1965
“What does that even mean, Logan?”
Kate’s pouring coffee in the very spacious kitchen in her new house on Whidbey Island. The percolator is shiny stainless steel that matches the appliances which contrast nicely with the walnut cabinets and granite countertops, a new product to the Pacific Northwest. She only recently moved in and the place still has that fresh paint smell.
He says it again. “The nut comes off the head of the joint.”
“Try it in English instead of Yellow Kid.”
“It means ‘You gotta spend money to make money.’” Leroy’s own cup is pre-laced with Scotch as he waits for her to pour. The way this conversation is going he might be waiting years.
“Then why not say that? Why ‘the nut comes off the head of the joint?’” She says it in a low mocking voice and they both begin to giggle.
He says, “Seriously,” another indication of something about to fly off the handle. “We need a lot of upfront money for this one.”
“Sure,” says Kate, missing the point. He can tell she’s missing it because she hasn’t taken a swing at him with one of these heavy copper pots hanging over the island where they’re sitting, her in a silk robe, him in boxers and a tee and black socks. It’s cold up here in the Yukon.
Leroy’s been living here for five weeks more or less, sometimes less, like when he went on a two day poker outing and came back with seventy-one hundred or the week he went after the ponies—“can’t lose, Kate,”—down at Santa Anita and came back down eleven thousand.
Either way, win or lose, he’s had fun and Kate’s loving him being here, filling the silence of her giant new house.
She says, “What are we talking, exactly?”
“The dinosaur,” says Leroy, testy, like it hasn’t been half a year since he mentioned it.
“Oh, the dinosaur,” she says back, nodding. “Forgive me forgetting.”
“It’s jake,” he replies, missing the sarcasm. “We need a bankroll for this one, Kate. A big bankroll.”
“What for? You’re not buying a dinosaur, are you?” Her eyes widen with sudden worry. “Are you?”
“No, of course not. I’m going to sell one to somebody else. Speaking of; you’re gonna have to find a buyer.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re the roper,” he says with simple conviction. “Your job.”
She thinks, when did finding a dinosaur collector become one of my job skills? Still, it’s an interesting challenge, you think of it right.”
Leroy says, “Money for the Blute, a big store, salt articles in the right places—not just any articles, got to be convincing—a bent professor , money for a crew…”
“A crew?” Kate’s been lost in her own thoughts—a rich guy with a bone fetish—and she’s surprised. “Since when do we need a crew?”
“Since we’re going big. The economy’s changing Kate; everything costs more. Bread’s nearly a quarter, eggs are thirty cents. A bet on a horse is a dollar! And this house—what’s it cost you?”
Kate mumbles something.
“What?”
“I said, “‘none of your beeswax, buster.’” She’s a bit sensitive since it cost way more than she’d planned. If Logan heard she paid $72 large for a house he’d have a fit.
Or not. He says, “Seventy-two plus for a house, Kate. It’s a nice house, sure, but it’s a house.”
It is nice. Six bedrooms, enough for Leroy’s pals to crash in, if Kate would let them, which she most certainly will not. Three baths, cavernous garage, huge lot looking out over Penn Cove.
“Short cons aren’t gonna pay for this pile, you know.”
She’s thinking, He’s right, dammit; we’ll have to go large.
She says, a long time later, this time at a dim restaurant in Seattle, candle in a red bowl casting flickering light, “What kind of money are we talking, Logan?”
Not missing a beat, just looking over the menu like he can’t decide between the oysters and the albacore, he says, “About $72 large.”
And Kate, getting it now, says carefully, “You want to pawn my house?”
“The nut, Kate; there’s a lot of upfront costs here.”
“Sure, Logan; I get that. But why my house? Why not yours?”
“I don’t have one,” he says with annoying logic. This is pretty much true; Leroy hardly has a pot to piss in. His money flies out as fast as it flies in.
“Adele’s house, I mean.”
“She’d never.” He shrugs.
Kate, recalling her visits to his wife, agrees. Adele Logan would never jeopardize her children’s security.
“Well, what about your money, Logan? You have to have some.”
“You’d think, Wouldn’t you?” He gives her that idiot smile he thinks is endearing. “Honestly Kate, I have no idea where it goes.”
Shocked, Kate sputters, “You don’t? You lose at gambling…”
“Yeah, but sometimes…”
“The horses play you…”
“Sure, there’s been a few losses there,” he admits. “But…”
“Logan, the horses throw a party whenever you get near a track….let me finish…you stay at expensive hotels when you could be here with me…”
“You don’t want me here all the time,” he says, which does stop her.
As much as Kate loves the man, and enjoys the rush when they pull of one of his outlandish scams, she values her freedom even more. Leroy Logan comes and goes in her life and that spices things up, makes her want him even more when he appears, usually rumpled, at her bedside.
So, sigh, “Fine. The nut will come off the head of the joint.”
The first nut being the acquisition of a place to put the dinosaur, if they ever get one.
“I have one in mind,” say Leroy, matter-of-fact, like it’s no big thing, I know of a dinosaur boneyard.
“You do? Do tell.”
“Not a real one, of course, but I know a guy, lives up in Montana so close to the border that he may as well speak Canadian.”
Kate’s about to correct him but figures, why bother?
“He’s legit, pretty much, and his family has owned this piece of rock and dirt for about a century and a half. There’s no water, can’t grow anything on it, cows take a quick look and go back to Kansas. Just rock and wind and sun.”
“Sounds charming.”
“Sounds perfect,” say Leroy. “Because there’s this one spot, northernmost point of the property that’s across the border. He even pays separate tax on it. Canadian tax.”
Kate’s feeling a little dense.” So?”
“So that’s where we find our dinosaur.”
Over drinks, leaning in over the table until their heads nearly touch, he tells her the tale. When he’s done he leans back, smug and she beams like she’s invented him herself.
“Logan; that is the best one yet,” she says, laughing. “The very best one yet.”
Next morning they’re showering in an enormous glass and tile bathroom, got two shower heads, one of which just sprays down like you’re in a tropical rain forest. Leroy’s never seen such a thing and says so.
“It’s what seventy-two large gets you these days,” she says, standing naked under it and Leroy, watching, thinks this might be the nicest feature he’s ever seen. Might not be so good without her, though.
He says, “We’re gonna need a mark.”
“Sure. Wash my back.”
“You’re the roper,” he says.
“I know. I’m on it. Takes a little time, Logan, to find the right guy. This is a specialty item. I mean, how many rich people are there who want dinosaur bones?”
Leroy stops lathering and begins gently scratching the places he knows she loves and she stretches like a cat deciding that maybe, just this once, you can keep on doing that forever.
Not just bones,” he tells her. “A skeleton. We’re going to find the first almost complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
“That’s th
e big one, right? Big head, teeny arms? How the hell did that thing ever scratch itself?”
“Probably had someone do it for him in the shower.”
Getting dressed she sees his battered grip open, half full. She chins in its direction. “You going somewhere?”
“Hopscotch,” he says, using a Yellow Kid term for traveling. “I got a lot of people to see, things to set up.”
“Want company?”
“I do, but you’ve got to find us a mark.”
“Ok. But maybe you don’t have to leave just yet…?”
First guy Leroy visits is a professor at the University of Chicago named Lawrence Duckbill. Lawrence—never Larry—is a paleontologist, meaning he knows about bones of animals dead for sixty-five million years, not so much about anything that’s happened since then. They’re wandering around a large windowed lab filled with counters filled with trays filled with dusty bits of what look to Leroy like plaster.
“How do you know what’s a bone and what’s a rock?”
“Years of training.” Lawrence is middle sixties, smokes a pipe with some sort of cherry-smelling tobacco. He’s wearing a wool suit with a vest and a bow tie and his hair, thin and gray, looks like he’s been sucking his fingers before sticking them in light sockets.
It’s the fourth of July and the lab in the Museum of Natural History is empty except the two of them. Lawrence says, “Let me get this straight…you want me to fake a dinosaur skeleton.”
“Yes. A Tyrannosaur.”
“Sure,” says Lawrence, deadpan. “”May as well go for the best.”
“What I thought,” says Leroy, missing the sarcasm completely.
“Be easier to do a smaller one. Have you thought about that? An Ankylosaur or perhaps one of the Pachycephalosauria. A Velociraptor wouldn’t be that hard.”
“Nah, if you’re going to swing the bat, you might as well go for the bleachers.”
Lawrence, a professor, didn’t quite get that. A sports metaphor? “I have to tell you, Mr. Johnson—Johnson being Leroy’s latest lie—this isn’t going to be easy. To make a convincing skeleton, to place in in situ, as it were; to make it appear to be genuine…” He shakes his head in a most unconvincing way and Leroy sees the play. The professor is trying to up the price.
