32 Cadillacs Page 21

  Going around the front of the car as the big guy came out the driver’s side, yelling, “Gypsies are supposed to be nonviolent!”

  Paul Bunyan paused to rip out the front seat and throw it across the street.

  “I’ll GYPSY YOU, BASTARD SONNA BEECH…”

  As O’B ran yet again, the sledge smashed in the headlights and grille. Back through the car, twist another key, the motor started, leave the key there, out again, run around it again, there went a hubcap wobbling away across the street, a blow at his legs took out the muffler. Back inside, slapped it into gear, crouched in the bare space behind the wheel, goosed it.

  Gimpy-gimpy jerk-jerk but fast, must have bent an axle somehow, goddamnedest Gypsy he’d ever…

  “KILLYOUK1LLYOUK1LLYOUKILL YOU KILL… YOU… KILL… YOU… KILL.… YOU.… kill.… you.… kill……”

  THUDS, CRASHES, CRUNCHES as Paul Bunyan ran alongside belaboring the Eldorado with his hammer. O’B finally began pulling away. Just as he reached the corner, Paul Bunyan threw the sledge after him, SMASH, there went the rear window…

  Safely away.

  * * *

  Jackson B. Gideon, president of California Citizens Bank, had a poor big devil of a stomach that, like Cyrano’s nose, marched on before him by a quarter of an hour. He also had John L. Lewis eyebrows crawling like hairy caterpillars around the top of his face, a beaked fleshy nose, pouting lips Sly Stallone would have killed for, and two chins with a third working on its growth portfolio. He splayed out of his dove-grey wool double-breasted suit the way a sausage splays out when you cut its skin.

  “It just won’t do,” he said. “It just won’t do at all.”

  They were in the bank’s cul-de-sac storage lot behind an old factory backed up against the base of Telegraph Hill. Ballard, whose butt still hurt and who thought he was there to be praised for his good work, not reamed out by a bank president, started to speak— but Stan Groner cut in smoothly.

  “Well, J.B., they did recover the car under very difficult conditions, and—”

  “And the city wants to bring suit against the bank.”

  Ballard was astounded. “What the hell for?”

  “New door for the precinct house,” explained Stan. “New light fixture. New front steps. New balustrade. New—”

  “They were trying to kill me, for God sake!”

  “Would have been cheaper if they had,” sniffed J.B.

  Not that the bank had any intention of paying the city one red cent—J.B. had elucidated the policy at that day’s board meeting—but field men had to be kept firmly in their place.

  He added in disdain, “Since it occurred in the course of a recovery action by Daniel Kearny Associates, I feel that the costs should come out of your company’s recompense.”

  “Now just a damned…”

  Stan Groner caught Ballard’s eye and shook his head slightly. Ballard stopped talking, face rich with unspent anger. Gideon, that smug bastard, had never been out in the field in his life, what did he know?

  Stan had once been the same way. But they’d gotten him liquored up at one of Kearny’s infamous spaghetti feeds, and had taken him out on a salty repo in the Hunter’s Point housing projects, where a favorite sport at the time had been shooting windows out of Muni buses. Sitting behind the wheel, Bart Heslip had read the repo’s operating manual aloud to Groner by dashlight, hoping to find out how to release the handbrake, while the registered owner had been running upstairs for his shotgun.

  They had made it away with nothing worse than a trunk lid full of buckshot, but Stan had been on their side ever since. Even now he was trying to pour oil on the troubled waters.

  “I’m sure this sort of thing won’t happen again, J.B. Gypsies are nonviolent creatures who…”

  His voice was drowned out by a terrible racket echo-chambered and amplified by the sounding-board walls of the deserted factory. RATTLE! of loose tinwork, COUGH! of ruptured muffler, SCRAPE! of rubber on pounded-in fenders, BANG! of misfiring engine, THUNK-THUNK of flattening tire.

  All eyes turned toward the cacophony of noises coming their way; all breaths were bated. Somehow, all three of them knew.

  Yes. Oh yes indeed. O’B. In a brand-new Eldorado.

  Brand-new? But how could this be? Fenders smashed in, a tire flat. The top was crushed down to the window tops, the windshield was gone, the door panels were pounded in, the trunk was flattened, the hood was history, the grille was gone, various fluids dripped as smoke rose from both ends of the car.

