32 Cadillacs (38 page)

And was gone, drawing the door shut behind him as if on a wake, fighting laughter out past Delia’s unattended desk. But she
was entering as he left, brushing up hard against him, and he grabbed her wrist, spun her around, pushed her against the door
frame to grind her pelvis against his own as he kissed her with hard contempt on the mouth.

He finally released her. “A pity,
cara
,” he said. Then he went out the door quickly and down the hall to the front desk.

He had been rough with her because she was not Giselle—and because he would never see Giselle again. Inescapable, but… for
just this once, if he could have
not
been a Gypsy…

But he was. Not just a Gypsy, but soon to be
King
of the Gypsies! Going out the heavy ornate doors to the traffic circle in front of the hotel, he blew a kiss to Marla. She
gave no acknowledgment, which he found interesting and at the same time unsettling. But what matter now? It was finished.
He had won!

At the curb, he gestured to the doorman.

“The pink Cadillac, my good man.”

It was his first sight of it, now all his own. Gleaming and exciting in the bright San Francisco sunshine, the top down so
its thoroughbred lines showed to best advantage. Worth, literally, a King’s Ransom, and looking it.

The tall well-built car-parker, his face shadowed by his uniform hat, brought the Caddy almost ceremoniously up to the entrance.
Rudolph came around it to the driver’s side.

But the car-parker didn’t get out. Instead he tipped his hat to the back of his head to look up at Rudolph. Blond hair. Hawk
features. Hawk eyes that drilled into Rudolph’s. Whose mouth fell open in sudden recognition and surprise as Ballard waved
the $20 bill languidly under his outraged nose.

“Thanks for the tip, Rudie-baby. See you around.”

And tromped on it. The Caddy shot away from the hotel and zipped across Powell Street under the nose of a startled cable car,
to disappear down the California hill. Marino ran a few paces after it, fists clenched, face congested, eyes ablaze. Stung!
Totally! By a
gadjo
, yet. With the help of another
gadjo
, the casually dismissed check-in clerk, Marla.

Then Rudolph stopped. Took a couple of deep breaths. Chuckled. Ballard was besotten, wasn’t he? So he’d deliver the car to
Yana, wouldn’t he? Yana would drive it to Stupidville.

Where Rudolph Marino would take it away from her.

His $75,000, so superbly scammed out of the St. Mark Hotel executives? Gone also. But if Rudolph knew his Yana, eventually
most of that money would find its way into her hot little Gypsy hands. And Rudolph was a master at taking things away from
Yana.

Meanwhile, no other
rom
need know he’d lost it, right? So his scam would stand among the best in the great legends of the Gypsy oral tradition—and
help him get his Kingship.

With a rueful grin, Rudolph turned back to the uniformed doorman to whistle him up a cab for the airport.

*   *   *

Larry Ballard figured Rudolph’s $20 tip was the easiest money he’d ever made. Of course he’d had to give one of the St. Mark’s
car-parkers $50 for a blind eye and the use of his uniform—but that was DKA’s money, not his.

After he removed and itemized the personal property in the car, he would return it to Yana. Who need never know he had temporarily
lost sight of it, right?

So she would come to him willingly in the night.

This
night.

Y
ana’s thoughts of the coming night,
au contraire
, were hard-edged. In a couple of hours, she would meet Larry to get back the pink Cadillac; she had given it to him for safekeeping
after getting word that Rudolph had pinpointed its hiding place. Now its safety didn’t matter: tonight, after her ultimate
coupling with Teddy’s bank account, it would be on the road.

Because she had him hooked so hard, Teddy himself had come clamoring for his own destruction the day before yesterday. His
phone call caught her still in bed not long after six o’clock on Saturday morning: the bed Ballard had left not an hour earlier,
sneaking down the stairs shoes-in-hand so Ramon would not know of their frenzied lovemaking.

“Madame… Madame Miseria? This is—”

“Theodore Winston White the Third.”

“You knew it was me?”

“I always know it is you.” Her voice hummed like a stroked harp. She knew her man as she knew the contours of her beloved
crystal ball. In the warm afterglow of sexual satiation, she was perfectly pitched to exploit him. “I receive certain emanations
from you when I pick up the receiver.”

