Cons, Scams, and Grifts Page 2

  “I thought you understood, my sweet—I want you dead.”

  “Mister?” The voice was old and quavery and full of dread, but it called again, “Mister, you all right?”

  “In . . . here . . .” Ephrem managed to get out.

  By squinting he could see the old white-haired lady from next door, for once without her binoculars. Her mouth was slack with fright: who could blame her? Here he was, bleeding on the floor, with his pockets turned out and a knife buried in his gut.

  So your nosiness overcame your fear, he thought. Nothing new there. All his life he had known women like that.

  All his life he had known women . . .

  Known women . . . known . . . women . . .

  “It was my . . . wife . . . from . . . ’Frisco . . .”

  The old woman’s face was down close to his. Not just nosiness. At the end, Rom thief and lonely old gadja woman.

  “Oh, you poor, poor man!”

  The room was darkening. He felt an overwhelming sadness, a sense of loss, the loss of what should have been.

  “Yana,” he croaked. Despite all, he now knew, he still loved her. He cried, “Yana-a-a-a-a . . .”

  Nevermore.

  two

  On Tuesday’s beautiful early spring afternoon in Rome, Willem Van De Post was behind his desk getting a phone call from Hong Kong. He was a heavy man but obviously athletic, with shirtsleeves rolled up over muscular forearms, a square Germanic head, sandy hair, and piercing blue eyes. What he heard robbed him of all tranquillity, made him lean forward across the desk, made his hand whiten around the receiver.

  “Stolen?” he demanded in impeccable Italian. He listened, then burst out, “I don’t care who threatened who with what, we have a valid contract, the renovation is almost complete . . .”

  He looked diminished in his swivel chair. This acquisition was to have been the crowning achievement of a long and honorable career: how he had fought the board of directors to allocate the funds on the argument that it would bring them international fame!

  “Is there any indication of whom—” He listened. “A Japanese?” He paused, said, “What good does it do me if you send my deposit back? I won’t have the—” He stopped again. “I . . . I will have to call you later.”

  He sat staring sightlessly out the window at the green sweeping vistas his office overlooked. Call him back? Why bother? The prize had been stolen by, Willem knew as surely as if he had seen it in a crystal ball, international financier Victor Marr. He’d always known Marr wanted it, but never dreamed he would use the Yakuza gangster Kahawa to steal it and to threaten Brantley with ruin, pain, perhaps even death, to ensure his silence. Only because of their long friendship, he was sure, had Brantley dared call him at all.

  Willem could go back to the board of directors, of course, the ministry, even, but what could they do? The facility to house it was nearly complete. So what? Marr would laugh at Interpol, laugh at governments. Would say, Prove I have it.

  Then the frown lines eased on his handsome, lived-in face. He could never prove Marr stole it, and he could never match the man for sheer ruthlessness. But . . . in the wild days of his youth he had done some things to stay alive, and thus already had a wonderful connection in California: his wife’s uncle, Staley Zlachi, King of the Muchwaya Gypsies.

  Offered a sufficiently tempting prize, Staley might just be persuaded to do some work on Willem’s behalf. For the first time since hanging up the phone, Willem Van De Post began to smile gently to himself. Devèl knew, Uncle Staley was not ruthless. But he was sly.

  Willem Van De Post was suddenly ready to call Brantley back in Hong Kong.

  Because of the time zones, that warm afternoon in Rome was a chilly 5:47 A.M. in San Francisco’s foggy Richmond District. Dan Kearny was parked in the Coronet Theater’s no-parking zone on Geary Boulevard. Around the corner behind him, on Arguello, three leased car transports roped exhaust into the chilly dawn air. Ahead, beyond the Almaden intersection, Wiley’s UpScale Motors was crowded with costly sports cars and restored classics.

  Kearny was a compact man in his early 50s, heavy of face, massive of jaw, hard of eye, his thinning curly hair gone silver. He unhooked a clumsy handful of mike from the dash of his Ford Escort to thumb the red button on its side. For an operation like this, give him the good old outmoded C/B radio every time.

  “This is S/F-One. All units check in.”

  Giselle Marc was tall and lean with wicked thighs, blond hair in loose easy waves around her face, blue eyes alight, big brain ticking over. Excitement thrummed in her voice: this was her first time in the field on a dealership raid.

