King Con (1997)

by Stephen Cannell

  "Good ... start..." Dakota mumbled. Once they got into the motor home, Victoria settled her on the sofa next to the wounded terrier. Dakota was looking at Victoria with new respect.

  Twenty minutes later, Victoria found the small, one-story Livingston Hospital. The E.R. attendants took one look and got Dakota on a gurney, rushing her into Emergency while Victoria picked up Roger-the-Dodger and carried him gingerly inside. She filled out the admitting slip for Dakota, using her own mother's maiden name, Barker. Then she got a nurse to take a look at Roger.

  "What happened to him?" the sympathetic woman asked. "He looks like he's been shot."

  "I don't know. I found him outside her house. I think her boyfriend may have beaten her and shot the poor dog," Victoria lied, wishing she was as good as Beano at spur-of-the-moment bullshit.

  "I'll get Dr. Cotton to take a look at him," she said.

  Two hours later Dakota was rushed into Emergency Surgery. Her spleen had been leaking blood into her abdomen for at least twelve hours. Her blood count and blood pressure were so low, they were life threatening.

  When the doctor came out after the surgery, he looked worried. "She lost a lot of blood. She went into cardiac arrest on the table from low BP. We removed her spleen, pumped her full of plasma. She's been stabilized, but ... I don't know ..."

  "How long till you can tell?" Victoria asked.

  "I let God sort out the close ones," the doctor said. "I've called the police. She was obviously beaten, so I'm going to need your statement. They're on their way."

  "I'll be glad to talk to them," Victoria said, but she knew she had to get out of there before the police came. Once they started asking questions, they'd sense her complicity. She needed to get Roger, so she wandered the sterile linoleum corridors, asking for Dr. Cotton. She finally found a plain-faced young woman M.D. in a doctors' lounge, holding Roger-the-Dodger and talking softly to him. His entire back end was now bandaged in white adhesive.

  "Is he your dog?" she said accusingly, as Victoria moved into the small room.

  "No, my friend's dog."

  "This dog was shot," the doctor said angrily. "A large caliber, from the look of it."

  "Oh," Victoria said. She wanted to get the hell out of there, so she reached out and took Roger out of the doctor's arms.

  "I shouldn't have sewn him up. I'm a doctor, not a veterinarian, but I love animals and I couldn't leave him like that. He needs a vet's prescription--some strong antibiotics for possible infection," she lectured. And then mercifully, her beeper went off. "Excuse me, don't leave," she said and moved out of the room.

  As soon as she was gone, Victoria took Roger and carried him out of the small hospital and into the Winnebago. She pulled the motor home out of the parking lot just as a police black-and-white arrived. The old Victoria would have glanced away in fear, but the new emerging one waved confidently at the cops, then turned left and sped away into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Four.

  PROVING THE PASTURE

  THEY HEARD A BANGING ON THE WAREHOUSE DOOR and, when Steve moved to open it, he found Keith Summerland standing there with blood all over the side of his head. When Tommy saw him, he immediately moved to the door. "The fuck happened to you?"

  "She hit me," Keith said, still holding his bleeding ear. He had decided not to tell Tommy he had been away from the car, trying to put a juke on a girl whose car had stalled.

  "I told ya to be careful a'her," Tommy said. He moved out quickly and looked at the empty lot and limousine. There was no sign of Dakota. He knew if she had hit Keith and escaped, there was a chance she would call the law. "Let's go, alla you," he said, waving the gun.

  They all moved out of the warehouse toward the limo. Tommy glowered at Keith, whose ear was still leaking blood.

  "You get the fuck away from me, you dumb asshole," he shouted at Keith. "What was you doin'? Tryin' t'give her a feel?"

  "No, Tommy, I just turned around for a minute and--"

  "Shut the fuck up. Get away from me. Joe was right to fire you. I'll deal with you later." Tommy pushed the huge man toward the gate. He was in a hurry to get out of there before the cops arrived.

  Beano had wondered how it would be possible for Dakota to hit Keith Summerland and do that much damage. She seemed almost unable to talk, let alone knock this 250-pound monster silly. Then, as Beano was looking across the pavement, something glinted in the overhead light. When he looked closer, he saw what it was....

  A plastic platform heel. He smiled to himself. Good girl, Vicky, he thought.

