King Con (1997)

by Stephen Cannell

  The next morning Beano was in his cowboy getup: fringed jacket, boots, and Stetson. All alone, he opened the front door of Rings 'n' Things at a little past nine and stuck his head in.

  "Howdy do," he shouted into the empty store. Nobody bought jewelry at nine A.M., SO the staff was having coffee in the back. After a moment, Donald Stine came out with a cup in his hand.

  "Good morning ... Mr. McQueed, wasn't it?"

  "Justice McQueed ... sure 'nuf. Good goin' on that. Y'all got a minute? I got a little bit of a problem here. ..."

  "Uh ... well, what kind of a problem? The pearl was okay ...?" Donald looked worried, even slightly frightened.

  "That pearl set me up fat as a Persian prince. Little Honey-dove an' me, we been talkin" bout her goin' on home t'Black Pearl Mesa with me to stay a spell."

  The store manager exhaled with relief. "That's wonderful. I'm glad everything worked out."

  "'Cept she changed her mind ... ain't it just like a woman ...?" Beano let this moment ripen until a look of full panic formed on Donald Stine's face. Donald didn't want to have to take the pearl back in trade. He had purchased it from the Jewelry Mart and sold it to the Texan. He knew a 22mm one-of-a-kind black pearl was a white elephant. He would never get rid of it. It would become perennial inventory.

  "Changed her mind?" Don breathed in as he said it, ending with a slight hiccup.

  "Well, not exactly changed it. ... I mean, what she wants is, she wants another one just like it. She wants earrings. She says she wants me t'buy her a duplicate. So I guess she's got me running with the big dogs now." He reached for his wallet. "I'm gonna let you make 'em up into a set of earrings, maybe get us platinum settings, like you was sayin'."

  "Oh. Oh ... well, look, a pearl of that size and color is very, very rare. You see, they're made by oysters."

  Then came the nature lesson. Beano put his empty wallet away and listened patiently.

  "As you probably know, a little grain of sand gets inside the oyster shell and the oyster makes the pearl to protect itself from the sand. It's a very slow and very individual process. Size and color are all variables. To find a matching pearl of that size would be almost impossible. We'd have to get very lucky."

  "Rich beats luck ever damn time." Beano grinned.

  "Beg your pardon?"

  "I want her t'come home t'Black Pearl Mesa with me, Mr. Stine, and them earrings is gonna do the deal. So, we gotta get her that matchin' pearl at any cost. Comprende?"

  "Well, that's all very easily said, but I'm afraid nature didn't make two pearls in that exact shade and color."

  "Bet nature made one pretty gol-dern close, though. I'll pay you one hundred and sixty thousand dollars for a pearl that's close enough t'be the mate."

  "One sixty?" Don said, greed overtaking good sense. "Lemme get this straight. ... It doesn't have to be exact? Just close?"

  "Hell, son, they're earrings. We ain't mintin' money here. Close is all we need. She's gonna wear the dad gum things on opposite sides of her head."

  "It will take some time. That was a huge pearl. I'll have to put out a fax bulletin and a notice on the International Jewelry Exchange."

  "How long is that gonna take?" Beano asked, sweeping his hat off and dropping it on the glass counter between them.

  "I don't know, Mr. McQueed ... maybe never."

  Beano looked at him sadly. "But you'll try?"

  "For a hundred and sixty thousand dollars I'd swallow a grain of sand and start making one myself," Donald grinned.

  Not a bad joke, Beano thought. But on this hollow-chested man who kept rubbing his hands together like an insect, it only managed to be annoying.

  Beano promised to check back later in the day. After he left, Donald Stine went to the back of Tommy Rina's store and put out a call for a 20-to-24mm black pearl with opaque luster, almost perfectly round. He faxed it to the International Jewelry Exchange. He also put it on the New York-New Jersey jewelry fax. He offered to buy the jewel for sixty thousand dollars, giving himself a hundred-thousand-dollar profit on the deal if he could find a pearl close enough to match.

  Two hours later, a Mr. Robert Hambelton of Hambelton, Deets, and Banbray, a wholesale jewelry company, answered with a fax responding to the recent inquiry. The letterhead said his firm was across the river in New York. The fax pictured a black pearl, opaque, almost perfect. His memo said the pearl he had in stock was 22.5mm in size, but was in a diamond-encrusted setting and that he would have to break up the necklace. He was asking a hundred and fifty thousand, no negotiation. There was a number in New York to call. Donald Stine figured a ten-thousand-dollar profit was better than nothing, so he rushed to his phone and dialed.

