32 Cadillacs Read online

  Beverly kicked Ballard out of the car right there in front of the Montana and drove off in tears. He had to walk six blocks just to find a cab. When he finally staggered into the sanctuary of his apartment, with a blinding headache and a red welt the size of a bread plate on his forehead, he threw up all over the front-room rug from the effects of his concussion.

  * * *

  Only Bart Heslip, of DKA’s minions, had a totally satisfactory evening. His forever lady, Corinne Jones, who was a warm golden brown to his plum black and had a Nefertiti profile right off an Egyptian wall painting, fixed him soul food while making big over his damaged face and stitched pate. Then she took him to bed for the sweetest loving this side of paradise.

  All of this without ever once bringing up the old tiresome I-told-you-so subject of finding some other line of work.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Friday. Show time. Even though they had nine hours because the banks were open until 6:00 P.M. on Fridays, Marino could allow only one and a half hours for his people to work the dealers in each area. They had to do it all in one day to keep ahead of the bank’s computers. He got the jump on his own part of the operation by strolling into the massive-pillared pseudo-Greco temple that housed Jack Olwen Cadillac on what was left of San Francisco’s Auto Row just as the doors opened at 8:30.

  “Ah, Mr. Grimaldi,” exclaimed Sales Manager Danny McBain as he scurried up, “here for your limo?”

  Marino grinned. “You said first thing Friday, so…”

  “Ready and waiting for you.”

  Marino’s Cadillac had been special-ordered from a limo-maker in Los Angeles to specifications he had gotten from a Gypsy in D.C. after a long hard barter. Of course it didn’t really have the Kevlar armor-plating and polymer bulletproof windows of the real McCoy, but it looked like it did, which was all Marino deemed necessary for the St. Mark Hotel scam to work.

  They crossed the display floor toward the finance office, past a husky, cement-dust-coated laborer, swarthy and vaguely middle-European looking. His red satin warmup jacket had 49ERS WORLD CHAMPIONS across the back. He was kicking the tires of a Fleetwood coupe—one of those with the formal cabriolet roof.

  “What’s the sticker on this here baby?”

  “Thirty-two-four base, Mr. Kaslov. Of course…”

  “As she stands,” said Kaslov gutturally. “No extras, nuttin’ like that. I can swing eight down…”

  McBain chuckled and said to the man he knew as Grimaldi, “They always kick the tires—as if that’s going to tell them one damned thing about the quality of the car!”

  Grimaldi chuckled also, in polite agreement. At three minutes to nine he drove the limo out into O’Farrell, one-way inbound, crossed Van Ness on the light, and was gone. Behind him he left a downstroke check for $9,800 drawn on the Blue Skye account in Cal-Cit Main at One Embarcadero Center. At that moment the check was good as gold; in ninety-three minutes it would he as good as, oh, say, the $8,000 check the artistically cement-dusted Kaslov would write on the same account at about the same time.

  * * *

  The San Francisco phone room was in a storefront on Turk, half a block short of what had once been and would again have been the Central Freeway’s Gough Street on-ramp if they hadn’t decided to tear down the earthquake-damaged skyway. Yana had refused the use of her ofica because she was working the Teddy White scam out of it, and didn’t want the location compromised.

  She and Ristik expected calls on seven cars. Three from Jack Olwen—Marino’s phony paperwork on his limo scam had gone in earlier—two from Freeway Cadillac in Colma, two from Wilson Cadillac/Porsche/Audi Motor Car Company on Burlington’s aptly named Cadillac Way. San Francisco, first of the day, was the linchpin of the operation: if it went well there, reasoned the surprisingly superstitious Gypsies, it would go well all over.

  The first call came in at 8:53. Yana answered musically with the last four digits of the number.

  “Three-four-six-two, good morning.”

  “Is this Acme Construction?”

  “Yes, sir, it certainly is.”

  “This is Jack Olwen Cadillac on Van Ness—”

  She interrupted with a delighted laugh.

  “I bet Greg Kaslov is in there buying a car.”

