Stephen Cannell - King Con

"Joe… you ain't gonna believe this. We're rich!"

"Where's my money, Thomas?" It was cold the way he said it. He had never called Tommy "Thomas" before. It was almost as if he were addressing somebody he didn't know.

Then Victoria came out of the bathroom. She had removed the body appliances and she wasn't wearing the wig. She looked like herself now as she swept into the room, laughing. "Tommy, honey, there's no toilet paper in the…" And she stopped to look at Joe Rina and the room full of strangers holding silenced automatics.

Tommy finally realized where he'd seen Laura Luna before, but it was too late.

"It's you… you're Victoria Hart," Tommy said.

"You're actually fucking the bitch who was prosecuting me?!" Joe was so mad, he was actually shaking. Tommy had never seen him like this. "Where's my money, Thomas?"

"It's gone, Joe. I bought us an oil company. Look't this," and he moved to the table and grabbed for his open briefcase to show his brother the stock certificates, but they were gone. They had been printed on flash paper, which bookies used to keep their betting records. Victoria had scooped them up on her way to the bath-room and dropped them in the toilet… They'd disappeared in seconds.

"You cunt! You took them. They were here a minute ago, I swear, Joe. Tell him!" he screamed at Beano. "Tell him about the oil company."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Tommy. What oil company? There's no oil company. Just give him his money back. Please, we shouldn't a stolen it in the first place. I knew it," Beano pleaded.

"Whatta you mean, there ain't no fucking oil company?" Tommy said. "Whatta you talkin' about? We used the money to buy the stock."

As Tommy started to get up, Joe kicked him in the face with his shoe, sending him back against the wall. Tommy flashed his anger, jumped to his feet, and started to charge his brother, but two guns were pointed at his face and he froze.

Joe had the hammer back on a nickel-plated revolver and now, slowly, he moved the barrel toward Tommy's eyes. "Where's my money?" he said.

"It's gone but we own the company," Tommy said.

"The money's in the trunk of his car," Beano corrected him.

Tommy looked over, confusion and panic in his beady, lizard eyes.

"Let's go see," Joe said coldly.

They took the elevator to the underground parking area and Tommy was forced, at gunpoint, to give up the keys to his rented Lincoln. Joe popped the trunk open and there, in the back, were the two suitcases that Tommy had brought from Nassau. Joe reached in and opened the suitcases and pulled out several stacks of money, still with the Nassau bank bands around them.

"How'd that get there?" Tommy said, unable to believe his eyes.

"Let's just end this," Joe said to Reo, who waved an arm. A van pulled up with the two sharpshooters in the front seat, then parked next to the Lincoln.

Then Reo produced riot-control plastic wrist cuffs and put them on Beano, Victoria, and Tommy. Reo pushed them toward the van.

"I'm your brother," Tommy said, looking into the hate-filled eyes of Joe Rina.

"I don't have a brother," Joe said. "I used to, but he died."

IT WAS TEN-THIRTY FRIDAY NIGHT AND GRADY HUNT was in an FBI satellite van on Fillmore Street, just off of Geary. It was hot in the back of the van and Denny Denniston had just stepped outside to have a smoke.

Victoria and Beano were somewhere inside the Ritz-Carlton. Grady had several two-man jump-out teams in sedans parked in strategic locations around the hotel. He had placed an agent in a doorman's coat out front. Every time that unlucky agent had to lift luggage off the valet cart and pack it in a guest's car, he would swear at his FBI teammates in low tones over the mike on his lapel.

The paging unit that was in Victoria's purse was sending a very nice signal up to Satcom 6 and bouncing it back to the Global Positioning Satellite Dish on the top of the blue minivan. Grady could follow Victoria, watching her movements on the lighted electronic map on the screen in front of him. The pagers had been developed by the FBI field operation lab and were actually miniature tracking units. He loved giving these special pagers to snitches. He would always page them a few times to let them know he was thinking about them, but the real reason was to activate the satellite tracking in case they took off or got out of pocket. Victoria and Beano thought they had lost Grady on the roof of the Penn Mutual Building, but the beeper gave him back their location in less then five minutes.

The phone in the van rang and he snapped it up. It was Gil Green from his hotel room at the Fairmont, downtown. "Give me an update," the colorless D.A. demanded without preamble.

"They're still cooped. When they leave, I'll call."

"Still at the Ritz?"

"Yeah."

"I wonder what they're doing there. Makes no sense."

"Yeah." Grady was trying to get the politician off the phone. Then his satellite track went hot. "They're moving. Gotta go," and he hung up.

He banged on the back door for Denniston. Seconds later the Vanilla Surprise jumped back into the van. Grady Hunt yelled at his driver, "They're headed down Stockton, just took a left on Broadway," he said, as the driver put it in gear. "Get on the air and tell Larry White this Mobile Command Post is in motion," he said to Denniston, who picked up the mike and switched the scanner over to Tac Two.

"This is Operation Brushfire, M.C.P. We're hot. Target was heading down Stockton, took a left on Broadway."

"Roger that," the voice said back.

Grady leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Put a little oomph in it. I'd like to make visual contact, see what they're riding in."

"Okay," the driver said, and he put the pedal down and the blue minivan accelerated.

Grady grabbed the mike and triggered it as he watched the blip turn on his video map. "He's making a right on Van Ness. He's on Route 101, everybody. I'm going to move up. Intersect point is in two blocks. Hold your pattern," he said.

The others all waited.

In the ex-Delta Force van, one of the sharpshooters was driving, the other rode shotgun. Tommy was seated, his hands cuffed behind him in a backwards seat facing Joe. He was looking into his brother's hollow, cold eyes. Beano and Victoria were in the tan Lincoln just behind them with Reo, Reefer, and Doughboy.

"Joe, you gotta listen to me," Tommy finally said.

Joe didn't respond. His eyes were looking right through his brother.

"We own a fucking oil company. It's the largest stratigraphic trap in the Northern Hemisphere. I bought it for both of us. I found out about it from these two guys who hit the casino in the Bahamas. The old guy, he's a physicist; the young guy is a geologist. They worked for this Fentress County Tennessee oil company. Stop fucking staring through me and listen to me, Joe!"

But Joe Rina said nothing.

"They found this huge oil field. I'm talkin' a fucking monster, Joe. Six acres. Now, I know that don't mean nothin' to you, but if you knew geology, you'd know a six-acre pool is like, unheard of. It's not like some fucking little pocket well with fucking anticlines an' shit. It's a full, shale-roofed stratigraphic trap or some damn thing. That's where the big oil finds always are. And these two geeks worked for FCP amp;G and they proved the field with this well… called a delineation well and…"

"You bought the company?" Joe interrupted. "Is that your story? But the money was still in your car. You think I'm stupid?"

"I don't know how that happened, they musta-"

"What were you doing hanging out with Victoria Hart?" Joe interrupted again. "She tried to put me in jail for attempted murder. We had to kill three people to shake her off. Now she's in your hotel room calling you 'honey' and 'darling.' You make me want to vomit."