32 Cadillacs Page 15

  “Incredible,” said Giselle, to be saying something.

  “But the Gyppos made one mistake. They stole a gold pocket watch off the dresser, an old antique job. So of course I nailed ’em when they tried to pawn it.”

  “Of course.” But her irony was unrecognized.

  “Yeah, well, that’s the kinda thing I do every day. As for what I do at night…” With another leer, he gestured at the plaque. “Interested? Feel safe tonight. Sleep with—”

  “I already feel safe at night.”

  She needed a cigarette, badly; but Dan Kearny was being such a pain about it that she’d quit again. Thank God for her impulse to give Harrigan a false name and profession. Any call from this man to any woman on earth for any reason whatsoever would be an obscene phone call.

  “You wanna feel even safer, girlie, you give ol’ Harry a call—he practices safe sex.” He started to guffaw, said again, “Safe sex. Course if a broad answers, hang up.”

  More guffaws. A broad. His wife. To hell with it. She took one of his cigarettes. Of course Harry was right there with a lighter, hoping for another peek down her blouse. Wouldn’t you just know, the lighter was an old-fashioned Zippo with the 82nd Airborne crest on the side? She stubbed out the cigarette after one puff. It tasted like she was smoking an old tire. Wouldn’t you just know that, too? You sin and it isn’t even any fun.

  She asked, “You hear anything about a Gypsy calling himself Angelo Grimaldi working the Bay Area lately?”

  “Grimaldi?” He shook his head. “No Gyp’d choose Grimaldi, they go for short Anglo-Saxon names—Adams, Marks, Wells…”

  “Great-looking, mid-thirties, charms professional women…”

  “A class act?” Harrigan lit up again. “Now I know he ain’t a Gyp. Gyppos can’t bring off a class act. And he ain’t local, either, I can tell you that. I know all the local Gyps.”

  “He’s around,” Giselle insisted. “Our angle is that this is a really unusual Gypsy we can build a story on.”

  “Yeah, well, they re putting the squeeze on welfare scams in New York and Chicago, so a lotta Gyppo scum is coming into California lately from over there. Maybe—”

  “The land of opportunity,” said Giselle wryly.

  But it was his first interesting remark. Maybe Grimaldi was a recent arrival. Not for welfare scams, surely, but…

  “They bring any news with them?”

  “They might be gonna have to pick a new King—there’s some rumors the old one’s dyin’ back in the Midwest…”

  Better yet. A dying King would answer Kearny’s questions about the timing of the Cadillac scam. The Gypsies would want new cars to go back in style to the huge encampment of Gypsy vitsas and kumpanias necessary for selecting a new King.

  “This dying King—who? Where? When?”

  “Who knows, who cares, why bother?” His eyes were now unbuttoning her blouse. “Back in the Corn Belt somewhere.”

  She had to be careful; cops were notorious moonlighters, many of them as free-lance repomen, she didn’t want to give him any hint about thirty-one Bay Area Cadillacs up for grabs. But she also needed whatever info he might have. So, turn it around.

  “Any stories making the rounds about Gypsies with a whole fleet of new Cadillacs, maybe heading this way?”

  “A fleet of ’em? Headin’ our way? Don’t I wish. A man could make himself extra loot knocking off those babies.” He stubbed his butt. “But nah. I’d of heard of ’em, for sure.”

  “For sure.”

  “What the hell, the President’s comin’ in a few days, I won’t be payin’ any attention to Gyppos for a while. Everybody on Bunco’ll be workin’ the downtown pickpocket detail.”

  “Trying to catch the politicians in the act?”

  “Hell no, the dips’ll be workin’ the crowds an’…” He stopped, belatedly realizing it had been a joke. He started to bellow with laughter. “Haw! Haw! Haw! Tryin’ to catch the politicians in the act! That’s good.”

  Giselle knew she’d had about all she could take of Dirty Harry Harrigan, but she had one more question.

  “Any other Cadillac stones making the rounds?”

  “Now you mention it, a bunco guy down to Palm Springs sent out flyers on a restored classic nineteen fifty-eight pink Eldorado ragtop got conned out of some used-car salesman.” More guffaws. “Car salesman’s out the money ’cause the Caddy wasn’t his to sell— just borrowed by his boss for a promo!”