“It doesn’t have to be too convincing,” he says, taking the opposite side of the negotiations. He picks up a hunk of rock from a bin and idly tosses it. “This thing, for instance. Just a hunk of rock, right?”
The professor grabs it from the air, appalled. “That’s an ankle bone from a Ceratopsia! It’s a precious piece.”
“Looks like you chiseled it off a brickyard.”
“Your customer,” says the professor with some distaste, “Is probably more educated than you.” His tone suggests a baboon would be more educated.
“You’d think,” Leroy agrees, again missing the sarcasm. “But he won’t be. The guy we’re after wants—literally—a skeleton in his closet. He wants to have something nobody else has. He goes in the room, wherever, and he looks at it and he thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas cause he’s got it and nobody else does.”
“And when he finds out it’s not real?”
“But it is real. To him, the guy, it’s as real as the money he paid to get it. And the more money he paid, the more real it is.” Leroy lights a Camel. He’s switched brands because Chesterfields aren’t killing him fast enough.
“That’s why this has to be a Tyrannosaur. Biggest dinosaur brings in the biggest buck.”
“But,” says the professor. “If he ever does find out…won’t he come looking for…” he wants to say me, but settles for a weak, “you?”
Leroy laughs through the haze. “No. Guy pays half a million for some bones isn’t going to check after he’s bought ’em. At that point he doesn’t want to know.”
Lawrence Duckbill whispers, “Half a million,” under his breath and Leroy realizes he’s just been outplayed. The price of a dinosaur skeleton just went up.
The professor’s not as dumb as his degree suggests.
While Leroy’s Hopscotching around, Kate’s firmly in one place, looking for just the right mark to make the play. The right place at the moment is the local library, third floor, north corner under the glow of a microfilm machine. She’s already been through the Who’s Who in American Society, and the equivalent volumes for Canada and come up empty.
The microfilm machine isn’t helping much either. She’s filled out ten pages of her yellow notepad with potential names, leads, ideas and is looking at a story about a millionaire in Pittsburgh who’s closing a factory to send the work to India. Just the sort of rich, heartless jerk she’s trolling for.
But not this guy. Down the column, after the shock grabber headline “Owner throws hundreds on breadline,” comes the twist. ‘Conrad Detwieler, owner, has paid each employee a year’s wages as a termination bonus and is going to rehire them when his new factory is built.’
So the evil tycoon is a saint and Kate’s moving on and voice next to her says, “Are you using this machine?” Which is a stupid line since, yes; she is, and there are six others gathering dust nearby. A hand settles on her shoulder and a head comes into the light.
Kate leans back and sees a well-dressed man of maybe forty leaning over her like a teacher checking a student’s homework. He’s got on a good suit, white shirt, blue tie, his hair is the perfect cut that comes from one of those new men’s stylist places that have been cropping up all over Seattle lately, and he smells like leather and spice. He begins squeezing, like a cat kneading her.
“Back off,” she says pleasantly. There’s nobody else in this corner of the building; nobody on the entire floor.
“Really?” He says, kneading in a circular pattern. It would feel pretty good if she knew him or wanted him touching her or he wasn’t a creep. But she doesn’t and he is.
“”Does this work?” she asks, meaning the intrusion, the touching, the implied threat.
“More often than you think,” he says. His voice is smooth and confident, like he’s going to get what he wants, it’s just a matter of when and Kate’s suddenly amused. She’s been at this library search for several hours now, her neck hurts and she’s getting eyestrain.
So she spins the chair around and her body fits into his arms like she planned and he stiffens, in several places, surprised and aroused. Kate puts an arm around his neck, draws him in and kisses him, hard, no tongue.
As she’s kissing she rises from the chair so they’re embracing, body to body. She can feel him get hard as his hand slides up and cups her right breast, massaging it instead of her neck.
After thirty seconds she gently pulls away. Her red hair is like a flame to a moth and he’s staring at her like she’s a dream come true. “Do you want more?” She says, low-throated, come hither voice like she’s heard in the movies, Mae West or Elizabeth Taylor.
“Yes,” he manages as Kate takes his hand and leads him to the far corner, away from the windows into the shadows.
She pushes him to the tunnel of bookcases and says, “Let’s make this special. You take off your suit—it’s such a nice suit—we wouldn’t want it to get dirty.” She says dirty like dirty and he can’t possibly miss the suggestion—a floor lamp wouldn’t miss the suggestion, or be any less rigid.
“You strip in this stack,” she whispers, leaning in, letting him fondle. “And I’ll strip in this one.” She points to the next aisle. Then we’ll meet here, naked, together. All right?”
He can hardly speak, just nods and backs into the aisle when she pushes him. Kate slowly unbuttons the first buttons of her blouse as he watches, then smiles wickedly and spins into the next aisle.
I’m taking off my bra,” she says, a soft voice in the dim library. “What are you taking off?’
“I…my shirt,” he says.
“My skirt,” she tells him.
“My pants,” he says. His voice is thick with emotion and Kate imagines he hasn’t exhaled in
the last three minutes.
“I’m pulling down my panties,” she whispers.
“My…my…undershorts,” he says.
Kate leans around the front of the stack and waves a bare arm at his stack. “Hand me your clothes and I’ll hang them on a chair. We can’t let that suit get ruined.”
A handful of clothes is shoved into her hand and she pulls them away. She calmly walks to the nearest window, opens it and throws them out. They flutter down to the street as the undershorts catch a breeze and waft serenely down 23rd Avenue..
The guy, naked and huddling in the shadows, yells, “What the Hell?” as Kate gathers her notepad, her purse and his wallet and walks away.
Of course, getting that guy doesn’t help her get the other guy. She still has to find a mark and she’s coming up empty. She stops for a cup of coffee at a local place that has outside tables. The sun is warm and pleasant, not the usual rainy Seattle morning. Logan’s right, she thinks, a cup of coffee for a quarter. The economy sucks.
As she sits and sips—it’s not even good coffee for a quarter—she thinks maybe Logan’s right about the hopscotch as well. It’s not a good idea to find a mark in your own back yard and Seattle’s just a short strait away from Whidbey. Maybe she should take a trip.
But where? Where would a collector of bones hang out and, more importantly, how will she find him? Logan’s counting on her to come up with somebody, her new house has a mortgage—at 6%, her payment is a staggering $447 a month—and this idea of doing bigger cons is intoxicating.
She remembers a cartoon from the New Yorker magazine she read at a hair salon during her married years. She spent a lot of time gone from the house back then, avoiding the mistake her life had taken. The cartoon had that scary family—the Addams?—up on the roof of their decrepit mansion, evidently during Christmas time. A group of carolers has gathered by the door as the family looks down. They have a pot of boiling oil leaning over the edge, poised…
Kate feels like that now. Not about fondue-ing people, but about being poised on the edge of something big.
So she watches people for a while, enjoying the view and the sun, not letting her conscious mind nag and a name appears, like it’s written in chalk on the sidewalk. Blue chalk, curlicue script: Jimmy James. Goes by Jimmy because James James is stupid.
She met Jimmy at a tech expo in New York at the beginning of the married years when she believed that Bill wanted her to come along, be part of his life. Turned out that no; he didn’t, a fact that eventually was made clear when he skipped out on about a million in unpaid invoices.
Jimmy, though, was bent. It didn’t take long, during a steak and lobster dinner provided by the sponsors of the expo, suppliers to the construction trade trying to sell their products, for Kate and Jimmy to get together. By the after dinner drinks they both knew they were kindred spirits. Jimmy, it turned out, was there to promote a new method of cost accounting for the construction trade guaranteed to cut your taxes. Kate saw through the guarantees straight to the scam and they quickly became best friends.
Where was he now?
Winslow Petrie stops in the hall of the tenth floor of the brand new J. Edgar Hoover Building, files in hand, cigarette between lips, wondering why he just stopped in the hall.
Somebody behind him makes an exaggerated tsk sound like it’s a major inconvenience to step around somebody, and flounces away. In a tight skirt, though, so Winslow’s ok with it.
But why did he stop? Some unconscious thread, like the faint vibration on the web of a spider, a sense of something missed.
Absently, he resumes his walk back to his office. He’s a star in the FBI now, after capturing three big time scam artists and being involved in a raid on a counterfeiting ring in DC. He’s been to lunch—twice—with J. Edgar at the new office commissary, glad for the attention, perplexed by the often incoherent ramblings of the director.
In his office—one wall glass, two walls covered with photos, his diploma from Harvard, pictures of him and captured gangsters—he sets his coffee next to the picture of Cora, his wife, and Billy, his son. The picture, an 8 X10 color glossy from Sears, in a gold frame, sits next to an ashtray, amber glass, overflowing with Marlboro filters.