  Tommy pushed him into the back of the limo next to Steve and Duffy. He made Jimmy ride in front with Wade. They pulled out, leaving Keith Summerland by the gate, still holding the side of his head and wondering what he was going to do next.

  In the back seat of the limo everybody rode in silence. Beano pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at Tommy, whose expression said nothing.

  "Whatta ya looking at?" Tommy finally snapped.

  "Well, sir... uh ... not to be indelicate, but... uh, well, the people at the field where we're going, they don't know there's oil down there, and it would be helpful if they weren't alerted to that fact. We drilled a slim hole, like Donovan said ... only six-eighths of an inch, and we capped it off 'cause we don't want them to know we proved the field."

  "So, we ain't gonna tell 'em," Tommy said.

  "I've been fired. If I go out there with a crowd of people looking around, they're bound t'figure something's funny."

  "So, you don't want me to see this field?" he said accusingly.

  "No ... it's not that, it's just... if I'm looking around out there, they're gonna get suspicious. If we just stayed in the car and sorta drove around, it might be better."

  "I don't know yet what we're gonna do, so shut the fuck up," Tommy said. "You're givin' me a migraine."

  They arrived at Oak Crest at a little past midnight, and drove around Carl Harper's alfalfa field. In the full moonlight, they could see the freshly painted pipes and cisterns, all dressed up in their new rust-red Fentress County Petroleum color. A big FCP&G shone in white block letters on the top of the large cistern by the road. Tommy turned on the dome light in the limo and got out the beautiful glossy oil-company brochure that Beano had printed. He looked carefully at all the colorful pictures of the painted pipes and cisterns; then he looked back out the window at the same pipes and cisterns in the field.

  "What's all the pipes for?" he asked Duffy.

  "Well, you should ask Dr. Clark. He's the geologist, I'm just a physicist."

  "When you set up a Class One-A field," Beano lectured, "that's a field on a large stratigraphic trap where there could be a pay zone of billions of gallons, there is the possibility of a blow-out or a gusher, and the F.E.R.C.--that's the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission," Beano added quickly, "--they don't want millions of gallons spewing around on the ground for ecological reasons, so they make you set up a gathering station in advance to control the flow of oil or L.N.G." Tommy glowered. "Liquefied Natural Gas ... This gathering station is a collection of pipes and cisterns like you see out mere. That way if you hit a well, this mechanism is already in place to bring the oil from the pumping station, or wellhead, to a cistern where it can be stored and tested." Beano smiled at Tommy, then removed and cleaned his glasses on his tie, like any good geek scientist between academic thoughts. He slipped them back on and took the brochure. "Let me show you on the map of the field here," Beano said, showing Tommy a printed schematic drawing of the farm that was in the brochure. "We put the delineation well in right about here. It's a horizontal well on a forty-five-degree slant. We used deviation drilling techniques and a subsurface reservoir catch basin we vented with horizontal drain holes." Beano was in full sales mode now and orbiting freely over his own planet of bullshit.

  Tommy was lost, but it didn't matter; he was buying it. "So, show me the well you drilled," he finally said.

  "This is so fucked," Duffy muttered.

  "Com
e on, Dr. Sutton," Beano said, "Mr. Rina has the money we need. We were going to have to try and steal more from Las Vegas. With all the security they have in those casinos, we might very well have been arrested. You told me yourself the reason we went to Sabre Bay was because it was smaller, with less security. Besides, the S.E.C. is going to shut down Fentress County Petroleum any minute. This is our best and last chance. Mr. Rina can make this happen. He puts in the cash, we buy the stock, the money relieves the company's debt, the S.E.C. and the bank go away. We're rich."

  Duffy grunted and mumbled, but stopped complaining.

  Beano showed Wade Summerland where to turn. Beano thought it was strange that Wade had not even protested once when his brother had been left behind alone, to deal with his ruptured ear.

  "The well's over here," Beano said as they moved away from the limo, down the road from the large, freshly painted cistern, and over to a small shrub area. Beano pulled the shrubs aside. They had been cut and tied to a sandbag to hide the wellhead. Under the shrubs was a small capped hole with a metal plate on top. The plate was engraved with the letters FCP&G. A small three-inch-diameter pipe led off across the field and intersected with one of the larger rust-red pipes.

