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Staley stirred and opened his eyes. “Mama?”

  “No. It’s Dr. Crichton. We won’t have to do the spinal tap after all, Mr. Klenhard, but we are going to have to perform some alternative tests on you right here in your bed.”

  “Like the last time? Bendin’ an’ standin’ an’—”

  “No. This will be with… sharp instruments.”

  “Needles?”

  “Little needles. Like straight pins. And scrapers.”

  “See if I feel ’em, huh?” said Staley surprisingly, then added, more surprisingly, “Okay, if it’s gonna help…”

  Crichton put down the covers and bared Staley’s legs and feet. He scraped them, seeking reflex reaction. Then, at Hawkin’s insistence, he jabbed needles into the soles of the feet. Through it all, Staley lay on his back, motionless and relaxed, staring at the ceiling. He finally spoke.

  “You can start anytime you want, Doc. I’m ready for it.”

  “We’re finished,” said a triumphant Crichton. He added to Hawkins, “Faking it, huh?” as Lulu appeared.

  “What you doing to my Karl?”

  Hawkins addressed a rude word to both of them and walked out without responding to either. Three minutes later, after reassuring Lulu that they had not harmed her husband in any way, Crichton also departed. Lulu sat down in the chair beside the bed with her purse on her lap.

  “Did I stay away long enough, Liebchen?”

  “Perfect,” said Staley.

  “Any trouble with the needles?”

  “There never is if you know they’re coming.” In his youth, accidental falls had been his specialty; he knew all about how to control his reaction to the needle jabs of reflex testing.

  “The spinal tap?”

  Staley groaned very loudly. They both laughed.

  The spinal tap that might have exposed their scam, because the fluid would have been clear, was safely behind them. Lulu opened her purse and took out some Nestle’s chocolate bars with bits of almond and toffee in them, Staley’s favorite.

  As he munched one of them, Lulu said, “That insurance man is gonna make us a nice offer in a few days.”

  “And you’ll make him make us a lot nicer offer a few days after that.”

  Staley said it complacently, with not a little pride in his voice at his wife’s abilities. He finished the bar and licked his fingers and started on a second one.

  “I think tomorrow, maybe, you start word to the rom that I’m sinking fast. Prob’ly ain’t gonna last out next week…”

  “I think that’s best,” agreed Lulu comfortably. She stole a sidelong look at her lord and master, and added slyly, “Think it’s maybe time for a Queen of the Gypsies again? I been hearing good things about that Yana out there in San Francisco…”

  “I don’t know, my dumpling,” said Staley judiciously. “I’ve been following the career of young Rudolph Marino…”

  * * *

  Marino and the other three sat in a semicircular window booth with a curved red leather seat, their backs to the glass. The maître d’ had RESERVED signs on the flanking booths and on the tables in front of them. A balding man’s waterfall fingers cascaded Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue from a piano against the mirrored sidewall that was framed in thirty-foot-high red plush drapes. He had outlived his youthful self on the placard outside by a quarter-century, although his hair had not. Marino, against the others’ objections to meeting in the Garnet Room, had said the piano would jam any listening devices pointed their way.

  Redheaded Shayne, Hotel Security, smeared out his half-smoked Marlboro and fired up another.

  “Your meeting, your agenda, Grimaldi.”

  Marino paused for a moment. They hadn’t panicked and gone to the authorities, or by this time relay teams of Secret Service interrogators would be sweating him under bright lights in some anonymous federal office building downtown. But they hadn’t accepted Angelo Grimaldi’s offer yet, either; and the President was due in a couple of days.

  So, another turn of the screw. He made his face devoid of expression and spoke from the corner of his mouth, tight-lipped.

  “Assassination plot.”

  That almost did it. Harley Gunnarson went white around the mouth. If something happened to the President in a hotel he was managing… He had to clear his throat to speak.

  “They plan to… to kill the President? In my hote—”

  “Yes. You could notify the Secret Service now, of course,” said Marino. “But…”

  Smathers, lips parted, bird-bright eyes gleaming like those of a whiskey jay spotting a shiny coin, couldn’t resist.

  “But what?”

