Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

She would drive the pink Cadillac Larry would bring her this afternoon, and Ramon would drive their sturdy three-year-old Jeep Cherokee that served the same function the Gypsy caravan wagon served their rom forebears a century earlier. They would rendezvous in Sacramento at dawn, to travel together over the Sierra and east across the Great Plains to Stupidville.

They systematically stripped the ofica of all its Gypsy paraphernalia, packing it carefully to be set up at some new location elsewhere after the funeral of the dying King. Although it looked exotic and richly furnished by the dim boojo lighting, it was all an illusion created by the heavy drapes, a couple of antique chairs, the specially constructed crystal-ball table, the highly portable ornaments and props. Holy pictures, tinkly lamps, books of divination and necromancy, charts, figurines...

As a matter of honor they were leaving with three months’ unpaid rent: it was the Gypsy way.

“Be careful of the crystal,” Yana said as Ramon added the priceless globe to one of the huge sacks of his gonya, a heavy leather strap with a bag at each end.

“Do you think I am a fool like your gadjo lover?”

“He is no concern of yours,” she snapped.

When the bags were filled to about equal weight, he put the strap across his shoulders and came erect. His body was tensed and lumped with the strain of supporting the weight of the loaded gonya . He met her eyes steadily.

“I know he slept with you Friday night.”

She drew herself up to her full height, eyes flashing.

“And if he did?”

“Yana... he is gadjo, and you... you—”

“Will be Queen of the Gypsies because of him, don’t forget that,” she snapped. “Besides, it is ended now.”

No auto traffic was allowed on Romolo Place; but as the street had to be available to fire trucks, three posts sunk in concrete at the foot of the street could be removed in an emergency. Somehow they had been set aside for yellow warning flashers; the Cherokee was parked right in front of the ofica .

As Ramon grunted his way down the stairs under his laden gonya, Yana thought, Yes, Larry is a gadjo, but he is also the only man who has ever clutched my heart in his two hands.

No more. Their meeting this afternoon, then she would never see him again. She knuckled her eyes in a little-girl gesture, then snapped at Ramon when he appeared, panting, at the head of the stairs.

“We must hurry, there are still the arrangements to be made over in Marin.”

Over in Marin, Teddy White was busy about his arrangements, all of which were financial, all of which were cash transactions. Closing out this brokerage account, cashing in these stocks and bonds, pillaging that bank balance, realizing the value on those government bonds, everywhere facing the same sort of financial advisor questions and comments.

“In this financial climate is this is a prudent move?”

“In another month, the capital gains allowances, even though reduced, would give you a tax advantage that...”

“On Friday I wanted you to roll these over. Now...”

“I must strongly advise against taking all this cash...”

“If I knew what this is for, I could better...”

To each he gave the response Yana suggested: a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity. She had also told him to take less than $10,000 in twenties, fifties, and a few hundreds from each of eight different accounts. Teddy was secretly appalled at the amount she named, secretly pleased it was not more, secretly guilty at being pleased it was only some fifteen percent of his net worth.

How could he be so petty, so mercenary? Hadn’t Yana already endangered her life just so he could survive to this moment? Couldn’t she very well be endangering it again tonight?

Giselle, staked out on the street below his house with binoculars, picked Teddy up when he came home with the money. At least, when he took from the backseat a dark green plastic garbage bag bulging with its contents, she assumed it was money.

So much money?

She waited, first thinking of revenge on Yana, then drifting into thoughts of later silken hours in Rudolph’s bed...

Over coffee Yana had been withdrawn, edgy, even a little sad, but she probably was preparing for the Teddy White scam that night. So Larry Ballard was also thinking of the night to come, when she would be finished with Theodore Winston White III and waiting in her bed for him...

Where would it end? What was going to happen? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to think beyond this coming night with her. He was well and truly hooked.

Meanwhile, on Florida’s Gold Coast, O’B was looking for Kalia Uwanowich, supposedly running a large-scale roofing scam in one of the bulging suburban areas near Fort Lauderdale, Broward County’s financial and commercial hub shoe-horned in between Miami to the south and Palm Beach to the north.

But which suburban area? O’B was doing what O’B did best — driving around, looking, talking, stopping in bars and lounges, having a drink with the good old boys. Soaking up information — and booze — like a sponge.

In Baja, in Cabo, Trin Morales already had spent several hours nosing around the fancy tourist hotels perched high up on the rocks overlooking the Pacific, or strung out along the white sandy beaches on the Sea- of Cortéz side. Then he’d parked the ancient rattling yellow VW Bug he’d rented at the airport on Cabo’s main street, and had just walked and talked. Up and down narrow potholed dirt streets, chatting with people in shanties of beaten-flat tin nailed to scraps of wood.

The Giggling Marlin, he’d learned, was where most of the gringo yachtsmen hung out. He would go in there, nurse a drink, wait. Where the yachtsmen were, the Gyppos eventually would be.

With the Cadillac Morales was after.

In Nebraska, Bart Heslip was driving west across the prairie along a gunbarrel highway remarkably flat and straight. It just cut right through all the rolling plains and undulating hills like a chainsaw through pine logs.

He’d phoned Kearny about the $30,000 in the valise, and Corinne to tell her he missed and loved her. Next stop, Chicago, and Nanoosh Tsatshimo’s bogus electroplating operation.

In Reno, the Lovellis were packing up to head east. Nearly a hundred Gypsy men, women, and children, twenty-two cars (seven of them Cadillacs ripped off from Cal-Cit Bank), and two pickups full of the paraphernalia they would need for a summer spent working the Midwest county fair circuit. East through Utah, Wyoming, a corner of Colorado, and then out across the rolling Nebraska plains toward the Mississippi and the Stupidville encampment.

In his Stupidville hospital room, Staley and Lulu were plotting the downfall of Barney Hawkins and the Democrat National Assurance Company — to the tune of $75,000. Staley was willing to come down to $50,000; Lulu didn’t think they’d have to.

At DKA, Dan Kearny was starting out the back door when his private phone rang. He sighed and went back and picked up to hear Ephrem Poteet’s voice.

“I got something for you, Kearny.”

“A Cadillac?”

“Something better. A King.”

Giselle Marc had to pee. It was all very well, in detective novels, for the writer to gloss over the gross stuff when someone was on stakeout for countless hours. Also, men had a natural spigot that interfaced just fine with an empty Styrofoam cup. A woman had some engineering problems with that. Worse, there were no adjacent bushes; if she drove off to find a gas station, Teddy would choose just that moment to depart.