Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Sonia shook the one-pound coffee can with the slot in the top and MIWOK INDIAN SUPPORT GROUP — GIVE WHAT YOU CAN pasted around it. She kept it almost empty at all times; a few lonely coins rattling around inside attracted sympathy.

“The Miwoks are starving, sir. The Great Spirit will bless you if—”

“Everybody’s starving,” snapped the man she’d stopped.

He obviously wasn’t. Florid face, fat stomach, three-piece suit, three-martini breath. Sonia welcomed the challenge. An argument always made other people stop and listen.

“Not like my people, sir. We—”

“You can’t kid me — the last of the Miwoks died off last year!” he said with inaccurate belligerence. “Ishi, that was his name! There was a movie on Showtime about him—”

Sonia, who had never heard of Ishi, interrupted with glib and equal inaccuracy. “Ishi was a Tamalpais Miwok. We are Coast Miwok.” In her eyes were Native American patience and pain. “There are only thirty-three of us left — the same number as our dear Savior’s years when He was crucified.”

A crowd of curious commuters was gathering. The man looked around and saw only sympathy for Sonia on the attentive faces. He muttered under his breath while digging in his pants pocket for a crumpled bill to stuff into her tin can.

“Here, for Chrissake.”

“The Great Spirit blesses you, sir.”

But it was a Bay Area Rapid Transit guard, not the Great Spirit, who materialized behind her to lay an ungentle hand on her shoulder. “No panhandling in the BART station, sister.”

Undismayed, Sonia displayed the bogus Chamber of Commerce “registered charity” badge that she’d paid a Gypsy documenter in San Jose $50 for. She didn’t know what it said, not knowing how to read, but it always worked like a charm.

“I’m not panhandling, sir.”

The guard’s hostility had lessened. He gestured at the broad yellow line at the edge of the platform where the silver bullet-shaped BART projectiles would come roaring past.

“You still can’t solicit in the BART station — it’s just too dangerous for the customers.” He gestured. “But you can do it upstairs, at the street entrance.”

“I’m sorry. This is my first day. I’m only nineteen.”

He hesitated. “Miwok, huh? I heard you say—”

“Only thirty-three of us are left, sir.”

“Aw, what the heir?”

The guard shoved a dollar in the slot. Sonia thanked him and managed to rattle two more donations into her coffee can on her way up to the Market/Powell entrance. The streetlights were on and the stream of BART commuters had thinned to a trickle; until Memorial Day brought summer’s tourist wave, she had to depend on the locals. Five more minutes, she’d quit for the day.

Rattle-rattle.

Clink.

“Great Spirit bless you, ma’am.”

The Miwok scam was a new one for her; for years, up and down the coast, she’d done Navajos. But last month she’d been forced to spend an afternoon hiding out from a Marin County bunco cop at the Miwok Museum in Novato; since she couldn’t read the captions under the displays, she’d followed around a schoolteacher explaining the exhibits to her second-graders. Sonia had immediately switched scams. In the Bay Area, she reasoned, local Miwok was bound to arouse more sympathy than far-off Navajo.

Still rattling her collection can, she started up the hill toward the Sutter-Stockton garage where she’d left her $50,000 Allante with its 4.5-litre V-8 engine and front-drive traction control system. Tonight, as usual, she’d swing over to the Rainbird Lounge for a little Miller time. Their happy hour always gave her useful bits of redskin lore and turns of phrase, and no one would come looking for her car there.

When she got the Georgia plates she’d applied for, the repossessors Rudolph Marino had warned her about would no longer threaten her Allante. And meanwhile, Rudolph would soon be King.

Leaving bitch Yana out in the cold where she belonged.

Larry Ballard was sitting opposite Giselle’s glass of wine and pack of cigarettes when she got back from the phone. The red lump on his forehead was just about gone; all that remained was a slight reddish discoloration as if he’d gotten too much sun. Back to his old handsome self. Time to quit thinking Florence Nightingale thoughts about him, she didn’t know why she was having them in the first place. Just silliness.

She shook her head ruefully. “I’d better change brands so I won’t be so predictable.”

“Or quit using disposable lighters.”

“They give me the illusion the smoking is also disposable.”

“I thought it was. Last I’d heard, you’d quit again.” When she answered only with a shrug, he gestured at the huge plate-glass picture window. “Fifi’s. I always feel like a French poodle at a dog show in this joint.”

“You’re sounding more like Dan every day.”

“Yeah, sure. You get anything on Grimaldi from Harrigan?”

“Nothing. He said that if any Gypsy was operating with that name in San Francisco, he’d know about it.”

“Except one is and he doesn’t.” Ballard paused. “You’ve been told the story about him, haven’t you? They started calling him Dirty Harry in Vice, ’cause he was dirty — extorting money and tail from hookers in the Tenderloin. When he got transferred to Bunco his gross probably dropped fifty percent.”

“He’s still plenty gross enough for me.”

“Dirty Harry put a move on you?”

They fell silent when the waitress brought Ballard’s mug of draft beer, an automatic professional caution rather than any real worry about being overheard. But still they waited until she departed. Giselle lit a new cigarette, fumbling the lighter as she remembered the man’s eyes crawling over her like spiders. Ballard grinned at her.

“Don’t feel bad — he’d screw mud.” To the look on her face, he added with quick diplomacy, “Not that I mean you’re—”

“I think you think you just paid me a compliment.”

She stubbed her just-lit cigarette in irritation. She didn’t like their patter; she felt as if she were flirting with Larry. Good old solid Larry Ballard, for God sake! What was the matter with her? To cover her discomfort, she told him about the blind date she’d set up for Harrigan. Ballard broke up.

“So Dirty Harry’ll show up at the Sappho Self-defense Dojo with his pocket full of condoms and his hand on his—”

“He did make a couple of interesting remarks,” Giselle said quickly. “Three, actually. First, there’s a rumor that the Gypsy King is dying back in the Midwest somewhere...”

“Which would explain Grimaldi interrupting his other operation for the Cadillac grab! Yeah! Go back in style to choose the new King...” He drank beer, added thoughtfully, “We need to know who, when, where. Maybe I can get a line on—”

“Harrigan wasn’t really interested, so I couldn’t be too interested myself, seeing as I’d just passed myself off as a free-lance journalist trying to dig up a story on—”

“Dirty Harry happen to mention a Gyppo named Rudolph?”

“No.” She couldn’t stop herself. “Why?”

Ballard grinned in an extremely sappy manner. “Oh, someone else mentioned him, that’s all.”

A sexy-sounding wench, Jane had said. Three years ago, a beautiful Gyppo fortune-teller’d had Ballard walking around with his tongue dragging the ground for a couple of weeks after DKA had put mob attorney Wayne Hawkley out of business for good.

“Your little Gyppo crystal-gazer from Santa Rosa?” she couldn’t help demanding snidely.

Ballard frowned at her from behind his beer mug. What was this? Old Giselle gets out in the field and all of a sudden starts getting competitive about sources like any other repo-man?