  “S/F-Two. A block away on the other side of Geary.”

  Next to check in was O’Bannon, the redheaded Irishman with the freckle-splashed leathery face, gargling his Rs as usual.

  “Faith an’ BeJaysus, an’ ’tis a frosty mornin’ for poor auld S/F-Three to be up here on Lone Mountain.”

  He was in place at Rossi and Turk, two blocks uphill. A couple of years Kearny’s junior, when he left the booze alone O’B was the best all-around field man DKA had after Dan himself.

  “S/F-Four, check in,” said Kearny.

  Bart Heslip’s heavy baritone growl wore the field-nigger patois it amused him to put on and off at will like an old and treasured sweater. He had a stylishly shaven pate and a thin mustache. “S/F-Four mos’ surely be on Palm below Euclid, waitin’ fo’ word fum de Great White Father, yassah boss.”

  When he had quit the ring with still-unscrambled brains to become a repoman, Bart had been a rising middleweight with thirty-nine wins (thirty-seven by KO) out of forty fights put into the record books.

  Larry Ballard was next, thumbing his mike with a stifled yawn. “S/F-Five on Anza between Stanyan and Loraine Court, over.”

  Not boredom, Kearny knew: probably out chasing some skirt all night. Despite his love of the ladies, despite sun-bleached hair and surfer good looks and a recent black belt in karate, Ballard, Kearny had to admit, was a damned good field man.

  Next came a thin and reedy voice so unlike Trin Morales’s usual breathy Latino tones that Kearny barely recognized it.

  “S/F-Six, in place by Mel’s Drive-In.”

  Morales was just back from a prolonged medical leave of absence after an outraged Latino and three amigos had beaten him to a pulp because Trin had messed with the man’s teenage sister. He had lost much more than forty pounds and his bullyboy manner; he was almost timid now. Kearny had never liked him much, despite his being a tough, treacherous, amoral, first-rate repoman. Now, maybe, not even that. Ballard actively hated his guts.

  After waiting in vain for Ken Warren’s check-in, Kearny said, “S/F-Seven, what’s your twenty?” Ken was silent. Kearny repeated his question. “Are you in position, S/F-Seven?”

  Finally there came two double-clicks as Warren thumbed his mike on and off twice. Which meant his Dodge Ram was squatting right on the Wiley UpScale Motors front gate with a long-handled chain-cutter waiting open-jawed on the seat.

  Dan Kearny checked his watch and said “Go!” into the mike.

  The DKA hands burned rubber to close in on UpScale from all sides. The drivers of the auto transporters snapped away their cigarettes while trotting back to their trucks. Ken Warren was out of his Ram to snip the padlock chain on the gate as if the case-hardened steel was Silly Putty.

  Big John Wiley threw back the covers in their bedroom a mile or so away on El Camino del Mar to stumble bare-ass across the room and cut the alarm. He had rounded shoulders, a sunken chest, a watermelon belly. Wings of lank black hair hung down on either side of his face. His blue eyes were shrewd, his mouth sensual, his nose well-shaped.

  Big John punched 911 on the bedside phone. “My name is John Wiley and somebody is breaking into my auto dealership on Geary at Almaden!”

  He listened, cursed, and hung up. Still abed was Eloise, his wife of thirteen years, a pretty blonde who had put on weight but could still turn the boys’ heads when she
was all dolled up. He jerked the covers down from her bare shapely shoulders.

  “Get dressed, baby,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

  Most classic car dealerships take their restored autos on consignment, or buy them outright. Big John didn’t have the cash for that, so Cal-Cit Bank lent him the capital needed for the stock to attract high-tech Gen-X buyers, using the cars themselves as collateral. As a car was sold, Big John was supposed to pay off the bank loan on that particular vehicle.

  Lately he’d sort of forgotten about those repayments, until Stan Groner, VP Business Loans, got tired of missing cars and missing cash and being out on a limb. He told Kearny to raid UpScale, grab all the cars on the lot, and auction them off.

  Eloise was awake by now. “What’s the matter, Johnny?”

  “Cal-Cit Bank is hitting the dealership.”

  She was out of bed, throwing on her clothes.

  “Those shits! What do you want me to do?”

  “Drive the ’Vette down to Pacifica and lock it in your sister’s garage and forget it’s there. Get her to drive you home and tell her to forget it, too. I’ll drive to UpScale in your heap with some bucks—repomen were born with their hands out.”

