Long White Con: The Biggest Score of His Life (12 page)

A
half hour before ten that evening, Folks packed his Aztec Billy costume and make-up kit into an overnight case and drove to the Buckmeister castle. Speedy was at the gates to receive him. He pulled the Eldorado into a parking area clogged with Mercedes, Rolls and Cadillac limousines.

Speedy whisked him into the security building and said, “You can watch the bash on a monitor. There’s a coffee urn in the corner.” Then he locked him in.

Folks lit a cigarette and sat down on a couch facing the bank of monitors. He intently watched the one with the image of the Buckmeister dining room. A hundred odd, formally attired men and women, most of them in control of multi national corporations, sat at a long rectangular banquet table in the luxurious room. A battery of crystal chandeliers blazed dazzling light from the high ceiling.

Crystal glassware and gold serviceware glittered on snowy damask table covering before them as their cultivated conversation hummed through the monitor. Their impressive names and titles were embossed on gold leafed place cards.

Christina was an empress vision gowned in spangled black lace at the end of the table. Trevor, distinguished, aristocratic and handsome, sat at the other end of the table. Swarms of waiters scurried in
puce uniforms with chest pockets embroidered with the Buckmeister coat of arms, an ancient Buckmeister knight on steed slaying a dragon. The waiters poured champagne into crystal goblets.

Trevor stood with goblet in hand. In the hush he said, “To the guest of honor, my beloved sister, Christina.”

The guests rose, aimed their faces and glasses toward Christina and sipped before they sat down.

Christina rose, with glass in hand. She smiled at a blond stringbean of a man at mid table with a perpetual dour expression on his handsome face.

Christina said, “Ladies and gentlemen, let us toast and honor the man, the proverbial heartbeat away, the honorable Chester Wiggins, the Vice-President of the United States!”

Wiggins nodded with a meager smile as the guests stood and toasted him.

Christina said, “Please keep your feet, ladies and gentlemen. Let us now toast and honor a truly great and legendary lady. My friendship with most of you, my happiness, my success is due to the influencing, the caring of one of this century’s most prestigious business women . . . the Grand Dame of finance and humanity, my ailing mother. The beloved Victoria Buckmeister!”

The guests toasted, then applauded enthusiastically. They descended
en masse
toward Christina, standing smilingly to receive their warm attention and congratulations.

Folks heard a joyful cackle of triumph from the adjacent private room. Curious, he walked into the room to the monitor with the image of Victoria’s bedroom. A withered octogenarian R.N. in a wilted white uniform was seated on the side of Victoria’s bed watching a closed circuit image of the dining room. Victoria, propped up on pillows, picked at banquet food on a tray across her lap. She childishly clapped her hands as she stared excitedly at the screen.

The R.N. said, “Congratulations, dear Victoria. Your dream has
come true for Christina. Not in twenty years have I seen you so happy.”

Victoria burst into tears. She sobbed, “Ella! Thank you! Thank you so much. Ella, I’m so happy! And proud!”

Then Victoria frowned and suddenly seized the R.N.’s sleeve. She clutched it desperately as her pitiful face stared up and she said, “Ella, please! Tell me, Ella, it’s true! Tell me, Ella! It’s real what I saw. Tell me it’s not like the other splendid things that I’ve only imagined. Help me, Ella!”

The R.N. leaned over and pressed Victoria tenderly back to the security of the pillows. She kissed her forehead and patted her hands. “Dear, it’s real! You can trust me.”

Victoria sighed. “Oh, thank you, Ella. Thank you so much. Oh, you precious angel, think of it! The Vice-President congratulated my baby! I’m so happy I could die this moment!”

“Yes, it is just wonderful, but you must not overexcite yourself. Please eat your dinner.”

Folks watched Trevor enter the room. Trevor was still immaculate in his impeccable, formal attire as he walked to the bed. He was obviously tipsy as he plopped down heavily on the side of the bed beside his mother and Ella.

Trevor slurred, “Mother, you must release Ella now. She must get some rest.”

Victoria kissed Ella. Ella rose and moved away from the bed toward the door. Trevor rose and followed her.

“Just a moment, Ella.”

Ella stopped and smiled.

“You’re precious, Ella. Mother is radiant this evening.”

Ella said, “Yes Trevor, I’m happy she’s been lucid. Rational as you and myself since early afternoon.”

“Small wonder, Ella. Her bright little student grew up to pre-empt me.”

