Cons, Scams, and Grifts Page 6

  She gave a rueful little laugh and shrugged prettily.

  “I’ll go get the keys.”

  She returned with not only the keys but two cups of tea. They sipped and chatted like old friends. She even stood outside on the sidewalk watching him put the Corvette on the towbar. She smiled ruefully.

  “I’m glad Garth isn’t home. He tends to get . . . physical.”

  “Then I’d better be gone before he gets here.”

  Irate husbands defending pregnant wives he didn’t need. But he went back to shut the overhead door for her. Even big with child she was aware of herself as a woman, and he liked her.

  As he topped the hill, the Corvette riding comfortably behind his truck on the towbar, a red Cherokee passed him going the other way. He caught a heavy-faced, stubble-bearded profile behind the wheel. Something in that red face made him keep his eye on the rearview. Garth tends to get physical.

  The Cherokee stopped, the man turned to stare intently at either Larry’s truck or the Corvette on the towbar. At thirty yards and moving, Larry couldn’t tell which. Then he was over the brow of the hill; too late for the husband, if that’s who he was.

  Bart Heslip had drawn an UpScale Motors salesman named Romeo Ferretti. Romeo was supposed to be living in an old Victorian clinging to steeply slanting Elizabeth Street, which, half a block above, banged its pretty nose on Grand View Avenue.

  There probably was a grand view down into Noe Valley from the second-floor bedroom windows; certainly the willowy young man—“that’s Chuckie with an ‘ie’ ”—seemed eager to take him up for a look. Bart declined.

  “Do you know when, Mr., ah, when Romeo will be back?”

  Chuckie made a pouting face. “Well, I hope never. He just moved right out with my absolutely divine 33 1/3 RPM set of Wilhelm Furtwaengler’s Götterdämmerung.”

  “No! To take anybody ’s recording of Götterdämmerung is Götterdämmerung cheek, but to take Furtwaengler’s!”

  Chuckie with an “ie” started to giggle.

  “Oh, make fun, I deserve it. But the Berlin Philharmonic is the best recording. He took our cat, too.” A sly sideways look from long-lashed eyes. “Pussy Galore.”

  “I saw the movie.”

  “Are you a . . .” Chuckie repeated the eye-thing. “Friend of Romeo’s?”

  “Never met him.” Bart half-pulled an envelope from his inside pocket, thrust it back down again. “Insurance. He reported an accident, some damage to his car . . .”

  “Oh no! Not that adorable old Ferrari convertible!”

  “The very one,” said Bart quickly. It figured. What would someone named Ferretti try to embezzle except a Ferrari?

  “But Romeo’s such a careful driver!”

  “Ah . . . do you know where I might find Romeo now?”

  That’s when Chuckie started to cry.

  As the AIDS threat became old hat because new and more powerful drugs were prolonging sufferers’ lives, attractive young gay males with no sense of history started a new party craze in the Castro District. They assembled at someone’s apartment with the understanding they had to leave three things at the door: their clothes, their condoms, and all talk of HIV.

  Romeo became addicted to such gatherings, and at one met “a simply devastating”—Romeo’s very own words—older man, a doctor recently retired from U.C. Med Center. Just like that, Romeo had gone to live on the medico’s big estate down in the very expensive Peninsula community of Woodside.

  “The Marcoses used to have a home there,” said Chuckie in a wistful voice as he dried his tears.

  “If the shoe fits . . .” began Bart, decided the joke was too obscure, unthinkingly added, “and now Romeo lives there.”

  More boo-hoos. Bart felt like shedding some salt himself when he checked out Chuckie’s gold address book that had a lascivious Proteus frolicking with some suspiciously male-looking nymphs on the cover. The doctor’s name and Woodside address were smeared over with black ink. All Chuckie could remember was Herbie-something on—could it really be?—Bare-Something Road. Or maybe, he giggled, it was on Bare-Everything Road.

  Bart tried U.C. Med Center with his cell phone, got told by Personnel that they never gave out the names or addresses of anyone who worked there or had ever worked there or might be contemplating working there in the future.

