Long White Con: The Biggest Score of His Life (11 page)

“I know her more than slightly too. She’ll see us both, if for no other reason than to thrill herself with a cold turn down face to face. Set it up, Trevor.”

Trevor shrugged, “I’ll try, Johnny.”

Kid and Trevor stood.

Kid said, “Laddie, you’ve got your sucker flaws, but you’re a whiz with the fluffs. If any gee can turn Christina around, you can. You soured the fix, now sweeten it again if you value friendship.” Kid slapped Folks’ back and led the way from the apartment.

Disguising his voice, Folks fired a long shot and called Christina. He was told by a butler with obvious delusions of grandeur that Miss Buckmeister was indefinitely indisposed. Folks and Speedy sipped black coffee and put their heads together to plot turnaround strategy for the audience with Christina that Folks was certain he’d get.

Next day, Monday, Speedy received a call from Trevor at noon, four hours before his chief of security duties usually began. Victoria Buckmeister had gone sleepless, been traumatized the night before by phantom Nazi commandos she was certain were scaling the building outside her bedroom windows. She was demanding that only Speedy should install special locks on her windows. Immediately.

Speedy put on his uniform and got into his newly overhauled Datsun. He drove toward the Buckmeister castle situated on a granite peak in a remote section at the perimeter of the city. As Speedy drove up a forested incline he was impressed as always to view the spectacular Buckmeister white stone castle shimmering like a mammoth jewel in the sun. A security squad of his subordinates, impeccable in gold spangled uniforms and caps, swung open massive steel gates. The Datsun moved inside the estate past a gigantic black block of marble with the Buckmeister name and coat-of-arms chiseled into it in giant gothic letters.

Speedy parked and went into a one story building near the gates. It was the security forces office and the locus for weapons and the control center for a closed circuit network of TV cameras. They scrutinized, by night, the exterior and interior of the castle. By order of Trevor and Christina, a TV monitor in a private room was checked exclusively by Speedy on his four
P.M.
to four
A.M.
shift. It received
the input from a camera secretly installed in suicidal Victoria’s bedroom despite the presence of around the clock nurses.

Speedy took a tool kit and locks to Victoria’s bedroom. He knocked. Millie, a sad faced elderly R.N., opened the door. Speedy stepped into the spacious room furnished in baroque Louis XIV style, with oil paintings of Victoria’s wedding strung on the silk-covered walls. Others depicted imperial social scenes in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany where she had been a grand dame.

Victoria was propped up on satin pillows in her canopied emperor bed. She was a pitiful sight clapping and cackling in glee as she watched a cartoon villain get his comeuppance on a preschoolers’ TV show. Her hair was a snowy heap piled atop her ruined doll face. Her child-like antics, with her wrinkled, emaciated body, gave her the appearance of a spastic fetus in the satin womb of her gargantuan bed.

Christina, in a gold silk robe, was seated on the side of the bed vainly trying to feed Victoria vegetable soup from a tray across her lap. Speedy made a mental note to tell Folks that Christina was still wearing his Aztec Princess ring.

Victoria spotted Speedy as he went toward a window. “Wade, you darling!” she exclaimed, lips pursed, as she held out her bony arms.

Speedy went to her bedside leaned his face to take her kiss on his cheek. “How are you doing, Miss Victoria?” he said as he straightened up.

“Splendidly until those monsters tried to slip in here and murder me. Please, Wade, double lock them out. They are certain to return.”

He patted her shoulder. “I’ll do that, Miss Victoria, and if they come back I’ll send them to be Satan’s pets, as my mama used to say.”

Four days later, on Friday, Trevor arranged a bank meeting with Christina for Kid. The plan was that Kid would, when he kept his appointment, casually mention to the bank’s security guard, whose job he owed to Kid, that his business associate would be a few
minutes late. Kid requested of him that he escort Johnny O’Brien to the executive office when he arrived.

Ten minutes later, Folks drove to the bank with Speedy in the Eldorado. Folks went into the popular bank which was bustling with clients. The security guard took him to the door of Christina’s office. He pushed a button and a buzzer sounded to unlock the door.

The guard swung the door open and said, “Miss Buckmeister, Mister Borenstein’s associate, Mister O’Brien.” The guard turned away.

Surprise and irritation shadowed Christina’s face for an instant as Folks stepped into the room with a warm smile on his face. “Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen.”

Trevor and Kid said, “Hello Johnny,” almost simultaneously.

