King Con (1997)

by Stephen Cannell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Some kinda rust, I guess. ..."

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

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

  "Yuck." He winced.

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

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

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

  "Copper it is," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "It's your Uncle Beano."

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

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

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

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

  "This is Beano Bates, Steve."

  "Can I hear them notes again?"

  Beano whistled them again.

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

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

  "Imagine so."

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

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

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

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

  "Where do you like to go?"

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

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

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

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

  "Be a pleasure, sir."

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

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

  "So now I know a family secret."

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

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

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

  "What if you're tone-deaf?"

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

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

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

  Oak Crest was beautiful, the acres growing green with alfalfa. The clear California sun beat down on this lush valley. Beano filled his lungs.r />
  "Whatta you smell?" he said expansively.

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

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

  "Oil," she said, grinning.

  "Me too," he smiled.

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

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

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

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

  Chapter Thirteen.

  POSSE

  FUCKING TEXACO PHILLIPS, TOMMY THOUGHT AS THEY sat in his apartment overlooking the Boardwalk. Calliope was shopping her brains out, looking for "darling outfits" to take to the Bahamas. Texaco sat across from Tommy, looking red-faced and stretching the seams of a maroon, thousand-dollar sport jacket, like a corn-fed ham in Saran Wrap. For the life of him, Tommy couldn't understand why his brother kept this foul-smelling, ignorant piece of shit around.

  "Look, Tex," Tommy said slowly, "all I want you to do is find 'em. My cousin Peter works for a travel agent and he punched up the flight manifest for Delta. She flew to San Francisco with two guys named B. Bates and J. Bates. I don't know who the hell these two fucks are, but don't you try and find out. Don't fucking try and solve this, you'll fuck it up. You just find 'em. They got phones in San Francisco, pick up a fucking phone and call me. Got it?"

  Texaco both nodded and shrugged at the same time. It was a gesture of acknowledgment and indifference and it pissed Tommy off, so he back-handed the big, ugly ex-linebacker on the shoulder.

  "Hey, dipshit, I don't hear no answer here."

  "I'll call ya, Tommy," Texaco said softly.

  "My cousin Peter will be checking to see if they book seats outta there. His number's written on this card." He stuffed it in Texaco's tailored breast pocket. "His name's Peter Rina. The kid's just outta college, so don't tell him nothin' he don't need ta know. He's in Jersey, but he can check this shit anywhere in the country."

  So Texaco became a posse of one. He flew to San Francisco, and was now wandering around in the City by the Bay looking at brightly clothed tourists and wondering how the fuck he was supposed to find Victoria Hart and these two guys named Bates. What he did find was a great gym near his hotel where he could get illegal steroid shots in the ass for fifty bucks a jolt. He also found a great Italian restaurant half a block from there, where the osso buco and the mozzarella marinara were world class. He alternated between four-hundred-pound dead-lifts, shots of jump-juice, and the great Italian cuisine. He was power lifting and eating his way through the first day, when he decided to finally call Peter Rina and have him scan the airline reservations for Victoria Hart and the two Bateses on all flights out of SFO. The kid told him he'd found nothing so far. Texaco figured eventually they would either leave and go someplace else or Tommy would tell him to come home. His heart wasn't in the hunt. Beyond that simple truth, his walnutsized brain had not wandered. When he got back to the hotel, he had a message to call Tommy.

  "The fuck you doin' stayin' in that hotel in town?" was Tommy's first question, passing right over "Hi" and "How are you?"

  "You said--"

  "Hey, musclehead," Tommy charged on, "you gotta wait at the airport. If they show up and buy tickets at the counter, you gotta be there. What the fuck's wrong with you? I give you Peter's number and he tells me you only call him once."

  "Jeez, Tommy," Texaco whined, "what'm I supposed t'do, call him every hour?"

  "Fuckin' A right. He's checking every hour, you call him every hour. What're you doin' out there? Gettin' a Chevy parked up your asshole or something?"

  "Come on, Tommy." Texaco Phillips was beginning to truly hate Tommy Rina, but the more he hated him, the more he was afraid of him. It was a strange formula. He promised he would call Peter Rina every hour on the hour and move to a hotel at the airport. When he hung up, he had completely lost his appetite.

