OUTER JOIN TableC C ON A.Id = C.FK_ID
WHERE CONTAINS((A.Column3, B.ColumnX, C.ColumnB), @SearchText)

2) Will creating a view MyView with the lookup table left outer joined with TableA improve performance as in ...

SELECT DISTINCT
  V.ID,
  V.Column1,
  V.Column2,
  V.Column3,
  V.Description
FROM MyView V
  LEFT OUTER JOIN TableB B ON V.Id = B.FK_ID
  LEFT OUTER JOIN TableC C ON V.Id = C.FK_ID
WHERE CONTAINS((V.Column3, B.ColumnX, C.ColumnB), @SearchText)