Christina stiffened behind her massive mahogany desk and said coldly, “Good afternoon. I wasn’t expecting you, Mister O’Brien. But now that you are here, have a seat and I will repeat to you what I have just said to Trevor and Saul.” She nodded toward a gleaming gold coffee service on her desk. “Coffee, Mister O’Brien, to brace yourself for the bad news?”

He smiled thinly and shook his head. He glanced at his ring on Christina’s finger.

She flushed scarlet, slipped off the ring and slid it on the desk top toward him. “Something I forgot to return, Mister O’Brien.”

“Thank you,” he smiled as he dropped it into his blue serge vest.

Trevor and Kid at that intimate juncture left the office.

She said evenly, “Mister O’Brien, this bank has backed its last swindle! My final answer is no! However, if you are flat broke perhaps Trevor or even I could loan you and your rabid little bird dog plane fare to your next sucker adventure. Oh, by the way, she suggested that I was racist and as such she predicted a mega shock for me. Any idea what she meant?”

Folks shrugged and smiled urbanely. “Maybe she’s leading a revolution. And no thank you to welfare. I don’t need it. We do need
you to change your mind, to be reasonable. Saul is an old man with his life savings and energies invested in our set-up. Don’t hurt him and his associates just to hurt me. Restore the fix and I’ll cop a heel permanently. Be reasonable!”

Her eyes shot gray flame. “I will not change my decision! I am always reasonable with honest people.”

Her hands shook as she took a cigarette from a case. Folks rose, leaned to flick his lighter to her cigarette. He leaned even closer across the desk.

He grinned lewdly and winked wickedly as he crooned, “No from you will always be unacceptable to me. You can imagine why, I’m sure. I’ve peeped at your hole card, humper by firelight. We will play for Mister Bates!”

Trevor and Kid entered the office and took their seats.

Christina said, “Ha! Biological encounters for me are as forgettable as rainstorms. I dare you to even play for a short con mark in this state! Please take your chair, Mister Wellington! You . . . ah . . . mouthwash makes me nauseous.”

Folks reseated himself.

Trevor leapt to his feet and spilled it out. “Chris, I will not let you do this to my friends! I’m the executive in charge of deposits and withdrawals. I’ll back them! I’ll move the Bates money for the score. I’ll see the captain and arrange the fix for the Bates play!”

Christina said contemptuously, “The captain wouldn’t fix a jay-walking ticket for you now without my approval. Trevor, please sit down. My final answer to you, Trevor, to you all as before, is no.”

Red-faced and deflated, Trevor left the office. Kid and Folks got to their feet and walked to the open door.

Christina followed them. “Good-bye, loser.”

Folks turned. Their eyes locked for a long moment as she stared up into his bland face.

He said, “I know what you’re thinking when you look at me like that.”

“Tell me.”

“You were thinking about the great hitch in my hips on the downstrokes.”

“You conceited rectum. I was thinking you should be compelled to carry documents.”

His eyebrows then took a ride. “Documents, Poontang?”

She frowned. “Don’t call me that! Yes, liar. Documents to prove you’ve got a brain, or even a heart. You’ve struck out all around. Hallelujah!”

He smiled smugly. “Now you’re a liar, Poontang.” He started to turn away.

She seized and gripped his sleeve and said harshly, “I’m too good for you, Utah Wonder. Go back to the coal pit plantation with Little Eva. On Saturday nights, you can ditch her as you certainly will, to get a belly full of rot gut whiskey and take a five dollar bill to a two buck whore and live happily ever after!”

He stabbed an index fingernail into the tender web between the thumb and index finger of her hand clutching his sleeve. She snatched her hand away and pressed her lips against the wound like a little kid. She bombed a fist at his groin that missed as he turned his hip to catch the blow.

“You rotten bastard!”

He shaped an amused smile and turned away as she banged the door shut. Kid compulsively shook his head as they went to the street, across the sun-splashed sidewalk to the Eldorado. Folks got in next to Speedy under the wheel as Kid got in the back. He threw his head back and he closed his eyes, pressing the knuckles of his hands against his temples as Speedy pulled the car into traffic.

The Kid moaned and said, “The museum, the mansion, the ghost town set-ups are waiting. We got a mark that stands to drop a mil! But we’ve got no fixes to back the play. I think I’m having a stroke! I warned you she was too raw.”

