Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

One down. Morales finished his beans and paid up, then talked earnestly with the waiter again. Again, money changed hands. Morales moved over to lean against the wall near the tackle and pulley and the painted giggling marlin.

His waiter and several more suddenly charged the other Gypsy. Gripped by the arms and legs, he was dragged from his chair and rushed over to the pulley and tackle. Lights flickered. The waiter beat his frying pan with his ladle. The crowd shrieked, clapped, cheered. The Gyppo squawked and yelled and struggled to no avail.

They laid him on the floor and whipped a padded leather cuff around his crossed ankles, pulled it tight. Then they unceremoniously hauled him up into the air, upside down, like a gaffed marlin being avenged by the giggler painted on the wall. Flashbulbs popped.

The waiters usually let their victims remove everything from their pockets before being upended; this time they seemed to have forgotten. Change, wallet, keys, pocket knife, and money clip all rained down on the floor beneath. In a drunken flash, Morales sat down heavily amid them. Struggling to his feet, he returned them courteously to the drunk and disoriented Gyppo once the photo opportunity was finished.

All except the Cadillac keys. Morales had a use for those.

The Cadillac’s headlights carved a tunnel through the forest of live oak, bay, ginestra, and acacia they were penetrating. The narrow blacktop road switchbacked up the steep hillside, eucalyptus trees now forming a row of tall grey ghostly sentinels beside them. Off to Teddy’s right on the far slopes beyond Tennessee Valley Road were scattered lights.

“Just... just k-keep going... It’s up near the top,” he quavered. His teeth were chattering, not just from the lowered convertible top. “Right-hand... side. I’ll... know it...”

A sharp switchback, their lights picked out a packed-earth path sloping away down the hillside, an abandoned wheelbarrow with a rake and a hoe in it. Oddly, no shovel, but Yana had no need of one; she had her own in the backseat.

Around the next curve were the gravestones, up- and downslope, some recent, some very old. The cemetery was well-kept.

Teddy chattered, “He-here. Stop here.”

“You are cold?” she asked sharply as she braked the car.

“I’m frightened.”

She cut lights and motor, they got out. From the backseat she got a foot-high statue and an old-fashioned kerosene lantern with a glass cylinder to shield the flame from the wind. She worked the little metal arm to raise the glass so she could insert a match and light the wick.

There was a low moan; Teddy realized it had come from him.

“You are sick?” asked Madame Miseria.

“Still frightened.”

“Rightly so.” Then she added, “Bring the shovel and the money,” and started off up the gentle grassy slope, holding the statue against her breast in the crook of her left arm, lighting their way with the lantern held high in her right hand.

“You... you know where my... my stepparents are buried?” demanded Teddy in awe.

She turned to look down at him over her shoulder. “There are few things on this earth I do not know.”

She didn’t say that she and Ramon had been all over the small cemetery earlier to find the Whites’ grave in this newest corner close to the edge of the hardwoods. As Teddy took off his jacket and with a frightened look around started digging, she placed the figure at the head of the grave and the lantern on the tombstone. The lantern vaguely illuminated a Christ figure and some of the letters incised into the stone:

Beloved parents of... In loving memory of...

Yana’s statue was of the Blessed Mary holding the Christ Child in the crook of her left arm as Yana had held it. Mary was very dark of visage; her blue gown, His red one, were crusted with jewels and gold and wondrous embroidery. On their heads were jeweled golden crowns, with halos of what looked like beaten gold fastened behind.

“The Black Virgin,” Yana explained when she saw Teddy gaping at it. “To protect us. Dig, my child — dig.”

Teddy dug. Down into his stepfather’s grave! He had a moment of terror, revulsion. Wasn’t this sacrilege? But Madame Miseria was standing at the foot of the grave with her arms wide, her head back, her eyes closed, her features stern as the cold stone itself. Her pose aped the spread-armed Christ incised into the reddish marble slab. The lantern’s pale light emphasized her striking resemblance to the Black Virgin.

“Te avis yertime mander, ter yertil tut o del,” she chanted. If you will forgive me all I have done to you, I will forgive all you have done to me. “Ta avel angla tute, tai kodo khabe tai kado pimo tai mange pa sastimaste.”

This Gypsy service for the dead would quiet the spirit and keep it in the grave. Better to be safe than sorry, no?

Teddy was sweating and smeared with soft loam. His hands were blistered, his right calf hurt from pushing his foot down on the rim of the shovel to help force it into the ground. The snake writhed fiercely up his left leg.

“It is deep enough,” said Madame Miseria abruptly. “Put in the money and cover it over.”

Shoveling the grave full was easier than digging it out.

“No one must ever disturb this site again,” she told him. There was a terrible and utter finality in her voice. “If they do, you will surely die.”

As the brown clods covered the green plastic bag, Teddy could picture the $75,000 in the dark earth, eventually rotting away and disintegrating just as his stepparents were doing. No, he would never disturb this grave. Not ever.

As they got back into the pink Cadillac, Teddy turned for a last look. He seemed to see a shadow moving at the edge of the trees behind them. He was glad to get away from there.

Ramon’s Cherokee nosed cautiously up the road. He parked where the Caddy had been, got out, started up to the grave with his shovel and flashlight. Twenty minutes later he hefted the big green garbage bag onto his shoulder and almost ran back down to his car. He didn’t like being alone in a cemetery at night.

Giselle rode the elevator up to Rudolph’s penthouse suite. A triumphant Giselle, despite being filthy, disheveled, hair hanging down in her face, one knee skun, pantyhose run, and still wearing her running shoes. First, a hot shower in Rudolph’s big tiled bathroom; then, fragrant with the hotel’s expensive soaps and perfumes, mating with her wild Gypsy lover in the big bed...

He wasn’t there. The night clerk was gravely attentive to her dilemma. “Mr. Grimaldi checked out, ma’am. Early this morning. No forwarding address. Of course if you want to contact Bookkeeping during business hours, perhaps...”

But Giselle was gone. She’d known all along it had to end, but... but... not yet . Not like this ... A single word rose up unbidden in her mind.

Gyppo.

As Ballard, over in North Beach, started his hand toward the bell push beside Madame Miseria’s door, he stopped. The seamed Gypsy palm and Madame Miseria’s sign were gone. He jabbed an overcoated elbow through the glass.

Stripped of its Gypsy artifacts, the nondescript flat had reassumed its real character: two tiny bedrooms, a living room with a bay window, a kitchen, and a minuscule bath with water stains on the ceiling from some long-ago overflow in the apartment above. Bare pine floors, bare plasterboard walls in need of paint, still bristling with the nails from which had been strung the wires for the heavy drapes. Nothing of Yana remained.

He’d known it would have to end. But not this way. Not now... A single word came unbidden into his mind.

Gyppo.

As, in Sacramento, Yana and Ramon stared wide-eyed at one another across the open tailgate of the Cherokee. Between them was an upended green plastic garbage bag, its contents heaped around it.