King Con

Chapter Twelve.

BEANO FINALLY TOLD VICTORIA HOW THE MAIN CON was supposed to work. They were all on the Delta flight to San Francisco. Roger-the-Dodger had his nose pressed against the screen of a large carrying case that had a sign across it that read CANINE DRUG ENFORCEMENT, u.s. CUSTOMS in large red letters. Beano had told the stewardess he was a government dog trainer and that Roger was being delivered to the Customs Drug Enforcement Team at SFO. This allowed the terrier a privileged position on the floor between their seats, in first class, instead of a freezing ride in the nut-puckering environs of the luggage compartment. As the engines hummed softly and flight attendants took drink orders, Beano explained to a partially awestruck Victoria how a moose pasture con worked. He told her about preparing the field, which included the government painting scam, and about the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company, which was a Bates family-owned business. He explained how the oil company was nothing but a watered-down corporate shell that Paper Collar John had bought for a hundred dollars five years ago for possible future use in a moose pasture. FCP amp;G's most attractive feature was that it ostensibly owned thousands of acres of prime land in north Fentress County, Tennessee. He explained that these deeds of ownership were basically worthless, because they came from old land grants issued a hundred fifty years ago at about the time of Andrew Jackson.

"A lot has happened since then," he grinned at her from seat 5B of the westbound flight. "The land has all been settled on by squatters who now have clear title. Technically, the land grant is still valid but not enforceable. The neat thing about Fentress County is that the County Clerk still has the land grant and deeded plot numbers on record, and if anybody calls to verify our deed's historical existence, she'll look it up and tell you that good ol' FCP amp;G owns the parcels in question, even though these lots are legally owned by the people living on them. This wonderful act of confusion is being supplied by the State of Tennessee because they haven't bothered to take the old land grants off their books. We can value that property at whatever we want. When Tommy's accountant checks, it's gonna look damn good on our balance sheet. Another plus is that this old dead company actually still has real live stockholders. They invested in the company when it was active ten years ago. It went broke, so they wrote it off on their taxes and forgot it, but legally these stockholders still own thirty percent of the Class-B stock. It's still registered, giving it the look of an operating public company. The stock is listed on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, where the listing requirements for companies are very lax. Up till a week ago it was a penny a share; the total value of the outstanding stock was less than twenty-five thousand dollars. Since then, my uncle John and I have been trading a block of hundred thousand shares back and forth to create an artificial market. We've already got the price up to almost a dollar. The float on this stock is so thin, it goes up fast. In a week, if we keep making two trades a day, we should have it up over ten. We're going to sell it in San Francisco because the Chronicle lists the stocks traded on the Vancouver Exchange. When Tommy's people try and get a value, that Tennessee land is going to make the ten-dollar price seem legit."

She was writing all this down on a yellow legal pad. Beano had considered telling her to stop because it was spooking him. He was more paranoid than a corrupt S amp;L president, and he hated leaving a paper trail, but it was part of Victoria's anal compulsion, so he let it go without comment.

An hour later, when he had finally finished describing the whole hustle to her, she closed the yellow pad and looked straight ahead, saying nothing. He finally leaned his seat back and tried to go to sleep, but he could feel her gaze on him. Occasionally, he would open his eyes and catch her staring. He wasn't sure if he had impressed her or frightened her to death.

They landed in San Francisco and carried their overnight bags and the oversized empty kennel coop, along with the canvas satchel containing a little over a hundred thousand dollars, down the long terminal to the rental car area. Roger-the-Dodger trotted along beside them on a red leash that Beano had bought for him last Christmas.

Beano was very specific with the Hertz girl about the make and color of the rental car he wanted. He demanded a mid-sized light green two-door. He turned down a blue Mustang and finally accepted a light green Ford Escort with a tan interior.

They drove to the Stanford Court, which was an upscale executive hotel on Nob Hill, where John registered under his own name and was shown to his room. Then they all met ten minutes later in a booth in the darkened executive bar. Roger curled up on the seat and put his chin on Victoria's lap. He watched carefully as Beano counted out ten thousand dollars on the seat beside him.

"Take the rest of this and set up a bank account for FCP amp;G with BofA," Beano instructed, handing John the canvas bag with ninety thousand dollars in it. "Take Victoria with you. I'll take Roge and go pick out the moose pasture."