  “What about our salesmen?”

  “Screw the salesmen, they’re on their own.”

  “Of course screw them. But they’re all driving cars from your lot as demos. If we can hide those cars too until—”

  “Good thinking.” Big John paused in the doorway. “Warn them from your car phone on the way down to Pacifica.”

  At UpScale Motors, the first of the auto transporters was backed into the open gate with its ramp down. Kearny’s crew was opening cars and firing them up. Giselle plunked down into the icy leather seat of a sweet little red ’88 Alfa Romeo Spider Quadrifoglio with personalized plates reading STATO. She keyed awake the dashboard’s bank of red and yellow lights. The engine growled. She liked this car!

  Kearny was standing beside the transporter ramp, clipboard in hand, marking them off. Heslip and Morales had the first two aboard; Ballard waited his turn in a Maserati Bora Coupe. Kearny came over to the Alfa, leaned down as Giselle opened the window.

  “When this one is on the truck, Giselle, sneak into Wiley’s office and get the names and addresses of his salesmen. We’ll grab the demos they’re driving before they can hide ’em.”

  Ballard, whose flooring reports of cars out of trust at Up-Scale had stirred Groner to action, grinned and jerked his head at a Corolla rolling to a stop beyond the fence.

  “Do it the easy way—here’s Big John himself.”

  Kearny walked through the gate to meet Wiley, who was out of his car and waving his arms and yelling.

  “Get those cars off that transporter! Just last night I personally handed Mr. Groner a check for—”

  “I spoke with Mr. Groner eight minutes ago,” lied Kearny blandly. “And . . .” He made a slashing motion across his throat.

  Big John drew him away to where the transporter shielded them from the others. “There really is some mistake here.”

  “Yeah, and you made it. You’re out of trust with Cal-Cit Bank on twenty-seven cars worth over seven hundred K.”

  Big John’s hand brought out a roll of greenbacks, casually.

  “Several of these cars are already sold—they just need final detailing before delivery.” He pressed a fistful of bills into Dan Kearny’s hand with his deal-closing smile. “I just bet you’re a man who likes a few bucks under the table.”

  Kearny grinned like a wolverine, but his eyes were suddenly the coldest Big John had ever faced—and, being in the used-car trade, Big John knew his cold eyes. Kearny opened his hand. The ocean wind coming up Geary whipped away the dead presidents like a politician’s promises.

  “You bet wrong,” Dan Kearny said.

  Benny Lutheran, a heavy-bodied blunt-faced man of German heritage, bragged that he could close a deal with a dead man. As he came down Geary his car phone buzzed. He picked up.

  “Benny Lutheran.”

  “Benny—Eloise Wiley.”

  Benny was passing the Coronet Theater. He put on his turn signal and his oiliest salesman’s voice. “Eloise!” It was the first time she’d called him since last year’s Christmas party when she was drunk in the storeroom and let him put his hand down the front of her peasant blouse. “Meet you in the storeroom?”

  “The bank is closing down the dealership,” she said.

  Benny had already started his turn into UpScale. “Later,” he said, dropped his cell phone, slammed on his brakes, hit reverse, and squealed backward out of the open gate.

  Ken Warren was already running for his Dodge Ram. He had recognized the sporty little vintage 1975 280Z from the hot-sheet. A salesman was driving it as a demo and was trying to keep it as his own. No way, man!

  Benny Lutheran made a screaming right turn off Geary into the first street he came to, Beaumont Avenue. Beaumont dead-ended a block uphill at Turk. Turn left, and Turk was a straight shot to Divisadero. Jink over a block to Golden Gate, and he’d be one-way inbound all the way to Market Street.

  So he whipped left into Turk, accelerated—and stood on the brakes in a scream of smoking rubber. The cross-walk was flooded with students on their way to early classes at the Lone Mountain Campus of U.S.F. A black-haired pixie-faced girl in a red warm-up jacket gave him an exuberant finger.

  Pissed off, Benny twisted to look over his shoulder before gunning the Datsun in reverse. Three inches from his back bumper hulked the repoman’s truck. Benny’s door was opened, a vise-grip hand reached in; suddenly he was standing in the street beside his car with his shirtfront rumpled. The students had stopped to watch. The girl in the red jacket jeered at him.