  The caller paused for a moment. “Well, yes, he is, but…”

  “It’s all he and Joanna have been talking about for the last six months—getting their Fleetwood…”

  “Well, they’re finally doing it. I was calling to verify employment, but…”

  She laughed again, not a care in the world. “Greg’s been here for twenty-two years. He was the first man Mr. Arnold hired when he came back from Vietnam…”

  The other phone rang while she was still pouring honey on Kaslov’s head. Ristik picked up. There was no trace of Gypsy gutturals in his voice.

  “Eight-oh-seven-six,” he said. “Credit Department? Just a moment, I’ll switch you.”

  Yana had just finished with Jack Olwen Cadillac. She stabbed the glowing 8076 extension button on her phone and said, “Trans-Universal Credit, how may I help you?”

  She thumbed quickly through the stack of papers on the desk as she listened, plucked one out, scanned it.

  “Yes, we are carrying the paper on Mr. Stokes’s home in the three hundred block of Third Avenue…” She rattled the papers realistically near the phone. “Twelve years, excellent pay, has never missed a payment, has… um… No. Has never even paid a late penalty.”

  On the other phone, Ristik was saying, “Listen, I’ve known Sally Poluth my whole life. She’s godmother to our kids… No, I didn’t know she was buying a car, but with the insurance from Ritchie’s death she sure as hell can afford one…”

  * * *

  By 10:30 A.M. Yana and Ristik had gotten the calls on all seven vehicles; they shut down the phone room just as Marino slid a withdrawal slip across the polished surface of a teller’s window in Cal-Cit Main at One Embarcadero Plaza.

  “I want to withdraw ten thousand in cash from my account.”

  “Ten thousand? Cash? That’s—”

  “Miss Wooding assured me there would be no problem.”

  Helen Wooding appeared as if on cue. With continental flair, Marino kissed the air a millimeter above her hand.

  “What’s the trouble here?” she demanded sharply of the teller. “Mr. Grimaldi’s account certainly is good for the withdrawal and it meets the fed’s ten thousand limit, so—”

  “Right away, Miss Wooding.” The girl was blushing. She started putting away her rubber stamps and locking up her drawers so she could go get that large an amount of cash.

  “Trainees,” said Helen in a voice deliberately loud enough for the departing teller to hear. She added with a coquettish laugh, “You should have come directly to me, Angelo.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you with such a trifle.” His fine dark eyes lit up. “Since I hope to be settling here on a permanent basis, I have been looking for a house to buy as a company investment. And I have run across a marvelous bargain out in the …” he paused, grinning, “the Avenues, is that right? Off Sloat Boulevard? An old Italian gentleman who said I reminded him of his son…”

  “The Avenues. Yes. South of the park is the Sunset. North of it is called the Richmond District.”

  “Sunset… Richmond… I’ll remember.”

  The teller had returned. She counted out the cash, Marino put it in his slim attaché case, saying to Helen, “Maybe we can go see the property on Monday.”

  “Monday?”

  He snapped shut the case. “Lunch—remember? And perhaps, since seeing the house will be a business activity for you, we could take the whole afternoon… perhaps spend the evening together…” He made subdued kissy-kiss noises with his lips. Helen Wooding actually blushed. “I’ll call you Monday morning first thing…”

  “Oh, yes,” she said breathlessly. “Call me.”

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Marino deposited the $10,000 ca
sh in the San Rafael Blue Skye account. He didn’t invoke Rita Fetherton’s assistance for the deposit as he would for the withdrawal; banks are delighted to see cash come in the door.

  As he walked out, one of the two phones began ringing in a small office over an electronics store on lower Fourth just three blocks away. Immaculata Bimbai, who fainted in jewelry stores, spoke breathily into the mouthpiece.

  “Five-four-nine-oh… Yes, this is Fashion Fabrics… Credit Department?” Immaculata, who was slim as a pencil and elegant as the diamonds she was always trying to steal, gave a sensual full-bellied laugh that suggested a woman with three chins and a milkshake in each hand. “Honey, I’m the whole ball of wax here. Owner, president, credit manager, sales manager…” Another pause. “Tibo Tene? Sure, Tibo’s been our fabric buyer for, oh, hell, I can get the records, but over ten years, anyway…”

  As she talked, the other phone began ringing. Josef Adamo, the fat bogus road-paving contractor, picked up.

  “Three-seven-six-six.”