"Not so fast, Bubba. I'm with you," Victoria said.

"Why? It's just a trip to go look at farms. You're a lawyer; you can help negotiate the building real-estate contract," he said, using some "Ditch Vicky" logic.

"The way you explained it on the plane, it's a lot more than looking at farms, and I want to see some of these Bates family members everybody's been telling me about."

She was like gum he couldn't get off his shoe, but Beano decided since she knew the whole scam anyway, it was better to get her aboard psychologically than to isolate her. "Okay, we'll drive to Modesto." He turned to John. "We should be back here tomorrow night. Start trying to find two floors in a high-rise office building we can rent. It would be great if it was downtown near the other big oil companies. Be nice to look out our corporate windows at the Texaco or Shell Building across the street."

"I'll find us a couple'a top floors down on Market, near the Exxon Tower, where we can get signage rights," John said. "How 'bout a lighted sign on the roof with the FCP amp;G logo on it?"

"What's the FCP amp;G logo?" she asked.

"It's a moose with an oil derrick up his ass." Beano grinned. John got up, said good-bye, picked up the canvas satchel, and headed out of the bar.

"Why Modesto?" she asked.

"The San Joaquin River valley is one of the last potentially huge oil basins in the Northern Hemisphere. Only a few meager natural gas wells have come in so far, but there's still a lot of speculation. That valley has what geologists call a huge sandstone stratigraphic trap. That gives it the makings of a major discovery. It also makes it a perfect place to run a moose pasture, because if any mooch we're targeting decides to check it out, our story is gonna make sense geologically."

They drove the light green Ford Escort out of San Francisco and headed east on State Highway 9. Soon the cityscape turned to rolling farmlands. Roger had found a place in the back seat and was back there having doggie dreams, yipping and licking his lips. They drove in silence for almost an hour. Beano was still wondering about Victoria. She was an ex-prosecutor… It was a little disconcerting to him to think she had been able to infiltrate him this deeply. He wondered if it was her guile and beauty that had softened him, or perhaps their common interest in revenge. Or maybe it was just another by-product of the beating with the nine-iron that he suspected had turned him soft. He had caught himself several times trying to make her smile, using his number-ten rainmaker and being crushed when it failed to get results. Now her silence was beginning to bother him more than his failed smile.

"You okay?" he finally asked.

"Yeah, I think." Victoria had a strange expression on her face.

"Say it," he encouraged. "What's on your mind? You've been too quiet. It's beginning to spook me."

What she said was not the condemnation he expected, but unrestrained excitement.

"I didn't know it was so easy to do stuff like this. I mean, that gag with the pearl was brilliant. We didn't even break any laws. We just sold a pearl for an inflated value… now we got this phony oil company complete with stockholders and registered land."

"Didn't you ever work bunco?" he said, surprised. "Didn't you ever catch a big securities-fraud case?"

"I prosecuted a few bunco cases, but they were just block hustles, street scams. Two years ago I plea-bargained a case where this street hustler, I can't remember his name, was selling mechanical dogs that were supposed to bark and walk around, only they were defective. They would walk but not bark. The con man got 'em from the factory for two-thirds off, and when the mark would bend down to look at the toy dog, this faker would actually throw his voice and make the barking sounds himself. He sold hundreds at Christmas. It was so cheesy it made me laugh. He got seven months, but it was nothing like this. This is a big-time criminal enterprise."

Coincidentally, Beano knew the block hustle she was talking about. It was a Bates family specialty. They bought the defective toys from a manufacturer called The Talking Animal Farm. They also bought ducks that didn't quack, which were Easter favorites, and Santa's elves that refused to say "Ho-ho-ho." He also thought he might know the arrestee in Victoria's story. It was most likely a second cousin of his, named "Sidewalk Sonny" Bates. Sonny had taken a fall in Trenton about two years ago for running that grift, but Beano decided not to mention it.

"Victoria, if you want justice for Carol, I promise I'll get it for you. I'll get Tommy and Joe to rat each other out, but you gotta stick with me."

"I know. Hold on by letting go, multiply by dividing. It's just that I've always held on by holding on, multiplied by multiplying. This is a big change for me." She was silent for a minute. "My whole life I've tried to stand for something, something I could be proud of."

"And that thing you were standing for… did I miss a beat or didn't it just chew you up and spit you out?"

