32 Cadillacs

by Joe Gores

  “Die horribly?”

  Teddy slumped in his chair. “No.” His limbs twitched. Sweat poured down his face. Yana softened.

  “Perhaps it will not come down to the money.”

  As if on cue, Ristik appeared, pale. “The omens are bad! You must not do this!” But she waved him away.

  “I must. Leave us. Be ready if I cry out.”

  He seemed to struggle against her, but finally disappeared silently through the curtains again.

  Yana turned back to Teddy. “Put the egg on the table.”

  He opened his old yellow gym bag and took out the Reebok. If he had felt silly putting the egg in the shoe, he didn’t now. Now he felt disoriented, terrified, feverish. Out of the shoe he carefully took the sweatsock in which he had rolled the egg. He put the egg carefully beside the bowl.

  “If the demon has not hatched, the egg will be pure. If it has…” Her voice trailed off, fraught with horrors.

  “How… will we… know?”

  “We will know.”

  “And if it… if it is in the egg, what happens?”

  She only whispered it. “It will pass from the egg to me.”

  She took up the egg and rolled it gently between the palms of her flattened hands. When she did, she began to tremble. Suddenly, with one convulsive jerk of her wrist, she cracked the egg against the rim of the bowl. She bent forward.

  As did Teddy. He looked into the bowl. He screamed.

  Staring up at him was a tiny bilious green devil’s head with black exclamation-point eyebrows, a black goatee, and gleaming minuscule horns. Tiny evil eyes burned redly up into his through the mucous mess at the bottom of the bowl.

  Even as he glimpsed it, Madame Miseria sprang to her feet, whirled around three times, and fell to the carpet where she rolled to and fro, shrieking, gnashing her teeth. Ristik leaped into the room and grabbed her shoulders, trying to hold her down.

  “Help me!” he cried. “The demon has passed from the egg into her! Goddam you, help me!”

  The terrified Teddy threw himself on her, but she was tremendously strong. Her shiny teeth snapped at his face like a dog’s, narrowly missing his nose. Ristik was chanting in rom. The squirmings and spasms of her body beneath Teddy’s were like obscene lovemaking. He felt disgust for himself: even as she fought for his life, he wanted to possess her sexually!

  Her convulsions began to lessen. Finally, the thrashing ceased. Ristik, panting, stood up to lean against the table, looking down at them. He crossed himself.

  “It… it has… gone.”

  Yana sat up, a dazed look on her face. She was wringing wet. She whispered hoarsely, her vocal cords strained by her battle with the forces of evil, “The… demon is very strong.”

  She struggled to her feet. Teddy did the same, couldn’t help looking into the bowl again. The devil’s head was gone!

  “Yes,” Yana nodded. “From the egg to me, It nearly took me, but now it has passed from me back whence it came.”

  Teddy knew where that was. He knew what had to be done.

  “So my money is—”

  “Cursed. Indeed, it is cursed.”

  The demon’s whirlwind passage had knocked the gym bag off the table; the paper bag’s money was spewed out across the floor.

  As Teddy stared at it, mesmerized, Madame Miseria whispered, “It is the only way. Only then will the curse depart.”

  Ristik had brought forward a thirty-gallon metal trash barrel and a poker and a box of decorative wooden fireplace matches about a foot long. Yana picked up the money, folded the top of the paper bag down over the thick sheaf of bills. She slipped the package into her bosom, crossed her arms over it.

  “You have the strength to do what must be done?”

  Teddy squared his shoulders. “Yes.”

  She hesitated, then took the tightly folded package from her bodice and handed it to him. Ristik jerked involuntarily, made a strangled sound. Yana ignored him to light a long match and hand it to Teddy. Her eyes glowed, her voice deepened.

  “Theodore Winston White the Third… burn the curséd money!”

  Trembling as if with the ague, Teddy put the flame to a corner of the package. It began to wisp smoke.

  “Drop it in the pail.”

  He did. With a WHOOSH! the crumpled newspaper in the barrel, soaked in lighter fluid, shot flames two feet above the rim, driving them both back. Ristik stepped in with the poker and stirred the contents vigorously as Yana chanted in her strong, almost guttural voice, “Te avis yertime mandartay te yertil o Dei, te avis yertime mandartay te yeriil o Dei…”

  The flames died. The money was gone. She embraced Teddy.

