King Con (29 page)

T
OMMY HAD HIS PILOTS LAND JOE’S RED AND WHITE
twin-engine Challenger jet at the Fresno Airport. It was four P.M. They taxied up to the new Spanos Executive Jet Center where Tommy had a limousine and three “heavy bag buttons” waiting. The buttons had driven over from Las Vegas where they worked as freelance muscle. The three enforcers looked like a wall of beef leaning against the front of the car. They watched as the big executive jet turned and parked. The wheels were chocked, and as the engines wound down, they pushed their bulk away from the black Lincoln stretch limousine where they had been bending the shiny fender with their bulk. The leader was a broad-shouldered hitter named Jimmy Freeze. Jimmy had a knife scar that ran down the side of his face like a psychopathic warning and disappeared into his collar. Beside him were the Summerland brothers, Wade and Keith, also ex-pro-football jocks. At over 250 pounds each, they were straining the stitching in their 56 extra-long suits. They had once worked for Joe and Tommy as security, until Joe fired them under dubious circumstances that Tommy didn’t understand. So he threw a little work their way when he could.

When the door opened and the gangplank dropped,
the first one off the plane was Dakota. Her face had swollen and turned purple where Tommy had hit her. Her split lip still needed stitches and dried blood was caked on the wound. She was in obvious pain and walked slowly down the steps, holding the rail for support. She was wearing one of Calliope’s new outfits and it was too small on her. She was followed closely by Tommy. Dakota moved to the car and got in the back seat with painful care and without speaking. As Tommy approached, Jimmy Freeze motioned to her.

“The fuck happened to her?” he asked.

“Shut up and let’s go,” Tommy barked.

He got in the back of the car and the limo pulled through the gate and onto the Airport Highway. Tommy handed Wade Summerland a slip of paper.

“The Mud Flat Marina is the fucking name of the place. Call four-one-one and find out the address. She says these fucks are on a houseboat named
Seismic Shot.
”

They sped past grain storage warehouses and freshly plowed fields alive with flying bugs, and headed toward Fresno. The sprawling city had grown up around the agriculture and the inland waterways that fed into the San Joaquin River, allowing the farm goods to be shipped cheaply to San Francisco on huge grain barges. Wade picked up the cellphone in the car, dialed Information, and got a number. He found out where the marina was and got directions over the phone. Fifteen minutes later, they pulled down the gravel road and parked in the marina parking lot. The place seemed deserted except for one or two cars parked in the lot near a closed, one-room marina office. A blue and white thirty-six-foot Winnebago was at the far end of the lot with the shades down.

Tommy looked at Dakota. “If they ain’t here, ya better make an appointment with a good plastic surgeon.”

“Hey, Tommy, you do what you want? I told you all I know. This is where they said they lived,” she said, weak with pain.

Tommy grunted, and then he looked at Keith. “Stay with her an’ cut her no slack. She’ll surprise you if you ain’t careful. She’s got guts.” He got out of the car with Jimmy and Wade. They walked over to a wood railing and looked down at the sleepy marina. As the name indicated, it sat on a low river tributary which was surrounded by mud flats. It was dusk, and the mosquitoes were beginning to swarm. For some reason they refused to bite Tommy, but vectored relentlessly at Jimmy and Wade, who swung their overdeveloped arms and slapped at themselves as they looked down at the small marina, surveying the layout. An old, decrepit wood dock paralleled the shore and served as a base for three finger docks that jutted out into the shallow water. Tied alone at the end of one of the fingers was a badly maintained, rusting houseboat. The stern said
SEISMIC SHOT.

“If these fucks’re here, I’m gonna chop some fucking lumber,” Tommy said softly. Then he led them down to the dock.

They walked slowly and silently out on the tippy dock, creeping softly as they got closer. They could soon hear talking coming from inside the houseboat. It sounded like an argument. Tommy put a finger up to his mouth and they crept closer until they were just outside the old vessel. It was then that Tommy could hear Beano’s voice over the sound of a top-forty radio station:

“It’s supposed to be a tight hole!” Beano was protesting. “We gotta keep everybody quiet or the whole deal will get out and the U.S. regulators will be in there.”

“Don’t worry,” Duffy responded. “You’re always
worrying. Nobody’s gonna say shit. These guys know what’s at stake.”

