32 Cadillacs (36 page)

*   *   *

Ballard was watching the blonde behind the reception desk, name-tagged
MARLA
, because she was a pale shadow of Giselle and because she was so obviously angry. Eyes glued to the entrance of the Garnet
Room, mouth a downturned arc so compressed her lips had disappeared. Then her face tightened in barely repressed fury—and
Giselle and the Gypsy came across the lobby to the elevator banks, arms around each other.

Arms around each other!
Giselle and the Gyppo bastard! And Ballard was stuck. He couldn’t get in the elevator with them, obviously; and if he caught
the next up-car he wouldn’t know their floor or room…

Giselle with that slimy Gypsy bastard who’d screw anything hot and hollow… He realized he was sitting with his teeth gritted
and his hands white-knuckled on the chair arms. Jesus, Larry, get a grip. Giselle’d never cared what he did with who, just
as he’d never cared what she did with who, either. Except as a friend. Sure, that was it. Friendship. He hated to see his
friend sleeping with…

Bullshit. Jealously. White-hot, searing jealousy. Unexpected, totally out of left field. But it
hurt. Burned.
Like drinking goddam Drãno straight out of the can.

But still Larry Ballard sat there.

Why? To find out how tough he was? Or to some purpose…

Then the blond woman named Marla was relieved at the desk, and Ballard knew what that purpose was. In the coffee shop she
looked up, startled, when he sat down across from her. He flashed a laminated yellow State of California registration card
with his color photo in the lower right-hand corner.

“I’m a private detective working on a case involving that blonde who got on the elevator with Mr. Grimaldi,” he said in gruff
professional tones, “I’m hoping you can help me…”

Could she. An hour and four cups of coffee later, he knew all about Angelo Grimaldi from New York, and terrorist calls, and—although
Marla didn’t—a whole lot about a Gyppo named Rudolph. He even had figured out the way the Gyppo, as Grimaldi, had used her
in running—again, unknown to Marla—a damned clever scam on the hotel management.

Later for that. For now…

He went down to the garage. In all this the ’58 ragtop was significant, perhaps vital, but Giselle would be bringing it back;
and besides, it wasn’t on his
REPO ON SIGHT
list. Rudolph’s long black limousine was. And Larry Ballard, no matter how much Drãno he might have drunk, was a professional.

*   *   *

Third time lucky: Marino and Giselle made it absolutely in synch, then fell apart gasping. The champagne was still cold, so
they lay companionably on the king-size bed, sipping bubbly and smoking cigarettes while their hearts slowed.

Their loving had been fierce, not tender; during her final involuntary rhythmic contractions, Giselle had felt Rudolph’s ultimate
frenzied thrusts not only in her vagina but in her heart, perhaps even in her soul. For the first time in her life, she had
wanted to be a succubus, to contract her whole body down around a man and greedily suck up all the juice he had in him, everything,
everything…

She looked over at him in the warm glow of city lights far below their aerie, and felt a great joy and sadness together, as
if something in her wept at a loss of ecstasy not yet known, and she was roused to give this man something, something fabulous…

Well, what about a Kingdom?

“The pink Cadillac,” she said to Rudolph. “It is yours.”

But with that highly feminine perception that made him so irresistible to women, he understood her gift and returned it.

“
Cara mia,
” Rudolph said, “if you do that, Larry will know you have taken it and have given it to me. I can’t let you—”

“I want him to know,” said Giselle grimly.

L
arry knew bright and early Monday morning.

He had gone to DKA to drive the limo to the bank’s storage lot, but instead found himself staring at the empty space where
the pink Cadillac had been—just as Giselle came striding in. Through the open garage door Ballard could see the cab that had
brought her. She was wearing the same clothes as Saturday.

She stopped dead at sight of the shiny black limo, a flush mantling her cheeks; Larry must have followed her to the St. Mark
on Saturday, so he must know she had just left Rudolph snoring on his king-size bed in oyster-depleted sleep.

“Bastard!”
she hissed in her embarrassment.

As he thought, She spent the
whole weekend
banging that Gyppo fuck, and
then
she gave him Yana’s pink Cadillac besides!

“Slut!”
he snapped in his hurt and confusion.

It was war.

*   *   *

Not for O’Bannon. He had arrived in Hawaii midday Saturday following the trail of a Rudolph clan member named Ral Wanko who
had shipped a long sleek white De Ville to Honolulu, his home base, the day after the big Cadillac grab. That was all O’B
had, so Kearny had lined up a P.I. contact for him on Oahu.

