32 Cadillacs Page 30

  The Giggling Marlin, he’d learned, was where most of the gringo yachtsmen hung out. He would go in there, nurse a drink, wait. Where the yachtsmen were, the Gyppos eventually would be. With the Cadillac Morales was after.

  * * *

  In Nebraska, Bart Heslip was driving west across the prairie along a gunbarrel highway remarkably flat and straight. It just cut right through all the rolling plains and undulating hills like a chain-saw through pine logs.

  He’d phoned Kearny about the $30,000 in the valise, and Corinne to tell her he missed and loved her. Next stop, Chicago, and Nanoosh Tsatshimo’s bogus electroplating operation.

  * * *

  In Reno, the Lovellis were packing up to head east. Nearly a hundred Gypsy men, women, and children, twenty-two cars (seven of them Cadillacs ripped off from Cal-Cit Bank), and two pickups full of the paraphernalia they would need for a summer spent working the Midwest county fair circuit. East through Utah, Wyoming, a corner of Colorado, and then out across the rolling Nebraska plains toward the Mississippi and the Stupidville encampment.

  * * *

  In his Stupidville hospital room, Staley and Lulu were plotting the downfall of Barney Hawkins and the Democrat National Assurance Company—to the tune of $75,000. Staley was willing to come down to $50,000; Lulu didn’t think they’d have to.

  * * *

  At DKA, Dan Kearny was starting out the back door when his private phone rang. He sighed and went back and picked up to hear Ephrem Poteet’s voice.

  “I got something for you, Kearny.”

  “A Cadillac?”

  “Something better. A King.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Giselle Marc had to pee. It was all very well, in detective novels, for the writer to gloss over the gross stuff when someone was on stakeout for countless hours. Also, men had a natural spigot that interfaced just fine with an empty Styrofoam cup. A woman had some engineering problems with that. Worse, there were no adjacent bushes; if she drove off to find a gas station, Teddy would choose just that moment to depart.

  So she’d just held it, waiting for dark; Yana, after all, was a creature of the night. Now it was nearly midnight. If he didn’t move soon… Then her binoculars caught Teddy coming down the front steps, heavy plastic garbage bag over his shoulder.

  She tried to figure out how to drive with her legs crossed as she tailed him down Tiburon Boulevard to the 101 freeway overpass to Mill Valley, the lights of Sausalito winking from her left across broad placid Richardson Bay.

  They ended up on the Shoreline Highway in Tarn Valley, where Teddy stopped his little red Alfa beside the closed old-fashioned fruit stand on the dirt verge of the Tennessee Valley Road intersection. Eleven forty-five. Obviously, a rendezvous set for midnight. And an old cemetery was nestled on a tree-shaded hillside above Tennessee Valley Road. Odds-on, a cemetery dig.

  She kept going, found some bushes where at long last she could ease her bladder, returned to the fruit stand for a tremendous shock. The pink 1958 Eldorado ragtop was just pulling up beside Teddy’s Alfa! One of the most beautiful women she had ever seen got out. Black-haired and exotic… Yana! Had to be!

  Oh, that bastard Larry! Somehow he had gotten the pink Cadillac away from Rudolph and had given it back to Yana.

  Giselle wasn’t going to let him get away with it, At a 7-Eleven she bought a box of heavy green plastic garbage bags and three newspapers, returned to Tennessee Valley Road seeking an easy way up the hill to her left. She stopped where the high cutbank dipped for a dry wash, half-choked with brush and ginestra, overhung with a live oak.

  Giselle got out her flashlight and stuffed a garbage bag with ripped newspaper. At least she had running shoes in the car. She looked both ways; then, wishing for slacks instead of a dress, hiked her skirt up around her waist and started climbing, using her flashlight only to keep from running into a tree or getting stuck in the eye by a branch.

  Ten minutes later, scratched and breathless, she hit a wide packed-earth path that slanted up the hillside to her left. Five more minutes on that, and she emerged at a hairpin turn of a narrow blacktop road. Beside the road was an abandoned wheelbarrow with a rake, a hoe, and a shovel in it.

