King Con

Chapter Thirty-Two.

AT EIGHT A.M., THEY PARKED IN THE SIDE LOT NEXT TO the Perm Mutual Building. Tommy locked the two suitcases full of cash in the trunk and walked briskly from the car, not waiting for Beano. He headed directly to the front of the building.

Tommy hurried through the double glass doors as Beano followed.

"When's this stockholders' meeting?" Tommy demanded as they rode up in the elevator.

"It's supposed to be at eight-fifteen," Beano said.

The doors opened on twenty-five to a bustle of activity. A young man with an armful of folders dove into the elevator before they could get out. He was chased in by a young woman, who held the door but didn't enter. "Tell Mr. Munroe the stock just ticked down an eighth of a point to five and seven-eighths," he said desperately to the girl, who looked harried and confused.

"I can't bust in there with that kinda news," she said. "You go run the Eastern and Southeastern fields' B.P.D. reports for Miss Luna like she wanted. I'll see if I can get Mr. Hatcher to slip a note to Mr. Munroe."

"Barrels per day," Beano told Tommy, who looked angrily at him for a translation as they got out of the elevator. The doors closed, whisking the young man away.

Beano wondered who the hell Miss Luna was. He knew the sharpers were trying to send him a message, a warning. He was on full alert, but he didn't know what had happened yet as they moved into the main secretarial area of the executive floor.

There was bustling activity everywhere: Bates family sharpers, dressed conservatively, were working on their computers or running folders of oil reports back and forth. Phones were ringing; there were pages over the sound system. Beano heard his own name: "Beano Bates, line two." He looked at Tommy, who, he hoped, didn't know who Beano Bates was. Tommy was devoting his limited powers of concentration to all the frenzied activity. He seemed impressed by the expensive art and the multitudes of scurrying, well-dressed yuppies.

Beano stepped away from him, picked up the phone, and hit extension two. "Go," he said.

"We got problems," Steve Bates said. "We got a mess here. Victoria is trying to set-" Suddenly, a hand reached in and disconnected the phone. Beano looked up and saw Tommy standing there, glaring at him.

"The fuck you doing?" Tommy demanded.

"I was going to page Dr. Sutton, see if perhaps he was here. I thought it would be nice to know what he's up to, since he might scuttle the whole deal," Beano said, his voice dripping snotty sarcasm. He was taking a chance that Tommy wouldn't backhand him here, and though Tommy's eyes flashed crazy, Beano got away with it.

"Get the President a'this outfit, this Chip Lacy prick," Tommy said, flipping open the brochure and pointing to Paper Collar John's picture, under which was the name LINWOOD "CHIP" LACY. Let's go brace this motherfucker."

Tommy grabbed one of the sharpers who was flying past and spun him around roughly by the arm. "Wanna see Chip Lacy," he said.

"Mr. Lacy isn't here."

"Isn't here?" Beano asked, startled.

"No. He had… Mr. Lacy had a slight coronary last evening. He's in the hospital."

"Who the fuck's runnin' this show?" Tommy growled.

"That would be Miss Luna."

"Miss who?" Beano said, his mind reeling. He couldn't figure out what was going on.

"Miss Luna, the Chief Financial Officer from the Knoxville home office. She flew in for the stockholders' meeting. Excuse me, I've got to get these wildcat-well asset sheets for Mr. Stuart," and the grifter pulled away.

Beano called after him, "Where's Miss Luna?"

"In Mr. Lacy's office, getting ready for the stockholders' meeting," the yuppie said as he turned the corner down the hallway and disappeared.

Tommy looked at Beano and then at the flurry of activity, phones ringing, people running here and there…

"I've only been here once," Beano said, "but I think Mr. Lacy's office is in the corner, over there." He pointed and headed off.

"Wonder where the fuck Alex is?" Tommy growled, looking around for his attorney. "We don't need him," Beano said, moving off toward the corner office, glad the hairy Armenian hadn't shown.

