Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Both O’B and Bart Heslip had called in.

The Spanish Lottery Gyps’ car was in the barn and Morales was on a plane to Cabo San Lucas, where an unnamed Gyp was maybe using his Cadillac in a lost-goldmine scam on some yachtsmen. In Baja, a Spanish-speaker was a must; hence Morales.

Ken Warren was driving Sarah Walinski’s Dodge Charger into the sunrise feeling well-content even though still not involved in the Great Gypsy Hunt. Their client on the Charger was a Jersey City used-car dealer who thought DKa’s three bids on the car were too low. Ignoring the fact that drunks’ cars get beat-up very rapidly, he thought DKA was jerking his chain. He wanted the Dodge ferried back to Jersey for resale off his own lot.

Which ticked Dan Kearny off enough to tell Ken to get cash or certified check for all costs before handing over the Charger. Ken was glad to. Don’t get him started on Jersey City...

The real point was that Dan Kearny had promised to give him any east coast Gypsy assignments that might develop while he was on the road.

Giselle Marc needed a shower and clean underwear. She couldn’t call Rudolph, the hotel switchboard would be listening in, but she needed to tell him that Ballard — damn him — had grabbed the limo she’d promised Rudolph he could keep until his hotel scam was over. So she’d told Jane Gold-son to put through any call from Mr. Grimaldi immediately — but no others. She was so upset she didn’t realize Ballard overheard the instructions.

The phone rang. Giselle grabbed it up.

“ Cara mia. I missed you when I awoke this morning.”

“Me too.” She paused. “Rudolph, I... have to tell you...”

Everything fair in love and war, right?

And this was war.

So when he saw Giselle’s extension light up, Ballard punched in and shamelessly eased his receiver off the hooks.

To hear Giselle’s voice, “Rudolph, I... have to tell you that... um... Larry, uh, repossessed your black limo over the weekend. Took it right out of the St. Mark garage.”

Rudolph’s hearty chuckle came over the wire, tightening Ballard’s hand around the receiver as if around Rudolph’s neck.

“ Cara mia mine, that is all right — let your Larry have his dog’s leavings, his Yana will dump him when she learns I have the pink Cadillac! He is meaningless to me.”

“I can hardly wait until tonight,” said Giselle in a dreamy little-girl voice that made Ballard want to fwow up.

“Nor I, my love,” said Rudolph. “I will count the hours until I hold you in my arms again.”

He made kissing noises into the phone, and hung up. So did Ballard — a tiny bit carelessly because he was fighting his gag reflex. Giselle caught the sound of the receiver going down.

Ballard! Listening in on her call!

She leaped to her feet, on her way upstairs to rip the sneaky bastard’s ears off, when she saw his extension light up. When it stayed lit, she sat down again and punched into it and carefully and silently lifted the receiver. Love and war...

Larry was speaking when she eased the receiver to her ear.

“... find out about that pink Caddy and about tonight.”

“Of course tonight!” exclaimed a voice that could only be Yana’s. “But the pink Cadillac — I need it before then, the danger has passed, it is perfect to... conclude my business with Teddy White tonight. Let us meet at that little café in North Beach...” Ballard was silent long enough for alarm to enter her voice and for Giselle to think, Maybe Ms. Slut’s clairvoyant after all. “The Eldorado is safe, is it not? It is vital—”

“Ah, sure, sure, it’s fine. But why’s it so important?”

“This afternoon for that, my love. And then tonight...”

She gave a throaty laugh and hung up.

Giselle, gloating, slipped her receiver back on the hooks when she was certain she had a dead line. Ballard and his Gypsy princess were about at the end of the trail. When he couldn’t deliver the pink Cadillac to her this afternoon...

But to make sure, tonight, before going to Rudolph’s bed, she would stake out Teddy, and he would lead her to Yana, and somehow she would mess up Yana’s scam and Yana along with it.

Ballard hadn’t told Yana he’d lost the pink Cadillac because he didn’t have to: he’d gotten something that morning over the phone from Marla at the St. Mark that he expected would let him teach Rudie-baby how to play hardball.

Angelo Grimaldi shot his cuffs so his antique gold links could be seen glittering at his wrists, then pushed open the door to Gunnarson’s office. He finally was playing match-point in the ultimate game of hardball he had come to San Francisco to play.

Delia, Gunnarson’s lanky but full-bosomed secretary, looked up at him with smouldering eyes, very different from the eyes with which she had regarded his first demand to see her boss. Obviously, Gunnarson had been pillow-talking to her about Angelo Grimaldi, and her look said she might find sexual congress with a lean dangerous Mafia attorney much more exciting than with a dull overweight hotel manager. Alas. Never to be.

“They’re waiting for you inside, Mr. Grimaldi.”

He nodded, caressed her with his eyes, and went through the inner door she buzzed open. Gunnarson, Shayne, and desiccated little Smathers were drawn up in a row across the room as if to repel a cavalry charge.

Grimaldi grinned at them. This was the moment every conman waited for, the moment of truth. Whichever way it went, the game had been worth it. He threw Shayne’s words back in his face.

“Your meeting, your agenda, gentlemen. But briefly. I have a plane to catch.”

Smathers must have gotten the short straw. He stepped forward almost formally and cleared his throat.

“Mr. Grimaldi, we have carefully considered your... offer to, um, er—”

“Blow the fuckers away,” supplied tough Angie Grimaldi in his Bronx voice, “before they blow up your fancy fucking hotel. But your forty-eight hours have passed, so I’m on my way to—”

“Goddam you, we’re paying!” burst out Shayne in a hoarse voice. “All right? We’re paying!” He stepped closer, his red face ugly. “But we know who you are and where you are, and if you’re fucking us over and the Saladin attack our hotel—”

“When I leave this room, gentlemen,” he said with a totally straight face, although the blood was singing in his veins and his stomach was quaking with suppressed laughter, “to all intents and purposes the Saladin will have ceased to exist. You have my personal guarantee that they will never bother you again.”

Gunnarson put a satchel on the desktop.

“Seventy-five thousand dollars. It’s also gotta guarantee that whatever happens, the hotel’s name won’t be connected—”

“Connected with what? With who? I will never have been here. We will never have had this talk. There will never have been a blonde. It’s what the politicians call deniability.”

Gunnarson opened the satchel, his associates pressed forward to bid a last fond farewell to the banded bundles of greenbacks stacked inside. Not Grimaldi. He merely leaned across the desk to push the intercom button.

“Delia, please come in here. Leave your steno pad.”

As he released the switch and snapped the satchel shut, Shayne began, surprised, “But don’t you want to count...”

Delia entered, looking puzzled because it had been Grimaldi’s voice on her intercom. He handed her the satchel.

“Tell Marla at the front desk to have this sent down to the garage and stowed in the trunk of my Cadillac with the rest of my luggage. And have the car brought around to the front entrance.”

Delia looked at Gunnarson, who nodded slightly.

“Ye... yes, sir, Mr. Grimaldi.”