  He called it in to Giselle for some skip-tracing. Perhaps because she had an M.A. in history from S.F. State, she took the long view of the Castro District’s heedless gay sex parties. It was the doomsday scenario, she told Bart, and then launched into a psychological explanation that to him explained nothing.

  When she ran down, Bart said, “The last millennium ended with a whimper so I’m going to do the same to start this one?”

  “Exactly! Fin de siècle. In 1900 tuberculosis—what they called consumption then—was the romantic death. In Y2K it’s AIDS. Up two-point-three percent in San Francisco.”

  “Yeah, romantic as hell. But you’re still just as dead. Now, how do we go about finding Dr. Herbert-Something?”

  Giselle giggled. “Bare Something . . . maybe Bare Mountain?”

  “Naw, that’s Bald Mountain and it’s in San Anselmo.”

  “Come take me to lunch, Bart, I’m getting cabin fever. I bet I’ll have something for you by the time you get here.”

  Though DKA had long since entered the computer age, Giselle immediately came up with one of the old standbys she still secretly preferred: the crisscross directory that listed by address rather than name. She had it by the time Bart arrived.

  Herbert Greer, M.D., 72 Bear Gulch Road, Woodside.

  Now, to find out whether Romeo, his Romeo, really wert in Woodside. Or rather, if the Ferrari wert. After dark for that.

  Lulu picked up the ringing phone and musically told it, “Ted’s TV Repair, if it ain’t broke, we can fix it anyway.”

  The strong, rich, well-known voice of Willem Van De Post said in Romani, “Lulu! How is my favorite aunt?”

  Lulu chuckled. “Me ávri pçándáv čoreskro báçht!—I tie up the thief’s luck!” Then she added, “It must be very late in Rome. How is Stanka? How are the little ones?”

  “Not so little. Rita runs an office here a Roma and is planning marriage, Nani will graduate from university in June, and Giuliezza just started her first year at Bologna.”

  “University,” Lulu said disparagingly. “And marriage to a gadjo, I bet! You are ruining those children.”

  “Times change, Aunt Lulu. To be Rom in Europe right now is a hazardous thing.” He lowered his voice. “Is Staley there?”

  Staley was in the shop, selling three VCRs that had fallen off a truck right in front of a fellow Muchwaya the night before.

  “This is Ted.”

  “I have information best given in person. I will come to California. We must meet discreetly. It is all very delicate.”

  When he heard Willem’s voice, Staley switched instantly to Romani and leaned closer to the phone, even though the two gadje buying the VCRs couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

  “The zoo is always a safe place to meet.”

  Willem laughed. “You have a sly mind, uncle.”

  They set the day and time, then Staley hung up and met the inquisitive eyes of the men buying VCRs at a price that made it obvious they were hot.

  “What was that lingo you was using?” asked one of them.

  “Arabic. My people are originally from Lebanon. My nephew want to borrow money.” He chuckled merrily. “Is what relatives are for—to borrow money.”

  nine

  Heslip was buying Giselle lunch at a new fancy SOMA restaurant. Ballard was dropping off the Wiley Corvette at the Cal-Cit Bank storage lot below Telegraph Hill. And salty old repoman O’Bannon was across the Golden Gate getting himself lost while searching for an UpScale salesman named Timothy Bland. Lost in the Marin County community whose local fire truck he had once repossessed for a truck-sales company. Oh shame! Oh woe!

  Bland was supposed
to be living on Toyon off Currey. What could be simpler, even on Tam Valley’s steep, heavily wooded, impossibly twisty house-crammed streets?

  Except Currey Avenue didn’t intersect with Toyon after all. O’B decided, after a lot of map study, that Toyon came off Currey Vista. It didn’t. Then it had to come off Currey Lane. No, Currey Lane came off Currey Vista.

  So Toyon had to come off Curry Vista. It did. Except its street numbers didn’t come anywhere near the number Ken Warren got from Benny Lutheran of the broken nose. But on a narrow blacktop lane called Toyon Court that dipped discreetly downhill off Toyon, O’B found the number he had been given for Tim Bland.

  It was a two-story redwood duplex clinging to the downhill side of the street with steel fingernails. The concrete floor of the empty double carport beneath the duplex wore an encouraging puddle of oil. A classic would lose more oil than a new car.

