King Con (1997)

by Stephen Cannell

  She found herself studying his too-blond wig, which was leaking perspiration down the side of his face. Then he looked up suddenly and caught her staring.

  "Okay, Vicky ..."

  "I prefer Victoria."

  "I prefer Theodore," he said with a smirk. "Lotta good it does me. What we have here is a live-on-tape interview. It will be broadcast on the evening news in a two-and-a-half-minute segment. We're going to have a hard out. I'll signal you when we're down to five seconds. Wrap it up fast, or you'll get cut off by the booth."

  "Okay," she said, not sure exactly what she was going to say, but because of the anger in her, she was fearing the worst.

  The stage manager held up five fingers, then ticked them down, one at a time, until he had a fist up and Ted grinned at the camera.

  "Welcome to 'New Jersey Talking.' I'm Ted Calendar, and this is our fireside chat with people in the news." He turned to Victoria. "I'm here with Vicky Hart, the Prosecutor just coining off a devastating situation in her trial against alleged mobster Joe Rina. Nice to have you with us, Vicky."

  "Thanks. Nice to be here, Teddy," she said, and watched him wince slightly.

  "So the trial isn't going to happen. A lot has been made of this prosecution, yet you withdrew your case before opening arguments. Is that it? After all the hoopla, it just goes over the cliff without even a skid-mark?"

  "The fact that my witness, Carol Sesnick, and two heroic police officers were brutally murdered and thrown down an elevator shaft is a real tragedy, and it's the reason we're not going to proceed with the attempted murder prosecution. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to know that these deaths, timed just days before opening arguments, were not coincidental."

  "You're accusing Joseph Rina of these murders?" Ted said, sensing a story and leaning forward in his chair.

  "You bet."

  Ted Calendar looked at her skeptically. "You're saying that you have evidence that Joe Rina killed these three people?"

  "I didn't say I had evidence. I said he did it."

  "As a prosecuting attorney here in New Jersey, you can't say something like that unless you intend to back it up."

  "Says who?"

  "I would guess Gil Green. Gil would have both legal and ethical concerns, I think."

  "This would be the same Gil Green who encouraged me, at length, to prosecute Joe Rina for attempted murder; who made a TV career out of talking about it for five months to get his political stock up, and now, because my key witness was murdered, is having me reviewed for doing it in the first place? I don't think we need to worry too much about Gil Green's ethical position. Let's worry instead about what happened to Carol Sesnick, Tony Corollo, and Bobby Manning. Those three people were my friends. Those three people were heroes. They gave their lives trying to do the right thing." She turned in her chair and faced the camera. "Joe Rina, if you're out there listening to me, I'm not going to rest until I see you brought to justice. I don't know how I'm going to prove you brutally killed my friends, but I'm going to." Her eyes were pinholes of burning anger as she looked into the camera. "I'm going to see you behind bars. I won't sleep until that day comes."

  Ted Calendar looked into the lens as the camera faced him. In his "ear angel," the director told him to go right to commercial. "Powerful stuff ..." he said to the camera. "Weil be right back," and they cut to black. He looked at her. "I'd like to do a second segment. Follow this up, if you can stay."

  "I think I've done enough damage to myself," she said, and unhooked her mike. She walked off the stage and out of the studio. She got in her car and drove along the Delaware River to the John Fitch Parkway, heading north. Without really planning it, she was heading to her parents' house in Wallingford, Connecticut. She knew the broadcast would end her career in the D.A.'s office. Halfway there, tears started rolling down her cheeks. She wasn't making a sound, but the tears flowed. It was strange, as if sheer force of will prohibited complete emotional collapse, but she couldn't stop the tears. Victoria Hart was hangin' on for dear life and running home to her mother.

  Chapter Eight.

  THE BROADCAST

  THE PICTURES WERE MORE GRUESOME THAN HE'D IMAGined: shots of him unconscious in the pre-op theater, his head swollen, his two middle teeth missing. He had blood all over him; his jaw was broken. He was covered with a cold sweat as he studied them.

  "Really knocked the shit out of me, didn't he, Rog?" Beano said, and laid the hospital photos aside.