He fans out the files like a card hand and watches them for several moments, waiting for them to tell him a story. One name catches his eye and he cocks his head to the side to read it.
Tucker Doogan.
Why would that name ring a bell? Winslow, tall and slim at 32, wears the regulation brown suit, white shirt, black (brown optional) tie required by FBI custom. His fedora is on a peg by the door, his snub-nose .38 in a worn leather shoulder rig on the table. Even Hoover doesn’t require they wear them in the building.
That asshole Clyde Tolson would though, and aren’t we glad he’s gone?
Winslow sits back in his chair and studies the Doogan file. Tucker Doogan is a face. One of the best, if rumors can be believed. Winslow knows that the stories, most of them, about con artists are created by the con artist and therefore embellished. Reputations are only important to their peers and their personal records are anything but truthful.
Winslow knows bits and pieces about him and the file fills in others. Early or late fifties, medium build, Tucker is an impersonator—a face. He can transform himself into any identity needed and, the file suggests, has played psychics, the deceased contacts of psychics, politicians, scientists, doctors and bank security guards. He’s a known associate (KA in FBI speak) of “Nibs Callahan, The Yellow kid and—here we go—Leroy Logan.
Leroy is a bit of an obsession with Winslow. Number one on the gotta-get-him list, maybe pick up Fast Kate as an after dinner mint.
Winslow’s remembering now why Tucker Doogan’s name reminded him of Logan. It’s the snitch he handled last week on a funny paper job, gave them the straight info on who, what and where and Doogan’s name popped up, not because he was a member of the gang, just corollary data.
“Doogan’s doing a skit,”—a face’s performance is called a skit because he’s acting—“I think in Philly. Something about a bank and some bonds.” The snitch is named Photon, God only knows why. He’s young and stick-thin from the drugs, marijuana or that new LSD shit. Long hair, dirty jeans, acne.
“Why are you telling me?”
“You tole me, man. You said if I ever heard anything about cons I should tell you.” He looks up at Winslow, crafty like. “So, what’s that worth? The tip?”
“You want a tip? Join the Army. Get clean and see the world.”
“The world, man? See the ‘Nam is more like it.”
Winslow can’t argue with that. He’s FBI but he’s seeing a lot of wrong in the peace/war thing. Hoover is, of course, clear on the subject. You want peace, you’re a Commie and probably a fag.
Sometimes Winslow has his doubts about the director.
Coincidence; Leroy’s in Philly same time as Tucker Doogan. Leroy’s not part of what Tucker’s up to, different people, different crowd; he’s here to find an acquaintance called the Cowboy Kid. Leroy doesn’t know his name—doesn’t, actually, know him—but he’s heard good things and wants a closer look. When he hears that Tucker’s in town as well he perks up. A twofer.
A couple of calls from pay phones in the lobbies of hotels, stuffed inside the dark wooden boxes, writing notes on the tiny shelf, Leroy makes plans for a meet. He picks Washington Square park because it’s convenient, glad he did when he sees that Independence Park just across the road, is filled with hippies and protesters chanting and carrying signs.
The Vietnam War isn’t huge news yet, and the protests are relatively tame. Leroy knows nothing about it, declining to read the papers and never watching the news, not even Walter Cronkite who Kate seems to adore.
As for drugs, he’s as live and let live as it’s possible to be, figuring if he’s ok about you ingesting whatever, you’ll be ok with him running off with the family trust fund. Karma, he thinks; it’s just like that Karma thing.
The Cowboy Kid, when he moseys into the park an hour late, is a tall guy, maybe shaved last week, wearing faded jeans, boots and a red plaid lumberjack shirt despite it being near a hundred. He’s got the hat his name suggests and a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips that turns out to be, when he sits down next to Leroy, marijuana.
He offers a toke to Leroy, who declines. The Kid rests his tailbone on the bench and stretches his legs way out, looks over at Leroy and says, “So?”
So, Leroy talks a little, about scams in general, people they both know, others they might know. They’re both fencing, trying to learn more than they tell. Leroy confesses to a few felonies, which cause the Kid to raise an eyebrow like that cowboy does on that western, Clint somebody—Eastwood?—got a funny name like Rowdy or something.
Leroy’s seen most TV shows and they have as much effect on him as the news; sort of in one eye and out the other without making real contact, except the Fugitive with David Janssen. He likes that one, especially now that it’s in color.
The Kid says, “I may have been involved with…” and mentions a crime Leroy’s heard of. Most references are like that; oblique references to various crimes that supply the listener with clues to the skills and habits of the speaker.
Leroy says, “I need a cowboy,” and the Kid, breaks out a big grin, like ‘have you seen me?’ and Leroy smiles back because, yeah, he’s exactly what’s needed.
Another step forward. “It’ll be in November, this year. You’ll be a ranch owner, cattleman type.”
“Sure, sure.”
“You’ll need a horse…”
“Got one. Some.”
“May need to shoot a gun,” Leroy suggests, casually, like how do you feel about that?
“At somebody? Just for show?”
“At’s fine. It’s just part of the expected character.” Because of TV, the mark’s perception of reality has changed. It’s now more important to be like reality than it is to be real. Fake real, whatever.
The Kid says, “I’m fine with that. I can shoot the wings off a fly at fifty feet,” leaving Leroy to wonder how do you practice that?
Then the kid asks, “What’s the scam?”
Leroy says, “A dinosaur.”
And the Kid says, “What?”
It’s a bit more civilized with Tucker Doogan when they meet at McGillan’s Old Ale House on Drury street. The place has been here since before history started and Tucker begins the conference by noting “Ethel Merman comes here.”
Leroy remembers her in that Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World movie Kate took him to see a year back but otherwise he’s at a loss. He lights a Camel and studies Tucker who’s trying to catch the eye of a barmaid.
Tucker Doogan is…well, nobody. Leroy can see his clothes; a basic suit/tie combo worn by everyman. He sees the short tan hair and brown eyes and thin lips and everything about him seems to fade from memory as soon as you look away. It’s the perfect appearance for a face and Leroy is delighted.
Tucker says, “Hey,” and pours a beer, carefully making a head and Leroy scans the room. When his eyes come back it’s like he’s never seen this guy before.
He says, “I’ll need a professor.”
“British or American? I can do either.”
“I’ll bet you can. Maybe an archeologist, leading a field team.”
“I don’t know what that is, mate, but I’ll look it up.” His accent is suddenly very Australian.
“Are you from…?”
“Brisbane, Mate. Moved here to the States after the war.”
“Nice,” says Leroy. “I’ll script something around that.” He studies the man in the booth for several moments, still not really seeing him. Tucker seems content to let him.
Finally, Leroy sighs and says, “You’re in.”
A Continental Flight back from Philadelphia to Seattle takes seven hours. Passengers are served hot meals by uniformed flight attendants, uniformly young female and pretty. Leroy’s met at the gate and he and Kate wander slowly through the airport, gather his bag and she drives them home through a typical afternoon rain.
Halfway to Whidbey, on the ferry at Mukilteo, Leroy says, “How’s the search going?”
Kate says, “Well,” stretching it out like taffy.
“That bad?”
“It’s not good, Logan. These people—if there are any such people—don’t advertise. There’s no I want to buy a dinosaur ad in the papers.” She doesn’t admit that, one morning over coffee, she actually looked.
“There’s somebody out there, though,” Leroy says. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Having the scam and looking for a mark that fits it? Usually it’s the other way around.”
“Yeah, funny,” says Kate deadpan. “Hysterical.” She tells him the story of the pervert in the stacks and he laughs for five miles.
“Baby,” he says, aping Ralph Kramden in the Honeymooners, “You’re the greatest!”
She turns up the inclined driveway in her little MGA roadster, a jaunty red car totally unfit for Seattle’s roads, weather or hills. “If the weather clears, we could have steaks on the grill.” Her house has a huge redwood deck on the south side overlooking Penn Cove. She can watch ships go by, see the lights of the city, the occasional porpoise. After being in the house for a couple of months now she hardly notices anymore.
“That sounds good. Do you have any beer?”
“No.”
“Potatoes?”
“Mmm…no.”
“Salad?” Head shake. “Corn?”
“No.”
“Steak? Never mind. Maybe we should eat out?”
“What a great idea!” Kate happily turns the car around before it crests the hill. Odds are it wasn’t going to make it up in this rain anyway.
Two A.M Kate’s wide awake staring at the ceiling. She listens to his breathing, feels him settle and says, “You awake?”
“No.”
“Oh, good. Listen, I was thinking, about what I said? About there’s no ads?”
Silence.
“Logan? Because I think that’s it.”
Reluctantly, his voice in the dark. “What is?”
“We advertise. That’s how we find the mark. We place an ad.”