  “Conned by Gypsies?” Giselle was leaning forward intently.

  “Ay-rabs. Gal had a bodyguard with a big ol’ knife, they scairt the guy into takin’ a check an’ signin’ over the pink an’ they just drove that ragtop right outta there.”

  “I take it the check bounced.”

  “Higher’n the Transamerica tower.”

  “Was it drawn on a San Francisco bank?”

  “Naw. Arabia. Bahrain, somethin’ like that.”

  Giselle was frowning. “Then why’d he circulate it to you? A few hundred dollars on a con game—”

  “Few hundred? Try sixty thousand! Goddam Ay-rabs.”

  These goddam Ay-rabs interested Giselle vitally. It was easy to print phony checks that said Arabia, and there just were not a whole bunch of Arab conwomen around.

  “Gould the woman have been a Gypsy posing as an Arab?”

  “Couldda been, I s’pose, but why would she take the chance? You’re talkin’ felony theft here. Gyps don’t want old cars—it’s always this year’s Caddy to tool around in.”

  True. And yet… and yet… there was something here.

  Maybe something like this: a Gypsy King is dying and a Gypsy who is using an odd pseudonym—one Kearny thinks has been created for a major sting already in place—recklessly endangers or at least complicates the sting by setting up a band of fellow Gypsies to hit a bank for a fleet of new Cadillacs.

  Why? Because it’s to Grimaldi’s advantage that they drive those Cadillacs back to the Gypsy King’s funeral?

  Next, a classic pink 1958 Eldorado ragtop worth $60K is conned out of a used-car salesman—surely not your typical easy mark—by someone who could have been a Gypsy posing as an Arab. A big-time felony for a car not usually of interest to Gypsies.

  To give Grimaldi an edge in choosing the new King?

  But how could a ’58 ragtop do that? She had to be missing some vital element. All of a sudden, Giselle wanted to talk to that used-car salesman in Palm Springs.

  And wanted to know about that special-order limo Angelo Grimaldi had scored from Jack Olwen Cadillac.

  And wanted to check whether any of the better San Francisco hotels had an Angelo Grimaldi registered.

  Because if the Gypsy calling himself Grimaldi had a major con going, it surely would be timed to the President’s arrival. The cops, tied up in crowd control as Dirty Harry had said, would be much less likely to catch the scam before it was too late.

  A lot of ifs and mights and maybes, but they all added up to one thing: Grimaldi could still be here in San Francisco, waiting for the President’s arrival. And if he was, Giselle Marc was going to nail him to the wall and…

  She was brought crashing back to earth by Dirty Harry’s dirty voice in her ear, his dirty hand on her arm.

  “Listen, girlie, I got this one-eyed snake in my pants…”

  Too much. She didn’t really mind whatever dirty little fantasies he might have about her, but it was intolerable he thought she might want to share them. This particular girlie was going to have to do something about Harry’s dirt…

  “Okay, okay, you win—I’ll admit it, you’ve got me intrigued.” She added wickedly, “Come over to my place tonight, seven-thirty … I’ll leave the street door unlocked…”

  Even as she had given him a phony name, so she gave him a phony address, that of the Sappho Self-defense Dojo. Ballard, brown belt that he was, had told her in slightly awed tones about this extremely militant feminist lesbian martial-arts support group on Clement Street.

  When Dirt
y Harry Harrigan swaggered into the place that night without knocking, she was sure they would give him, if not the sort of evening he fantasized, almost certainly the sort of evening he deserved.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As Giselle was dashing heatedly off in several directions at once to look for Angelo Grimaldi, Rudolph Marino, cool as geometry, was looking for her. Oh, not for her specifically, but, through his SFPD contact, for the repomen who had knocked off the two Gypsy Cadillacs over the weekend.

  He used a St. Mark lobby payphone; by now he routinely phoned from his suite only for room service and wake-up because the switchboard would be monitoring his calls. He asked for his tame cop in the gruff voice snitches so often have.

