Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Stan had once been the same way. But they’d gotten him liquored up at one of Kearny’s infamous spaghetti feeds, and had taken him out on a salty repo in the Hunter’s Point housing projects, where a favorite sport at the time had been shooting windows out of Muni buses. Sitting behind the wheel, Bart Heslip had read the repo’s operating manual aloud to Groner by dashlight, hoping to find out how to release the handbrake, while the registered owner had been running upstairs for his shotgun.

They had made it away with nothing worse than a trunk lid full of buckshot, but Stan had been on their side ever since. Even now he was trying to pour oil on the troubled waters.

“I’m sure this sort of thing won’t happen again, J.B. Gypsies are nonviolent creatures who...”

His voice was drowned out by a terrible racket echo-chambered and amplified by the sounding-board walls of the deserted factory. RATTLE! of loose tinwork, COUGH! of ruptured muffler, SCRAPE! of rubber on pounded-in fenders, BANG! of misfiring engine, THUNK-THUNK of flattening tire.

All eyes turned toward the cacophony of noises coming their way; all breaths were bated. Somehow, all three of them knew.

Yes. Oh yes indeed. O’B. In a brand-new Eldorado.

Brand-new? But how could this be? Fenders smashed in, a tire flat. The top was crushed down to the window tops, the windshield was gone, the door panels were pounded in, the trunk was flattened, the hood was history, the grille was gone, various fluids dripped as smoke rose from both ends of the car.

O’B stepped gently on the brakes as he came up level with them. The engine died with a pop, pop, grunt, grunt, poof... silence. He had found a plastic bucket somewhere to upend where once the sleekly upholstered seat had been, and was hunkered down on it, under the flattened roof, as he drove the car. He shoved a shoulder against the door to open it. The door fell off with an agonized CLANK! of overstressed metal.

Totaled.

O’B stepped out and said jauntily to Stan, “The lighter still works, Reverend.”

“But... but... but... this... this can’t be... be... one of ours ...” Groner managed to stammer out.

“It can. It is. He beat it to death trying to get me.”

“Gypsies are nonviolent,” snapped J.B. in his nastiest give-the-teller-hell voice.

Stan the Man wilted into Stan the Boy. Ballard turned red trying to keep from laughing. O’B, who had made out a condition report when he had stopped to get the plastic bucket seat, held the completed form out to J.B. Gideon with a straight face.

“If you’ll just sign for it. Reverend, I’ll be on my way.”

Gideon stared at him with real hatred, then turned to Stan the Boy. “I will expect you in my office in sixty minutes, Mr. Groner,” he said thickly. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

He stalked unevenly away across the rubble-strewn storage lot. Stan ran after him for a few paces, but Gideon was already in his Lexus LS400 and slamming the door with eloquent rage. The car sped off. Stan turned blindly back to O’B, who was laughing, and Ballard, who was too solemnly checking the car’s serial number against his list of the Gypsy cars’ I.D. numbers.

“I’m ruined,” groaned Groner.

O’B guffawed and shoved the condition report under his nose. Stan started to automatically scrawl his signature across the bottom of it, but Ballard held up a detaining hand.

They both turned to look at him.

“What?” demanded O’B a bit shrilly. The expression on Ballard’s face had made the laughter die on his lips.

Ballard waved an airy hand at the Cadillac. “This isn’t one of our Gyppo cars. Its l.D. number isn’t on our list.”

O’B turned bone white. His freckles looked like measles against that suddenly ashen skin. “But... it has to be...”

“Okay, you’ve had your fun,” said Groner. “Now go give the man back his car — and get me the right one. Right away. Reverend.” Then Stan the Man started an ugly chortling sound.

He was laughing.

Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar, incredibly beautiful and incredibly wealthy Brazilian coffee heiress — recently widowed — passed through the gilt-edged motor-driven plate-glass door of bascom’s (rome, london, paris, amsterdam, beverly hills). Even in parlous economic times, these first few blocks of Rodeo Drive north of Wilshire in Beverly Hills are... well, Rodeo Drive. Occasionally Worth Avenue in Palm Beach pretends to the crown, but... after all, Florida...

The diminutive button-eyed youth behind Dona Dulcinea wore the Beverly Wilshire’s distinctive livery and was festooned with boxes: square boxes, oblong boxes, oval boxes, boxes large and boxes small, boxes flat and boxes deep, boxes broad and boxes skinny. All bearing labels from the most exclusive shoppes and boutiques up and down Rodeo Drive.

“My hotel has call,” announced Dona Dulcinea imperiously.

Her hotel hadn’t, but nonetheless Monsieur Bascom himself surged forward with her entrance, practiced eye agleam at the compulsive-shopper possibilities suggested by all those boxes.

“Ah, yes, of course, Madam...”

“ Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar of São Paulo. Brazil.” Her accent made “Bretheel” of the final word. Monsieur Bascom inclined his beautifully greyed coiffeur as she added, “Someone should help the...” She gestured helplessly at the bellhop. “Mmmm, how you say, young servant man...”

M. Bascom was already snapping his fingers without looking around. He had a patrician face with a thin nose pinched at the sides, and thin lips that could by a sycophantic pucker become a rosebud or by simple compression a white line of fury.

“Could the word be ‘bellhop,’ madam?”

“ Sim! Bellhop! The hotel has give...” She broke off, looking extremely sexy as she almost giggled. “No, has lend me the bellhop to help with my...” She rolled around the word on her tongue. “... mmm, buying. You sell diamonds, não ?”

“Yes, of course. We sell... diamonds .”

Bascom gave the final word the reverence usually reserved for all the names of God. His snapped fingers had brought a magnificent salesman to help the bellboy jettison all those boxes as M. Bascom led the fair Dulcinea to the gleaming glass cases where bascom’s most stunning creations dwelt in luxury.

“If one could inquire as to madam’s diamond needs...”

Again that charming almost half-giggle. “I no really know... but I weel when I see!” Her eyes got very wide and round and her mouth formed a lovely little “O.” “But whatever you show me must be most... tasteful. Nothing, mmm... vulgar, não? The absolute... how does one say...”

“Crème de la crème?” suggested Bascom.

“Sim. Exactissimo.”

Bascom had little Spanish and less Portuguese, so he found himself utterly charmed by Dona Dulcinea’s accent as she went through thirty minutes of brooches, earrings, and necklaces “not quite right” for her needs. Of course, since he had an addiction to scoring sexually with wealthy women no matter what their age or looks, he was already in thrall to the Dona’s bounteous feminine charms. Finally, he suggested that if she could perhaps tell him the occasion she sought to enhance with diamonds...

Sim, but could she have a glass of Pellegrino, perhaps... ver’ hot in here...

Refreshed and restored, she explained that it was a little — pronounced “leetle” — somet’ings for her first dinner party at the hacienda since the death... close to tears here... of her beloved “hoosban” eighteen months before...