  “You have been very strong,” she said. “Very brave.”

  “And the curse… what of that?”

  She shrugged in the Gypsy manner. “We shall see if this money was enough. Go home. Feel if the snake in your body withers away—perhaps you will have no more need of me.”

  “I will always need you!” cried Teddy despairingly. He could not face the uncertainty of life without her help.

  But she had melted away through the curtains and was gone. Teddy found himself being firmly herded by Ristik from the ofica and down the stairs to slanting Romolo Place.

  * * *

  Ristik returned to be waltzed around the room by his manic sister at the success of the “burn-up”—so called because no evidence of the con is left, supposedly it has all been burned up. By the dimming light of the candles their shadows capered like those of cavorting goblins.

  “I was the best I’ve ever been…”

  “When you handed him the phony package to burn—”

  “Did you see the switch? The smoothest…”

  “If he had looked inside—”

  “I had stage money in the prepared package…”

  Yana took Teddy’s $5,000 package from the pocket inside the bosom of her blouse, and put it on the boojo table. Next to it Ristik laid the tiny hand-carved devil’s head he had scooped from the bowl just before Teddy had stood up. Just as he had flipped the gym bag to the floor so the money would spill out.

  Yana gestured at it. “Half is yours.”

  Ristik protested, rather weakly, “You did all the work…”

  “Equal partners, brother of mine.” She embraced him again, and laughed at him. “Go! To your poker or dice game…”

  He laughed almost sheepishly as he took $500. “Keep the rest for me, Yana. Otherwise I will just gamble it away.”

  “We will get much more than that with the cemetery dig.”

  “You truly believe that he will go along with that? What if his sciatica clears up?”

  “He will still think it is there.” She extended a foot like a ballet dancer on pointe. “He would lick this shoe if I asked him.” Her laugh was not pretty. “He is mine. I own him.”

  After she had gotten rid of Ramon, she smiled a secret smile and went to put on perfume. She had another fortune to tell tonight. She knew Ramon’s ingrained rom disapproval, but Ballard was necessary to save the pink Cadillac so she would be Queen of the Gypsies. She merely had to get him to…

  The trouble was, conning Teddy had her in a state of sexual arousal. Seeing Larry would heighten and focus that arousal.

  * * *

  From her vantage point in the recessed doorway of a small grocery store at the head of Romolo Place, Giselle had seen Teddy White enter the ofica. She hadn’t tried to dissuade him previously in Tiburon over caffe latte: there was one horn every minute, and what Yana did to him interested her not at all.

  Unfortunately, what Yana did with Larry interested her a great deal—to her eternal shame. Oh God, acting like a jealous teenager! Over Larry, always only a friend. If he knew how she felt, he’d laugh at her. Yet here she was, consumed.

  She watched the dazed Teddy eventually go back down Romolo toward Broadway with the limping, shambling gait of a drunk. Minus, she was sure, that silly damned egg wrapped in a sweatsock and stuck in the toe of his runni
ng shoe. Minus, also, whatever money he’d crammed into the gym bag with it. Poor fool.

  She sighed. A wasted stakeout, what had she accomplished? What had she learned? Who was the bigger fool?

  But still she stayed.

  The door emitted a swaggering Ramon Ristik. The brother, off to celebrate a successful con in a bar or poker game.

  And still she stayed. Waiting for what now? What other shoe was there to drop?

  Larry Ballard climbed the steep side of Telegraph Hill to Madame Miseria’s door, was admitted.

  Of course. That was why she had waited. For the final humiliation at the hands of Yana. Oh, the bitch!

  * * *

  “You have come.”

  “To get my fortune told?” Ballard made it a question.

  Yana drew him up the stairs, her hand hot in his. Wearing the same sort of flowing silks as that first time in Santa Rosa. He found it so erotic he got a strong erection just walking hand in hand with her down the dim narrow curtained hallway.

  He finally broke the silence. “Did you have… a séance here tonight?”

