Stephen Cannell - King Con

"We'd like to have a moment to talk to Miss Luna," Beano said.

"I'm afraid that's out of the question," Ellen snapped and continued dialing her computer phone.

Tommy reached over and depressed the switch-hook. "Nothing is out of the question. Is she in there?"

"She is preparing for a very important stockholders' meeting," Ellen said huffily, pulling his hand off the phone.

"That's gonna work out fine, because I just happen to be a very important stockholder," Tommy growled.

"I… I… I'm still…"

"Who fucking cares?" Tommy said, and walked right past her and into the office without knocking. Beano followed.

Standing in the center of the room, holding a large sheaf of papers, her back to them, was Miss Laura Luna. She was talking on a speaker phone when they burst in: "… no other explanation, Alan? One of our major stockholders must be selling for it to drop like this." And then she stopped and turned around.

Beano had never seen her before. She was a middle-aged, overweight, Janet Reno-sized woman, about five foot eight. Miss Luna was wearing a black pant suit that failed to disguise her immense girth. She had a double chin, and her half glasses were hanging from a chain around her neck. Her stout legs bulged in the loose-fitting pant suit. Beano wondered who the hell she was; then she spoke again and he recognized her. His heart sank. There's no way we 're ever going to pull this off.

"Get out of this office," she said. "I'm preparing for a shareholders' meeting. You can't be in here."

"I'm the only fucking meeting you got that counts," Tommy said and he closed the door behind him, cutting off the noise of the busy office outside. Then he moved to her desk and disconnected the phone.

After John had left to go home to be with Cora, Victoria called the number he had given her. It belonged to a family member named Smart Bates, no X. He was in Los Angeles working on a TV show. Stuart Bates, like Carol Sesnick, was one of the few Bates family members who wasn't on the bubble. Stuart did special-effects makeup for a Space Odyssey television show that was being made on a soundstage in Hollywood. When Victoria told him what she wanted, he had said it was impossible. He needed to make body molds and cure them; he needed to get the correct skin tone to do the makeup. "Two days, working round-the-clock at the very least," he told her… besides, he had a TV show to do. "What time does this have to happen?" he finally asked.

"Eight-fifteen, tomorrow morning," she said. "Beano Bates is running the sting."

"King Con?" Smart said; his voice seemed to hesitate, slightly in awe.

"That's who's running it. We could sure use the help. One of our main inside men just went down."

"Okay, I'll do the best I can," he'd said.

He phoned in sick and chartered a plane, which she said she'd reimburse him for. Stuart had flown up to San Francisco with all of the equipment he could carry. Victoria had next phoned the FBI. "Let me talk to Grady Hunt," she said, and in a minute he was on.

"So far so good," Grady bragged. "Everybody's in town, Tommy and your boyfriend are at the Ritz. Whatta you want?"

"You said I had to call, so I'm calling."

"Then gimme something I don't know, like where's the old duck with the gray hair going? He got on a plane for New Jersey. I got a team set to pick him up in Atlantic City."

"John Bates is going home. Don't follow him, his wife is dying. He's out of the play."

"Boo-hoo and whoop-de-do," Grady said.

"Don't follow him, okay? He's just going to sit at the hospital with his wife. I'm meeting a guy tonight named Stuart Bates. He doesn't know what's going on either. He's doing me a favor, so don't jam him up. He's not part of it."

"Nobody seems to be part of it," he said. "We got a first here, a crime with no criminals."

"I'll call you in the morning before it goes down," she said, and hung up on him. What a jerk.

She'd picked Stuart Bates up at the airport at eleven-thirty, and they had gone directly to a motel that was a few blocks from the Big Store. He'd asked for a room with a bathtub. Once they were inside, he had insisted that she take off all her clothes. She had hesitated, but then thought, What the fuck, and threw caution and her clothes away. She stood naked before him. He looked at her beautiful body and tried to decide which areas to pad.

"I'm gonna give ya the cellulite transformation, a big stern, and thunder thighs," he said. Then he handed her a robe. He poured three bags of plaster of Paris into the tub and had her sit on a chair in the bathroom with her head tipped back in the sink while he made a face mold.

"Okay," he said, "I'm going to give you body padding. I brought some in the huge suitcase. Try it on; we'll probably have to tailor it, but you'll wear it under clothes so it should work. Your hands are going to be tough, a real giveaway. Hopefully, he won't look at them too closely. We'll get a pant suit for you to wear, with pockets. Keep your hands in your pockets to hide them. I don't have time for the hand appliances. I'll do chin, cheeks, and neck. You can look through that suitcase for a wig."

They had started at twelve-fifty in the morning, and seven hours later the sun was up, and he was just applying the finishing touches. She was sitting in a motel bathroom four blocks from the Perm Mutual Building while he fine-tuned the eye makeup and powder-dusted the glued-on appliances. She watched in fascination; he had transformed her into a fat, middle-aged woman with three chins. In high school, Victoria had developed a very funny imitation of her history teacher, Miss Laura Luna. She had been rather large and had a breathy but slightly squeaky voice. Victoria needed a new persona so that Tommy wouldn't recognize her. She decided to resurrect Miss Luna.

Stuart had picked up some size 15 clothes and she had selected a dark blue pant suit, with pockets. It also hid the leg and stomach padding, which were held on with Velcro. The whole contraption weighed over thirty pounds.

She was sweating under it as she cabbed the four blocks to the Penn Mutual Building and took the service elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor. Her FBI tail didn't recognize the woman who hurried past them to the cab stand. Instead, they stayed and watched the empty motel room. She dashed into the President's office just two minutes ahead of Beano and Tommy. Now, with almost no time to get set and settle down, she was face to face with Tommy Rina.

"I'm sorry, I can't meet with anybody right now," Victoria told the ugly mobster.

"Hey, lady." Tommy took a menacing step forward. "Who the fuck you think you're talking to?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," she said, in her breathy soprano. "I've never seen you before in my life. But I'm going to insist you leave my office or I'll have to call Security. I'm preparing for a meeting with our million-dollar shareholders and I only have a few minutes to review Mr. Lacy's notes."

"I own a million dollars' worth a'this oil company," he said, and he yanked open his briefcase and thrust the stock certificates at Victoria.

She looked at them." This is only a hundred thousand shares. The stock is trading at just under six. That means the market value of these certificates is only about six hundred thousand."

"The fuck," Tommy said, "y'mean I'm still losing money?"

"Please leave my office," she said insistently.

Beano pulled Tommy aside and whispered to him, "If the stock goes down, that's good for us. Means we can buy more for our money. Forget the first million," he whispered, "we're talking about billions."

Tommy pulled back and looked at Beano. Finally he seemed to connect to that. He nodded.

Beano thought he needed to slow the pace slightly. He had never played a mark who had less understanding of business. "We're interested in buying control of this company," Beano said to Victoria.