Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

“Hey, bruddah, you one dead man.”

Whirling, O’B lost his balance, saved himself only by grabbing one of the angled two-by-four support struts. Wanko was directly behind him on the beam, grinning ferociously, a short-handled sledge for beating out fenders upraised in a hand that made it look like a doctor’s reflex hammer.

O’B should have remembered Wanko was a Gypsy, one of the world’s ultimate survivors, which meant one of the world’s ultimate paranoiacs. That “X” of tape had sent him into ambush to see if some unwary quarry would break cover. Unwary O’B had.

“Listen,” O’B said in a voice that wobbled with earnestness and bonhomie , “I’m not the cops and I’m not here to—”

Wanko swung the sledge. O’B ducked, it splintered his two-by-four support, he went off the beam sideways, arms windmilling wildly to no avail, struck the roof of the Jaguar feet-first. They went from under him, he shot off the slick curved surface to land on the floor just as the massive Hawaiian charged him.

O’B jinked, his attacker smashed headfirst into the side of the Jag. Wanko couldn’t get off the beam quickly without rupture, so O’B walked across the goal line for the score. He gave them a digit salute while burning rubber out of the garage.

By noon Monday the De Ville was in bonded storage waiting shipment back to the mainland, Five-O had a copy of the report, and Mr. Ueda was driving a lei -laden O’B to Honolulu International for the long hop to Florida, where Yana’s info had sort of pinpointed another Gyppo Cadillac.

O’B hadn’t had this much fun even in the Army.

That same morning in Seattle, Bart Heslip, seeking some fun of his own, parked his rental car half a mile from BIG JOHn’s BIG BUNGALOWS. He left the keys on top of the left rear tire and the completed paperwork in the glove box; he would call Avis with directions where to pick it up if he was successful.

The paved streets of Big John’s subdivision were black and smooth and gleaming in the muted light that managed to get through an angry cloud cover. Bart hunkered down behind the signboard and thought, Hot damn, it looks like rain any minute.

When the rain began, that was when the fun would begin.

A two-year-old Chrysler Imperial pulled up in front of the sales office. Big John and Little Johnny got out. Big John was carrying a satchel. Little Johnny looked at the gleaming streets of the subdivision and got inordinately excited.

“Pa, those streets look fantastic! People come out here, drive around, they’ll just start laying their money down!”

“Yeah, but where’s that nigger gonna take Adams down?”

Little Johnny looked a little scared. “Pa, you sure you wanta... uh... This Joe Adams looks pretty... tough...”

“Ain’t us going to do anything, son,” said Big John. “It’s just the man from the State of Washington gonna do his duty.”

Just then Josef Adamo’s Seville turned in from the highway. The fat Gypsy grunted his way out from behind the wheel and came around the back of the car, leaving his keys in the ignition. With a look of great self-satisfaction he waved his arm at the ribbons of tar laid over the flattened landscape.

“What I tell you? You ever see a better job than that?”

“It’s terrific!” enthused Little Johnny.

Big John had $30,000 in the satchel; it was a hell of a job at the price, but it would be a hell of a lot better job if the price was zero, nothing at all. Stall ’til the nigger got there.

“It looks okay, but that’s what we’re paying you for.”

“Speaking of getting paid...”

“Yeah, well, you were promising written guarantees...”

“I got ’em right here in the car.”

So Big John was able to stall him twenty minutes, reading things he didn’t give a damn about anyway, all he needed was the roads laid — they were — and the nigger there — he wasn’t — but then just a few little drops of rain started falling and Joe Adams got impatient and uptight and almost abusive.

“What the fuck you waiting for, Charleston? I laid your goddam streets, now gimme my money!”

Big John reluctantly handed over the satchel, buying more time because Joe Adams had to count his money. But then the rain started to come down in earnest — and still no nigger — and Adams was abruptly and surprisingly satisfied. He shook hands, tossed the satchel into the Seville, and started to get in himself only to be arrested by a sharp voice at his back.

“Are you Joseph Adams?”

Adamo backed out awkwardly and looked around. A compact very wide-shouldered black man had materialized out of the rain.

“Who the hell wants to know?”

“Would you step away from the car, please?”

Adamo got a confused look. “You a cop? This a roust?”

The black man totally ignored the rain that was really pelting down now, sparkling in his tightly curled black hair, running down his face in rivulets.

“He’s from the state licensing bureau!” burst out Little Johnny in gleeful triumph. “He’s going to get you!”

“Please. Step away from... thank you.”

The black man moved forward as Adamo shuffled awkwardly aside.

Big John felt wonderful under his rain slicker and hood. It was going to work out; even his kid showed promise. “Sir,” he said respectfully to the black man, “I had no idea he was going to illegally blacktop my roads without the proper permits...”

He stopped because the most extraordinary thing happened. The black man from the state stepped right by Joe Adams and into the Seville and slammed the door. The automatic door locks clicked shut. The car moved away around the traffic circle back toward the main highway. Everyone woke up at once.

Adamo started running after the still-slow-moving vehicle.

“MY CAR!” he bellowed. “MY CAR!”

Big John, yellow rain slicker flapping, suddenly ran too.

“MY MONEY!” he shouted. “MY MONEY!”

Little Johnny was staring at the beautiful blacktop roads.

“OUR STREETS!” he yelled. “PA! OUR STREETS!”

Big John checked at his son’s cry. Looked.

His beautiful shiny streets were dissolving under the pounding rain into mud, their blacktopping running down the ditches beside them. Just as Bart Heslip had known they would, because Josef Adamo had bought up just about all the recycled crankcase oil and cheap paint thinner in Seattle. A mix of paint thinner and crankcase oil applied to a road surface looks exactly like high-class road paving — until it rains.

Then the glistening new surface just melts and vanishes.

Screaming his fury, Big John Charleston flung himself on fat Josef Adamo.

Bart Heslip’s last view of BIG JOHn’s BIG BUNGALOWS was through sheets of torrential rain as two hefty tar babies rolled over and over in the mud, flailing ineffectually away at each other. Even as the downpour obliterated the sight, the third figure, jumping up and down and waving its arms, lost its footing and rolled down the muddy slope into the fray.

It wasn’t until he hit the Idaho line on his way to Chicago that Bart stopped to check out the bag that Josef Adamo had tossed into the Seville.

Thirty thousand dollars — in a pig’s valise! Bart Heslip cracked up. As Jane Goldson would say in her Limey accent, Dan Kearny really was going to do a bird over the personal property in this baby!

Rudolph’s actually scant data to Giselle was now going out, as Yana’s also scant data to Ballard already had, so people were on the road for the second wave of repos before the first wave had even hit the beach. Kearny still was holding off on referrals to affiliates around the country, and even to DKA branch offices: he didn’t want to make assignments until he had specific cars, names, and addresses to give them.