  “You gonna take that? Paste him one in the mouth!”

  At the same time the repoman said, “Ahng taktin nat cah!”

  Hey, this guy was some kind of retard! Retards, Benny knew from five minutes of a PBS special he’d caught, were gentle souls and stupid besides. He was as tall as the retard, and outweighed him by thirty pounds. And Miss Pixie-Face was watching.

  So he threw a looping right hand at the retard’s jaw. It was a good right. It connected. It hurt his hand. It didn’t seem to hurt the retard’s jaw.

  Thunk! Bright colors. Benny, feeling sick, was sitting on broad tan steps leading from Turk Street up to the lofty spires of Lone Mountain College, holding Miss Pixie-Face’s handkerchief to his broken nose. His tear-blurred eyes saw a wavery form standing over him. It waggled a finger in his face.

  “Hnew hnit—an htay ner!”

  Again, Benny didn’t understand a word the guy said, but he just knew, in his heart of hearts, that only an idiot would stir from that spot just then. And Benny Lutheran was no idiot.

  Nor was the retard. Not even a retard, in fact. Just one hell of a tough carhawk with a speech impediment, helping to put Wiley’s UpScale Motors out of business.

  three

  On the other hand, San Francisco’s Homicide Squad was never out of business. Their cup was always full, pressed down and overflowing. But even Homicide cops have to eat, right? So at ten-fifteen that same morning, Rosenkrantz, the bald one—the only way, somehow, that Beverly could tell him from Guildenstern—was at Jacques Daniel’s Saloon waiting for salami and Swiss on a French roll, lettuce, mayo, pickles, hold the mustard.

  Beverly and Danny got together while working at the St. Mark as cocktail waitress and bartender, bought a failing neighborhood bar on 21st Avenue and Lincoln Way, and renamed it Jacques Daniel’s because of their names, Beverly Amy Daniels and Jacques Daniel Marenne. They had taken it from fern-and-Tiffany-glass back to new old-fashioned San Francisco saloon: polished brass bar rails, a C/D player masquerading as a jukebox, a clientele that talked IPOs despite the March Nasdaq meltdown.

  Meanwhile here was bulky Rosenkrantz: round unremarkable face, shirt unpressed as usual, herringbone jacket, dark slacks. A tie, askew, like spaghetti in tomato sauce dropped on th
e floor. A 9mm Glock 17 bulging his jacket over his right hip.

  “I got a joke,” he said.

  “You always do,” Beverly replied sadly. “Always awful.”

  She was slightly above five feet, size four and triumphantly blond, with sparkling blue eyes that could turn sensuous when Danny was around, a tiny waist, beautiful dancer’s legs, and a bosom too full for the ballerina she had once aspired to be.

  “These two whales are swimming along when they see a sailing ship. The first whale says, ‘That ship killed my father! Let’s swim under it, blow as hard as we can, and turn it over.’ The second whale nods his head okay.”

  Beverly put the sandwich down in front of him, and started to make another one just like it.

  “The whales swim under the ship and blow as hard as they can, and the ship turns over. The sailors are in the water, floundering around, yelling. The first whale says, ‘That’s not enough revenge. Let’s go eat up all of those sailors.’ The second whale shakes his head, saying—”

  “ ‘I was willing to give you a blow job,’ ” smoothly inserted the big, bulky, unremarkable man coming through the door, “ ‘but you didn’t say anything about swallowing the seamen.’ ”

  Guildenstern had a full head of sandy hair and an unpressed shirt; his tie, also askew, was like an anchovy pizza dropped on the floor. His herringbone jacket had leather elbow patches. When he took the stool adjacent to his partner’s, his 9mm Glock 17 bulged his jacket over his left hip. Beverly slid the second sandwich across the stick to him with a couple of paper napkins.

  “Salami and swiss? Lettuce? Mayo? Pickles? Hold —”

  “Hold the mustard,” agreed Beverly.

  Guildenstern was surprised. “Yeah. Hey, what do you tell a blonde with two black eyes?”

  “Nothing,” said Rosenkrantz. “You’ve already told her twice.”

  An assistant D.A. who was into community theater—he always played Felix, the neat one, in The Odd Couple—had first called them Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern. Now, new SFPD men didn’t know their real names; some whispered their wives didn’t, either, but they had the highest case-closure record in the Homicide Squad.