"That doesn't mean it wasn't worth believing in."

There was a deep silence in the car, and then Victoria smiled. "Well, that's over with now. We're near Modesto. Let's go find our moose pasture."

"Gotta pick a company color first. There's a hardware store up ahead."

They pulled up in front of a turn-of-the-century wood-frame building called Hobbs Ranch and Farm Supplies, got out, and went inside. The store had metal racks, neon ceiling lights, and a linoleum floor. Beano moved past the farming displays to the back of the large, brightly lit store. The entire back wall was devoted to outdoor paint products. He stood with Victoria, looking at a paint-chip sampler that was on the wall.

She reached out and took an emerald-green chip and showed it to him. "This is pretty. Tennessee is a green state, looks kinda like what I think a Fentress County, Tennessee, company should look like."

"When I say the words 'ferrous oxide,' what color comes to mind?"

"Some kinda rust, I guess…"

"We need something that looks like it could contain ferrous oxide. This hustle has to work in two directions."

"Of course you're right." She turned and picked out a bright orange chip and handed it to him.

"Yuck." He winced.

' It's not such a bad choice when you remember everything our government does is intentionally ugly," she said.' it's part of the government's design-cost-use equation. It promotes function over style, and cost over function. It's why everything looks like hell and doesn't work."

"Okay." He smiled. "But this orange is just a little bright for a corporate folder. What if we dulled it down by adding one-third of this?" He picked out a deep ox-blood red and held them side-by-side. "Kinda rusty copper, just like you said," he reasoned. "Then we could use the rust-copper paint for the moose pasture and on our annual reports."

He turned and, for the first time, saw her give him a full smile. It lit her face, softening it. She was truly beautiful. In that second, he saw what she must have been like as a little girl, before the self-driving compulsions took over.

"Copper it is," she said.

Beano went up to the front of the store and held out two chips to an old man behind the counter wearing a name tag identifying him as GARY HOBBS, OWNER AND COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT. "I may need as much as four hundred gallons of this"-Beano held up the orange chip, then the red-"and two hundred of this. And I need spray-painting equipment and compressors. Just bought a farm up in Marysville, and I need to paint all my outdoor metal."

"That'll make a nice little order," Hobbs smiled. He picked up a catalogue and started thumbing through it.

"I'd like to know your discount for volume," Beano said, and Hobbs nodded. "I'd also like to get this in a day or so. I'll pay the shipping. I may need to cut the order slightly, or add to it, depending what my painter thinks. I just want to be sure the paint is readily available. I'll give you a down payment to hold the order."

"Lemme check the inventory in Bakersfield." Hobbs picked up the phone and dialed the number.

"Can I borrow your phone book?" Beano said, and Gary Hobbs pushed it across the table at him while he checked with the warehouse in Bakersfield. Beano took the phone book over to where Victoria was standing. "You still got that note pad?" he asked. She nodded and pulled it out of her purse.

Beano looked up "Bates" in the Central California Directory. When he found "Steven X.," he wrote down the number.

They cut a deal with Hobbs for the paint, which he said could be delivered anywhere in the San Joaquin Valley within a day. Beano paid him a thousand dollars cash in advance, to hold the available stock. Inside the little chain-linked stock yard at the back of Hobbs Ranch and Farm Supplies, they picked out a compressor and some spray equipment with three tanks. They took two cans of orange and one of red with them. Before they left, Beano bought three sheets of yellow decal letters, two inches high, and three sheets of half-inch white letters. He also bought two green jump-suits.

With Gary Hobbs's card in his pocket, Beano went out to a pay phone in the parking lot and dialed up Steven Bates.

"Bates Roofing," a young boy answered the phone.

Victoria couldn't hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but looked up sharply as Beano whistled three notes into the receiver and waited. Beano took the phone away from his ear; then she could hear the faint sound of three other notes being whistled back. It was some kind of secret identification code.

"This is Beano Bates," he said, pressing the phone back to his ear. "Who am I talking to?"

"I'm Lawrence Bates," the young boy said proudly over the receiver… "Come on, really, who is this?"

"It's your Uncle Beano."

"This is King Con?" the boy said, awe in his voice.

"Yeah, but I hate that name 'cause it brings too much heat."

"Just a minute, sir," and the phone was dropped. Beano could hear the boy yelling for his father at the top of his lungs. After a moment a man came on the line.

