Stephen Cannell - King Con

"Don't hit me," Beano pleaded.

So Tommy hit him, knocking him backwards into the chair. Then he stepped forward and kicked Beano in the nuts. Beano doubled over into a fetal position, still seated in the chair. To complete this brutal choreography, Tommy stepped forward and hit him with a vicious uppercut, straightening him out and knocking him to the floor. Roger-the-Dodger was on his feet, now looking at this in alarm.

"Please, please… I'm just a scientist, I have no money. Don't hurt us." Beano had now become a wimpy and very frightened Doctor of Geology.

"You ain't half as tough as the fuckin' bitch you hired," he said to Beano, who was shaking in fear, curled up on the faded, threadbare carpet of the saloon, holding his throbbing nuts in both hands.

Duffy stood up in the center of the saloon. He tried to run again, but was grabbed by Jimmy Freeze and thrown back into the room… Tommy took one shuffle step forward, timed his punch perfectly, and nailed the stumbling old man with a perfect left hook, knocking Duffy right out of his canvas boat shoes. "Think maybe I'm finally getting that left hook dialed in," Tommy said to himself. He was slightly out of breath from all the wood chopping he'd been doing. His knuckles were red and sore, but he was happy. He lived for moments like this.

Ten minutes later, Beano and Duffy were tied to the metal chairs in the saloon with an extra dockline that Tommy had found in a forward locker.

It was dark outside, and Tommy had turned on the two old, shaded saloon lights, which were throwing an evil yellow hue on everything. Tommy had been through the boat, but he had not found his money. What he did find was mountains of graphs from the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company that were dated and carefully annotated. They had to do with something called the Oak Crest Stratigraphic Trap. There must have been forty of them or more. Some were labeled "Biotherm Shot"; others, "Basal Conglomerate" or "Basal Shale Seismic Shot." There were several pen-and-ink drawings of what looked like a geographic map of the subsoil strata in Oak Crest, near Modesto. They showed a huge underground domed area labeled "Faulted Dome and Cap Rock." There were seismic maps of things called "anticlines" and drawings of "fault traps." Somebody had written copious notes in the margins. Tommy glanced at a few before he lost interest. They said things he didn't care about or understand, like "Reshoot the 3-D seismic for section 16-B." It was Greek to Tommy, and he could care less. He threw them in a pile on the table. What he wanted was his $1,125,000 back, plus a Utile blood flow for his trouble.

Beano opened his eyes when Tommy threw a glass of water into his face.

"Hey, dipshit, over here," the mobster said, and Beano looked over at him. His groin was throbbing, and his face was bleeding. Tommy had loosened a few of his teeth. Duffy was still only half conscious, parked in the chair beside him.

"Ahhh," Beano finally said, trying to regain his senses. "Can't see, need my glasses. I lost my contacts yesterday."

Tommy found Beano's thick, Coke-bottle, tortoise-shell glasses on the floor and shoved them roughly on Beano's nose. Tommy knew he was menacing, and he wanted this academic twit to get a good look at who he was fucking with.

"Want my money back," Tommy said, as he pulled up the extra chair, turned it backwards, and straddled it, folding his arms over the back, now holding the SIG-Sauer in his right hand and resting his chin on his forearm. "You think we can get that done right away?" he said to Beano.

"I don't have it… I swear," Beano replied.

"Hey!" Tommy said sharply, barking the word out so that Beano, Duffy and Roger, who was still on the sofa, all flinched. "I got what they call a social disease," he said. "It's more of a psychological disorder, wad-dayacallit, an emotional dysfunction. My problem is I like t'kill. That surprises some people." He smiled his ghastly smile at them over the back of the chair, and Beano recoiled in horror. Tommy's chin was still on his forearm, the SIG-Sauer dangling dangerously. "These people, doctors mostly, they say that's a very serious personality flaw. But I'm not so sure I agree, 'cause I'm a student of the Homo sapiens species, and did you know that killing is inbred into the human DNA, just like wanting t'drive sports cars and fuck good-looking pussy?"

Beano cleared his throat again. "Actually, DNA has not yet been absolutely proven to determine behavioral characteristics. It deals only with physical genetic-code markers," he said academically.

"Don't fuck around with me, asshole," Tommy warned. "Just listen. Now, I'm sayin' this to you because I would have absolutely no difficulty goin' down to the hardware store an' buyin' a Black an' Decker, an' chain-sawin' you two pricks up a thin slice at a time. I would not cringe from this event in any way, because I have decided not to violate my natural instincts. I'm at peace with this brutal fact."

"Mr. Rina, I wish I could tell you I had your money, but it's gone," Beano said, his eyes magnified through the thick glasses.

"Gone." Tommy looked down at the floor, then over at Duffy. "Gone?" he asked Duffy, who was just coming back to the party and nodded his head. Tommy pulled the gun up and put it under Beano's chin, then he moved it up until the barrel clicked against Beano's still-sore teeth.

"Okay, okay… It's not gone, it's… well, it's…" Beano looked at Duffy.

"Don't tell 'im," Duffy croaked in despair.

"You fuckin' guys misevaluate what is going on here. I am a fuckin' murderous psychopath… clinical. It's no shit! I got medical papers from Leaven worth shrinks. My dick gets hard over this shit."

"We used the money to buy stock certificates," Beano blurted.

"Don't!" Duffy screamed.

Tommy stood and kicked Duffy's chair over. Since he was firmly tied in it, he stayed aboard and hit his head on the floor.

"He's an old man," Beano pleaded. "Stop it."

And Tommy moved over and hit Beano three hard shots in the head. His glasses flew off. This time he almost went out. Fireworks exploded in his brain. When Beano finally pulled it back together and squinted at Tommy without his prop glasses, he could see Tommy had a ghastly expression of carnal pleasure on his simian face. Beano pointed weakly: "In the bedroom, under the bed, there's some loose panels… Pull them up. There's a metal lock box."

"No…" Duffy croaked.

Tommy nodded at Jimmy, who moved quietly into the master stateroom and returned a few minutes later with a metal lock box.

"The key's around his neck," Beano said and they grabbed the chain from Duffy's neck and pulled the key free, unlocked the box and pulled out ten beautifully engraved stock certificates for the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company. Each certificate was worth ten thousand shares. Also in the box were several color printed brochures for the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company. The folder that contained the press kit was a bright, glossy, rust-red color, loudly announcing the company's bright future from every page. There was an entire section describing and highlighting a great projected field in Oak Crest with helicopter photos of Carl Harper's newly painted, rust-red pipes and cisterns. There was a corporate photo of Paper Collar John. Under the picture, it said he was Linwood "Chip" Lacy, Chairman and CEO. Under that was the Chairman's message detailing the rosy future of FCP amp;G.

"What the fuck is this?" Tommy growled in dismay. "Where's my million dollars?" He threw aside the brochures and rifled through the certificates.

"Stock certificates. We used the money to buy them. The stock is trading at ten dollars a share. We got a hundred thousand shares, but it's not enough. We didn't win enough at craps to gain control."