  "Open it up," Tommy said.

  "It goes down eighteen hundred feet," Beano whined, "you can't see anything."

  "Did I ask about that? I said open it up."

  "Donovan, the man apparently has his heart set on seeing a hole in the ground," Beano said to Steve Bates, sighing loudly to show his disgust.

  "Am I boring you, dipshit? 'Cause if I am, I can arrange to give you a few minutes of memorable action," Tommy sneered at Beano, who took a quick step back while Steve removed a tool from his belt and started to open the capped hole.

  Beano started to mollify Tommy. "Mr. Rina, I'm a geologist... MIT actually, with my doctoral studies at Yale, post-doc at Stanford. I have fifteen years in satellite well production and sand control analysis. I worked my way up to Field Manager. I'm a man who analyzes rock hydrocarbons. I spend hours in the laboratory looking at complex organic molecules."

  "I don't want your fuckin' resume," Tommy interrupted.

  "It's just... you keep threatening me. I'm not a brave man. I don't pretend to be a hero. I'm interested in this field on a geological level primarily, and yes, if I make some money, that's wonderful. I'm trying to say to you that I view you as a real asset in this situation, but you keep holding a gun and threatening me like I'm some kind of low-life criminal who's just on the edge of jumping you. I'm not a physical threat, I've never even been in a fight in my entire life. So can we please stop acting like little children?"

  Tommy loved to hear weasels weasel, and he smiled at this concert of gutless pleading. He didn't answer, but a few minutes later, he did tuck the gun back in his pants.

  "Okay, got 'er off," Steve said, as he pulled the heavy plate back and Tommy looked down the cement-walled, metal-jacketed hole. He took a quarter out of his pocket and held it over the opening and dropped it, waiting for it to hit. Since the hole went down only twenty feet, Beano had to cough loudly at about the right moment to avoid the slight possibility that Tommy would hear the quarter hit.

  "We better get outta here," Beano warned.

  "So, you hit oil right here, huh?" Tommy asked, ignoring him.

  "That's right," Steve Bates said. "Pumped fifteen thousand gallons t'prove out the well. Took it right up outta that little five-inch hole."

  "So, where's the oil?" Tommy insisted. "You said you can't leave it on the ground... so you gotta do something with it. Where is it?"

  "Over there," Beano said, pointing to the large, two- story-high, rust-red cistern with the white company letters displayed proudly on the top.

  "The fifteen thousand gallons is in there?" Tommy said, squinting at it in the moonlight.

  "That's right. This tank is supposed t'be empty, so nobody even checks it," Beano said. "We hadda put the oil somewhere. We had the flow meter on her and we fed the spillover into that nine-inch ground pipe and that pumps it into the storage system over in that cistern."

  "Let's go see," Tommy said.

  "Huh?" Beano replied.

  "I wanna go see the oil."

  "The cistern's sealed, you can't get inside it."

  "Bullshit. I can get in anywhere I want. Now, let's go."

  "That tank's buttoned up airtight. I'm telling you, you can't get in there," Beano insisted.

  Tommy grabbed Beano by the shirt collar and pulled him up close. "I'm not getting through to you, Doc, and that really pisses me off. How smart can you be if every fucking question I ask, you come back with 'Huh?' or T can't do mat. "Huh?' isn't a fucking answer. You got me? I say I wanna go see the fucking oil, you say 'Follow me,' or 'Yes, Mr. Rina.' Any other answer is gonna get your fucking head punched." Tommy was spitting the words into Beano's face and spraying his Coke-bottle glasses.

  "I'm just telling you the facts. I don't see why you insist on this violent presentation of your position."

  "'Cause I don't fuckin' like you," Tommy explained.

  "O-Okay," Beano said, stuttering slightly. "Okay."

  Tommy finally released him. "Now, are we gonna go get a look at that oil or we gonna stand here jerking off?"

  "We're gonna go get a look at the oil," Beano said.

