Cons, Scams, and Grifts

by Joe Gores

  “Alzheimer’s,” said Rosenkrantz wisely.

  “Yeah. Guy goes to the doctor, doctor says, ‘I’ve got bad news and worse news. You got cancer and you got Alzheimer’s.’ ”

  “ ‘Thank God I don’t have cancer,’ ” said Rosenkrantz.

  Guildenstern chuckled, then sobered. “Madame Miseria. At least we got a name to give Dirty Harry down at Bunco.”

  Staley hung up the phone and sat back down at the kitchen table. The fragrance of Lulu’s thin stogie filled the room.

  “The L.A. cops refuse to release Ephrem’s body and they’re holding his possessions as crime-scene evidence.”

  “I’m still gonna hold a pomana for him,” insisted Lulu. A pomana was a ritual feast for the dead at which only fruits and grains are served. “Even if we don’t got his body.”

  “We can hold it at my place on High Street in Point Richmond,” said Rudolph Marino. “Big brown shingle house with a great view across the bay. The owners are on a world cruise and the neighbors think I’m their nephew.” He changed the subject. “Why’d you tell ’em that Yana reads fortunes as Madame Miseria?”

  “Why shouldn’t I of told ’em?” Lulu was just short of defiant. “They wanted to notify her that Ephrem had been killed, that’s all. You got a problem with getting her into trouble with the cops? She’s been declared marime, what more do you need?”

  Staley said cautiously, “How much trouble we talkin’ here?”

  “They’re from Homicide, not General Works,” said Marino.

  “How d’ya know that? They didn’t say nothing like that.”

  “Mama, they showed us a picture of Ephrem—dead,” Staley reminded her. “And then started askin’ about Yana.”

  Rudolph added, “Ephrem fingered her as his killer before he died. He said, ‘It was my wife from ’Frisco.’ And at the last second he yelled her name, ‘Yana-a-a-a-a . . .’—just like that.”

  “How you know all this stuff?” demanded Lulu in a suddenly subdued voice. If Yana was guilty of preplanned murder, she had broken one of the most deeply held Rom taboos.

  “The bartender at the Hurly Burly in L.A. is a Kalderasha with a pipeline to police headquarters.”

  “Why would she kill him?” asked Staley. “Ephrem never had no money. He always drank or gambled away everything he made.”

  “This time he had money.”

  “From where?” asked Lulu with a new gleam in her eye.

  “He made a big credit and phone card score at Universal Studios and cashed it in at the Hurly Burly two hours before he died. Bragged that he’d taken a lot of cash and traveler’s checks, too. After Yana stuck him and emptied his pockets, she took apart the ceiling light fixture.”

  “How’d she know he might of hid anything up there?” asked Staley. “They ain’t lived together for six-seven years, right?”

  “Yana’s got the second sight,” said Lulu decisively.

  No one could challenge this. Staley fell silent. He felt momentarily old, happy to have an heir apparent. Rudolph could do the heavy thinking.

  “Whatever she did,” said Rudolph, “we have to try and get to her before the gadje cops.”

  Staley took control of things again. “Call to make sure she’s there, but go in person, Rudolph. Phones got ears.”

  five

  At forty-three, Dirty Harry Harrigan (his red hair faded to pink by the gray that Just For Men somehow didn’t quite hide), had pond-scum eyes and a brass plaque on his desk: FEEL SAFE TONIGHT—SLEEP WITH A COP. He already had in his twenty with the SFPD, and during his years on the force had never fired his weapon at anyone. But his gun, sheathed in latex, was another matter. He fired that at anything hot, hollow, and female he could find.

  He tried for Giselle once when she came to Bunco with questions about Gypsies, but she turned him down. He went to what he thought was her apartment anyway; she’d slipped him the address of a radical lesbian women’s-rights martial-arts self-defense collective. His evening had ended badly.

  Rosenkrantz sank with a sigh into one of the chairs across the littered desk from a brass INSPECTOR HARRY HARRIGAN nameplate that had Dirty Harry underneath the name.

  “Dirty Harry,” he said. “ ’Cause they give you all the shit details, right?”

  These two guys only came to him when they wanted to pick his brains. He snapped, “You fuckin’ guys say that every time you come in here. Say what you want, and leave.”

