Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

She was leaning forward again, eagerly, like a child, excitement and intrigue in her eyes, as if the prospect of money had rekindled her personal feeling for him. She laid her open hand palm-up on the table. She almost giggled again.

And actually said, “Cross my palm with silver.”

Ballard hesitated but a moment, then dug out his money clip and counted five twenties into her palm. That left him with three bucks. She closed her hand around the money.

“I wish to prove my heart is true,” she said, “so I will find you a car, today. After today, if I have information for you I will leave a message only we will understand, and you will come, and I will tell your fortune, and you will—”

“—pay you for the reading,” finished Ballard.

“And only you and I will know of it, no one else! I will be your... what do the police say? Your snitch!” She smiled complacently and leaned back in her chair. The $100 had disappeared. She glanced casually beyond him and added with delight, “And here is Ramon with the tea!”

Ristik came through the draperies with his tray again, as if just coming from the kitchen rather than lurking and listening behind the curtains. Ballard ignored him, wondering hopefully what else Yana might come to be for him besides his snitch.

The two cheap metal plaques-were placed so they would be facing anyone who sat down across the desk from the broken-down swivel chair in the narrow cubicle. One read, INSPECTOR HARRY CALLAHAN, with, underneath it, Dirty Harry . The other read, FEEL SAFE TONIGHT — SLEEP WITH A COP.

“Pretty good, huh?” demanded a voice behind her.

Giselle turned. The man wore an off-the-rack suit and Polo aftershave obviously applied in the men’s room after seeing that she was good-looking. The cheap suit said honest cop; the Polo, and the leer he was giving her despite his wedding band, said son of a bitch. Said, to Giselle, don’t trust the cheap suit.

She stuck out her hand and said, on that insight’s impulse, “Inspector... Callahan? Gerry Merman, free-lance journalist. I want to do an article about the Gypsies, and—”

“Harrigan, not Callahan. Bunco.” Going around the desk, he ignored her hand but not what she had down the front of her blouse. “The other guys gave me that plaque ’cause my name is Harry an’ I get all the dirty jobs.” To her silence he added, “You know, Dirty Harry Callahan... in the movies...”

Giselle finally nodded. Harrigan was the SFPD Gypsy man, and despite his wandering eye she needed his help.

“Clint Eastwood,” she supplied.

“Yeah. As for the other plaque...”

“Very clever,” she agreed too quickly.

“Yeah.” A little sourly.

He lit a cigarette and leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. Early 40s, Irish, red hair faded to pink by the grey in it, face full of sexual predation. Would once have been good-looking and would have known it, still would never regard his mirror with less than full approval.

Just the reverse of O’Bannon’s bright blarney Irish coin.

“So, Gerry, you wanna do an article about me an’ the Gyppos. Well, lemme give you an example...”

Two retired brothers, both in their 80s, lived in one of the showplace homes across the Boulevard from the Marina Green. A his/her pair of Gyppos had come knocking on their door claiming to be from the French Hostel welfare department...

“Musta staked ’em out an’ followed ’em home, ’cause these old guys belonged to the hostel, all right — but they’d never heard of any welfare department there...”

Giselle realized that Bunco was even more depressing than Homicide. At least death had a hard truth. In Bunco it was all lies, lies to vulnerable old people who thought they had been helping the police catch a bad guy by cleaning out their trust account, only to learn they had given their life savings to some slime who’d dreamed up a new wrinkle on the pigeon drop.

“Anyway, the woman talks to ’em, prob’ly hints around about doin’ ’em, y’get my drift...” He was leering at her through his cigarette smoke. “Meanwhile, her partner is goin’ through the house. Gyppos know how to smell money. One old guy had thirteen hundred cash in the inside pocket of one of his suits in the closet, his brother had five hundred. That’s eighteen hundred bucks!”

“Incredible,” said Giselle, to be saying something.

“But the Gyppos made one mistake. They stole a gold pocket watch off the dresser, an old antique job. So of course I nailed ’em when they tried to pawn it.”

“Of course.” But her irony was unrecognized.

“Yeah, well, that’s the kinda thing I do every day. As for what I do at night...” With another leer, he gestured at the plaque. “Interested? Feel safe tonight. Sleep with —”

“I already feel safe at night.”

She needed a cigarette, badly; but Dan Kearny wast being such a pain about it that she’d quit again. Thank God for her impulse to give Harrigan a false name and profession. Any call from this man to any woman on earth for any reason whatsoever would be an obscene phone call.

“You wanna feel even safer, girlie, you give ol’ Harry a call — he practices safe sex.” He started to guffaw, said again, “Safe sex. Course if a broad answers, hang up.”

More guffaws. A broad. His wife. To hell with it. She took one of his cigarettes. Of course Harry was right there with a lighter, hoping for another peek down her blouse. Wouldn’t you just know, the lighter was an old-fashioned Zippo with the 82nd Airborne crest on the side? She stubbed out the cigarette after one puff. It tasted like she was smoking an old tire. Wouldn’t you just know that, too? You sin and it isn’t even any fun.

She asked, “You hear anything about a Gypsy calling himself Angelo Grimaldi working the Bay Area lately?”

“Grimaldi?” He shook his head. “No Gyp’d choose Grimaldi, they go for short Anglo-Saxon names — Adams, Marks, Wells...”

“Great-looking, mid-thirties, charms professional women...”

“A class act?” Harrigan lit up again. “Now I know he ain’t a Gyp. Gyppos can’t bring off a class act. And he ain’t local, either, I can tell you that. I know all the local Gyps.”

“He’s around,” Giselle insisted. “Our angle is that this is a really unusual Gypsy we can build a story on.”

“Yeah, well, they’re putting the squeeze on welfare scams in New York and Chicago, so a lotta Gyppo scum is coming into California lately from over there. Maybe—”

“The land of opportunity,” said Giselle wryly.

But it was his first interesting remark. Maybe Grimaldi was a recent arrival. Not for welfare scams, surely, but...

“They bring any news with them?”

“They might be gonna have to pick a new King — there’s some rumors the old one’s dyin’ back in the Midwest...”

Better yet. A dying King would answer Kearny’s questions about the timing of the Cadillac scam. The Gypsies would want new cars to go back in style to the huge encampment of Gypsy vitsas and kumpanias necessary for selecting a new King.

“This dying King — who? Where? When?”

“Who knows, who cares, why bother?” His eyes were now unbuttoning her blouse. “Back in the Corn Belt somewhere.”

She had to be careful; cops were notorious moonlighters, many of them as free-lance repomen, she didn’t want to give him any hint about thirty-one Bay Area Cadillacs up for grabs. But she also needed whatever info he might have. So, turn it around.

“Any stories making the rounds about Gypsies with a whole fleet of new Cadillacs, maybe heading this way?”

“A fleet of ’em? Headin’ our way? Don’t I wish. A man could make himself extra loot knocking off those babies.” He stubbed his butt. “But nah. I’d of heard of ’em, for sure.”