“Sure.” He goes back to snoring.
Breakfast for Kate is 6:30, Leroy stumbles out around noon. She watches him putter around the kitchen gathering a bowl and sugar and cereal and lets him eat in silence, all while buzzing with the desire to grab him by the lapels and yell into his face.
“What about it, Logan? What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About what we talked last night? My idea? The ad?” She’s leaning forward, almost bouncing on her stool.
“We talked last night?”
“Yes.”
“Did I say I liked it? The idea?”
“You loved it. You were thrilled with it. Best idea ever, Kate; that’s what you said.”
“Okay then. Let’s do it.”
“Oh Baby,” she says, grinning. “You’re the greatest!” She hustles to the percolator to pour him some very black coffee.
“Kate?”
“Yes, honey?”
“What plan?”
She doesn’t pour the hot coffee in his lap.
But she’s thinking it.
A week later they do place an ad. It’s an article, actually, written by professor Lawrence Duckbill, credited to one of Leroy’s aliases, concerning the recent dinosaur discoveries in the Faith Hills area of Montana, and how “unscrupulous” collectors are buying them for personal collections. The article goes on at length about what a crime this is.
The article is perfect bait for exactly that person.
$150 each gets the article into several prominent specialty magazines, including Paleontology Monthly, Paleontology World Journal and of course, the popular Paleontology NOW! Combined circulation of nearly thousands.
It’s nearly a month before publication, time spent creating convincing fossi
ls, hiring actors, preparing more fake articles to later be placed in libraries. Leroy’s living full time with Kate and there’s lots of downtime that they fill with trips up to Canada, down to Mexico and one short con in Washington, DC just to “keep the skills fresh.”
That one proves to be a problem.
Winslow Petrie meets Photon near the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument rising patriotically over them. Photon, stoned and giggling, says, “Looks like a Jay, Man,” and Winslow smacks him across the back of his head.
“What is wrong with you?” But it’s Winslow, with his suit and tie and dark glasses who’s out of place here. The entire length of the reflecting pool is lined with stoners, guitar players, protesters and people hanging out. There’s buzz that Martin Luther King will be giving a speech at the Lincoln Memorial and the feel of history changing is almost as strong as the marijuana smoke casting a haze.
“I got a thing, man,” says Photon, rubbing his head. “Maybe I got a thing…” he looks off into the distance, then snaps back. “Logan, you said. Guy named Logan…”
“What about him?” Winslow leans in to listen.
“I heard from a guy…heard from a guy…that this other guy…Logan?...is in town doing something…”
Winston’s tracked down a lot of leads over the years that started with “I heard from a guy,” and he’s maybe losing interest when Photon snaps back from Neptune or wherever and says clearly, “There’s this red-haired chick…”
And Winslow thinks, “Fast Kate?”
The article comes out in September and the replies to the PO Box mentioned in it come in a wave shortly after. The box is stuffed with over twenty letters, all of them from wannabe collectors of illegal dinosaurs.
Kate, letting a pile of them slide through her fingers onto her kitchen island says, “Who knew you could find a mark like this?” Her tone suggests fairy-dust and unicorns are involved.
Leroy reads one, ‘Dear sirs, blah, blah…would be interested in talking to you about these ‘illegal purchases,’ and how one would go about making one.’ Well, that’s subtle.”
“Can it be this easy?” Kate asks, wide-eyed. “They’re all asking how to buy skeletons. Logan, they know it’s illegal, and they’re asking, right here,” she waves an envelope. “How to break the law.”
“New to me, too, Kate.” He’s considering the possibilities of how this could work. Mail people an ad to buy the Golden Gate Bridge? Offer people, say, a million dollars if they send you a thousand up front? Would they respond like this?
“The one we want isn’t going to be so obvious. He’ll be subtle.”
Kate says, “Hello,” and hands over a letter.
They hit gold in Max Billows, an antiques dealer in Bangor, Maine. Max is sixty-three, looks forty-seven due to, he says, “good genes, good food, good habits.” He’s wearing a suit any undertaker would envy, down to the shiny pointed black shoes, and his manner, when he meets them at the Bangor airport is almost shy. His voice is typical New-Englander with “ayes” and “ehs” tossed in randomly, like mandarin oranges in a fruit salad.
Introductions—lies on the part of Kate and Leroy—are made and lunch offered at a local elegant restaurant with an actual water wheel spinning outside. The room is old weathered wood with large windows facing water and the food is what Leroy would call ‘hearty’ if he knew what that meant.
Max gets to business when the plates are being removed. “I’m very interested in this article. It says you’re involved in an excavation in Montana. Is this true?”
“It is,” says Kate. She’s the roper so this meeting is hers to run with. There are two other letters as prospects but none as good as Max here, watching here like he can get answers directly from her brain.
“My husband Thomas,” she indicates Leroy, who’s pretending to be bored, gazing out the window at a lot of ducks, “and I are funding the dig. It’s being led by…” and she names names and gives out real credentials that be checked easily while not actually belonging to the people Max here will actually meet.
The site is near the Canadian border, the closest town is Sweetgrass on the U.S. size, Coutts in Alberta which is less a town than a border crossing. “Not many roads, not many people. Rocks, mostly, which is good for us.”
She talks about a guy, name withheld, who has a ranch of sorts a few miles away, couple hundred thousand acres of nothing. There was a storm last winter, took out power for a week and the guy, name withheld, took to driving his truck around the lonelier parts of the property. He got lost and wound up on somebody else’s land, found a collapsed hillside and looked closer, shocked to discover petrified bones of some animal.
“Well the guy’s no dummy,” says Kate, getting into the story they’ve created, “and he’s heard about recent dinosaur sites in the Black Hills of the Dakotas, so he calls a friend who gets him onto a professor at the University of Montana who’s willing to stay quiet for a reasonable price.”
“Tenured professors don’t make much at the University of Montana,” explains Leroy, to split Max’s attention. It’s an old trick, well used, the last time being the recent trip to DC that’s going to come back to bite them.
“Yes,” agrees Kate, swiveling Max’s head back her way. “He—the professor—got in touch with our foundation—” Leroy smiles at the this new twist. We got a foundation now.
Kate continues. “We put together the crew, hired an archeologist. We’re using students from the university for the dig But…” Here’s where the line gets to the hook…” We decided that maybe, given the magnitude of the find, that this time, the public should be allowed an opportunity.”
“And what exactly,” Max asks, “Is the find?”
“The first nearly complete skeleton of…” pause for dramatic effect…“A full grown Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
At this point in the tale the mark is going to go one of two ways. He’ll either drop out of his chair in awe or act disinterested. Max chooses the latter.
“Oh,” he says, deflated. Like, I expected better, why are you wasting my time? “A T-Rex, you say.” He couldn’t be more bored if he was an oil well.
He says, “Let me show you something.” They leave, get in his car and drive to a large warehouse on a larger estate, a hulking building like an aircraft hangar. Max hides the combination on the lock with his body and they step into a cool dark interior. He snaps a couple of switches and lights come on overhead.
“My collections,” he says and despite themselves Kate and Leroy both do a double take. The guy has it all. There are two small military airplanes suspended on wires like they’re invading Japan, about a dozen shiny old cars gleaming under spotlights, even a restored Cable-car on a piece of track.
“That’s the survivor, the only one, of the San Francisco fire. It’s from the Clay Street line, Grip #8. They think they have the real one in their museum but I had a fake built and swapped them.” He touches the side of the wooden car tenderly, then walks them to a back section, pointing at things as he goes.
“Books,” he says. “Paintings, sculpture, rare fossils…”
They stop there, seeing shapes of leaves and small bones embedded in rocks.
Back at the door, tour over, he says, “So you see, I don’t need a dinosaur skeleton.”
Which is how they know they have him.
Max takes them to dinner at a seafood place and Leroy tells the tale.
“It’s like this,” he begins, though no; it really isn’t. “The land where we found the Tyrannosaur is a family owned ranch…someplace…” He smiles at Max at the omission—can’t tell all our secrets, can we?—“Owned it for a century or two since they swindled it from the Indians. There’s not much family left, just one old rancher who lives in a run-down place a long way from the dig site.”
“I assume he doesn’t know,” says Max, “What you found.”
“He does not. If he did, he would sell the skeleton to the highest bidder or it would wind up in a museum somepla
ce.”
“Won’t he find out?” Max says. “You can’t exactly hide a discovery like this.”
“Actually,” says Kate, “You can. The site is so remote that the house sits a good seven miles away. There’s nothing anywhere near it, no roads, no people. It’s…rustic.”
“But if we took the skeleton,” says Max. “The location would have to come out. Otherwise the provenance, the very proof of the skeleton’s veracity, would be jeopardized.”
