Six elderly men and two women held up their hands, and Beano nodded.
"We'll have a separate point-out meeting in a minute, then I want you to run rehearsals. I'll walk you through the first one, then you can run two or three more when John gets here. We need to have this down pat by tomorrow, at eight A.M. The Vancouver Stock Exchange closes at one-thirty P.M. This whole 'stock reload' has to take place before the closing bell. We keep the pressure on so he doesn't have time to re-think it."
Beano took the six men and two women who were point-outs into the President's office and talked to them for about twenty minutes. A point-out in a Big Store con is an inside player who is pointed out to the mark as a person of power or influence. The eight Bates point-outs would be identified as big stockholders-disgruntled heavy hitters who wanted their money back.
By nine-thirty, it was time for Beano to leave. He had to be at the airport when Tommy showed up. He wondered where the hell Paper Collar John was. He was supposed to be here to do the rehearsals. None of the shillabers in front of him had ever done this kind of sting. "Okay, let me quickly ran you through this," he said, afraid to leave until he knew John was there.
Beano led them from room to room, explaining what each area was for. He showed Theodore X. Bates, who was one of the point-outs, where he would do the crossfire, which was a point in the con where, if the mark lost his nerve, he would "overhear" an important conversation. He demonstrated the speaker phone in the secretary's office. He showed them the Board of Directors' room, one floor down, where the rest of the point-outs would gather prior to the sting. He coached the "stockholders" on their fines. It was well past nine-thirty when he finished, and if he didn't leave now, he would miss Tommy.
"We'll keep rehearsing," Victoria said, and Beano looked at her skeptically. "Come on," she said angrily. "How long have I been in on this? How many times have we talked it through?" she argued. "I've run complicated felony murder trials. I know how to perform in front of a jury… This isn't all that different."
"There's a huge difference between talking and doing," he countered. "And a manacled defendant in court isn't a maniac like Tommy with a gun in his pocket."
"I know what's supposed to happen. Go on, go to the airport. Steve and I will keep this moving till John shows up."
Beano finally nodded; he had no other choice. He looked at his watch one last time, then kissed Victoria and left.
John showed up twenty minutes later. When he stepped off the elevator, Victoria knew immediately something was very wrong. He looked awful. His face was pale and his eyes were rimmed in red. He'd been crying. Victoria took him by the hand and led him into one of the beautifully appointed offices and closed the door.
"What's wrong?" she asked him, fearing the worst.
"I've been on the phone to New Jersey," he said, his voice quivering. "The hospital called. Cora's not going to live much longer."
"Oh, John, I'm so sorry," Victoria said, reaching out for his other hand.
"I can't stay," he said. "She's awake. The doctor said they can keep her alive for maybe seven or eight hours. If I ever want to see her again, to say good-bye, I have to leave now. I have to go home… She's been asking for me."
Victoria looked at him, her mind racing. "But John, Tommy's seen the brochure we printed. You're in there as the President of this company. You have to sell him the stock. Without you, we can't do this."
Paper Collar John stood there, tears running down his cheeks. "I'm sorry," he said. "Cora and I, we've been married for fifty-five years. She's been my best friend for my whole life, Vicky. I hate running out on you, but she's my wife. If Beano was here, he'd tell me to go. I won't let her die alone…"
Beano would know how to figure something out, save the sting, Victoria thought. The way it was planned, from now on Beano had to be with Tommy. There was no way to even reach him and warn him. Tomorrow at eight A.M., Beano would walk in here with Tommy and the play had to go down with or without John. It was up to her and Steve Bates to make it happen. Steve was a short-con expert who'd never done this before. She was a State Prosecutor, a lawyer. Even though she could perform for a jury, she found strength in solid facts. Beano was right…bullshit was her weakest category.
"Is there anybody here who can play inside for us?" she finally asked John.
"I don't know. Most Bateses do short plays, house hustles and the like." Then he looked at her very carefully. He wrote down a number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. Then he told her what to do. After she heard his solution, her knees were weak with fear and excitement. "It will never work," she protested.
"Call him. He can help," Paper Collar John replied; then he turned, and with tears still on his face, he walked out of the Big Store and took the elevator to the street.
Victoria Hart stood there with her heart pounding. The FBI was outside and fifty Gypsy roofing sharpers were inside. She was caught in the middle and left to deal with the sting alone.
Chapter Thirty-One.
BEANO WAS TEN MINUTES LATE GETTING TO THE PAcific Air Private Jet Terminal. The Challenger was already chocked and Tommy was standing out in front of the Pacific Aviation Flight Service Company, looking pissed at being kept waiting. He had rented a tan Lincoln Town Car and the two leather bags with the five million dollars were already in the trunk.
"The fuck you been?" Tommy said. His anger at seeing the geek physicist brought up bile he could taste.
"This entire experience is so nerve racking. I can't find Dr. Sutton. I've looked and looked," Beano whined, as he pushed his tortoise-shell glasses up on his nose and squinted through them. He had changed his clothes in the car and was now wearing a short-sleeved pink shirt with a plastic pen protector and a clip-on bow tie and was carrying a scarred briefcase.
Tommy looked at him and remembered that, when he had first seen him in the bar at Sabre Bay, he had actually thought the geologist was handsome, a threat to his campaign to fuck Dakota. That was before he'd heard him wimper and plead. Once you got to know Dr. Clark, he was about as sexy as leather pants on an insurance executive.
"Who the rack cares about Dr. Sutton?" Tommy said angrily.
"Well, uh… how to put this… uh…" Beano took off his glasses, pulled up his shirttail, and cleaned them before slipping them back on his nose. "Dr. Sutton was never, as I'm sure you remember, all that excited about your inclusion as a financial entity," he stammered weakly.
"Who the fuck cares what that bag of bones thinks?"
"Well, I'm not saying this is really going to happen, but… well, Dr. Sutton took all the graphs and three-D seismic shots. The biotherms and the anticlines, along with his geophone resonance material, and he… well, he left."
"So he left. Fuck him. Who needs him? We got what we need from him."
"Well, you see, Mr. Rina, I don't think he took all that material with him because he wanted to frame it and hang it on his wall, so to speak…"
"So, why did he take it, shithead? I'm tired of playing twenty questions. Spit it out," Tommy barked, thinking this fucking geek was beginning to annoy him worse than Calliope Love. At least he could park his Johnson in Calliope's mouth occasionally to shut her up.
"I'm very concerned that maybe he decided to seek out another partner. You see, if he could convince one of the major stockholders of the viability of our find at Oak Crest, well then, there'd be a competitive bidder."