32 Cadillacs Read online

  The little wizzled-up one, Smathers, the corporate counsel, cleared his throat. “Yes. A great deal of money, Mr.…” He looked at the business card in his hand. “Mr. Kearny.” He smiled a toothy smile. “But guests leave their valuables in the safe at the front desk—not here in the manager’s office.”

  “But it’s not my money,” said Kearny with a great show of reason. “It’s your money.”

  The big redheaded one, Shayne, with the gun under his arm, suddenly said, “I don’t know what sort of games you guys play back there in Washington, Kearny, but out here—”

  “Washington?” Kearny jerked a thumb at his own chest. “Like the card says, Daniel Kearny, licensed private detective right here in San Francisco…”

  Gunnarson waved him silent with almost a smirk.

  “You’re a licensed private investigator from California. We accept that.” He opened his hands and beamed. “So why won’t you accept that we never had a guest at this hotel named Angelo Grimaldi? No Angelo Grimaldi ever tried to extort money from us. And we certainly—”

  “His real name is Rudolph—”

  “Please. And we certainly never gave any Angelo Grimaldi any seventy-five thousand dollars.” He turned to look at his two associates, and chuckled. “Why, we wouldn’t keep our jobs very long if we went around dishing out free cash to just anyone who came through that door, would we, fellows?”

  They also laughed. Dan Kearny looked from face to face. Never-Never Land? Alice down the rabbit hole, for Chrissake!

  “Grimaldi told you that a blond terrorist was going to blow up the President and he said he killed her and dumped her body in the ocean…” They were all staring at him blandly. He added with a dash of desperation, “The blonde isn’t dead—she’s my office manager, for Chrissake! I can get her in here—”

  “A terrorist for an office manager?” Smathers made little tutting noises with his birdlike mouth. “I don’t know if this is a bet, or a prank, or what, Mr. Kearny, but we’re busy men…”

  Shayne picked up the satchel, clicked it shut, and slammed it against Kearny’s chest so Kearny had to grab it or let it fall to the floor. And he suddenly understood.

  They hadn’t told the feds about Marino’s threatening phone calls! So now they could never admit anything to anyone!

  Back at the office, Giselle Marc was sitting on the top of his desk, idly swinging her legs and smoking a cigarette.

  “He wouldn’t take back the seventy-five thousand dollars,” she said.

  Kearny set his satchel down next to her plastic suitcase.

  “Neither would they.” He fired up one of her cigarettes, then shrugged. “But at least I can take a triangle flight up to Seattle tonight on my way to Steubenville, and give that guy back the thirty thou Bart found and messengered to us.”

  * * *

  “Nossir, I don’t know nothing about no thirty thousand bucks I was supposed to of paid some road contractor.”

  Big John Charleston was glowering at him from across the desk in the office Big John could no longer pay for on Queen Anne Ave near the Seattle Center.

  “He was a Gypsy,” said Dan Kearny, trying to keep tension out of his voice. It was happening again! “He put crankcase oil mixed with paint thinner on the roads of your subdivision—”

  “I ain’t got no subdivision,” snarled Big John.

  “Because you guys at the state took it away from him!” chimed in Little John from his smaller desk in the corner.

  “I’m not from the state! I’m a private investigator—”

  Big John was on his feet.

  “Then investigate how to get to hell outta my office ’fore I throw you through the window! You guys ruin me an’ then come around tryin’ to trap me into damaging admissions…”

  Which meant Dan Kearny had to fly back to San Francisco to redeposit the $30,000 before catching a flight east to Iowa. He didn’t know what else to do with it—for the moment. But all that money was giving him ideas…

  The flight back to San Francisco, however, was going to put him into Stupidville well after the fireworks had started there.

  And in Nebraska.

  And in New York City.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Pearso Stokes was a beautiful Gypsy woman of 26 who managed to look like a misfit Iranian student of 19. Her lustrous coiling black hair was skun back into a bun with a rubber band around it, huge glasses magnified her truly astonishing eyes into terrifying bug eyes. She carried a chemistry and a physics textbook under one arm, though she could neither read nor write.