  “Marino,” he said when the man answered, gave the payphone number, hung up. When it rang three minutes later, he asked it, “What do you have?” then listened, nodding. “Morales… Marc… DKA? Which stands for… I see… Daniel Kearny Associates…”

  He kept on listening. So Yana had been right. The same agency had picked up both cars. Bad news and good news. Bad news because the private detectives must indeed have figured out that it was Gypsies who had hit the bank for the Cadillacs. Good news because he could keep this information from Yana while feeding DKA information about her kumpania until she panicked and brought that ’58 ragtop into the open where he or his people could grab it…

  “Giselle Marc?” he exclaimed to the phone, surprised.

  One of the repomen was a woman? He grinned whitely to himself. There wasn’t the woman born he couldn’t get next to.

  Well, maybe Yana.

  “Gerry Merman… yes… I understand… a journalist doing a piece about Gypsies… I see… free-lance…”

  He hung up, frowning. Then he smiled. Gerry Merman, writer. Giselle Marc, repowoman. He’d never heard of a repowoman, but he liked her moves, posing as a free-lance writer to get a line on Grimaldi without tipping DKA’s investigation. Free-lance, so if the cop had a highly unlikely I.Q. power surge and became suspicious, he couldn’t check out her cover story.

  Just her bad luck that Harry Harrigan, SFPD’s Bunco Squad Gypsy specialist, also happened to be the cop in Marino’s pocket. But her good luck that now he, Rudolph Marino, soon to be King of the Gypsies, would be feeding her info about Yana’s kumpania.

  Nothing about Stupidville, of course. If she learned of it, Giselle Marc sounded plenty smart enough to show up and grab some Caddies from a rom encampment called to name their new King upon the death of their old.

  * * *

  Their old King was not all that near death, actually, but Dr. Crichton, making his rounds, was worried about him all the same. Poor old Karl didn’t seem to have a lot of will to live, and now the department store’s insurance company was involved and insisting, in this age of skyrocketing medical costs, on more tests being run before they would okay even current expenses.

  Bad for his patient, bad all around.

  What Crichton didn’t know was that Barney Hawkins, Democrat National Assurance Company’s adjuster, was at that moment in Staley’s room shoving ballpoint pen and release form under his aged nose. Hawkins had bad teeth and was overweight, with just a fringe of hair around the back of his head as if he had been tonsured for the religious life. Shifty brown eyes that Staley met with a hurt and hurting old-man’s candor and bewilderment.

  “Whazzis?” he mumbled in his overmedicated way.

  “Just a release,” oozed Hawkins. “So your medical bills will be paid and you can stay here in this nice hospital until you’re all better.”

  Staley had taken the pen, but now it slipped from his lax fingers and his head tilted down to one side as if he suddenly were dozing off from his medications. He gave a snore.

  “Here, don’t do that. Just sign the form…” Victory seemed near and Hawkins made the mistake of grabbing an ancient shoulder and shaking him. “Hey, old man, wake—”

  Staley reared up screaming. Hawkins jumped back, startled, to carom off the solid bulk of Lulu, who had been waiting in the bathroom for Staley’s shriek to bring her charging out.

  “What you do to my husband?”

  As she grappled with the dumbfounded adjuster, the door burst open and in rushed Crichton and the redheaded, freckled nurse who accompanied him on rounds.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  The nurse had Lulu by the arms to hold her back from Hawkins, who was exclaiming, “This crazy old broad attacked—”

  “I was in bathroom, came out, he was shaking my Karl—”

  “Shaking him?” Crichton, livid, shoved the adjuster back across the room. “You’re shaking, him? This man has a spinal injury from a fall down an escalator and you’re shaking him?”

  Staley moaned loudly from the bed. All eyes turned. “Want me to sign some paper,” said his wan old-man’s voice.

  Crichton knew Hawkins only all too well. “A release form?”

  “My Karl is not gonna sign no release forms,” Lulu said in loud abrupt tones. “The lawyer told me that he shouldn’t—”

  “Lawyer?” cried Hawkins in alarm. “What lawyer?”

  “The lawyer who said I should sign a paper with him.”

