Stephen Cannell - King Con

"Yes, Mom."

"'an I 'ome in?"

"Sure." She got out of bed, turned on the light as her mother came in, and set the brake on the wheelchair.

"Honey, I 'ant you read 'iss," her mother slurred, and handed Victoria a sheet of paper filled with her shaky but legible handwriting.

Victoria read it out loud: "People have to attain their own destinies. Sometimes only you can know what you must do. A long life is nice… and I wish it for you because I love you. But a life full of choices forced on you by others is not worth living."

They sat looking at each other. Her mother had come to her rescue thousands of times in this room, sat patiently helping her with her homework, helping her with her life.

Victoria moved to her mother, bent over, and gave her a hug. "How did I get so lucky to have you guys as parents?"' she finally said.

"We lucky ones," her mother answered.

Somewhere in this moment the phone had rung downstairs. Victoria had not paid it any attention. Now her father was calling for her. She moved out of her room and into the hall where the phone sat on a French Provincial table.

"Hello…" she said tentatively.

"Martin Cushbury. I hope that stain came out. Should have. Citrus juice generally isn't too tough."

"Whatta you want?" she said angrily.

"You sure stuck your broom handle into a Sicilian hornets' nest, Vicky."

"I want my case folders back."

"I'm not so sure I would have flipped off Joe Rina on TV, but other than that, it was a pretty good performance. It's about time somebody gave Gil Green a tonsillectomy."

"Just send my case folders back… There's nothing in there you can use. Beyond that, I don't have anything to say to you."

"Don't be so sure. I was wondering if maybe we could get together, have a little talk about the Rina brothers."

"We're not going to get together. You're wanted by the FBI. I don't need to add harboring a fugitive, and aiding and abetting, to my list of this week's fuck-ups."

"FBI?" He said it as if he'd never heard of them.

"For a clever guy, you had one clumsy moment. You left your orange juice glass on the table. I ran the prints. When I pulled your priors out of the computer, the yellow sheet went all the way to the floor."

"I like to stay busy," he said without humor.

"No kidding. I also know that Carol Sesnick was a member of your family. For that reason, I'm going to cut you some slack… I could've agreed to meet you again, then shown up with an FBI escort."

"You can trust me, Vicky. I think, from what I've heard, we both want the same thing."

"Send my files back. The address is on the manila folder. And don't call me again." She hung up the phone and looked over and saw her father standing in the hall. He had a question mark on his face and was holding a fax from David Frankfurter.

"This was in the machine downstairs," he said, handing it to her.

She looked at the N.C.I.C. printout and the fax with Beano's picture. In the photo he had black hair and no mustache. She didn't want to talk about any of this with her parents, so she gave them both a kiss, then went back to her room and climbed into bed, pulling the covers up under her chin. But her mind would not shut down. She was thinking about Beano Bates… Who was he? Had he been close to Carol? How could Carol have been in a family of Gypsies who roamed the Midwest picking pockets? Why had she not told Victoria what was going on? Had Victoria been played for a sucker? All of this went through her mind, and then another thought struck her. She got up and moved to her desk and turned on the lamp. She looked closely at the faxed picture of Beano Bates. She tried to remember the pictures of Frank Lemay that had been taken in the hospital. She wondered if Beano Bates could be Frank Lemay. It was hard to tell. The hospital photos had shown a man who had been beaten almost beyond recognition. Still, the age was right, the hair color similar. She moved back to her bed and got under the covers again. She tried to figure out what it could mean. New questions filled her head: If Beano was Frank, then wasn't it too big a coincidence that his cousin Carol was in that parking lot to witness the beating? Did that mean Carol had been lying? Had her friend played her for a fool? Was Carol going to manufacture testimony, lie in court, because she knew Beano's life was still in danger? Had Victoria so badly misjudged the situation?

A full moon was low on the horizon and shot cold silver light through the open window. She looked at the ballerinas on the wallpaper, spinning, turning, throwing themselves around with graceful abandon, dancing on her walls in the moonlight. They whirled haphazardly, motionless, in two dimensions. They were whirling without result, just like Victoria's troubled thoughts.

VICTORIA DROVE BACK TO TRENTON ON SUNDAY night. She had notified the D.A.'s office that she was going to take some vacation time. On Monday morning, she intended to sleep late but woke up at six A.M., just like always. She showered, toweling her short hair, forgoing the dryer. She put on jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed her navy pea-coat, and went out for breakfast.

At ten o'clock, she found herself sitting alone on a bench in Bromley Park, watching birds flutter around, trying to steal an old sandwich crust out of a trash basket. She wasn't sure what she would do. She had decided to set out to prove that the Rina brothers had killed Carol, Tony, and Bobby, but her expertise was litigation, not investigation. She wondered if she could hire Reuben Dickson, a retired homicide detective whom she had befriended. He was good, methodical and not afraid to dig deep, but he was old with arthritis. Last time she'd seen him, he could barely walk. She had several thousand dollars in the bank she could use to hire him. She thought she still had his home phone number from a case they'd worked on together just before he pulled the pin. She was just getting set to leave the park when a small terrier came up and sat in front of her. She looked down at him.

"Hi, honey," she said, and he jumped up on her lap and licked under her chin. She laughed and scratched him behind the ears. Then, without warning, he moved off her lap, snapped up her purse in his mouth, and took off across the park with it. "Stop, come back," she yelled foolishly. Then she jumped up and ran after him. The dog raced into the women's toilet. She chased him in there and slammed the door shut so that he couldn't get out. The terrier came out from the stall and dropped the purse at her feet.

"Bad dog," she said and picked it up and looked inside. "Son-of-a-bitch!" she said, discovering her wallet was gone. "You little thief, what did you do with my wallet?" she asked the dog.

Then Beano Bates stepped out from one of the stalls, holding it in his hand. He had her case folders under his other arm. "He's not the smoothest dip in the world, but in a pinch, it's better then breaking into a house." He was counting her money. "You don't carry much cash, do you?"

"You know something?"

"What?"

"I've never met a bigger asshole."

"Compliment accepted," he said. "I need your help. I think we want the same thing."

"Highly unlikely," she said, thinking he seemed like a completely different person from the one in the restaurant. That man had been unsure and flustered; this one was in charge and self-assured. She could see he was a remarkably good actor. She decided she couldn't trust him for a second.

"Carol was your friend, I could tell. I could see on TV how much you cared for her-"

"Hey," she interrupted, "forget the rubdown."

"You know, for a good lawyer, you aren't much of a listener."

"It's because most everything you say is honeybaked bullshit."