Leroy mulled that sentence as Kate delivered the bait. “That’s where we come in. The rancher could be persuaded to sell the land. Then the new owner—” She smiles prettily at Max—“You, could discover the site sometime later. As the owner of the land you could do with the skeleton whatever you wanted.”
“No; I couldn’t,” Max objects. “U.S Law says any discovery has to be placed on the open market so museums can get a shot at them.”
Leroy sits back and grins, stretching the moment, then drops the hook. “That’s the beauty of this Mr. Billows. The ranch crosses the U.S. border. The site is in Canada.”
To which Max says, “Um?”
Max rallies after brandy in his large, barn like house. It’s got a fire burning against the cold and floor lamps glowing to make the room seem less like an bus station. He passes out cigars as Kate and Max’s wife Loretta light cigarettes.
Max says, “What’s in it for you?” And Leroy pretends not to understand.
Kate though, smiling through the haze, says, “Twenty-five percent.”
“Of what?” asks Loretta. She’s middle-aged and settled comfortably into middle weight. Her hair is permed and she dresses well, if conservatively, in a brown skirt and blue sweater. “Of the dinosaur, when it sells?”
“No, ma’am,” says Kate. “We want twenty-five percent as a commission for the land.”
“I see,” says Loretta, not seeing at all, but she’s the better of the two at negotiating so she’s got the wheel. “Why do we want the land, Max?”
“Because, if we own it, the dinosaur find is ours to do with as we see fit. Canadian law isn’t the same as American.”
“Why can’t we just buy the Canadian part?”
Leroy jumps in with a prepared speech. “It’s all part of a land grant from President Rutherford B. Hayes,” he lies. “Our nineteenth president. He gave the reservation to the Blackfeet tribe and the land next to it to Jeremiah Humphrey, the doctor who saved his life when he was shot at the Battle of South Mountain, in Maryland, during the Civil War. The boundary with Canada wasn’t established then and the border cuts through it, leaving a small section to the north. Canada doesn’t want to change maps and resurvey and make new deeds so it stays as one parcel. But legally, I assure you,” Leroy lies, “It’s under Canadian law.
He’s got a briefcase with a lot of forged deeds and legal briefs and historical documents, all property aged and stamped and so official looking they’d convince a judge. Max and Loretta look them over, nod a lot, then Loretta asks, “How much?”
Kate meets her eyes. “Three-hundred-Twenty-Seven thousand.”
Loretta doesn’t blink. “And your fee?”
“Comes on top.”
Back at Kate’s place they let the stew simmer for a couple of weeks, ignoring Max’s calls and letters. Leroy spends a lot of time gone and Kate visits art shows. She’s got an easel set up in a sunny room on the west side of the house, brushes and tubes of acrylic paints. She’s been studying Jackson Pollack and is interested in this new Andy Warhol guy after seeing his commercial art last year in New York.
She keeps the door closed, not wanting to hear Leroy’s comments about tomato soup cans.
He’s back one Sunday evening and they’re on the big couch in the living room watching Ed Sullivan on the huge 19 inch color RCA. Ed’s got Soupy Sales and an opera singer and Fantasio, the magician. After a commercial Ed introduces a guy who spins plates and Kate says, “He’s a lot like you,” which gets her a raised eyebrow.
“He does what you do, Logan. He’s got a plate spinning on a stick, which is hard enough. But then he adds more until he’s got six of them all spinning at once. You do the same with the cons. You have a lot of people, a lot of things that either look real or are real and if you screw up it all falls apart.”
What Leroy’s thinking, as he watches the guy run from one plate to the next is, how bad do you want to avoid a real job, you spend all your time spinning plates?”
Kate loves this part of the game. Loves watching Logan move pieces around, making plans, making calls, adjusting the play. He’s at his best during these times, not drinking, staying away from the horses, buzzing like an electrified butterfly.
He gets up and clicks off the TV, turning off about a million teenagers screaming at that new band the Beatles. Kate kind of likes them, Logan considers them as a possible target until he realizes he’d have to go to England.
He says, “I think Max is about ready.”
She says, “I think he’s been ready for years, waiting for us to come and get him.”
Leroy grins. “So, should we give him another week?” He comes back to the couch and bends down for a kiss.
“You know; I did not like that man,” Kate says, leaning back. “Maybe a couple.”
Leroy’s got a lot of plates spinning on this scam. He takes Max the mark to the University of Montana where Tucker Doogan does aces as a paleontology professor. His Aussie accent is gone, replaced with a Midwest tone that accents some words, as he guides Max through the fine points of dinosaur skeletons, specially, the ownership possibilities.
“The problem,” says Tucker, “Is that, while it is legal in the U.S. to own a skeleton, the law requires that any find be offered for sale on the open market to allow museums to get a crack at it.”
All of which Max knows. “That sounds expensive.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” says Tucker. Leroy isn’t here to get annoyed by Tucker’s overly dramatic reading of the professor. He’s busy keeping people away from the paleontology department by being a janitor blocking the only entrance. The department looks real to Max because it is real. It’s just not, technically speaking, theirs.
So Tucker is portraying the very real professor Clark Ludlum, PhD, who is home taking care of a very nasty water leak, one of Leroy’s other spinning plates.
Tucker says, “The last skeleton that came on the market, a lovely specimen of a Tethysaurus Nopscai, which, as we all know, is the missing link between Mosasaurs and Crocodilians. There are only four specimens known to exist, and none are complete…”
He goes on, at length, and Max is thinking that, given the oddly stressed syllables, all in the wrong places, that it’s a damned good thing for the professor’s students that he doesn’t have any.
But he’ll leave the University satisfied that, if a Tyrannosaurus skeleton could be found, the north border of Montana or North Dakota would be the ideal place to look.
The professor is saying, “The alluvial deposits formed by the concomitant…” when Max pumps his hand wildly and flees back to Maine where he tells his wife, Loretta, “It’s real.”
She hands him a martini—two olives—and smiles. “So they’re legit, these people?”
“Good God; no.” He sips and sucks the pimentos. “Those two are a phony as a three dollar bill. They’re con artists, flim-flammers. The worst sort.”
“So what are you going to do? We want that skeleton don’t we?”
“Yes, we do, my love. And we will get it. Just not from them.”
“Then you’re planning to…?”
“Screw the fuckers, yes.”
Leroy’s warming up over coffee at the Well Howdy diner on Railway street in Milk River, Alberta. He’s waiting For Max to show up, expecting that Max won’t and isn’t surprised when he doesn’t.
Pouring cream and stirring in many, many packets of sugar, he thinks about Loretta that night asking, “Why do we need you? Why can’t we just make a deal with the owner, di
rect?”
Leroy saying, “You could. Except that you don’t know who it is.”
He’s wondering if they heard the hole in that story and when Max doesn’t walk in the front door as expected, he figures they did.
The hole being that, if Max already owns the land, it doesn’t matter that Leroy spills the beans. It’ll be too late. And maybe, just maybe; they can find him.
Outside, leaning against the wall to huddle against the wind, he drops a lot of quarters in the pay phone and calls Kate.
Another plate spins, this one a bit wobbly, and Leroy’s nowhere around to see it.
Max is in Montana a lot lately, driving to small towns all along the Canadian border, checking in a local land offices. He’s searching for a piece of land that’s been in one family for a century, that’s really big and that has a small tip jutting into Canada.
That’s the card that fell out of the scam artists sleeve, Max thinks. How many pieces of land have that as a feature.
So he’s driving a rented Ford F-150, red and white if it wasn’t covered with all this dust out here on the edge of nothing. You gotta figure the land’s worthless because it sits right up against the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. If any white settlers thought there was anything left in this Godforsaken place, they’d have moved the tribes out a long time ago. Again.
The truck bounces and jostles and Max would listen to the radio if there were any stations in this goddamned desert. He’s approaching a town called Sunburst, all of five short streets and a gas station. It’s the seventeenth little town he’s visited on this hellish drive across Montana and his back hurts from the travel. He stops at the station, fills the truck while marveling at the price of gas. 43 cents a gallon is—literally—highway robbery and Max is in a foul mood as he enters the one room Federal Post Office.
“Is there a place where they keep land records?”
“There is,” says the solitary clerk, a middle-aged, overweight, thin-haired guy wearing the required post office uniform of light blue shirt, dark blue pants, gray vest and bored attitude.
Both he and Max wait a while for anything more to happen. The guy has a nametag on his vest that says ‘Roy.’
“Roy,” says Max with what seems like patience, but isn’t. “Where might that be?”
“It might be in Sweetgrass,” says Roy, stopping the conversation again.
“Might be?” asks Max.
Roy considers for far longer than any human should before finally admitting, “Is.”
“How far?” asks Max.
“To where?”
