King Con (44 page)

Joe walked in and looked disdainfully down at his brother, a black mixture of anger, betrayal, and disappointment filling his eyes. “Yeah, without Joe we sure wouldn’t have a pot to piss in. You sure got that right, Tom.”

Tommy was up on his elbows, astonished by the presence of his brother. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Jersey.”

“I thought you were in Sabre Bay till I found out you were robbing my bank in Nassau.”

“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.”

I
T 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&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.”

“She was in makeup, Joe. I didn’t recognize her. She was pretending to be Laura Luna, the company’s Financial Officer. See Chip Lacy, he’s the President of the company, but he had a heart attack and…” Tommy stopped because Joe rubbed his forehead in disgust. “Listen, this whole thing sounds stupid, I know … but if you’ll fucking listen, Joe, just listen to me, I’m sure you’re gonna—”

“You know why I quit clipping guys and started letting you do it?” Joe interrupted for the third time.

“Look, Joe, this whole fucking thing … I can explain it.”

“Reason I quit was I couldn’t stand listening to dead men whine. You
used
to be a man; don’t go out whining. Not that I care about memories anymore… but why don’t you help me here and stop it? You’re nothing but a walking piece of yesterday. A disappointing part of my personal history.”

“Joe, how can you say that?”

“Only reason I don’t put you down right now,” Joe continued, “is this suit is raw silk, and at this range, I’m gonna get pieces a’you all over me from the back spray.”

Tommy looked into Joe’s eyes and saw such cold clarity that he knew his brother wasn’t kidding.

“Joe, please listen … just let me …”

But Joe thumbed back the hammer and fired a shot. The driver of the van jumped and almost ran off the road. The bullet tore through Tommy’s chest, puncturing his lung. He jackknifed forward from recoil and landed on Joe’s lap, pouring blood all over the black, raw silk suit.

“Nuts,” Joe said softly, then pushed his stunned and bleeding brother back into a sitting position. “Now shut
up, will ya? I don’t wanna hear any more.”

They arrived at the Presidio entrance on Lombard. Reo pulled the Lincoln around in front of the van, got out, and, using a padlock key he had in his pocket, opened the gate of the old, abandoned military base. It sat on fourteen hundred acres of prime waterfront land and used to be the military command center for the eight Western states until it was closed because of budget cuts. The site was magnificent, with its wood-frame, turn-of-the-century architecture. The clapboard structures were built in the 1870’s, with large bay windows that looked out on the Golden Gate Bridge. Reo stood aside as the Lincoln, driven by Doughboy and containing Reefer, Beano, and Victoria, pulled through the gate, followed by the sharpshooters in the white van with Joe and Tommy. Once they were through, Reo locked the gate. Then he got in the Lincoln and they pulled up Presidio Boulevard, past the deserted Letterman U.S. Army Health Clinic with its low eaves and slanting roof. They passed the old wood-frame Army Headquarters, which was closed up and abandoned. They turned left on Arguello Boulevard and headed up into the hills, leaving the base and the road lights behind. They drove south on the old rutted road, climbing toward the wooded hillside where Reo and his squad had done their LURRP training years before.

“They’re in the Presidio,” Grady said into the mike as he hunched over his GPS unit in the back of the van. He had a slight tinge of annoyance in his voice. “They could get lost up there. Let’s move in. I’m gonna take the Lombard gate, you guys go in on Presidio Boulevard. Don’t fuck with the lock, break it off if you have to.”

Denniston was already out of the van and had taken the tire iron and busted the lock on the Lombard gate.
He got back in the van, and they drove up into the Presidio. … Following the GPS, they turned south, heading up into the hills that overlooked the old military base and San Francisco Harbor beyond.

The sharpshooter parked in a wooded area and set the hand break on the white van. An unusual gale wind several months before had blown trees down in this area of the Presidio. It was dense with fallen trees and thick underbrush.

They got Tommy out of the car, still handcuffed. His legs were weak, and he stumbled in front of his little brother. He didn’t look like he would last much longer or make it much farther. Blood was running down the front of his shirt and also out a large exit wound in his back.

When Beano saw him, he knew they were in trouble. The entire con depended on keeping Tommy alive to testify. He hadn’t thought Joe would shoot him in the van. With Tommy dead, they didn’t have a witness. Joe Dancer would get away clean.

They moved through the underbrush, and Reo found a foot trail that led into a clearing. This was the place where Reo’s weapons team had done Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol training. Reo and his crew knew every inch of this terrain, especially the underground network of caverns that had been built to prepare them for tunnel fighting. Reo’s S.I.O.P. called for them to kill Tommy, Victoria, and Beano, then drag their bodies down into one of the abandoned tunnels and, using a physics package made up of C-4 and a radio detonator, collapse the tunnel, burying the three bodies fifty feet down under tons of soft earth. They would never be found.

The group of nine moved along the footpath, and finally out into the clearing. Reo kicked back a big piece
of wood that had been covering a man-sized “spider-hole” trap door just like the ones Charley had used in Vietnam.

“On your knees,” Joe said to the three of them.

Tommy was coughing blood now. He half dropped to his knees, and the loss of blood was making him dizzy. It was all he could do to stay upright.

Beano knew they were all just seconds from oblivion.

Doughboy had set up down the road to guard their backs. He heard cars coming, so he edged up on the ridge and looked down at the road below through a Starscope. He could see a blue van with a satellite dish, being followed by several cars full of men. He made them instantly as Feds, and grabbed his mike.

“I got a number ten situation here,” he said.

Reo had his Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine gun out. He slowly lowered it and triggered the walkie-talkie instead. “Whatta you need to fix it?” he said.