Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

“If somebody catches up with him,” said Giselle, “he just says it was all a mistake, he got confused between accounts.”

“Legally he can do that?” asked Ballard.

“Under California law, criminal intent can be assumed, and fraud charged, only if the account doesn’t exist or has been closed prior to the presentation of the check.”

Heslip’s mind was momentarily drifting. It was at these conferences that he most keenly missed Kathy Onoda, dead at age 29 of a busted blood vessel in her head. CVA, they called it. Cardiovascular accident. Some accident. Icepick-slim Kathy, button-black eyes shining, classical Japanese features alight with excitement...

Him and her off in a corner giggling at each other’s dirty jokes like a couple of schoolgirls... Neither one of them ever told off-color jokes to anyone else. It was like their little minority secret together, and...

Aw, dammit to hell, anyway.

Ballard was musing in an awed voice, “One-point-three-two-five million bucks!”

“Until this morning, when Stan finally collated all the contracts, the bank didn’t know how bad they’d been stung. And until we told ’em, they didn’t know it was Gypsies who’d hit them.” Kearny slapped his palm on the files on the butt-scarred desktop. “These don’t have a single name, address, credit reference, residence or work address that’s genuine.”

“But they look wonderful,” said Giselle. “The dealer credit managers did everything right, made all the requisite background phone checks — work adds, home adds, personal refs, pay experience with other lenders. Everything. They all checked out. On paper and over the phone, pure as the driven snow.”

“Like a certain Colonel Buford Sanders, USAF Retired,” said Ballard slyly.

They looked at O’B and laughed. DKA had repo’d nine Caddies from the larcenous colonel before he took an insurance company for $275,000 in a fake injury accident scam. O’B went after him, but instead of proving the con, ended up being an affidavit eyewitness in support of the colonel’s fraudulent claims.

“I’ll still nail that guy one day,” O’B muttered darkly.

“Maybe we ought to hire him,” said Kearny.

“Why Cal-Cit Bank?” demanded Heslip.

Kearny stood stock-still for a moment.

“Damn good question, Bart.”

Giselle added a note to the list on her shorthand pad. “Hmmm... yes... He could have gone to four different banks — going to branches of the same one made it a lot harder because he put himself in a time bind. He had to make the withdrawals and deposits in cash all in one day so the bank’s in-house computer wouldn’t catch up with him before bank-close. Why?”

“I’m still bothered by that non-Gypsy pseudonym for their main man,” said O’B.

Heslip said, “Yeah, he’d have to have valid-looking I.D., just in case he got questioned on one of the ten-thousand-buck withdrawals — but why not use a familiar Gyppo pseudonym?”

“Maybe he already had the Grimaldi I.D. for some other scam he was working,” said Kearny. “Giselle...”

She was already writing it in the notebook. Ballard, still catching up, asked, “How did they work the phones? It’s a lot more sophisticated than pigeon drops or Jamaican switches.”

“In each area,” said Kearny, “all the purchasers used the same sets of phone numbers to confirm all false credit data and false personal and business references on the applications.”

“Why four phone rooms? Why not just one?”

“They were working across area codes, and they’d want to keep everything local to help avoid raising suspicions.”

“If you hustle cars for a living in the middle of a recession,” said O’B cynically, “how suspicious are you gonna be when you’re looking at the commission for a forty-K sale?”

Ballard: “Phone rooms — how do they help us?”

Heslip: “Somebody had to rent the rooms to them.”

Giselle: “And Pac Bell had to put in the phones.”

O’B: “All places to start.”

Kearny stood up abruptly.

“Okay, that’s enough for tonight. We’ve got a packet for each of you with all the information we’ve got so far, plus dupe keys and info on all the vehicles. Each of us runs down whatever leads he develops himself, but meanwhile check out any Caddy with paper plates that fits the description of any car on this list.”

“How tough do we get?” asked Ballard.

“As tough as we have to.”

Heslip muttered, “A felony a week if we need it or not.”

“Current workloads?” asked Giselle.

“Turn ’em in tomorrow morning, reports current, for reassignment. I want to be able to get someone else out on them over the weekend so our regular billing doesn’t suffer.”

“Not Uvaldi,” said Ballard hotly at the same time that Heslip exclaimed, with equal heat, “Not Walinski.”

“Don’t be a sap, Larry,” said O’B. “Let somebody else get the next headache.”

“Turn ’em in day after tomorrow,” snapped Kearny. “ All of ’em. From now on all our energies have to be focused on the Gyppos.”

Ballard and Heslip exchanged looks that said: we got tomorrow to drop a rock on Uvaldi’s Mercedes and Walinski’s Charger. Kearny caught the look but said nothing. He wouldn’t have wanted his men to feel any other way. Getting even was better than getting screwed without intercourse, every time.

On the other hand, they were going to have to move damned fast on the opposition. Being Gyppos, those guys wouldn’t be standing still.

The black stretch Caddy whispered up Taylor to the blinking yellow light at California. Behind the wheel was Rudolph Marino in another $1,200 suit. Inbound traffic streamed across in front of him as he edged the limo farther up the steep incline. Ignoring a glaring old woman in a cloth coat who shook a fist at him, he violated the pedestrian walk to swing down California Street with his right blinker on.

Thirty-one brand-new Cadillacs — and no way the bank could ever find out who had them or where any of them were! The sheer brilliance of that scheme alone ensured him immortality in the legends of the rom . Plus this audacious hotel scam, another first; nobody could stop him from becoming King of the Gypsies.

But just in case, he would find the thirty-second Cadillac, the pink ragtop, and take it away from Yana to present as his own for the King to be buried in.

Cool shadow swept over the limo on the down-ramp to the St. Mark garage. After parking, he rode the escalator up to the lobby. Beyond the rest rooms and phone bank, he pushed open a door marked HOTEL EMPLOYEES ONLY; thanks to unwitting Marla the Check-in Clerk, he knew which of the four offices to enter and who to ask for.

A very decorative secretary wearing colored contacts and Obsession and a man-tailored blue pinstripe suit with enormous shoulders was putting the plastic cover on her computer when he came through the door. Wearing that perfume to work, she had to be sleeping with her boss.

“Angelo Grimaldi. One of your penthouse suites.” Marino had chosen the end of business hours to heighten drama and tension. He pointed at her intercom, put into his voice the sort of steel his role demanded. “Harley Gunnarson. Now .”

“Sir, I’ll have to call hotel security if you don’t—”

“Ten days ago a terrorist death threat was phoned to this hotel. Do you want that threat carried out? ”

Tense minutes later, Gunnarson, the St. Mark manager, opened his door to stand there frowning. He was a heavyweight mid-50s with thinning hair and piercing eyes and a hawk nose; the sort of man who looks soft and then beats you straight sets at handball.