  He'd been through the files two times, to no avail. The whole Amp Heywood/Cedric O'Neal/Martin Cushbury scam on Victoria Hart had produced very little ... only the horrible pictures, which had knotted his stomach and brought the unreasonable fear bubbling up, filling his senses, like untreated sewage. Beano had read her trial strategy, which didn't help him either. He had her opening statement, which he thought was inventive and dramatic and just ever so tricky: "More than a man was beaten in the parking lot of the Greenborough Country Club," she had intended to say. "The boundaries of self-restraint and human decency were also viciously and demonically attacked." Pretty good. She didn't have Beano, so society and human decency were standing in for him. Beano had read it twice and found nothing in it besides some nice imagery and three spelling errors. There were no background facts on Joseph or Tommy. If he was going to run a Big Store confidence game on the Rinas, he would desperately need to know everything about them. But very little of it was here. He had swung for a grand slam and had whiffed completely.

  Roger-the-Dodger rolled onto his side, sound asleep. He barked softly and growled, then his feet started running in the air. The terrier was on the foot of the motel bed, involved in some important canine adventure. Beano had the TV on, but was not paying much attention until he caught a glimpse of Victoria Hart. He lunged over Roger, across the room, and turned up the volume. The dog looked up, annoyed. Beano caught the last part of the interview where Victoria Hart stomped on Gil Green's balls, then turned to the camera and promised Joe Rina that she would get him.

  Beano waited until the news came back on. Ted Calendar was at his anchor desk in a blue blazer; the red-haired co-anchor, Shelly September, was shaking her vinyl hair in disbelief.

  "Quite an interview, Ted," she said.

  "Yes, it was. We've asked Gil Green to comment, Shelly, and he said that the District Attorney's office doesn't support Miss Hart's position. In fact, he told me she had been demoted, and perhaps her anger over that produced these remarks. They also said they would have a full statement sometime tomorrow."

  "A very strange ending to a very strange saga," Shelly said in mock amazement and then turned to other news.

  Beano muted the TV and looked down at Roger. "What the fuck is she doing, attacking a monster like that? She's gonna get herself killed."

  Roger had no answer, so Beano got up and went into the bathroom and slapped water on his face; then he started to gather up his cosmetics. He took them back into the bedroom, reached under the bed, and pulled out a canvas bag. Inside it was a three-gallon pickle jar with an air-tight metal top. Through the glass jar he could see rolls of hundred-dollar bills. He surveyed his layout money skeptically. "Ain't gonna be enough, Rog. For what I gotta pull, I'm gonna need a lot more." The dog yawned. "The answer is we gotta get Vicky Hart to tell us where Tommy and Joe have their money stashed. We better get to this woman before the Rinas do." He continued packing. He had seen Gil Green on TV three or four times already that afternoon. He turned the volume back up and started flipping around, looking for the District Attorney, who had been getting a lot of news play because of the abrupt dismissal of the high-profile case. He finally found him on Channel Two. It was a taped courthouse interview right after the Prosecution had waved the white flag.

  "Of course ... this was absolutely expected after the eyewitness was lost. Ms. Hart has made some serious errors in judgment here and we're going to be looking into it."

  Beano was listening to the rhythm of Gil Green's speech, the soft low-energy presentatio
n.

  He turned to Roger. "Of course ... this was absolutely expected after the eyewitness was lost. Ms. Hart has made some serious errors in judgment here and we're going to be looking into it." Beano's mimicking got very close to Gil Green's pinched voice on the first attempt. He thought it needed to be a Utile higher, a little reedier. He tried it a few more times. Finally, Roger barked at him.

  "You think?" Beano asked. "Okay, let's try it."

  He moved to the phone book, looked up the D.A.'s office, and dialed. Once he got the switchboard, he asked for Victoria Hart's extension. After several rings, he was forwarded to the Reception Desk just before it shut down for the night.

  "Hi, who is this?" he asked in Gil Green's soft, non-confrontational, passive-aggressive voice.

  "It's Donna. Is that you, Mr. Green?" the receptionist answered.

  "Yes, Donna, this is Gilbert. I'm trying desperately to reach Victoria and I fear I've left my book in the office. Do you have her home telephone and perhaps her address?"

  "Yes, Mr. Green," Donna said, eager to please, "but I don't think she's at home just now."

  "Do you know where she might be?"

  "She's at her parents' house in Wallingford, Connecticut. I don't have the number, but I think it's listed."

