Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Still silent. Fingers, do your work.

“Hey, how’d you get it down here in the middle of the intersection without no key to it?”

Had it! His fingers turning the ring washer as his eyes found the rearview mirror he’d tilted so he could see up the hill. Holy Christ, here she came boiling out of the house!

“Can’t leave it here in the intersection, y’know, pal.”

Ignition lock out. He could unfasten the wires, but even if he got it started, with this guy hanging in the window...

“GODDAM THIEF!”

The beefy kid turned his head — but kept his elbows firmly in the open window. Ken jerked the wires out of the old lock, started fumbling them around the posts on his own lock.

“GODDAM THIEF! GODDAM THIEF WITH MY GODDAM CAR!”

She was running now, downhill, full out, something long and glittering in her right hand. As Ken started to put his key into his now-live substitute ignition lock, the beefy guy grabbed his arm and sent the key flying.

“Hey, you! Who’s the broad yelling thief?”

Fumbling around on the floor for the key, got it! stick it into his lock now dangling at the end of the ignition wires.

“I’m talkin to you, pal!”

Sarah was coming off the curb a dozen yards away, the huge butcher knife in her right hand raised for stabbing. With desperate calm, Ken tried harder than he’d ever done in his life to articulate well.

“Hmy whife!” he managed to yell.

And twisted the key. The engine started.

But Sarah’s shoulder sent the beefy guy bouncing out of the way like a helium balloon, too late to roll up the window — the knife flashed down at Ken’s unprotected neck. But the car was easing forward so the blade gouged uselessly down the rear window and the knife was knocked from Sarah’s hand by the frame.

The amazed construction worker, flat on his butt in the street, yelled, “Your wife? Pal, you do got troubles!”

Sarah was knifeless but still running alongside, clawing at Ken’s hair and face, grabbing the door frame, being dragged several feet before he could stop the car to save her injury.

Dead stop. Leaving him a sitting duck, helpless against her attack. She pulled back her fist for the knockout blow, her red rage-contorted face filling the open window.

Ken kissed her on the cheek.

Her mouth fell open in astonishment, as did her fist. Ken tapped the accelerator, the Charger moved away. In the rear-view Sarah, dumbfounded in the middle of the street, was staring after him. Then her right arm came up, again fisted. But the fist dissolved. Thick fingers, as of their own accord... waggled .

The dragon, transformed to fair maiden by a kiss, was waving Ken Warren and her Charger a bittersweet goodbye.

“If not a terrorist and not a blackmailer, then what?”

They were back in the limo, driving back in toward Nob Hill. Marino used the lighter on both their cigarettes.

“A knight in shining armor to stop the terrorists.”

“Who do not exist. You made them up.”

He patted the pocket with the transmitter in it. “Who is to say they are made up? With proof such as this... And a blond terrorist trying to break into the President’s limo... But you can see my dilemma. Even a white knight must have his great black stallion on which to ride to the rescue.”

“Only I have a repo order on your stallion.”

“The steed of a man who saved you from arrest, disgrace, torture? Perhaps even from...” He twirled an imaginary mustache, Giselle laughed, she seemed to laugh a lot with this man. “Something worse? But me ... I can make you an offer—”

“I can’t refuse?”

“Exactly! I will give to you Cadillacs being driven by Yana’s clan—”

“But you got those cars for them in the first place!”

“ Devalesa gives, Devalesa takes away. Yana is betraying my clan to your friend with the hawk eyes, yes? So let me finish my business with the hotel while giving your DKA many cars...”

Giselle stubbed out her cigarette. What could she lose? He wasn’t going to give her the limo, anyway, and she couldn’t take it away from him. Not now. And if he fed her other Gyppo cars... and helped destroy Yana in the meantime...

“Tell me just one thing, Rudolph. Who is Angelo Grimaldi?”

“Who else could he be but Mouthpiece for the Mob, offering to rub out the terrorists for a fat fee?”

Giselle broke up. It almost would serve the hotel people right if they bit on that one. He was going on.

“We will work out a telephone code, you will be a business woman joining me at my hotel for conferences; I will give you the time and place to steal many cars.”

“Recover,” she said automatically.

“Whatever.” He paused. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

He reached over and solemnly shook her hand. Ballard had his Gyspy informant, she thought defiantly, she’d have hers. A disturbingly attractive Gypsy informant...

Very disturbingly attractive...

After dropping Giselle at her car, Marino found a payphone and called Gunnarson’s office at the St. Mark. He repitched his voice to the bogus Arab gutturals of his previous terrorist call and became more and more excited, speaking faster and faster in a higher and higher register.

“We failed this morning, but we will strike again. You have opposed us and taken one of ours, so now the St. Mark Hotel is our target! Even if your President escapes our vengeance!”

And hung up. Back at the hotel, he holed up in the Garnet Room while sending word to Gunnarson they had to meet right away. He made it even money whether the Three Stooges or the feds would show up this time, but hoped Gunnarson and his cohort were in too deep to cry wolf now.

He had a drink, then a second, rare for him; not, oddly enough, because he was nervous about a possible federal bust, but because he had been shaken by Giselle Marc.

He wanted her. Physically. Usually, with gadje women, he just serviced them as part of some con he was running. But Giselle was not only stunning, she was row -smart, smart as Yana. Despite their mutual attraction, she would be using him while he was using her, and he found that intensely exciting.

Curly, Larry, and Moe paused in the doorway of the lounge to tell the maître d’ to keep other patrons away from around their table. Marino felt himself relax. No feds.

So, as Grimaldi, he opened with, “Now do you believe me?”

“Believe you about what?” demanded a harried Gunnarson.

Marino realized his fears had been groundless. Call in the feds? These stupid bastards hadn’t even made the necessary connections to do so — connections transparent as glass to him.

Grimaldi snarled, in his Bronx accent, “Whadda ya think? The terrorists. The blonde in the garage this morning, trying to get into the President’s car so she could set a C-4 plastique bomb — and then do a remote detonation by radio signal.”

“What sort of fools do you take us for?” demanded hulking redheaded Shayne. “The underambassador of Kuwait’s wife tries to open the wrong limo, and you try to make her a terrorist?”

“The underambassador from Kuwait, a devout Moslem, has a blond American for a wife?” countered Marino witheringly.

Shayne blustered, “The Secret Service agents—”

“Are stupid.” Not that he really thought so; it was just that he had been running cons since he was three years old, and fortunately these particular agents, hustled, had bitten. “That was not Ali Akbar Zuhrain who took the blonde away from them.”

Little desiccated Smathers bubbled, “But... but... the key fit the underambassador’s limo, they drove away together...”