  But boy, could she count! She entered her fourth midtown bank of the day to work the scam supposedly originated by the legendary Tene Bimbo some seventy-five years before. The con was so old nobody remembered it anymore, especially not the harried Manhattan tellers to whose windows she shuffled. Here she put down her books and fixed the teller with her fearsome bug eyes.

  “My fadder has send me money from Tehran.”

  The teller leaned forward. “What?”

  Her accent was truly atrocious, guttural and thick, her voice low. He could barely understand what she said. While honking at him again, she dug through her voluminous purse for a crumpled $500 bill she handed him like a fragment of the Koran.

  “What?”

  —“I said I want five one-hundred-dollar bills.”

  But as soon as she had them, Pearso changed her mind.

  —“No, no, wait. I need three hundred in fifties and two hundred in twenties.”

  The teller started over again with fifties and twenties. The line of impatient customers behind Pearso was growing. She picked up her new money, hesitated, thrust it back again.

  —“Make the fifties tens, and one of the twenties fives.”

  Somebody behind her exclaimed just loudly enough, “Aw, for Chrissake!”

  Pearso was undeterred. The teller was flustered. He had just finished the count when she gave it all back again.

  —“No. I need four fifties, ten twenties, nine tens, ten dollars in quarters, and fifty dimes.”

  He had to write that one down. The line behind her was grumbling like a thunderstorm. He lost his count twice.

  After all that, she exchanged the silver for two $5 bills, got another ten and four twenties, and the rest in hundreds. The patrons behind her started clapping as she left. Pearso didn’t mind: she could laugh all the way from the bank. Her silver Eldorado with its M.D. plates had the driver’s-side visor turned down to show her printed sign, EMERGENCY—DOCTOR ON CALL, so the car was unticketed even though left in a No Parking zone.

  She had palmed one of the original hundreds.

  Then a fifty and a twenty.

  After that, two tens and a five.

  On the final exchange, a fifty, two twenties, and a ten.

  She had given the teller $500, had gotten $500 back, and had palmed an additional $295 that the teller wouldn’t discover was missing until he tried to balance at the end of the day.

  Time for tea at her sister’s mitt-camp in the Village. But a cruising Ken Warren spotted her at Seventh Ave and West 14th, and fell in behind her. Everything fit. Eldorado. Silver. M.D. plates. Woman driving who looked like a Gyppo.

  Follow until it roosted, then drop a net over it.

  * * *

  Despite the fancy shingle out front, READER AND ADVISOR, it was a mitt-camp. Ken parked a short block away on the narrow busy street, started to get out—and there was a wiry little guy with a sharp nose who didn’t look like any Gyppo Ken had ever seen just getting into the Caddy.

  He unslotted the Toyota, followed him. When the guy stopped, Ken would grab the Caddy, Only he picked up two more guys and some luggage. One was tall and bony and middle-aged, not much heat if Ken had to dance with them. But the other one was an elephant in clothes. Not a fat elephant, either.

  Not good. Not good at all. Ken couldn’t have handled him one-on-one, let alone wearing the other two around his neck.

  And then, to make matters wors
e, they headed north out of the city along the West Side Highway, He’d topped off, but the Caddy with its outsized tank would have the range on him if they went over a couple hundred miles.

  * * *

  They didn’t. Two hours later the Cadillac made a turn onto Oak Street in a little town called Dudson Center and pulled up on the gravel driveway just shy of a chain-link fence behind the old-fashioned two-story white clapboard house at number 46. Good. No garage.

  Ken steered the red Toyota past, made the next right, the next left, and parked. Maybe they were Gyppos after all; the big guy, who looked like two pro wrestlers at once, had sat in the backseat waving a tambourine around on the way up.

  Didn’t matter. Two minutes and the Caddy would be his. He retraced his route on foot, shambling along round-shouldered and thrust-jawed like an ill-tempered dangerous bear.

  The Eldorado had been left unlocked. Ken slid in behind the wheel. Man, it was loaded—cruise control, a/c, cassette player, reading lights, extremely woodlike dashboard trim. As he keyed the ignition, a bread company van pulled in behind him, filling the rearview mirrors and blocking his exit.