  “Madame Miseria. We wanna talk to her.”

  “Talk to her about what?”

  “Police business,” said Guildenstern in a cold, dead voice.

  Harry felt the chill. “Yeah, well, she’s Muchwaya, and I hear they’re back in town. Fact is, a Russian barkeep I know out on Clement called to report a Gyppo-looking guy took one of his regulars for half-a-K after trying to steer him to a lady fortune-teller.” He shrugged. “Coulda been Madame Miseria.”

  “Her old man got aced down in LaLa Land last night, died sayin’ his wife did him.”

  That changed things. “Yeah, I remember now. Madame Miseria’s supposed to have a mitt-camp out on Geary Boulevard.”

  “Geary,” said Guildenstern flatly, “which runs parallel to Clement—where a guy tried to steer someone to a Gypsy fortune-teller. How come we know more about that than you do?”

  After the two big Homicide men had departed, Harry went out to a pay phone. If Poteet’s wife had killed him, she now had the money and papers he had run off with two weeks earlier. Goddam her, she hadn’t bothered to tell Harry. Probably thought he’d never hear about it.

  Yeah, well, he had. He savagely punched out her number. He wanted his cut pronto. And she’d better be wearing that see-through red lace bra and those red crotchless panties when he came to collect.

  In a suddenly deep, growling voice, the young, beautiful, brightly clad Gypsy woman calling herself Madame Miseria intoned:

  “Tré báct me çáv

  Tré báçt me piyáv,

  Dáv tut m’re baçt,

  Káná tu mánge sál.”

  The merest hint of incense made the air slightly heavy. Yana raised her head to look deep into the eyes of the woman across the table from her. Meryl Blanchett was matronly, mid-50s, but fighting it with a too-short skirt and bright blouse and jangly jewelry. Round face with tuck marks in front of the ears, warm eyes that crinkled at the corners when she smiled.

  They were in Yana’s ofica on Geary Boulevard, in the duikkerin room where she did her boojo: crystal-ball gazing, psychic reconstructions, and Tarot card readings. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with blood-red plush drapes to soak up street noise. The only light came from a cantaloupe-size crystal ball glowing between them on a three-foot-square table covered with black velvet.

  Back against one wall, a museum-quality Greek icon of St. Nicholas, alive with gilt, shared its tabletop with a ceramic springer spaniel, minus a leg, won at a carnival midway. A cheap ceramic fat grinning Buddha from Chinatown, acrawl with ceramic children, wore a rosary of exquisite Danish floating amber around its neck. Red, blue, and gold votive candles softly lit an acupuncturist’s chart that mapped chi points of the human body.

  Madame Miseria translated in a softer, more feminine voice:

  “I eat thy luck,

  I drink thy luck;

  Give me that luck of thine,

  Then thou shalt be mine.”

  “Yes!” cried Meryl in her soft, I-want-to-please-you voice. “I want to give Theodore back his luck.”

  “Then go to the place where you two first met—”

  “Julius Kahn Playground inside the Presidio Wall just down from my apartment,” Meryl interrupted breathlessly. “Theodore has a wonderful schnauzer, Wim, and my little Milli—”

  “Your white miniature poodle.”

  “How did you know who Milli was? I never told you . . .” Yana thought, Because you flashed its picture when you took out your wallet to pay me last week. She leaned forward to lock eyes with the woman across t
he gently pulsing crystal ball.

  “I know many more things than I wish to know.”

  Yana was not yet 30, full-bosomed, with lustrous, shining black hair that, let down, reached nearly to her waist. Her oval face was truly beautiful: small, full-lipped mouth and short, straight nose. Her long-lashed, dark, deep-set liquid eyes could be stern or melting, could seem to pierce to the very soul, or fill with all of this world’s saddest wisdoms.

  More things than I wish to know. Where had that come from?

  “Should you know them, you would never sleep again.” The phone call had changed everything; now she had to rush to the client. “At the playground you will select a blade of grass and take it in your mouth. Then you will turn first to the east and then to the west, and say . . .” And she deepened her voice again to chant:

  “Kay o kám, avriável,

  Kia mánge lele beshel!

