Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Crichton made cat scratches on the patient’s chart. “And how about the vertigo?” Seeing the look on their faces, he amended, “Dizziness. Losing your balance when you stand?”

“0h. Yeah. I gotta lean on Margarete when I gotta use the bathroom, Doc. Is very... makes me feel... ashamed , you know?”

The nurse came in, a sturdy freckle-faced girl with auburn hair and upturned nose. Crichton said he would like the patient to stand beside the bed for a few simple tests.

“Here we go,” said the nurse cheerily. She drew back the covers and reached for Staley’s feet. “We’ll just—”

“No!” exclaimed Margarete. “He don’t do it that way.”

It was a major operation, with everyone helping, just to get Staley on his two feet beside the bed. Even then he wasn’t upright; he was bent forward and pulled over to one side.

“That’s fine!” exclaimed Crichton with dubious enthusiasm. “Now I would like you to stretch your arms out to your sides... yes... that’s it... Now close your eyes and touch your nose with your forefinger...”

Staley tried with his left hand first. He fell over to his left. Margarete, expecting it, was quick to catch him.

“Gee, Mr. Doctor, I... I’m sorry...”

“You did just fine. Could you try the other hand?”

Staley tried with his right. And fell over left again.

“What’s it mean he does that?” demanded Margarete in alarm.

“It suggests that the major injury is on your husband’s left side.” Crichton patted Staley’s shoulder. “You’re doing just fine, Mr. Klenhard. You game for another little test?”

This one was more daunting. Staley was to try to relax his body, and then bend gently forward at the waist as if to touch his right foot with his left hand.

He bent down a few inches. And shot erect, screaming.

Trying to reverse it, to touch his left foot with his right hand, Staley, pale and shaken, got down about a foot before he yelped and shot erect again with a hand to the small of his back. They got him carefully but quickly back into bed on his back, pale and shaken, with the covers still drawn down.

“Is that it?” he asked hopefully. Lulu was patting his face with her handkerchief. “I don’t know if I can...”

“Just one more, then we’ll give you something for the pain and leave you alone.”

Lulu was fierce. “You gotta tell him what it is first.”

“I’d like you to raise your left knee just a little, Mr. Klenhard, then straighten it out again...”

“Hey, that oughtta be easy!” exclaimed Staley with his first show of enthusiasm for the day.

He almost delightedly started to lift his left knee. And yelped in agony, jerking to his left. Lulu started forward protectively. The nurse stopped her. Staley was breathing quickly and shallowly. He finally relaxed, the lines of pain lessening on his face. He spoke apologetically.

“Guess I didn’t do that so good, huh, Doc?”

“You did fine.” Crichton made a little grimace of his own. “How about... could I try to bend your knee, Mr. Klenhard?”

“Sure,” said Staley with a ghost of his former enthusiasm, “maybe you be better at it than me, huh?”

Crichton gingerly began to bend the knee. Staley yelped. This time Lulu started for Crichton, hands clawed, but the nurse again interposed herself between them.

“That’s enough. My Karl has had enough.”

Crichton frowned. “If we could just try his right leg—”

“No more,” she said with that sudden determination that so far had kept anyone else from being assigned to the other bed in the room. “No more for my Karl.”

“Mama,” said Staley. This time he met that dark, ominous gaze with one of his own. “We gotta let the doctor find out what he can. One more leg, okay? Then we be all through here.”

Another long pause from Lulu. Then finally, reluctantly, she nodded. “Okay. Once more. The right knee.”

Staley steeled himself, then started to bend his right knee. One inch. Two. Six. He kept bending it. It was almost totally flexed before he suddenly winced and let it drop. He lay there panting, but he met the doctor’s eyes triumphantly.

“Hey, I done good, huh, Doc?”

“You done wonderfully,” agreed Crichton. “And that’s it for today. In a few minutes they’ll bring supper—”

Lulu said, “I think he’s got too much pain to eat supper.”

“Then you can eat it for him,” grinned Crichton.

He made his notes on Staley’s chart and departed with the nurse. Staley’s eyes met Lulu’s. He winked. She winked back.

“I’ll make sure the nurse knows it was me ate your supper,” she said. “Then during visiting hours tonight I’ll sneak you in something from Jack in the Box—”

“Some of those fingerfoods I see on the TV,” exclaimed Staley with enthusiasm. His voice was deep and full, not thin and quavery as it was when anyone else was around. “With some of those curly fries and a Coke...”

Marino was off working his secret hotel scam, but the three other literates in the kumpania — Yana, Immaculata Bimbai, and, surprisingly, fat Josef Adamo — were filling out registration applications in a variety of names, with return addresses all over the country. The DMVs of such friendly southern states as Georgia and North Carolina would mail valid auto registrations to anyone who paid the fee and sent in the forms, and already only fourteen of the cars were still in the Bay Area.

Immaculata Bimbai herself was still in town only because she wanted to hit a big Post Street jeweler before driving down to hit a similar establishment on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

As soon as fat Josef Adamo finished the Cadillac paperwork he would be heading for Seattle. His brother was already up there, organizing a much expanded version of the road-paving scam that was Josef’s usual M.O.

Wasso Tomeshti was in the southland setting up the most ambitious con of his career, involving an East L.A. TV wholesaler and a contractor who was just finishing a fancy motel in the Valley. For this, the new Caddy was essential window dressing.

Heading for Florida was Kalia Uwanowich, planning on a big score in subdivision roofing just outside Fort Lauderdale.

Chicago for Nanoosh Tsatshimo, where a relative had rented a defunct metal working plant under a phony name. Nanoosh’s electroplating scam needed a physical place of business where the bogus plating work could be done, not just a mail-drop address.

Pearso Stokes was going to New York; she specialized in shortchanging banks and she liked Manhattan because New Yorkers, even bank tellers, thought they were too streetwise to be taken. Which made them very easy to take indeed, especially with a hoary scam everyone had forgotten in this new electronic age of computer theft. Gypsies are nothing if not traditionalists.

No fewer than seven Lovellis, each with a new Caddy, were gathered in Reno to prepare for their annual round of the Midwest county fair circuits as palmists, curse-removers, mentalists, astrologists, telekineticists, tarot-card and tea-leaf readers, crystal-ball gazers, and similar divinators. All for twenty-five bucks a reading, quick in and out, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

All felt good about their work, because Christ Himself had given permission to the Gypsies to steal. As He hung dying on the shameful cross, a Gypsy stole the Roman soldiers’ fourth spike — the one intended for His heart. A grateful Christ gave His absolution forever to all Gypsies who stole from the gadje .

Of course in this world of unenlightened souls, the gadje, just because they could not find the story in their Bibles, didn’t believe in this dispensation; but the kumpania didn’t worry about them. The kumpania could always outwit non-Gypsies.