  “You already didn’t tell them about the bomb threat—”

  “There haven’t been any more,” pointed out Shayne.

  “That doesn’t negate the one there was.”

  Dull, unimaginative Shayne, focus among them of opposition to Marino’s sting, stubbed out his just-lit second cigarette. His resistance seemed to have given Gunnarson back some of the bluster the word “assassination” had scared out of him.

  “I’m not so sure,” Gunnarson said. “What if that threat was just some kook who thought he’d get his kicks making it? We have only your word that the Saladin even exist…”

  Shayne added, “With the Secret Service guys and my own security people on watch, nobody can get through to do anything to the President anyway.” He pressed his point. “So yesterday we decided that we don’t need you or your ‘people’ on this.”

  Gunnarson concurred by refusing to meet his eyes, so Marino turned to Smathers, who lathered his little hands with the invisible soap of distress and squeaked, “I’m not management! As corporate counsel I can only advise! This decision was reached over my most strenuous objections! I was overruled!”

  Marino had been counting on the tiny desiccated attorney, but now saw he’d been wrong. Well, he hated to waste such a beautiful vehicle, but his limo had been gotten as the final convincer, and this was the biggest sting of his life. So, better go over to Richmond and get it wired up by Eli Nicholas, who had served in ’Nam.

  He slid out of the booth and smiled down at them. None of the faces was really happy. The limo would do it for sure.

  “Your funeral,” he said in his slightly grating Joisey voice. “Or rather, the President’s.” He started away, then turned back. “You’re gonna get bloody on this one, y’know.”

  It was a hell of a good exit line, even if he had stolen it from Lethal Weapon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Giselle and Ballard planned to talk about Gypsies over a drink at Fifi’s on Union Street, but Ballard was late and Giselle, because of that pesky concussion he’d suffered, was feeling almost… maternal about him. Which was silly, since they’d worked together for eight years and were great friends. Friends. There could never be anything… personal between them.

  It was just that he seemed so vulnerable and…

  He also seemed to be twenty minutes late, she thought, but even her irritation was mild. Just like that Larry.

  Leaving her wine and newly purchased pack of cigarettes and disposable lighter on a table facing Union Street through plate glass, she wormed her way through noisy bar drinkers to the pay-phone. Jane Goldson’s noncommittal “Hello?” was the response prescribed for all unlisted DKA skip-tracer numbers.

  “Jane? Giselle. Did Larry call in to say that he’s still planning to meet me at Fifi’s?”

  “There’s a message for you, luv, but not from Larry. From dear old Mr. Anonymous.” Her cheery cockney voice changed to a reading singsong: “‘In Tiburon. Theodore Winston White the Third.’”

  Whatever that meant. She said, “I’m impressed—the Third, yet. But nothing from Larry…”

  “No—well, a message for him, actually. A woman.” Jane giggled. “Sexy-sounding wench, she was.” The singsong again. “‘Rainbird Lounge. Tonight.’”

  Larry’s call was none of her business, and Giselle’s own anonymous call couldn’t be about Gyppos. The onl
y informant she had spoken with was Dirty Harry, who didn’t have her real name or number. Besides, Theodore Winston White III was no Gypsy name.

  Just to be sure, she tapped out 411. No listing for White in the Tiburon/Belvedere area. No listing for him anywhere in Marin County. And no way until tomorrow to run him down through the Civic Center records in San Rafael.

  * * *

  Sonia Lovari was 32 and looked 19, and helped nature along with simple artifice: since she had a short chunky body and swarthy skin and a round face with an inappropriate beak of a nose, she plaited her long hair into a single lustrous black braid that reached to the small of her back, wore jeans, run-over cowboy boots, and a fringed jacket of phony buckskin. Thus attired, she neatly fit the gadjo stereotype of squaw woman.

  Sonia shook the one-pound coffee can with the slot in the top and MIWOK INDIAN SUPPORT GROUP—GIVE WHAT YOU CAN pasted around it. She kept it almost empty at all times; a few lonely coins rattling around inside attracted sympathy.

  “The Miwoks are starving, sir. The Great Spirit will bless you if—”

  “Everybody’s starving,” snapped the man she’d stopped.

