Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

“I’ll check the I.D., you run the keys,” he said firmly.

O’B responded weakly, “Oh Jesus Christ!”

Ballard turned to follow his stricken gaze. Thundering down the front steps of the half-demolished house was the biggest biped he’d ever seen outside 49ers game days at Candlestick Park. Before they could move he was upon them, engulfing O’b’s right hand in his own, roughly the size of a Virginia ham, and pumping it up and down with great energy.

“Geez, am I glad to see you! I really gotta apologize.” He turned to include Ballard in his remarks. “I got this terrible temper, see—”

“I wouldn’t have known that,” said O’B mildly, trying to massage feeling back into his fingers. “Anyway, no harm done. At least, not to me...”

By this time, Paul Bunyan was examining his car with professional interest, hands on hips, shaking his head fondly.

“Geez, see what I mean? My dam’ temper. I roont it.” He turned back to O’B. “Called the friggin’ bank soon’s you was gone an’ I calmed down. Tol’ ’em I was sorry they hadda send somebody — got so much demolition work goin’ on around town I just dead forgot to make the payments. Tol’ ’em I was payin’ it off — penance, y’see what I mean? Authorized a transfer right on the phone. They said they’d check an’ get you right back out here with the car, an’ here you are.”

O’B cleared his throat. “You, ah, was this, ah... I mean, which bank did you...”

“B of A, of course. Dumbbutt I talked to didn’t even know they’d sent you out after it, but that’s okay. Here you are an’ here it is.” Paul Bunyan laughed a great laugh. “Yeah, here it is! Jeez, here it is!”

Ballard opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. What was there to say? Luck of the Irish?

“Couple days, I call the insurance company an’ say it was stole. Cops get it on the hotsheet, find it parked somewhere, like this...” His massive head suddenly swung toward them, his brows drawing down frightfully. “ ’Less you got some moral qualms ’bout sticking it to the insurance company...”

They protested qualmlessness with upraised palms. Paul Bunyan laughed and nodded and again hoped O’B had no hard feelings and again shook hands with both of them. Then he turned and nodded at the other Eldorado. And laughed again.

“Same freakin’ car, ’cept for the color.”

O’B said smoothly, “And would you believe, sir, that we also have a repossession order on that very car? That’s why I brought my colleague with me when I came back...”

“No kiddin’!” He almost collapsed into helpless laughter as they walked over to the Gyppo Caddy. “How the hell you gonna tell it’s the right one, without a license plate on it yet?”

“I.D. number,” said Ballard, this time very firmly.

And began checking it. As O’B began working his keys on the locked door.

“Right car,” said Ballard.

But he used a desperate sotto voce because the door of the house had burst open and seven obviously Gypsy males were running down the walk at them. And still the keys stubbornly refused to work here in the right car, when they had perversely worked fine in Paul Bunyan’s wrong car.

Ballard went into a defensive stance, but Paul Bunyan stepped in front of him to pluck the Gypsies’ obvious ringleader from the ground with one hand, and shake him. The man’s eyes bounced around in his head, his hands flapped at the ends of his arms like clothespins on a line. The other Gypsies faded back.

“You owe the bank on that car?” roared Paul Bunyan.

“Yee... ee... ee... ees... sss... sssirrrrr...”

“Then you give that man the keys, y’hear what Vm sayin’?”

He slammed Yonkovich back down on his feet like slamming a beer mug back on a table. Tucon dug through his pockets with shaking fingers to find the keys and give them to O’B.

Using them, O’B asked, “Any personal possessions in here?”

Yonkovich shook his head mutely. Perhaps all of his voice had been shaken out of him with “Yessir.” O’B gave Ballard the keys to his company car, knowing Ballard would figure it was parked around the corner out of sight.

He paused to shake hands with the hulking demolition man. “Thanks for savings our butts, Mr... er...”

“My pleasure!” roared Paul Bunyan. “I hate the kinda deadbeat s.o.b.s get their cars repossessed!”

Luck of the Irish, thought Ballard fatalistically as he trudged away to get O’b’s car and drive it back downtown.

That same evening, back in Iowa, the first tentative bands of Gypsies were gathering around the edges of Stupidville like rime ice at the edges of a pond at the first freeze of winter. No ice crackled in the corridors of the Stupidville General Hospital, not yet, but it was coming. Oh, it was coming.

Inside the hospital, Barney Hawkins, Democrat National Assurance Company’s adjuster, was red in the face as he strode up and down Staley Zlachi’s room with short, jerky steps. Veins swelled dangerously along the sides of his neck. His suit coat was thrown across the empty other bed. Sweat mooned his armpits.

“Lissen, Klenhard ” — his voice made the word an epithet — “you know an’ I know you’re faking it, but—”

“Not by the reflex tests,” said Lulu calmly from her chair by the window. “You watch ’em yourself, mister — by them, my Karl, he got no feeling in his legs.”

As for Staley, he said nothing. In his Klenhard persona he lay on his back under the blankets with his eyes closed.

“Goddammit, man! Are you even listening—”

“You’ll bring on another attack,” warned Lulu.

Hawkins stopped in the middle of the floor and bent over almost double, like a man in pain. He finally straightened up and sighed deeply. “Look, I know you’ve got some shyster lawyer you won’t even tell me his name, but I’ve made a good offer—”

“Fifteen thousand,” said Lulu in disdain. “For my Karl living the rest of his days precarious-like, in pain and possible danger of being paralyzed forever?”

“Twenty.”

Lulu didn’t even deign to reply. Hawkins’s face became scarlet again. With visible effort he got control.

“You’re nothing, you know. Shit on a stick. But I wanta get you off the books because I have some really important cases piling up. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go to the absolute limit.” He lowered his voice. Staley opened an eye to squint at him. “I’ll go to twenty-five thousand.” Hawkins pasted a smile on his face. “And I’m a man of my word. Twenty-five thousand, I got the papers in my briefcase, you can—”

“Seventy-five,” said Staley. And closed the eye again.

“And not a penny less,” chimed in Lulu instantly.

Hawkins snatched up his jacket and stormed out. In the hall he yelled, “I’ll see you both in hell before I go one cent over twenty-five!” As he charged off and the door slowly shut on its pneumatic closer, his voice got smaller and smaller like a Louis L’Amour hero riding off into the sunset. “Crazy bastards think... wouldn’t give my mother a seventy-five-K settlement...”

Staley threw back the bedclothes and slid his bare feet to the floor. He began striding up and down the narrow room, his crumpled white hospital gown fluttering open behind him.

“Are the rom gathering?”

Lulu nodded, then frowned. “Yes. I’m keeping them away from the hospital — you’re too sick to see them. But...”

“But you’re right, Lulu darling. We can’t stall them much longer. Guess it’s time to settle with Hawkins.”

Just then the doorknob turned. With remarkable agility, Staley leaped into bed and jerked the covers up as Lulu, out of her chair with equal alacrity, grabbed up his glass of water and dashed it in his face. Crichton entered to find Staley flat on his back, tossing his sweat-beaded head from side to side on the soaked pillow.