32 Cadillacs

by Joe Gores

  “I’ll check the I.D., you run the keys,” he said firmly.

  O’B responded weakly, “Oh Jesus Christ!”

  Ballard turned to follow his stricken gaze. Thundering down the front steps of the half-demolished house was the biggest biped he’d ever seen outside 49ers game days at Candlestick Park. Before they could move he was upon them, engulfing O’B’s right hand in his own, roughly the size of a Virginia ham, and pumping it up and down with great energy.

  “Geez, am I glad to see you! I really gotta apologize.” He turned to include Ballard in his remarks. “I got this terrible temper, see—”

  “I wouldn’t have known that,” said O’B mildly, trying to massage feeling back into his fingers. “Anyway, no harm done. At least, not to me…”

  By this time, Paul Bunyan was examining his car with professional interest, hands on hips, shaking his head fondly.

  “Geez, see what I mean? My dam’ temper. I roont it.” He turned back to O’B. “Called the friggin’ bank soon’s you was gone an’ I calmed down. Tol’ ’em I was sorry they hadda send somebody—got so much demolition work goin’ on around town I just dead forgot to make the payments. Tol’ ’em I was payin’ it off—penance, y’see what I mean? Authorized a transfer right on the phone. They said they’d check an’ get you right back out here with the car, an’ here you are.”

  O’B cleared his throat. “You, ah, was this, ah… I mean, which bank did you…”

  “B of A, of course. Dumbbutt I talked to didn’t even know they’d sent you out after it, but that’s okay. Here you are an’ here it is.” Paul Bunyan laughed a great laugh. “Yeah, here it is! Jeez, here it is!”

  Ballard opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. What was there to say? Luck of the Irish?

  “Couple days, I call the insurance company an’ say it was stole. Cops get it on the hotsheet, find it parked somewhere, like this…” His massive head suddenly swung toward them, his brows drawing down frightfully. “ Less you got some moral qualms ’bout sticking it to the insurance company…”

  They protested qualmlessness with upraised palms. Paul Bunyan laughed and nodded and again hoped O’B had no hard feelings and again shook hands with both of them. Then he turned and nodded at the other Eldorado. And laughed again.

  “Same freakin’ car, ’cept for the color.”

  O’B said smoothly, “And would you believe, sir, that we also have a repossession order on that very car? That’s why I brought my colleague with me when I came back…”

  “No kiddin’!” He almost collapsed into helpless laughter as they walked over to the Gyppo Caddy. “How the hell you gonna tell it’s the right one, without a license plate on it yet?”

  “I.D. number,” said Ballard, this time very firmly.

  And began checking it. As O’B began working his keys on the locked door.

  “Right car,” said Ballard.

  But he used a desperate sotto voce because the door of the house had burst open and seven obviously Gypsy males were running clown the walk at them. And still the keys stubbornly refused to work here in the right car, when they had perversely worked fine in Paul Bunyan’s wrong car.

  Ballard went into a defensive stance, but Paul Bunyan stepped in front of him to pluck the Gypsies’ obvious ringleader from the ground with one hand, and shake him. The man’s eyes bounced around in his head, his hands flapped at the ends of his arms like clothespins on a line. The other Gypsies faded back.

  “You owe the bank on that car?” roared Paul Bunyan.

  “Yee .. ee .. ee .. ees… sss… sssirrrrr…”

  “Then you give that man the keys, y’hear what I’m sayin’?”

  He slammed Yonkovich back down on his feet like slamming a beer mug back on a table. Tucon dug through his pockets with shaking fingers to find the keys and give them to O’B.

  Using them, O’B asked, “Any personal possessions in here?”

  Yonkovich shook his head mutely. Perhaps all of his voice had been shaken out of him with “Yessir.” O’B gave Ballard the keys to his company car, knowing Ballard would figure it was parked around the corner out of sight.

  He paused to shake hands with the hulking demolition man. “Thanks for savings our butts, Mr.… er…”

  “My pleasure!” roared Paul Bunyan. “I hate the kinda deadbeat s.o.b.s get their cars repossessed!”