  Nobody home at Bland’s lower apartment. Nobody home upstairs, either, except a grey and white tabby cat O’B could just hear meowing through the double-glassed front door.

  Work the neighborhood, ask questions of everyone in sight. Except there was no one in sight, and Tim Bland could be driving any one of the seven missing classics—or none of them.

  Pardon me, sir, I’m looking for a guy driving a car. Sure. The next house downslope was a typical California hillside cantilever: the carport on the roof and the bedrooms in the basement. An old woman with mad eyes held up her cell phone just inside the door and repeatedly pantomimed punching 911.

  O’B went away. She’s somebody’s mother, boys, you know. The next cookie in the jar was a heavyset guy who answered the door in mid-afternoon wearing only morning breath. He would never star in a porno flick, that was for sure.

  “Yeah, whadda fuckya wan’?”

  “I’m trying to get in touch with Mr. Bland—”

  “Earn a hones’ livin’ you come aroun’ knockin’ on my door.”

  “Could you tell me what kind of car Mr. Bland—”

  “Push a hack nights, pay my taxes, don’ beat th’ wife.” Wife? Loneliness could do strange things to a woman. “Summich sold me a lemon of a Honda once. Summich ain’t home.”

  Slam! Sound of sliding deadbolt. And nobody home at either of the other two houses. Sometimes it went that way.

  Go get some lunch, scattering corn behind him so he could find his way back again. Then just keep checking the address until Tim Bland showed up. Or, abysmal thought, didn’t show up.

  O’B climbed wide wooden stairs to Houlihan’s restaurant on Bridgeway, and sipped nonalcoholic O’Doul’s in the bar while waiting for his table. Until 1937, Sausalito was a sleepy little Portagee fishing village with only the ferries connecting it to San Francisco across the Bay. Then the Golden Gate Bridge went and ruined everything by making it accessible by auto.

  A voice at his elbow eerily echoed his thoughts.

  “Things descend to awful goddam hell.”

  Zack Zanopheros was a private eye who organized court cases for prominent defense attorneys. He was a grinning bearded compact man O’B’s own age, whose bright, zestful eyes crinkled up at the corners when he smiled. He wore a cashmere sports jacket, dark slacks, and shiny black loafers with tassels. He plunked his half-emptied bottle of Beck’s down on the polished mahogany.

  “Let me buy you a beer.”

  O’B returned his grin. “Sure. How’s tricks, Reverend?”

  “I let the computers do the work and I play a lot of tennis. How’s the repo business?”

  “We still get to go out and thug cars.”

  Zack nodded sadly. “You can’t do that by computer.” A half-hour later he was still toasting “the good old days,” when the loudspeaker intoned, “Zack, party of one.”

  “Let’s make it a party of two,” Zack said quickly.

  Only when the maître d’ led them to one of the front-window tables that faced the far gleaming tumble of San Francisco across the Bay did O’B realize that Zack had been buying him full-bore Beck’s instead of O’Doul’s.

  Aw, shucks! What was a fellow to do?

  Staley Zlachi strolled with other midday patrons through the turnstile at the San Francisco Zoo—still called by old-timers the Fleishacker Zoo—and paused at the top of the concrete steps. He watched glowing pink flamingos dip black scimitar beaks into the wading pool. The hot grease from the concession stands smelled good to him, as did the clean, rank animal smells. From the primate house came the booming hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo of a howler monkey. He moved on to the orangutan habitat, where the dominant male, hulking and dish-faced, was out on the ramp leading to their concrete house.

  “Magnificent, isn’t he?” asked an accented voice.

  The man was bulky but very fit, early 60s, dressed with European punctiliousness in a dark solid-color suit, somber tie, white shirt, and highly polished black shoes. He had a large square head and ashy hair slightly thinning over the forehead. His blue eyes were sad and piercing and merry all at once.

  “Orangs were mentioned in the Linnaeus classification texts of 1766, but the first individual was not brought to Europe until the nineteenth century. Now they are extremely rare in the wild, even though extremely intelligent.” He sighed. “Habitat destruction is making them extinct.”

  Only then did Staley turn so they could shake hands. As he did, a woman and three small children bundled up against the chill ocean breeze came up to the railing near them. The two men immediately switched to Romani.