Ella pressed fingers against his lips. “Now, Trevor!”

Trevor wove a little as he pressed her hands to his cheeks. His voice trembled with emotion. He said, “Nanny, I love you. Don’t ever leave us . . . me!”

Ella said, “Now, stop that, Trevor!”

“Admit it, Ella, you are the only caring mother, Chris and I have had since infancy.”

Ella kissed Trevor, pulled away and departed. Trevor went back to the bed. He stood for a long moment with cold eyes watching Victoria eat. Then he flopped himself full length on the bed. He rested his face on his palms and elbows as he stared at Victoria’s palsied ineptitude with knife and fork.

He smiled wickedly as he said, “Careful, you clumsy prune!”

Victoria whined, “Don’t call me names, you torturer. Get out!” She gagged on her food and wailed, “Trevor, get the hell out of here so I can enjoy my food.”

Trevor grinned at her maliciously as she resumed eating. A bit of salad dressing dribbled down Victoria’s shin as she spastically forked salad into her mouth. Trevor cocked his head from side to side like a curious robin, observing a hapless earthworm.

He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, saying, “Mother! You have a blob of food on your chin. Oh! What a slob!”

He reached into the tray for a napkin. She recoiled, snatched the napkin and frantically blotted her chin clean.

Victoria’s voice trembled on the rim of hysteria. “Ella! Ella! Trevor’s attacking me again. Trevor, go away! I’m getting sick again. Please Trevor, go away! Ella!”

Trevor taunted, “Mother, save your breath. Ella won’t be back tonight.”

Victoria backhanded her fork at Trevor’s face. Trevor narrowly escaped as he scuttled away across the bed. Victoria feebly attempted to hurl the tray of food. Instead, she only succeeded in dumping it atop the satin quilt.

Trevor stood beside the bed, staring down at her. He said with a
smirk, “You’ve lost your temper, Mother, like an emotional peasant. Mother, you always flogged my ass for that, remember, Mother?” Trevor fingered his belt buckle. “What was good for the goslin is doubly good for the crazy old gander!”

Victoria cringed away. She screamed, “Ella! Ella! Help me!”

Folks saw Ella dash into the room glaring at Trevor. Trevor hurriedly left.

Folks went back to the couch as Speedy keyed in and sat down beside him. They drank coffee, and sat down beside him. They drank coffee, smoked and talked until one
A.M.
Then Speedy escorted him to Christina’s quarters in a secluded wing of the castle. Speedy nodded his head toward Christina’s bedroom door as they soundlessly moved on airy carpet past it. Folks went into a vacant guest room bathroom to put on his Aztec Billy make-up and costume.

He went to her door, kneeled and put his eye close to the key hole. She was nude with her razzle of alabaster curves showcased on the pink satin spread of her mammoth bed. She undulated her bottom on a satin pillow, with crotch agape, in the pink glow of a nightstand lamp. Her hand pushed up a long plump breast to rake her teeth across the erected Bing cherry nipple. Her eyes were shuttered as she furiously jiggled the thumb tip of her other hand against her pygmy dingus. Her tapered shiny-wet fingers alternately thrusted to disappear into her four inch cone of fat blond bush.

He silently turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, then stood at the threshold watching her as she groaned and cavorted toward climax.

He clucked and said softly, “Naughty, naughty. Our Johnny would want you punished.” He undid his fly.

Her eyes popped open, her face frozen in an expression of total flabbergast as she stared at the apparition. His eyes flashed blue flame in his Rasputin visage, framed by the long platinum wig. Her lips moved mutely as she struggled to speak.

He pressed an index finger against his lips. “S-s-s-sh! I will say everything . . . do everything you want to do.”

He glided toward her with a crooked urchin smile as she snatched a pearl-encrusted Derringer from an open nightstand drawer and tremulously aimed it at him as she sat on the far edge of the bed.

She gasped, “I’ll kill you! Get out! Please!”

He oozed closer and jerked his hips. His ten inch monster lunged from the lair of his open fly. Her bottom lip trembled uncontrollably as she gazed hypnotically at the poignant ragamuffin’s member bloated with blood in the pink ambience.

She waggled the Derringer and shouted, “Please don’t make me kill you! Take that back to your jigaboo bitch.”

He kissed, caressed the air between them with his fingertips and crooned as he floated to the bedside, “Johnny loved Pearl, but he loves you more. He’s sent her away forever.”