  "Hambelton, Deets, and Banbray," a woman's voice said.

  "I'd like to speak to Mr. Robert Hambelton about the twenty-two-millimeter pearl he faxed me a picture of."

  "One moment, please, I'll see if Mr. Hambelton is in." In a moment, Bob Hambelton came on the line.

  "Bob Hambelton here," a thin voice said. "How can I help, please?"

  Donald explained about his customer and about the pearl and the need to make earrings, and that was why his client would vastly overpay for the jewel. Robert Hambelton said he would send the pearl down to Atlantic City that afternoon and Mr. Stine could buy it from their representative, a Mr. Carl Forbes.

  At five o'clock, just before closing, a distinguished-looking man with gray hair and an expensive suit came through the door of Rings 'n' Things. He asked for Donald Stine. His Jewelry Mart I.D. indicated that he was Carl Forbes. He opened his metal suitcase and produced a pearl that Donald Stine would have sworn was almost a perfect duplicate of the one he'd sold the Texan. Donald appraised it and signed for it, then gave a cashier's check for one hundred and fifty thousand, made out for cash, to Mr. Forbes, who then handed Donald the pearl. Then Mr. Forbes put the cashier's check in his briefcase and left.

  Of course, the whole thing had been set up by Beano, using a call-forwarding system he already had in New York. The system routed the call from the number on the fax back from New York to the pay phone at the Shady Rest Trailer Park. Victoria played the secretary; Beano was the thin-voiced Robert Hambelton. Paper Collar John performed the distinguished Mr. Forbes.

  Beano had just sold Don Stine his own pearl back, but better yet, Joe and Tommy Rina had just put up one hundred thousand dollars to finance their own destruction.

  Chapter Eleven.

  DAKOTA, NASSAU, AND TENNESSEE

  "UNBELIEVABLE," VICTORIA SAID, HER VOICE TRIUMphant. "I never saw this much cash outside of a police property room."

  "To Carol," Beano toasted, and they all raised a glass of champagne, including John, who was on the cellphone to Fit-Throwing Duffy in Cleveland. Beano had turned the cashier's check into fifteen hundred crisp $100 bills. They were stacked on the Winnebago's dining table. A celebratory bottle of Dom Perignon was being passed around.

  John closed Victoria's flip-phone and raised his glass in a second toast. "Duffy's aboard. He's gonna catch the next flight to the Bahamas. I told him to find us a place to work out of, somewhere down the road from the Sabre Bay Club. Said he'd bring the drills, the cellophane gas, and the '97 McGuire Financial Listings, but he needs us to bring your wheelchair."

  "Cellophane gas?" Victoria said. She was feeling a little giddy. She didn't usually drink, and just two glasses of the imported champagne had her off balance.

  "For the tat," Beano said. "We drill the dice and load 'em with cellophane gas, which is the only substance on the planet that turns from a gas to a solid when you heat it. Every other substance goes from a solid, to a liquid, to a gas. Cellophane gas dice are much better than regular loadies."

  "How so?"

  "Duffy found out about this cellophane gas stuff in an article in Scientific American. He figured out how to use it in the tat. It's his discovery. No one else even knows about it, so don't spread it around. It's a family secret." She nodded. "Duffy is the best dice mechanic in the game. He'll
switch out the table dice at Sabre Bay with close counterfeits he'll bring with him. This is important because all casinos change the dice at odd intervals and the official dice all have minor imperfections. The Pit Boss can quickly check a pair of dice to make sure they're casino issue. When we hit them big, they're gonna be checking the dice hard, and we need to be using their cubes. Once Duffy's got us ten or twelve sets of casino cubes off the tables, we'll go to our room and drill 'em and put the cellophane in. The way it works is, when the cellophane gas is heated by your hand, it turns solid. That loads 'em so when you roll the dice, they come up on whatever number they're weighted to make."

  "Why do you need cellophane gas?" she asked. "Why not just use regular weights?"