  “Don’t do that,” said Hawkins with a terrible intensity. He’d had a shitty litigation loss-ratio last year, he didn’t need this. “Don’t sign any contracts with any lawyer—”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, ah, he’ll, ah, take half of what you get from us. He’ll, ah, cheat you. Just let us make you an offer and—”

  Staley groaned again from the bed. Lulu said immediately, “My Karl in too much pain to be thinking about anything like that right now.”

  “Out,” snapped Crichton, “everybody out. The nurse is here to give the patient a sponge bath.” He laid a gentle hand on Lulu’s shoulder. “You too, Mrs. Klenhard. Go get a cup of coffee at the cafeteria. Come back in half an hour or so.”

  Outside in the corridor, Hawkins glowered after Lulu’s retreating form. “Y’know her old man’s faking it, Doc.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I tell you he’s faking it.” He riffled the papers in his hand. “Not one X ray here that’s worth a damn.”

  “Not unusual; patients with acute pain can’t lie still for X ray. I’ve conducted manual physical exams that more than—”

  “Manual exams don’t cut it with me, Doc.”

  “The man is nearly eighty years old! He fell down an escalator in a store you insure—”

  “I want a spinal tap.”

  After a long, angry pause, Crichton said icily, “I make the determination of which tests should be run on my patients.”

  “Oh yeah? We’ve been through this before, Doc, I always go to the hospital chief administrator, and he always says…”

  “The bottom line,” finished Crichton hollowly.

  The bottom line. If the insurance company refused to pay Klenhard’s running medical expenses, the hospital would transfer the old man to a county-run facility that Crichton regarded as little better than a snake pit. He sighed in resignation.

  “He has to agree to the spinal tap.”

  “Okay. But right now. Before that wife of his gets back.”

  The two men stared at one another with cordial mutual loathing. Crichton sighed and turned away. Hawkins smiled at his back. The old woman was the steel in the combination. With her out of the way, the old man would be putty in his hands.

  The nurse had finished both Staley’s sponge bath and that amazing nurses’ feat, changing his sheets with him still in them.

  Crichton dismissed her, said gently, “We’ve been discussing your case, Mr. Klenhard. We want you to submit to a spinal tap.”

  “What’s that?” Staley was looking apprehensively from face to face for those answers not found in words alone.

  “I draw fluid from your spinal cord to test whether—”

  “Draw? What’s that, draw?”

  “Siphon off,” put in Hawkins impatiently.

 
“Like with a needle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A big needle?”

  “Yes,” said Crichton suddenly, “a very big needle.”

  “It’s gonna hurt, ain’t it? A lot?” Staley’ s chin had gotten determined and his eyes had gone mule-stubborn. “I ain’t gonna do it, I can’t stand no more pain.”

  “Mr. Klenhard—”

  “No.”

  Staley looked straight ahead as if alone in the room. Crichton took Hawkins to the window. Outside, April showers had come their way to bring the flowers that bloom in May.

  “You heard. He can’t stand any more pain.”

  “He wouldn’t have known about any more pain if you hadn’t tipped him off,” snarled Hawkins. “A little needle prick—”

  “Have you ever had a spinal tap, Mr. Hawkins?”

  “No, but—”

  “I thought not. I sincerely hope I get a chance to give you one. Meanwhile, I can’t chance it over his objections.” He amended, “I won’t chance it. With his sensitivity to any added pain, the tap could result in further permanent injury.”

  “Further? I’m telling you, Doc…” The adjuster paused for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, “Okay, I’ll accept reflex tests if administered right now in my presence.”

  “The same objection applies,” said Crichton in equally low tones. “Any added pain—”

  “If he’s as bad off as he’s claiming, he won’t feel a thing. If he does inadvertently show pain, Doc, either we got us a miracle right here in River City… or he’s been faking it all along. Right?”

  Crichton hesitated. There had seemed no way Klenhard could profit from faking serious injury, but now the store manager had brought in his insurance company with the possibility of a settlement. Might not a destitute septuagenarian looking at a penniless old age be motivated to attempt insurance fraud?

  “Okay,” Crichton said abruptly, “I’ll go along with it.”

  They turned from the rain-streaked window back to the bed, where Staley seemed to have fallen asleep again.

  “Mr. Klenhard.” No reaction. Louder. “Mr. Klenhard.”