Free King Con by Stephen J. Cannell Page B

that some Italian mobsters did the work. At least that’s what it sounded like. I don’t need to remind you that anything that Demo Williams told your client is hearsay and not worth much, if anything.”
    “What if Mr. Heywood was in the nightclub, sitting right at the table, when the original offer was made?” Beano said, pinching his voice, giving it some Ivy League timbre.
    “That would be very interesting,” she said.
    “I need three things if we’re going to trade, yes? One: your promise that you will gather up a good position against the Rinas for murdering those three before you call Mr. Heywood to testify. He doesn’t want to present himself to the court and implicate these Mafia killers only to have you lose the case. He wants them in jail where they can’t retaliate. Two: He wants to be absolved of any charges pending against him for crimes currently being considered by your office. And three: He would like to be placed in the Witness Protection Program.”
    Victoria was still thumbing through her copy of
Martindale-Hubbell
and finally found Cedric O’Neal. The listing said he had graduated top of his Yale class in 1989.
Another Ivy League choirboy. They’re coming
through the windows.
He was a partner in a law firm in New York, but was also licensed to practice in half-a-dozen other states, including New Jersey. He graduated less than ten years ago. She thought he was very young to be a partner already and it pissed her off. “You still with Lincoln, Forbes, O’Neal, and Ross?” she asked.
    “Ahhh. Got your
Martindale-Hubbell
out, do you?” he said in his pinched, clenched-jaw voice. “Yes, I’m afraid I’m still there, despite their best efforts to replace me.” And then he laughed; it sounded very close to a cackle.
    Lincoln, Forbes, O’Neal, and Ross was actually a non-existent law firm that had miraculously appeared in the 1997
Martindale-Hubbell,
courtesy of Frank X. Bates. Frank, who did second-story jobs when he wasn’t oiling down roofs, had broken into the printing firm in Chicago that put out the directory and added the fictitious law firm to the computer file one day before it went to be typeset. It was very handy for a family of con men to have a registered, but nonexistent, law firm when working a sophisticated mark. It was often necessary to show up in a con claiming to be somebody’s lawyer. Beano even had stationery and business cards printed. They were somewhere in his suitcase. The publisher had sent out a letter disavowing the mistake, but the nonexistent law firm was still in the book, long after everyone had thrown the letter away.
    Victoria closed the
M-H
directory and pondered what to do with stuffy Cedric O’Neal. She had one or two yellow “Caution” lights flashing on the big emergency panel in her head, but she was still seething with anger about the death of her friend and that energy helped to make up her mind. “Okay, Mr. O’Neal, how ‘bout ten o’clock tomorrow morning? My office.”
    “Ahh, could we perhaps make it someplace where thepossibility of recording or eavesdropping is a mite less intense?”
    “How ‘bout Sam’s Deli, down by the river? Nine o’clock?” she said.
    “It’s a date. I’ll be the tall, balding gentleman in the tan suit and the striped school tie.”
    She hung up the phone and wondered what the hell was going on.
    Beano hung up the phone, grabbed Roger, and headed to the door. He needed to go dig up the pickle jar he had buried under a rock off Highway 10. The jar contained fifty thousand dollars in cash. The fifty large was his start-up money and all he had left in the world. Then he had to catch the red-eye flight to Jersey, so he could make his nine o’clock meeting with a beautiful prosecutor named “Tricky Vicky” Hart.

SIX
T ELLING THE T ALE
    S AM’S DELI WAS ON THE CORNER OF MANCHESTER AND O Street. It had large, plate-glass windows and a takeout counter along the east wall. Beano arrived at eight, an hour