King Con

Chapter Thirty.

TOMMY WAS FLYING BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO IN THE Challenger, looking down at the two tan leather bags he'd brought from Nassau. They were on the floor before him and contained five million in banded cash. He had never before done something like this without his brother's permission, but despite that, he couldn't help himself, he was smiling. He could hardly wait to tell Joe what he'd done and how he'd done it. He had been fantasizing about that moment since they took off from Nassau. He kept visualizing the scene: He'd call Joe up, make him come to Tommy's apartment in Atlantic City. Joe wouldn't want to come, but Tommy wouldn't beg… He'd laugh and say something like "Come on over, I think it just might be worth your time." He'd have the graphs and the oil core sample, which his Texas geologist had told him was called O.C.M.-Oil Cut Mud. Tommy would show his geologist's report, which indicated the sample shale was over 90 percent pure. "Incredible," the Texas geek had told him over the phone in Nassau. Tommy would throw in some of the oil terms he'd been learning to show his brother he wasn't just some dumb street hitter with no brains and nine inches of lumber between his legs. He'd tell Joe about the high G.O.R.-Gas-to-Oil Ratio-and talk about how they would use water-induced B.H.P.-Bottom Hole Pressure. He'd scribbled all of this stuff down while the geek from Texas explained what he needed to know. Once he parked this huge deal in the family's driveway, Tommy was absolutely, for damn sure, through taking shit off of Joe. From now on, his little brother would have to admit that it was Tommy who had brought this good fortune home.

He leaned back in his seat and adjusted the air nozzle over his head. He closed his eyes… Being smart wasn't all that difficult, he mused. He had let Joe convince him that he'd always fuck things up if he didn't let Joe run things, but he was about to prove that piece of horseshit wisdom wrong. Anybody could be smart. Doing deals was a lot like clipping guys. All you had to do was be careful, make sure you had good accomplices, and get rid of all the Dixie cups. He had decided that the two geek doctors from Fresno were definitely Dixie cups.

In the cockpit of Joe Rina's Challenger jet, the phone rang, and the pilot, Scott Montgomery, picked it up immediately. It was a new airphone that got its calls off of the Satcom 9 geosynchronous satellite. The calls cost twenty dollars a minute, and the only person who ever used this phone was Joe Rina.

"Yes, sir," Scott said into the receiver while his copilot, Daniel Rubin, looked over.

"Is Tommy aboard?" Joe asked from his house in upstate New Jersey. He was looking out through the windows of his den at a shallow man-made lake that was beginning to freeze in the unusually early winter.

"Yes, sir, he's on board. We're headed to San Francisco."

"I don't want you to tell him I've spoken to you," Joe said firmly. "I want you to give me an estimated time of arrival in San Francisco and the name of the F.S.O. you're going to use there."

"We're scheduled to land at Pacific Aviation Flight Service Organization in two hours, at about ten P.M.," Scott said, wondering what the hell this was all about. Tommy and Joe never worked behind each other's backs. Their trust in one another was legendary.

"Okay," Joe said, "if that changes or if Tommy diverts you to another field, I want you to call me. And Scott, I'm warning you, if you tell him anything, I'm going to deal with you harshly and personally-you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Scott said, and hung up the phone.

In New Jersey, Joe stood in his den, seething. It was a little past eight as he looked out at the last glimmerings of twilight playing across the glistening gray body of landscaped water. He couldn't believe that Tommy had turned on him. Black anger churned like boiling asphalt.

Then Joe extinguished these emotions. He would deal with this methodically, not emotionally. So far, all he had was some pictures given to him by Victoria Hart, who was, after all, a mortal enemy. She could be trying to fool him. He still wasn't convinced she hadn't played a role in the jewelry store scam. Tommy said she had, that it was on tape, but Joe hadn't been able to see it yet and now Tommy was making some very spooky moves. Maybe there was another explanation. He would give Tommy a chance to explain. If the explanation made sense, then he would have Victoria Hart killed for her treachery. But if Tommy had been stealing from him, if he'd arranged to put the card sharp into the game in Greenborough, like Victoria had said… if Tommy had been involved in the tat at the Sabre Bay casino and had stolen money from the dead-drop without an overwhelming personal reason, then Tommy would have to pay the Sicilian price. He would no longer be Joe's brother and would die in agony.

Joe was now moving impatiently around his den as these thoughts consumed him. He was waiting for a phone call from San Francisco. His mind played across the facts once more, searching for a plausible explanation he might have missed: He knew for sure that Tommy had taken the money from the bank in Nassau. What possible reason could Tommy have for stealing five million dollars? Why would he do that? If he needed money, Joe would give it to him. No matter from which angle he surveyed the question, there seemed to be no answer except one: Tommy must have done it to show disrespect. Tommy had broken their bond of faith, and that fact tortured Joe. He could not excise it from his mind. It seared the edges of every other thought.

Then the phone rang and he snapped it up. "Yeah?"

A voice he knew well said, "You get the info?"

"He's landing at San Francisco at ten. They're using Pacific Aviation. Let me know."

