"Bates Roofing," a young boy answered the phone.
Victoria couldn't hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but looked up sharply as Beano whistled three notes into the receiver and waited. Beano took the phone away from his ear; then she could hear the faint sound of three other notes being whistled back. It was some kind of secret identification code.
"This is Beano Bates," he said, pressing the phone back to his ear. "Who am I talking to?"
"I'm Lawrence Bates," the young boy said proudly over the receiver… "Come on, really, who is this?"
"It's your Uncle Beano."
"This is King Con?" the boy said, awe in his voice.
"Yeah, but I hate that name 'cause it brings too much heat."
"Just a minute, sir," and the phone was dropped. Beano could hear the boy yelling for his father at the top of his lungs. After a moment a man came on the line.
"This here's Steven Bates," the man said. "Who is this again?"
"This is Beano Bates, Steve."
"Can I hear them notes again?"
Beano whistled them again.
"Son-of-a-bitch! I seen you 'bout three, four weeks ago on America's Most Wanted."
"In our game, celebrity ain't always a blessing."
"Imagine so."
"Listen, Steve, I'm running a moose pasture up here in Modesto. I could use a little help."
"Modesto ain't bad for it, but you seen them farms around Oak Crest? Real good, and pretty too. Lotta pipe above ground."
"I haven't been over there, but I'll check it out," Beano said. "Can I buy you and your family dinner tonight?"
"You bet," Steven answered. "We'd be honored."
"Where do you like to go?"
"There's a place called the Red Barn up near Keats. It's on Highway Seventeen. How 'bout there?"
"Around seven-thirty, and Steve, I'm looking for somebody to be the painting contractor. You think you could pull some family together for that?"
"I figured that was what you wanted. There's a bunch of us up here for the summer. You think ten would do it?"
"Oughta do. We'll cut the deal tonight."
"Be a pleasure, sir."
Beano hung up. Victoria whistled the three notes at him. They sounded slightly familiar. She shot him a puzzled look.
"The first three notes of Brahms's 'Lullaby,'" he answered, before she could ask. "He whistles back the last three."
"So now I know a family secret."
He moved to the car. "Only it changes every month, and you've gotta know what music publication to look in, what list of songs, and what number on the list. It's a variation of the key book code used by spies during World War I. It's basically an unbreakable code unless you know the keys."
"And everybody in the family goes out and buys the music publication and memorizes the melody each month?" she said, cocking an eyebrow, thinking that was a hell of a lot of trouble to go through.
"It beats doing prison time because you trusted the wrong person."
"What if you're tone-deaf?"
"We take all our tone-deaf children out in a field and shoot 'em," he said, a smile playing on his expressive features.
"Perfect solution. Why didn't I think of it?" she smiled back.
They got into the car and he looked up the town of Oak Crest on the California map, then swung out of the parking lot and headed east.
Oak Crest was beautiful, the acres growing green with alfalfa. The clear California sun beat down on this lush valley. Beano filled his lungs.
"Whatta you smell?" he said expansively.
She took a deep breath. "Alfalfa," she replied.
"No, down under the alfalfa, under the subsoil and the cap rock… down where the arenaceous shale butts up against the anticline, down there in that great stratigraphic trap."
"Oil," she said, grinning.
"Me too," he smiled.
They drove around looking for the right farm. Beano thought Steve Bates was right. This place was perfect. To begin with, it was beautiful. "It's always better to take a mark to a beautiful setting," Beano explained as they drove around looking at the farms. "It makes them feel good. It's always hard to sell lakefront property in a desert." There was lots of greenery in Oak Crest, California. Old oak trees hung shade over the two-lane highways like gnarled visitors from another world. The architecture was rustic, with old wood-frame, brightly painted houses. Where the lush green alfalfa didn't grow, cattle or horses grazed in picturesque herds.
Beano was looking for a particular setup, and he found it at Cal Oaks Farm. The farm, like most in Oak Crest, grew alfalfa. The irrigation pipes were large, but needed painting. They ran for miles next to the road above-ground. There were huge water cisterns to help the farm through California's frequent dry periods. The cisterns dotted the landscape like big, two-story pillboxes. Horses grazed lazily in the lowland down by the river. It was truly beautiful, but what made it perfect was that directly across the street from the farm was a large construction company that had gone out of business. A weathered sign banged in the afternoon breeze, hanging from two chains on a post arm. The office building was three stories high and had plate-glass windows that looked out at the picture-postcard farm on the other side of the road.
Beano parked the Escort and climbed over the gate. He walked all around the empty building. Before he climbed back over, he got the name of the real-estate agent off the sign in the window and called her from Victoria's flip-phone. He was told he could lease the property on a month-to-month basis for a very reasonable rate. Beano told the agent he would call her back. He explained to Victoria that he wanted to make sure he could cut a deal with the farm before he tied up the construction company property.
Beano got out of the car and looked at the pillbox cisterns and miles of exposed metal pipes punctuating the expansive landscape. "Think we might a found our moose pasture," he finally said.
Chapter Thirteen.
FUCKING TEXACO PHILLIPS, TOMMY THOUGHT AS THEY sat in his apartment overlooking the Boardwalk. Calliope was shopping her brains out, looking for "darling outfits" to take to the Bahamas. Texaco sat across from Tommy, looking red-faced and stretching the seams of a maroon, thousand-dollar sport jacket, like a corn-fed ham in Saran Wrap. For the life of him, Tommy couldn't understand why his brother kept this foul-smelling, ignorant piece of shit around.
"Look, Tex," Tommy said slowly, "all I want you to do is find 'em. My cousin Peter works for a travel agent and he punched up the flight manifest for Delta. She flew to San Francisco with two guys named B. Bates and J. Bates. I don't know who the hell these two fucks are, but don't you try and find out. Don't fucking try and solve this, you'll fuck it up. You just find 'em. They got phones in San Francisco, pick up a fucking phone and call me. Got it?"
Texaco both nodded and shrugged at the same time. It was a gesture of acknowledgment and indifference and it pissed Tommy off, so he back-handed the big, ugly ex-linebacker on the shoulder.
"Hey, dipshit, I don't hear no answer here."
"I'll call ya, Tommy," Texaco said softly.
"My cousin Peter will be checking to see if they book seats outta there. His number's written on this card." He stuffed it in Texaco's tailored breast pocket. "His name's Peter Rina. The kid's just outta college, so don't tell him nothin' he don't need ta know. He's in Jersey, but he can check this shit anywhere in the country."
So Texaco became a posse of one. He flew to San Francisco, and was now wandering around in the City by the Bay looking at brightly clothed tourists and wondering how the fuck he was supposed to find Victoria Hart and these two guys named Bates. What he did find was a great gym near his hotel where he could get illegal steroid shots in the ass for fifty bucks a jolt. He also found a great Italian restaurant half a block from there, where the osso buco and the mozzarella marinara were world class. He alternated between four-hundred-pound dead-lifts, shots of jump-juice, and the great Italian cuisine. He was power lifting and eating his way through the first day, when he decided to finally call Peter Rina and have him scan the airline reservations for Victoria Hart and the two Bateses on all flights out of SFO. The kid told him he'd found nothing so far. Texaco figured eventually they would either leave and go someplace else or Tommy would tell him to come home. His heart wasn't in the hunt. Beyond that simple truth, his walnutsized brain had not wandered. When he got back to the hotel, he had a message to call Tommy.