Seated in the President's outer office was Ellen X. Bates, Steven's wife. Beano knew from the dinner they'd had in Oak Crest that before she married Steve, she'd been an experienced telephone yak and had worked bucket shops from New York to L.A. She had a good gift of gab and a breezy intelligence. He and John had picked her to be a point-out stockholder. It surprised him that she was playing the lesser role of the President's secretary. Something was definitely up.

"We'd like to have a moment to talk to Miss Luna," Beano said.

"I'm afraid that's out of the question," Ellen snapped and continued dialing her computer phone.

Tommy reached over and depressed the switch-hook. "Nothing is out of the question. Is she in there?"

"She is preparing for a very important stockholders' meeting," Ellen said huffily, pulling his hand off the phone.

"That's gonna work out fine, because I just happen to be a very important stockholder," Tommy growled.

"I… I… I'm still…"

"Who fucking cares?" Tommy said, and walked right past her and into the office without knocking. Beano followed.

Standing in the center of the room, holding a large sheaf of papers, her back to them, was Miss Laura Luna. She was talking on a speaker phone when they burst in: "… no other explanation, Alan? One of our major stockholders must be selling for it to drop like this." And then she stopped and turned around.

Beano had never seen her before. She was a middle-aged, overweight, Janet Reno-sized woman, about five foot eight. Miss Luna was wearing a black pant suit that failed to disguise her immense girth. She had a double chin, and her half glasses were hanging from a chain around her neck. Her stout legs bulged in the loose-fitting pant suit. Beano wondered who the hell she was; then she spoke again and he recognized her. His heart sank. There's no way we 're ever going to pull this off.

"Get out of this office," she said. "I'm preparing for a shareholders' meeting. You can't be in here."

"I'm the only fucking meeting you got that counts," Tommy said and he closed the door behind him, cutting off the noise of the busy office outside. Then he moved to her desk and disconnected the phone.

After John had left to go home to be with Cora, Victoria called the number he had given her. It belonged to a family member named Smart Bates, no X. He was in Los Angeles working on a TV show. Stuart Bates, like Carol Sesnick, was one of the few Bates family members who wasn't on the bubble. Stuart did special-effects makeup for a Space Odyssey television show that was being made on a soundstage in Hollywood. When Victoria told him what she wanted, he had said it was impossible. He needed to make body molds and cure them; he needed to get the correct skin tone to do the makeup. "Two days, working round-the-clock at the very least," he told her… besides, he had a TV show to do. "What time does this have to happen?" he finally asked.

"Eight-fifteen, tomorrow morning," she said. "Beano Bates is running the sting."

"King Con?" Smart said; his voice seemed to hesitate, slightly in awe.

"That's who's running it. We could sure use the help. One of our main inside men just went down."

"Okay, I'll do the best I can," he'd said.

He phoned in sick and chartered a plane, which she said she'd reimburse him for. Stuart had flown up to San Francisco with all of the equipment he could carry. Victoria had next phoned the FBI. "Let me talk to Grady Hunt," she said, and in a minute he was on.

"So far so good," Grady bragged. "Everybody's in town, Tommy and your boyfriend are at the Ritz. Whatta you want?"

"You said I had to call, so I'm calling."

"Then gimme something I don't know, like where's the old duck with the gray hair going? He got on a plane for New Jersey. I got a team set to pick him up in Atlantic City."

"John Bates is going home. Don't follow him, his wife is dying. He's out of the play."

"Boo-hoo and whoop-de-do," Grady said.

"Don't follow him, okay? He's just going to sit at the hospital with his wife. I'm meeting a guy tonight named Stuart Bates. He doesn't know what's going on either. He's doing me a favor, so don't jam him up. He's not part of it."

"Nobody seems to be part of it," he said. "We got a first here, a crime with no criminals."

"I'll call you in the morning before it goes down," she said, and hung up on him. What a jerk.

She'd picked Stuart Bates up at the airport at eleven-thirty, and they had gone directly to a motel that was a few blocks from the Big Store. He'd asked for a room with a bathtub. Once they were inside, he had insisted that she take off all her clothes. She had hesitated, but then thought, What the fuck, and threw caution and her clothes away. She stood naked before him. He looked at her beautiful body and tried to decide which areas to pad.

