King Con

Chapter Twenty-One.

TOMMY HAD HIS PILOTS LAND JOE'S RED AND WHITE twin-engine Challenger jet at the Fresno Airport. It was four P.M. They taxied up to the new Spanos Executive Jet Center where Tommy had a limousine and three "heavy bag buttons" waiting. The buttons had driven over from Las Vegas where they worked as freelance muscle. The three enforcers looked like a wall of beef leaning against the front of the car. They watched as the big executive jet turned and parked. The wheels were chocked, and as the engines wound down, they pushed their bulk away from the black Lincoln stretch limousine where they had been bending the shiny fender with their bulk. The leader was a broad-shouldered hitter named Jimmy Freeze. Jimmy had a knife scar that ran down the side of his face like a psychopathic warning and disappeared into his collar. Beside him were the Summerland brothers, Wade and Keith, also ex-pro-football jocks. At over 250 pounds each, they were straining the stitching in their 56 extra-long suits. They had once worked for Joe and Tommy as security, until Joe fired them under dubious circumstances that Tommy didn't understand. So he threw a little work their way when he could.

When the door opened and the gangplank dropped, the first one off the plane was Dakota. Her face had swollen and turned purple where Tommy had hit her. Her split lip still needed stitches and dried blood was caked on the wound. She was in obvious pain and walked slowly down the steps, holding the rail for support. She was wearing one of Calliope's new outfits and it was too small on her. She was followed closely by Tommy. Dakota moved to the car and got in the back seat with painful care and without speaking. As Tommy approached, Jimmy Freeze motioned to her.

"The fuck happened to her?" he asked.

"Shut up and let's go," Tommy barked.

He got in the back of the car and the limo pulled through the gate and onto the Airport Highway. Tommy handed Wade Summerland a slip of paper.

"The Mud Flat Marina is the fucking name of the place. Call four-one-one and find out the address. She says these fucks are on a houseboat named Seismic Shot."

They sped past grain storage warehouses and freshly plowed fields alive with flying bugs, and headed toward Fresno. The sprawling city had grown up around the agriculture and the inland waterways that fed into the San Joaquin River, allowing the farm goods to be shipped cheaply to San Francisco on huge grain barges. Wade picked up the cellphone in the car, dialed Information, and got a number. He found out where the marina was and got directions over the phone. Fifteen minutes later, they pulled down the gravel road and parked in the marina parking lot. The place seemed deserted except for one or two cars parked in the lot near a closed, one-room marina office. A blue and white thirty-six-foot Winnebago was at the far end of the lot with the shades down.

Tommy looked at Dakota. "If they ain't here, ya better make an appointment with a good plastic surgeon."

"Hey, Tommy, you do what you want? I told you all I know. This is where they said they lived," she said, weak with pain.

Tommy grunted, and then he looked at Keith. "Stay with her an' cut her no slack. She'll surprise you if you ain't careful. She's got guts." He got out of the car with Jimmy and Wade. They walked over to a wood railing and looked down at the sleepy marina. As the name indicated, it sat on a low river tributary which was surrounded by mud flats. It was dusk, and the mosquitoes were beginning to swarm. For some reason they refused to bite Tommy, but vectored relentlessly at Jimmy and Wade, who swung their overdeveloped arms and slapped at themselves as they looked down at the small marina, surveying the layout. An old, decrepit wood dock paralleled the shore and served as a base for three finger docks that jutted out into the shallow water. Tied alone at the end of one of the fingers was a badly maintained, rusting houseboat. The stern said SEISMIC SHOT.

"If these fucks're here, I'm gonna chop some fucking lumber," Tommy said softly. Then he led them down to the dock.

They walked slowly and silently out on the tippy dock, creeping softly as they got closer. They could soon hear talking coming from inside the houseboat. It sounded like an argument. Tommy put a finger up to his mouth and they crept closer until they were just outside the old vessel. It was then that Tommy could hear Beano's voice over the sound of a top-forty radio station:

"It's supposed to be a tight hole!" Beano was protesting. "We gotta keep everybody quiet or the whole deal will get out and the U.S. regulators will be in there."

"Don't worry," Duffy responded. "You're always worrying. Nobody's gonna say shit. These guys know what's at stake."

The houseboat was about forty feet long and shaped like a shoe box. The faded yellow paint was peeling badly, exposing rusted tin underneath. There were a few tan pool chairs on the back deck that had been cooked and faded by the sun. A window air conditioner was growling loudly.