"This here's Steven Bates," the man said. "Who is this again?"

"This is Beano Bates, Steve."

"Can I hear them notes again?"

Beano whistled them again.

"Son-of-a-bitch! I seen you 'bout three, four weeks ago on America's Most Wanted."

"In our game, celebrity ain't always a blessing."

"Imagine so."

"Listen, Steve, I'm running a moose pasture up here in Modesto. I could use a little help."

"Modesto ain't bad for it, but you seen them farms around Oak Crest? Real good, and pretty too. Lotta pipe above ground."

"I haven't been over there, but I'll check it out," Beano said. "Can I buy you and your family dinner tonight?"

"You bet," Steven answered. "We'd be honored."

"Where do you like to go?"

"There's a place called the Red Barn up near Keats. It's on Highway Seventeen. How 'bout there?"

"Around seven-thirty, and Steve, I'm looking for somebody to be the painting contractor. You think you could pull some family together for that?"

"I figured that was what you wanted. There's a bunch of us up here for the summer. You think ten would do it?"

"Oughta do. We'll cut the deal tonight."

"Be a pleasure, sir."

Beano hung up. Victoria whistled the three notes at him. They sounded slightly familiar. She shot him a puzzled look.

"The first three notes of Brahms's 'Lullaby,'" he answered, before she could ask. "He whistles back the last three."

"So now I know a family secret."

He moved to the car. "Only it changes every month, and you've gotta know what music publication to look in, what list of songs, and what number on the list. It's a variation of the key book code used by spies during World War I. It's basically an unbreakable code unless you know the keys."

"And everybody in the family goes out and buys the music publication and memorizes the melody each month?" she said, cocking an eyebrow, thinking that was a hell of a lot of trouble to go through.

"It beats doing prison time because you trusted the wrong person."

"What if you're tone-deaf?"

"We take all our tone-deaf children out in a field and shoot 'em," he said, a smile playing on his expressive features.

"Perfect solution. Why didn't I think of it?" she smiled back.

They got into the car and he looked up the town of Oak Crest on the California map, then swung out of the parking lot and headed east.

Oak Crest was beautiful, the acres growing green with alfalfa. The clear California sun beat down on this lush valley. Beano filled his lungs.

"Whatta you smell?" he said expansively.

She took a deep breath. "Alfalfa," she replied.

"No, down under the alfalfa, under the subsoil and the cap rock… down where the arenaceous shale butts up against the anticline, down there in that great stratigraphic trap."

"Oil," she said, grinning.

"Me too," he smiled.

They drove around looking for the right farm. Beano thought Steve Bates was right. This place was perfect. To begin with, it was beautiful. "It's always better to take a mark to a beautiful setting," Beano explained as they drove around looking at the farms. "It makes them feel good. It's always hard to sell lakefront property in a desert." There was lots of greenery in Oak Crest, California. Old oak trees hung shade over the two-lane highways like gnarled visitors from another world. The architecture was rustic, with old wood-frame, brightly painted houses. Where the lush green alfalfa didn't grow, cattle or horses grazed in picturesque herds.

Beano was looking for a particular setup, and he found it at Cal Oaks Farm. The farm, like most in Oak Crest, grew alfalfa. The irrigation pipes were large, but needed painting. They ran for miles next to the road above-ground. There were huge water cisterns to help the farm through California's frequent dry periods. The cisterns dotted the landscape like big, two-story pillboxes. Horses grazed lazily in the lowland down by the river. It was truly beautiful, but what made it perfect was that directly across the street from the farm was a large construction company that had gone out of business. A weathered sign banged in the afternoon breeze, hanging from two chains on a post arm. The office building was three stories high and had plate-glass windows that looked out at the picture-postcard farm on the other side of the road.

Beano parked the Escort and climbed over the gate. He walked all around the empty building. Before he climbed back over, he got the name of the real-estate agent off the sign in the window and called her from Victoria's flip-phone. He was told he could lease the property on a month-to-month basis for a very reasonable rate. Beano told the agent he would call her back. He explained to Victoria that he wanted to make sure he could cut a deal with the farm before he tied up the construction company property.

Beano got out of the car and looked at the pillbox cisterns and miles of exposed metal pipes punctuating the expansive landscape. "Think we might a found our moose pasture," he finally said.