The houseboat was about forty feet long and shaped like a shoe box. The faded yellow paint was peeling badly, exposing rusted tin underneath. There were a few tan pool chairs on the back deck that had been cooked and faded by the sun. A window air conditioner was growling loudly.

Tommy pointed at himself and then at the main hatch, indicating he would take the main door, which was opposite the gangplank leading from the dock up to the houseboat. Then he pointed Jimmy to the stern, and Wade to the bow. The two huge buttons nodded, and cracked their knuckles. Then Tommy pulled a 9mm SIG-Sauer out of a hip holster, signaled both men, then charged up the ramp, hit the door, and exploded into the main saloon. …

Beano was seated in a metal chair at the saloon table. He was wearing a striped, shiny tie and thick tortoise-shell glasses. He had a pen protector in the pocket of his shortsleeve shirt. When the door banged open and Tommy appeared in the room, Beano immediately bolted from the chair, heading out the back door of the houseboat. Duffy ran out the front, leaving Tommy, for a moment, alone in the main saloon with a small brown and black terrier, who had been asleep on the sofa and now jerked his head up to see what was happening. There was the sound of a brief struggle on both decks. … Suddenly Beano, and then Duffy, were thrown backwards onto the saloon floor. Jimmy and Wade followed them in, filling the front and back doors with their girth. Tommy put his gun away and moved to Beano. He yanked him up onto his feet and held him by his striped shirt collar.

“Don’t hit me,” Beano pleaded.

So Tommy hit him, knocking him backwards into the
chair. Then he stepped forward and kicked Beano in the nuts. Beano doubled over into a fetal position, still seated in the chair. To complete this brutal choreography, Tommy stepped forward and hit him with a vicious uppercut, straightening him out and knocking him to the floor. Roger-the-Dodger was on his feet, now looking at this in alarm.

“Please, please … I’m just a scientist, I have no money. Don’t hurt us.” Beano had now become a wimpy and very frightened Doctor of Geology.

“You ain’t half as tough as the fuckin’ bitch you hired,” he said to Beano, who was shaking in fear, curled up on the faded, threadbare carpet of the saloon, holding his throbbing nuts in both hands.

Duffy stood up in the center of the saloon. He tried to run again, but was grabbed by Jimmy Freeze and thrown back into the room. … Tommy took one shuffle step forward, timed his punch perfectly, and nailed the stumbling old man with a perfect left hook, knocking Duffy right out of his canvas boat shoes. “Think maybe I’m finally getting that left hook dialed in,” Tommy said to himself. He was slightly out of breath from all the wood chopping he’d been doing. His knuckles were red and sore, but he was happy. He lived for moments like this.

Ten minutes later, Beano and Duffy were tied to the metal chairs in the saloon with an extra dockline that Tommy had found in a forward locker.

It was dark outside, and Tommy had turned on the two old, shaded saloon lights, which were throwing an evil yellow hue on everything. Tommy had been through the boat, but he had not found his money. What he did find was mountains of graphs from the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company that were dated and carefully annotated. They had to do with something called
the Oak Crest Stratigraphic Trap. There must have been forty of them or more. Some were labeled “Biotherm Shot”; others, “Basal Conglomerate” or “Basal Shale Seismic Shot.” There were several pen-and-ink drawings of what looked like a geographic map of the subsoil strata in Oak Crest, near Modesto. They showed a huge underground domed area labeled “Faulted Dome and Cap Rock.” There were seismic maps of things called “anticlines” and drawings of “fault traps.” Somebody had written copious notes in the margins. Tommy glanced at a few before he lost interest. They said things he didn’t care about or understand, like “Reshoot the 3-D seismic for section 16-B.” It was Greek to Tommy, and he could care less. He threw them in a pile on the table. What he wanted was his $1,125,000 back, plus a Utile blood flow for his trouble.

Beano opened his eyes when Tommy threw a glass of water into his face.

“Hey, dipshit, over here,” the mobster said, and Beano looked over at him. His groin was throbbing, and his face was bleeding. Tommy had loosened a few of his teeth. Duffy was still only half conscious, parked in the chair beside him.

“Ahhh,” Beano finally said, trying to regain his senses. “Can’t see, need my glasses. I lost my contacts yesterday.”

Tommy found Beano’s thick, Coke-bottle, tortoise-shell glasses on the floor and shoved them roughly on Beano’s nose. Tommy knew he was menacing, and he wanted this academic twit to get a good look at who he was fucking with.

