32 Cadillacs (37 page)

When the rain began, that was when the fun would begin.

*   *   *

A two-year-old Chrysler Imperial pulled up in front of the sales office. Big John and Little Johnny got out. Big John was
carrying a satchel. Little Johnny looked at the gleaming streets of the subdivision and got inordinately excited.

“Pa, those streets look fantastic! People come out here, drive around, they’ll just start laying their money down!”

“Yeah, but where’s that nigger gonna take Adams down? ”

Little Johnny looked a little scared. “Pa, you sure you wanta… uh… This Joe Adams looks pretty… tough…”

“Ain’t us going to do anything, son,” said Big John. “It’s just the man from the State of Washington gonna do his duty.”

Just then Josef Adamo’s Seville turned in from the highway. The fat Gypsy grunted his way out from behind the wheel and came
around the back of the car, leaving his keys in the ignition. With a look of great self-satisfaction he waved his arm at the
ribbons of tar laid over the flattened landscape.

“What I tell you? You ever see a better job than that?”

“It’s terrific!” enthused Little Johnny.

Big John had $30,000 in the satchel; it was a hell of a job at the price, but it would be a hell of a lot better job if the
price was zero, nothing at all. Stall ’til the nigger got there.

“It looks okay, but that’s what we’re paying you for.”

“Speaking of getting paid…”

“Yeah, well, you were promising written guarantees…”

“I got ’em right here in the car.”

So Big John was able to stall him twenty minutes, reading things he didn’t give a damn about anyway, all he needed was the
roads laid—they were—and the nigger there—he wasn’t—but then just a few little drops of rain started falling and Joe Adams
got impatient and uptight and almost abusive.

“What the fuck you waiting for, Charleston? I laid your goddam streets, now gimme my money!”

Big John reluctantly handed over the satchel, buying more time because Joe Adams had to count his money. But then the rain
started to come down in earnest—and
still
no nigger—and Adams was abruptly and surprisingly satisfied. He shook hands, tossed the satchel into the Seville, and started
to get in himself only to be arrested by a sharp voice at his back.

“Are you Joseph Adams?”

Adamo backed out awkwardly and looked around. A compact very wide-shouldered black man had materialized out of the rain.

“Who the hell wants to know?”

“Would you step away from the car, please?”

Adamo got a confused look. “You a cop? This a roust?”

The black man totally ignored the rain that was really pelting down now, sparkling in his tightly curled black hair, running
down his face in rivulets.

“He’s from the state licensing bureau!” burst out Little Johnny in gleeful triumph. “He’s going to get you!”

“Please. Step away from… thank you.”

The black man moved forward as Adamo shuffled awkwardly aside.

Big John felt wonderful under his rain slicker and hood. It was going to work out; even his kid showed promise. “Sir,” he
said respectfully to the black man, “I had no idea he was going to illegally blacktop my roads without the proper permits…”

He stopped because the most extraordinary thing happened. The black man from the state stepped right by Joe Adams and into
the Seville and slammed the door. The automatic door locks clicked shut. The car moved away around the traffic circle back
toward the main highway. Everyone woke up at once.

Adamo started running after the still-slow-moving vehicle.

“
MY CAR
!” he bellowed. “
MY CAR
!”

Big John, yellow rain slicker flapping, suddenly ran too.

“
MY MONEY
!” he shouted. “
MY MONEY
!”

Little Johnny was staring at the beautiful blacktop roads.

“
OUR STREETS
!” he yelled. “
PA
!
OUR STREETS
!”

Big John checked at his son’s cry. Looked.

His beautiful shiny streets were dissolving under the pounding rain into mud, their blacktopping running down the ditches
beside them. Just as Bart Heslip had known they would, because Josef Adamo had bought up just about all the recycled crankcase
oil and cheap paint thinner in Seattle. A mix of paint thinner and crankcase oil applied to a road surface looks exactly like
high-class road paving—until it rains.

Then the glistening new surface just melts and vanishes.

Screaming his fury, Big John Charleston flung himself on fat Josef Adamo.

Bart Heslip’s last view of
BIG JOHN’S BIG BUNGALOWS
was through sheets of torrential rain as two hefty tar babies rolled over and over in the mud, flailing ineffectually away
at each other. Even as the downpour obliterated the sight, the third figure, jumping up and down and waving its arms, lost
its footing and rolled down the muddy slope into the fray.