"I'm gonna give ya the cellulite transformation, a big stern, and thunder thighs," he said. Then he handed her a robe. He poured three bags of plaster of Paris into the tub and had her sit on a chair in the bathroom with her head tipped back in the sink while he made a face mold.

"Okay," he said, "I'm going to give you body padding. I brought some in the huge suitcase. Try it on; we'll probably have to tailor it, but you'll wear it under clothes so it should work. Your hands are going to be tough, a real giveaway. Hopefully, he won't look at them too closely. We'll get a pant suit for you to wear, with pockets. Keep your hands in your pockets to hide them. I don't have time for the hand appliances. I'll do chin, cheeks, and neck. You can look through that suitcase for a wig."

They had started at twelve-fifty in the morning, and seven hours later the sun was up, and he was just applying the finishing touches. She was sitting in a motel bathroom four blocks from the Perm Mutual Building while he fine-tuned the eye makeup and powder-dusted the glued-on appliances. She watched in fascination; he had transformed her into a fat, middle-aged woman with three chins. In high school, Victoria had developed a very funny imitation of her history teacher, Miss Laura Luna. She had been rather large and had a breathy but slightly squeaky voice. Victoria needed a new persona so that Tommy wouldn't recognize her. She decided to resurrect Miss Luna.

Stuart had picked up some size 15 clothes and she had selected a dark blue pant suit, with pockets. It also hid the leg and stomach padding, which were held on with Velcro. The whole contraption weighed over thirty pounds.

She was sweating under it as she cabbed the four blocks to the Penn Mutual Building and took the service elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor. Her FBI tail didn't recognize the woman who hurried past them to the cab stand. Instead, they stayed and watched the empty motel room. She dashed into the President's office just two minutes ahead of Beano and Tommy. Now, with almost no time to get set and settle down, she was face to face with Tommy Rina.

"I'm sorry, I can't meet with anybody right now," Victoria told the ugly mobster.

"Hey, lady." Tommy took a menacing step forward. "Who the fuck you think you're talking to?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," she said, in her breathy soprano. "I've never seen you before in my life. But I'm going to insist you leave my office or I'll have to call Security. I'm preparing for a meeting with our million-dollar shareholders and I only have a few minutes to review Mr. Lacy's notes."

"I own a million dollars' worth a'this oil company," he said, and he yanked open his briefcase and thrust the stock certificates at Victoria.

She looked at them." This is only a hundred thousand shares. The stock is trading at just under six. That means the market value of these certificates is only about six hundred thousand."

"The fuck," Tommy said, "y'mean I'm still losing money?"

"Please leave my office," she said insistently.

Beano pulled Tommy aside and whispered to him, "If the stock goes down, that's good for us. Means we can buy more for our money. Forget the first million," he whispered, "we're talking about billions."

Tommy pulled back and looked at Beano. Finally he seemed to connect to that. He nodded.

Beano thought he needed to slow the pace slightly. He had never played a mark who had less understanding of business. "We're interested in buying control of this company," Beano said to Victoria.

"And just who might you be?"

Beano thought Victoria's makeup was a bit too heavy. At one spot, it looked like it had been put on with a trowel to cover the neck appliances. Then Tommy said something to Victoria that jerked him back.

"Don't I know you?" he blurted. "We met someplace before?"

"I'm sure not," Victoria asked.

"Yeah… yeah, I'm sure. Florida? You ever been to Florida?"

"What do you mean, you want to buy the company?" she said, abruptly changing subjects. "That's hardly possible at this point."

"Miss Luna, is it?" Beano said and she turned to him. "I know you've got a bunch of angry stockholders convening here this morning. These people want their money back. I happen to know they all hold Class-A Preferred Stock, same as Mr. Rina here. And somebody, some insider, must be selling it fast to push the price down like this."

"I can't discuss insider business," she said.