"Done," the voice said and then they both disconnected, providing very little, if any, information to a potential government phone tap on Joe's house.

The man he had just talked to was named Reo Wells. He was not a made guy, but an independent contractor that Joe used when he had to do sanctions outside the family. Reo was government trained, a Delta Force commando, who had once done unauthorized wet-work for the CIA.

Joe paced in the den for several more minutes. The sun was down now and he had not turned on the lights. He couldn't seem to control his emotions. Anger swelled. He couldn't just stay caged up here and do nothing… He snatched up the phone and dialed an air charter service and booked a private jet to San Francisco.

"The Hurrah," Beano explained to Victoria, "is that point in the confidence game where the mark has completely committed himself. From this point forward there's no way he's going to pull out. He's got the bit in his teeth. He can smell the gold."

They were driving to the Penn Mutual Building two blocks east of Market Street, where Paper Collar John had dressed the top three floors to be the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Big Store. Beano parked in the parking garage next door; then he and Victoria rang the security buzzer out front. She looked around, sure there would be a government sedan with two buzz-cuts somewhere nearby watching, but she saw nothing. After a few minutes, an aging security guard came down from the mezzanine. They showed their driver's licenses through the thick glass door and the guard found their names on a list John had left; then he let them in.

"Lotta people up there. You havin' some kinda do?" he asked.

"Yep," Beano said nonchalantly. "It's some kinda 'do,' all right." They left the guard and took the elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor.

When they walked out, there were fifty members of the Bates family standing around, or sitting on desks or in chairs. A few were sitting on the floor. They were all dressed about the same, mostly jeans and T-shirts. When Beano walked into the room they started to applaud. He was their famous cousin and the acknowledged best sharper in the game. He was the only member of the Bates family to ever be known as "King Con."

The top floor of the office building, which would serve as the Fentress County executive floor, was magnificent. John had really done his job in the last three days. Rented antique furniture, computers, and beautiful statues on pedestals dominated the carpeted floor. The blond, matched ashwood walls were now decorated with beautiful paintings in gold leaf frames. This was a setting that reeked of class, money, and success.

Steve Bates came up and shook Beano's hand. "John had everybody put on name tags 'cause I figured you ain't met some of these family members," he said.

Beano smiled and nodded. "That's great," he said. "Where's John?"

"Don't know," Steve said. "He was supposed to be here, but we should get started. He'll show up."

Victoria wondered if the FBI Agents might have broken their promise and picked up John, but why would they? It would ruin everything. She'd given Gil her word, which was her bond… and then she remembered that Gil's word was worth almost nothing.

Beano stood in front of the group. "I'm Beano," he announced unnecessarily, as they all nodded and grinned. They'd seen him on America's Most Wanted.

"Thanks for being part of this Big Store," he began. "The mark, as I'm sure John has told you, is Tommy Rina. But there's something that he probably hasn't told you." He paused to make his point. "Tommy is, in my opinion, certifiably insane, a homicidal maniac who can't control his temper. When he loses it, you can't steer him. He's an unguided missile. If he comes through hot, he'll shoot up the place. You should all know this, and if anybody wants out, now's the time, no hard feelings."

They all looked down, shook their heads, and waited for him to go on.

"Whatever we take from him, we split evenly."

An old man named Theodore X. Bates, from San Francisco, stood up. He was handsome, with a closely trimmed white beard and full white hair. "That's real nice, cousin Beano, but Carol was our family. We talked it over 'fore you got here, and we don't want no money. We're doin' this for her, same as you. Don't seem right to take money for it." They all murmured their assent.

Beano took a moment with that, and then he nodded. "Thank you, that really means a lot," he said, looking out at them. "Okay… here's how we're gonna run the bubble." Then he told them about the sting, explaining in detail what they were supposed to do and how they should act. He showed them a computer disk that Victoria had programmed, which would replicate the falling stock price of Fentress County Petroleum and could be interfaced with the on-line Quotron business report, which ran the real New York ticker at the bottom of the screen. "Remember, those of you who haven't played inside on a Big Store, the idea here is this has to be so realistic and so flawless that it would never even occur to the mark that what's going on here is not real. Never for a moment come out of character, no matter what happens."

They nodded and murmured and fell silent as Beano continued: "This Big Store con we're running is a variation on 'The Magic Wallet.' It was originally developed by a sharper named William Elmer Mead at the turn of the century, but it works just as good today. It basically gets the mark to invest in a dying company to save it. His magic wallet will buy the failing company at the last minute and make him rich. We have to convince Tommy that Fentress County Petroleum is on its last legs, that the float on the stock is so thin that his five million could control a hundred-million-dollar company." They nodded. "This isn't like running a short con. On this we have to be ready to move in any direction to head off the mark's questions. He's gonna be nervous about laying out five million dollars. He may even bring an accountant or attorney. He may get balky at the last minute. If that happens, I have a stall and a red ink close-out set up. We're gonna do the play-off somewhere else. The play-off is against the wall."

"Isn't that kinda dangerous, cousin Beano?" Theodore Bates asked.

