King Con (1997)

by Stephen Cannell

  He put the phone back to his ear and cleared his throat. "Okay, put a tail on her in California and keep me posted. If she does anything illegal, pick her up and notify my office immediately. And thanks for putting me aboard."

  "You got it."

  Victoria boarded the United Airlines flight. Stan and Sheila watched her all the way onto the aircraft, then Stan put on a UA flight attendant's jacket and walked down the passenger ramp and onto the plane with a clipboard to see if she was seated with any K.A.'s. She was alone, no one in the seat next to her. He checked the passenger manifest and walked back out to the gate.

  "Any Known Associates aboard?" Sheila asked.

  Stan didn't even look at her. He just grunted and Sheila clenched her teeth again. The guy was truly pissing her off.

  Beano Bates met Victoria at the airport in San Francisco. Another FBI surveillance team watched as they kissed. Victoria and Beano held hands as they headed out of the airport. The two suits followed at a discreet distance.

  The lead man was Grady Hunt. He was short and compact with a flat top and flat face. His nickname in the Eye was Hammerhead, and it fit him. Walking next to him was Denny Denniston. He was tall and fair and usually dressed in light-colored suits with pastel shirts. He was soft spoken, but also had a violent temper, which had earned him the nickname Vanilla Surprise.

  "You make the guy?" Grady asked, as they followed Beano and Victoria through the terminal.

  "Looks kinda familiar. I think I know him from somewhere. Maybe a local pinch report."

  Since Victoria had no checked luggage, they moved right out of the terminal into the parking area. Grady and Denniston had their car parked at the curb in the red zone and they eased it up near the exit of visitor parking and waited. A few minutes later, the targets drove out in a yellow Caprice. Grady put his sedan in gear and followed.

  "I seen this guy somewhere. Maybe on the wall, downtown. I think we got a posting on him," Denniston said, racking his memory.

  Then Grady snapped his fingers. "He's not on the wall, he's on the list!" Grady said. "Bumbo ... somebody."

  "Beano Bates," Denniston corrected him. "He's a Ten Most Wanted. Fuck me." Denniston had been in the Eye for ten years and had never even seen a Ten Most Wanted fugitive. "No wonder I recognized him. I get this asshole's picture in the mail once a month." He smiled at Grady. "Whatta you wanna do?"

  "This is supposed to be a Watch and Report Surveillance. We better call it in."

  When they called New Jersey and talked to Stan Kellerman, he put them on hold and contacted Gil Green in Albuquerque.

  "Tricky Vicky ain't so tricky, is she?" Stan said limerickly, after filling Gil in.

  "She's consorting with a known felon. She's guilty of half-a-dozen Class-B felonies, maybe one Class-A beef. This could be big; I'm on my way to you." Gil was already adding up the political points.

  "What do you want my team in Frisco to do?" Stan asked.

  "Something more is going on here. I want to find all the edges before I pounce. Wait till Victoria is alone and pick her up. Take her to the Federal Building. Stay on Bates, but don't arrest him. I'll be on the next flight."

  Grady Hunt and Denny Denniston were on point and followed Beano and Victoria to a small but neat two-story motel next to the Golden Gate Marina. Within five minutes they had the Marina Motel staked out with five back-up units. Everybody was "jacked and flaked."

  They watched as Beano drove out alone at three-thirty in the yellow Caprice. He turned right and headed down toward Market Street; two units followed him and then the rest moved in on the the motel room.

  Victoria was in room 22 and they hit the door without warning. "Freeze, FBI!" Grady Hunt screamed as he pinned himself against the inside wall, his 9mm Beretta cupped in his hand, his heart lunging, his finger on the four-ounce trigger. Denniston took a shooting stance from a cover-fire position outside. Both agents held Victoria in their sights.

  "On the floor. Now!" Grady shouted as Victoria, who was unpacking her overnight case, looked up, startled.

  "What are you doing?" she stammered.

  "On your face. Now!"

  She kneeled down, and before she touched the floor, Grady landed on her and cuffed her quickly and brutally. They pulled her up and out of the room, jammed her into the back of the plainclothes sedan, and pulled away, smoking tire rubber as they left.