"Now the other stockholders can't sell without flooding the market and driving the price to nothing. Since they're all stuck holding this plunging stock, I think they're going to want you to liquidate assets. If they vote this morning to do that, then you're going to have to start selling stuff like the Tennessee land, and if that happens on top of this falling stock price, even the Vancouver Stock Exchange is going to panic and freeze everything, maybe even de-list the security. You're in a horrible fix, Miss Luna. You should be treating us like saviors. We happen to be the only buyers in a market full of sellers," Beano grinned.

"I still don't know who you are," Victoria said.

"This is Mr. Rina, a respected businessman. I used to work here until I was fired for doing my job. I'm a geologist, Dr. Douglas Clark."

"Oh, yes. Seems to me I read that termination slip. So now what's your story? You trying to buy the company and teach us all a lesson?"

"I'm trying to offer a solution, not a lesson."

"I'm sorry, but I don't think selling you the company at a distressed price is a very good business solution… at least, not this morning. As the corporate CFO, I'm empowered to negotiate deals for FCP amp;G, but I hardly intend to take advantage of that power until Chip Lacy gets better and can offer his opinion."

"What's she saying?" Tommy asked, leaning forward in his loafers like a railbird at the Aqueduct finish line.

"I happen to know this company is falling apart," Beano exploded at her, losing his temper. "You people haven't been bringing in new wells. Your field development costs are killing your cash flow. You haven't even been paying your bills. Don't stand there and preach to me about good business solutions."

"I think you need to get ahold of yourself, Dr. Clark. You were fired for meddling in a financial matter that was not your concern. Now, obviously, you're harboring the fantasy of buying us and firing everybody to get even. Revenge and retribution? Is that the plan?" she said, her voice rising in indignation to match his.

"The West Coast Platform Drilling Company was hired by me!" Beano screamed. "Donovan Martin was my friend. We had a contractual obligation to him, and all I did was-"

Then the door opened and Teo X. Bates entered the room. He was tall and broad shouldered. He had been doing land scams in the Phoenix area and flew in to work Beano's sting. Following Teo into the room was a driveway specialist from Simi Valley, California, named Luther X. Bates.

"Everything okay in here?" Teo said, looking suspiciously at Beano and Tommy. "We heard shouting."

"Perhaps these gentlemen would like to leave now," Victoria said.

"I own a hundred thousand shares a'this company," Tommy said. "I ain't goin' nowhere."

Victoria looked at him unpleasantly, then seemed to relent. "Maybe if you'd wait in another office for a minute. Perhaps I can arrange for you to be included in the preferred stockholders' meeting."

As Tommy turned to leave, Beano gave Victoria a lingering look. She held it for a minute, then winked at him and shrugged. Tommy pulled him out of the office. It was then that Beano saw Alex Cordosian standing there, out of breath. He had just arrived.

"They're gonna let us in the stockholders' meeting," Tommy grinned.

"The reason I'm late is I've been making some calls. You can't just walk in here and buy this place. I can't get any banking information on this outfit. You don't know what the debt obligation of this company is… What if they owe a hundred million against a bunch of devalued assets? You're gonna be liable for all their loans." Tommy blinked his lizard eyes at the Armenian attorney. "What if there are outstanding claims by other subs?" Alex continued. "What if there's hundreds of millions in lawsuits pending? You don't know what you're buying. You could be buying a long-term headache. I'm determined to point these things out to you," he lectured. "You can threaten me, but I owe you my best judgment. Your brother would never plunge blindly like this, believe me." That sentence, more than all the others, snapped Tommy's eyes wider.

"Did you check on all that Tennessee land, did you call about that?" Beano asked hotly.

"Yes, I talked to the Clerk in Fentress County. The company does have a land grant title for the acreage, and I did feel better when I confirmed that, but there's no current value for the land listed. The land grant goes all the way back to the Civil War."

"There's more value here than they even begin to suspect," Beano whispered intently, turning Tommy so Ellen seemingly couldn't hear. "Don't forget all that oil in the ground. The largest stratigraphic trap ever located." He led Tommy away from the secretary's desk and out of earshot.