"Yeah, but it's the only way that Tommy is gonna get the message. We gotta take him right to the edge. That means we gotta go to the edge with him." He looked at them and smiled. "Okay, now here's the gaff: Fentress County is a watered-down company that we actually own. It's listed on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. It hasn't been traded much in years, except for stock swaps John and I make twice a month to keep the stock active. Tomorrow the price is going to drop, courtesy of Victoria's disk." He held it up. "This will show that Fentress County Petroleum stock is falling out of bed. It's about to go bankrupt. You're all about to lose your jobs. You all have to play the situation, lots of nervous activity, strained looks, hopelessness. This is the Titanic, and we're sinking, okay?" He looked at them and they nodded. "Who has John picked to be the point-outs?"

Six elderly men and two women held up their hands, and Beano nodded.

"We'll have a separate point-out meeting in a minute, then I want you to run rehearsals. I'll walk you through the first one, then you can run two or three more when John gets here. We need to have this down pat by tomorrow, at eight A.M. The Vancouver Stock Exchange closes at one-thirty P.M. This whole 'stock reload' has to take place before the closing bell. We keep the pressure on so he doesn't have time to re-think it."

Beano took the six men and two women who were point-outs into the President's office and talked to them for about twenty minutes. A point-out in a Big Store con is an inside player who is pointed out to the mark as a person of power or influence. The eight Bates point-outs would be identified as big stockholders-disgruntled heavy hitters who wanted their money back.

By nine-thirty, it was time for Beano to leave. He had to be at the airport when Tommy showed up. He wondered where the hell Paper Collar John was. He was supposed to be here to do the rehearsals. None of the shillabers in front of him had ever done this kind of sting. "Okay, let me quickly ran you through this," he said, afraid to leave until he knew John was there.

Beano led them from room to room, explaining what each area was for. He showed Theodore X. Bates, who was one of the point-outs, where he would do the crossfire, which was a point in the con where, if the mark lost his nerve, he would "overhear" an important conversation. He demonstrated the speaker phone in the secretary's office. He showed them the Board of Directors' room, one floor down, where the rest of the point-outs would gather prior to the sting. He coached the "stockholders" on their fines. It was well past nine-thirty when he finished, and if he didn't leave now, he would miss Tommy.

"We'll keep rehearsing," Victoria said, and Beano looked at her skeptically. "Come on," she said angrily. "How long have I been in on this? How many times have we talked it through?" she argued. "I've run complicated felony murder trials. I know how to perform in front of a jury… This isn't all that different."

"There's a huge difference between talking and doing," he countered. "And a manacled defendant in court isn't a maniac like Tommy with a gun in his pocket."

"I know what's supposed to happen. Go on, go to the airport. Steve and I will keep this moving till John shows up."

Beano finally nodded; he had no other choice. He looked at his watch one last time, then kissed Victoria and left.

John showed up twenty minutes later. When he stepped off the elevator, Victoria knew immediately something was very wrong. He looked awful. His face was pale and his eyes were rimmed in red. He'd been crying. Victoria took him by the hand and led him into one of the beautifully appointed offices and closed the door.

"What's wrong?" she asked him, fearing the worst.

"I've been on the phone to New Jersey," he said, his voice quivering. "The hospital called. Cora's not going to live much longer."

"Oh, John, I'm so sorry," Victoria said, reaching out for his other hand.

"I can't stay," he said. "She's awake. The doctor said they can keep her alive for maybe seven or eight hours. If I ever want to see her again, to say good-bye, I have to leave now. I have to go home… She's been asking for me."

Victoria looked at him, her mind racing. "But John, Tommy's seen the brochure we printed. You're in there as the President of this company. You have to sell him the stock. Without you, we can't do this."

Paper Collar John stood there, tears running down his cheeks. "I'm sorry," he said. "Cora and I, we've been married for fifty-five years. She's been my best friend for my whole life, Vicky. I hate running out on you, but she's my wife. If Beano was here, he'd tell me to go. I won't let her die alone…"

Beano would know how to figure something out, save the sting, Victoria thought. The way it was planned, from now on Beano had to be with Tommy. There was no way to even reach him and warn him. Tomorrow at eight A.M., Beano would walk in here with Tommy and the play had to go down with or without John. It was up to her and Steve Bates to make it happen. Steve was a short-con expert who'd never done this before. She was a State Prosecutor, a lawyer. Even though she could perform for a jury, she found strength in solid facts. Beano was right…bullshit was her weakest category.

"Is there anybody here who can play inside for us?" she finally asked John.

"I don't know. Most Bateses do short plays, house hustles and the like." Then he looked at her very carefully. He wrote down a number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. Then he told her what to do. After she heard his solution, her knees were weak with fear and excitement. "It will never work," she protested.

"Call him. He can help," Paper Collar John replied; then he turned, and with tears still on his face, he walked out of the Big Store and took the elevator to the street.

Victoria Hart stood there with her heart pounding. The FBI was outside and fifty Gypsy roofing sharpers were inside. She was caught in the middle and left to deal with the sting alone.