  “A reading. Theodore Winston White the Third.”

  There was an electricity in the air, a tension so palpable it was almost unpleasant. Also a tremendous excitement in her—as if she had just made love. He told himself it had been just another con, nothing physical, but he felt a stab of jealousy.

  He tried to keep his voice neutral. “Successful, I hope.”

  “Very.”

  “For him or for you?”

  The ofica was dim, he could smell snuffed candles; now the only illumination was the glowing crystal ball back on the table, beautiful and cool and disturbing. She stopped and turned so abruptly that he collided with her. The length of her body pressed against his. Her eyes gathered light like a cat’s.

  “For me,” she said in a low intense voice. She was speaking almost into his mouth. “It was a poisoned egg. It is a cruel deception, but he is only a gadjo.”

  Ballard’s arms had come up around her. She was naked under the thin silk, her body almost feverish to the touch. She made a small despairing sound in her throat. She must not. She was rom, Ballard was gadjo. But she felt the same wild excitement as the first time with him. She belonged to no man, no concept: only to herself. Therefore she could give herself to any man she desired,rom or gadjo, couldn’t she? Yes!

  Their mouths met, their tongues sought. Their bodies began to move together in that most ancient rhythm of life even as they were sinking to the floor, even as his hands went up under the silk garments to open her waiting flesh, even as her hands almost magically freed his stiffened member so it could enter her.

  Above them, the crystal ball faded slowly to darkness.

  * * *

  When the dim light was gone from the front room, Giselle left her stakeout, feeling humiliation almost as vindication. No wonder Dan Kearny kept DKA out of domestic investigations: they were degrading. No more of this for Giselle Marc, not ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ken Warren sat upon the edge of the couch and looked at his wristwatch. Not quite six in the morning. He yawned and started to stand up and fell back in a sitting position with a grunt of surprise. He had to put his hands on his knees and push to get himself upright, his knees popping like dry kindling. Goddam couch. Old and not very good quality in the first place.

  In the shower, hot enough to turn him lobster red, then cold enough to chatter his teeth, he knew that he would have to get his bed back. Which meant getting Maybelle an apartment.

  Yesterday he’d returned her Connie to the dealership, only to be faced by an edgy Giselle when he’d got to the office.

  “Ah… fast work on that Continental, Ken.” He’d shrugged, but she wouldn’t go away. “You… ah… have any trouble?”

  He faked amazement. “Nthixty-one an’ phat an’ hmblak?”

  She put her hands on her hips and tried to stare him down.

  “All of those,” she said, “and a hooker besides. But also a human being who deserves some decency and a few breaks.”

  Ken had patted her shoulder and walked around her and gone up to type reports. When he had looked up an hour later, Giselle was leaning in the doorway with her arms folded, waiting.

  “You know she was sleeping in that car?” Warren nodded, kept hitting the keys. “Now where’s she going to sleep?”

  Unwillingly, still typing, he said, “Nthees ngoht frenz.”

  Softly, “Thanks, Ken.” When he looked up, she’d been gone.

  None of that helped with this morning’s aching back. He’d give Maybelle this apartment and move into a furnished room in a minute—but she’d never stand for it. No, she had to have legit work that paid enough better than piecework at a dry-cleaning plant to let her get a place of her own.

  As he turned off the icy stinging water and rubbed down vigorously with the napless towel, he started to laugh. She was big, strong, eager, and the job was there. He’d make it happen.

  Meanwhile, he’d repo’d all the easy ones the DKA gang had left for him. Today he wanted the tough ones.

  * * *

  Today Giselle wanted Angelo Grimaldi.

  She would uncover his scam, then take his big black limo away from him. To hell with Larry Ballard and his Gyppo broad. Today she was Boadicea, war queen of the Britons, slashing Roman legionnaires to bloody ribbons with flashing blades fixed to the wheels of her chariot.

  Since she was going to the St. Mark, she wore pale yellow silk under her lightweight full-length back leather coat, and wrapped a very expensive almost Gypsy-bright silk scarf about her throat. Her attaché case of repo tools looked full of dynamite legal papers. She would never be spotted as a hard-nosed repoman.

  Ah, repowoman. Repoperson?