Actually, Teddy’s voice was unmistakable, thin and reedy and hesitant and unsure of itself, much like Teddy. She took a chance—
not much of a one at 6:00
A.M
., not with Teddy.

“You are calling me from your bedroom, you are barely able to get up, the snake has crawled deeper into your body.”

“Yes!” The eagerness of the hypochondriac expatiating his illness quickened his voice. “It… it’s like a red-hot cable down
the back of my leg. I want… I need…”

“It is as I feared,” she said. “When the demon entered my body from the egg, my terrible battle to expel him told me that
the evil is very strong indeed.”

She was sitting up in bed now, smelling rich strong black coffee, Gypsy coffee boiled in a big old enameled pot with the grounds
and an eggshell. Perhaps Ramon himself was a mind reader; or perhaps he had heard her on the phone, taking care of business
on a 6:00
A.M.
Saturday. It might even be his way of making amends for his intransigence about her love life.

Even so, she was glad he hadn’t seen Larry sneaking down the stairs. Meanwhile, Teddy was still whining on the phone.

“You know what you must do,” she said in ringing, apocalyptic tones. “And quickly. Midnight Monday.”

“Midnight? Monday?” Alarm squirmed in his voice.

“It is your stepfather you have offended,” she reminded him inexorably. “It is the only way.”

“Oh God!” moaned Teddy softly.

This was it, the culmination, the final sting: after that, he would never see her again. She said, “Tam Junction. Midnight
Monday. The fruit stand where Tennessee Valley Road leaves the Shoreline Highway. Alone.”

His voice shivered. “How… how much do I have to—”

“Seventy-five,” she had said abruptly, and had hung up.

Monday was the earliest he could assemble the cash money she was asking for, so for the rest of the weekend, to avoid possible
backsliding, she had not answered her phone.

*   *   *

Now it was Monday and tonight Teddy would bring her $75,000—if he came at all. Naming a particular sum was a calculated risk,
because if that sum stripped his estate, lawyers and bankers would start asking questions. Seventy-five thousand would be
by far and away the biggest score Yana had ever made.

And afterward, that’s where she would be—far and away. Out of the state, out of the jurisdiction, Her kind of fraud was not
federal, so if California ever came after her for it they’d have to identify her first, find her second, and extradite her
third. Which, given that she was a beautiful
Gypsy boojo
woman in a time of criminal rights, would be very difficult indeed.

She would drive the pink Cadillac Larry would bring her this afternoon, and Ramon would drive their sturdy three-year-old
Jeep Cherokee that served the same function the Gypsy caravan wagon served their
rom
forebears a century earlier. They would rendezvous in Sacramento at dawn, to travel together over the Sierra and east across
the Great Plains to Stupidville.

They systematically stripped the
ofica
of all its Gypsy paraphernalia, packing it carefully to be set up at some new location elsewhere after the funeral of the
dying King. Although it looked exotic and richly furnished by the dim
boojo
lighting, it was all an illusion created by the heavy drapes, a couple of antique chairs, the specially constructed crystal-ball
table, the highly portable ornaments and props. Holy pictures, tinkly lamps, books of divination and necromancy, charts, figurines…

As a matter of honor they were leaving with three months’ unpaid rent: it was the Gypsy way.

“Be careful of the crystal,” Yana said as Ramon added the priceless globe to one of the huge sacks of his
gonya
, a heavy leather strap with a bag at each end.

“Do you think I am a fool like your
gadjo
lover?”

“He is no concern of yours,” she snapped.

When the bags were filled to about equal weight, he put the strap across his shoulders and came erect. His body was tensed
and lumped with the strain of supporting the weight of the loaded
gonya
. He met her eyes steadily.

“I know he slept with you Friday night.”

She drew herself up to her full height, eyes flashing.

“And if he did?”

“Yana… he is
gadjo
, and you… you—”

“Will be Queen of the Gypsies because of him, don’t forget that,” she snapped. “Besides, it is ended now.”

No auto traffic was allowed on Romolo Place; but as the street had to be available to fire trucks, three posts sunk in concrete
at the foot of the street could be removed in an emergency. Somehow they had been set aside for yellow warning flashers; the
Cherokee was parked right in front of the
ofica
.