  “How are you, Willem? What is this I hear about Rita?”

  Willem chuckled. “It is true. In the fall she will marry a gadjo, a fine Italian lad. I know, I know, you do not approve. But remember . . .” The bundled-up family moved on. The two men returned to English. “I am didákái—half-gadjo—myself. All gadjo by blood, but by upbringing—”

  “The story is legendary,” said Staley. “You were an orphan, six years old, on the open roads of Holland during the war. Mami Celie scooped you up and made you part of the vitsa.”

  “Grandma Celie.” Willem shook his head fondly. “How I loved that woman! She taught me how to live with one foot in the Rom world and the other in the gadjo world. She dealt in the G.I. black market at Porte Portese so I could go to school. But I forget my manners. How are you, Staley? And Lulu?”

  “We’re fine.” He paused sadly. “Well, we got a situation. One of our kumpania killed her husband in cold blood. We think there’s a lot of money involved.”

  Willem crossed himself while shaking his head. “Money is good but murder is bad, very bad, bad for all Romi everywhere.”

  “We gotta deal with it. To do that we gotta find her first. Trouble is, she’s living in the gadjo world and knows how to avoid us. She’s very smart.”

  “You need some gadje to help you look.”

  Staley’s eyes suddenly flashed. “Hey! Maybe you got something there! I know this guy . . .” He paused. “But hey! What about my manners? You’re here for our help with a recovery problem of your own.”

  They ate cheeseburgers and fries and drank coffee at one of the little round tables near the concession stands. The hot grease not only smelled good, but tasted good to Staley, too. Willem told him all about Robin Brantley in Hong Kong, and Victor Marr, and the Yakuza gangster named Kahawa.

  “What could Robin do? The Yakuza threatened his life.”

  “And now Marr has it here in California.”

  “At a fortified mountaintop facility near Big Sur.” He told Staley all he had learned about Xanadu. “Brantley says he is willing to help. But will he stand fast and not falter, not go to Marr through his fear of physical violence?”

  “We gotta bigger problem,” said Staley. “The way you describe this Xanadu, my people just don’t have the sort of training and expertise ya need to get into a place like that.”

  “Ah, Staley, there is always a way,” said Willem gently.

  And sure enough, there was. Another hour of talk between these two sly men, and they had it. A crazy way. A bril
liant way. A Gypsy way.

  Ballard meant to go right back to the office after dropping off the Corvette, he really did. But he’d been at the dojo again until 2:00 A.M. the previous night, practicing for his first-degree black belt, then had been up early to check out Big John Wiley’s neighborhood. The day had snowballed from there.

  So he decided to go home to his two-room studio apartment facing Golden Gate Park across Lincoln Way, make himself a pot of his signature coffee, grab a shower and shave and change of clothes. Then he could pull an all-nighter if he got any hot leads.

  As he started up the hall wrapped in a cloud of steam and a big shaggy towel, Midori Tagawa came in the street door behind him. For two years he had shared the shower and bath with this porcelain-doll Japanese exchange student who rented the tiny back apartment. During those same two years he intermittently waged a gently unsuccessful seduction campaign against her.

  “Hello, Larry, no see you, long time.” In her high little voice, soft as eiderdown, it was more like, “Herro, Rarry.”

  He bowed elaborately. “Ah so, long time. How’s school?”

  “Cost a lot. I got part-time job now.”

  He had lent Midori a semester’s tuition, hoping she’d maybe pay him back in exquisite golden flesh. But her bookkeeping was scrupulous and her body remained inviolate. A few months ago they came close. He caught her coming from the shower wrapped in just a towel, which slid down her body just as she disappeared into her apartment. Accident? Deliberate? He’d been involved elsewhere at the time, so he’d never tried to find out.

  “Menswear,” Midori added obscurely.

  “Menswear?”

  “Nordstrom’s, Stonestown. Sell menswear.”

  Ballard had on very little menswear. Just his towel. And there was a draft in the hallway of the old two-story Victorian. A shiver ran through him.

  “You cold,” Midori said quickly. “You come fo tea.”

  “I’m not dressed for it,” said Ballard.