Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

“Magnificent, isn’t he?” asked an accented voice.

The man was bulky but very fit, early 60s, dressed with European punctiliousness in a dark solid-color suit, somber tie, white shirt, and highly polished black shoes. He had a large square head and ashy hair slightly thinning over the forehead. His blue eyes were sad and piercing and merry all at once.

“Orangs were mentioned in the Linnaeus classification texts of 1766, but the first individual was not brought to Europe until the nineteenth century. Now they are extremely rare in the wild, even though extremely intelligent.” He sighed. “Habitat destruction is making them extinct.”

Only then did Staley turn so they could shake hands. As he did, a woman and three small children bundled up against the chill ocean breeze came up to the railing near them. The two men immediately switched to Romani.

“How are you, Willem? What is this I hear about Rita?”

Willem chuckled. “It is true. In the fall she will marry a gadjo , a fine Italian lad. I know, I know, you do not approve. But remember...” The bundled-up family moved on. The two men returned to English. “I am didákái — half- gadjo — myself. All gadjo by blood, but by upbringing—”

“The story is legendary,” said Staley. “You were an orphan, six years old, on the open roads of Holland during the war. Mami Celie scooped you up and made you part of the vitsa .”

“Grandma Celie.” Willem shook his head fondly. “How I loved that woman! She taught me how to live with one foot in the Rom world and the other in the gadjo world. She dealt in the G.I. black market at Porte Portese so I could go to school. But I forget my manners. How are you, Staley? And Lulu?”

“We’re fine.” He paused sadly. “Well, we got a situation. One of our kumpania killed her husband in cold blood. We think there’s a lot of money involved.”

Willem crossed himself while shaking his head. “Money is good but murder is bad, very bad, bad for all Romi everywhere.”

“We gotta deal with it. To do that we gotta find her first. Trouble is, she’s living in the gadjo world and knows how to avoid us. She’s very smart.”

“You need some gadje to help you look.”

Staley’s eyes suddenly flashed. “Hey! Maybe you got something there! I know this guy...” He paused. “But hey! What about my manners? You’re here for our help with a recovery problem of your own.”

They ate cheeseburgers and fries and drank coffee at one of the little round tables near the concession stands. The hot grease not only smelled good, but tasted good to Staley, too. Willem told him all about Robin Brantley in Hong Kong, and Victor Marr, and the Yakuza gangster named Kahawa.

“What could Robin do? The Yakuza threatened his life.”

“And now Marr has it here in California.”

“At a fortified mountaintop facility near Big Sur.” He told Staley all he had learned about Xanadu. “Brantley says he is willing to help. But will he stand fast and not falter, not go to Marr through his fear of physical violence?”

“We gotta bigger problem,” said Staley. “The way you describe this Xanadu, my people just don’t have the sort of training and expertise ya need to get into a place like that.”

“Ah, Staley, there is always a way,” said Willem gently.

And sure enough, there was. Another hour of talk between these two sly men, and they had it. A crazy way. A brilliant way. A Gypsy way.

Ballard meant to go right back to the office after dropping off the Corvette, he really did. But he’d been at the dojo again until 2:00 A.M. the previous night, practicing for his first-degree black belt, then had been up early to check out Big John Wiley’s neighborhood. The day had snowballed from there.

So he decided to go home to his two-room studio apartment facing Golden Gate Park across Lincoln Way, make himself a pot of his signature coffee, grab a shower and shave and change of clothes. Then he could pull an all-nighter if he got any hot leads.

As he started up the hall wrapped in a cloud of steam and a big shaggy towel, Midori Tagawa came in the street door behind him. For two years he had shared the shower and bath with this porcelain-doll Japanese exchange student who rented the tiny back apartment. During those same two years he intermittently waged a gently unsuccessful seduction campaign against her.

“Hello, Larry, no see you, long time.” In her high little voice, soft as eiderdown, it was more like, “Herro, Rarry.”

He bowed elaborately. “Ah so, long time. How’s school?”

“Cost a lot. I got part-time job now.”

He had lent Midori a semester’s tuition, hoping she’d maybe pay him back in exquisite golden flesh. But her bookkeeping was scrupulous and her body remained inviolate. A few months ago they came close. He caught her coming from the shower wrapped in just a towel, which slid down her body just as she disappeared into her apartment. Accident? Deliberate? He’d been involved elsewhere at the time, so he’d never tried to find out.

“Menswear,” Midori added obscurely.

“Menswear?”

“Nordstrom’s, Stonestown. Sell menswear.”

Ballard had on very little menswear. Just his towel. And there was a draft in the hallway of the old two-story Victorian. A shiver ran through him.

“You cold,” Midori said quickly. “You come fo tea.”

“I’m not dressed for it,” said Ballard.

That’s when his towel fell off. Through no conscious agency of his own, honest. But still, revealing the tumescence of long abstinence and the remembered tantalizing glimpse of Midori’s taut ivory haunches and glowing golden thighs all those months ago. She put a hand up over her mouth and giggled.

“You come as you are, Rarry.”

Then that exquisite little hand reached out and took hold of Rarry’s distended handle and led him down the hall to mutual ecstasy in her tiny, scrupulously neat apartment.

The intercom on Kearny’s desk buzzed. Giselle flicked the switch. Jane Goldson’s clipped British voice came tinnily from the other end of the room. She was speaking in low tones.

“There’s a Mr. and Mrs. Winslett here to see Mr. Kearny and they have their knickers in a twist.”

Watching them come down the office toward her, Giselle heard a lot of alarm bells going off.

Winslett was a big bristling man, six feet and over 240 pounds, with a red lined face and a stubbly brown beard and the wide mouth and glittering blue eyes of a blustering, first-class bully. A not unfamiliar type in the repo trade.

The woman was petite, big with child, with long straight blond hair and a face that normally would have been very pretty. But she had a split lip and a swollen purplish jaw and a black eye and a feverish look. Her short-sleeved maternity dress was grease-smeared on the left hip. Her left elbow was skinned. Giselle could almost smell the fear coming off her.

A lot of alarm bells.

“I wanna see a fucker named Kearny!” yelled Winslett. “Look what he did! My wife is eight months pregnant and—”

“You’re saying he assaulted her?” Giselle was furious.

“Punched her out, knocked her down — after he took an axe to my garage door. Then he stole my brother-in-law’s car.” He slapped down a sheaf of Polaroid photos on the desktop. “I got pitchurs. So what’re you gonna do about this?”

Giselle turned to the almost-cringing blonde.

“Mrs. Winslett, are you saying our field man did this to you in the course of effecting a totally legal repossession?”

Her good blue eye — the one not swelled shut — met Giselle’s steely gaze with a sort of panic. She spoke in a half-whisper. “I... it happened like my husband says.”