  Like San Francisco, the North Bay operation would account for eight Cadillacs, but was more spread out: the calls would be coming in from Corte Madera in Marin County; Vallejo in Solano; Petaluma, and Santa Rosa in Sonoma; Napa in Napa County (the wine country); and Ukiah in Mendocino, way up there in the redwoods.

  At 1:00 P.M., Marino took the $10,000 in cash back out of the San Rafael account, and drove across the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge to deposit it in the East Bay account. At the same time, Immaculata and Josef closed down their San Rafael phone room and two other Gypsies opened theirs over a Greek taverna on Clay and Second near Oakland’s Jack London Square.

  The whole operation was completed clown in San Jose just at 6:00 P.M. bank-close, exactly as planned.

  * * *

  The dealers’ credit managers cleared their desks on Friday night, dropping all the paperwork, including the downstroke checks for the thirty-one Cadillacs, into their Out boxes to the four Cal-Cit Bank branches. But the bank’s zone men, who handled conditional sales contracts on chattel mortgages generated by these auto dealers, didn’t work Saturdays. As a result, the computer wouldn’t be pushing any of those thirty-one down-payment checks through the accounts of origin until Monday morning.

  Thus, on Sunday, the eve of destruction, Stan (the Man) Groner, efficient and ambitious president of Consumer Loans for the entire California Citizens Bank system, still could have a wonderful evening eating popcorn and laughing at America’s Funniest Home Videos (their bridge over troubled generational waters) with his 15-year-old daughter. Never for a moment did Stan suspect that starting that week, April would become the rottenest, lousiest, most stinking month of his entire life.

  Because when Monday’s computers started humming, down payments started popping in Cal-Cit Banks all over the Bay Area with a zest that would have made Orville Redenbacher and his wimpy grandson happy and proud. Stunned zone men started grabbing telephones and waving their arms and screaming. Stunned dealership finance managers started screaming back, turning white and dropping their phones and sometimes their pants.

  Damage assessments started reaching Stan Groner’s desk in Consumer Loans that same afternoon. He called for files. But it wasn’t until early A.M. Thursday that the tally he’d come in early to get was complete. Then the stack of manila folders in the center of his desk, stinking of economic brimstone and glowing pinkly from the ghastly financial fires within, made him quickly reach for his phone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Giselle Marc and Dan Kearny usually shared the day’s first cup of coffee while going over the probable shape of DKA’s day; but when the phone rang early on Thursday morning, their chat had degenerated into a verbal brawl because Kearny had asked whether Ballard was showing up for work yet.

  “He’s still home, Dan. Still has that lousy headache.”

  “From a concussion?” His voice was disbelieving. “I think he’s on a toot.” Kearny’s slang was mired in the ’40s. He added illogically, “And if it is a concussion, he got it falling down drunk in some barrel house. He’s been working too many cases with O’B lately—try to bend an elbow with that guy and pretty soon you’re dipping your beak in paint thinner.”

  “You should see the lump on Larry’s forehead.”

  “All I see is his caseload getting fat without him doing anything about it. Hell, he’s got four new assignments without twenty-four-hour first report, and sixteen others that—”

  “I could pick up the slack on those unworked first-report cases,” said Giselle quickly around her cup, as if muffling the words might keep Kearny from really hearing them.

  “I need you here in the office. Besides, you’ve been acting so unprofessional lately that you can’t keep up with the cases you’ve got.”

  “Just what is that supposed to mean?” she demanded coldly.

  Kearny fired up a cigarette, watching her slyly past the smoke. “I hear your galfriend Maybelle is doing more than just living in the backseat of that Connie of hers.”

  Giselle dunked a doughnut in frosty silence. Her emotions were still tender from the scene with the Brit, and here was Kearny, just as she’d known he would, zeroing in on the very thing that had caused that painful rift in her personal life.

  “She’s on the hustle.” When Giselle didn’t dignify this with a reply, he added, “The Mary Magdalene lay. And eventually I gotta tell the bank about it.”

  Giselle stood up abruptly; she didn’t want to think about May-belle losing her car all over again, this time for good.

  “I have to get to work,” she said. Which is when the phone rang. Already on her feet, she snatched it up and snapped into it, “Daniel Kearny Associates.”