  “Hey,” Ken said. He leaned out to look back at the van’s driver. Hell of a time for a guy to make a delivery. “Moo fit!”

  Instead, the driver switched off the van’s engine, pulled on the emergency brake, and stepped out to the driveway, calling toward the house, “Andy! Mayday!”

  And hell, here came another one, climbing over the driver’s seat to get out on the same side as the driver. That made five of them. The new one said, “Who is he, Stan?”

  “No idea.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “No idea.”

  Ken hit the button that locked all four doors, tried his keys, kept working them. Once the Caddy started, he’d push the van back out of his way and be off about his business.

  People erupted from the house; first the two who’d been in the front seat of the Caddy on the way up, then a not-bad-looking woman making unconscious motions like a person lighting a cigarette off the stub of another one, then the big guy, finally a really mean-looking old dude. He and the woman stayed on the porch. The three he knew about came over to join the two from the bread truck. They were all looking in at him. He could hear them talking through the closed window.

  “What’s going on?” the guy Stan had called Andy asked.

  “No idea,” Stan said. He turned to the other bread truck guy. “Wally?”

  “That man was in the car,” Wally said, in great excitement, “when we got here.”

  “He’s still in the car,” Andy said, and rapped on the glass in the driver’s door, calling to Ken, “Hey! What’s the story?”

  He found a key that popped over, and the engine purred. Ken looked over at the right-door mirror to back up and push the bread truck out of the way, when he saw a heavy-laden pickup pull into the driveway behind the van, filling the driveway and blocking the sidewalk as well. A handsome blond guy in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt that said Work Is for People Who Don’t Surf got out and strolled curiously forward.

  “What’s the story here?” he asked.

  “No idea, Doug,” Stan said.

  This was getting confusing. All these people to keep straight. Could he push both the van and the pickup? He had to try, get on out of here. He shifted into reverse—and watched a green and white taxi pull up to the curb, parking crosswise just behind the pickup. A feisty little woman in a man’s cloth cap got out of the cab and joined the crowd beside the Cadillac.

  “What’s happening?”

  “No idea, Mom,” said Stan. “Dortmunder, do you…”

  The other guy who had been in the Cadillac just shook his head. Ken considered the chain-link fence. No: the metal pipe supports were embedded in concrete. Get the elephant mad, he might pick up the Cadillac and shake it ’til Ken fell out.

  The feisty little cab-driving woman went into the house. Andy leaned close to the glass separating him from Ken.

  “We’re gonna put a potato in the exhaust!” he yelled. “We’re gonna monoxide you!”

  Ken was feeling very put-upon, very confused. For the first time, he studied this mob around the Cadillac. They just didn’t look right. Could he have made a mistake? But the car was right: make, model, and color. The M.D. plate was right. He’d picked it up in front of a mitt-camp, for God sake! There was even a tambourine on the backseat.

  Still, something was wrong. Tambourine or no tambourine, these people just weren’t Gypsies. As the woman cabdriver came out of the house carrying a big baking potato in her hand, Ken cracked the window beside him just far enough to talk. He announced through the crack, “Ngyou’re gno Gnipthy!”

  Andy reared back: “What?”

  “Gnone of gnyou are Gnipthyth!”

  “He’s a foreigner,” Stan decided. “He doesn’t talk English.”

  Ken glared at him. “Ngyou makin funna me?”

  “What is that he talks?” Stan’s mom asked, holding the potato. “Polish?”

  “Could be Lithuanian,” the elephant rumbled doubtfully.

  Dortmunder turned to stare at him. “Lithuanian!”

  “I had a Lithuanian cellmate once,” the elephant explained. “He talked like—”

  Ken had had enough. Pounding the steering wheel, “Ah’m thpeaking Englith!” he cried through the open slit of the window.

  Which did no good. Dortmunder said to the elephant, “Tiny, tell him it’s our car, then. Talk to him in Lithuanian.”

  Tiny. That figured. He said, “I don’t speak Lith—”

  “Ikth’s gnot your car!” Ken yelled. “Ikth’s gha bankth’s car!”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Andy said. “I understood that.”

