Stephen Cannell - King Con

Not a bad joke, Beano thought. But on this hollow-chested man who kept rubbing his hands together like an insect, it only managed to be annoying.

Beano promised to check back later in the day. After he left, Donald Stine went to the back of Tommy Rina's store and put out a call for a 20-to-24mm black pearl with opaque luster, almost perfectly round. He faxed it to the International Jewelry Exchange. He also put it on the New York-New Jersey jewelry fax. He offered to buy the jewel for sixty thousand dollars, giving himself a hundred-thousand-dollar profit on the deal if he could find a pearl close enough to match.

Two hours later, a Mr. Robert Hambelton of Hambelton, Deets, and Banbray, a wholesale jewelry company, answered with a fax responding to the recent inquiry. The letterhead said his firm was across the river in New York. The fax pictured a black pearl, opaque, almost perfect. His memo said the pearl he had in stock was 22.5mm in size, but was in a diamond-encrusted setting and that he would have to break up the necklace. He was asking a hundred and fifty thousand, no negotiation. There was a number in New York to call. Donald Stine figured a ten-thousand-dollar profit was better than nothing, so he rushed to his phone and dialed.

"Hambelton, Deets, and Banbray," a woman's voice said.

"I'd like to speak to Mr. Robert Hambelton about the twenty-two-millimeter pearl he faxed me a picture of."

"One moment, please, I'll see if Mr. Hambelton is in." In a moment, Bob Hambelton came on the line.

"Bob Hambelton here," a thin voice said. "How can I help, please?"

Donald explained about his customer and about the pearl and the need to make earrings, and that was why his client would vastly overpay for the jewel. Robert Hambelton said he would send the pearl down to Atlantic City that afternoon and Mr. Stine could buy it from their representative, a Mr. Carl Forbes.

At five o'clock, just before closing, a distinguished-looking man with gray hair and an expensive suit came through the door of Rings 'n' Things. He asked for Donald Stine. His Jewelry Mart I.D. indicated that he was Carl Forbes. He opened his metal suitcase and produced a pearl that Donald Stine would have sworn was almost a perfect duplicate of the one he'd sold the Texan. Donald appraised it and signed for it, then gave a cashier's check for one hundred and fifty thousand, made out for cash, to Mr. Forbes, who then handed Donald the pearl. Then Mr. Forbes put the cashier's check in his briefcase and left.

Of course, the whole thing had been set up by Beano, using a call-forwarding system he already had in New York. The system routed the call from the number on the fax back from New York to the pay phone at the Shady Rest Trailer Park. Victoria played the secretary; Beano was the thin-voiced Robert Hambelton. Paper Collar John performed the distinguished Mr. Forbes.

Beano had just sold Don Stine his own pearl back, but better yet, Joe and Tommy Rina had just put up one hundred thousand dollars to finance their own destruction.

"UNBELIEVABLE," VICTORIA SAID, HER VOICE TRIUMphant. "I never saw this much cash outside of a police property room."

"To Carol," Beano toasted, and they all raised a glass of champagne, including John, who was on the cellphone to Fit-Throwing Duffy in Cleveland. Beano had turned the cashier's check into fifteen hundred crisp $100 bills. They were stacked on the Winnebago's dining table. A celebratory bottle of Dom Perignon was being passed around.

John closed Victoria's flip-phone and raised his glass in a second toast. "Duffy's aboard. He's gonna catch the next flight to the Bahamas. I told him to find us a place to work out of, somewhere down the road from the Sabre Bay Club. Said he'd bring the drills, the cellophane gas, and the '97 McGuire Financial Listings, but he needs us to bring your wheelchair."

"Cellophane gas?" Victoria said. She was feeling a little giddy. She didn't usually drink, and just two glasses of the imported champagne had her off balance.