  * * *

  The brown sign with the green tree painted on it read:

  IRONWOOD CEMETERY

  AND MORTUARY

  Yana swung the huge car left into the steeply slanted blacktop drive. The top was down and Teddy felt chilled of body and mind. In the backseat was a shovel and $75,000 of his stepfather’s—no, he meant his—money.

  “I wish Ramon was here,” he said in a shaky voice.

  Yana stopped just short of huge black iron double gates, flanked by grey massive concrete cubes twenty feet square.

  “He would not come.” Her stunning eyes burned into his. “He does not approve of this. If you wish to withdraw now…”

  “No, I… The curse…” His hands were like ice while his forehead was clammy with sweat. “But the cemetery’s closed, the gate’s locked…”

  Yana made a strange quick graceful gesture at it with both hands and intoned loudly, “Nashti jas vorta po drom o bango.” Just the Gypsy proverb “You cannot walk straight when the road is crooked,” but it was the prearranged signal and was why the Eldorado’s top was down.

  Before Teddy’s astounded eyes, the long-hasped padlock struck through the joint of both gates clattered to the ground as the right-hand gate slowly swung wide. Yana put the Eldorado through the opening. The narrow blacktop road continued by a long grey massive concrete mortuary building set into the hill like a bunker; a few scraggly patches of ivy grew on it.

  Yana sent the big car questing up by it into darkness.

  * * *

  Ramon trotted out to close the gate in case a security patrol came by. He previously had picked the lock and set it back, open, to fall off when Yana signaled him to pull the thin strong black wire he had attached to the right-hand gate.

  When he heard Yana’s car returning, he would reopen it.

  * * *

  It was just after midnight at the Giggling Marlin, and Morales had miscalculated. He’d drunk three of the Marlin’s goldfish-bowl-size margaritas, and his lips were numb. His head was swirling. Now he was shoveling in refrítos y arroz y polio—but it was much too late. He was blasted.

  So was just about everyone else in the place. The Giggling Marlin was a huge box crowded with dozens of tables, all jammed with babbling patrons, mostly yachtspeople. Mexicans, Norteamericanos, other gringos—Australian, Scandinavian, German, English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish… A dozen languages, a hundred accents fenced in midair.

  Against the left wall was a heavy pulley and tackle such as sports fishermen use to haul up by the tail and display the big game fish they have caught. On the wall beside it in bright cartoony colors was painted an eight-foot marlin up on his tail, with sunglasses and a deep-sea fishing rod. He was laughing.

  Morales turned to look over the room yet again, and there they were. Four gringos and two swarthy men who looked Mexican but who had to be his Gyppos, because one of them was pocketing a set of Cadillac keys. All of them were drunk and boisterous.

  Morales staggered to his feet and out the door—Madre de Dios, how he was drunk! A serious miscalculation. A group of Mexicans was laughing and exchanging remarks in highly accented English with the gringos. One wore a leather vest and no shirt; a three-foot-long iguana was perched on his shoulder, its long whippy lizard tail curled down against his naked chest. The iguana’s eyes mirrored with lidless lizard contempt Morales’s own vast contempt for mankind.

  “He is your friend?” he asked the Mexican in Spanish.

  “My dinner,” said the Mexican, and they all laughed.

  Morales said, “I wish to see the rich North American’s Cadillac.”

  “The new Cadillac? With the word ‘Brougham’ on the trunk lid? With the wire wheels and the leather seats and the tinted glass and the cornering lights and—”

  “T
he very one,” said Morales gravely.

  “I have not seen it.”

  They all laughed again. Morales found a crumpled $20 bill, said with great assurance, “But you can discover it.”

  The Brougham was found, but it had the d’Elegance option package, which included a theft-deterrent system. Morales had no key for it. Caramba, he wished he wasn’t so drunk; he couldn’t remember where he’d left his own car, with his repo kit in it.

  Even with the kit, and sober, getting away with the Caddy wouldn’t be easy. Cabo was at the very southernmost tip of Baja, where the Gulf of California met the open Pacific. There was only one paved road north to La Paz, capital of baja del sud.

  He had to find a way to get a head start on them.

