32 Cadillacs Page 36
She shrieked and stood on the brakes as almost up in front of her popped an aged Gyspy crone in tattered silks, clanking metal coins and beads and hoops and ornaments, her head shawled in a bright scarf. But as the car slewed by almost sideways, she vaulted lightly into the rider’s seat beside Giselle. The Caddy shot out of the encampment into the highway as they fought for control of it.
Behind them, everyone was scrambling for cars, trucks, campers, anything on wheels in which to give pursuit, but they were arrested by Staley’s suddenly booming voice.
“LET IT GO!” Movement ceased, heads turned faces slack with confusion toward him. “Let it go, my children, I cannot now claim it, anyway. I have realized that I must remain King of the Gypsies until I die! I cannot give away this sacred power, for we now see that only I know how to wield it fully…”
Right into the outskirts of town the glorious finned monster roared, as the two apparent Gypsies battled for control of it. Half the time the car drove itself as they tried to shove each other, elbowed and cursed and…
The crone’s clutching fingers tore Giselle’s scarf from her head. Her lustrous blond hair tumbled out to blow about her face. The crone stopped fighting, staring at her openmouthed. Giselle, sensing advantage, tried to slam the crone’s head against the dash. Instead, she stripped the silken shawl from around her shoulders and face.
Rather, Ballard’s face.
No hand on the wheel, no foot on the accelerator, the pink Cadillac slowed to a halt half on and half off the road.
Of common accord, they leaped out to stagger around in the road like drunks, laughing, wiping the makeup from their faces, panting out their stories… Giselle was suddenly sober.
“Larry, what about Yana? If you love her—”
“When I saw her up there with Rudolph, Giselle, I suddenly realized… that’s where she belongs…” He jerked his head at the pink Cadillac. “And here’s where I belong. Stealing cars from the goddam Gyppos.”
The last barrier was down. They hugged each other, delighted with their rediscovered friendship. And thus did not see the trunk lid pop up a few careful inches.
“The look on your face when I almost ran you down…”
“The look on yours when I jumped in and started fighting you for the wheel…”
With a ROAR the pink Cadillac fish tailed away from them, leaving them gaping in the middle of the road. They ran after it a few steps, then stopped. Hopeless.
They looked at one another, both started to speak, neither did. By common accord, they started trudging wearily down the road. The greatest sin in Dan Kearny’s moral code was losing a repo once you had your hands on it. What the hell were they going to tell him when they got to their distant motel?
* * *
If they got there. Most of the townspeople, after their Town Meeting, had gone to their beds like good citizens. But a small group, led by Herr Himmler, had gone hunting along highways and byways with lanterns and clubs. They found no Gyppos, of course, because they were giving the encampment a wide berth. Out there, after all, were half a thousand Gypsies to their scant fifty. Where was the glory in that?
But God was good. God was just.
Walking down the road toward them were two Gypsies, all alone, one a tall old crone, the other a tall young man…
“There’s two of the bastards!” yelled Himmler. He slapped his bat against his palm and started running toward them.
“Get ’em!” screamed Mary Lonquist, and tightened her grip on her short-handled garden hoe as she broke into a dainty run.
Yes, they would pet them with lead pipes, make them believers with baseball bats…
* * *
Coming at them in a sudden rush down the blacktop was a solid mass of local yokels with hoes, rakes, bats, lead pipes, scythes, their wildly bouncing lanterns illuminating their hate-distorted faces.
“Christ!” yelled Ballard, “it’s the villagers, come to get us! We’re in a goddam Frankenstein movie!”
They whirled and ran for their lives, but it had been a long day and a longer night, and the angry townspeople gained on them with every stride.
Ballard, chest heaving, said, “Keep going. Get help. I’ll slow them down.”
“No! I’ll stand with you!”
But out of the darkness came snarling a great gleaming pink beast. “GET IN! GET IN!” yelled the driver, already tromping on it even as they were tumbling into the backseat.
As Dan Kearny sent the car arrowing away from the angry, frustrated mob, Ballard said bitterly, “So it was you in the trunk! You stole this thing from us!”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“But why…” Giselle was nonplussed.