  Luck of the Irish, thought Ballard fatalistically as he trudged away to get O’B’s car and drive it back downtown.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  That same evening, back in Iowa, the first tentative bands of Gypsies were gathering around the edges of Stupidville like rime ice at the edges of a pond at the first freeze of winter. No ice crackled in the corridors of the Stupidville General Hospital, not yet, but it was coming. Oh, it was coming.

  Inside the hospital, Barney Hawkins, Democrat National Assurance Company’s adjuster, was red in the face as he strode up and down Staley Zlachi’s room with short, jerky steps. Veins swelled dangerously along the sides of his neck. His suit coat was thrown across the empty other bed. Sweat mooned his armpits.

  “Lissen, Klenhard”—his voice made the word an epithet—“you know an’ I know you’re faking it, but—”

  “Not by the reflex tests,” said Lulu calmly from her chair by the window. “You watch ’em yourself, mister—by them, my Karl, he got no feeling in his legs.”

  As for Staley, he said nothing. In his Klenhard persona he lay on his back under the blankets with his eyes closed.

  “Goddammit, man! Are you even listening—”

  “You’ll bring on another attack,” warned Lulu.

  Hawkins stopped in the middle of the floor and bent over almost double, like a man in pain. He finally straightened up and sighed deeply. “Look, I know you’ve got some shyster lawyer you won’t even tell me his name, but I’ve made a good offer—”

  “Fifteen thousand,” said Lulu in disdain. “For my Karl living the rest of his days precarious-like, in pain and possible danger of being paralyzed forever?”

  “Twenty.”

  Lulu didn’t even deign to reply. Hawkins’s face became scarlet again. With visible effort he got control.

  “You’re nothing, you know. Shit on a stick. But I wanta get you off the books because I have some really important cases piling up. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go to the absolute limit.” He lowered his voice. Staley opened an eye to squint at him. “I’ll go to twenty-five thousand.” Hawkins pasted a smile on his face. “And I’m a man of my word. Twenty-five thousand, I got the papers in my briefcase, you can—”

  “Seventy-five,” said Staley. And closed the eye again.

  “And not a penny less,” chimed in Lulu instantly.

  Hawkins snatched up his jacket and stormed out. In the hall he yelled, “I’ll see you both in hell before I go one cent over twenty-five!” As he charged off and the door slowly shut on its pneumatic closer, his voice got smaller and smaller like a Louis L’Amour hero riding off into the sunset. “Crazy bastards think… wouldn’t give my mother a seventy-five-K settlement…”

  Staley threw back the bedclothes and slid his bare feet to the floor. He began striding up and down the narrow room, his crumpled white hospital gown fluttering open behind him.

  “Are the rom gathering?”

  Lulu nodded, then frowned. “Yes. I’m keeping them away from the hospital—you’re too sick to see them. But…”

  “But you’re right, Lulu darling. We can’t stall them much longer. Guess it’s time to settle with Hawkins.”

  Just then the doorknob turned. With remarkable agility, Staley leaped into bed and jerked the covers up as Lulu, out of her chair with equal alacrity, grabbed up his glass of water and dashed it in his face. Crichton entered to find Staley flat on his back, tossing his sweat-beaded head from side to side on the soaked pillow.

  “I heard Hawkins all the way down in the doctor’s lounge,” Crichton began apologetically. “Did he…”


  “Terrible abusive, he was,” snuffled Lulu. She was dabbing the moisture off Staley’s contorted features. “He swore an’ called my Karl names…”

  Crichton sighed. “I’ll see he doesn’t get in here to bother you again.”

  They grinned at each other as the door closed behind him.

  “Three-four days oughtta do it,” said Staley.

  “Yes, my beloved,” said Lulu warmly.

  * * *

  In San Francisco, it was a night for lovemaking. And con games. And maybe jealous rages.

  Bart Heslip and his forever lady, Corinne Jones, were buying a house together above Parnassus in that maze of little streets twisting up the side of Twin Peaks. It was a Victorian with dark hardwood walls and floors, big front windows, an upstairs, an old-fashioned swing on a front porch with chunky balustrades, and a modern kitchen with a microwave and an electric stove that Corinne had installed herself and loved.