“Little Jap guy named Shinji Ueda. I met him on Maui during the P.I. convention at the Kaanapali Beach Resort last year,”
he explained. “Size of your thumb, but smart—he’ll probably have Wanko picking you up at the airport in the De Ville.”

Not quite. But Mr. Ueda was there himself, holding up a big neatly lettered
O’BANNON
sign on a wooden stick. Ueda was short indeed, about five-two, and a crow among peacocks. Instead of the usual
aloha
shirt and shorts and
zori
, he wore a three-piece dark suit, a dark tie, and highly polished black oxfords.

He bowed. “O’Bannon-san. Shinji Ueda.”

O’B returned it. “Make that O’B-san, Ueda-san.”

Ueda had a round head and crinkly cheeks and narrow bright inquisitive eyes. Driving the Ala Moana Highway from the airport
to Waikiki, he cast O’B a long worried sideways look.

“I have made certain inquiries.”

O’B had his window down so warm moist air delightfully heavy with flowers could ruffle his russet hair. “And?”

“Is very dangerous. Ral Wanko is a very bad man indeed, with very bad friends. They steal very nice cars to order. Repaint,
or take apart to use parts for other cars—”

“Chop shop,” said O’B.

A short bow behind the wheel. “Even so.” A pause. “They move auto-altering establishment many times a year. Hard to find.”
Ueda drove with his hands at ten and two in the proper manner. He bowed again, slightly. “But I go find for you.”

O’B took him at his word. He dug his toes into dazzling white sand in front of his high-rise hotel, swam in the ocean, drank
at the beachside bar, saw the Banyan Tree, and at sunset wandered along the Ala Wai Promenade watching the sailboats ghost
by. After dark he went downtown, barely avoided a fight in a poolhall, rejected the advances of a truly stunning
hapa-haole
hooker, and went to bed alone feeling sober and virtuous and that he hadn’t had so much fun since his Army days.

That was Saturday.

*   *   *

On Sunday, Mr. Ueda took him up to the incredible verdant freefall of the Pali, where many brave warriors had gone to their
death, then out to the rich exclusive streets off Kahala Avenue. Not a word of business. Mr. Ueda had his golf clubs in the
backseat and was one of the peacocks today, wearing a short-sleeved flowered shirt that showed a chest and arms suggesting
he spent a lot of hours in the
dojo
breaking bricks with his bare hands.

They came around a sweep of drive to a stunning view out to the Pacific past the shoulder of decayed volcano known as Diamond
Head. Blue-edged fluffy clouds dreamed on the distant horizon. Ueda gestured at a long sleek red Jaguar XJ6 parked at the
curb.

“That one,” he said. “Tonight.”

O’B craned around at it. “That one what tonight?”

“They steal. You follow to chop shop. De Ville be there.”

They had rounded the Diamond Head crater, were entering Kapiolani Park. In the moist heavy air, the lush vegetation rang with
the squawks and shrieks of the zoo’s exotic harsh-voiced tropical birds.

“How do you know all this stuff about ’em?” asked O’B.

Ueda laughed, hee-hee-hee, “Call in lotta favors. Sam Spade, huh?” He slapped O’B’s knee in almost shocking intimacy. “I give
you car to drive, you stake out Jaguar, you catch ’em, be big hero with Five-O.” Another hee-hee-hee, a punch on the arm.
“Book ’em, Dano!”

The car stopped under the frangipani bushes flanking the hotel parking lot. Heat bounced off the sun-softened blacktop. The
hotel balconies were a white ladder climbing a blue heaven. They could have been in Dallas. O’B cleared his throat.

“Ah, Shinji, maybe you’d like to, ah, come along tonight, share in the glory with Five-O.” He gestured. “I bet you know judo,
karate, kung fu, aikido, all that martial-arts stuff…”

Alarm passed across Mr. Ueda’s face. “Oh no no no no. No know martial arts. Know golf.” His seamed face split into a huge
grin. “Low eighties.”

That was Sunday.

*   *   *

After midnight, thus technically Monday, O’B was parked under the shadows of some anonymous estate’s tall hibiscus border
when he heard the almost silent rush of a bicycle-built-for-two manned by two massive figures in
aloha
shirts. Far down the wide curving expensive street, the one riding behind slid off to dart over to the Jag XJ6. His partner
kept pedaling.

