"Why Modesto?" she asked.
"The San Joaquin River valley is one of the last potentially huge oil basins in the Northern Hemisphere. Only a few meager natural gas wells have come in so far, but there's still a lot of speculation. That valley has what geologists call a huge sandstone stratigraphic trap. That gives it the makings of a major discovery. It also makes it a perfect place to run a moose pasture, because if any mooch we're targeting decides to check it out, our story is gonna make sense geologically."
They drove the light green Ford Escort out of San Francisco and headed east on State Highway 9. Soon the cityscape turned to rolling farmlands. Roger had found a place in the back seat and was back there having doggie dreams, yipping and licking his lips. They drove in silence for almost an hour. Beano was still wondering about Victoria. She was an ex-prosecutor… It was a little disconcerting to him to think she had been able to infiltrate him this deeply. He wondered if it was her guile and beauty that had softened him, or perhaps their common interest in revenge. Or maybe it was just another by-product of the beating with the nine-iron that he suspected had turned him soft. He had caught himself several times trying to make her smile, using his number-ten rainmaker and being crushed when it failed to get results. Now her silence was beginning to bother him more than his failed smile.
"You okay?" he finally asked.
"Yeah, I think." Victoria had a strange expression on her face.
"Say it," he encouraged. "What's on your mind? You've been too quiet. It's beginning to spook me."
What she said was not the condemnation he expected, but unrestrained excitement.
"I didn't know it was so easy to do stuff like this. I mean, that gag with the pearl was brilliant. We didn't even break any laws. We just sold a pearl for an inflated value… now we got this phony oil company complete with stockholders and registered land."
"Didn't you ever work bunco?" he said, surprised. "Didn't you ever catch a big securities-fraud case?"
"I prosecuted a few bunco cases, but they were just block hustles, street scams. Two years ago I plea-bargained a case where this street hustler, I can't remember his name, was selling mechanical dogs that were supposed to bark and walk around, only they were defective. They would walk but not bark. The con man got 'em from the factory for two-thirds off, and when the mark would bend down to look at the toy dog, this faker would actually throw his voice and make the barking sounds himself. He sold hundreds at Christmas. It was so cheesy it made me laugh. He got seven months, but it was nothing like this. This is a big-time criminal enterprise."
Coincidentally, Beano knew the block hustle she was talking about. It was a Bates family specialty. They bought the defective toys from a manufacturer called The Talking Animal Farm. They also bought ducks that didn't quack, which were Easter favorites, and Santa's elves that refused to say "Ho-ho-ho." He also thought he might know the arrestee in Victoria's story. It was most likely a second cousin of his, named "Sidewalk Sonny" Bates. Sonny had taken a fall in Trenton about two years ago for running that grift, but Beano decided not to mention it.
"Victoria, if you want justice for Carol, I promise I'll get it for you. I'll get Tommy and Joe to rat each other out, but you gotta stick with me."
"I know. Hold on by letting go, multiply by dividing. It's just that I've always held on by holding on, multiplied by multiplying. This is a big change for me." She was silent for a minute. "My whole life I've tried to stand for something, something I could be proud of."
"And that thing you were standing for… did I miss a beat or didn't it just chew you up and spit you out?"
"That doesn't mean it wasn't worth believing in."
There was a deep silence in the car, and then Victoria smiled. "Well, that's over with now. We're near Modesto. Let's go find our moose pasture."
"Gotta pick a company color first. There's a hardware store up ahead."
They pulled up in front of a turn-of-the-century wood-frame building called Hobbs Ranch and Farm Supplies, got out, and went inside. The store had metal racks, neon ceiling lights, and a linoleum floor. Beano moved past the farming displays to the back of the large, brightly lit store. The entire back wall was devoted to outdoor paint products. He stood with Victoria, looking at a paint-chip sampler that was on the wall.
She reached out and took an emerald-green chip and showed it to him. "This is pretty. Tennessee is a green state, looks kinda like what I think a Fentress County, Tennessee, company should look like."
"When I say the words 'ferrous oxide,' what color comes to mind?"
"Some kinda rust, I guess…"
"We need something that looks like it could contain ferrous oxide. This hustle has to work in two directions."
"Of course you're right." She turned and picked out a bright orange chip and handed it to him.
"Yuck." He winced.
' It's not such a bad choice when you remember everything our government does is intentionally ugly," she said.' it's part of the government's design-cost-use equation. It promotes function over style, and cost over function. It's why everything looks like hell and doesn't work."
"Okay." He smiled. "But this orange is just a little bright for a corporate folder. What if we dulled it down by adding one-third of this?" He picked out a deep ox-blood red and held them side-by-side. "Kinda rusty copper, just like you said," he reasoned. "Then we could use the rust-copper paint for the moose pasture and on our annual reports."
He turned and, for the first time, saw her give him a full smile. It lit her face, softening it. She was truly beautiful. In that second, he saw what she must have been like as a little girl, before the self-driving compulsions took over.
"Copper it is," she said.
Beano went up to the front of the store and held out two chips to an old man behind the counter wearing a name tag identifying him as GARY HOBBS, OWNER AND COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT. "I may need as much as four hundred gallons of this"-Beano held up the orange chip, then the red-"and two hundred of this. And I need spray-painting equipment and compressors. Just bought a farm up in Marysville, and I need to paint all my outdoor metal."
"That'll make a nice little order," Hobbs smiled. He picked up a catalogue and started thumbing through it.
"I'd like to know your discount for volume," Beano said, and Hobbs nodded. "I'd also like to get this in a day or so. I'll pay the shipping. I may need to cut the order slightly, or add to it, depending what my painter thinks. I just want to be sure the paint is readily available. I'll give you a down payment to hold the order."
"Lemme check the inventory in Bakersfield." Hobbs picked up the phone and dialed the number.
"Can I borrow your phone book?" Beano said, and Gary Hobbs pushed it across the table at him while he checked with the warehouse in Bakersfield. Beano took the phone book over to where Victoria was standing. "You still got that note pad?" he asked. She nodded and pulled it out of her purse.
Beano looked up "Bates" in the Central California Directory. When he found "Steven X.," he wrote down the number.
They cut a deal with Hobbs for the paint, which he said could be delivered anywhere in the San Joaquin Valley within a day. Beano paid him a thousand dollars cash in advance, to hold the available stock. Inside the little chain-linked stock yard at the back of Hobbs Ranch and Farm Supplies, they picked out a compressor and some spray equipment with three tanks. They took two cans of orange and one of red with them. Before they left, Beano bought three sheets of yellow decal letters, two inches high, and three sheets of half-inch white letters. He also bought two green jump-suits.
With Gary Hobbs's card in his pocket, Beano went out to a pay phone in the parking lot and dialed up Steven Bates.