  O’B stepped gently on the brakes as he came up level with them. The engine died with a pop, pop, grunt, grunt, poof… silence. He had found a plastic bucket somewhere to upend where once the sleekly upholstered seat had been, and was hunkered down on it, under the flattened roof, as he drove the car. He shoved a shoulder against the door to open it. The door fell off with an agonized CLANK! of overstressed metal.

  Totaled.

  O’B stepped out and said jauntily to Stan, “The lighter still works, Reverend.”

  “But… but… but… this… this can’t be… be… one of ours…,” Groner managed to stammer out.

  “It can. It is. He beat it to death trying to get me.”

  “Gypsies are nonviolent,” snapped J.B. in his nastiest give-the-teller-hell voice.

  Stan the Man wilted into Stan the Boy. Ballard turned red trying to keep from laughing. O’B, who had made out a condition report when he had stopped to get the plastic bucket seat, held the completed form out to J.B. Gideon with a straight face.

  “If you’ll just sign for it, Reverend, I’ll be on my way.”

  Gideon stared at him with real hatred, then turned to Stan the Boy. “I will expect you in my office in sixty minutes, Mr. Groner,” he said thickly. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

  He stalked unevenly away across the rubble-strewn storage lot. Stan ran after him for a few paces, but Gideon was already in his Lexus LS400 and slamming the door with eloquent rage. The car sped off. Stan turned blindly back to O’B, who was laughing, and Ballard, who was too solemnly checking the car’s serial number against his list of the Gypsy cars’ I.D. numbers.

  “I’m ruined,” groaned Groner.

  O’B guffawed and shoved the condition report under his nose. Stan started to automatically scrawl his signature across the bottom of it, but Ballard held up a detaining hand.

  They both turned to look at him.

  “What?” demanded O’B a bit shrilly. The expression on Ballard’s face had made the laughter die on his lips.

  Ballard waved an airy hand at the Cadillac. “This isn’t one of our Gyppo cars. Its I.D. number isn’t on our list.”

  O’B turned bone white. His freckles looked like measles against that suddenly ashen skin. “But… it has to be…”

  “Okay, you’ve had your fun,” said Groner. “Now go give the man back his car—and get me the right one. Right away. Reverend.” Then Stan the Man started an ugly chortling sound.

  He was laughing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar, incredibly beautiful and incredibly wealthy Brazilian coffee heiress—recently widowed—passed through the gilt-edged motor-driven plate-glass door of bascom’s (rome, london, paris, amsterdam, beverly hills). Even in parlous economic times, these first few blocks of Rodeo Drive north of Wilshire in Beverly Hills are… well, Rodeo Drive. Occasionally Worth Avenue in Palm Beach pretends to the crown, but… after all, Florida…

  The diminutive button-eyed youth behind Dona Dulcinea wore the Beverly Wilshire’s distinctive livery and was festooned with boxes: square boxes, oblong boxes, oval boxes, boxes large and boxes small, boxes flat and boxes deep, boxes broad and boxes skinny. All bearing labels from the most exclusive shoppes and boutiques up and down Rodeo Drive.

  “My hotel has call,” announced Dona Dulcinea imperiously.

  Her hotel hadn’t, but nonetheless Monsieur Bascom himself surged forward with her entrance, practiced eye agleam at the
compulsive-shopper possibilities suggested by all those boxes.

  “Ah, yes, of course, Madam…”

  “Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar of São Paulo. Brazil.” Her accent made “Bretheel” of the final word. Monsieur Bascom inclined his beautifully greyed coiffeur as she added, “Someone should help the…” She gestured helplessly at the bellhop. “Mmmm, how you say, young servant man…”

  M. Bascom was already snapping his fingers without looking around. He had a patrician face with a thin nose pinched at the sides, and thin lips that could by a sycophantic pucker become a rosebud or by simple compression a white line of fury.

  “Could the word be ‘bellhop,’ madam?”

  “Sim! Bellhop! The hotel has give…” She broke off, looking extremely sexy as she almost giggled. “No, has lend me the bellhop to help with my…” She rolled around the word on her tongue. “… mmm, buying. You sell diamonds, não?”

  “Yes, of course. We sell… diamonds.”

