Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

He got into the back of the limo with the square of stolen explosive and, with the flat of one hand, began pounding the square casually down into place on the contoured metal floor where the seat would fit back in.

“Careful!” yelped Marino.

Nicholas ignored him to finish, then got back out of the car to squint at him through habitual cigarette smoke.

“Before we put the seat back in, I’ll push an electrical blasting cap down into the C-4. We’ll use a radio transmitter to detonate. When you want it to go off, you just attach a radio receiver preset to a certain band to the cap’s wires. You’ll have a pocket radio transmitter with you, so you just—”

“What if somebody else has a transmitter set to that band?”

“They won’t, but anyway, you connect the receiver to the blasting cap at the last second — in the garage. Then get behind a pillar and turn on your transmitter and...” He suddenly threw his arms wide with a joyful laugh, “POOF!”

PLOP!

The broken egg had slid down the curved side of the mixing bowl just a split second before something small and dark and gleaming and hunched dropped in after it.

“No,” said Ramon Ristick, “too slow. Way too slow.”

Yana fished the little dark gleaming pellet-like object out and palmed it. When she destroyed the next egg, the black object fell so smoothly that it landed in the bowl to glisten evilly up through the yolk as if it had preceded it.

“Perfect,” pronounced Ramon.

Yana broke another egg. “It has to be perfect every time.”

Ristik, watching her practice in glum silence, suddenly said, “I didn’t like what happened to Soma’s Allante.”

“That was Rudolph’s fault. I had to give Sonia to the gadjo after Rudolph threatened us...”

PLOP! Perfect yet again.

“He’ll know it was you told the gadjo where to look.”

“Maybe he’ll blame Ephrem again,” she said indifferently.

After two more, they scrambled and ate the eggs she had been practicing with, discussing when and with what trappings of the occult — and speculating for how much — they would work the poisoned-egg effect on Theodore Winston White. The Third.

Even from the outside, Theodore Winston White Ill’s house looked to Giselle like something out of Hammett’s “The Gutting of Couffignal.” Part stone, part wood, probably twenty-five to thirty rooms, three stories on grounds that were a wilderness of native California trees and shrubs able to thrive despite the now-broken drought.

Giselle had driven up a winding drive to the top of a Tiburon hill and climbed the broad stone stairway to the hardwood door. She banged the iron gargoyle-face knocker and turned away to look at the City, rising from the far side of the sparkling bay like a misplaced Camelot: distance lent it a bogus charm absent in close-up.

When the door was opened by a slender blond chap in his 30s, a big tiger-stripe tomcat scooted out between his legs and bounded off down the steps.

“It’s okay,” he said quickly, “he does it all the time.”

There was a moment of silence. Once the office-work crunch had eased, Giselle had been in a great hurry to follow up on her anonymous phone caller’s lead. So she had gotten White’s address from the tax assessor’s office at the Marin Civic Center, and had driven directly here without even phoning ahead. She had not even formulated a plan of attack or worked out her cover story.

So she cleared her throat and said, “Ah... I’m looking for Theodore Winston White the Third.”

“That’s me. Teddy White.”

“This might sound a little strange, but do you perchance know any Gypsies?”

His slightly too close-set eyes lit up. “Madame Miseria’s incredible, you know. She’s changing my life.”

It all fell into place. Madame Miseria. Ballard’s Yana, the Gypsy fortune-teller. Giselle’s anonymous caller obviously was some Gyppo opposed to Yana. Giselle smiled. Brilliantly. The kind of smile men felt all the way down to their toes.

“Mr. White, I’d love to drive you down into town and buy you an espresso,” she said.

Drinking muddy Turkish coffee in the office, Wasso Tomeshti could see his sister and mother and two cousins feeding the shopping frenzy surrounding his purloined color TVs. He’d priced the sets for quick cash sales, so was also collecting and pocketing the 7.25 % sales tax to help offset the bargain prices.

Wasso figured he had today and tomorrow before some officious bureaucrat came around asking to see his sales permits; so tomorrow he’d give E. Dana Straub her check and pack up his remaining sets and move on — to be gone by the time it bounced. No sweat about Sam Hood’s check bouncing — Hood didn’t know where to find him anyway. Life was good.

“Mr. Adam Wells?”

Tomeshti looked up from his paperwork — bogus optional service guarantees on the sets, also paid to him in cash — into cold grey eyes above a granite jaw. Cop face. But they couldn’t have got on to his scam yet, so...

So he said, “That’s me, King of the Cash Sale—”

The guy shook his head. “No. A Gyppo named Wasso Tomeshti.” He showed some I.D. “Private detective.” He held out his hand. “The keys to the Seville, Gyppo.”

The coin dropped. Yana’s call warning him that some P.I. might have a line to their Caddies. He was unworried. He was a big man, heavy-waisted and four inches taller than the square, grey-haired man’s five-nine. Never actually violent, but this gadjo couldn’t know that. He came around the counter.

“You better get to hell out of here, pal, before I...”

Hard-face merely picked up the phone and tapped out a number with such confidence that Tomeshti waited just too long.

“Yeah, gimme Sergeant Block in Bunco.” He listened to the canned voice saying, At the tone, Pacific Daylight Saving time will be, then said, “Larry? Dan Kearny here. I’m at...”

Tomeshti’s thick fingers depressed the hooks on the phone. Kearny laid those cold grey eyes on him once more.

“And my next call, Tomeshti, is to the guy you conned out of those three hundred TV sets.”

Kearny didn’t know if Tomeshti had conned the sets out of anybody or not, but it was a safe bet — and conmen were easily conned. Tomeshti slid the Seville keys across the counter.

Saying, “Goddam you,” in a heartfelt voice.

He followed Kearny silently out through the bedlam of the store, careful to arouse no hot-blooded rom hostility against him: what if the guy wasn’t bluffing? Sam Hood was the kind of man would live up to his name if he knew he’d been ripped off.

Wasso had left the Seville parked out in front as a sort of advertisement. Kearny opened the trunk and curbside doors.

“Please remove your personal possessions from the car.”

“Hey, listen, can’t we—”

“No.” Flat voice. No give. No leeway. “Just do it.”

Kearny watched as Tomeshti put his personal gear in a rather messy pile on the curb. Prospective customers were starting to gather around and watch also, highly diverted. In that neighborhood, repos were no novelty.

Wasso’s beautiful Seville pulled away, the radio blaring golden oldies. He turned sadly back to the store — and stopped dead. Facing him was brass-haired E. Dana Straub.

She bared all those teeth in a supposed smile. “I need the year’s lease payment in cash right now, Mr. Wells, instead of a check tomorrow,” she said with transparent ferocity.

Aw, hell .

Giselle Marc, back from Marin only twenty minutes ago, dropped the receiver onto the hooks and leaned back in her creaking swivel chair to slam a fist against her thigh in delight.