Stephen Cannell - King Con

"Dentist drill," Duffy explained as Victoria wandered over, holding the last toast square with caviar. He laid the drill carefully on the table. Then he unpacked an assortment of blades, several dark glass vials that Victoria assumed contained the cellophane gas, and a jar of epoxy, plus a bottle of white paint. The last thing he removed was a small case that contained several tiny single-hair paint brushes.

"This is gonna take a while," he said as he attached a small vise to the edge of the table. Victoria moved over and looked at the twelve pairs of casino dice that were lined up on the far end of the table.

"These the perfects?" she said, picking one up and examining it. "Aside from being perfect cubes, I don't see any difference between these and the counterfeits your brother made," she added.

"Look at the 5 in Sabre," Duffy said.

She held it close and squinted at it. "The 5 is closed at the bottom, like an eight," she said.

"Right. That's the intentional flaw. There's also some dye in the dice. Look't this…" He picked up a small black light and plugged it in.

"Hit the light switch, Beano," and Beano turned off the dining room lights. Duffy put the dice Victoria had in her hand into the table vise and then shined the ultraviolet light through them. There was a purple glow that ran diagonally through the cube.

"Very cool," she said softly.

"Okay, Beano," Duffy said and Beano switched the overhead lights back on.

"We gotta drill this so we don't interfere with that purple stripe. What I do is, I go right through the white spot on the face of the die, create a little hollow tube with the dentist drill. We put the cellophane gas next to the open oven to warm it, which makes it heavy and thick so we can pour it in, then fill the drilled hole halfway up, leaving room so it can expand when it cools and turns to gas. Then we fill the top of the hole with epoxy, closing it, hollow it out slightly to match the others… and paint the dot white again with these single-hair paint brushes."

"How long is all that gonna take?" she asked.

"'Bout four hours if I hurry." He looked at his watch. "We should be ready to run the tat by three A.M. Dakota is gonna get Tommy hammered and get him to her room around one."

Beano turned and moved unexpectedly out of the dining room and into the living room. She could hear him slide open the balcony door and go out, then a patio chair scraped against the concrete deck as he moved it.

"Can I help?" she asked Duffy.

"Nope. This is an art form. Very delicate work. One little slip and the pair are ruined. We might need all twelve." He took the vials of cellophane gas and put them on a chair in the kitchen, next to the open oven. Then he turned the flame on and came back. He picked up the first of the translucent red dice and put it into the vise. "Gonna make my set of weighted sevens first. That means I drill the one and the three, which then brings up the light side, which is two and five." He then picked up the dentist drill, affixed a tiny round drill bit, and turned the instrument on. It made a light whirring sound. Then he poised over the single die in the vise and slowly began to drill out the center spot in the three. Occasionally he would shine the U.V. light to make sure he hadn't hit the purple strip. "In the old days I used ta skip roll the dice," he said, as he worked. "Perfected my Greek shot… That's a controlled roll, where the dice hit the rail one on top of the other so the bottom cube doesn't roll over. Only an expert could do it, but it's easy for a Box-man to spot. Then I started using flat passers; they're basically shaved dice so the four, five, nine, and ten turn up more frequently. Then I invented electric dice," he grinned.

"What're they?"

"Drilled dice loaded on one side with tiny steel slugs. Hadda get in the casino storage room where they worked on the tables and install an electromagnet under the felt. Tough to install, but worth the risk. 'Course that was back when the Pit Bosses were called Ladder-men 'cause they sat up on ladders and watched the tables. That was before TV surveillance, before the Eye-in-the-Sky. I used ta' only work carpet joints 'cause the ritzy casinos didn't float the dice. Them metal slugs would take my loadies straight to the bottom of the glass." Victoria watched in fascination as he talked and finished the work on the first one. "I done 'em all. Worked every tat there is, from Dead Aces to beveled dice with rounded edges, but I ain't never come up with nothin' as good as this." He grinned as he placed the second cube in the table vise. "While I finish this, go out there and calm Beano down. Something's wrong, he ain't been actin' right."

"Maybe because he's still in love with Dakota, who's about to sleep with a hood who could qualify as a hemorrhoid substitute. Some life you people lead."

"It's a living," Duffy said, and he went back to work.

Victoria moved out of the dining room into the living room, got a Coke out of the minibar, and slipped out onto the deck, passing Roger, who had curled up on the silk-covered sofa and was snoring. She sat next to Beano in one of the patio chairs and looked out at the moonlit ocean. A searchlight on the hotel roof was aimed out at the jagged rock outcroppings and lit the sharp foam-wet ridges. They glistened in spotlit beauty.

"Duffy's credit is approved," she finally said. "You didn't ask, but that went off just the way we planned… two hundred thousand."

"The casino manager told us," he said and he fell silent again.

"You didn't want Dakota to be the roper? Was it because you didn't want her with Tommy?" she said.

"It's not about Dakota. I was stupid. I knew she was a mack when I took up with her. I was just so damned lonely I made a mistake. It's over."

She wasn't sure what else to say to him. He was so unlike the Beano Bates of two days ago. The one who'd conned her in the Jersey restaurant and sold the pearl; the one she'd helped set up the moose pasture. This Beano Bates was sad and vulnerable, and she found herself drawn to him.

"Are you afraid of Tommy?" she finally asked.

There was a long moment while he sat absolutely still, not moving a muscle. Then he started to talk. His voice was very soft, almost blown away by the tropical wind.

"I don't know why," he started, "but something happened to me the night Joe beat me with that club. I lost my edge, my mental toughness. I walk around and I think I'm the same, but I'm not. At first, I thought I was afraid of Joe and Tommy, but now I think that's not it. I'm not afraid Tommy will hurt me… but that, somehow, I won't be able to square things for Carol." He never looked at her. His handsome profile was lit by the distant moon and the kick from the hotel lighting.

"All she would ask is that we try," Victoria said.

"No, she wouldn't ask that, not Carol, not the nurse. She'd say, 'Go home, Beano. Don't do this. It's not worth it.'" He hesitated, then went on, "All my life I've been alone. Even with my parents I was alone because we never talked about what we were feeling. For a sharper, that can never be part of it. You're taught to act a role and never reveal anything. You suck it up, play the game, never show weakness. Only suckers show weakness. But I am weak. I'm weak in my center and I've done it to myself. There's an old Gypsy saying: 'If you don't believe in your con, the mark won't believe it either.' I've believed in too many cons. I've passed myself off as so many people, I don't know who I am anymore. I've traded myself away, with tiny pieces of bullshit. The only one I could ever talk to about it was Carol. Carol knew. She was raised by her parents with the same values I was raised with, but she rejected them. We talked about it when we were children. Later, when I was in prison, she told me, 'What you steal won't nourish you. In order to be nourished you need to care about what you're doing.' I used to think I could take pride in running a great hustle… but there was never anything left behind. I had no legacy, nothing to pass on to my children. No children to pass it on to, anyway. Everything was bullshit. So, she was right. Now I'm only left with revenge. Revenge is a pitiful emotion, and it's leaking out of me faster than I can pour the hate back in. So I'm here wondering whether I can even pull this off. I keep thinking, 'What the hell am I doing? How is this going to help her? Am I just trading another piece of myself away, devaluing what's left?' I think that's what's been scaring me."