Stephen Cannell - King Con

"I was ashamed, I guess. Now I know it was a mistake. I know I can't trust Gil Green to keep his word. He'll double-cross me. He only cares about one thing and that's getting into the Governor's Mansion. If I didn't do what he said, they would have killed you."

Beano looked at her for a long moment.

"Whatta we gonna do?" she said, after long moments of uncomfortable silence. She was feeling utterly helpless and totally responsible.

"I guess we better start a fire," he finally said.

THE CALL CAME FROM THE HYSTERICAL EXECUTIVE AT exactly twelve-thirty-five in the afternoon.

"This whole place is on fire!" Victoria screamed through the receiver and then, while the Fire Department dispatcher was talking, the call came in from the building's Direct-Dial Sentry Fire Alarm System. They had electronic confirmation of the blaze at the Penn Mutual Building. "We're trapped up here! We can't go down, the stairs are filled with smoke."

"Go to the roof," the dispatcher on the phone told the panicked C.E.O. "Get everybody up there."

Grady Hunt saw the smoke billowing out of the twenty-fifth-floor windows from his surveillance position across the street. He immediately sensed he was in trouble. He and Denniston ran inside the building just as the first Fire Marshal's unit screeched up.

"Hey, you can't go in there!" the Fire Marshal yelled, but Grady ran in anyway, with Denniston right on his heels.

The building lobby was clear of smoke, but the elevators were full of people from all floors, pouring out in a panic. The alarms were ringing loudly. Grady was knocked down on his way into the elevator, and then run over like a calf in a stampede.

The Fire Marshal grabbed Grady, pulling him to his feet. "I'm not gonna tell you again! We have a three-alarm on the twenty-fifth floor."

"Get your fucking hands off me, Smoky," Grady said, pulling out his badge and pushing it in the fireman's face.

"I don't care if you're President Fucking Clinton. Get the hell out of this building, asshole!" the Fire Marshal screamed.

Then Grady and Denniston grabbed the startled man, knocked him down, and jumped into the elevator. They made it all the way up to the twenty-fourth floor, where the elevator computer-locked and prevented them from going any higher. They jumped out, found the fire stairs, and ran up to the top floor of the building. Smoke was billowing down the staircase at them, and when they got to twenty-five, they could see why… There were two huge wastebasket fires burning on the top landing.

"This fucking guy," Grady said, as he burst through the fire door onto the twenty-fifth floor, which was almost completely full of smoke. Several of the plate-glass windows had been broken on the east side and smoke was billowing out into the afternoon air. Under each broken window was another raging trash can fire. Nothing else on the floor was burning. The cans were full of stuffing ripped out of the office chairs and they were putting out thick, black smoke.

Then they heard an approaching helicopter. "Roof!" Grady yelled. He and Denniston pulled guns and ran back to the fire stairs.

As they were climbing to the top, they could hear the chopper landing. When they broke out onto the roof, Beano was waiting. He delivered a solid right cross to Grady's square jaw. The Fed catapulted back onto the landing and was out.

Alex, Tommy, and Victoria were running to the chopper, which was just setting down.

Beano looked over at a shocked Denniston, who was now holding his pistol, half-pointed at him. Beano kicked at the gun and it went flying out of Denniston's hand. He and Denniston faced off. Beano didn't think this blond pastel prince was going to be much trouble. Then he got the Vanilla Surprise: Denniston lost his temper and exploded in a rage, charging Beano and taking him down.

Tommy saw this from the helicopter and looked over at Beano, who was now rolling around with some guy in a tan suit he'd never seen before.

Tommy had thought the building was on fire and wanted to get the hell out of there. He had not seen the trash can fires because Beano had lit them and let the floor fill with smoke before breaking the windows and steering a shaken Tommy out of the conference room, where he had just finished packing up his briefcase with stock certificates. Victoria shouted, "Up on the roof!" and he'd gone without asking questions, lugging his briefcase with him. Now, he looked out of the helicopter and saw his personal corporate geologist getting pounded. He climbed down to help.

"Only got room for one more!" the chopper pilot yelled, so Tommy, who didn't want to lose Dr. Clark just yet, got out, walked over to where Denny Denniston was choking Beano, and calmly kicked the Vanilla Surprise in the head. He helped Beano up and they moved to the chopper…

"What about that other guy?" the pilot said, pointing at Denniston, who was sitting with his head in his hands.

"He said it's okay to come back and get him on the next trip," Tommy said.

The helicopter lifted off and away. They flew to a chopper pad five blocks down and were let off. Beano, Alex, Tommy, and Victoria got out, then the helicopter pilot lifted off to return for the last man on the roof. Alex was shaken. He'd had enough and wanted to go back to his office. Tommy, Victoria, and Beano cabbed back to the Penn Mutual Building and slipped into the parking garage, where they got in Tommy's rented car and sped away without being seen in the commotion.

"Here's to the fucking oil," Tommy said, as he raised a glass of Scotch and drank it down. He already looked half in the bag, grinning at his captive audience of Beano, Miss Luna, Wade and Keith Summerland. Keith still had his left ear bandaged from where Victoria had hit him a couple of days before. "Where're these fucking girls?" Tommy asked Wade, who had made a deal to have some strippers brought over from the Pussycat Theater in the Tenderloin District.

"They oughta be here any minute, Tommy," Keith said, and Tommy poured himself another glass, then looked over at Victoria.

"You say you've never been to Vegas?" he asked her, and she shook her head. "This broad looks real familiar. This is like fucking drivin' me nuts, but I'm gonna pin it down."

They were in Tommy's suite at the Ritz. He had the stock certificates in his open briefcase on the table. "So here's the deal," he said, turning back to business and looking at Beano with a lopsided grin. "Since Dr. Sutton turned out to be a fucking hemorrhoid specialist instead of a physicist, I ain't giving him his end. His twenty percent goes to me. And as for your twenty percent, Dr. Clark, I'm thinking it's way too much. What the fuck did you do?"

"Mr. Rina," Beano said. He had lost his prop glasses on the roof in the struggle with Denniston and was now squinting at Tommy, pretending he could barely see him. "I did everything. I found the field. Without me, we wouldn't have the oil company at all. We made a deal, and a deal is a deal," he said lamely.

"You got our deal on paper?" Tommy asked, grinning maliciously.

"Well, no," Beano said, "but we have a verbal agreement."

"We do? Got any witnesses to this fucking verbal agreement?"

"Dr. Sutton-"

"He don't count. Anybody else?"

"No sir, but surely you remember-"

"No, I got no recollection of no deal with you, douchebag. And since that makes it your word against mine, I sure hope you ain't calling me a liar, 'cause if you are, I'll fucking ballpeen your geeky ass through the floor." And then he smiled and looked at Wade and Keith, who were smiling with him. "This business shit ain't so tough. Everybody makes it sound tough. Not tough at all." The two ex-linebackers' smiles were strained and unnatural, like the grille of a fifties Buick. Tommy was only five-eight, but he scared the two exlinebackers to death.