  Dortmunder turned his frown toward Andy: “You did?”

  “He said, ‘It’s the bank’s car.’”

  “He did?”

  “Fuckin’ right!” Ken yelled.

  Stan’s mom pointed the potato at him. “That was English,” she said accusingly.

  “He’s a repoman,” Stan said.

  “Ah’m a hawk!” Ken boasted.

  “Yeah, a carhawk,” Stan said.

  Wally said, “Stan? What’s going on?”

  Stan explained, “He’s a guy repossesses your car if you don’t keep up the payments.” Turning to Andy, he said, “You stole a stolen car. This guy wants it for the bank.”

  Ken nodded fiercely enough to whack his forehead against the window. “Yeah! Nghe bank!”

  “Oh!” Andy spread his hands, grinning at the repoman. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  Ken peered mistrustfully at him.

  “No, really, fella,” Andy said, leaning close to the window, “no problem. Take it. We’re done with it, anyway.”

  Handing Doug the potato, Stan’s mom said, “I’ll move my cab.”

  Handing Stan the potato, Doug said, “I’ll move my pickup.”

  Handing Wally the potato, Stan said, “I’ll move the van.”

  Wally pocketed the potato and smiled at Ken as if he’d never seen a repoman before.

  Ken, with deep suspicion, watched all the other vehicles get moved out of his way. Everybody smiled and nodded at him. The other woman and the mean-looking old man came down off the porch. The woman smiled and did that thing like lighting a cigarette off an old one again.

  The mean-looking guy said, “Kill him.”

  They all turned toward him at once. “Huh?”

  The old guy waved his arms. “Drag him out through the crack in the window. Bury him in the backyard in a manila envelope. He knows about us.”

  “He knows what about us?” asked Dortmunder reasonably.

  Everybody nodded and turned back to Ken, still all smiles. The mean-looking old guy lapsed into moody silence.

  Ken lowered his window another fraction of an inch and said, “Ngyou dough wanna arngue?”

  Andy grinned amiably at him. “Argue with a fluent guy like you? I wouldn’t
dare. Have a happy. Drive it in good health.” Then he leaned closer, more confidentially, to say, “Listen; the brake’s a little soft.”

  The other vehicles were all out of the way now, but people kept milling around back there. The van driver returned from moving his van to lean down by Ken’s window and say, “You heading back to the city? What you do, take the Palisades. Forget the Tappan Zee.”

  Ken couldn’t stand it. Trying hopelessly to regain some sense of control over his own destiny, he stared around, grabbed the tambourine out of the backseat, and shoved it into the van driver’s hand.

  “Here,” he said, “this ain’t ghu bank’s.” For some reason, it was probably the clearest sentence of his life.

  The blond guy stood down by the sidewalk and gestured for Ken to back it up, so he could guide him out to the street. Ken put the Cadillac in reverse again, and the woman from the porch came over to say, “You want a glass of water before you go?”

  “Gno!” Ken screamed. “Gno! Jus lemme outta gnere!”

  They did, too. Three or four of them gave him useful hand signals while he backed out to the street, and eight of the nine stood in the street to wave goodbye; a thing that has never happened to a carhawk before. Only the old guy glared after him with hate-filled eyes. Only the old guy knew how to act.

  Ken had his Cadillac, but as he drove away, he just didn’t feel very happy about it. Much of the fun had gone out of the transaction. There were right ways and wrong ways to do things. A repoman took a car, the people driving it resisted. That was the way it had always been, that was the way it would always be.

  But not with these cheesecakes.

  Halfway back to the city, however, the Toyota behind him on the towbar, Ken brightened. First Gyppo blood for him, right? He turned on the radio and started to drum his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music. He’d finally figured out what was wrong with those screwy people who’d just given him the Caddy without any argument.

  They were crooks; and you just couldn’t trust crooks. Crooks never did what was right and proper. Only the old guy who’d wanted to kill him had it right.

  * * *

  Back in Jersey, there was a message from Bart Heslip. Meet him and Larry Ballard in Grand Island, Nebraska, as quick as he could get there. Drive all day, all night if he had to.