  The whole apprehension took less man three minutes.

  The Federal Building downtown on Flower Street was like Federal Buildings everywhere: Hand-me-down furniture squatted in overcrowded case rooms, with fly-specked windows that looked out onto brick walls, and coffee-stained Styrofoam cups filled with cigarette butts floating filter-deep in sludge.

  Victoria had been put in a holding cell with a oneway mirror. She sat there alone for an hour, wondering what the hell to do. Obviously she had stumbled into a surveillance trap, but she didn't know how much they knew. She hoped she could bluff her way out. She'd been a prosecutor for five years, so she knew that there were basically two reasons why cops cool out a suspect like this: Guilty arrestees, when left alone, often would relax and even go to sleep, because once caught, they were prepared for the worst and gave up to it. Only the innocent would fidget and pace, because they knew they were innocent and they tended to panic. She knew that on the other side of her one-way mirror she was being closely observed, so she spoke out loud to the hidden mike she knew was somewhere in the room: "I know this routine, guys. I pulled this cool-out a hundred times myself. I'm not gonna take a nap, so can we get on with it?" When nobody came, she contemplated the other reason cops held somebody like this. It was usually because they were waiting for the principal interrogator to show up.

  Gil Green arrived at the Flower Street Federal Building at five-thirty-five. He asked for a polygraph operator to be put on standby, then he asked that Victoria be brought down from her holding cell.

  He was dressed in a conservative gray suit with a charcoal tie and matching handkerchief. His nondescript features were arranged in a placid expression as Victoria was led through the door and seated in a wooden chair in the sterile, windowless interrogation room.

  "Victoria, I wish I could say it's a pleasure to see you," Gil opened dryly.

  "Aw, go ahead and say it anyway, Gil. Insincerity always seems to work for you."

  "We're already at ground level in two sentences," he smiled. "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you in such trouble. I'll never forgive you for that interview on 'New Jersey Talking,'" he said softly.

  "I'd like to know why I've been arrested."

  "Do you want the charges chronologically or alphabetically?"

  "How 'bout just so they make sense?" she said.

  And then he told her about the surveillance of the Pasta Palace, about the fact that they had witnessed her meeting with Joe Rina and dropping off a package. Then her consorting with Beano Bates, a known felon, which, if she had prior knowledge, made her an accessory-after-the-fact in all of his crimes. When Gil got through, she continued to look at him, trying hard not to let her face give her away.

  "So far I can't see the crime," she said. "Joe Rina isn't wanted for anything. I can meet with him without facing indictment. As for Mr. who ...?"

  "Bates."

  "Bates. Well, he said his name was Curtis Fisher, so there goes your prior knowledge. I met him in a bar five days ago. He seemed nice. You say he's a criminal? Well, can you imagine that?" She looked at him and they locked hostile gazes.

  He was so bland, she couldn't, for the life of her, read him. His thin lips and wispy hair all seemed to blend together on his pale, featureless face.

  "Victoria, you are in major trouble. Let me run a few possible scenarios for you."

  "Please do," she said agreeably.

  "I think it went like this.... You had a case that could put Joe Rina in prison. Maybe he threatened you or threatened your family or maybe he just offered you a helluva lot of money, or maybe you went to him with a For Sale sign.
Either way, I think you cut a deal and you sold him the location of your witness. Carol and two brave cops got murdered. Your case got pitched and you ran off to San Francisco with the money to hang out with a Federal criminal."

  "Lots of 'I thinks' and 'maybes' in that brief, Counselor. You might want to harden it up before you file it. And it's always nice when you have evidence. Can you document a shred of this?"

  "I have you on video in Joe Rina's office yesterday, dropping off material." He smiled without humor. It was a strained, ghastly smile, almost as if he were shifting gas. "Tell me what was in the folder you dropped?"

  "Family pictures," she said evasively.

  "Beano X. Bates is a con man on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List. That list has been circulated through your office once a month for the five years you've been there. Bates has been on it for twenty-six months; his picture is on the wall in the coffee room, downstairs."