  He obviously wasn’t. Florid face, fat stomach, three-piece suit, three-martini breath. Sonia welcomed the challenge. An argument always made other people stop and listen.

  “Not like my people, sir. We—”

  “You can’t kid me—the last of the Miwoks died off last year!” he said with inaccurate belligerence. “Ishi, that was his name! There was a movie on Showtime about him—”

  Sonia, who had never heard of Ishi, interrupted with glib and equal inaccuracy. “Ishi was a Tamalpais Miwok. We are Coast Miwok.” In her eyes were Native American patience and pain. “There are only thirty-three of us left—the same number as our dear Savior’s years when He was crucified.”

  A crowd of curious commuters was gathering. The man looked around and saw only sympathy for Sonia on the attentive faces. He muttered under his breath while digging in his pants pocket for a crumpled bill to stuff into her tin can.

  “Here, for Chrissake.”

  “The Great Spirit blesses you, sir.”

  But it was a Bay Area Rapid Transit guard, not the Great Spirit, who materialized behind her to lay an ungentle hand on her shoulder. “No panhandling in the BART station, sister.”

  Undismayed, Sonia displayed the bogus Chamber of Commerce “registered charity” badge that she’d paid a Gypsy documenter in San Jose $50 for. She didn’t know what it said, not knowing how to read, but it always worked like a charm.

  “I’m not panhandling, sir.”

  The guard’s hostility had lessened. He gestured at the broad yellow line at the edge of the platform where the silver bullet-shaped BART projectiles would come roaring past.

  “You still can’t solicit in the BART station—it’s just too dangerous for the customers.” He gestured. “But you can do it upstairs, at the street entrance.”

  “I’m sorry. This is my first day. I’m only nineteen.”

  He hesitated. “Miwok, huh? I heard you say—”

  “Only thirty-three of us are left, sir.”

  “Aw, what the hell?”

  The guard shoved a dollar in the slot. Sonia thanked him and managed to rattle two more donations into her coffee can on her way up to the Market/Powell entrance. The streetlights were on and the stream of BART commuters had thinned to a trickle; until Memorial Day brought summer’s tourist wave, she had to depend on the locals. Five more minutes, she’d quit for the day.

  Rattle-rattle.

  Clink.

  “Great Spirit bless you, ma’am.”

  The Miwok scam was a new one for her; for years, up and down the coast, she’d done Navajos. But last month she’d been forced to spend an afternoon hiding out from a Marin County bunco cop at the Miwok Museum in Novato; since she couldn’t read the captions under the displays, she’d followed around a schoolteacher explaining the exhibits to her second-graders. Sonia had immediately switched scams. In the Bay Area, she reasoned, local Miwok was bound to arouse more sympathy than far-off Navajo.

  Still rattling her collection can, she started up the hill toward the Sutter-Stockton garage where she’d left her $50,000 Allante with its 4.5-litre V-8 engine and front-drive traction control system. Tonight, as usual, she’d swing over to the Rainbird Lounge for a little Miller time. Their happy hour always gave her useful bits of redskin lore and turns of phrase, and no one would come looking for her car there.

  When she got the Georgia plates she’d applied for, the repossessors Rudolph Marino had warned her about would no longer threaten her Allante. And meanwhile, Rudolph would soon be King.

  Leaving bitch Yana out in the cold where she belonged.

  * * *

  Larry Ballard was sitting opposite Giselle’s glass of wine and pack of cigarettes when she got back from the phone. The red lump on his forehead was just about gone; all that remained was a slight reddish discoloration as if he’d gotten too much sun. Back to his old handsome self. Time to quit thinking Florence Nightingale thoughts about him, she didn’t know why she was having them in the first place. Just silliness.

  She shook her head ruefully. “I’d better change brands so I won’t be so predictable.”

  “Or quit using disposable lighters.”

  “They give me the illusion the smoking is also disposable.”

  “I thought it was. Last I’d heard, you’d quit again.” When she answered only with a shrug, he gestured at the huge plate-glass picture window. “Fifi’s. I always feel like a French poodle at a dog show in this joint.”

  “You’re sounding more like Dan every day.”

