Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

“When I laid the idea out to the other rom ...” He paused again and shook his head. “I wanted to use four banks, it would have been easier, but they said one bank... four branches...”

“But it doesn’t make sense—”

“The stars said it did.” A shrug. “The rom ...”

Giselle shrugged in turn. He acted as if he didn’t believe in superstition, but he’d gone along with it. “Okay. Now I want to know all about a nineteen fifty-eight pink Eldorado Biarritz convertible.”

For perhaps the first time in his life, Rudolph Marino was speechless. He opened his mouth, shut it again, blinked, yawned like a confused cat, and then just stared at her.

“What has that car got to do with whether the Gypsies get a new King or a new Queen?”

Devalesa! This woman! But... with a typical Gypsy shrug he told her of the dying King’s wish to be buried in a restored 1958 Eldorado convertible because he had ridden in one to his coronation in 1958. She was laughing before he was through.

“No no no no no! You have to have a casket and an embalmer and burial certificate and—”

“ You do. Not us, we are the rom .”

She leaned suddenly across the table toward him, so their faces almost touched. “Would you give me all the other Gypsies’ Cadillacs for that pink Eldorado?”

Her voice slurred “Cadillacs” so it ended with a slight but distinct “sh” sound. Yet, even here, even now, even tipsy, she was working him. He loved it. He shrugged again.

“Of course. But even if you could and I did, you must understand that the rom are never long in one place...” Except Stupidville next week, but she was not to know of that encampment, ever. “We Gypsies are like the wind—”

“I have it,” she said. For the second time that evening, he was momentarily struck stupid. She almost giggled as she pointed at the floor as if in confirmation. “I drove it here.”

Not like other gadje women, no, not just useful to him...

But still useful. On Monday he had to be heading for Stupidville because the real Grimaldi would make his departure imperative... somehow, he had to be driving that pink Cadillac.

“Let’s go down to the garage and take a look at it.” He could barely disguise the greed in his voice.

Giselle shook her head with a lazy smile. “I didn’t say it was in the garage. If Lar—” She stopped with a surprised look on her face. Champagne. She covered by saying, “Kiss me.”

He did, using lips and tongue, working on her in turn... Devalesa, maybe this woman had hidden rom blood in her, after all. Just her kiss made him stiff.

But meanwhile, Lar . Larry something. Of course! The tall blond man with the hawk eyes. Yana must have asked him to hide the Eldorado for her at their repossession agency, where Rudolph would never think of looking. How admirable of her! But he merely shrugged at Giselle.

“It is of no moment. We can go out to dinner in the limo.” He gave it the lightest possible touch while feeling his heart actually pound as it had when he had lost his virginity at the age of 11. Champagne, of course. It could be nothing else. “Or... we could get room service...”

This was it, wasn’t it? Giselle had felt her body go soft and creamy when they had kissed. This was what she had come here to find out, admit it. About herself. About him. All questions answered, even apart from getting leads to Gyppo Cadillacs...

Ballard was probably with Ms. Slut right now.

“With more Cordon Rouge?” she asked almost defiantly.

“For us both,” he said. “And with oysters for me.”

Ballard was watching the blonde behind the reception desk, name-tagged MARL A, because she was a pale shadow of Giselle and because she was so obviously angry. Eyes glued to the entrance of the Garnet Room, mouth a downturned arc so compressed her lips had disappeared. Then her face tightened in barely repressed fury — and Giselle and the Gypsy came across the lobby to the elevator banks, arms around each other.

Arms around each other! Giselle and the Gyppo bastard! And Ballard was stuck. He couldn’t get in the elevator with them, obviously; and if he caught the next up-car he wouldn’t know their floor or room...

Giselle with that slimy Gypsy bastard who’d screw anything hot and hollow... He realized he was sitting with his teeth gritted and his hands white-knuckled on the chair arms. Jesus, Larry, get a grip. Giselle’d never cared what he did with who, just as he’d never cared what she did with who, either. Except as a friend. Sure, that was it. Friendship. He hated to see his friend sleeping with...

Bullshit. Jealously. White-hot, searing jealousy. Unexpected, totally out of left field. But it hurt. Burned. Like drinking goddam Drano straight out of the can.

But still Larry Ballard sat there.

Why? To find out how tough he was? Or to some purpose...

Then the blond woman named Marla was relieved at the desk, and Ballard knew what that purpose was. In the coffee shop she looked up, startled, when he sat down across from her. He flashed a laminated yellow State of California registration card with his color photo in the lower right-hand corner.

“I’m a private detective working on a case involving that blonde who got on the elevator with Mr. Grimaldi,” he said in gruff professional tones. “I’m hoping you can help me...”

Could she. An hour and four cups of coffee later, he knew all about Angelo Grimaldi from New York, and terrorist calls, and — although Marla didn’t — a whole lot about a Gyppo named Rudolph. He even had figured out the way the Gyppo, as Grimaldi, had used her in running — again, unknown to Marla — a damned clever scam on the hotel management.

Later for that. For now...

He went down to the garage. In all this the ’58 ragtop was significant, perhaps vital, but Giselle would be bringing it back; and besides, it wasn’t on his REPO ON SIGHT list. Rudolph’s long black limousine was. And Larry Ballard, no matter how much Drano he might have drunk, was a professional.

Third time lucky: Marino and Giselle made it absolutely in synch, then fell apart gasping. The champagne was still cold, so they lay companionably on the king-size bed, sipping bubbly and smoking cigarettes while their hearts slowed.

Their loving had been fierce, not tender; during her final involuntary rhythmic contractions, Giselle had felt Rudolph’s ultimate frenzied thrusts not only in her vagina but in her heart, perhaps even in her soul. For the first time in her life, she had wanted to be a succubus, to contract her whole body down around a man and greedily suck up all the juice he had in him, everything, everything...

She looked over at him in the warm glow of city lights far below their aerie, and felt a great joy and sadness together, as if something in her wept at a loss of ecstasy not yet known, and she was roused to give this man something, something fabulous...

Well, what about a Kingdom?

“The pink Cadillac,” she said to Rudolph. “It is yours.”

But with that highly feminine perception that made him so irresistible to women, he understood her gift and returned it.

“Cara mia,” Rudolph said, “if you do that, Larry will know you have taken it and have given it to me. I can’t let you—”

“I want him to know,” said Giselle grimly.

Larry knew bright and early Monday morning.

He had gone to DKA to drive the limo to the bank’s storage lot, but instead found himself staring at the empty space where the pink Cadillac had been — just as Giselle came striding in. Through the open garage door Ballard could see the cab that had brought her. She was wearing the same clothes as Saturday.