But Alex kept following and buzzing, "How much is the oil field really worth? You don't know, nobody knows. You don't even really know there's crude down there, you just have this guy's word for it. What if it's just a pocket well?"

"A what?" Tommy asked.

"It's no pocket well," Beano corrected. "Are you kidding? I've worked the seismics on this acreage for eighteen months. We've got at least a six-acre pool down there. The flow pressure tests were incredible."

"I saw it. I saw the oil," Tommy said.

"How much?" Alex asked. He was cooking now, he could see indecision clouding Tommy's narrow thoughts. "Did you see a billion barrels' worth, like he said?"

"You don't have to see it. I know it's there. That's what geology is about," Beano hissed angrily.

"I didn't see it," Tommy said, "but I got a decanter full."

"Oh, a decanter. Well, great, that's gotta be worth about two bucks. You can't do this."

"Look, you," Beano said, leaning in on the lawyer, who pulled back in fear. "I don't need all this sarcasm from you. I worked to prove that field for almost two years. You don't know what you're talking about. In half an hour this opportunity goes away."

"I've been in a few oil deals in my life, and they're not done like this. This is nuts. I called some friends of mine back east this morning. They think this company went bankrupt in the late seventies."

"Bankrupt in the seventies?" Beano sputtered.

"I'm not saying you shouldn't buy this eventually, just slow down. Joe never buys stuff quick. He always says, 'If there's a clock anywhere in the deal, then let the buyer beware.'"

"Joe says that?" Tommy asked.

"If this is an up-and-up deal, it will be for sale tomorrow or next week. You don't have to buy it now. If you insist, we can negotiate an option today, preserve all your rights, and then, after I've checked it out, we can let go of the cash."

It was a solution that would never work for Beano. Alex would surely discover the fraud if given enough time to investigate. Beano had to up the stakes… So, he moved back to Ellen's desk, borrowed a pencil, and wrote a note for her while Alex was slowly getting Tommy to reconsider.

"What's it matter if you buy it today? Look, big purchases don't happen like this. You don't roll in with a suitcase full of cash and plunk it down. That's insane. Do it the way Joe would do it. Do it smart." Alex had finally found the right tune to play, and Tommy was listening and nodding.

Beano handed the note to Ellen. She read it and stood up. "You can wait in Mr. Spencer's office while Miss Luna gets the approval for you to attend the meeting," she said, as she showed them to a nearby office.

They entered and looked out of the huge plate-glass window. Across the street, the Exxon double locking x's were shining. Ellen left them in the office and closed the door. Then she handed Beano's note to her husband, Steve. Rig a chill and play the cross-fire, the note read.

There was a computer in the office where they were waiting. Tommy watched as Beano turned it on and booted it up.

"I'm telling you," Alex went on relentlessly, "we can hold our dirt. If they're really in cash trouble, time is working for us, not against us."

Beano had the Quotron stock report up, and he motioned to Tommy and Alex.

"Look't this," he said, and he punched in FCP amp;G and they watched the stock ticker report. "This stock was trading at ten yesterday, this morning it's down to five and seven eighths and whoa, no… look't this…"

Tommy leaned in and, as they talked, he saw the stock drop from five and seven-eighths to five and three-fourths. Again, Victoria's program had overridden the real Quotron ticker, and Fentress County fell right before their eyes.

"This fucking thing is dropping faster than a bad tit job," Tommy said, glaring at the screen.

"Mr. Rina," Beano said, "I don't mean to stand here and argue with Mr. Cordosian, brilliant in legal matters as I'm sure he is, but I've been in the oil business for fifteen years. This stock is about to get frozen by the Vancouver Exchange. An insider is obviously dumping stock without notifying the Board. They've gotta be looking at this. A stock goes from ten to five and three-quarters, loses almost half its value in one day, and you don't think the Exchange is gonna stop trading and delist it? Once that happens, we are absolutely out of the game. Maybe your brother thinks if there's a clock in a deal there's a problem, but I'm sure he wasn't contemplating a foreign stock exchange taking the whole transaction out of our hands. We have one hell of an opportunity here. But we've gotta suck it up, be a little brave, and move now."

