Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Now they tried to do it at his desk in the morning before things got too hectic, but it wasn’t the same.

Giselle was dressed in jeans that looked like someone had spilled acid on them, and a mauve sweatshirt with figures leaping like lightning that spelled out Alvin Alley . Without makeup and with her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail under a billed Giants cap, she looked about 12 years old. A tall, shapely 12.

But as she got into the car the angry gleam in her eye was anything but juvenile. On the other hand, she was carrying a fistful of folders. So she hadn’t been as dedicated to free time on the weekend as she had let on.

“Dammit, Dan, I deserve a little personal time to—”

“You too, huh?” he interrupted without sympathy.

They were coming up to the metering lights on the Bay Bridge approach, inactive now for the weekend. She fastened her seat belt and squirmed around to get comfortable. She fought a grin. Finally nodded ruefully.

“Yeah. Me too. On Monday I’ll check with the Gypsy guy in Bunco — an Inspector Harrigan — and the Better Business Bureau and the state Consumer Fraud Division.”

“Why now, Giselle? This is a major, major con, one that’s going right into the Gyppos’ book of tall tales. Somebody really bright — obviously this guy calling himself Grimaldi — had to think and plan a long time to set this one up. Why’d he spring the trap right now?”

Out beyond her window and the whizzing railings of the bridge, the bay was whitecapped with hundreds of sailboats heeled over by a stiff breeze through the Gate.

“He was ready to move. He had everything in place, so—”

“I don’t buy it.” Kearny was frowning behind the wheel. “I think we ought to check with our law enforcement and P.I. informants around the country who work with Gypsies, find out if anything big is happening in their world.”

“I thought we didn’t want anyone to know about this case.”

“We don’t tell ’em anything — we ask .” He paused. “Yeah, and when you see that bunco cop, check with him for any other odd incidents involving Gyppos and new Caddies during our time frame — hell, make that any Caddies during the past couple weeks. I think it’s like you said — this guy Grimaldi was using that name to set up some nontypical Gypsy scam. Something really big, well-planned... It had to be something even bigger to make him endanger that by activating this Cadillac grift in such a hurry.”

They were still kicking it around as they came down off the skyway at Eighth, intending to run out Harrison to Eleventh and the office. This was the heart of San Francisco’s light industrial area, shabby and blue-collar with dirty intersections weekend-deserted, the lights clicking red and amber and green and red again in a senseless roundelay for nonexistent traffic.

Which made the car ahead of them in mid-block stand out. A white/blue Eldorado with the optional cabriolet roof. Without plates but with a paper sticker in the corner of the windshield.

“That’s one of ours,” said Kearny in a taut voice.

“You can’t be sure, Mr. K—”

“Lookit the guy driving! Gyppo all the way. I’m sure.” And he was, she knew. A savage intuition that made him the best in the business. “Get ready to slide over.”

“Dan’l—”

But Kearny had drifted into the far left lane behind the Eldorado so he was close behind it. Too close behind it. When it braked for the red light at Tenth, he ran into the rear end.

“ Daniel , are you crazy? What—”

But Kearny already had the car in neutral, motor running, and was jumping out. He left the door open. Ahead of them, the driver of the other car was doing the same, leaving his door open also, outrage flooding his dark, saturnine features. Giselle understood suddenly, even as she was sliding into the driver’s seat. She wanted to pound the steering wheel with delight.

Outside, Kearny and the Gypsy — surely, he was a Gypsy — were meeting where Kearny’s front bumper was just touching the Eldorado’s rear one. The Gypsy was holding his neck.

“What the hell you do? Where the hell you learn to drive? I got whiplash—”

“It was your fault,” Kearny exclaimed. “Running fast up to the light that way, then slamming on your brakes.”

“Slam on my brakes? You were right on my bumper.”

Giselle eased the door shut almost silently, just enough so the latch clicked to hold it in place, then backed up slightly. Kearny squatted to look at the bumper of the Cadillac her move had exposed.

The Gypsy started to squat, too, holding his neck and grimacing theatrically as if from pain. But then he shrieked and struggled erect again, now holding the small of his back also.

“Not a scratch on it,” Kearny was saying.

“Besides my whiplash, I think I got a slipped disk.” He was groaning, still holding his neck with one hand, the small of his back with the other. “And whadda ya mean about the car? Looka that crease! That indentation! That chipped paint!”

“Chipped paint?” yelled Kearny. “You’re crazy!” He was erect again, pointing accusingly at the car, drawing the Gypsy’s eye to the back of the Eldorado. “There’s no—”

“There! There! And lookit there! And what about my neck? Very severe whiplash. And my back. Very dangerous slipped disk.” He was growing paler by the moment, experimentally moving his legs around beneath him, the knees now slightly bent as if he couldn’t straighten them. “And torn ligaments in both knees, too, from hittin’ them on the dashboard. That means I gotta see three doctors, go to hospital, get X rays, lose time on job...”

He was still holding his neck and holding his back and keeping his knees bent when the traffic light changed to green. Kearny simply walked away from him and slid into the driver’s seat of the Cadillac. Belatedly, the Gypsy leaped erect beside the two cars, eyes bugging out, whiplash and slipped disk and torn tendons all suddenly and miraculously cured.

“Hey, what the hell you think —”

Kearny goosed the Eldorado across the intersection with the green light and the door still hanging open. The Gypsy ran after him for a dozen paces, shouting and waving his arms; then, as Giselle started to accelerate behind him, whirled to stand in her path, holding his arms out like he was herding sheep.

“Hey, you, stop —”

She whipped the wheel over, hard, floored it, bounced across the corner of the intersecting curbs with a loud crash! and screamed around the corner into Tenth Street. He slammed an angry hand against her rear fender, but she was already by him.

And gone.

As Kearny was gone in the Eldorado.

Ah. First blood.

Second blood to, of all people, Trinidad Morales. Who wasn’t working the Gyppo files, wasn’t even supposed to know about the Gyppo files, Kearny’s paranoia about them being what it was. But on Friday afternoon he had snooped the supposedly empty file cabinet upstairs that seemed to hold so-much fascination for Kearny, Giselle, O’B, Heslip, and Ballard. And had leafed through enough of the Gypsy material to know that almost any new Caddy with paper plates and a swarthy driver would be fair game.

Then he heard someone on the stairs, so he snatched one of Giselle’s lists — the cars’ colors and descriptions and model and I.D. numbers — eased the file drawer shut, and was halfway down the hall by the time Kearny appeared.

“Lose something, Morales?”

“Just findin’ my office, Mr. K, just findin’ my office. Lot different here from over to Seven Sixty.”

Not that Morales intended to go out looking for Gypsy cars off that list. He had been hired to work the cases abandoned by those assigned to the Gyppos, and besides, there weren’t any direct leads to work yet. For now he just wanted to know what was going on. Knowledge was power, and all that. And he would keep checking. There might be a way to snatch some meat from the jaws of the other guys for a quick buck or two.