It wasn’t until he hit the Idaho line on his way to Chicago that Bart stopped to check out the bag that Josef Adamo had tossed
into the Seville.

Thirty thousand dollars—in a pig’s valise! Bart Heslip cracked up. As Jane Goldson would say in her Limey accent, Dan Kearny
really
was going to do a bird over the personal property in this baby!

R
udolph’s actually scant data to Giselle was now going out, as Yana’s also scant data to Ballard already had, so people were
on the road for the second wave of repos before the first wave had even hit the beach. Kearny still was holding off on referrals
to affiliates around the country, and even to DKA branch offices: he didn’t want to make assignments until he had specific
cars, names, and addresses to give them.

Both O’B and Bart Heslip had called in.

The Spanish Lottery Gyps’ car was in the barn and Morales was on a plane to Cabo San Lucas, where an unnamed Gyp was maybe
using his Cadillac in a lost-goldmine scam on some yachtsmen. In Baja, a Spanish-speaker was a must; hence Morales.

Ken Warren was driving Sarah Walinski’s Dodge Charger into the sunrise feeling well-content even though still not involved
in the Great Gypsy Hunt. Their client on the Charger was a Jersey City used-car dealer who thought DKA’s three bids on the
car were too low. Ignoring the fact that drunks’ cars get beat-up very rapidly, he thought DKA was jerking his chain. He wanted
the Dodge ferried back to Jersey for resale off his own lot.

Which ticked Dan Kearny off enough to tell Ken to get cash or certified check for all costs before handing over the Charger.
Ken was glad to. Don’t get him started on Jersey City…

The real point was that Dan Kearny had promised to give him any east coast Gypsy assignments that might develop while he was
on the road.

*   *   *

Giselle Marc needed a shower and clean underwear. She couldn’t call Rudolph, the hotel switchboard would be listening in,
but she needed to tell him that Ballard—d
damn
him—had grabbed the limo she’d promised Rudolph he could keep until his hotel scam was over. So she’d told Jane Goldson to
put through any call from Mr. Grimaldi immediately—but no others. She was so upset she didn’t realize Ballard overheard the
instructions.

The phone rang. Giselle grabbed it up.

“
Cara mia
. I missed you when I awoke this morning.”

“Me too.” She paused. “Rudolph, I… have to tell you…”

*   *   *

Everything fair in love and war, right?

And this was war.

So when he saw Giselle’s extension light up, Ballard punched in and shamelessly eased his receiver off the hooks.

To hear Giselle’s voice, “Rudolph, I… have to tell you that… um… Larry, uh, repossessed your black limo over the weekend.
Took it right out of the St. Mark garage.”

Rudolph’s hearty chuckle came over the wire, tightening Ballards hand around the receiver as if around Rudolph’s neck.

“
Cara mia
mine, that is all right—let your Larry have his dog’s leavings, his Yana will dump him when she learns I have the pink Cadillac!
He is meaningless to me.”

“I can hardly wait until tonight,” said Giselle in a dreamy little-girl voice that made Ballard want to fwow up.

“Nor I, my love,” said Rudolph. “I will count the hours until I hold you in my arms again.”

He made kissing noises into the phone, and hung up. So did Ballard—a tiny bit carelessly because he was fighting his gag reflex.
Giselle caught the sound of the receiver going down.

Ballard! Listening in on her call!

She leaped to her feet, on her way upstairs to rip the sneaky bastard’s ears off, when she saw
his
extension light up. When it stayed lit, she sat down again and punched into it and carefully and silently lifted the receiver.
Love and war…

Larry was speaking when she eased the receiver to her ear.

“… find out about that pink Caddy and about tonight.”

“Of course tonight!” exclaimed a voice that could only be Yana’s. “But the pink Cadillac—I need it before then, the danger
has passed, it is perfect to… conclude my business with Teddy White tonight. Let us meet at that little café in North Beach…”
Ballard was silent long enough for alarm to enter her voice and for Giselle to think, Maybe Ms. Slut’s clairvoyant after all.
“The Eldorado
is
safe, is it not? It is vital—”

“Ah, sure, sure, it’s fine. But why’s it so important?”