  Kay o kám tel’ ável,

  Kiva lelákri me beshav.”

  Meryl exclaimed despairingly, “I’ll never be able to learn either one of those. I’m terrible with languages.”

  “I have written out translations for you to memorize.”

  In her mind’s eye she could see Theodore and Wim: a pair of handsome devils. Theodore with touches of bogus grey at the temples, Wim with a magnificent walrus mustache. The pair of them trolling the Presidio Wall for foolish females. A scoundrel, Theodore. He would take Meryl for much more than Yana ever would—including her happiness. Yana would have liked to crush this Theodore like a grape. Or really bind him to Meryl.

  She sighed inwardly, softened her voice to warm and melodious as she gave Meryl the chant’s translation.

  “Where the sun goes up

  Shall my love be by me!

  Where the sun goes down

  There by him I’ll be.”

  She said sternly, “You must cut the blade of grass into small pieces and put it into his food—a salad is best. When he eats of it, he will be moved to love you, to be truehearted.”

  Meryl laid five $100 bills on the table, belatedly kept her hand on them as if fearing that mere money would not buy her what she so desperately sought. Yana was counting on this.

  Meryl began, “You are sure this will . . .”

  “Nothing is ever sure in this world. Well, I have one other potion that never fails, but it is dangerous . . .”

  “Oh please! I want it! Anything!” Meryl quickly, anxiously, released the money as if it had suddenly become hot beneath her fingers. “I’m sorry if I seemed to doubt you . . .”

  “My grandmother taught me the spells to chant while making it.” Yana touched the dimmer switch under the rug with the toe of her narrow black boot. The crystal ball began to glow with a cerulean tinge apparent in its depths. “Those who practice the black arts use their version of this potion to destroy—”

  “It mustn’t hurt Theodore!” Panic in Meryl’s voice.

  “Then you must use it exactly as I instruct you.” She touched the switch again. The crystal began to fade. Her voice faded with it. “If I give you this potion, then on next St. John’s feast day I must go to Golden Gate Park and catch a green frog to put, alive, in an earthen pot pierced with small holes.”

  “So it can breathe?” Meryl was a gentle soul who belonged to Best Friends, PETA, IDOA, Wild Care, HFA, and ALDF.

  “So when I bury it in an anthill they can get in through the holes and eat it alive down to its skeleton.”

  Meryl shuddered at the deliberate brutality of the image. Pinpoints of light cleverly directed through the nearly dark crystal ball made Yana’s eyes glow with an unearthly fire.

  “This skeleton I will grind to powder, and mix this with the blood of a bat and dried, ground-up bluebottle flies . . .”

  Actually, Yana concocted the potion from a paste of black bean powder, toasted tofu, and water. Her toe moved. The crystal began to pulse rose-pink. Yana put her hands on the table, fingers spread and touching each other, then suddenly drew them back and up and opened her arms wide, materializing a tiny dark and misshapen loaf like a breakfast sausage link.

  “This will tie Theodore to you for life. For life. Use this and there will be no extinguishing his love for you. Wrap it in your handkerchief and take it home—if you dare.”

  Resolve tightened Meryl’s usually indecisive features as she gingerly picked up the little sausage with her handkerchief.

  “I . . . I dare anything for Theodore’s love.”

  “So be it. At your supper for him, serve split pea soup, very hot, then slip this loaf into his bowl so it will dissolve.”

  “I . . . I don’t have enough cash to . . .”

  “A check will be acceptable. Five thousand dollars.”

  This was the carefully weighed escalation, the moment of truth. But Meryl asked, almost timidly, “To Madame Miseria?”

  “To my birth name, Yasmine Vlanko.” Meryl started writing the $5,000 check. Yana said, “One more thing. You must give him the blade of grass and the potion on the night of the new moon.”

  Leaving just enough time to open a Yasmine Vlanko account and close it when the check had cleared; in case of trouble, there would be nothing to link Yana to the mythical Yasmine.

  She walked Meryl out through the miniature anteroom she had fashioned for possible waiting clients, dimly lit by a faux Tiffany lamp with cut-crystal rectangles dangling from the shade to tinkle with the slight wind of their passage. Here the incense was only a shadow on the moving air.