Then the door opened and Ellen Bates stuck her head in. "Miss Luna says you can join the stockholders' meeting. It's on the floor below, in the big conference room. I can show you down."

Tommy picked up his briefcase and they all followed her out of the office to the elevator.

The stockholders' meeting was more of a shouting match than a meeting. Miss Luna, a.k.a. Victoria Hart, was trying to maintain some control, but the Bates point-out players were screaming at her and each other.

"You can't be serious!" Leonard X. Bates was shouting. "If we don't make a move now, take this into our own hands, we're going to get frozen. One or more of us is selling and killing the market for everyone else. We have to move now, Laura. Sell the Tennessee land, dispense the assets. I understand we have a buyer on that property."

Everybody started talking at once.

"Mr. Lacy had very strong opinions about liquidating that asset, and the offer on the table is ridiculous," Victoria yelled out. "Once we do that, we're basically out of business. That property is leveraged against our bank loan. Besides, we feel we have certain development fields that show wonderful promise. We're not in a crisis situation here, at least not yet."

"If we're not, I'd sure as hell like to see your definition of a crisis!" Theodore Bates barked.

"I'm holding way too much of this paper. I'm not gonna stand here and eat it, sheet by sheet," another sharper yelled.

"This is the worst quarterly P and A field report I've seen in twenty years," another interrupted.

And then everybody in the room started shouting over one another and Victoria was clapping her slender, out-of-proportion hands to get them all to quiet down. "If we can please speak one at a time," she yelled, but arguments were raging all around the table.

Beano leaned toward Tommy. "This thing is so ripe. We won't even need the whole five mil. Make an offer."

Tommy looked over at Alex, who shook his head, and Tommy leaned back. He was going to wait, like he thought his brother Joe would do.

Beano was stuck, so he flashed a sign at Theodore. It was time to play the cross-fire.

"Miss Luna, I want to adjourn for a while. I have partners in Texas I need to speak with. Could we have a few minutes, please?" Theodore yelled.

The din in the room lessened with planned orchestration, so Victoria could give her line. "Okay, I think we all need to cool down. Weil take five."

"I know this fat broad from someplace," Tommy said. "I fucking can't pin it down, but when it comes to pussy, even ugly pussy, I got fucking unbelievable instincts."

"Let's go find a room to talk," Beano said.

He moved with Tommy and Alex out of the conference room. All of the sharpers were growling and arguing at the turn of events, cursing the falling stock and the stockholder among them who was selling. They filed out into the hallway. Beano led Tommy and Alex to an empty office.

All the offices on twenty-four were less impressive than the ones on twenty-five. The offices had half-walls with decorative, frosted glass up to the ceiling to create an open feeling.

Beano motioned them into an office, then hesitated. "I gotta take a quick leak," he said. "Be right back." He closed the door, counted to ten, then opened the door and quickly re-entered the office.

"Fuck! I knew it!" he exclaimed, turning Tommy and Alex around. "He's here. He's fucking here. I knew it!"

"Who's here?" Tommy said.

"Dr. Sutton. He's talking to that old guy, Theodore Lanaman, the guy who called for the recess. They just went into an office across the hallway."

"You think he's making a deal with that guy?" Tommy said, concern crossing his feral features.

"Of course. Whatta you think? He's not at this stockholders' meeting to give a geophone report. We're fucked," Beano said, totally defeated. He pointed at Alex. "If you hadn't listened to this guy, we could've already owned this thing."

"Where is he? Let's go see," Tommy said, then opened the door and walked out. Beano and Alex followed.

Beano pointed to the office across the hall; then Tommy saw that there was a door right next to it. He opened it. It led to a secretarial area which was between two executive offices. One was the office that Duffy and Theodore were in. The other was empty.