  “Tellkearnyineedhimuphererightawaynohesitationsnoexcuses rightnowfiveminutesorimcallingholstromautorecoverybureau…”

  She picked out a word here and there from Stan Groner’s long high scream of anguish, enough to know Kearny was wanted at the bank and wanted now.

  She said, “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying, but I recognize your note of hysteria.”

  “Goddammitgisellewereouthundredsthousandsmillions…”

  “I still can’t understand you but we’ll get on it right away,” she said crisply, and hung up.

  “Get right on what?” demanded Kearny. “Who was that?”

  “Wrong number.”

  “Wrong number? I just heard you say that we’ll…”

  Giselle was already gone down the office with long, clean-limbed strides. She’d handle this one herself, and show Kearny just who the real professional was around here. She made an abrupt left turn through the sliding glass door to the back office that was her domain, then kept on going right out the back door and into the storage lot where her company car was parked.

  Kearny morosely smoked another cigarette, stubbed it, took a slurp of coffee. Stone cold. The phone rang just as he reached for it to bitch at Giselle about the coffee, so he snatched it up to snarl at it. It snarled at him first.

  “DAMMIT, KEARNY, WHY AREN’T YOU HERE YET?”

  “Fine, Stan, thanks for asking. How’s the family?”

  “DAMMIT, I TOLD GISELLE I NEEDED YOUR BUTT HERE RIGHT—”

  “Giselle? When?”

  Some of the hysteria was fading from Groner’s voice. He must have looked at his watch. “Well, maybe like only fifteen, twenty minutes ago, but this is… oh, here she is now…”

  “Giselle? There?”

  “At least she knows how to respond to a client…”

  He was talking to an empty phone: Kearny was on his way.

  What the hell did that woman think she was doing?

  * * *

  But Dan Kearny was too old a hand to let a bank man’s panic panic him, so he parked in the usual lot and strolled across Battery to the glittering marble and glass monolith of One Embarcadero Center. It was one of those San Francisco spring mornings, clear and bright and crisp without a hint of fog, that make the gulls swoop and squawk raucously and dive
-bomb passing pedestrians for handouts.

  He wandered through the Consumer Loans Division, nodding to a man here and winking at a woman there, whatever her age and shape and marital status. It was ritual, like the bottle of decent bourbon each of them got, man and woman alike, at Christmastime. He knew that most of the women would have preferred a box of Sees chocolates, but candy didn’t fit the DKA image. DKA was the rough-and-ready crew that took all the assignments the bank’s men were scared of, closed out all the cases the other repo agencies struck out on. Kearny wanted the bank people to get a whiff of predator whenever DKA padded by.

  The door with STANLEY GRONER—PRESIDENT—CONSUMER LOANS DIVISION gold-leafed on its pebbled glass hissed shut behind him with a pneumatic sigh. Groner was a traditionalist: the dark-paneled room had sporting prints on the walls, heavy hardwood and leather furniture, art deco lamps. Only thing missing was a brass spittoon beside the antique oak desk.

  “Here I am, Stan, now what…”

  Groner, a normally placid and pleasant-faced man of 42, addicted to soft tweeds and knitted wool ties, was walking around his desk in tight circles. His arms were waving and his normally warm brown eyes were casting fell looks and foul toward the couch from behind his hornrims. Kearny took the ire to be directed neither at Giselle, sitting there rifling a manila folder, nor at her cigarette smouldering on the chrome smoking stand at her elbow. So Groner apparently was upset by the messy stack of files on the coffee table in front of Giselle.

  Cigarette? Kearny thought belatedly. Damn! Giselle had started smoking again.

  But he said only, “Files,” and then added, “so?”

  Giselle answered for Groner, excitement sparkling in her eyes like diamonds.

  “Last Friday, Dan, the Bay Area’s twenty Cadillac dealers, from Ukiah down to Salinas, wrote conditional sales contracts on thirty-one new Cadillacs. The works—Allantes, Broughams, De Villes, Fleetwoods, Eldorados, Sevilles, even a special-order stretch limo from Jack Olwen on Van Ness.”

  In a hushed voice, Kearny began, “You mean to tell me—”