“Save the stroke, Pappy, for a proper occasion. We’ll play for
Bates. I’ve got the angle to turn Christina around. All Speedy has to do is get me inside the castle to make it work.”

“What?”

Folks laughed. “Yeah, lopear. Who the hell else can get me in except you, the chief of security.”

Kid moaned, “Have you lost your alleged mind? I just saw that wildcat try to punch off your balls. So how in the hell do you figure to turn her around?”

“I can turn that witch around. I know I can!”

Kid said, “I’ve laid out a bundle for the Bates play, including the production of a documentary film convincer. We’re about to be ridden out of town on a rail. Is it asking too much for a hint as to what your turn around angle is for that broad?”

“Trust me, Pappy! Keep the faith. Speedy believes I’ll find and punch her ‘yes’ button, don’t you, pal?” Folks laughed.

Speedy hee-hawed. “Sure, Saul. He’s got a sure-shot angle. He’s going to snatch Victoria, tie me into a kidnap beef and hold the old lady for fix ransom until Christina turns around.”

Folks cuffed the side of Speedy’s head and knocked off his brand new hat.

Speedy replaced it on his long head and exclaimed, “My fifty buck lid!”

Folks said, “I’m so sure I can turn her around in the next two days that I’m making an appointment today with Bates to tour his ranch for sale this weekend. So Speedy, swing the castle gates wide tonight for Christina’s heart throb!”

Speedy said, “Make it late, Buddy. There’s a big bash at the castle tonight.”

Kid said, “It can’t work.”

Folks said, “It will work. She’s a fantasy freak. By purest chance I spun her sex tumblers to open her up. She’s hooked and hot! I’m her composite living link-up, rare and secret treasure.”

Kid said, “Hot to cross you.”

“Draw charts on marks, Pappy. Leave the broads to me. Sure, on the surface she despises me. But that’s only a gauge of Christina’s underbelly of bitch dog heat and yen for me. The psychology is the same as when Mary Smith, the punishment junkie, heckles her old man until he drags her to fist alley. Afterwards, both the freaks get hyped to hump up a storm to make up.

“Christina is like that in a scaled down way. I’ll play Mary Smith’s old man for her. I’ll corner her. I’ll chastise her with my whip, and turn her around. She’ll be easy, friends. Christina can’t douche me down her erotic toilet just like that. I refuse to let her sucker me out into the cold. Camille Costain did it. But never again!”

Kid mused bitterly, “Laddies, I’ll have to confess, I’ve been a lopeared sucker for fluffs since I escaped the plow and the stink of mule farts down home in Mississippi. I was twenty before I got laid. My pappy was a racist bastard, the cruelest cocksucker slavemaster in the county, if not the state. There were six of us boys that slaved in the fields from dawn to dusk under Pappy’s eye. His tyranny killed my mother. He almost beat me to death with a tow chain when he caught me shooting the breeze with a black chum I liked. I was sure I’d kill him after that, if I didn’t leave. So, I sneaked away and joined a medicine show as a shill to learn the fundamentals of the con. Then the carnival flat joints. At thirty I was playing long con and hooked on fancy fluffs and bright lights, a zillion miles from those goddamn mule farts!”

Speedy said, “I’m beginning to feel lucky I blew my storm and strife.”

Folks said, “Janie isn’t coming back from L.A.?”

Speedy sighed. “Miss Suction Pussy got her heart heisted again by a high school beau . . . called me this morning. She was sweet . . . had a washboard cave. I got no beef. She’s twenty-two, I’m fifty-two. I held her for a month. That’s not bad for an old gee.

“But my track record with broads has always been hassled. I was just a liver-lipped Harlem orphan that rose to become a first grade
detective in the Apple’s bunco squad. A tramp bitch got my nose open wide enough to park a Mack truck. I wasted a pretty joker I caught banging her. Maybe I shoulda wasted her and let him slide. Did a dime in the joint before they cut me loose. Played the con in the streets to survive. Janie was the second broad that got in my bed without a sawbuck up front on the dresser. Since I got a face like the Original Man’s, that ain’t hard to understand.”

Folks leaned back against the seat, closed his eyes and visualized Pearl beside him in his bed. An abysmal downer snared him as he realized how much he missed her. Yes, he told himself. How much I love her! Christina, the poisonous bitch! She forced herself into my life. She’s to blame! His scrotum sparkled with hatred, with desire more powerful than his love for Pearl.