  Morales returned to his half-eaten frijoles and latest margarita, caught the arm of a passing waiter to talk earnestly about the Gyppo without the car keys. Greenbacks changed hands. The waiter departed. Soon a threesome of waiters appeared. One carried a tray with a huge brimming margarita on it. The second carried a big black frying pan and a heavy metal ladle. The third carried a funnel.

  Suddenly the lights dimmed, flickered. The waiter with the funnel grabbed the Gypsy under the chin and tipped his bead back to shove the funnel into his mouth. The one with the frying pan beat it lustily with his ladle. The one with the margarita poured it into the funnel.

  As the Gypsy gagged and choked and thrashed and blinked his watering astounded eyes, everyone in the room clapped, whistled, and cheered his macho performance. He got more drunk and out of it by the second, intoxicated not only by tequila but by the crowd’s flattery of his all-important machismo.

  One down. Morales finished his beans and paid up, then talked earnestly with the waiter again. Again, money changed hands. Morales moved over to lean against the wall near the tackle and pulley and the painted giggling marlin.

  His waiter and several more suddenly charged the other Gypsy. Gripped by the arms and legs, he was dragged from his chair and rushed over to the pulley and tackle. Lights flickered. The waiter beat his frying pan with his ladle. The crowd shrieked, clapped, cheered. The Gyppo squawked and yelled and struggled to no avail.

  They laid him on the floor and whipped a padded leather cuff around his crossed ankles, pulled it tight. Then they unceremoniously hauled him up into the air, upside down, like a gaffed marlin being avenged by the giggler painted on the wall. Flashbulbs popped.

  The waiters usually let their victims remove everything from their pockets before being upended; this time they seemed to have forgotten. Change, wallet, keys, pocket knife, and money clip all rained down on the floor beneath. In a drunken flash, Morales sat down heavily amid them. Struggling to his feet, he returned them courteously to the drunk and disoriented Gyppo once the photo opportunity was finished.

  All except the Cadillac keys. Morales had a use for those.

  * * *

  The Cadillac’s headlights carved a tunnel through the forest of live oak, bay, ginestra, and acacia they were penetrating. The narrow blacktop road switchbacked up the steep hillside, eucalyptus trees now forming a row of tall grey ghostly sentinels beside them. Off to Teddy’s right on the far slopes beyond Tennessee Valley Road were scattered lights.

  “Just… just k-keep going… It’s up near the top,” he quavered. His teeth were chattering, not just from the lowered convertible top. “Right-hand… side. I’ll… know it…”

  A sharp switchback, their lights picked out a packed-earth path sloping away down the hillside, an abandoned wheelbarrow with a rake and a hoe in it. Oddly, no shovel, but Yana had no need of one; she had her own in the backseat.

  Around the next curve were the gravestones, up- and downslope, some recent, some very old. The cemetery was well-kept.

  Teddy chattered, “He-here. Stop here.”

  “You are cold?” she asked sharply as she braked the car.

  “I’m frightened.”

  She cut lights and motor, they got out. From the backseat she got a foot-high statue and an old-fashioned kerosene lantern with a glass cylinder to shield the flame from the wind. She worked the little metal arm to raise the glass so she could insert a match and light the wick.

  There was a low moan; Teddy realized it had come from him.

  “You are sick?” asked Madame Miseria.

  “Still frightened.”

  “Rightly so.” Then she added, “Bring the shovel and the money,” and started off up the gentle grassy slope, holding the statue against her breast in the crook of her left arm, lighting their way with the lantern held high in her right hand.

  “You… you know where my… my stepparents are buried?” demanded Teddy in awe.

  She turned to look down at him over her shoulder. “There are few things on this earth I do not know.”

  She didn’t say that she and Ramon had been all over the small cemetery earlier to find the Whites’ grave in this newest corner close to the edge of the hardwoods. As Teddy took off his jacket and with a frightened look around started digging, she placed the figure at the head of the grave and the lantern on the tombstone. The lantern vaguely illuminated a Christ figure and some of the letters incised into the stone:

  Beloved parents of… In loving memory of…

  Yana’s statue was of the Blessed Mary holding the Christ Child in the crook of her left arm as Yana had held it. Mary was very dark of visage; her blue gown, His red one, were crusted with jewels and gold and wondrous embroidery. On their heads were jeweled golden crowns, with halos of what looked like beaten gold fastened behind.