It’s nine miles Max discovers by looking at one of the many local maps he has littering the front seat. North on state highway 397 and right on the border, sharing streets with Coutts on the Canadian side.
He drives to the local police department, asks questions to people who answer in the same time zone and seeks out the public library. “Land records are kept there,” says a helpful lady cop.
Another helpful lady, this time a librarian, shows Max the county record books but he doesn’t actually open them. When he tells her what he’s after she says, “The Carswell place.”
Back in D.C. Winston’s got a lot on his mind. He’s thinking, where Fast Kate is, Leroy Logan’s not far away, and probably up to no good.
Winston’s had a thing for catching Leroy for nearly six years now, since he heard stories about a necklace and the Queen Mary. And just a year ago he arrested a couple of grifters said to be part of the loose gang of thieves Logan likes to use, Gerald Kribs and Fancy Lee Lewis, both out of Cleveland, now residing in Leavenworth.
Which is where Leroy’s going if Winston and director Hoover have a say in it. Just last Monday at the weekly conference J. Edgar pulled him aside and told him that grifters and con artists had the highest priority. Not as high as the Reverend Doctor King or the new peace movement, or drugs or the always high-priority enemies list, “But up there; way, way up there.”
J. Edgar said, through the smoke of his always lit cigar, “You’re doing America’s work, kid. Keep it up.” The he chucked Winslow on the shoulder and strutted away.
So here’s Winston, in his office, shuffling through files trying to put together a case. Photon says Leroy’s been seen with Tucker Doogan, and this file here tells him that Doogan’s known associates (KA’s) are the Cowboy Kid and Willie Stubbs and—imagine Winston’s surprise to discover that both the Kid and Tucker have taken a bunk.
Later that day, fighting a lot of snow and traffic, Winston finds Willy Stubbs and shakes him for their whereabouts. Willie’s reluctant, of course, but eventually, after threats and for a C-note, suggests that the two might be in Montana.
Leaving Winston thinking, Montana?
He can’t even imagine what Leroy and Kate are doing in Montana, but he’s got a lot of time on the United flight to Great Falls to figure it out.
What Leroy is doing in Montana is being shafted by Max Billows.
Max has learned so much from the library lady. He’s learned that the land is real, has been in the Carswell family forever. That it butts up against the Blackfeet Reservation on the west side and goes a little bit into Canada on the north, all things that agree with what Max wants to hear. What he doesn’t want to hear is, “He’ll never sell.”
“He?” asks Max of Caroline, the library lady.
“Fletcher Carswell” she tells him. “He’s the last of them; the Carswells. Got married, Fletcher did, twice, but they didn’t stick. City women, they got bored with life out here and left him. No children. Parents gone. It’s just Fletcher and he won’t sell.”
“Won’t?” Says Max.
“Never,” says Caroline.
“Well, shit,” says Max, which earns him a grin from Caroline.
Leroy and Kate are enjoying the sights. She’s looking through the telescope on the north side of the new Space Needle here in Seattle on a warm and blessedly clear day. She says, “Look!” You can see my house.”
Leroy takes a turn at the eyepiece and focuses. He sees houses, yes; across the straight on Bainbridge Island, and decides not to burst her bubble.
They’ve been vacationing by visiting all the local sites the locals never visit . The Space Needle, for example; built in sixty-two for the Expo, or the monorail that goes down 5th Avenue to nowhere. She wants to go to the zoo but Leroy’s fighting the idea.
“What do you have against the zoo?” she asks, interested. Who doesn’t like zoos?
“It’s the cages, Kate. All those bars remind me of what could happen to me. I could wind up there.”
“We could,” she admits.
“Nope,” he says, and adds the most romantic thing he’s ever said. “Not we, Kate. Me. If anything goes wrong and it looks like a fall, you’re gonna be long gone out of it. That’s a promise.”
“Aw, Logan; you say the nicest things.” Truth is, Kate’s feeling soft inside at this. For Logan to offer prison to save her, especially given the likelihood of prison in his future, what with the stories she’s been hearing lately about some Federal Dick with a hard on for cons, well; it’s sweet.
So she hugs him and delivers a kiss that causes a lot of looks and asks him how the scam is going because that’s the best reward she knows, to let a man talk about himself.
Which he does, over hot dogs from a vendor way down by Regrade Park, sitting on a bench in the rare sunshine.
He says, “The latest cost is the crew on the site.”
“The fake students and archeology dig.”
“Yeah. I don’t know if Max is going to be able to find them but I have to keep the store going in case he does.”
“You think he will?”
“I got no thoughts either way. If he doesn’t we’re out a couple gees. If he does and finds out there’s no dig, the scam fails.”
“If he does, will he go down and talk to them?”
Leroy smiles at this and Kate dabs a bit of mustard from the corner of his mouth. “I hope so. Hate to see a go
od dinosaur skeleton go to waste. Took weeks to get it buried so a group of college kids can make two bucks an hour digging it back up. All for a guy who may or may not see it.”
He finishes his root beer and gathers the trash. Coming back from the barrel he asks, “What about the guy?”
“Jimmy? Don’t you worry, Logan. I’ll keep up my side of this deal. Besides; you’ve got enough to worry about.”
To which he smiles his most wicked smile, the one that makes her want to hit him or start taking off clothes, depending.
“So who’s worried?
Max, spinning plate number six, has been busy. He’s rented a room at the Glocca Morra Inn in Sweetgrass, It’s a bargain at $4.50 a night and features an in-room phone and a television. After asking around he’s found a guy with a small airplane who’s willing to go out surveying.
“What the hell you looking for?” asks Henry, the pilot. The plane is a two seater, little more than a go-cart with wings, but Henry seems efficient as he runs through a checklist, runs his hands over the wings and buckles in for the flight.
“Geological formations,” Max lies. “Unique to this area.”
“Sure,” says Henry, not believing it. He figures a guy wants to spend $10 an hour flying around the hills, that’s no skin off his nose. Beside, he’s flown crazier people. That guy Logan last June, for instance; Henry never believed him either.
They fly in an out of American and Canadian airspace in a grid pattern, burning time and fuel, stopping back at the dirt strip behind Henry’s barn to refuel and get lunch. Around four in the afternoon Henry feels his passenger stiffen and he looks out and down and doesn’t see anything but another of the crazy digs the University is always doing as field trips for the geology students.
That seems to be what his passenger is interested in because he yells over the engine noise, “Can you set down there?”
Henry gives him the sneer the question deserves and points to some tracks in the dirt. “You can drive in, but there’s no damn way to land a plane.”
Later that night in his F-150, Max does exactly that. He drives from the paved road to the dirt road to nearly-invisible ruts that suggest maybe somebody’s come this way in the last few years, in a truck or, more likely, a covered wagon. Even going less than ten he’s bumped his head on the roof a dozen times and he’s doubting the wisdom of the trip when he comes around a wide mound of rock and sees the site.
It deserted of course. The moon is low on the horizon and it feels like he’s walking on it as he gets out of the truck, stretches a lot, and stumbles down to the side of the hill. There’s a field tent set up way over there and a couple of trash dumps and a huge army-green tarp, probably surplus, staked on the hillside.
That’s the dig, Max thinks as he approaches it. The wind is still and his boots make scratchy noises as the only sounds and Max can hear his heartbeat in the stillness of the night. He pulls up some of the stakes holding tarp and pulls it back, folding it like a carpet until he comes to…
Oh my God; it’s a dinosaur.
Max bangs on the door of the dilapidated lodge as snow whirls around his ears. He ducks his head like a turtle and waits, pounds again, waits and…
“Hold your damn horses!” Yells a voice from inside, followed by heavy footsteps followed by the door being yanked open by a skinny as a rail cowboy in blue jeans over dirty long johns. The guy hasn’t shaved recently and his red eyes suggest redeye.
He blinks in the glare of the sunshine on new snow and says, “What?”
“Mr. Carswell?” Max says. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“’Bout what?” The voice is scratchy and raw from too many smokes and too much alcohol.
“About buying this place.”
Carswell stares like Max just dropped down the chimney with a bag of coal.
They talk in a dingy room that last saw better days in the nineteen-twenties, on a ratty couch in front of a giant unlit fireplace. Fletcher Carswell offers drinks, they clink glasses and Fletcher tries to keep the boredom out of his voice.
“I don’t wanna sell,” he says, several times. “The land’s been in my family for generations.” He points to a lot of portraits mounted on a lot of the wall space, almost as many heads in frames as there are animal heads. The heads of antelopes and elk and one massive bison glare down at the room from up high on the walls.
“But I can make you a good offer,” says Max, sounding a lot like the devil come up to make a deal. “A very good offer.”
Fletcher considers this a while, repeats, “The land’s been in my family for generations.”