  Walking uphill from the bus at six o’clock, she found Bart in the kitchen with lamb chops in the broiler, mashed potatoes warm on the stove, brussels sprouts in the microwave, and a green salad on the countertop he’d laid tile by tile.

  “My God!” she exclaimed, folding herself into his thick black arms. “It’s a miracle!”

  “C’mon, I do lots of cookin’ around here…”

  “Microwave popcorn,” she said, opening things and peeking into things and sniffing things. “Hot dogs. But lamb chops… and even a crucifer…” She laughed over her shoulder at his sour face. “What you want? You must want somethin’…”

  Bart suddenly grinned. “How about you?” he said.

  “That can be arranged.”

  It was.

  An hour later they sat down to dinner by candlelight, Bart waving his arms around as he told her just how much he wasn’t accomplishing on the Great Gyppo Hunt.

  “Everybody’s grabbing cars but me! Even Trin Morales got one of ’em, for God sake! Morales!”

  By soft candleglow, Corinne’s black eyes gleamed in her heart-shaped brown face. She was a beautiful woman, with high cheekbones off an Egyptian wall painting and a wide warm kissable mouth. Bart was stirred again just looking at that face.

  “You always said he was a very good detective.”

  Heslip laid down his knife and fork to gesture some more.

  “Also a son of a bitch, unlike the other Latinos I know. Point is, he doesn’t know anything more about Gyppos than I do—but he’s scored. Larry’s got his fortune-teller feedin’ him leads, Giselle’s got some secret informant, O’B just busted one out by the Cow Palace, the Great White Father is down in L.A. knocking ’em off…”

  “And poor little Bart Heslip is a pseudo house-husband stuck at home baking cookies for his wage-earning cutie.”

  “Well, damn near.”

  They both laughed, and linked their wineglasses gaily; and the phone rang. Corinne wiped her mouth as she stood up.

  “It’ll be the office.”

  The year before, she had taken over as manager of the downtown travel bureau where she had worked for several years; she and Bart were even talking about buying in when the owner retired. The promotion had meant more money, but in the recession crunch the agency had taken to staying open until seven o’clock weekday evenings, and problems were usually bounced back to Corinne even if she had gone home for the night.

  But it was Giselle Marc’s familiar voice on the phone. After hello-hello, Corinne said, “I hear you have a mysterious Gypsy informant all of your own.”

  “Mysterious is right,” said Giselle. “One cryptic phone call that led me to a mark who led me to Larry’s fortune-teller.”

  “Jealously among the Gyppos?” asked Corinne.

  “Something like that, maybe I’ll know more tonight.” She added quickly, “Don’t tell Bart that, he’ll tell Larry and—”

  Corinne chuckled. “Gotcha.” Giselle had told her all about Yana and the claws she had in Larry.

  “Speaking of Bart the Incredible Hulk, is he around?”

  “And grouchy as a bear.”

  “Then I think I have some good news for him.”

  Heslip was standing beside her when she turned to look for him; he always knew when she was talking with Giselle. The two women had gone through a couple of things together that had made them the same kind of real friends he and Larry were.

  He took the receiver from Corinne’s hand, making a kissing mouth at her as she went back to her dinner before it got cold.

  “Ed McMahon called, I’m worth millions?”

  “Next best thing,” said Giselle. “Dan has a chokehold on Poteet and the man is paying off like a drilled slot machine.”

  Cutting lamb, Corinne watched Bart write things down. She knew him so well. They had met just before he had quit the ring, and for years she had hated his being a detective as much as she’d hated his being a boxer, had even convinced herself she hated Dan Kearny for making him a DKA associate. But finally she had realized that Bart defined himself by the game, and his game was Me against You, whether in the ring or in the field.

  Me against You, and no color, no social status, no educational differences to worry about. Delinquent debtor, deadbeat, embezzler, skip, defrauder, personal injury cheat, they were all the same. For Bart, just Me against You, physical if you wanted it that way, but usually outguessing, outthinking, or outfacing you to bring you down. In a way she’d even come to approve of it—she couldn’t deny that sort of excitement and challenge to her man…

  Who was writing and mumbling, “Yeah, yeah, I got it, mmhmm, Seattle… Yeah. And that’s… Okay, J-O-S-E-F—that’s with an ‘F’—A-D-A-M-O. And his scam… Road paving. We got an address or… Just check on new subdivisions, huh? Okay, Got it. And Chicago… hold it a sec…”

  He started another REPO ON SIGHT order.

