Stephen Cannell - King Con

She looked at him for a long moment. "What kind of deal?" she finally said.

"You come clean and then we'll figure something out."

"Hold on by letting go?" she smiled. "Not with you, Bucko; that only works when the sharper's running the game."

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

"I'm sure you don't," she said, and then sat silent for a long moment. "Don't think we can deal, Gil. Hit me with what you've got and let's see what happens."

He sat there for a long time, looking at the razor-sharp pleat on his pants as if somewhere in that perfect crease was his answer. "Not totally unexpected, but still a shame," he finally said. Then he turned and rang the bell on the door. In a minute it opened. Grady Hunt, in full Kevlar body armor, stepped in. "Take Bates. Use S.I.S… If he runs, use extreme prejudice and put him down hard."

"Be a pleasure," Grady said, then turned and closed the door.

"You're not gonna kill him in cold blood?"

"S.I.S. ain't short for 'sister,'" Gil said softly.

Victoria knew all about S.I.S.; it stood for Special Investigative Service, and they were notorious for the way they did business. They held court in the street by targeting a habitual criminal and, instead of picking him up when they found him, they would follow him, wait until he did a robbery or some other crime, then shoot him in cold blood as he came out of the liquor store with a bag full of cash. It was legalized execution. If S.I.S. was on Beano and he ran, which she assumed he would, then S.I.S. would drop him, no questions asked. It was the operational M.O.

She tried to hold her bluff but she kept thinking of Beano lying in a pool of blood, dying alone. All the while Gil was watching her, meticulously picking invisible lint off his gray suit. Time lapsed until she could bear it no more. "Okay, stop," she said softly. "You've got a deal."

He reached over and hit the button on the door and another cop looked in. "Tell Agent Hunt to put a hold on that order. We may go in another direction," Gil Green said.

Victoria negotiated the best deal with Gil that she could. It included his promise to let her plead Beano's case to the U.S. Attorney after his arrest. Gil insisted she make her statement hooked up to a polygraph machine. She was taken to the next room and connected to "the Box."

During the next hour she told the entire story. She explained the tat, and the moose pasture, and told all about the Big Store. Gil Green and the two FBI Agents listened quietly as the polygraph charted her veracity. When she was finished, she felt tired and dirty and sick. She had given up the con. She had rolled over, and ratted them all out. And her only excuse was she couldn't bear the thought of Beano being killed. The men in the room said nothing as the machine was turned off and she was unstrapped from it.

"I like it," Gil finally said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I like it. If this con works, Tommy will give us Joe. We get Joe, and I win."

The two FBI men in the room didn't understand his change of pronouns. Only Victoria knew he was talking about his chance to become New Jersey's Lieutenant Governor. "Run the scam anyway?" she asked.

"Yeah. Only we're your partners. You keep us informed. Once it goes down, we bust everybody."

Victoria looked at him, not sure what to do. Finally she shook her head in disgust. "You constantly amaze me, Gil. You keep setting one new low after another."

"I'm not the one sleeping with a felon," he prodded her. Then he gave her a satellite vibrating beeper, and told her she had better call in every twelve hours or when they beeped her, whichever came first. If she failed to comply, they would fall on the scam, bust everyone, and all deals would be off.

Then Gil drove with her in the back of a government sedan to the Marina Motel. When they were a block away, he let her out of the car, but he stopped her before she could walk away. "Of course, you understand that regardless of how this goes, I'm going to see that you're disbarred for this."

"See you at the hearing," she finally answered and walked away into the night.

BEANO HAD LEFT VICTORIA AT THREE-THIRTY IN THE afternoon and had driven the yellow Caprice across town to pick up Paper Collar John at his hotel; then they headed toward the Red Boar Inn two blocks off Market Street down by the harbor. Beano could hear them even before he and Paper Collar John pulled into the large asphalt parking lot. The Inn was an arched, two-story, stucco, Spanish-style structure with a red tile roof. There were ten wide-tire trucks parked in the lot, all of them sporting Arkansas license plates, mud flaps, gun racks, and tuck-and-roll upholstery. For some unknown reason each radio antenna had a red feather taped to the tip. The trucks were pristine, and glistened with chrome wheel rims and lacquer paint. The sound of laughter and catcalls was pouring out into the early evening through the open door of room 15.

"Shit," Beano said to Paper Collar John, "they're gonna end up getting busted for noise pollution before we even get them in the lineup."

"I already came down here twice yesterday and talked to the Manager of this place. Gave him an extra five hundred not to call the cops."

"Who's in charge a'these hillbillies now?" Beano asked as they got out of the Caprice and moved toward the room where a huge, three-hundred-pound albino man in overalls was tipped back in a creaking metal chair.

"Hard to tell," John answered. "None a'these Hog Creek Bateses have IQs higher than the Arkansas speed limit. I think it's either the skinny one, Cadillac Bates, or maybe it's the fat guy, Ford."

Beano remembered that more than half of the Hog Creek Bateses were named after their vehicles. The reason for that, he'd been told, was because most of them couldn't read. They chose names they could copy off their trucks for hospital birth certificates.

As they got nearer, they could hear Travis Tritt singing on the full-volume radio, but still barely cutting through the wall of Hog Creek noise. The Albino in the chair, whose skin and buzzed hair were both snow-white, finished a beer and burped at them.

"Hi, cousin. I'm Beano. Cadillac Bates around?" Beano asked and smiled at his huge, inbred relative.

The Albino didn't answer but turned and bellowed over his shoulder, "Yankees comin'!"

"Thanks for that kind assessment," Beano said to the Albino, who blinked pale eyes at him, missing the sarcasm. "Which one are you?" he added.

"Bronco Bates," the young man said, and burped again. End of conversation.

Beano nodded and moved past Bronco into a motel room that had been cleared of all furniture. The king-size bed had been dismantled and stacked up against the wall. The rest of the furniture was piled up in the hall. There were twenty Bateses and two roosters in the room. The men were in a circle cheering, while the game cocks in the center of the room were tearing the shit out of each other. Money was on the floor everywhere, and the men, who ranged in age from twenty to fifty, were yelling obscenities at the two warring roosters. The spectators looked like refugees from a monster truck tournament.

"Jesus," Beano said to John in disgust as the two cocks went at each other.

Finally, one of the birds went down, and the owner of the defeated rooster yelled, "Done," and grabbed his game cock before it was ripped to shreds by the winner. Then a scramble for money took place and finally, after several loud arguments, the gambling seemed to be over. While Tammy Wynette took possession of the radio and started warbling another country favorite, the room full of Bateses seemed to finally notice Beano and John standing in the doorway.

"I'm Beano!" he yelled loudly, just as another huge Arkansas inbred came in from the bathroom with a rooster under his arm and started to unleash him for another bout.