Tommy pointed at himself and then at the main hatch, indicating he would take the main door, which was opposite the gangplank leading from the dock up to the houseboat. Then he pointed Jimmy to the stern, and Wade to the bow. The two huge buttons nodded, and cracked their knuckles. Then Tommy pulled a 9mm SIG-Sauer out of a hip holster, signaled both men, then charged up the ramp, hit the door, and exploded into the main saloon…

Beano was seated in a metal chair at the saloon table. He was wearing a striped, shiny tie and thick tortoise-shell glasses. He had a pen protector in the pocket of his shortsleeve shirt. When the door banged open and Tommy appeared in the room, Beano immediately bolted from the chair, heading out the back door of the houseboat. Duffy ran out the front, leaving Tommy, for a moment, alone in the main saloon with a small brown and black terrier, who had been asleep on the sofa and now jerked his head up to see what was happening. There was the sound of a brief struggle on both decks… Suddenly Beano, and then Duffy, were thrown backwards onto the saloon floor. Jimmy and Wade followed them in, filling the front and back doors with their girth. Tommy put his gun away and moved to Beano. He yanked him up onto his feet and held him by his striped shirt collar.

"Don't hit me," Beano pleaded.

So Tommy hit him, knocking him backwards into the chair. Then he stepped forward and kicked Beano in the nuts. Beano doubled over into a fetal position, still seated in the chair. To complete this brutal choreography, Tommy stepped forward and hit him with a vicious uppercut, straightening him out and knocking him to the floor. Roger-the-Dodger was on his feet, now looking at this in alarm.

"Please, please… I'm just a scientist, I have no money. Don't hurt us." Beano had now become a wimpy and very frightened Doctor of Geology.

"You ain't half as tough as the fuckin' bitch you hired," he said to Beano, who was shaking in fear, curled up on the faded, threadbare carpet of the saloon, holding his throbbing nuts in both hands.

Duffy stood up in the center of the saloon. He tried to run again, but was grabbed by Jimmy Freeze and thrown back into the room… Tommy took one shuffle step forward, timed his punch perfectly, and nailed the stumbling old man with a perfect left hook, knocking Duffy right out of his canvas boat shoes. "Think maybe I'm finally getting that left hook dialed in," Tommy said to himself. He was slightly out of breath from all the wood chopping he'd been doing. His knuckles were red and sore, but he was happy. He lived for moments like this.

Ten minutes later, Beano and Duffy were tied to the metal chairs in the saloon with an extra dockline that Tommy had found in a forward locker.

It was dark outside, and Tommy had turned on the two old, shaded saloon lights, which were throwing an evil yellow hue on everything. Tommy had been through the boat, but he had not found his money. What he did find was mountains of graphs from the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company that were dated and carefully annotated. They had to do with something called the Oak Crest Stratigraphic Trap. There must have been forty of them or more. Some were labeled "Biotherm Shot"; others, "Basal Conglomerate" or "Basal Shale Seismic Shot." There were several pen-and-ink drawings of what looked like a geographic map of the subsoil strata in Oak Crest, near Modesto. They showed a huge underground domed area labeled "Faulted Dome and Cap Rock." There were seismic maps of things called "anticlines" and drawings of "fault traps." Somebody had written copious notes in the margins. Tommy glanced at a few before he lost interest. They said things he didn't care about or understand, like "Reshoot the 3-D seismic for section 16-B." It was Greek to Tommy, and he could care less. He threw them in a pile on the table. What he wanted was his $1,125,000 back, plus a Utile blood flow for his trouble.

Beano opened his eyes when Tommy threw a glass of water into his face.

"Hey, dipshit, over here," the mobster said, and Beano looked over at him. His groin was throbbing, and his face was bleeding. Tommy had loosened a few of his teeth. Duffy was still only half conscious, parked in the chair beside him.

"Ahhh," Beano finally said, trying to regain his senses. "Can't see, need my glasses. I lost my contacts yesterday."

Tommy found Beano's thick, Coke-bottle, tortoise-shell glasses on the floor and shoved them roughly on Beano's nose. Tommy knew he was menacing, and he wanted this academic twit to get a good look at who he was fucking with.

"Want my money back," Tommy said, as he pulled up the extra chair, turned it backwards, and straddled it, folding his arms over the back, now holding the SIG-Sauer in his right hand and resting his chin on his forearm. "You think we can get that done right away?" he said to Beano.

"I don't have it… I swear," Beano replied.