They walked into the secretarial area and looked through the frosted-glass dividing wall that separated them from Duffy and Theodore. They could see Duffy talking animatedly, but his voice and image were muffled by the decorative glass partition. Beano finally found the secretary's speakerphone and hit a button. Immediately they could hear the conversation, because Beano had connected the speakers between the two phones:

"… I been doing it just like we planned," Theodore was saying, and through the distorting glass they could see him holding up a piece of paper. "These are the trading slips."

Duffy was standing facing him, his Einstein hair frizzy in the distorted backlight. Beano grabbed a miniature tape recorder out of his pocket to record the conversation.

"I'm telling you, Mr. Lanaman, they won't find out you're the one selling… The price is going down. It's already in the mid-fives."

Beano, Alex, and Tommy were hunkered over the speakerphone, eavesdropping, while Beano recorded the "betrayal."

"I'll call my broker and dump the rest of my stock. That should drive it down to the mid-fours and then they'll be desperate to sell. It gets me out at an average price of about six, which is not all that bad."

"Then let's get to work," Duffy said as they left the office and Beano turned off the recorder.

"If Sutton told him about the field and all the oil, why is he selling his stock?" Tommy asked, his brow knit. Business had always been hard for him. It wasn't like clipping guys where you just stepped up and did it. In business you tried to fool them or bluff them. Sometimes it just didn't make sense.

"It's very simple," Beano said slowly. "He wants the stock price to fall so these other stockholders will panic and sell him their stock right now. He'll pick up control of the company for bubkes."

Tommy looked at Alex. "Zat sound right?" he asked. Alex thought for a second then nodded. "Yeah… it's probably exactly what he's doing," he agreed, beginning to be a believer himself. "By buying it here at the stockholders' meeting, he doesn't have to buy it over the counter and create a higher and higher market as he goes. He also avoids the five-day stock exchange clearing procedure. Pretty damn smart," Alex said grudgingly.

"It's fish-or-cut-bait time," Beano said. "It's us or them or it's the V.S.E. in Vancouver. This time tomorrow this company and that billion-dollar field is gonna belong to somebody else. I'm saying it should be us."

Victoria reconvened the stockholders' meeting, and as they sat at the now more subdued table, Duffy walked into the room and sat behind Theodore Bates.

"Who is this gentleman?" Victoria asked in her breathy Miss Luna voice.

"He's my assistant," Theodore said in his authoritative Mr. Lanaman voice. "And I'd like to make an offer to everybody in this room. I understand you want out, but I think it would be nothing short of criminal to sell that Tennessee land grant for what's being offered. I always believed in this company and in Chip Lacy, so I'm willing to buy your stock certificates, the Class-A as well as the outstanding Class-C, at one point over Close of Market today."

Immediately the room broke into a flurry of discussion. Finally, the buzz died down and the stockholders looked over at Theodore.

"Why would you do that? The stock is dropping like a rock," one of the point-out sharpers asked Theodore.

"Frankly? Because I've been semi-retired for a year and I'm bored. I'd like to give running this place a shot. Gimme something to do, but I'm not gonna spend that much time and energy unless I own it."

Beano looked over at Tommy, and now Tommy nodded, so Beano exploded to his feet. "He's not trying to own it. He's trying to steal it! It's Lanaman who's been selling his stock and knocking the price down so he can buy it for nothing."

"That's patently absurd," Theodore thundered.

"Is it?" Beano asked rhetorically, as he turned on the little tape recorder and set it on the polished mahogany table.

Through the speaker they could hear Theodore's voice: "I been doing it just like we planned. These are the trading slips." Then Duffy was saying, "I'm telling you, Mr. Lanaman, they won't find out you're the one selling… The price is going down. It's already in the mid-fives." Then Theodore again: "I'll call my broker and dump the rest of my stock. That should drive it down to the mid-fours and then they'll be desperate to sell. It gets me out at an average price of about six, which is not all that bad."

Beano turned off the tape and the room exploded in anger.

"My offer still stands," Theodore shouted.