  They moved back to the car and then over toward the main cistern. A full moon glinted on the fresh paint as they climbed the small ladder to the top of the cistern. Only Wade stayed behind with the car. Once they were on top of the two-story metal container, the entire field could be seen spread out before them in the moonlight. ... Acres of rust-red pipes criss-crossed the field, punctuated by three other rust-red cisterns; it was all very impressive. Across the road was the abandoned office building that Beano had found, which was now also painted in the company colors. A big sign out front read:

  FENTRESS COUNTY PETROLEUM AND GASDEVELOPMENT FIELD 32

  Tommy had brought a crystal glass and one of the decanters from the limo. "Open this fucking thing up," Tommy said to Beano, pointing at a three-foot-square hatch in the cistern, which was held in place by twenty rusting bolts.

  "How? We'll never get these bolts off and it's gonna be rank in there. Crude oil is very rich, organically speaking. It smells terrible."

  "Open it up," Tommy repeated. "I wanna see the oil."

  Finally Steve stepped forward. "We can get these here bolts loosened, I think. They're three-fourths of an inch. I think most tire irons is three-fourths. We could use the lug wrench outta the trunk."

  They sent Jimmy Freeze down to get it. He returned a few minutes later with the lug wrench. He and Steve went to work unbolting the hatch. It was slow going, but they all took turns, except Tommy, and twenty minutes later they had it off. It was now three-thirty in the morning. They lifted the metal plate off the big cistern and set it'to the side of the opening. Tommy leaned over and sniffed at the hole. "Don't smell nothin'," he said.

  "You'd have t'climb down," Beano said nervously.

  "If there ain't no fucking oil down there, you're one dead fucking geek."

  "Maybe they found it and drained it," Beano stuttered. "You can't just kill me if it's empty."

  "Watch me," Tommy promised.

  "The tank's ladder is right here, inside to the right of the opening," Steve pointed out, to change the subject.

  Tommy looked at Jimmy Freeze. "Go down there an' get me some oil, Jimmy."

  "Ahhh, Tommy, how come it's gotta be me?"

  "'Cause I said so, and I wanna keep my eyes on these assholes."

  Jimmy took the decanter and the glass and slowly lowered himself over the side and found the ladder with his toes. They watched while he disappeared down into the cistern. There was a deep bonging every time he kicked the side of the cistern with the toes of his shoes. They could hear him coughing and then they heard him swearing. A few minutes later, Jimmy Freeze reappeared at the opening of the cistern. "There's a bunch of it down there, filled almost ha
lfway up." His eyes were watering from the fumes.

  "This is a thirty-thousand-gallon reservoir; that's fifteen thousand gallons in there," Steve said.

  Then Jimmy lifted the crystal decanter up and set it down by Tommy's feet and climbed out of the cistern. Tommy picked up the decanter and looked at it in the moonlight. It was half filled with crude oil.

  "Son-of-a-bitch," he said, looking at the black gold.

  "I told ya. When are you gonna believe me?" Beano said.

  "Right after I get this analyzed," Tommy said.

  The oil in the cistern had been brought up from Santa Barbara. Steve had bought it from an offshore rig. When Tommy sent it to a lab, he would be told it was high-quality, 90 percent pure crude with no shale content. Of course, there wasn't fifteen thousand gallons in the cistern. There was only fifty. Since oil is lighter than water, all they had to do was float the fifty gallons of crude on top of Carl Harper's water supply. There was only six inches of oil floating on top of fifteen thousand gallons of water.

  They put the stopper on the decanter and climbed back down to the ground. Once they were all back in the limo, Beano looked over at Tommy. He could see it wasn't going to be necessary to take him to the little oil office in the morning and run him through that maze. The ugly mobster was hooked. He kept looking at the oil in the decanter. He would pick it up out of the decanter rack every few minutes, hold it in his hands, look at it again, and smile. "Okay, you guys, I'm in."

  "How much of this is ours?" Beano said. "We still haven't discussed an equitable stock distribution."

  Tommy looked over at him as if the thought hadn't even occurred to him. "How's sixty-forty?" Tommy said, a small smile on his face. "Of course I get sixty, you guys run the technical stuff and get forty."

  "This is fucked," Duffy said.

  "No, it's not. We'll get forty percent of billions of dollars," Beano said. "Come on, Dr. Sutton. This is better than we could have hoped for, trying to make it the other way, stealing from Las Vegas." Beano shoved his glasses back on his nose. "You got a deal," he said to Tommy, but then added, "You better hurry though. The S.E.C. could shut this stock down and freeze trading on the company any day."