  “The Black Virgin,” Yana explained when she saw Teddy gaping at it. “To protect us. Dig, my child—dig.”

  Teddy dug. Down into his stepfather’s grave! He had a moment of terror, revulsion. Wasn’t this sacrilege? But Madame Miseria was standing at the foot of the grave with her arms wide, her head back, her eyes closed, her features stern as the cold stone itself. Her pose aped the spread-armed Christ incised into the reddish marble slab. The lantern’s pale light emphasized her striking resemblance to the Black Virgin.

  “Te avis yertime mander, ter yertil tut o del,” she chanted. If you will forgive me all I have done to you, I will forgive all you have done to me. “Ta avel angla tute, tai kodo khabe tai kudo pimo tai mange pa sastimaste.”

  This Gypsy service for the dead would quiet the spirit and keep it in the grave. Better to be safe than sorry, no?

  Teddy was sweating and smeared with soft loam. His hands were blistered, his right calf hurt from pushing his foot down on the rim of the shovel to help force it into the ground. The snake writhed fiercely up his left leg.

  “It is deep enough,” said Madame Miseria abruptly. “Put in the money and cover it over.”

  Shoveling the grave full was easier than digging it out.

  “No one must ever disturb this site again,” she told him. There was a terrible and utter finality in her voice. “If they do, you will surely die.”

  As the brown clods covered the green plastic bag, Teddy could picture the $75,000 in the dark earth, eventually rotting away and disintegrating just as his stepparents were doing. No, he would never disturb this grave. Not ever.

  As they got back into the pink Cadillac, Teddy turned for a last look. He seemed to see a shadow moving at the edge of the trees behind them. He was glad to get away from there.

  * * *

  Ramon’s Cherokee nosed cautiously up the road. He parked where the Caddy had been, got out, started up to the grave with his shovel and flashlight. Twenty minutes later he hefted the big green garbage bag onto his shoulder and almost ran back down to his car. He didn’t like being alone in a cemetery at night.

  * * *

  Giselle rode the elevator up to Rudolph’s penthouse suite. A triumphant Giselle, despite being filthy, disheveled, hair hanging down in her face, one knee skun, pantyhose run, and still wearing her running shoes. First, a hot shower in Rudolph’s big tiled bathroom; then, fragrant with the hotel’s expensive soaps and perfum
es, mating with her wild Gypsy lover in the big bed…

  He wasn’t there. The night clerk was gravely attentive to her dilemma. “Mr. Grimaldi checked out, ma’am. Early this morning. No forwarding address. Of course if you want to contact Bookkeeping during business hours, perhaps…”

  But Giselle was gone. She’d known all along it had to end, but… but… not yet. Not like this… A single word rose up unbidden in her mind.

  Gyppo.

  * * *

  As Ballard, over in North Beach, started his hand toward the bell push beside Madame Miseria’s door, he stopped. The seamed Gypsy palm and Madame Miseria’s sign were gone. He jabbed an overcoated elbow through the glass.

  Stripped of its Gypsy artifacts, the nondescript flat had reassumed its real character: two tiny bedrooms, a living room with a bay window, a kitchen, and a minuscule bath with water stains on the ceiling from some long-ago overflow in the apartment above. Bare pine floors, bare plasterboard walls in need of paint, still bristling with the nails from which had been strung the wires for the heavy drapes. Nothing of Yana remained.

  He’d known it would have to end. But not this way. Not now… A single word came unbidden into his mind.

  Gyppo.

  * * *

  As, in Sacramento, Yana and Ramon stared wide-eyed at one another across the open tailgate of the Cherokee. Between them was an upended green plastic garbage bag, its contents heaped around it.

  Torn-up newspapers, courtesy of Giselle Marc. The same word rose unbidden to both of their lips.

  Gadjo.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It was getting hot. Trinidad Morales licked his crusted lips and bunched up his round brown face against the exquisite thunder inside his skull, gathered his courage, and opened his eyes. And SCREAMED.