Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

“The window!” she yelled at Ballard.

Still spinning on one foot, he tossed the box in the open window on the rider’s side and leaped in after it. But as the Allante roared away backward toward Vermont Street, someone grabbed Ballard’s legs. He heard a ripping sound and felt cold air, heard a grunt of effort behind him — and a splintery two-by-four slammed against his bare butt with stunning force.

“OWWWW!”

Comes By Night had counted coup back at him by scalping his behind. Cars were roaring into life all around them. At Vermont, Giselle, still running backward, mashed the brakes and spun the wheel and simultaneously goosed it.

“Jesus!” Ballard took the Savior’s name in vain as the torque almost tore him out of the window again.

It was Little Bird who stared sadly after the disappearing vehicles from in front of the emptied Rainbird — even the bartender had joined in the chase. But it was Sonia Lovari who sighed and started away on foot: she really had begun to think of herself as Indian, but eventually these genuine Indians would realize she was a Gypsy and would reject her.

And she knew who to blame. Only Yana would have told the gadje where to find her.

Giselle bit her lip hard enough to draw blood when one of the pursuing cars rammed the rear bumper.

“Hang on!” she yelled at Ballard, flooring it.

“What the hell do you think I—”

A brick whizzed by his head to scar the Caddy’s paintwork. Cars were coming up on either side of them, the one on the right running with one set of wheels on the sidewalk, the other in the gutter. It hit a power pole and was out of the running, but another swerved around it to keep coming.

Giselle slewed into 16th Street as if she knew where she was going. Ballard hoped to hell she did; he didn’t have a clue. He tried to pull himself inside, but the pursuer swerved in to crush him between the cars. He jerked up tight against the side of the Caddy as metal ground metal just below him.

Giselle screamed the Allante into broad Third Street, ran the red at the next intersection, horn blaring. They were outrunning their pursuers: the Caddy’s big V-8 generated a lot of power. But a car shot across Third directly in front of her, she hit the brakes, slid almost sideways down the street, so numb by this time that she felt only a mild detached curiosity about whether she would miss it or not.

She did, but the skid had let the Indians catch up. They were cutting in, forcing her to the curb, roaring war chants.

But she was there! Horn blaring, she jumped the curb. Ballard, still half out of the car, hung on for dear life as the Allante leaped up three concrete stairs at a steep 45-degree angle to splinter the double doors at their head with its front bumper. A tire went BANG! The old-fashioned globe light above the cophouse door POPPED! to drift sharded glass down on them.

Uniformed cops, wearing astounded, half-scared faces, poured out of the Southeast precinct house past the Allante with guns in their hands. This flushed the covey of pursuing Indian cars, which burst out in every direction with squealing tires.

Ballard had managed to get his feet on one of the steps by this time, too dazed to know his ripped pants were puddled around his ankles so he was buck-ass naked from the waist down. He was waving his arms around in front of him, panting as if he’d just run a footrace.

“Peaceful repossession, peaceful repossession!” he yelped at the dozen guns’ big unwinking eyes staring at him.

“The hell you say,” drawled the Irish desk sergeant.

“From... the Rainbird... Lounge...”

“Ah,” said the sergeant in soft understanding, and holstered his weapon. All the cops knew the Rainbird. After a moment, the rest followed suit, putting their guns away also.

Giselle staggered around the car from the driver’s side, blood running down her chin from her bitten lip.

“I checked... I.D. number... we got... right car...” Then she saw Ballard and laughed weakly. “So this... is how it’s done... maestro?”

“It got done,” said Ballard with great dignity.

Looking at Giselle looking at Ballard, the sergeant said, with Irish rectitude, “Hey, Sam Spade, better get your pants on.”

Ballard, suddenly realizing his condition, jerked his pants up with a savage gesture.

And shrieked in pain as the rough fabric scraped across innumerable splinters to drive them deeper into his bruised and lacerated rear end.

Because Giselle was out in the field chasing Gypsies, Dan Kearny was stuck in the office with all the routine paperwork they usually shared. And it was making him feel old.

Time was, his field agents needed him to clean up their messes; now, he’d trained ’em to be the best in the business.

Time was, at Walter’s Auto Detectives — before he founded DKA with Giselle and O’B and Kathy Onoda, God rest her soul — he was the best field agent in the business.

Now... Old. Mighty old.

His phone rang. Jane Goldson’s voice was in his ear. “A man calling himself Ephrem Poteet is on line—”

Kearny, suddenly twenty years younger, punched into the blinking red light. “Whadda ya have for me?”

A recognized chuckle and heavy tones came at him over the wire. “Always right to business with you, ain’t it, Kearny?”

“ Gadje manners.”

“Okay. Los Angeles. Silverlake District. Wasso Tomeshti. TV sets. And I’ll take my hundred bucks now, up front.”

“Not for that you won’t. I need more. What’s the scam?”

“Factory-direct to consumer. That’s all you get.”

Kearny recognized finality, but more than that, had a flash of inspiration.

“Your hundred’s in the mail.”

He hung up, sat there behind his desk. Fired up a Marlboro, forgot to shake out the match until the flame touched his fingertips. In all the years he’d dealt through various P.O. boxes with Poteet, they had never laid eyes on each other. He took a puff of his cigarette.

“No,” he said aloud. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”

Not this time. This time he needed leverage, or Poteet would string out his info for weeks in an attempt to raise the $100-per ante — while the subject Gypsies scattered like quail.

Right now Poteet was calling the shots, and Dan Kearny didn’t like anyone calling the shots on him.

He didn’t like feeling old, either.

He shook his heavy silvered head, chuckled, jerked open a drawer to grab out one of the made-up Gypsy folders with everything they knew on each Cadillac. He didn’t have a set of keys cut for the cars, but what the hell? Stay hungry.

As he went past Jane’s desk, she piped up cheerily, “Where to, Mr. K? Your meeting with Stan at the bank isn’t until—”

“Cancel it.”

“But—”

“And hold my calls.”

“But—”

“Hold tomorrow’s calls, too.”

“But...”

“And maybe the day’s after that.”

From her wastebasket he grabbed a discarded FINAL NOTICE window envelope with a canceled stamp on it — a shocking-red envelope designed to catch a delinquent’s eye — and took a sheet of letterhead from her desk. Then he was gone.

Few would recognize Wasso Tomeshti in sleek Mr. Adam Wells.

Wasso Tomeshti was a greasy-curled rom who wore a heavy curled mustache with a day’s beard, bright shirts, a brick-red bandana around his thick throat, and black jeans tucked into the tops of black leather hack boots. Mr. Adam Wells, his finest creation, wore a painfully close shave, too much cheap cologne, a gangrenous three-piece electric-green suit, a purple and gold plaid shirt, a paisley tie mostly orange, and black loafers.

“Want a little air?” Mr. Adam Wells asked expansively.