  Bascom gave the final word the reverence usually reserved for all the names of God. His snapped fingers had brought a magnificent salesman to help the bellboy jettison all those boxes as M. Bascom led the fair Dulcinea to the gleaming glass cases where bascom’s most stunning creations dwelt in luxury.

  “If one could inquire as to madam’s diamond needs…”

  Again that charming almost half-giggle. “I no really know… but I weel when I see!” Her eyes got very wide and round and her mouth formed a lovely little “O.” “But whatever you show me must be most… tasteful. Nothing, mmm… vulgar, não? The absolute… how does one say…”

  “Crème de la crème?” suggested Bascom.

  “Sim. Exactissimo.”

  Bascom had little Spanish and less Portuguese, so he found himself utterly charmed by Dona Dulcinea’s accent as she went through thirty minutes of brooches, earrings, and necklaces “not quite right” for her needs. Of course, since he had an addiction to scoring sexually with wealthy women no matter what their age or looks, he was already in thrall to the Dona’s bounteous feminine charms. Finally, he suggested that if she could perhaps tell him the occasion she sought to enhance with diamonds …

  Sim, but could she have a glass of Pellegrino, perhaps… ver’ hot in here…

  Refreshed and restored, she explained that it was a little—pronounced “leetle”—somet’ings for her first dinner party at the hacienda since the death… close to tears here… of her beloved “hoosban’” eighteen months before…

  Dwelling on this untimely death made her feel “a leetle faint” again, but she recovered quickly when he showed her loose teardrop diamonds set in gold which could be worn as singlets, clustered as a pendant, worn around the neck on a gold chain…

  Yes! Dona Dulcinea’s interest quickened at the sight of them.

  For some time the bored bellhop had been following them around the store, staring at the wonders being displayed, but unfortunately was just too far away to help catch Dona Dulcinea when she swooned and fell heavily against M. Bascom.

  As her unexpected dead weight bore Bascom to the floor, her hand struck the edge of the velvet display tray upon which the diamonds nestled. Teardrops flew in every direction. Before the salespeople could converge, the bellhop was crouched beside her, mouth working as in distress, cradling her head with his hands.

  He gulped back tears. Immediately, her beautiful dark eyes fluttered open and she gazed deep into M. Bascom’s blue ones.

  “I am so ver’ sorree,” she said in a little voice. The eyelids fluttered again. “The loss… of my hoosban’… sometime it has seem… I cannot… go on…”

  More Pellegrino, a few minutes in a brocaded chair by the office, and Dona Dulcinea was much restored. But too upset to, mmm, how you say, do more shop today. For now, she would return to the Beevairly Weelsheer to rest…

  Without qualms, M. Bascom led her solicitously to the door. One teardrop was missing, a stone valued at $7,000, but she could not have taken it. She was, after all, very wealthy in her own right; and she had been in her swoon at the very moment the diamonds had become vulnerable. Staff was still looking, probably it had rolled under some distant display case…

  Dona Dulcinea gave M. Bascom her hand to kiss and flashed her big round eyes at him. “If it is not found by tomorrow when I return, I mus’ pay for the diamon’ who is missing!”

  “No need, madam,” said Bascom gallantly. “It will turn up.”

  “But I insist—and I have just decide. Tomorrow, I weel buy ten of the teardrops!”

  At the curb was her beautiful cream and grey Fleetwood Sixty Special four-door sedan. A grey-haired heavy-jawed man, obviously her hired driver, was doing something under the dash. But as Bascom reached out to open the door for the dona, the man started the Caddy and accelerated away into traffic without a backward turn of his head.

  Leaving Bascom on the curb with his hand outstretched and his mouth, for once, hanging open in utter astonishment. He turned to Dona Dulcinea for enlightenment, and was even more astounded to see the Brazilian heiress running out into Rodeo Drive, skirts flying, face contorted, vapors forgotten.

  “You son of a bitch!” the dona screamed after the departing Fleetwood. “I know who you are, faggot repo bastard! I curse your eyes and the eyes of your children! I spit into…”

  Dona Dulcinea caught herself, realizing the figure she was cutting, and turned back to the curb with an embarrassed little moue. But her accent had derived from no farther south than, say, South Jersey, and, since diamonds were involved, this stripped off a good bit of Bascom’s veneer. His shit-kicker granddaddy had come west from Ada, Oklahoma, during the dustbowl ’30s, after all, to get land-rich during the postwar California ’50s, and Mama Bascom hadn’t raised no fools.

