Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Dwelling on this untimely death made her feel “a leetle faint” again, but she recovered quickly when he showed her loose teardrop diamonds set in gold which could be worn as singlets, clustered as a pendant, worn around the neck on a gold chain...

Yes! Dona Dulcinea’s interest quickened at the sight of them.

For some time the bored bellhop had been following them around the store, staring at the wonders being displayed, but unfortunately was just too far away to help catch Dona Dulcinea when she swooned and fell heavily against M. Bas-com.

As her unexpected dead weight bore Bascom to the floor, her hand struck the edge of the velvet display tray upon which the diamonds nestled. Teardrops flew in every direction. Before the salespeople could converge, the bellhop was crouched beside her, mouth working as in distress, cradling her head with his hands.

He gulped back tears. Immediately, her beautiful dark eyes fluttered open and she gazed deep into M. Bascom’s blue ones.

“I am so ver’ sorree,” she said in a little voice. The eyelids fluttered again. “The loss... of my hoosban’... sometime it has seem... I cannot... go on...”

More Pellegrino, a few minutes in a brocaded chair by the office, and Dona Dulcinea was much restored. But too upset

to, mmm, how you say, do more shop today. For now, she would return to the Beevairly Weelsheer to rest...

Without qualms, M. Bascom led her solicitously to the door. One teardrop was missing, a stone valued at $7,000, but she could not have taken it. She was, after all, very wealthy in her own right; and she had been in her swoon at the very moment the diamonds had become vulnerable. Staff was still looking, probably it had rolled under some distant display case...

Dona Dulcinea gave M. Bascom her hand to kiss and flashed her big round eyes at him. “If it is not found by tomorrow when I return, I mus’ pay for the diamon’ who is missing!”

“No need, madam,” said Bascom gallantly. “It will turn up.”

“But I insist — and I have just decide. Tomorrow, I weel buy ten of the teardrops!”

At the curb was her beautiful cream and grey Fleetwood Sixty Special four-door sedan. A grey-haired heavy-jawed man, obviously her hired driver, was doing something under the dash. But as Bascom reached out to open the door for the dona, the man started the Caddy and accelerated away into traffic without a backward turn of his head.

Leaving Bascom on the curb with his hand outstretched and his mouth, for once, hanging open in utter astonishment. He turned to Dona Dulcinea for enlightenment, and was even more astounded to see the Brazilian heiress running out into Rodeo Drive, skirts flying, face contorted, vapors forgotten.

“You son of a bitch!” the dona screamed after the departing Fleetwood. “I know who you are, faggot repo bastard! I curse your eyes and the eyes of your children! I spit into...”

Dona Dulcinea caught herself, realizing the figure she was cutting, and turned back to the curb with an embarrassed little moue . But her accent had derived from no farther south than, say, South Jersey, and, since diamonds were involved, this stripped off a good bit of Bascom’s veneer. His shit-kicker granddaddy had come west from Ada, Oklahoma, during the dustbowl ’30s, after all, to get land-rich during the postwar California ’50s, and Mama Bascom hadn’t raised no fools.

So Immaculata Bimbai spent two most uncomfortable hours in Bascom’s office with Bascom himself and a brace of Beverly Hills cops, during which time it was discovered that the Beevairly Weelsheer had never heard of her or the bellhop, and that the boxes he had been carting around all day were empty.

But finally they had to let Immaculata go, along with her young servant man. Lying to a jeweler, even a Beverly Hills jeweler, is no crime, and she was getting vocal in the way only a rom woman can while extricating herself from trouble. Most importantly of all, however, a separate strip search of her and her son — the cops never uncovered their real names or relationship — could not turn up the missing bijou .

So Immaculata came away scot-free; it was her son Lazlo who had a few bad hours in their West Hollywood motel. He ate many a slice of Wonder thin sandwich bread to coat the swallowed diamond on its way through his intestines, and brought forth just about the time Peter Jennings did the same with the evening news.

They cleaned up the teardrop and admired it, a wonderful $7,000 score; but their elation was tempered by the loss of their lovely loaded $50,000 Fleetwood Sixty Special. Not even all of Immaculata’s Gypsy curses could bring that back again.

Just about the time Lazlo swallowed the diamond, O’B poured beer for Ballard at Ginsberg’s Dublin Pub on Bay Street up in San Francisco. Under cover of CCr’s “Bad Moon Rising” on the juke, O’B was pleading, actually pleading, for assistance, which gave Ballard a wonderful chance to be sanctimonious.

“Absolutely not,” he said, not for the first time, “I am not going out to Oriente Street with you, and that’s final.”

“But Larry...” O’B again plied Ballard with beer. “Think of all the times I’ve helped you out—”

“All the times you’ve got me in trouble, you mean. No! I keep telling you, O’B, since we got no plate numbers you gotta check those Gyppo serial numbers before you grab the cars!”

Conveniently forgetting he had done the very same thing on the Sonia Lovari Allante. But that had been the right Caddy.

“There just wasn’t time, Larry. It was squatting right on the address. You know I usually always make sure before I—”

“Usually always,” said Ballard, then added, “Fairfield.”

In Fairfield late one St. Paddy’s Day, a tipsy O’B had grabbed a hearse while Ballard was inside the mortuary learning the undertaker had just caught up the payments. Even worse, O’B hadn’t checked the rear of the vehicle...

“The guy paid with a rubber check,” said O’B virtuously. “And we dumped that personal property at Eternal—”

“I don’t want to hear about it. The answer is still no.”

Actually, there was a certain logic to Ballard’s refusal. Returning the car could get messy, and a cryptic message from Yana at the DKA office meant that tonight he was getting his fortune told. And maybe getting some other treasure besides?

“Paul Bunyan really tried to kill me, Larry. I go back out there alone, and...”. O’B drew a slicing hand across his throat.

Two beers later, Ballard relented, drove O’B back to the storage lot, and helped get the Eldorado started. He even found another bucket to sit on — gingerly, his lacerated butt was still sore — so they could plan strategy while riding out to the Portola District together. He considered it simple.

“If he isn’t around, we just drop it at the curb and run.”

“If he is around, we hit him on the head with a tire iron until we get his attention.”

“He can’t be that big and tough, O’B.”

“Bigger,” said O’B. “Tougher.”

They couldn’t ease the Eldorado back to the curb exactly where O’B had gotten it, because another car was parked there. You guessed it. Another brand-new Eldorado. With paper plates.

“That’s Yonkovich’s car!” bellowed O’B as they came rattling, clunking, banging, and thunking up the street. “I’m sure of it!”

“Maybe,” Ballard yelled back cautiously over the din.

O’B shouted, “In your heart you know that it’s the —”

“It’s nice to sneak up on him this way!” shrieked Ballard.

O’B eased the totaled Eldorado to the curb in front of the house being torn down a few doors away from Yonkovich’s place. He killed the engine. Ballard rubbed his tortured ears.