Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

She pushed the bell and Teddy opened the door and the same big tiger-stripe tomcat scooted out between her feet and bounded down the steps. Teddy even started again, “It’s okay, he does it all...” before exclaiming, “Oh! Ms. Marc! Hello.”

“I, ah, wanted to tell... that is, I have something to...”

Teddy looked five years younger, two inches taller, and his face eased of all the lines of pain. He came by her out onto the stoop, leaving the door open.

“Let’s sit out on the steps to talk, this sun is so nice.”

Giselle sat with her feet primly together, smoothing her skirt down over her knees almost nervously.

“I... have something to tell you about Madame Miseria. She knew your name, all about your stepparents and your dead real parents because...” She cleared her throat. “She got it all from her brother. He picked your pocket in that bar—”

“Not possible,” said Teddy. “But please — go on...”

“The bleeding dollar bill — when you went to get the bowl of water, she just substituted one soaked with red dye for the one you’d put on the table.”

“Of course she didn’t,” he said, untouched. “But even if she had, that’s what convinced me my money actually was cursed.”

The big tomcat came up and started to rub against Giselle’s calf and purr. She scratched the back of his head and behind his ears absently. She was fuming.

“The poisoned egg — that was just sleight of hand. She had the devil’s head in her hand when she broke your egg. She just dropped it into the bowl and—”

“Where is all this leading, Ms. Marc?”

“It was all a series of cons,” she said stridently. “I bet she burned up a bunch of money that night too, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Five thousand dollars.”

“Five...” Giselle got control of her voice. She said very precisely, “She didn’t burn up that money, she kept it. She and her brother just burned up a different envelope full of—”

“Paper bag.”

“What?” Her voice was shrill.

“It was a paper bag full of money she burned up. But...” He gave her that goofy grin of perfect peace again. “But even if she kept the money, she would be entitled to it.”

“I... don’t understand. If she conned you and—”

“She cured me. Better than any doctor could have done.”

Giselle sighed. Out between Angel Island and Alcatraz a big oil tanker down to its marks was waddling in with a bellyful of crude for the Standard Oil Refinery at Point Richmond.

“Okay,” she said briskly. “She cured you. But also, two nights ago, she took you out to the graveyard in Tam Valley and there you and she buried a great deal of money in your stepfather’s grave. Seventy-five thousand dollars, to be exact.”

Teddy stood up abruptly. Suddenly there was panic in his eyes. “You didn’t dig it up ...”

Giselle started to say yes, then checked herself. She stood also. She put a gentle hand on his arm.

“Ramon Ristik did.”

His reaction was totally unexpected. He started to laugh.

“No he didn’t. You’re mistaken.”

“I saw him dig it up!”

“You couldn’t have,” he said with total conviction, “because I’m still here.”

“You’re still... I don’t understand.”

“That money was put there for the demons. If anyone digs it up, I die. But since I am still alive...” He flapped around awkwardly on the stair like a drunk in a dancing-chicken suit. “And cured ...”

Giselle was finally getting it. “So if someone should return seventy-five thousand dollars to you—”

“I wouldn’t take it. Because it wouldn’t be mine. Mine is buried in my stepfather’s grave.” A sudden sly grin. “Besides, if Ramon took the money, how did you get hold of it?”

“I took it first, and substituted another garbage bag full of torn-up paper for it?” It was a question, not a Statement.

“Ramon wouldn’t be satisfied with torn-up paper,” said Teddy delightedly. “So, if you have any money in your car, it isn’t mine. The demon has mine.” He chuckled. “And I’m cured.”

Giselle found herself standing on the steps alone with the cat. It was a nice cat. She scratched it behind the ears. It was a nice day. Teddy was a nice man. Yana was not a nice woman. But then neither was Giselle Marc a particularly nice woman. She remembered a line from a favorite kid’s book of her childhood. A book about a goldfish seeing the world.

“Sunny Sunfish wiggled his tail and wondered.”

Giselle wondered if she was wiggling her tail on the way down the stairs to the car.

Dan Kearny wondered if he’d ended up in that place Peter Pan went back to — Never-Never Land, that was it — instead of the executive offices of the St. Mark Hotel. Lined up across the desk from him like the Three Stooges were the hotel’s General Manager, Corporate Counsel, and Head of Security. All because he’d just thumped their satchel full of money down on the desk.

“There it is, gents, all of it. The seventy-five thousand dollars a man calling himself Angelo Grimaldi extorted—”

“That’s a great deal of money,” said the heavy-set one, Gunnarson, the manager.

The little wizzled-up one, Smathers, the corporate counsel, cleared his throat. “Yes. A great deal of money, Mr...” He looked at the business card in his hand. “Mr. Kearny.” He smiled a toothy smile. “But guests leave their valuables in the safe at the front desk — not here in the manager’s office.”

“But it’s not my money,” said Kearny with a great show of reason. “It’s your money.”

The big redheaded one, Shayne, with the gun under his arm, suddenly said, “I don’t know what sort of games you guys play back there in Washington, Kearny, but out here—”

“Washington?” Kearny jerked a thumb at his own chest. “Like the card says, Daniel Kearny, licensed private detective right here in San Francisco...”

Gunnarson waved him silent with almost a smirk.

“You’re a licensed private investigator from California. We accept that.” He opened his hands and beamed. “So why won’t you accept that we never had a guest at this hotel named Angelo Grimaldi? No Angelo Grimaldi ever tried to extort money from us. And we certainly—”

“His real name is Rudolph—”

“ Please . And we certainly never gave any Angelo Grimaldi any seventy-five thousand dollars.” He turned to look at his two associates, and chuckled. “Why, we wouldn’t keep our jobs very long if we went around dishing out free cash to just anyone who came through that door, would we, fellows?”

They also laughed. Dan Kearny looked from face to face. Never-Never Land? Alice down the rabbit hole, for Chrissake!

“Grimaldi told you that a blond terrorist was going to blow up the President and he said he killed her and dumped her body in the ocean...” They were all staring at him blandly. He added with a dash of desperation, “The blonde isn’t dead — she’s my office manager, for Chrissake! I can get her in here—”

“A terrorist for an office manager?” Smathers made little tutting noises with his birdlike mouth. “I don’t know if this is a bet, or a prank, or what, Mr. Kearny, but we’re busy men...”

Shayne picked up the satchel, clicked it shut, and slammed it against Kearny’s chest so Kearny had to grab it or let it fall to the floor. And he suddenly understood.

They hadn’t told the feds about Marino’s threatening phone calls! So now they could never admit anything to anyone!

Back at the office, Giselle Marc was sitting on the top of his desk, idly swinging her legs and smoking a cigarette.

“He wouldn’t take back the seventy-five thousand dollars,” she said.