Max says, “Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Not a chance, mister.” Fletcher waves his arms around, taking in the dilapidated lodge, but meaning, probably, the entire parcel. “Eight hundred thousand acres of good cattle grazing land…”
He’s lying here and Max, who’s done his homework, knows it. If there were more than five hundred cows on this land they’d take a vote and leave for someplace else.
But he says, “Sure; it’s a great land. I’ll go as high as three-hundred.”
Fletcher says, “You won’t go anywhere, except maybe back east where you came from. This land’s got mineral rights…”
Nobody’s found anything in a hundred years. “Three-twenty-five.”
“Water rights…”
Max almost chokes on his drink at this line. By far the most water this arid piece of rock has seen all year is in his glass. “Three-fifty; that’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”
“Sentimental value…the land’s been in my family…”
“…For years; yeah I got that. But I can’t do a dime more than Three-seventy-five.”
Fletcher says, “Hell; for all we know there could be fossils. I read about a find in North Dakota…”
Max sucks his cigar hard enough to make a noticeable difference in the room’s lighting. Does he know? He can’t know! Or we wouldn’t be talking now. “Four-hundred even,” he says.
Fletcher holds out for four-fifty.
“But it’s got to be done right now,” says Max, “We go into town, I get the cash and we record the deed. Then you and the money can go somewhere…”
“Florida,” says Fletcher immediately. “I always wanted a boat...”
“Fine, whatever, just as long as we…”
“Or one of those islands, you know, down in the Bahamas someplace? Like in that James Bond movie Goldfinger, just came out? That Pussy Galore woman…”
“Right,” says Max. “Right, right, right. You can go anywhere you want. Do we have a deal?”
Fletcher looks out at the snow whirling in eddies around the big front window. He’s got an expression that says he’s already sipping Rum on that beach.
“Yes sir; I believe we do.”
Seven hours, forty-seven minutes; that’s what it takes to drive from the Carswell estate to Helena to get the money and record the deed. Fletcher sits anxiously through the paperwork— just three forms.
“Sign here and here,” says the clerk brightly before affixing a notary seal to the deed.
Max passes over his case with the money, the clerk verifies that Fletcher has it and they shake hands on the sidewalk and go their separate ways.
Fletcher to the airport to get out of Dodge.
Max to the nearest restaurant that serves liquor, to eat and drink and celebrate. Sitting at the booth, dark wood paneled and low-lit, he takes out the deed and smiles. Worthless land, he’s thinking, and damn happy about it. He did his research before coming here. The lands not worth the paper it takes to record it. All eight hundred thousand acres aren’t worth the money it cost to buy a plane ticket out here.
It barely supports enough cattle to bother herding them, there’s damn little hunting, almost no water; even the Blackfeet reservation doesn’t want it.
But as a dinosaur graveyard…
Max grins at his good fortune and cool business sense. Got it all by hustling that i
diot con artist. Artist! Max laughs out loud and snorts whiskey though his nose.
The appalled waitress, rushing over to help, can’t tell if he’s choking from the booze or his laughter.
The plates are spinning faster now and Leroy’s got his hands full keeping them from falling. He’s sent the excavation team home, all twelve of them paid off and heading back to their college dorms, science majors happy to make sixteen bucks a day pretending to be archeology majors.
He’s got Kate on a flight to D.C and a pair of eyes at the Great Falls airport watching to see who gets off flight 509.
The game is all but over.
Winslow Petrie gets off United 509 with a headache and a crick in the neck from the nine hour flight. Stops in Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake; Winslow’s feeling like the pioneers struggling across the prairie in their covered wagons, except with stewardesses serving hot meals and that they’re flying.
He drags himself down the steps and across the tarmac into the little concourse, barely more than a tin shed with delusions and stops suddenly. The guy behind him bangs into his back but Winslow doesn’t notice. His eyes are fixed on one man chatting up a girl at the ticket counter. The guy’s in profile but there’s no mistaking him.
Tucker Doogan, one of Leroy’s boys.
He heads over, carry-on bag in his left hand, the handle of his .38 in his right. He recalls the file he read just two days ago. Tucker Doogan, Australian by birth, moved to the States after the big war. Arrested in that war a couple of times for supplies that were always disappearing, then a few arrests and one prison turn in Detroit involving more missing property, this time diamonds.
The file suggesting Leroy Logan as the mover in that operation; just hints and stoolies get-out-of-jail chatter, but Winston’s not going to believe that Tucker being in Montana at the same time he’s got a lead on Logan is a coincidence.
Winston’s got a bad case of stress as he creeps through the small crowd—six people, some crowd—gathering their stuff from the baggage cart hauled in by the Sky Cap. He’s maybe twenty feet away, hoping that Doogan won’t turn, won’t see him, won’t run.
The last thing he needs is a gun battle in the Great Falls airport, or, more likely, since Tucker’s file never mentioned violence, a foot race. Winston’s in pretty good shape, given his heavy desk time, but he’d rather do this easy than hard.
And easy it is. He gets all the way to Tucker without the Aussie noticing him. He drops his bag but keeps the pistol ready. He reaches out and grabs Doogan’s arm at the elbow, spins him around expecting surprise and desperation.
Instead Tucker grins a big wide one and claps him on the shoulder, almost making that pocketed stub-nose go off.
“Crikey, Mate!” bellows the Aussie. “What the blazes took you so long?”
Leroy says, “It’s all about keeping a promise,” which seems a stretch considering who’s saying it.
Three men sitting in a booth in a bar, this one a run-down neighborhood watering hole in Great Falls.
“I don’t see why you have to travel any further,” says Leroy as he escorts the jovially grinning Tucker and the mystified, angry and still armed Winston Petrie to a nice brown Ford Fairlane that he drives without explanation to this bar.
And says that thing about keeping promises.
Winston, already past angry, well into really pissed, says, “Like you’ve ever kept one, Leroy.”
“Don’t call me that,” is the surprising reply, like a nerve’s been touched or a card’s come out of the deck that wasn’t already palmed.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” suggests Leroy, meaning the file folders he knows the Bureau has on him.
“Even if I believe half of it,” says Winston, “It’s enough.”
Tucker waves an arm for a barmaid, a woman so far past sixty the term lost meaning a couple decades ago. She drifts over, past the only three others in this dim dive, takes orders, ambles away, eases back with several bottles and glasses on a tray and wanders off again.
Winston’s been doing a pretty good job so far of keeping his temper down and his pistol in, finally says, “What the Hell?”
“Beer first,” says Tucker, who begins pouring his own, from the bottle, down his gullet. He finishes it in one large swallow, belches hugely and grins. “Tell him, old sport,” he says to Leroy, and, “This is a good ‘un,” to Winston. “You’re gonna love it, mate.”
“I doubt that,” Winston says, deadpan, but he is curious, this being the single oddest moment of his career. “But do go on.”
“Here’s the thing,” says Leroy. “You want to arrest me…”
Winston snorts at this, like the sky is blue or water is wet. “I do,” he says solemnly.
“And I do not have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is Kate.”
“Fast Kate,” says Winston.
“Don’t call her that,” says Leroy. For the briefest moment there’s real anger in his voice and Winston takes a shot.
“Don’t call her Fast Kate. Don’t call you Leroy. You’ve got some issues, son.”
“I probably do,” Leroy admits. “Hard to be in this line of work if you don’t.”
Tucker drains another beer—Winston’s this time— “I don’t” He says amiably. “Have issues.”
“Present company excluded, then.” Leroy turns back to Winston.
“You took down a couple of my…acquaintances. Gerald Kribs and Lee Lewis. ”
“Ah,” says Winston, recalling a pair of mid-level cons doing insurance scams on elderly rich women. He doesn’t like people who suck off the public tit but he hates those guys who’d scam a grandma. “You’re thinking I’m coming after you.”
“You are coming after me,” says Leroy, statement of fact.
“Okay, say I am. I’ll catch you, too; sooner than you think.”
“Sure,” says Leroy, dismissing it. “I set this all up to get you here to offer you a deal.”
“Wait. You set this up?”
“Yeah; it’s what I do.” Leroy makes some small circles in the air with his finger and says, “Lots of plates to spin. Take Photon, for instance.”
Winston doesn’t like where this is going. “No.”
“Yes. He’s a grifter out of Philly, pretty low profile so you may not have much on him and no; I’m not gonna tell you his real name.” Which is Jimmy James, Kate’s long-lost hustler buddy. “What I am going to tell you, is that he conned you.”
Winston thinks back to their meetings, how eager he was to get information, how little he checked up on the guy. For a moment he sees the skill behind the con. If the mark’s greedy, he won’t ask questions. Damn.
“And Tucker here,” he says. “What’s his part in this?”