"You get the hell out of here," one of the sharpers yelled at Theodore. "I wouldn't sell you my stock at gunpoint!"

"Get out of this meeting, you son-of-a-bitch," another yelled, and he was on his feet grabbing for Theodore X. Bates, who, along with Duffy, made a hasty exit from the room. Once he was gone, they all sat there looking at one another.

"Too bad," one of the sharpers said. "I was hoping I could sell. I wish we could find another buyer."

Beano looked pointedly at Victoria. "Tell him, Miss Luna," he said. "You've a fiduciary duty. You can't withhold that kinda information."

"Well, I just… It seems to me we're all panicking."

"Tell him!" Beano said firmly, and then Victoria turned to the room full of sharpers.

"Well, there was another offer this morning, but I think-"

"Another offer?!" they all said, before she could finish. They were astounded.

Now it was Tommy who rose majestically to his feet. He felt exactly the way he knew Joe must feel when he was closing a well-planned deal.

"I'm willing to pay cash money, one point over C.O.M."

"Over what?" one of them asked.

"Over C.O.M., Close of Market," Tommy said.

"They don't call it C.O.M.," Beano whispered. "It's just called Close of Market."

"Oh," Tommy said. "Well, I'll buy all your stock up to five million dollars."

"You gotta deal," one sharper yelled.

"Count me in," another yelled, rising to his feet, pulling his prop stock certificates out of his briefcase.

Tommy smiled. He liked doing business on his terms. He decided it was just like clipping guys, only your dick didn't get quite as hard. Then he left Beano to sort out the sellers, while he and Alex went down to get the two suitcases of cash out of the trunk of Tommy's car.

They returned to a selling frenzy. Each sharper handed over his certificates, and Tommy gave him the appropriate amount of cash. It was in banded packages of hundreds, right out of Joe's dead-drop room in Nassau. In less than two hours the transaction was complete.

Once the sharpers had left with their money, Tommy was seated with fifty or sixty stock certificates in a pile in front of him and a satisfied smile on his face. He told Beano it was time to have a party and celebrate.

"I hope you're happy," Miss Luna said angrily to Beano. "You own the company. It'll probably kill Mr. Lacy." And she moved out of the conference room in a huff.

"I know that cunt from someplace," Tommy said after she was gone. But, for the life of him, he still couldn't remember from where.

While Tommy was packing up the stock certificates and Alex was instructing him that they should be immediately placed in a safety deposit box, Beano found Victoria in the President's office.

She was looking out the window at the oil buildings across the street. Her stocky legs were spread wide to balance the heavy load of padding. She was in a pensive mood and, with a delicate hand up to her mouth, was looking down the street. She wondered how many Feds were down there. Beano came in, and she spun around as he locked the door.

"Great job," he said, and she nodded without enthusiasm. "What's wrong?" he said, picking up her mood.

Victoria could not lie to him for another moment. As she stood there, a completely disparate thought hit her. She knew in that instant she really loved him. Strange as it was, he had crept into her every waking thought, coloring all her values and perceptions with his personality.

"Beano… the police know all about this," she said slowly, hating every word she uttered. "For all I know they're outside the door right now."

"How could they?" he said, still smiling, but looking at her closely. It was hard to read her expression behind all of the makeup.

"Because I told them."

"You told them?" The smile died slowly on his handsome face. "Why?"

"They picked me up in Jersey coming out of Joe's office. I stumbled into a Federal stake-out." Then she sat on the edge of the desk, and while he listened in utter disbelief, she told him about everything that had happened since her return to San Francisco.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" he said after she finished, his feelings hurt.

"I was ashamed, I guess. Now I know it was a mistake. I know I can't trust Gil Green to keep his word. He'll double-cross me. He only cares about one thing and that's getting into the Governor's Mansion. If I didn't do what he said, they would have killed you."

Beano looked at her for a long moment.

"Whatta we gonna do?" she said, after long moments of uncomfortable silence. She was feeling utterly helpless and totally responsible.

"I guess we better start a fire," he finally said.