  “Yeah, sure. You get anything on Grimaldi from Harrigan?”

  “Nothing. He said that if any Gypsy was operating with that name in San Francisco, he’d know about it.”

  “Except one is and he doesn’t.” Ballard paused. “You’ve been told the story about him, haven’t you? They started calling him Dirty Harry in Vice, ’cause he was dirty—extorting money and tail from hookers in the Tenderloin. When he got transferred to Bunco his gross probably dropped fifty percent.”

  “He’s still plenty gross enough for me.”

  “Dirty Harry put a move on you?”

  They fell silent when the waitress brought Ballard’s mug of draft beer, an automatic professional caution rather than any real worry about being overheard. But still they waited until she departed. Giselle lit a new cigarette, fumbling the lighter as she remembered the man’s eyes crawling over her like spiders. Ballard grinned at her.

  “Don’t feel bad—he’d screw mud.” To the look on her face, he added with quick diplomacy, “Not that I mean you’re—”

  “I think you think you just paid me a compliment.”

  She stubbed her just-lit cigarette in irritation. She didn’t like their patter; she felt as if she were flirting with Larry. Good old solid Larry Ballard, for God sake! What was the matter with her? To cover her discomfort, she told him about the blind date she’d set up for Harrigan. Ballard broke up.

  “So Dirty Harry’ll show up at the Sappho Self-defense Dojo with his pocket full of condoms and his hand on his—”

  “He did make a couple of interesting remarks,” Giselle said quickly. “Three, actually. First, there’s a rumor that the Gypsy King is dying back in the Midwest somewhere…”

  “Which would explain Grimaldi interrupting his other operation for the Cadillac grab! Yeah! Go back in style to choose the new King…” He drank beer, added thoughtfully, “We need to know who, when, where. Maybe I can get a line on—”

  “Harrigan wasn’t really interested, so I couldn’t be too interested myself, seeing as I’d just passed myself off as a free-lance journalist trying to dig up a story on—”

  “Dirty Harry happen to mention a Gyppo named Rudolph?”

  “No.” She couldn’t stop herself. “Why?”

  Ballard grinned in an extremely sappy manner. “Oh, someone else mentione
d him, that’s all.”

  A sexy-sounding wench, Jane had said. Three years ago, a beautiful Gyppo fortune-teller’d had Ballard walking around with his tongue dragging the ground for a couple of weeks after DKA had put mob attorney Wayne Hawkley out of business for good.

  “Your little Gyppo crystal-gazer from Santa Rosa?” she couldn’t help demanding snidely.

  Ballard frowned at her from behind his beer mug. What was this? Old Giselle gets out in the field and all of a sudden starts getting competitive about sources like any other repoman?

  “Why do you ask?”

  Giselle just shook her head and drank her Chablis, appalled at herself. She changed the subject yet again.

  “Dirty Harry also said that some heavy-duty bad-guy Gyppos have been moving in from New York and Chicago…”

  Ballard’s momentary irritation seemed forgotten. “That fits, too. My informant said Rudolph had just hit town. She’s never seen him, doesn’t even know his last name, but—”

  Again, Giselle couldn’t stop herself. “She says.”

  “Why would she lie?” He licked foam from his upper lip and started trying to connect up the dots, one of the main hazards of the detective game—the irresistible urge to make all the data you had somehow fit together. “Think this Rudolph character could be Angelo Grimaldi?”

  “Why not? Anyway, I’ll check registrations for the Grimaldi name at the top hotels in town. If he is setting up some elaborate scam, it’ll be timed to the President’s visit…”

  “Yeah. The cops’ll be too busy on security and crowd control to check out every con game in town.”

  Giselle had finished her wine. She leaned toward him.

  “I’ve already talked with Danny McBain at Jack Olwen Cadillac about Grimaldi’s specially built limo. He said—”

  “Specially built how?”

  “Jack didn’t know, the work was done by an outfit down in L.A. I’ve got a call in to them now.”

  “What was his description of Grimaldi?”

  “Same as the bank’s. Tall, lean, soulful eyes…”

  “Man of my dreams.” He added, a bit distractedly, “What’s the third thing Harry told you about?”