As Ramon grunted his way down the stairs under his laden
gonya
, Yana thought, Yes, Larry is a
gadjo
, but he is also the only man who has ever clutched my heart in his two hands.

No more. Their meeting this afternoon, then she would never see him again. She knuckled her eyes in a little-girl gesture,
then snapped at Ramon when he appeared, panting, at the head of the stairs.

“We must hurry, there are still the arrangements to be made over in Marin.”

*   *   *

Over in Marin, Teddy White was busy about
his
arrangements, all of which were financial, all of which were cash transactions. Closing out this brokerage account, cashing
in these stocks and bonds, pillaging that bank balance, realizing the value on those government bonds, everywhere facing the
same sort of financial advisor questions and comments.

“In this financial climate is this is a prudent move?”

“In another month, the capital gains allowances, even though reduced, would give you a tax advantage that…”

“On Friday I wanted you to roll these over. Now…”

“I must strongly advise against taking all this cash…”

“If I knew what this is for, I could better…”

To each he gave the response Yana suggested: a once-in-a-life-time investment opportunity. She had also told him to take less
than $10,000 in twenties, fifties, and a few hundreds from each of eight different accounts. Teddy was secretly appalled at
the amount she named, secretly pleased it was not more, secretly guilty at being pleased it was only some fifteen percent
of his net worth.

How could he be so petty, so mercenary? Hadn’t Yana already endangered her life just so he could survive to this moment? Couldn’t
she very well be endangering it again tonight?

*   *   *

Giselle, staked out on the street below his house with binoculars, picked Teddy up when he came home with the money. At least,
when he took from the backseat a dark green plastic garbage bag bulging with its contents, she assumed it was money.

So
much
money?

She waited, first thinking of revenge on Yana, then drifting into thoughts of later silken hours in Rudolph’s bed…

*   *   *

Over coffee Yana had been withdrawn, edgy, even a little sad, but she probably was preparing for the Teddy White scam that
night. So Larry Ballard was also thinking of the night to come, when she would be finished with Theodore Winston White III
and waiting in her bed for him…

Where would it end? What was going to happen? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to think beyond this coming night
with her. He was well and truly hooked.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, on Florida’s Gold Coast, O’B was looking for Kalia Uwanowich, supposedly running a large-scale roofing scam in
one of the bulging suburban areas near Fort Lauderdale, Broward County’s financial and commercial hub shoehorned in between
Miami to the south and Palm Beach to the north.

But which suburban area? O’B was doing what O’B did best—driving around, looking, talking, stopping in bars and lounges, having
a drink with the good old boys. Soaking up information— and booze—like a sponge.

*   *   *

In Baja, in Cabo, Trin Morales already had spent several hours nosing around the fancy tourist hotels perched high up on the
rocks overlooking the Pacific, or strung out along the white sandy beaches on the Sea of Cortéz side. Then he’d parked the
ancient rattling yellow VW Bug he’d rented at the airport on Cabo’s main street, and had just walked and talked. Up and down
narrow potholed dirt streets, chatting with people in shanties of beaten-flat tin nailed to scraps of wood.

The Giggling Marlin, he’d learned, was where most of the
gringo
yachtsmen hung out. He would go in there, nurse a drink, wait. Where the yachtsmen were, the Gyppos eventually would be.
With the Cadillac Morales was after.

*   *   *

In Nebraska, Bart Heslip was driving west across the prairie along a gunbarrel highway remarkably flat and straight. It just
cut right through all the rolling plains and undulating hills like a chain-saw through pine logs.

He’d phoned Kearny about the $30,000 in the valise, and Corinne to tell her he missed and loved her. Next stop, Chicago, and
Nanoosh Tsatshimo’s bogus electroplating operation.

*   *   *

In Reno, the Lovellis were packing up to head east. Nearly a hundred Gypsy men, women, and children, twenty-two cars (seven
of them Cadillacs ripped off from Cal-Cit Bank), and two pickups full of the paraphernalia they would need for a summer spent
working the Midwest county fair circuit. East through Utah, Wyoming, a corner of Colorado, and then out across the rolling
Nebraska plains toward the Mississippi and the Stupidville encampment.