"Hey!" Tommy said sharply, barking the word out so that Beano, Duffy and Roger, who was still on the sofa, all flinched. "I got what they call a social disease," he said. "It's more of a psychological disorder, wad-dayacallit, an emotional dysfunction. My problem is I like t'kill. That surprises some people." He smiled his ghastly smile at them over the back of the chair, and Beano recoiled in horror. Tommy's chin was still on his forearm, the SIG-Sauer dangling dangerously. "These people, doctors mostly, they say that's a very serious personality flaw. But I'm not so sure I agree, 'cause I'm a student of the Homo sapiens species, and did you know that killing is inbred into the human DNA, just like wanting t'drive sports cars and fuck good-looking pussy?"

Beano cleared his throat again. "Actually, DNA has not yet been absolutely proven to determine behavioral characteristics. It deals only with physical genetic-code markers," he said academically.

"Don't fuck around with me, asshole," Tommy warned. "Just listen. Now, I'm sayin' this to you because I would have absolutely no difficulty goin' down to the hardware store an' buyin' a Black an' Decker, an' chain-sawin' you two pricks up a thin slice at a time. I would not cringe from this event in any way, because I have decided not to violate my natural instincts. I'm at peace with this brutal fact."

"Mr. Rina, I wish I could tell you I had your money, but it's gone," Beano said, his eyes magnified through the thick glasses.

"Gone." Tommy looked down at the floor, then over at Duffy. "Gone?" he asked Duffy, who was just coming back to the party and nodded his head. Tommy pulled the gun up and put it under Beano's chin, then he moved it up until the barrel clicked against Beano's still-sore teeth.

"Okay, okay… It's not gone, it's… well, it's…" Beano looked at Duffy.

"Don't tell 'im," Duffy croaked in despair.

"You fuckin' guys misevaluate what is going on here. I am a fuckin' murderous psychopath… clinical. It's no shit! I got medical papers from Leaven worth shrinks. My dick gets hard over this shit."

"We used the money to buy stock certificates," Beano blurted.

"Don't!" Duffy screamed.

Tommy stood and kicked Duffy's chair over. Since he was firmly tied in it, he stayed aboard and hit his head on the floor.

"He's an old man," Beano pleaded. "Stop it."

And Tommy moved over and hit Beano three hard shots in the head. His glasses flew off. This time he almost went out. Fireworks exploded in his brain. When Beano finally pulled it back together and squinted at Tommy without his prop glasses, he could see Tommy had a ghastly expression of carnal pleasure on his simian face. Beano pointed weakly: "In the bedroom, under the bed, there's some loose panels… Pull them up. There's a metal lock box."

"No…" Duffy croaked.

Tommy nodded at Jimmy, who moved quietly into the master stateroom and returned a few minutes later with a metal lock box.

"The key's around his neck," Beano said and they grabbed the chain from Duffy's neck and pulled the key free, unlocked the box and pulled out ten beautifully engraved stock certificates for the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company. Each certificate was worth ten thousand shares. Also in the box were several color printed brochures for the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company. The folder that contained the press kit was a bright, glossy, rust-red color, loudly announcing the company's bright future from every page. There was an entire section describing and highlighting a great projected field in Oak Crest with helicopter photos of Carl Harper's newly painted, rust-red pipes and cisterns. There was a corporate photo of Paper Collar John. Under the picture, it said he was Linwood "Chip" Lacy, Chairman and CEO. Under that was the Chairman's message detailing the rosy future of FCP amp;G.

"What the fuck is this?" Tommy growled in dismay. "Where's my million dollars?" He threw aside the brochures and rifled through the certificates.

"Stock certificates. We used the money to buy them. The stock is trading at ten dollars a share. We got a hundred thousand shares, but it's not enough. We didn't win enough at craps to gain control."

"You dumb shits used my cash to buy oil stocks?" It was beginning to dawn on Tommy that his money was gone and the two men tied in chairs before him, despite being scientists, might also be world-class dimwits. Beano read the look and went to work.

"You just don't get it," Beano said indignantly, beginning his spiel. He always liked to hit a mark with a little attitude before selling him. "You wouldn't understand what this is all about. You couldn't understand. It's too technical for you and you're too stupid to see it." Tommy's anger flashed. A psychopathic rage swept through him that was overpowering. It obviated all reasonable thought.