“Want my money back,” Tommy said, as he pulled up the extra chair, turned it backwards, and straddled it, folding his arms over the back, now holding the SIG-Sauer in his right hand and resting his chin on his forearm.
“You think we can get that done right away?” he said to Beano.

“I don’t have it … I swear,” Beano replied.

“Hey!”
Tommy said sharply, barking the word out so that Beano, Duffy and Roger, who was still on the sofa, all flinched. “I got what they call a social disease,” he said. “It’s more of a psychological disorder, wad-dayacallit, an emotional dysfunction. My problem is I like t’kill. That surprises some people.” He smiled his ghastly smile at them over the back of the chair, and Beano recoiled in horror. Tommy’s chin was still on his forearm, the SIG-Sauer dangling dangerously. “These people, doctors mostly, they say that’s a very serious personality flaw. But I’m not so sure I agree, ‘cause I’m a student of the
Homo sapiens
species, and did you know that killing is inbred into the human DNA, just like wanting t’drive sports cars and fuck good-looking pussy?”

Beano cleared his throat again. “Actually, DNA has not yet been absolutely proven to determine behavioral characteristics. It deals only with physical genetic-code markers,” he said academically.

“Don’t fuck around with me, asshole,” Tommy warned. “Just listen. Now, I’m sayin’ this to you because I would have absolutely no difficulty goin’ down to the hardware store an’ buyin’ a Black an’ Decker, an’ chain-sawin’ you two pricks up a thin slice at a time. I would not cringe from this event in any way, because I have decided not to violate my natural instincts. I’m at peace with this brutal fact.”

“Mr. Rina, I wish I could tell you I had your money, but it’s gone,” Beano said, his eyes magnified through the thick glasses.

“Gone.” Tommy looked down at the floor, then over at Duffy. “Gone?” he asked Duffy, who was just coming back to the party and nodded his head. Tommy
pulled the gun up and put it under Beano’s chin, then he moved it up until the barrel clicked against Beano’s still-sore teeth.

“Okay, okay … It’s not gone, it’s … well, it’s …” Beano looked at Duffy.

“Don’t tell ‘im,” Duffy croaked in despair.

“You fuckin’ guys misevaluate what is going on here. I am a fuckin’ murderous psychopath … clinical. It’s no shit! I got medical papers from Leaven worth shrinks. My dick gets hard over this shit.”

“We used the money to buy stock certificates,” Beano blurted.

“Don’t!” Duffy screamed.

Tommy stood and kicked Duffy’s chair over. Since he was firmly tied in it, he stayed aboard and hit his head on the floor.

“He’s an old man,” Beano pleaded. “Stop it.”

And Tommy moved over and hit Beano three hard shots in the head. His glasses flew off. This time he almost went out. Fireworks exploded in his brain. When Beano finally pulled it back together and squinted at Tommy without his prop glasses, he could see Tommy had a ghastly expression of carnal pleasure on his simian face. Beano pointed weakly: “In the bedroom, under the bed, there’s some loose panels. … Pull them up. There’s a metal lock box.”

“No …” Duffy croaked.

Tommy nodded at Jimmy, who moved quietly into the master stateroom and returned a few minutes later with a metal lock box.

“The key’s around his neck,” Beano said and they grabbed the chain from Duffy’s neck and pulled the key free, unlocked the box and pulled out ten beautifully engraved stock certificates for the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company. Each certificate was worth ten thousand shares. Also in the box were several color
printed brochures for the Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company. The folder that contained the press kit was a bright, glossy, rust-red color, loudly announcing the company’s bright future from every page. There was an entire section describing and highlighting a great projected field in Oak Crest with helicopter photos of Carl Harper’s newly painted, rust-red pipes and cisterns. There was a corporate photo of Paper Collar John. Under the picture, it said he was Linwood “Chip” Lacy, Chairman and CEO. Under that was the Chairman’s message detailing the rosy future of FCP&G.

“What the fuck is this?” Tommy growled in dismay. “Where’s my million dollars?” He threw aside the brochures and rifled through the certificates.

“Stock certificates. We used the money to buy them. The stock is trading at ten dollars a share. We got a hundred thousand shares, but it’s not enough. We didn’t win enough at craps to gain control.”

“You dumb shits used my cash to buy
oil stocks
?” It was beginning to dawn on Tommy that his money was gone and the two men tied in chairs before him, despite being scientists, might also be world-class dimwits. Beano read the look and went to work.