  "And her father would be ...?" He let it hang in the air with arch theatricality, liking the way he was doing the impression. Sometimes, he thought he could even give Dana Carvey a run for it.

  "Her father's name is Harry Hart. Harry and Elizabeth Hart."

  "How very American," he said condescendingly, and hung up without saying good-bye. Minutes later he had their phone number. He dialed, but got no answer. He tried calling again at seven-ten, then at seven-forty and at eight P.M., but still no answer. Maybe they're out to dinner, he thought, or maybe I'm already too late.

  The restaurant was on the ninth fairway of the public links in Wallingford, Connecticut. The windows overlooked the course. Harry and Elizabeth Hart listened earnestly as their daughter finished her tale.

  Harry was a retired insurance executive. He had a ruddy complexion and silver-white hair. After he retired, he'd started wearing out-of-style madras coats and white linen pants--clothes Victoria thought he would never have worn ten years ago. Harry was very proud of his daughter. He thought she was the most strikingly wonderful person he had ever known.

  Elizabeth Hart had her wheelchair parked up close to the table. She was holding her daughter's hand under the drape of the tablecloth. Her hands were too slender and heavily veined. The right side of her face sagged and she had lost the ability to walk since her last stroke. Elizabeth Hart's mind was still tracking, even though she slurred her speech in her soft Texas accent. It was hard for Victoria to see her mother this way. ... She had always been so vital, so beautiful. It had been her mother who had constantly pried Victoria's hand off the achievement throttle as a child, urging her to develop her playful side. It had been a valiant, if unrewarding struggle.

  "I suppose it's already aired by now. Thank God you don't get WTRN here in Connecticut," Victoria said, and then they sat in silence until a waiter cleared the plates.

  "You did the right thing, Victoria," her father said. "You must do what you feel is right. From everything you've told me about Gil Green, he's not a good manager of his people." He was being the business expert now, falling back on twenty years of management experience at Penn Mutual Insurance.

  "But see's been 'ere almos five 'ears, 'arry," her mother slurred, the Texas drawl making it even harder to understand. "Where 'ill see go?" Her mother, as usual, had caught the heart of the problem: Where could she go to practice law after all this?

  "So, you stay up here for a while, till it all blows over." Her father raced ahead: "You hang up a shingle. I know some people who will throw work your way. Real estate or business contracts, lotta work like that around here."

  "I'm a criminal attorney, Dad." Then she paused before going on. "... And I have another problem. ..."

  They both anxiously waited for her.

  "I ... maybe ..." She stopped and looked down. "Maybe I need to do something about these murders, prove what happened to Carol."

  "Let the police do that," Harry said sternly, but Elizabeth squeezed her hand under the table.

  "But, Dad, they won't be able to. Joseph Rina is very smart. He doesn't make mistakes. The only mistake I think he ever made was beating this John Doe, whoever he was, with a nine-iron in front of a witness. I need to find a way to get Rina. A police investigation won't do it; there are too many rules, plus evidentiary and procedural roadblocks. He'll never go down that way. I need something else, something ..." She hesitated, looking for the right word, then chose the one that had been linked to her by the press. "... something tricky," she finished.

  "I won't hear of this," her father said. "If Joe Rina is everything you say, and I'm sure he is, he's not somebody you want to be messing around with. I know I can't tell you what to do anymore, but, sweetheart, I can't bear the thought of you being in danger. It's not your job to go out and try to settle society's debts."

  She looked at him and finally nodded.

  On the way out of the restaurant, her cellphone rang. Her father had wheeled her mother over to get their coats when she answered it. It was David Frankfurter.

  "You sure knocked the flies out of the garbage," he said.

  "Lotta pissed-off people down there, I'll bet," she said softly.

  "Yeah, listen, there's something else you oughta know. I got a kickback from the N.C.I.C. deep check on Beano Bates."

  "Not that it matters anymore, but let's hear."

  "His father was Jacob Bates. The Bates family is sort of well-known. There are three thousand of them. Most of the family is on the hustle. There's even an N.C.I.C. information number on them, with arrest records going back six years. If you want, I could order it up, but it's gonna be a phone book."

  "Save it. Maybe later. Is that all?"

  "That's not the main reason I called." He paused for effect. "Beano Bates's mother's maiden name is Sesnick."

  "What?" she said; her voice was suddenly too loud in the restaurant entry. Her mother and father turned to look.