Beano knew in that instant he had overplayed his hand. He could see the white-hot craziness flash in Tommy's eyes as the little mobster turned the gun on Beano and instinctively thumbed back the hammer. In those horrifying split seconds, Beano knew he was dead. He knew that he had made a fatal error in judgment. The mark had "come through" on him. Beano hadn't counted on Tommy's hovering insanity. He had always been able to read and control a mark; it was a skill he counted on. The click of the hammer filled the room. Tommy's finger went white as he started to pull the trigger. It was over.

Then something exploded off the sofa and launched itself at Tommy's neck… Roger-the-Dodger was only twenty pounds, but he hit Tommy's throat like a Romanian bat, knocking the mobster over. Roger's jaws were firmly clamped on Tommy's throat. Tommy struggled to his feet, grabbing at the terrier, who was locked in a death grip. Blood was beginning to flow from the wound. Tommy dropped the gun and staggered around the cabin trying to get the terrier off his neck. Roger was snarling viciously and hanging off the mobster's neck like bad Indian jewelry. Tommy finally got his hands around Roger's throat and began to strangle him. The dog continued to snarl, but he was losing air, and when he was almost unconscious, Tommy finally pulled Roger off and flung him across the room. Blood was flowing down Tommy's neck, staining his white shirt collar. He screamed in fury and then grabbed for the SIG-Sauer, which was on the floor at his feet. He snatched it up and fired at the terrier, who had recovered and was now moving fast toward the rear door. The first shot was high-it broke a window and whirred away over the mud flats-but the second shot hit Roger in the hind end and knocked him down. He squealed in pain, but he rolled up and kept going out the door and across the deck. Tommy ran after him, but it was too dark outside and he couldn't see the brown and black dog, who was running and whining somewhere up the dock.

Tommy stormed back into the saloon. He grabbed the chair Beano was in, shoving the gun into Beano's mouth. "That fucking mutt tried to kill me!"

"Listen to me, that stock is worth billions," Beano slurred, his tongue tasting the gun barrel. He was desperately trying to focus Tommy on the bait. Beano's eyes were straining to see the black steel weapon that was in his mouth, buried up to the ejection port.

"Yeah? You little fucks. How is this shit worth billions?" Tommy backhanded the stock certificates off the table and then he pulled the gun out of Beano's mouth so he could talk.

"We found the biggest oil pool in North America, even bigger than the Alaskan strike. All those graphs there on the table confirm it. He and I are the only ones who know where it is," Beano said in a rush, looking toward Duffy. "The field's been proved out, but the oil company that's developing the field, FCP amp;G, they don't even know it's there, 'cause we haven't told them. We're buying up the company stock instead."

The crazy murderous glare that had been in Tommy's eye now more closely resembled puzzled antagonism. "Oil?" he said. "What the fuck you talking about?"

"Shut up," Duffy yelled at Beano from the floor. "Don't tell him… Don't… Please. My whole life, my whole life I been waiting for this."

Tommy growled, already losing his patience, which was not a quality he was known for in the first place. He grabbed Duffy's coat and started to pull the chair upright. Jimmy and Wade moved to help.

"All of these graphs, all of this stuff… It proves that Oak Crest, California, is the biggest undiscovered oil find in North America," Beano continued, "and nobody but me and Dr. Sutton here, and Donovan Martin, know about it."

"Zat what all of this stuff is about?" Tommy asked as he motioned to all of the graphs and drawings on the table.

"Yes, those are seismic shots Dr. Sutton made. They were done over the last two years. FCP amp;G holds the mineral rights to that property in Oak Crest, they're the operator, but-"

"You're giving it all away, Douglas," Duffy wailed.

"We can't spend the money if we're dead, Harry. Can we? This man is gonna kill us." He turned to Tommy, who was now squinting again at the confusing graphs.

Duffy shook his head as Beano now looked directly at Tommy, going for the hard sell. "He's a doctor of physics, I'm a doctor of geology. We were both hired by the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company of Tennessee to check on a suspected stratigraphic trap near Modesto, a hundred miles northwest of here. But nobody really thought it was going to be there. All oil field exploration is a crap shoot at best, with only one in ten or fifteen fields panning out."

"A strati what?" Tommy said, his snake-mean brain struggling to comprehend.