Pretty slick. No wonder no one ever heard the thieves.

Motor. Lights. Red wink of taillights, one marred by the “X” of black electrician’s tape O’B had put over it earlier. This
helped him track the Jag through still-heavy Sunday night freeway traffic to the Pali Highway Interchange, over to Ward Avenue,
and into the industrial district.

There O’B had to drop back so far that he lost it, but going by an abandoned-looking warehouse he saw double doors sending
out a widening wedge of light. When the Jaguar entered and the doors closed again, O’B’s vague silhouette slid through the
final sliver of light behind it. Inside, he crouched beside a BMW, panting with excitement and perhaps even terror.

The two huge men both looked Hawaiian. But as one got out of the Jag, the other said, “Any trouble, Ral?”

So the hulking driver was the Gypsy, Ral Wanko. Who shook his head and said, “Like silk,” then stopped to stare at the tape
on the taillight. “Hey, bruddah, whadda hell’s this?”

“Who cares? We got da kine work to do.”

Their upper halves disappeared beneath the Jag’s hood. Beyond the midnight mechanics was the De Ville O’B was after, and beyond
that, through another set of wide-open double doors, an enclosed parking area and an alley. By merely going around the block,
O’B could have snuck up on the De Ville and grabbed it.

But now he was trapped. Closed automatic doors behind him, the two midnight mechanics between him and the De Ville and the
safety of the open doors beyond it.
Huge
midnight mechanics. He couldn’t go back, through, or around.

But could he go
over?

The peaked tin roof was held up by two-by-six beams bolted together in rectangular patterns, supported by angled crisscross
two-by-fours bolted to other beams above. If he could get up there, could he hump his way along one of those horizontal beams
to the far wall where a rough ladder of two-by-fours waited?

O’B crept back to the similar ladder fastened to the wall behind him. Ten agonizing minutes, one rung at a time, a fly on
the wall in plain sight, freezing each time one of the car choppers emerged from beneath the hood.

Just as he straddled a beam far above them, Ral Wanko laid down his wrench and wiped his hands on a greasy red rag.

“Gotta go take a dump.”

One gone. Do it now. Grip the beam ahead with both hands. Lean forward, weight on arms, slide butt forward eight or ten inches.
Again. Again again again. And yet again. He was almost directly over the Jaguar now…

“Hey, bruddah, you one dead man.”

Whirling, O’B lost his balance, saved himself only by grabbing one of the angled two-by-four support struts. Wanko was directly
behind him on the beam, grinning ferociously, a short-handled sledge for beating out fenders upraised in a hand that made
it look like a doctor’s reflex hammer.

O’B should have remembered Wanko was a Gypsy, one of the world’s ultimate survivors, which meant one of the world’s ultimate
paranoiacs. That “X” of tape had sent him into ambush to see if some unwary quarry would break cover. Unwary O’B had.

“Listen,” O’B said in a voice that wobbled with earnestness and
bonhomie
, “I’m not the cops and I’m not here to—”

Wanko swung the sledge. O’B ducked, it splintered his two-by-four support, he went off the beam sideways, arms windmilling
wildly to no avail, struck the roof of the Jaguar feet-first. They went from under him, he shot off the slick curved surface
to land on the floor just as the massive Hawaiian charged him.

O’B jinked, his attacker smashed headfirst into the side of the Jag. Wanko couldn’t get off the beam quickly without rupture,
so O’B walked across the goal line for the score. He gave them a digit salute while burning rubber out of the garage.

By noon Monday the De Ville was in bonded storage waiting shipment back to the mainland, Five-O had a copy of the report,
and Mr. Ueda was driving a
lei
-laden O’B to Honolulu International for the long hop to Florida, where Yana’s info had sort of pinpointed another Gyppo Cadillac.

O’B hadn’t had this much fun even
in
the Army.

*   *   *

That same morning in Seattle, Bart Heslip, seeking some fun of his own, parked his rental car half a mile from
BIG JOHN’S BIG BUNGALOWS
. He left the keys on top of the left rear tire and the completed paperwork in the glove box; he would call Avis with directions
where to pick it up if he was successful.

The paved streets of Big John’s subdivision were black and smooth and gleaming in the muted light that managed to get through
an angry cloud cover. Bart hunkered down behind the signboard and thought, Hot damn, it looks like rain any minute.