“Why, for old Staley, of course.” Kearny gestured with one hand while driving with the other. “He wants this car, but he couldn’t keep it if he wasn’t going to die, or at least surrender the crown. But if he could steal it back from a couple of gadje who stole it from him…”
“You expected one of us to grab it at the encampment.”
“One or both of you, sure. I found it hidden in the bushes, had Lulu drive it while I hid in the trunk.”
“So you’re going to just turn it back to him? After—”
“Hell no!” Kearny swung the wheel to send the long sleek car up the road to the top of the bluff where O’B had come to grief the night before. “We’ll let the village idiots go home before we do anything else.”
He braked the car, killed the engine. They could hear wild music, voices, laughter, singing from the Gypsy encampment below, carried to them up the face of the bluff on the rising night air.
They walked to the edge and looked down at a hundred gleaming campfires that silhouetted cavorting figures in archaic costumes. Kearny mused, “What with this car and the insurance money and all the death gifts from the rom, I suppose old Staley’ll clear a couple hundred grand from all this.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?” demanded Ballard savagely.
“Why should it, Larry? If fools get taken—”
Giselle said almost dreamily, “What about DKA’s extra hundred-eighty grand? Does that bother you?”
“No. We’re going to set up the Daniel Kearny Associates Foundation with that money,” said Kearny airily.
“A foundation?” she said weakly. “To do what?”
“Help Gyppos who want to learn how to read and write.”
Giselle didn’t understand it, but was seeing it all now.
“And who better to tell us who wants an education than—”
“Who better indeed? Staley Zlachi.”
Ballard said almost hoarsely, “King of the Gyppos? Are you nuts? Soft in the head? If he gets his hands on that money—”
“He won’t. We pay the tuition directly to the school—he just advises.” He shrugged. “Hell, maybe I’m just getting old.”
They fell silent, still staring down at the scene below. Distance made it like a childhood dream of summer, a memory of something never known yet somehow recalled. It was, for that pure moment, a fairy tale brought to life. Dan Kearny sighed.
“Well, we’d better go pick up O’B at the motel. We still got ten Cal-Cit cars to get.”
They walked back to the pink Cadillac, paused with the doors open.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Ballard. “Old Zlachi’s gonna advise us on this foundation, but who’s gonna advise us on where to find those Gyppo Cadillacs?”
“Zlachi already has. He gets back this car only after we get the other Cadillacs.”
“You mean he’s selling out his own people.”
“That was the whole idea. To put him in the vise so—”
Giselle demanded, “Dan, when did you decide to—”
“Back in San Francisco, when you told me he wanted a pink Cadillac to be buried in. I figured that just had to be a scam on his own people. That’s when I knew I could make a deal with the crooked old bastard.”
Getting into the car, Giselle remembered what a nice old ge
ntleman Staley looked while actually being slippery as a snake.
“If you sup with the devil, Dan’l, you better have a long spoon.”
“I hope Zlachi’s is long enough,” said Dan Kearny.
He started the pink Cadillac. Larry Ballard and Giselle Marc fell into each other’s arms in helpless laughter.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
JOE GORES AND 32 CADILLACS
“A fabulous romp through the twilight world of Gypsies and their arch-enemies, the repomen. Fast, witty, and packed with arcane street lore, 32 CADILLACS may well be Joe Gores' best book yet.”
—Ross Thomas, author of Voodoo, Ltd.
and president of the Mystery Writers of America
“This excellent novel about Gypsy confidence games and Gypsy scamming, Gypsy cleverness and Gypsy charm, could only have been written by a Gypsy. Now we know the truth about Joe Gores' ancestors.”
—Paco Ignacio Taibo II, author of Some Clouds
and president of the International Association of Crime Writers
“Joe Gores shows you just how much fun a Gypsy can have stealing a Cadillac, and how much more fun a repoman can have stealing it back. Everybody has fun in this book. I don't get to use the word 'rollicking' very often, but now's my chance. 32 CADILLACS is a rollicker if I've ever seen one. It rollicks all over the place.”
—Lawrence Block, author of A Dance at the Slaughterhouse,
winner of the 1992 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Novel