Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

Kearny set his satchel down next to her plastic suitcase.

“Neither would they.” He fired up one of her cigarettes, then shrugged. “But at least I can take a triangle flight up to Seattle tonight on my way to Steubenville, and give that guy back the thirty thou Bart found and messengered to us.”

“Nossir, I don’t know nothing about no thirty thousand bucks I was supposed to of paid some road contractor.”

Big John Charleston was glowering at him from across the desk in the office Big John could no longer pay for on Queen Anne Ave near the Seattle Center.

“He was a Gypsy,” said Dan Kearny, trying to keep tension out of his voice. It was happening again! “He put crank-case oil mixed with paint thinner on the roads of your subdivision—”

“I ain’t got no subdivision,” snarled Big John.

“Because you guys at the state took it away from him!” chimed in Little John from his smaller desk in the corner.

“I’m not from the state! I’m a private investigator—”

Big John was on his feet.

“Then investigate how to get to hell outta my office ’fore I throw you through the window! You guys ruin me an’ then come around tryin’ to trap me into damaging admissions...”

Which meant Dan Kearny had to fly back to San Francisco to redeposit the $30,000 before catching a flight east to Iowa. He didn’t know what else to do with it — for the moment. But all that money was giving him ideas...

The flight back to San Francisco, however, was going to put him into Stupidville well after the fireworks had started there.

And in Nebraska.

And in New York City.

Pearso Stokes was a beautiful Gypsy woman of 26 who managed to look like a misfit Iranian student of 19. Her lustrous coiling black hair was skun back into a bun with a rubber band around it, huge glasses magnified her truly astonishing eyes into terrifying bug eyes. She carried a chemistry and a physics textbook under one arm, though she could neither read nor write.

But boy, could she count! She entered her fourth midtown bank of the day to work the scam supposedly originated by the legendary Tene Bimbo some seventy-five years before. The con was so old nobody remembered it anymore, especially not the harried Manhattan tellers to whose windows she shuffled. Here she put down her books and fixed the teller with her fearsome bug eyes.

“My fadder has send me money from Tehran.”

The teller leaned forward. “What?”

Her accent was truly atrocious, guttural and thick, her

voice low. He could barely understand what she said. While honking at him again, she dug through her voluminous purse for a crumpled $500 bill she handed him like a fragment of the Koran.

“What?”

—“I said I want five one-hundred-dollar bills.”

But as soon as she had them, Pearso changed her mind.

—“No, no, wait. I need three hundred in fifties and two hundred in twenties.”

The teller started over again with fifties and twenties. The line of impatient customers behind Pearso was growing. She picked up her new money, hesitated, thrust it back again.

—“Make the fifties tens, and one of the twenties fives.”

Somebody behind her exclaimed just loudly enough, “Aw, for Chrissake!”

Pearso was undeterred. The teller was flustered. He had just finished the count when she gave it all back again.

—“No. I need four fifties, ten twenties, nine tens, ten dollars in quarters, and fifty dimes.”

He had to write that one down. The line behind her was grumbling like a thunderstorm. He lost his count twice.

After all that, she exchanged the silver for two $5 bills, got another ten and four twenties, and the rest in hundreds. The patrons behind her started clapping as she left. Pearso didn’t mind: she could laugh all the way from the bank. Her silver Eldorado with its M.D. plates had the driver’s-side visor turned down to show her printed sign, EMERGENCY — DOCTOR ON CALL, so the car was unticketed even though left in a No Parking zone.

She had palmed one of the original hundreds.

Then a fifty and a twenty.

After that, two tens and a five.

On the final exchange, a fifty, two twenties, and a ten.

She had given the teller $500, had gotten $500 back, and had palmed an additional $295 that the teller wouldn’t discover was missing until he tried to balance at the end of the day.

Time for tea at her sister’s mitt-camp in the Village. But a cruising Ken Warren spotted her at Seventh Ave and West 14th, and fell in behind her. Everything fit. Eldorado. Silver. M.D. plates. Woman driving who looked like a Gyppo.

Follow until it roosted, then drop a net over it.

Despite the fancy shingle out front, READER AND ADVISOR, it was a mitt-camp. Ken parked a short block away on the narrow busy street, started to get out — and there was a wiry little guy with a sharp nose who didn’t look like any Gyppo Ken had ever seen just getting into the Caddy.

He unslotted the Toyota, followed him. When the guy stopped, Ken would grab the Caddy. Only he picked up two more guys and some luggage. One was tall and bony and middle-aged, not much heat if Ken had to dance with them. But the other one was an elephant in clothes. Not a fat elephant, either.

Not good. Not good at all. Ken couldn’t have handled him one-on-one, let alone wearing the other two around his neck.

And then, to make matters worse, they headed north out of the city along the West Side Highway. He’d topped off, but the Caddy with its outsized tank would have the range on him if they went over a couple hundred miles.

They didn’t. Two hours later the Cadillac made a turn onto Oak Street in a little town called Dudson Center and pulled up on the gravel driveway just shy of a chain-link fence behind the old-fashioned two-story white clapboard house at number 46. Good. No garage.

Ken steered the red Toyota past, made the next right, the next left, and parked. Maybe they were Gyppos after all; the big guy, who looked like two pro wrestlers at once, had sat in the backseat waving a tambourine around on the way up.

Didn’t matter. Two minutes and the Caddy would be his. He retraced his route on foot, shambling along round-shouldered and thrust-jawed like an ill-tempered dangerous bear.

The Eldorado had been left unlocked. Ken slid in behind the wheel. Man, it was loaded — cruise control, a/c, cassette player, reading lights, extremely woodlike dashboard trim. As he keyed the ignition, a bread company van pulled in behind him, filling the rearview mirrors and blocking his exit.

“Hey,” Ken said. He leaned out to look back at the van’s driver. Hell of a time for a guy to make a delivery. “Moo fit!”

Instead, the driver switched off the van’s engine, pulled on the emergency brake, and stepped out to the driveway, calling toward the house, “Andy! Mayday!”

And hell, here came another one, climbing over the driver’s seat to get out on the same side as the driver. That made five of them. The new one said, “Who is he, Stan?”

“No idea.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“No idea.”

Ken hit the button that locked all four doors, tried his keys, kept working them. Once the Caddy started, he’d push the van back out of his way and be off about his business.

People erupted from the house; first the two who’d been in the front seat of the Caddy on the way up, then a not-bad-looking woman making unconscious motions like a person lighting a cigarette off the stub of another one, then the big guy, finally a really mean-looking old dude. He and the woman stayed on the porch. The three he knew about came over to join the two from the bread truck. They were all looking in at him. He could hear them talking through the closed window.