  Boadicea, armored. Angelo Grimaldi, dogmeat.

  Except she couldn’t even get from DKA to the top of Nob Hill. Her radio told her why: the presidential motorcade was arriving from the airport. Finally, she parked in a supermarket tot on Larkin and rode the California cable in.

  At the St. Mark she went through the fancy revolving doors into the venerable thick-carpeted lobby and almost asked the tall blonde at the check-in counter, who looked simpática, if Angelo Grimaldi was in his room; but showing interest would tip her hand too soon. Instead, attaché case in hand, she went to the elevators. Check the garage first, she might just get lucky.

  * * *

  Rudolph Marino, wearing yet another $1,200 suit, strolled from the coffee shop just in time to miss the descending car the tall beautiful sexy blonde was getting on. A knockout! But no time for blondes now, not even blondes that stunning. So he tipped sometime lover Maria at the check-in desk a wink—she might still be useful—and waited for the next down-car.

  Just before his continental breakfast, he had attached the receiver to the detonator embedded in the C-4 plastique under the rear seat of his limo, thus arming it. The transmitter was in his pocket. Today an unsuccessful terrorist attack on the President would make Rudolph Marino $75,000 richer.

  * * *

  My God, there was the long black Gyppo limo conned out of the bank by Angelo Grimaldi! Giselle had intended to scope out Grimaldi’s scam before seeking the limo, but this was better. With the car in the barn, maybe she could turn him. He’d make a dynamite informant, even better than Dan’s Ephrem Poteet, light-years better than Larry’s Ms. Gyppo Slut.

  The garage was full of men in business suits coming and going, standing around in little groups talking. Giselle got out the key she had cut for it, and, looking every inch the ambitious young attorney, strode boldly over to the Gyppo limo and started to insert the key into the door lock.

  That’s when half a dozen suits seized her from behind, twisting the key out of her hand and slamming her face-down against the car’s fender, her arms up behind her back.

  * * *

  Rudolph Marino stepped from behind his pillar to check that nobody was near his limo before he detonated the C-4 under
the rear seat, and saw the Secret Service agents roughing up his beautiful sexy elevator blonde. Devalesa! She had to be Giselle Marc, the repo queen! He changed his plan instantly.

  * * *

  “You have the right to remain silent…”

  Giselle felt cold steel bite into her wrists. “No! Wait! You don’t understand—”

  “You have the right to an attorney…”

  “It’s all a mistake—”

  “If you cannot afford an attorney…”

  “All I was trying to do—”

  “Stop this disgrace!”

  The voice was such a whipcrack of authority that the chunky man in the Brooks Brothers suit stopped reading Giselle her rights from the soiled card in his hand. Even Giselle, despite her awkward position against the car, twisted to see who it was.

  The most beautiful man in the world.

  Dusky skin… raven ringlets… long curved eyelashes… a strong nose, beautifully shaped lips, strong, cruel chin… meltingly handsome, romantic, dashing… Obviously… Angelo Grimaldi! Whoever the hell Angelo Grimaldi really was.

  “Who the hell are you, buddy?” A short weasel of an agent had his chin thrust out.

  “The lady’s husband.” Somehow, Marino was at Giselle’s side, his arms around her. “Are you all right, my darling? Have they hurt you?”

  She almost managed tears. “They frightened me, sweetheart, and they put these cold… things on my wrists and—”

  He whirled on them, eyes blazing.

  “Remove those handcuffs immediately! My wife makes a simple mistake, and…”

  Weasel had planted himself in front of Marino, hand out. He said, “I.D.” Marino didn’t move. Weasel smiled. Not a nice smile. “No? I like that.” He gestured. “Take him, too.”

  “Better not,” said Grimaldi.

  Giselle, half-forgotten, had managed to straighten up and twist around. She was close to openmouthed at the unbelievable chutzpa of this Gypsy calling himself Grimaldi.

  Who was saying, “I am Ali Akbar Zuhrain, underambassador from Kuwait, here in San Francisco to confer with your President.” A pause. “At his invitation.”

  The man who had been reading Giselle her rights furtively but feverishly began thumbing through an appointment schedule.