  Yana was closing the recessed street door behind Meryl when she saw two bulky men getting out of a plain sedan three doors down toward Eleventh. They put no money in the meter. The sedan was too plain. The men were too bulky.

  The check between her teeth, she made six silken moves to be free of her voluminous parrot-bright soothsayer’s gown.

  six

  Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern paused on the Geary Boulevard sidewalk just off Twelfth Avenue to examine a blue sandwich board in front of a yellow-brick apartment house. It bore a yellow outspread hand, palm forward, and the words:

  “Follow the yellow-brick hand,” said Rosenkrantz.

  They didn’t see the black Cadillac Catera sliding into a parking space across Geary, nor did they see a tall lean man in a grey suit get out. They were too busy reading lettering on a draped-off first-floor window overlooking Geary.

  PSYCHIC & TAROT

  CARD READINGS!

  $5 SPECIAL READING!

  The narrow entrance was arched in a vaguely Moorish way. Two steps up in a small vestibule was an inset door with an OPEN sign hanging on the knob and more lettering on the opaque glass:

  MADAME MISERIA

  KNOWS ALL . . . SEES ALL . . . TELLS ALL . . .

  No secret too DEEP . . . No Future too BLEAK . . .

  MADAME MISERIA Can Help YOU

  “She ain’t exactly hiding out, is she?” mused Guildenstern.

  Cut-glass teardrops tinkled softly on the Tiffany lamp’s phony stained glass shade when the two cops entered the tiny waiting room. A young woman reading a magazine started eagerly from her chair, then subsided in obvious disappointment.

  “You’re waiting for Madame Miseria?” asked Rosenkrantz.

  “Yes.” She shot a quick look at the tiny gold wristwatch just above her white-gloved left hand, and added in a low, well-modulated voice, “I had a three o’clock appointment.”

  Golden hair shone under her white tam-o’-shanter, big round glasses gave her small face an almost scholarly cast. She was slender yet full-bosomed under a white sweater and grey flannel jacket. Slim ankles and narrow black shoes peeped out from under a pleated grey mid-calf skirt. A thin attaché case rested on the floor beside her chair. For a fleeting moment, Rosenkrantz wished he had a daughter like her.

  “Maybe Madame Miseria is inside,” he suggested gently.

  “I used the bell-pull. There was no answer. And the inner door is locked.”

  Guildenstern said, “Yeah? Let’s give her another jingle.
”

  He jerked several times on the silk-tasseled bell-pull. A bell bong-bonged inside. He rattled the door. No response.

  “See? She doesn’t answer.” The blonde stood up, almost theatrically. “What if something has . . . has happened to her?”

  “Why would you think that?” snapped Guildenstern.

  “One hears . . .” A vague gesture. “Gypsies . . .”

  “Just why are you seeing her?”

  “Consulting her,” she corrected. Her eyes, behind their glasses, were abruptly icy. “And I can’t conceive of any circumstance under which that would be any of your business.”

  The cops belatedly hauled out their shield wallets.

  “Police officers,” they said in unison.

  “I see. I do not wish to embarrass Madame Miseria by being here at such an awkward time,” said the blonde. “So, good day.”

  As she picked up her attaché case, the door was opened by a man in a thousand-dollar suit. He bowed gallantly as she swept by him with a distant nod. The door closed behind her. Guildenstern bore in on the chivalrous dude.

  “We saw you out in the Mission this morning at a Gyppo hot-TV storefront place.”

  “Now we see you here at a Gyppo mitt-reader’s camp,” added Rosenkrantz. “We wanna know why.”

  Guildenstern held out his hand. “And we wanna know who.”

  The man slapped a business card down on the open palm.

  “Angelo Grimaldi, Attorney at Law. My firm represents the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco in—”

  Guildenstern said, “What do you call twelve lawyers falling out of an airplane?”

  “Skeet,” said Rosenkrantz.

  Grimaldi went on smoothly, “. . . In certain legal matters. I am trying to serve papers on the woman who, I learned at what you so colorfully call the Gyppo hot-TV storefront, operates here as Madame Miseria. She received a large sum of money from one of the Archbishop’s parishioners under dubious circumstances—”