  "I don't pay much attention to those lists, Gil; I was a very busy little girl, what with all the bullets I was taking for you and everything."

  "Beano's here in San Francisco. We have a surveillance team set up on him right now. When I snap my fingers, he's dust. I could have picked him up with you, but I thought because of our association, I owed you this meeting first. If you insist on playing hardball with me, then he goes away."

  He watched her closely and could see her flinch ever so slightly when he said that. He knew he was on the right track.

  "You don't owe me a meeting, you're just trying to turn me."

  "I don't need to turn you, Vicky. I got you dead bang. I got him dead bang. I'm hardly out looking for a charge to pin on Bates. I've got a shopping list of felony warrants I can use."

  "Okay, then what are you looking for?"

  "I'm not a great attorney, I'm sure you know that."

  She held her comment.

  "But I'm a pretty decent student of human nature and I know how the game is played. So, I say to myself, 'Why is this happening? Why is Victoria pulling such a harebrained stunt?' And you know what the answer is?"

  "Too many Hostess Twinkies?"

  "Something else is going on. There's a piece of this puzzle that I'm not seeing ... and what I want from you is that piece. You're way too smart for any of the scenarios I just got through running. I figure if you level with me, then maybe I'll help you. Maybe we cut a deal and minimize the damage to you and Bates."

  She looked at him for a long moment. "What kind of deal?" she finally said.

  "You come clean and then we'll figure something out."

  "Hold on by letting go?" she smiled. "Not with you, Bucko; that only works when the sharper's running the game."

  "I don't understand what you're talking about."

  "I'm sure you don't," she said, and then sat silent for a long moment. "Don't think we can deal, Gil. Hit me with what you've got and let's see what happens."

  He sat there for a long time, looking at the razor-sharp pleat on his pants as if somewhere in that perfect crease was his answer. "Not totally unexpected, but still a shame," he finally said. Then he turned and rang the bell on the door. In a minute it opened. Grady Hunt, in full Kevlar body armor, stepped in. "Take Bates. Use S.I.S.... If he runs, use extreme prejudice and put him down hard."

  "Be a pleasure," Grady said, then turned and closed the door.

  "You're not gonna kill him in cold blood?"

  "S.I.S. ain't short for 'sister,'" Gil said softly.

  Victoria knew all about S.I.S.; it stood for Special Investigative Service, and they were notorious for the way they did business. They held court in the street by targeting a habitual criminal and, instead of picking him up when they found him, they would follow him, wait until he did a robbery or some other crime, then shoot him in cold blood as he came out of the liquor store with a bag full of cash. It was legalized execution. If S.I.S. was on Beano and he ran, which she assumed he would, then S.I.S. would drop him, no questions asked. It was the operational M.O.

  She tried to hold her bluff but she kept thinking of Beano lying in a pool of blood, dying alone. All the while Gil was watching her, meticulously picking invisible lint off his gray suit. Time lapsed until she could bear it no more. "Okay, stop," she said softly. "You've got a deal."

  He reached over and hit the button on the door and another cop looked in. "Tell Agent Hunt to put a hold on that order. We may go in another direction," Gil Green said.

  Victoria negotiated the best deal with Gil that she could. It included his promise to let her plead Beano's case to the U.S. Attorney after his arrest. Gil insisted she make her statement hooked up to a polygraph machine. She was taken to the next room and connected to "the Box."

  During the next hour she told the entire story. She explained the tat, and the moose pasture, and told all about the Big Store. Gil Green and the two FBI Agents listened quietly as the polygraph charted her veracity. When she was finished, she felt tired and dirty and sick. She had given up the con. She had rolled over, and ratted them all out. And her only excuse was she couldn't bear the thought of Beano being killed. The men in the room said nothing as the machine was turned off and she was unstrapped from it.

  "I like it," Gil finally said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I like it. If this con works, Tommy will give us Joe. We get Joe, and I win."

  The two FBI men in the room didn't understand his change of pronouns. Only Victoria knew he was talking about his chance to become New Jersey's Lieutenant Governor. "Run the scam anyway?" she asked.