  "Because, once you start to hit these casinos, they get very nervous and, besides checking the dice, they send over a pit boss who's gonna stand at the table, watching the action. If you're winning too much, he'll also float the dice." Seeing her confused look, he explained: "That means he'll drop 'em in a glass of water. If they roll over, he knows they're weighted on one side and you're busted. Thing about cellophane gas is, it heats fast, but it also cools very fast. By the time he gets it into the water, it's already back to being a gas and therefore equally distributed, so the dice don't roll."

  "Pretty clever."

  "In order to get Tommy's attention, we're gonna have t'hit his casino for a pile of dough. Between the table and the 'fill cage,' I'd like to get as close to two million as I can. To do that, we're gonna have to be at that table for a while. They won't shut us down if they can't catch us cheating. These dice should have 'em stumped."

  "Okay, so what's the deal with the wheelchair?"

  "I'll show you." Beano got up and went out of the motor home. Victoria and John followed, watching as he climbed up the back ladder and untied the tarp on the roof. Then he handed down a Quickie Grand Prix Victory folding wheelchair with no seat. Victoria watched as Beano dug around on the roof for a minute. He climbed down with what looked like a portable toilet with a plastic catch basin attached.

  "That's a Porta-Toilet seat," she said, grinning foolishly, still feeling giddy from the champagne.

  Beano opened the chair, John handed him a rag, and Beano wiped the dust off. He then attached the Porta-Toilet to the seat on the wheelchair and looked up at her. "This is gonna be Fit-Throwing Duffy's work station. He's gonna be a gimp at the table. I wheel him in, park him, and create the distractions. Once he pulls the dice off the crap table, he drops 'em between his legs into the Porta-Toilet. At the same time, he makes a palm switch putting counterfeit dice in the game. Since we're going to be losing big at this point, the Stick-man on the table won't bother to check the dice. They never worry about dice being used by a loser. It won't be until the new Shift Manager comes on and they do a dice count that they'll find our dice, but since they're not loaded, they'll probably just fill out an incident report and do nothing. Neither the Pit Boss or the Shift Manager watching through the Eye-in-the-Sky camera will spot Duffy's switch. He can palm stuff like a close-hand magician. In an hour he'll get us twelve pairs of their trademark dice to drill." Beano turned the wheelchair upside down and showed her a specially designed cartridge clip under each arm where the drilled dice could be snap-loaded. "The doctored dice fit in here. If Duffy wants a seven, he pulls the ace from this side, the six from the other, and holds 'em for a minute, doing some player hooey to stall long enough for the gas to warm up and turn solid. At the same time, he ditches the table dice into the Porta-Toilet. He blows on the loadies, starts sayin' stuff like 'Come on, come on seven. Baby needs a new pair a'shoes,' some bullshit like that. Once the cellophane is solid, he rolls the number and wins".

  "You guys have this down to a science."

  "It's not a science," Beano grinned, "it's an art."

  As they were talking, a brand-new red Corvette with the top down pulled through the arch at Shady Rest and parked next to the motor home. Behind the wheel was one of the most extraordinary creatures that Victoria Hart had ever seen. She had long, luxuriant jet-black hair and ivory-white skin. Her green eyes sparkled when she got out of the car. She was not saving anything. Her luscious frame was poured into skin-tight, ripped jeans. She was wearing a tank-top, her chest jutted, and when she moved it didn't look to Victoria like a silicone job. Beyond all of those breathtaking physical attributes there was something else, something intangible: a smoldering, musky sexuality that was palpable and sucked all the available oxygen from the spot where they were standing. Victoria was no wallflower, but she instantly knew she was no sexual competition for the Queen of Hearts.

  "I understand you guys are looking for a capper to rope a mark," she said as she hugged John, but only looked over at Beano. They kept their distance. There was negative tension between them. "How you doing?" she said to him.

  "I'm okay. I see you're having a good year," he said, eyeing the Vette. There was a coldness in the remark that startled Victoria.

  "If you're still pissed, Beano, I'm sorry. I thought we were just screwing around."

  "Yeah," he said, "I guess that's what we were doing."

  "I wanna help. Don't freeze me out," she said, looking at him, holding his gaze until he spoke.

  "You know we're talking about Tommy Rina?"

  "So, I'll thumb some Vaseline up my nose to help with the smell. I can rope that little shit. I'll steer him for you, and if he comes off hot, I'll play the little monkey against the wall." Then, without warning, she turned to Victoria and threw out her hand. "Hi, I'm Dakota Bates."