  “In Chicago it’s… Mmmhmm, N-A-N-O-O-S-H… what was the second… T-S-A-T-S-H-I-M-O—Tsatshimo, that right?… Yeah… Metal plating? What the hell is… Okay, got you… Yeah… Either likely to be using his real name?… Okay, sure, I’ll call you, give you my motel soon’s I get… Yeah, I’ll fly tonight. Soon’s I can get to the airport…”

  He talked a few moments more, hung up, turned to Corinne wearing a face alight with excitement.

  “Honey, old Dan Kearny turned this L.A. Gyppo upside down and shook him, and out popped—”

  “Seattle and Chicago and a couple of Gyps with names like rare diseases.”

  He chuckled. “Think you’re so smart! Anyway, I gotta—”

  “Soon as you can get to the airport?”

  Her tantalizing Mona Lisa smile made Heslip realize he was going to be several long days—and nights—away from her sweet face and sweet body and that sweet loving he’d just had some of not long before…

  “Well, baby, all that ‘soon’ talk is relative, isn’t it? Gotta find out when there’s a Seattle flight, no use hanging around the airport for hours… What’s ‘soon,’ after all…”

  Somehow, they never did finish that fine dinner house-husband Heslip had slaved over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ramon Ristik met Teddy at the door. “Do you have the egg?”

  Teddy held up the old battered yellow gym bag as if it carried the Hope diamond. “Still in my Reebok. Just the way Madame Miseria told me. And the money, all I could raise.”

  Ristik nodded and stepped aside to let him by. It was all part of the mumbo jumbo, but also Yana had not been quite ready for the night’s charade. They had been arguing, truth be told. About the tall blond gadjo with whom Yana had a relationship Ristik really didn’t understand. And didn’t trust at all.

  But Ristik had dropped it: after all, who knew what powers Yana might really possess? Ramon always had secretly believed that his sister had been born with “a veil over her forehead” as the gift of second sight often is described by the rom.

  She appeared at the head of the stairs when Teddy had limped halfway up—the snake down his flank was severe. Yana w
as back in her bright filmy Gypsy clothes, but tonight it was without anything under them so her beautiful figure was outlined mistily by the light behind her.

  Ristik approved of the tantalizing display, it kept Teddy off balance. But he couldn’t approve of the blond gadjo. How did Yana know him so well? From when? From where? She almost acted as if they once had been… lovers. But rom, gadjo…

  “You have come,” said Yana in that eerily deep voice she could assume at will.

  “Ye-e-es,” quavered Teddy.

  “To learn whether evil had hatched out or not.”

  Yana was as beautiful as ever, but Teddy noted there were shadows under her eyes—skillfully applied, which he didn’t notice— and her skin was pale, almost translucent. He didn’t realize, either, that she had dusted pale powder on beforehand and that her parrot-bright silks were to heighten the effect.

  She said, “All day I have been feeling… a presence…”

  Teddy was led to the boojo room. Flickering candles made shadow demons dance in the corners. They sat down across from one another at the table. No crystal ball tonight; instead, a single small bone-white ceramic bowl like that in which his money had bled. Ristik had disappeared. Yana gripped both of Teddy’s hands hard in hers.

  “Let us pray now to Jesus Christ the Savior,” she said.

  Teddy panicked—he hadn’t prayed in years, so he could think of nothing except “Now I lay me down to sleep…” Yana started a Hail Mary, but suddenly stopped and released his hands.

  “It is no good!” she exclaimed harshly. “The emanations are too strong…” She transfixed him with her sudden fierce gaze. “You brought all the cash you could raise?”

  “Yes,” said a terrified Teddy. He didn’t say he had cheated, that it was all he could raise without starting to cash in the investments his stepfather had left for him. “Over five thousand dollars. But…”

  “But! Do you wish to die?”

  “No, but—”