Stephen Cannell - King Con

"It's just… you keep threatening me. I'm not a brave man. I don't pretend to be a hero. I'm interested in this field on a geological level primarily, and yes, if I make some money, that's wonderful. I'm trying to say to you that I view you as a real asset in this situation, but you keep holding a gun and threatening me like I'm some kind of low-life criminal who's just on the edge of jumping you. I'm not a physical threat, I've never even been in a fight in my entire life. So can we please stop acting like little children?"

Tommy loved to hear weasels weasel, and he smiled at this concert of gutless pleading. He didn't answer, but a few minutes later, he did tuck the gun back in his pants.

"Okay, got 'er off," Steve said, as he pulled the heavy plate back and Tommy looked down the cement-walled, metal-jacketed hole. He took a quarter out of his pocket and held it over the opening and dropped it, waiting for it to hit. Since the hole went down only twenty feet, Beano had to cough loudly at about the right moment to avoid the slight possibility that Tommy would hear the quarter hit.

"We better get outta here," Beano warned.

"So, you hit oil right here, huh?" Tommy asked, ignoring him.

"That's right," Steve Bates said. "Pumped fifteen thousand gallons t'prove out the well. Took it right up outta that little five-inch hole."

"So, where's the oil?" Tommy insisted. "You said you can't leave it on the ground… so you gotta do something with it. Where is it?"

"Over there," Beano said, pointing to the large, two- story-high, rust-red cistern with the white company letters displayed proudly on the top.

"The fifteen thousand gallons is in there?" Tommy said, squinting at it in the moonlight.

"That's right. This tank is supposed t'be empty, so nobody even checks it," Beano said. "We hadda put the oil somewhere. We had the flow meter on her and we fed the spillover into that nine-inch ground pipe and that pumps it into the storage system over in that cistern."

"Let's go see," Tommy said.

"Huh?" Beano replied.

"I wanna go see the oil."

"The cistern's sealed, you can't get inside it."

"Bullshit. I can get in anywhere I want. Now, let's go."

"That tank's buttoned up airtight. I'm telling you, you can't get in there," Beano insisted.

Tommy grabbed Beano by the shirt collar and pulled him up close. "I'm not getting through to you, Doc, and that really pisses me off. How smart can you be if every fucking question I ask, you come back with 'Huh?' or T can't do mat. "Huh?' isn't a fucking answer. You got me? I say I wanna go see the fucking oil, you say 'Follow me,' or 'Yes, Mr. Rina.' Any other answer is gonna get your fucking head punched." Tommy was spitting the words into Beano's face and spraying his Coke-bottle glasses.

"I'm just telling you the facts. I don't see why you insist on this violent presentation of your position."

"'Cause I don't fuckin' like you," Tommy explained.

"O-Okay," Beano said, stuttering slightly. "Okay."

Tommy finally released him. "Now, are we gonna go get a look at that oil or we gonna stand here jerking off?"

"We're gonna go get a look at the oil," Beano said.

They moved back to the car and then over toward the main cistern. A full moon glinted on the fresh paint as they climbed the small ladder to the top of the cistern. Only Wade stayed behind with the car. Once they were on top of the two-story metal container, the entire field could be seen spread out before them in the moonlight… Acres of rust-red pipes criss-crossed the field, punctuated by three other rust-red cisterns; it was all very impressive. Across the road was the abandoned office building that Beano had found, which was now also painted in the company colors. A big sign out front read:

Tommy had brought a crystal glass and one of the decanters from the limo. "Open this fucking thing up," Tommy said to Beano, pointing at a three-foot-square hatch in the cistern, which was held in place by twenty rusting bolts.

"How? We'll never get these bolts off and it's gonna be rank in there. Crude oil is very rich, organically speaking. It smells terrible."

"Open it up," Tommy repeated. "I wanna see the oil."

Finally Steve stepped forward. "We can get these here bolts loosened, I think. They're three-fourths of an inch. I think most tire irons is three-fourths. We could use the lug wrench outta the trunk."

They sent Jimmy Freeze down to get it. He returned a few minutes later with the lug wrench. He and Steve went to work unbolting the hatch. It was slow going, but they all took turns, except Tommy, and twenty minutes later they had it off. It was now three-thirty in the morning. They lifted the metal plate off the big cistern and set it'to the side of the opening. Tommy leaned over and sniffed at the hole. "Don't smell nothin'," he said.

"You'd have t'climb down," Beano said nervously.

"If there ain't no fucking oil down there, you're one dead fucking geek."

"Maybe they found it and drained it," Beano stuttered. "You can't just kill me if it's empty."

"Watch me," Tommy promised.

"The tank's ladder is right here, inside to the right of the opening," Steve pointed out, to change the subject.

Tommy looked at Jimmy Freeze. "Go down there an' get me some oil, Jimmy."

"Ahhh, Tommy, how come it's gotta be me?"

"'Cause I said so, and I wanna keep my eyes on these assholes."

Jimmy took the decanter and the glass and slowly lowered himself over the side and found the ladder with his toes. They watched while he disappeared down into the cistern. There was a deep bonging every time he kicked the side of the cistern with the toes of his shoes. They could hear him coughing and then they heard him swearing. A few minutes later, Jimmy Freeze reappeared at the opening of the cistern. "There's a bunch of it down there, filled almost halfway up." His eyes were watering from the fumes.

"This is a thirty-thousand-gallon reservoir; that's fifteen thousand gallons in there," Steve said.

Then Jimmy lifted the crystal decanter up and set it down by Tommy's feet and climbed out of the cistern. Tommy picked up the decanter and looked at it in the moonlight. It was half filled with crude oil.

"Son-of-a-bitch," he said, looking at the black gold.

"I told ya. When are you gonna believe me?" Beano said.

"Right after I get this analyzed," Tommy said.

The oil in the cistern had been brought up from Santa Barbara. Steve had bought it from an offshore rig. When Tommy sent it to a lab, he would be told it was high-quality, 90 percent pure crude with no shale content. Of course, there wasn't fifteen thousand gallons in the cistern. There was only fifty. Since oil is lighter than water, all they had to do was float the fifty gallons of crude on top of Carl Harper's water supply. There was only six inches of oil floating on top of fifteen thousand gallons of water.

They put the stopper on the decanter and climbed back down to the ground. Once they were all back in the limo, Beano looked over at Tommy. He could see it wasn't going to be necessary to take him to the little oil office in the morning and run him through that maze. The ugly mobster was hooked. He kept looking at the oil in the decanter. He would pick it up out of the decanter rack every few minutes, hold it in his hands, look at it again, and smile. "Okay, you guys, I'm in."

"How much of this is ours?" Beano said. "We still haven't discussed an equitable stock distribution."

Tommy looked over at him as if the thought hadn't even occurred to him. "How's sixty-forty?" Tommy said, a small smile on his face. "Of course I get sixty, you guys run the technical stuff and get forty."

"This is fucked," Duffy said.