Stephen Cannell - King Con

The next morning they set up the moose pasture. It was so easy, it was almost ridiculous. They drove down the entrance road of Cal Oaks Farm in their green Escort with the Agriculture Department decals on the door, decked out in their doctored jump-suits. The clipboards held prop pages torn from the phone book. Yellow hard-hats rode officially on their heads. They pulled up next to the barn where a startled, heavy-set blond man in coveralls looked up. Beano already knew that his name was Carl Harper from some letters he'd looked at in the mailbox out by the road. Beano glanced down at his clipboard as he got out of the car.

"Jill, this is the Harper place, am I right?" he said, loud enough to be heard.

"Believe so, Danny," she said, her heart beating frantically as Carl Harper walked up.

"I help you folks?"' he said; his pale eyes zigzagged suspiciously around, from their faces down to the door of the car and back up to their uniform pocket decals.

"Well, I'm hoping," Beano said and gave him the rainmaker. "I'm Danny Duncan with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and we're out here trying to help the space engineers at NASA this morning," he grinned.

"How's that?"

"Well, NASA and the U.S. Army coordinated on developing a brand-new kind a'paint." He turned to Victoria. "You wanna show him, Jill?"

From the back seat she pulled a can of paint that they had mixed that morning with their two-to-one formula. The paint was now a rusty, coppery-reddish color.

"This here is called Ferrous Oxide Paint," Beano began, "and what it's supposed to do is protect exposed metal, for in the neighborhood of fifty years. The deal here is once it's on, you don't have to repaint for half a century, if you can imagine that. NASA and the Army came to us over at D.O.A. and said maybe we could get some farmers around here to allow us to put it on their pipes and water cisterns, sorta give it a test."

Harper wiped his nose with a big red handkerchief, then stuffed it back into his back pocket. "Kinda bright," he said, looking at the paint, already trying to imagine it on all his exposed metal. "What you say's in it, again?"

"Well, I admit I ain't a chemist," Beano said, "and I ain't quite sure. Jill, what's in this stuff? You got them specs?"

Victoria looked on her prop clipboard. "It's basically an aluminum-phosphate-based paint with sulfur and cilineum nitrate," she said, cursing herself because her voice was shaking.

"There ya go," Beano said, smiling. "I think the cilineum nitrate is yer magic ingredient."

"What's the deal again?" Harper said, looking at them closer.

"Well, sir, I've been driving around all morning looking for a farm that looks like the pipes and cisterns're about due for a paint job. What we'd like to do is paint your exposed metal out there with this stuff and see if NASA and the Army are right. You probably won't have to paint again for fifty years. Cost to you is not one red cent. We'll wanna put some white letters, FCP amp;G, on the cisterns to identify your farm from the air," he said, reading off the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas initials.

"FCP amp;G? What's that stand for?" Harper asked.

"It's the paint. Ferrous-oxide Cilineum Phosphate. G stands for government," he smiled. "Also, they wanna see if the normal letter paint affects the base coat. If ya say yes, you're gonna be helping your government. Can you imagine the tax savings if all the tanks and jeeps and such don't have to be painted but once every half-century?"

"I don't gotta pay nothin'? And you all're gonna paint all my pipes and cisterns for me and this stuff is gonna last fifty years? What's the catch?" he grinned.

"Kinda strange, ain't it?" Beano grinned. "Your government's finally givin' ya something back."

"Son of a gun," Carl Harper said, figuring this was indeed his lucky day. "When y'all need to start?"

"First thing tomorrow," Beano said. "Just need you t'sign this official release…" He had typed up a release on the motel office typewriter that morning. It didn't look very official, but Beano said once they got that far in the scam, it wouldn't matter. The farmer would already be a laydown. And since they were really going to paint his pipes for him, he was the only mark in this scam who would actually be coming out ahead.

Mr. Harper signed the paper without a second glance, then shook hands with both of them, grinning the whole time.

As they drove away, Victoria couldn't stop smiling.

"We're gonna have to get you a tattoo under your watch," Beano said, and suddenly they were both laughing.

PAPER COLLAR JOHN WALKED THEM THROUGH THE BIG Store, which was on the top two floors of the Perm Mutual Building on Market Street. The offices had once belonged to State Mutual Insurance, and had housed the Account Supervisors, Vice-Presidents, and the company's Regional Director. The spare-no-expense, taste-conscious executives had put in matched blond cypresswood paneling and white plush-pile carpet. When S.M.I, had closed this office two months ago, they had removed everything of interest except for some built-in lighting and one brass chandelier in the main conference room. The two floors were now empty, but very promising. Beano, Victoria, and Roger followed Paper Collar John around the floor, over parqueted wood where Roger's toenails tapped musically, then across plush white carpets where everybody's shoe leather squeaked. They walked in and out of sumptuous office suites and secretarial areas with their matching wood walls and paneled filing cabinets. Beano had already filled John in on the moose pasture at Cal Oaks Farm, and had given him Steven Bates's name and number, and the number of the real-estate agent who handled the deserted construction company across from the farm. Now, John was giving Beano the terms of the lease deal:

"I got both floors on a short lease, first and last month in advance. It was more than I planned to spend, ate up half the front money, but it's as good a setup as I ever saw, so I went five grand over budget." John stopped in front of a picture window that looked out over the city. Cable cars climbed the steep hills like brightly painted Chinese beetles. "I called the museum and told them I was the President of Fentress County Petroleum and Gas. By the way, I'm calling myself Linwood 'Chip' Lacy. I said I was a big art lover and that I'd like to sponsor some young local artists… but that I need to live with the art for a month before buying. I said we'd be interested in donating some of our wall and pedestal space to promising San Francisco artists and sculptors to be reviewed by major art critics at our grand opening in January. They're ecstatic. It should get some pricey stuff in here for no money," he said, surveying the acre of paneling.

"Good going," Beano said as they wandered in and out of the offices.

The west windows looked out at Exxon Plaza and the Golden Gate Bridge. The huge Exxon sign with the double locking x's glittered in red from the roof across the street.

"Damn, that's sweet," Beano said, as he admired the view. "Nice to be able to keep an eye on our competitors," he grinned.

"I'll rent furniture and do the decorating myself," John said. "Fax machines, phones, all that stuff will be mostly rentals. We'll put extra office noise and pages through this speaker system from a background tape," he said, pointing to recessed speakers in the ceilings. "Still, I'm gonna need five to ten thousand more to do it right," he said.

"Looks great. How long will it take?"

"Two, three days, if I hurry and don't get messed up. Also, I need to staff this place. I need at least forty-five people, so I'll have to see how many Bateses are in the area. I checked the book, it looks pretty thin."