"For the tat," Beano said. "We drill the dice and load 'em with cellophane gas, which is the only substance on the planet that turns from a gas to a solid when you heat it. Every other substance goes from a solid, to a liquid, to a gas. Cellophane gas dice are much better than regular loadies."

"How so?"

"Duffy found out about this cellophane gas stuff in an article in Scientific American. He figured out how to use it in the tat. It's his discovery. No one else even knows about it, so don't spread it around. It's a family secret." She nodded. "Duffy is the best dice mechanic in the game. He'll switch out the table dice at Sabre Bay with close counterfeits he'll bring with him. This is important because all casinos change the dice at odd intervals and the official dice all have minor imperfections. The Pit Boss can quickly check a pair of dice to make sure they're casino issue. When we hit them big, they're gonna be checking the dice hard, and we need to be using their cubes. Once Duffy's got us ten or twelve sets of casino cubes off the tables, we'll go to our room and drill 'em and put the cellophane in. The way it works is, when the cellophane gas is heated by your hand, it turns solid. That loads 'em so when you roll the dice, they come up on whatever number they're weighted to make."

"Why do you need cellophane gas?" she asked. "Why not just use regular weights?"

"Because, once you start to hit these casinos, they get very nervous and, besides checking the dice, they send over a pit boss who's gonna stand at the table, watching the action. If you're winning too much, he'll also float the dice." Seeing her confused look, he explained: "That means he'll drop 'em in a glass of water. If they roll over, he knows they're weighted on one side and you're busted. Thing about cellophane gas is, it heats fast, but it also cools very fast. By the time he gets it into the water, it's already back to being a gas and therefore equally distributed, so the dice don't roll."

"Pretty clever."

"In order to get Tommy's attention, we're gonna have t'hit his casino for a pile of dough. Between the table and the 'fill cage,' I'd like to get as close to two million as I can. To do that, we're gonna have to be at that table for a while. They won't shut us down if they can't catch us cheating. These dice should have 'em stumped."

"Okay, so what's the deal with the wheelchair?"

"I'll show you." Beano got up and went out of the motor home. Victoria and John followed, watching as he climbed up the back ladder and untied the tarp on the roof. Then he handed down a Quickie Grand Prix Victory folding wheelchair with no seat. Victoria watched as Beano dug around on the roof for a minute. He climbed down with what looked like a portable toilet with a plastic catch basin attached.

"That's a Porta-Toilet seat," she said, grinning foolishly, still feeling giddy from the champagne.

Beano opened the chair, John handed him a rag, and Beano wiped the dust off. He then attached the Porta-Toilet to the seat on the wheelchair and looked up at her. "This is gonna be Fit-Throwing Duffy's work station. He's gonna be a gimp at the table. I wheel him in, park him, and create the distractions. Once he pulls the dice off the crap table, he drops 'em between his legs into the Porta-Toilet. At the same time, he makes a palm switch putting counterfeit dice in the game. Since we're going to be losing big at this point, the Stick-man on the table won't bother to check the dice. They never worry about dice being used by a loser. It won't be until the new Shift Manager comes on and they do a dice count that they'll find our dice, but since they're not loaded, they'll probably just fill out an incident report and do nothing. Neither the Pit Boss or the Shift Manager watching through the Eye-in-the-Sky camera will spot Duffy's switch. He can palm stuff like a close-hand magician. In an hour he'll get us twelve pairs of their trademark dice to drill." Beano turned the wheelchair upside down and showed her a specially designed cartridge clip under each arm where the drilled dice could be snap-loaded. "The doctored dice fit in here. If Duffy wants a seven, he pulls the ace from this side, the six from the other, and holds 'em for a minute, doing some player hooey to stall long enough for the gas to warm up and turn solid. At the same time, he ditches the table dice into the Porta-Toilet. He blows on the loadies, starts sayin' stuff like 'Come on, come on seven. Baby needs a new pair a'shoes,' some bullshit like that. Once the cellophane is solid, he rolls the number and wins".