  So Immaculata Bimbai spent two most uncomfortable hours in Bascom’s office with Bascom himself and a brace of Beverly Hills cops, during which time it was discovered that the Beevairly Weel-sheer had never heard of her or the bellhop, and that the boxes he had been carting around all day were empty.

  But finally they had to let Immaculata go, along with her young servant man. Lying to a jeweler, even a Beverly Hills jeweler, is no crime, and she was getting vocal in the way only a rom woman can while extricating herself from trouble. Most importantly of all, however, a separate strip search of her and her son—the cops never uncovered their real names or relationship—could not turn up the missing bijou.

  So Immaculata came away scot-free; it was her son Lazlo who had a few bad hours in their West Hollywood motel. He ate many a slice of Wonder thin sandwich bread to coat the swallowed diamond on its way through his intestines, and brought forth just about the time Peter Jennings did the same with the evening news.

  They cleaned up the teardrop and admired it, a wonderful $7,000 score; but their elation was tempered by the loss of their lovely loaded $50,000 Fleetwood Sixty Special. Not even all of Immaculata’s Gypsy curses could bring that back again.

  * * *

  Just about the time Lazlo swallowed the diamond, O’B poured beer for Ballard at Ginsberg’s Dublin Pub on Bay Street up in San Francisco. Under cover of CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” on the juke, O’B was pleading, actually pleading, for assistance, which gave Ballard a wonderful chance to be sanctimonious.

  “Absolutely not,” he said, not for the first time, “I am not going out to Oriente Street with you, and that’s final.”

  “But Larry…” O’B again plied Ballard with beer. “Think of all the times I’ve helped you out—”

  “All the times you’ve got me in trouble, you mean. No! I keep telling you, O’B, since we got no plate numbers you gotta check those Gyppo serial numbers before you grab the cars!”

  Conveniently forgetting he had done the very same thing on the Sonia Lovari Allante. But that had been the right Caddy.

  “There just wasn’t time, Larry. It was squatting right on the address. You know I usually always make sure before I—”

  “Usually always,”
said Ballard, then added, “Fairfield.”

  In Fairfield late one St. Paddy’s Day, a tipsy O’B had grabbed a hearse while Ballard was inside the mortuary learning the undertaker had just caught up the payments. Even worse, O’B hadn’t checked the rear of the vehicle…

  “The guy paid with a rubber check,” said O’B virtuously. “And we dumped that personal property at Eternal—”

  “I don’t want to hear about it. The answer is still no.”

  Actually, there was a certain logic to Ballard’s refusal. Returning the car could get messy, and a cryptic message from Yana at the DKA office meant that tonight he was getting his fortune told. And maybe getting some other treasure besides?

  “Paul Bunyan really tried to kill me, Larry. I go back out there alone, and…” O’B drew a slicing hand across his throat.

  Two beers later, Ballard relented, drove O’B back to the storage lot, and helped get the Eldorado started. He even found another bucket to sit on—gingerly, his lacerated butt was still sore—so they could plan strategy while riding out to the Portola District together. He considered it simple.

  “If he isn’t around, we just drop it at the curb and run.”

  “If he is around, we hit him on the head with a tire iron until we get his attention.”

  “He can’t be that big and tough, O’B.”

  “Bigger,” said O’B. “Tougher.”

  * * *

  They couldn’t ease the Eldorado back to the curb exactly where O’B had gotten it, because another car was parked there. You guessed it. Another brand-new Eldorado. With paper plates.

  “That’s Yonkovich’s car!” bellowed O’B as they came rattling, clunking, banging, and thunking up the street. “I’m sure of it!”

  “Maybe,” Ballard yelled back cautiously over the din.

  O’B shouted, “In your heart you know that it’s the—”

  “It’s nice to sneak up on him this way!” shrieked Ballard.

  O’B eased the totaled Eldorado to the curb in front of the house being torn down a few doors away from Yonkovich’s place. He killed the engine. Ballard rubbed his tortured ears.