"It's a separation in the natural rock layers in the earth's crust," Beano explained. "It creates underground caverns that trap oil. All big oil fields are a result of stratigraphic traps. Of course, the right geological substrata have to exist. We're looking for Paleozoic rock formations. Then we do what's called a three-D seismic shot. It's mildly complicated to explain, but basically, a seismic shot is accomplished when we drill a hole in the ground in the target area and then blast off a dynamite cap. The sound of the explosion travels through the rock. We trace it with sensitive geophones attached to our seismic computer; the sound waves bounce against the different rock hydrocarbons and tell us the nature of the rock and sand strata below the surface of the earth so we can graph them. Harry here is a seismic operator, a physicist; he uses his geophones to graph the hydrocarbon density to find the over-pressurized zones and then he interprets rock porosity."

"The fuck are you talking about?" Tommy finally yelled, getting angry because he didn't understand a word Beano was saying.

"What it boils down to is, we're sitting on the biggest undiscovered oil field maybe ever in the world. Bigger than Midland, Texas, or the Alaska find. It could be worth between two to five billion a year in crude E.O.R."

Tommy grabbed his arm. "Talk so I know what the fuck you're saying, you geek," he growled. "I'm fuckin' up to here with you already."

"E.O.R. stands for 'Enhanced Oil Recovery.' It's an upgraded pumping system," Beano added quickly.

"You rucking guys stole my money to buy stock in this fucking oil company?" Tommy said, returning to his first basic fact.

"But we didn't get enough money. We need three to five million. See, Fentress County Petroleum and Gas doesn't know the oil is down there, 'cause after we found it, we didn't tell them. If they did know, no amount of money could buy this company, because it would be worth billions. It's still our secret because we made a deal with the service company who was drilling the delineation well. The owner agreed to play along."

"Slow the fuck down," Tommy said, still trying to reel in the facts.

"Look," Beano said-he knew he had the hook in now and started a softer sell-"it's really simple. The oil company we work for, Fentress County Petroleum, spends millions in oil field discovery costs. People like me an' Harry are sent all over the world to find potential fields. We're sorta project managers. If we find a stratigraphic trap in the right Paleozoic rock strata, we do our seismic shots and, if we get what is known as a 'hot spot' or a 'bright spot' on our computer graphs, we notify the company and then they spend a lot of money to develop the potential field, put in pipes and cisterns. Then they hire an independent service company in the area to prove out the field. The service company drills what's called a delineation well to see what's down there. The service company Fentress hired is an outfit called W.C.P.D." Under Tommy's glare, he quickly added, "West Coast Platform Drilling Company, 'cause they also drill offshore. W.C.P.D. drilled a bunch a'holes in this Oak Crest field that were basic P an' A's."

"Knock it off with the fucking letters."

"Plugged and Abandoned. Dry holes basically, but the core samples were promising. Dr. Sutton and I found out that W.C.P.D. wasn't getting paid by Fentress County Petroleum for their work. I complained to my boss about it and the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company fired me. At first I thought that was very strange, because I was running the operation out here. We didn't know it then, but Fentress is going broke. That's why they fired me. They were cutting new field development to nothing. We got together with Donovan Martin, who owns the service company, and all agreed to go ahead and try and prove out the field on our own. But because I'd been fired and Donovan's service company hadn't been paid, we agreed that if we found oil we would make it a tight hole, and not tell the F.E.R.C. We-"

Tommy reached out and backhanded Beano.

"I'm sorry." Beano winced. "Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A tight hole is a secret oil well. You're supposed to tell the F.E.R.C. if you get positive results, but we agreed not to." He looked at Tommy. "We proved the field. Our delineation well came in. It was huge. This oil find is incredible! Fentress County Petroleum and Gas is in big financial trouble. They don't know we proved the field, they're going to go out of business, and their stock is falling. We're trying to get a controlling interest before the bank takes them over. Once the bank grabs the company we're out of luck, because there'll be an army of bank examiners and-"

Tommy held up his hand to silence Beano. "So you two assholes come to my casino in the Bahamas and steal money to buy this oil company, using crooked dice?" Tommy said, getting his next basic fact.

"It was his idea," Beano carped, looking at Duffy. "Harry used to do close-hand magic. He discovered the cellophane gas. He said we could do it, it's just we couldn't get enough money from the casino to buy the company before you shut us down."

"How can I believe all of this?" Tommy said, beginning to get interested.

"We've got the oil core drilling samples. They're at the service company warehouse," Beano said. "Donovan Martin, who owns the platform drilling company, has got 'em."

Tommy picked up the stock certificates from the floor and table, then gathered up the seismic graphs, the drawings, and the glossy printed brochure. "Let's go see," he finally said. "If this is all true… you guys just got yourselves a new partner."