Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Now, Dan Kearny just wanted to get back to San Francisco so he could oversee the recovery of the missing classic cars. Maybe he could slip out, find a phone...

But the man at the podium said, “And now, with no further ado, I give you our featured speaker, DKA’s own Dan Kearny...”

No heat wave at Pacifica. Plenty of sun, but a strong onshore breeze to bring in chilly air, and soon, an afternoon fog bank unusual for May. More like August. Slanting Palmetto had some of the most breathtaking ocean views anywhere in the Bay Area, but the developers had, as usual, built the houses facing each other across the street instead of the blue Pacific. Duh.

The wide slanting driveway of the ranch-style Winslett house held a 2000 gold Saturn with paper plates. The attached one-car garage was shut. Because the Corvette was in there?

Larry pulled a U-ie, parked, got out with his repo order in one hand, in the other a set of pop keys, two heated and bent screwdrivers, and a three-prong hotwire. Tools of the trade now almost as classically outmoded as the ’62 ’Vette itself.

No kids playing in the street, no curtains twitching on the windows facing Larry from the far side of the road. He cupped his hands to peer in through the Winsletts’ garage-door window.

Yeah! The Corvette was between him and a washing machine against the back wall making dissonant slosh-gurgle harmony with the adjacent dryer’s thunk-whirl. He swung up the overhead door to slightly spronging springs. Give him sixty seconds...

Not to be. The inside door was nudged open by the hip of a very pretty blonde of about twenty-five who backed in toting a double-armload of dirty laundry. When she saw Ballard, she dropped her laundry. He almost held up crossed forefingers to ward off evil: pregnant women were dynamite, and she was extremely pregnant. But the best defense was always a quick offense.

“Mrs. Ellen Winslett?”

At her name, the panic began ebbing from her face. “Y... Yes?”

He dug out a DKA card, remembering too late that it was one of Kearny’s; he’d run out of his own. “I’m, uh, Dan Kearny, here to take physical custody of this Corvette. It is out of trust and California-Citizens Bank has put out a recovery order on it.”

“I’m... I can’t... It isn’t our car...”

“Exactly. Out of trust and in the hands of a third party. I’m glad you understand.” The washer stopped. Against the continuing thunk-whirl of the dryer, he said, “Can I get those clothes out of the washer for you, ma’am?”

“No, I wait until the dryer’s stopped before — Say, are you allowed to just come onto someone’s property like this—”

“Oh, yes, ma’am” — making it up as he went along — “under California chattel-recovery rule 19350E we can enter any unlocked garage to effect recovery of the bank’s legal property.”

She gave a rueful little laugh and shrugged prettily.

“I’ll go get the keys.”

She returned with not only the keys but two cups of tea. They sipped and chatted like old friends. She even stood outside on the sidewalk watching him put the Corvette on the towbar. She smiled ruefully.

“I’m glad Garth isn’t home. He tends to get... physical.”

“Then I’d better be gone before he gets here.”

Irate husbands defending pregnant wives he didn’t need. But he went back to shut the overhead door for her. Even big with child she was aware of herself as a woman, and he liked her.

As he topped the hill, the Corvette riding comfortably behind his truck on the towbar, a red Cherokee passed him going the other way. He caught a heavy-faced, stubble-bearded profile behind the wheel. Something in that red face made him keep his eye on the rearview. Garth tends to get physical.

The Cherokee stopped, the man turned to stare intently at either Larry’s truck or the Corvette on the towbar. At thirty yards and moving, Larry couldn’t tell which. Then he was over the brow of the hill; too late for the husband, if that’s who he was.

Bart Heslip had drawn an UpScale Motors salesman named Romeo Ferretti. Romeo was supposed to be living in an old Victorian clinging to steeply slanting Elizabeth Street, which, half a block above, banged its pretty nose on Grand View Avenue.

There probably was a grand view down into Noe Valley from the second-floor bedroom windows; certainly the willowy young man — “that’s Chuckie with an ‘ie’ ” — seemed eager to take him up for a look. Bart declined.

“Do you know when, Mr., ah, when Romeo will be back?”

Chuckie made a pouting face. “Well, I hope never. He just moved right out with my absolutely divine 33 1/3 RPM set of Wilhelm Furtwaengler’s Götterdämmerung. ”

“No! To take anybody ’s recording of Götterdämmerung is Götterdämmerung cheek, but to take Furtwaengler’s!”

Chuckie with an “ie” started to giggle.

“Oh, make fun, I deserve it. But the Berlin Philharmonic is the best recording. He took our cat, too.” A sly sideways look from long-lashed eyes. “Pussy Galore.”

“I saw the movie.”

“Are you a...” Chuckie repeated the eye-thing. “Friend of Romeo’s?”

“Never met him.” Bart half-pulled an envelope from his inside pocket, thrust it back down again. “Insurance. He reported an accident, some damage to his car...”

“Oh no! Not that adorable old Ferrari convertible!”

“The very one,” said Bart quickly. It figured. What would someone named Ferretti try to embezzle except a Ferrari?

“But Romeo’s such a careful driver!”

“Ah... do you know where I might find Romeo now?”

That’s when Chuckie started to cry.

As the AIDS threat became old hat because new and more powerful drugs were prolonging sufferers’ lives, attractive young gay males with no sense of history started a new party craze in the Castro District. They assembled at someone’s apartment with the understanding they had to leave three things at the door: their clothes, their condoms, and all talk of HIV.

Romeo became addicted to such gatherings, and at one met “a simply devastating ” — Romeo’s very own words — older man, a doctor recently retired from U.C. Med Center. Just like that, Romeo had gone to live on the medico’s big estate down in the very expensive Peninsula community of Woodside.

“The Marcoses used to have a home there,” said Chuckie in a wistful voice as he dried his tears.

“If the shoe fits...” began Bart, decided the joke was too obscure, unthinkingly added, “and now Romeo lives there.”

More boo-hoos. Bart felt like shedding some salt himself when he checked out Chuckie’s gold address book that had a lascivious Proteus frolicking with some suspiciously male-looking nymphs on the cover. The doctor’s name and Woodside address were smeared over with black ink. All Chuckie could remember was Herbie-something on — could it really be? — Bare-Something Road. Or maybe, he giggled, it was on Bare-Everything Road.

Bart tried U.C. Med Center with his cell phone, got told by Personnel that they never gave out the names or addresses of anyone who worked there or had ever worked there or might be contemplating working there in the future.

He called it in to Giselle for some skip-tracing. Perhaps because she had an M.A. in history from S.F. State, she took the long view of the Castro District’s heedless gay sex parties. It was the doomsday scenario, she told Bart, and then launched into a psychological explanation that to him explained nothing.

When she ran down, Bart said, “The last millennium ended with a whimper so I’m going to do the same to start this one?”

“Exactly! Fin de siècle . In 1900 tuberculosis — what they called consumption then — was the romantic death. In Y2K it’s AIDS. Up two-point-three percent in San Francisco.”