  There was a small Western combo and some pretty slick line dancing going on in the nightclub at the Red Barn in Keats. Steven Bates and his wife, Ellen, were dressed up, starched, and pleated. Twelve-year-old Lawrence had on a wide, frayed, striped tie that looked like it had been handed down through three generations. The music flowed through the open door of the nightclub into the dining room while they all ate delicious barbecued ribs and buttered corn.

  "... 'course, since we settled down here in Keats, we ain't been doin' no roofing or driveway husdes. We go out on the road once, twice a year, fleece some mooches, come back, and use the money to build our legit contracting business," Steve said. He was talking as he ate, wiping barbecue sauce off his chin. They were a lean, raw-boned couple, weathered by exposure to the outdoors. Steve had a con man's kind blue eyes and a receding hairline. Ellen was a fading beauty with a short, no-nonsense hairstyle and intense black eyes that examined you with a laser focus. Victoria thought that little Lawrence was going to be quite a charmer. He was just twelve years old, and his voice had not changed yet, but he had the same dazzling con man's smile that seemed to run in this family, and he was not afraid to use it.

  "How you gonna play the bubble?" Steven asked, leaning in closer.

  "Gonna rope the mooch with a tat, steer him with a mack, probably put him on the country-send to his drop, and play him off against the wall."

  Victoria wondered what the hell they were saying as Steve continued. ...

  "A cold playoff is kinda dangerous."

  "If I have to, I'm gonna bring in the Hog Creek families," Beano added.

  'You ever worked with them before?" Steve asked.

  "Nope."

  "Watch out. Them Bateses been living up in that Arkansas valley for a hundred years, inbreedin' an' drinking sour mash. They come rollin' outta them hills in wide-tire trucks, kickin' ass and eatin' their victims. They ain't too delicate."

  "I'll bear that in mind." Beano put down his fork. "Probably set up the farm tomorrow. I think I found one that looks good for the play. I want you t'run the paintin' crew and I'll pay you ten thousand dollars, plus one tenth of anything we can skim."

  S
teven Bates closed his eyes. He didn't say anything for a long time. Victoria almost thought he'd gone to sleep until he opened them and looked at his wife, Ellen, who seemed to read his mind, and nodded. He turned back to Beano.

  "You mentioned you was doin' this on account'a your cousin Carol," Steven finally said.

  "Yeah. She got killed by the two mooches we're gonna play this game on."

  "Kinda pisses me off when one of our extended family gets screwed up. I don't take that kindly. Seems wrong fer us t'be makin' money off Carol's death."

  "Look, I appreciate that, Steven, but she was very close to me--you don't have to work for nothing."

  "Thing is, I never run a Big Store. You let me in on this ... lemme play on the inside. That'd be enough payment for me."

  "You sure?"

  "You're somethin' of a legend; be an honor," Steve said, and Ellen nodded in agreement.

  "We seen you on America's Most Wanted," Lawrence chipped in. "Only you had black hair an' no mustache."

  "Okay," Beano smiled at the couple, "but if we end up with surplus cash, I'll cut you in for a tenth."

  "Fair 'nuff."

  The business having been completed, they switched to other subjects. Victoria said very little. There was one family detail that amazed her. ... All of them had a tattoo under their watches, including Beano. The tattoo was a script B with the date of each family member's first scam. Lawrence Bates had gotten his just last summer.

  "Yep," Steven said, as his son removed his watch. "Dropped some leather over in Portsmouth at the fair. Worked the drag with his fifteen-year-old cousin Betsy." Lawrence showed his tattoo proudly. Under the capital B it said: 7/3/96.

  Later that night, after they rented rooms in the motel in Keats, Beano invited Victoria to his room for a nightcap of vodka and Coke that he had picked up at the liquor store. Victoria was determined not to get giddy this time and sipped her drink cautiously as Beano pulled a small, electrically heated press-on steamer out of his bag.

  "This is the same kind of thing they use to steam pictures and logos onto T-shirts," he said, as he filled it with water and plugged it into the wall socket to let it warm up. He pulled out the two jump-suits they had bought at Hobbs Ranch and Farm Supplies. He laid them out on the faded green motel bedspread. Beano took the small white decals, which were only a half-inch high, and placed them over the breast pocket so that they said U.S. AGR. DEPT. He looked at them critically.