  "Yeah. Only we're your partners. You keep us informed. Once it goes down, we bust everybody."

  Victoria looked at him, not sure what to do. Finally she shook her head in disgust. "You constantly amaze me, Gil. You keep setting one new low after another."

  "I'm not the one sleeping with a felon," he prodded her. Then he gave her a satellite vibrating beeper, and told her she had better call in every twelve hours or when they beeped her, whichever came first. If she failed to comply, they would fall on the scam, bust everyone, and all deals would be off.

  Then Gil drove with her in the back of a government sedan to the Marina Motel. When they were a block away, he let her out of the car, but he stopped her before she could walk away. "Of course, you understand that regardless of how this goes, I'm going to see that you're disbarred for this."

  "See you at the hearing," she finally answered and walked away into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine.

  INBRED INSURANCE

  BEANO HAD LEFT VICTORIA AT THREE-THIRTY IN THE afternoon and had driven the yellow Caprice across town to pick up Paper Collar John at his hotel; then they headed toward the Red Boar Inn two blocks off Market Street down by the harbor. Beano could hear them even before he and Paper Collar John pulled into the large asphalt parking lot. The Inn was an arched, two-story, stucco, Spanish-style structure with a red tile roof. There were ten wide-tire trucks parked in the lot, all of them sporting Arkansas license plates, mud flaps, gun racks, and tuck-and-roll upholstery. For some unknown reason each radio antenna had a red feather taped to the tip. The trucks were pristine, and glistened with chrome wheel rims and lacquer paint. The sound of laughter and catcalls was pouring out into the early evening through the open door of room 15.

  "Shit," Beano said to Paper Collar John, "they're gonna end up getting busted for noise pollution before we even get them in the lineup."

  "I already came down here twice yesterday and talked to the Manager of this place. Gave him an extra five hundred not to call the cops."

  "Who's in charge a'these hillbillies now?" Beano asked as they got out of the Caprice and moved toward the room where a huge, three-hundred-pound albino man in overalls was tipped back in a creaking metal chair.

  "Hard to tell," John answered. "None a'these Hog Creek Bateses have IQs higher than the Arkansas speed limit. I think it's either the skinny one, Cadillac Bates, or maybe it's the fat guy, Ford."

  Beano remembered that more than half of the Hog C
reek Bateses were named after their vehicles. The reason for that, he'd been told, was because most of them couldn't read. They chose names they could copy off their trucks for hospital birth certificates.

  As they got nearer, they could hear Travis Tritt singing on the full-volume radio, but still barely cutting through the wall of Hog Creek noise. The Albino in the chair, whose skin and buzzed hair were both snow-white, finished a beer and burped at them.

  "Hi, cousin. I'm Beano. Cadillac Bates around?" Beano asked and smiled at his huge, inbred relative.

  The Albino didn't answer but turned and bellowed over his shoulder, "Yankees comin'!"

  "Thanks for that kind assessment," Beano said to the Albino, who blinked pale eyes at him, missing the sarcasm. "Which one are you?" he added.

  "Bronco Bates," the young man said, and burped again. End of conversation.

  Beano nodded and moved past Bronco into a motel room that had been cleared of all furniture. The king-size bed had been dismantled and stacked up against the wall. The rest of the furniture was piled up in the hall. There were twenty Bateses and two roosters in the room. The men were in a circle cheering, while the game cocks in the center of the room were tearing the shit out of each other. Money was on the floor everywhere, and the men, who ranged in age from twenty to fifty, were yelling obscenities at the two warring roosters. The spectators looked like refugees from a monster truck tournament.

  "Jesus," Beano said to John in disgust as the two cocks went at each other.

  Finally, one of the birds went down, and the owner of the defeated rooster yelled, "Done," and grabbed his game cock before it was ripped to shreds by the winner. Then a scramble for money took place and finally, after several loud arguments, the gambling seemed to be over. While Tammy Wynette took possession of the radio and started warbling another country favorite, the room full of Bateses seemed to finally notice Beano and John standing in the doorway.