  "Carol Sesnick was related to him," David finished.

  "You think Bates stole the file because he's trying to get even with Joe Rina for killing Carol?"

  "Well, he sure didn't steal it because he needed the practice," David answered. "The Sesnick family, by the way, is also in the computer. They're a family of American Gypsies. They work crowds in the Midwest, mostly pickpockets, some tarot card and palm-reading scams."

  "Jeez" was about all she could think to say.

  "I've got Beano Bates's mug shots and file pictures here. You want, I can fax 'em to your mom and dad's house."

  "Yeah." She gave him the number, then stood there, looking out the front door of the restaurant. Her father rolled her mother up to her.

  "Ready?" he said.

  "Be right there, Dad," she replied, and he pushed the wheelchair out and gave the valet the parking ticket.

  "Listen," David continued, "I've had a couple a'calls. It's kinda goofy around here. That Ted Calendar piece was courageous but maybe not too smart."

  "I know ... I'm sorry. I couldn't just do nothing. It was stupid, but it's done."

  "Don't let these assholes run you off, Victoria. They want to sell justice by the pound down here. You're one of the ones who never let that happen."

  "Thanks, David. Don't worry, I'm hanging tough," she lied. They both knew that Gil Green would never let her come back.

  That same evening, Joe Rina had been having a celebration in the plush dining room at the Trenton House. At the table was his fiancee, Stacy DiMantia, and her father, Paul. Tommy and a hooker he had paid five hundred dollars to made up the rest of the party. The French dining room was named La Reserve. Their waiter was named Giraud Le Mousant; Tommy's hooker was named Calliope Love. She laughed loudly and called Tommy "the best little jockey w
ho ever rode her." Joe was getting angry at her vulgarity and was about to say something when the maitre d' came over and whispered that Joe had a phone call. He took the call in the lobby. It was from Gerald Cohen.

  "Just think you oughta know that you were accused of murdering the witness and two cops on Ted Calendar's TV program tonight."

  "Come on, Gerry, they've got no evidence of that. ... You sure? Who's stupid enough to do that?"

  "Tricky Vicky. I've got a copy of the segment. I'll send it over."

  "She's not that stupid," Joe said. "What's she think she's doing?"

  After dinner, Tommy and Joe watched the tape alone in the Trenton House manager's office. When it was over, Tommy was fuming. "This fucking bitch! Where's she get off? I'm gonna use this cunt up."

  "You're going to calm down and watch your language," Joe said, without emotion. He put a tasseled loafer up on the side of the desk and looked at his tan silk socks, which came from Hong Kong and cost sixty dollars.

  "We're not going to do anything right now. You got that, Tommy?"

  "Joey, accidents happen," Tommy pleaded. "People get hit by falling safes ... a car full a beaners runs a light and whammo, you got avocado salad."

  "You will not do anything. Calm down, okay? I'll think of something. ... We'll take care of it at the appropriate time."

  Tommy figured the appropriate time was now, but he didn't say anything. They got up; Joe removed the cassette, then turned to his older brother. "One other thing, Tommy. This sperm bank you brought with you ... can you possibly get her to shut up?"

  Tommy looked at his handsome brother. Sometimes Joe got on Tommy's nerves. With his good looks, manners, and Italian suits, Joe didn't have to work to get a good piece of ass. ... Since he was thirteen, all Joe had to do was crook a finger. Tommy choked back his anger over the criticism. He knew his little brother was the boss. That had been established when they were barely in their teens. Tommy wasn't about to change things now, but sometimes Joe could really piss him off.

  It was only nine o'clock, but Victoria was exhausted. She guessed it was from the mental anguish of what had happened in the last two days. She was glad to be back home, in her own bedroom. She put on her old flannel nightgown that she had had since before college. She paused on the way to her bed and looked at her old cheerleading photos from ninth grade. She had been the team captain. She was kneeling in front of the rally squad, her pom-poms beside her, the big white W on her sweater. She was the only one in the picture who wasn't smiling. She let her eyes roam the room. Victoria had never allowed herself any leisure time here. She had studied hard, never wanting any seams to show. She had wanted to be perfect. She tried to recapture the countless hours spent in this room, to review them like favorite moments in a scrapbook ... but there were none. This was not a room full of fun memories. It was a work space.