  Victoria shook hands and introduced herself. Victoria was five-nine but Dakota must have been close to six feet tall. She had showgirl dimensions.

  "Come on inside," Beano finally said, and they moved into the motor home.

  The cash was still on the table. Dakota looked at it. "John said you're running a moose pasture in Modesto with a Big Store in San Francisco." Beano nodded. "You think that's gonna be enough cash?" she asked.

  "If we're careful. We need that to set up the field and rent offices. Victoria, John, and I are gonna fly to San Francisco tomorrow. We'll take around a hundred thousand, you take the other fifty and catch a flight to the Bahamas and meet Fit-Throwing Duffy there. Weil see you in two days. One of us will have to deliver the new McGuire Financial Listings to the casino credit department."

  "How you gonna get Tommy to the Bahamas?" Dakota asked.

  "I checked around. His latest roommate is a redheaded hooker named Calliope Love," Beano said. 'Boardwalk Radio is about to call her up and give her two free tickets to paradise."

  "I thought you 'never pitch a bitch,'" Dakota said, turning to Victoria." Beano thinks girls tantalize but analyze, while guys just jump at the con feet first."

  "Sometimes you gotta break the rules," he said.

  Dakota nodded and put her overnight case on the table.

  "By the way, you don't have to sleep with Tommy," Beano said awkwardly, "just steer him."

  "Hey, sweetheart, let me handle my end of it. How I get this mooch to cooperate is my business."

  "I'm just saying--"

  "Don't," she interrupted firmly; then she saw Roger. "Hey, Rogie. Good to see you, honey." Roger-the-Dodger ran across the motor home and jumped up into her lap, putting his paws upon her magnificent chest.

  "How you doing, Roge?" Dakota said to the terrier as she nuzzled him.

  "A hell of a lot better than you," Victoria whispered to Beano softly.

  Tommy Rina heard about the pearl at noon. When the rich Texan didn't show up to purchase the "matching" pearl, it took poor Donald Stine half a day to figure out what had happened to him. When he realized that he had just bought back the same pearl for a hundred and fifty thousand that he had sold the day before for fifty, he knew he was in big trouble. He couldn't figure out a way to hide the mistake, so he finally called Tommy, who was his boss, and told him what had happened.

  Tommy was standing in the jewelry store in less than twenty minutes. "You fucki
ng let this Texas goof sell you back the same fucking pearl?" he said, amazed. "Did you fucking check your brains at the Automat?"

  "I didn't know it was the same pearl at first. The more I looked at it, the more I wondered. I had the guy from the Jewelry Mart who I originally bought it from come over. He told me. ..." Donald Stine was scared to death. He was sure that Tommy would take him out back and beat him to death with his trademark ballpeen hammer, but that wasn't what happened.

  "Okay," Tommy said, a strange, deadly calm coming over him. His close-set, prehistoric eyes blinked lazily. "I'm gonna get these sorry fucks and put 'em in a new category."

  "Yes, sir," Donald said, figuring the new category was deceased.

  "Happens again, you're gonna be more than sorry, you're gonna get some flashlight therapy. Gonna be a fucking Jersey River whitefish. Smarten up, asshole; this is your only mistake, don't make another." And the little mobster turned and walked out of the jewelry store without another word.

  Tommy moved across the purple and red carpet of Bally's past the faro tables, past the banks of dollar slots, then across the lobby where the chemin de fer tables were located in a plush pit. He moved up to Gus Taggert, the Floor Boss, who was sitting on a regal velvet chair next to a mahogany elevator door that led to the High-roller tables on the second floor.

  "I wanna see S.B.," he said.

  "Come on, Tommy, I can't let you up there. You know you're not carded; I got gaming commission rules to follow." Gus had been given this job because he was harder to get around than a free safety.

  "Hey, fuck you, Gus, and fuck your fucking rules. You want me for a fucking enemy, I'll turn your fucking world shit-black." Tommy was smoking mad. His prehistoric eyes now shone with carnivorous intent. There was something about Tommy when he was mad that melted all resistance.

  "Okay, okay. Calm the fuck down, will ya?" Gus said, backing up, losing all his field position.

  "You calm fucking down!" Tommy shouted back. "Some cowboy hit my jewelry store for a hundred K. I wanta see S. Bartly's cameras. You fucking better get on my team, Gus ... or you're gonna have a fucking scar down where your snake used to play."