“This afternoon for that, my love. And then tonight…”

She gave a throaty laugh and hung up.

Giselle, gloating, slipped her receiver back on the hooks when she was certain she had a dead line. Ballard and his Gypsy
princess were about at the end of the trail. When he couldn’t deliver the pink Cadillac to her this afternoon…

But to make sure, tonight, before going to Rudolph’s bed, she would stake out Teddy, and he would lead her to Yana, and somehow
she would mess up Yana’s scam and Yana along with it.

*   *   *

Ballard hadn’t told Yana he’d lost the pink Cadillac because he didn’t have to: he’d gotten something that morning over the
phone from Marla at the St. Mark that he expected would let him teach Rudie-baby how to play hardball.

*   *   *

Angelo Grimaldi shot his cuffs so his antique gold links could be seen glittering at his wrists, then pushed open the door
to Gunnarson’s office. He finally was playing match-point in the ultimate game of hardball he had come to San Francisco to
play.

Delia, Gunnarson’s lanky but full-bosomed secretary, looked up at him with smouldering eyes, very different from the eyes
with which she had regarded his first demand to see her boss. Obviously, Gunnarson had been pillow-talking to her about Angelo
Grimaldi, and her look said she might find sexual congress with a lean dangerous Mafia attorney much more exciting than with
a dull overweight hotel manager. Alas. Never to be.

“They’re waiting for you inside, Mr. Grimaldi.”

He nodded, caressed her with his eyes, and went through the inner door she buzzed open. Gunnarson, Shayne, and desiccated
little Smathers were drawn up in a row across the room as if to repel a cavalry charge.

Grimaldi grinned at them. This was the moment every conman waited for, the moment of truth. Whichever way it went, the game
had been worth it. He threw Shayne’s words back in his face.

“Your meeting, your agenda, gentlemen. But briefly. I have a plane to catch.”

Smathers must have gotten the short straw. He stepped forward almost formally and cleared his throat.

“Mr. Grimaldi, we have carefully considered your… offer to, um, er—”

“Blow the fuckers away,” supplied tough Angie Grimaldi in his Bronx voice, “before they blow up your fancy fucking hotel.
But your forty-eight hours have passed, so I’m on my way to—”

“Goddam you, we’re paying!” burst out Shayne in a hoarse voice. “All right? We’re paying!” He stepped closer, his red face
ugly. “But we know who you are and where you are, and if you’re fucking us over and the Saladin attack our hotel—”

“When I leave this room, gentlemen,” he said with a totally straight face, although the blood was singing in his veins and
his stomach was quaking with suppressed laughter, “to all intents and purposes the Saladin will have ceased to exist. You
have my personal guarantee that they will never bother you again.”

Gunnarson put a satchel on the desktop.

“Seventy-five thousand dollars. It’s also gotta guarantee that whatever happens, the hotel’s name won’t be connected—”

“Connected with what? With who? I will never have been here. We will never have had this talk. There will never have been
a blonde. It’s what the politicians call deniability.”

Gunnarson opened the satchel, his associates pressed forward to bid a last fond farewell to the banded bundles of greenbacks
stacked inside. Not Grimaldi. He merely leaned across the desk to push the intercom button.

“Delia, please come in here. Leave your steno pad.”

As he released the switch and snapped the satchel shut, Shayne began, surprised, “But don’t you want to count…”

Delia entered, looking puzzled because it had been Grimaldi’s voice on her intercom. He handed her the satchel.

“Tell Marla at the front desk to have this sent down to the garage and stowed in the trunk of my Cadillac with the rest of
my luggage. And have the car brought around to the front entrance.”

Delia looked at Gunnarson, who nodded slightly.

“Ye… yes, sir, Mr. Grimaldi.”

Grimaldi extended a $20 bill also. “For the flunkie who takes down the luggage and brings up the car.”

Hesitantly, she took satchel and bill and departed. Grimaldi spoke to the three hotel officials as if there had been no interruption.

“You know who and where I am—but I also know who and where
you
are. So I don’t have to count the money, do I?” There was a chorus of assent to his negative. He nodded in a courtly way.
“Then, the best goodbyes are the shortest, gentlemen.”