She stared at him transfixed and he gently lifted the pistol from her hand and flung it away to the carpet.

She exclaimed, “You’re insane! Please! I can’t let . . .”

He caressed her lips mute with his fingertips, then her throat and her nipples as he kneed her thighs apart. She moved her lips to protest but he leaned and smothered them with a feathery kiss. Her eyes softened doe-like as her fingertips sensuously stroked the backs of his hands caressing her ears.

She buried her face in his groin and sobbed, “Oh, you adorable maniac! Angel from the coal pits, I’m still mad about you!”

He thought, it’s prat-out time to cinch her as he scuttled away across the carpet with a sly old face. Her eyes brimmed tears as she leapt to her feet in pursuit, and he let her catch him at the door.

She clutched him desperately to her, weeping even as she laughed uncontrollably and begged, “Please don’t leave me, you gorgeous, sweet, ugly sonuvabitch!” She slipped the Aztec Princess ring from his finger and slipped it on her finger. “I love you. I can’t do without you,” she said as she led him to the side of the bed.

She sat down on the side of it and she yelped ecstatically as he seized her hair and yanked her head to his crotch. A torrent of hateful triumph drowned his mind. Grenades of power wobbled his knees as he watched her deep-throat his organ with feline purrs of surrender.

A
t the end of the week, Folks, Trevor and Bates, the mark, driven by Speedy in a rented limousine, drove toward Nevada to tour Bates’ ranch for sale.

In town, Kid’s woman, Rita, the fledgling grifter in the minor role of Lance Wellington’s Baroness sister, stood impatiently on the front porch of the mob’s museum-mansion set-up in a secluded area of the city. She awaited arrival of a crew of back-up shills recruited for the Bates play. The spires of the pearly prop seemed ablaze in the brilliant noon sun. It appeared afloat like a gem boat in a landscaped sea of jade.

A legitimate employment agency bus labeled
Peerless Personnel Service
pulled into the parking area on the right of the showplace. A group of uniformed servants spilled out and moved toward the mansion’s front door.

Rita inspected the nails and uniforms of the servants as they passed her and entered the mansion. The back-up players, costumed as titled aristocrat jet swingers, arrived and emerged from limousines. Rita was haughtily regal in her role as Lance’s sister and hostess as she stood in the crystal chandeliered entrance hall of the mansion. She greeted her elegantly attired confederates.

A monocled fake count, with a sex pot brunette on his arm,
approached Rita. He bent at the waist and kissed the back of Rita’s extended hand. He said, “Good afternoon. How lovely you are, dear Baroness!”

Rita replied, “Count! Countess Fertig! How marvelous you both came. Countess, you are just ravishing!”

“Thank you very much, Baroness.”

A heavy-set ex-convict shoplifter, with an aristocratic face and bearing, entered the hallway and approached Rita.

With a clipped English accent, Rita said, “So good to see you again, Duchess!” Then under her breath, “Myrtle, watch yourself! The servants are from a legit employment agency. Now get to the powder room and dilute your mascara.”

The fake Duchess said, “How very kind of you to invite me, dear Baroness.” She plucked a mote of lint off Rita’s black lace dress and whispered, “Lint in the cleavage is a worst omen than playing for a blind or crippled mark.” The Duchess moved on.

Flo Baumgarten, ex-pickpocket and spurious French noblewoman, approached, wearing
pince-nez
glasses perched precariously on her long aquiline nose.

She embraced Rita and gushed, “Oh Baroness, so good to see you in gorgeous living, beautiful flesh! You dear woman, I’ve missed you since that marvelous summer on the Riviera. Dear Baroness, thank you for inviting me. How’s Lance?”

Rita said, “Lance is fine. We’re all expecting his arrival shortly.” Then she whispered, “Flo, your breath stinks like bootlegger mash! Deodorize your breath before the play!”

Flo whispered, “It isn’t whiskey, Rita. It’s gin, your favorite poison.” Flo smiled and moved on.

Rita finally received the last group of the shills and moved with them into the palatial mansion.

A crew of grifter menials in coveralls feverishly hung counterfeit Old Masters on the silk-covered walls. Several of the crew went down a short flight of stairs to a high domed room, pregnant with
mysticism in its lighting and decor. They pried open a huge wooden crate to reveal a compelling giant plaster replica of the Aztec Princess Statue.