“He’s been a professor at Montana University, talking up dinosaur bones.”
Winston shakes his head in resignation, then grabs the last beer before it’s poured down Tucker’s throat. “All right. I’m interested. Tell me all.”
“All’s a bit far, but I’ll tell you most. I found this piece of land that goes into Canada. That’s important to the plan. See, I figured, I fake a dinosaur skeleton, salt it in a regular piece of rock somewhere, the mark’s gonna want to see it in situ—”
“In situ?” says Winston, amused. Leroy Logan, he knows, has a fourth grade education.
“Got it from Kate. It means—”
“I know what it means. Do go on.” Nobody’s ever confessed to a scam this big before and Winston’s fascinated. He wants to hear it all before arresting these guys.
Leroy says, “So I find a guy—he’s pretty damn bent, but we’ll get to that—who wants a dinosaur skeleton of his very own. You’d be amazed at how many there are. We must have answered a dozen letters from the ads.”
“Wait. Ads? You advertised for a skeleton collector?”
“Surprise, huh? Who’da thought. So we find this guy, Max Bellows, and he shows us his own collection and I sell him on the dinosaur while leaving
a couple of hints about how he can find the landowner all by himself and cut me out altogether.”
“Which he did, I assume.”
“Oh; God, yes. That man planned to cheat me years before he ever met me. He was just waiting on the introduction. Max finds the owner of the land and makes a deal. He buys the place and now he doesn’t have to tell anybody about the find or he can tell everybody and sell the bones on the open market.”
“Which is illegal in the U.S,” says Winston, edging closer to the arrest. He’s got mixed feelings because he’s finding he likes the guy. Leroy’s a crook, but he’s also charming as hell.
“Yes it is” agrees Leroy. “But not in Canada, where I stashed them. So our guy—Max Bellows; you might want to write that down—he can keep ’em or sell ’em, providing he’s the owner of the land.” He pauses for dramatic effect and to wrestle a beer from Tucker.
“And the owner is?” prompts Winston.
“Me.”
They decide to eat after that bombshell. Winston’s feeling like he stepped on a rake and the handle just came up and smacked him. Tucker’s stomach is making more noises than his belching and Leroy suggests steaks, which they can’t get here.
So they all troop out into the cold and walk a few blocks to a better part of town and there’s steak bones on the plates and empty glasses and full ashtrays before they get back to the story.
“You,” says Winston. They’ve all lit up smokes and this place has a real bar with a real bartender so the drinks now have more alcohol.
“Me,” says Leroy. “I bought it right after I found it, for a little over eighteen thousand dollars. The former owner, Fletcher Carswell, was so thrilled he would have paid me to take the place.”
“Why is that?” asks Winston. He’s relaxed and amused and fascinated and thinking this has to be the strangest bust in history.
“I’ll get there. So, end of the story. I gave my power of attorney to my guy who took the place of the long gone Fletcher Carswell.”
“And what guy is that?” asks Winston.
“Not saying,” says Leroy, honoring his agreement with the Cowboy Kid.
“Had to try.”
“Sure. So now Max owns the land and I got paid and everything’s good in the world.”
“You think so,” says Winston. “Still, I’m going to have to arrest you.”
“What for?” asks Leroy, innocently.
“What for? For…for…” He’s suddenly aware that he can’t think of a single crime being committed here. There’s no law against burying fake dinosaur bones, not if there’s no intent to sell them. The land sale is legal since Leroy gave a power of attorney and never lied about who he was. The booze seems to evaporate as Winston begins to see exactly how much he’s been conned. The anger is just beginning.
Leroy says, “So I have an offer.”
“What?” Fuck! “What?”
“Max Bellows is a thief. He showed me his ‘collection’ when we met and I recognized a couple of pieces. None of them could have been bought legit. So my offer is, I’ll give you Bellows if you promise, when the time comes that you catch me, that you’ll leave Kate out of it.”
Winston takes a long—long—time with that one. Leroy’s relaxed, smoking, and Tucker’s been asleep for the last ten minutes, snoring gently. Finally, Winston says, “I can’t promise anything.”
“Yeah, you can. You make promises to stoolies every damn day, Winston. You pay people to rat on me, make deals with crooks to get them lesser time if they tell tales. I’m not saying you can’t come after me with everything you got. But Kate gets a free pass.”
“God damn it, Leroy—”
“Don’t call me that. It’s Logan to my friends.”
Winston laughs, surprised. “And you think we’re friends?”
“I’ve got worse ones.”
“I’ll bet you do. Okay, Logan; I’ll agree to your offer.”
“Thanks. There’s one little thing. A bonus, you might call it. You should wait a year before you bust Max.”
“Why would I do that?’
“Well, it seems that the reason old Fletcher was so desperate to unload the ranch is that it has a whole bunch of tax liens on it. U.S. Side and Canada. They want the owner for close to a million in back taxes. The Carswells haven’t paid a nickel since about nineteen-twenty eight.”
Winston laughs as he gets the scope of what Logan is saying. “So Max, who tried to cheat you, gets a fake dinosaur that he paid a lot for, I’d imagine…”
Leroy looks modest, which answers that question.
“And he gets a federal tax beef.”
“It’s what you guys got Capone on. Max’ll be in good company.”
“And you get a pass for your girlfriend. You planned this!”
Leroy makes those circles with his fingers in the air. “Yes,” he admits.
“Yes, I did.”
One last meeting, this one more of a party. Time to divvy up the profits.
They’re all here, in Kate’s living room with the views of the bay nobody notices, drinking Scotch of a better brand than they’ve ever tasted, sitting on nicer furniture.
Jimmy James, thin as a straw, wearing Levi’s and a light blue sweater, no shirt and tan loafers, no socks, is draped across the arms of a deep lounge chair, looking as if he might just melt into its embrace. He looks a lot better than the homeless snitch in D.C.
“Can’t thank you enough for bringing me in Kate,” he says and raises a glass. All of them follow suit and refill their glasses. There’s a barely restrained sense of elation in the room.
Least restrained is the Aussie Tucker Doogan. His accent slips randomly from Midwestern to New England to Texan. “Here’s to ya!” he bellows, then throws his arms around Kate and squeezes.
The Cowboy Kid is studying the label of his own bottle of Bourbon as if memorizing it for a future theft. Possibly a truckload of it.
Leroy says, “You did a great job, Kid. I was expecting maybe three hundred and you talked him up to four and a half. Nice.” He’s thinking that maybe the Kid would have pocketed the difference and the Kid’s thinking he would have pocketed the difference except there was paperwork, dammit.
“I get a bonus, right? Anything over the base, I get a bonus.”
“That you do, Kid.” He lets the party go on for a bit, then announces it’s time to split the pot.
They gather around Kate’s big dining room table, shipped out all the way from Marshall Fields in Chicago, the best one they had, and screw the cost. She’s put out coasters against the guys fucking up the finish.
Leroy says, “Okay, we take the expenses off the top…” And gets a whole lot of grief for it.
“What the Hell?”
“You’re not serious?”
“Lord, fuck a duck!”
A lot of eyes turn his way. Unhappy eyes, most of them.
Leroy says, “Hey; it’s like a business, you guys. I had to pay for the land, the crews, airfare for you all to come out here.”
Grudging acceptance, if not actual agreement.
“Besides,” says Leroy. “You all know I wouldn’t cheat you.”
“Yes, you would!” says Tucker.
“Sure,” agrees the Kid.
“In a heartbeat,” adds Tucker.
“Logan, you’d rob your mother, if she wasn’t too dead to stop you,” says Jimmy James, the more articulate of the crew. Kate has to smother a laugh at that one.
“Damn,” says Leroy. “You guys don’t trust me?”
“No,” says the Kid, surprised. “Of course not.”
“Who would?’ asks Tucker.
“You don’t trust you,” says Jimmy James. “And you’re smart to do it.”
“Jeez,” grouches Leroy. “I figured you guys would understand.” He shakes his head sadly, just as if he had feelings to hurt.
“Nobody would,” the Kid.
“Crikey, what a Mad Hatter idea,” says Tucker. “You’d be a bloomin’ nutter t
o think that.”
“Blooming,” agrees Jimmy. “Stark raving mad.’
“Fine,” Leroy sighs theatrically. “Let’s leave it up to Kate. You trust Kate, right?”
“Sure.”
“Damn becha!”
“Never a doubt, mate.”
Leroy turns to her and says carefully, “And none of us want to see her lose any money.”
Which causes Kate to smile at him.
“Well, guys,” she says, catching every eye. “In the words of the Yellow Kid…
“The nut comes off the head of the joint.”
End of Chapter Five
Chapter Six
HOW HIGH THE MOON
The Rag, The Wire And The Big Store Page 7