Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

That’s when the rude beast inside the garage started roaring and slamming itself against the closed overhead door. But Bart already had the Ferrari’s raised hood resting on his back, leaning into the engine compartment with his flashlight between his teeth. He clipped the hotwire to the distributor, found the hot post of the battery, laid the third prong of the wire against the double posts of the solanoid.

rrrRRRrrr rrrRRRrrr rrrRRRrrr VROOOOOOOOOM!

A window went up. He stepped back and slammed the hood.

“Stop! Thief!”

Stone chips flew behind his right shoulder, crack! and crack! again. Something touched his left ear with a hot finger. A third shot merely spattered more stone chips.

A voice shouted, “No! Herb! My God, don’t shoot my car!”

Bart had dropped and rolled in tight against the side of the Ferrari away from the house. Ablaze with excitement, he swung the door open above him and snaked himself into the driver’s seat. He’d never been shot at before — not in earnest. It was terrifying and exhilarating.

He couldn’t back the low-slung Ferrari up to the street without bottoming out, and the bank wanted its car back in one piece. He did a classic bootlegger’s turn on the concrete apron to end up facing the steep driveway for his run up the slope.

A two-hundred-pound Rottweiler, obviously raised on raw liver — raw human liver — raced from the garage to launch itself at his still-open door. Bart kicked out savagely just as the massive beast left the ground. His heel slammed into the short crinkled nose, the dog spun away going yowp! yowp! yowp! in astonishment. People didn’t do that to him: he did that to people.

Bright-beam lights shone in Bart’s rearview and another powerful engine roared behind him. Coming up into slanting Bear Gulch Road, he swung right, uphill , running without lights, racing past his own parked car. Over the crest, out of sight, stop! , kill the engine, hope they turned downhill.

Downhill, his pursuers might catch up with him before the gate could open at his approach. Since the Ferrari was on no cop’s hotsheet, only DKA’s, they could shoot him and get away with it — but officer, we thought he was a car thief.

He went on, using his lights now. Away clean. After a mile, he became aware of a dull throb in his nicked ear. Lucky the upholstery was leather. Easy to clean the blood off it.

O’B came up behind the wheel of his car with a start. Four A.M., two hours after bar-close. Head full of ache, mouth full of the all-too-familiar dirty sweatsocks. He checked the carport. Empty. He groped in the glove-box for his emergency flask, tipped it up to his lips. Empty, too. Damn!

Tim Bland wasn’t coming back tonight. Time to go find a twenty-four-hour gym with a sauna, soak out the alcohol. His wife, Bella, was going to be really pissed. O’B drove away into the fog.

The fog had broken early; sunshine blessed the Marina District’s wide quiet morning streets. When Harriet Nettrick’s doorbell rang at North Point and Broderick, she saw on her terrazzo stoop two young nice-looking men she took to be Latino. Each carried a workman’s long metal toolbox. The panel truck in the driveway wore the familiar Water Department logo.

She opened the door. The one with FRANK sewn above his tan uniform’s pocket said, “Mrs. Nettrick? We’re from the Water Department. A chemical contaminant has gotten into the pipes for this area and we have to eliminate it. Can we come in?”

She opened the door. “My goodness, I hope it isn’t—”

“The kitchen, ma’am?” He was all business. “Syd, you go check the upstairs bathroom.”

Syd went up the stairs as Frank followed Harriet to the kitchen and across its old-fashioned inlaid white tile floor to the sink.

“Could you get me a water glass, please, ma’am?”

While holding the glass under the cold water tap he let a fragment of crumbled Alka-Seltzer slide down its inside, then turned to her with the glass of foaming liquid in hand.

“This isn’t the way your water usually looks, is it?”

Harriet put her hand to her breast in shock. “Oh my Lord!”

Down on his knees in front of the sink, Frank opened his toolbox. It held wrenches and screwdrivers, rolls of soldering wire and electrician’s tape, and any number of odd-looking tools. For the next twenty minutes he was under there, twisting things, grunting, tapping metal tubing with the back of his small pipe wrench, having Mrs. Nettrick hand him a variety of objects from the tool kit. Finally Syd appeared in the doorway.

Frank demanded, “Were the bathroom pipes corrupted?”

“Level three.”

“Same here. We got it in time!” He went back under the sink, tightened something, gave a couple of grunts, backed out awkwardly, stood up to wipe his hands on a maroon cloth from his back pocket. He rinsed out the glass, filled it anew, and held it up before Harriet’s dazzled eyes.

“See that? Crystal clear.” And he drank it down to show her how innocuous it had become.

Because they were such nice boys, who had saved her from who knew what lurking chemical horror, Harriet wanted to tip them even though they solemnly assured her it was not necessary.

Several hours later she realized all her cash and credit cards from the purse she had left beside her easy chair in the living room were gone, as was the money from her bedside table. So were her silver and jewelry.

At about the same time the kumpania took its share of Frank and Syd’s take.

While Mrs. Nettrick was calling SFPD Bunco — much too late, of course — diminutive Midori Tagawa was almost selling sweet old Mr. Stabler the wrong size shirt.

This was at the menswear department of the big fancy Nordstrom’s department store in the Stonestown Mall way out off 19th Avenue. The shirt was a red and black check lumberjack with a brown cloth log cabin sewn to the back of it. Midori was still heavy-lidded and almost languid from yesterday’s lovemaking with Larry Ballard, still unfocused.

“Midori, are you sure that’s the right size for him?” asked a low voice in her ear.

For a second Midori thought it was an inner voice, a Zen sort of thing, then realized it was the other saleswoman on the men’s department floor, a Guatemalan of Baltic origins with the exotic name of Luminitsa Djurik.

Midori blushed and put her hand over the lower part of her face. She giggled nervously. “I no so good at sizes yet.”

“I am,” said Luminitsa. She was a long-legged, slenderly voluptuous woman with long black shiny hair and dark exotic eyes and an oval face. She raised her voice so Stabler could hear her. “This shirt is preshrunk, sir, so there is no need to buy a size too large against shrinkage in the first wash.”

“Say again, miss?” He gave them a small, sweet smile. He was short and shaky, but his faded blue eyes behind severe gold-rims bubbled with good cheer, and his silvery hair had an absolutely stunning pewter sheen. “The hearing’s the second thing that goes when you get old.”

Luminitsa moved in for the kill, a warm big-sister smile on her gleaming red lips. Midori knew this was a common tactic, taking over the sale a new salesperson had already made and grabbing the commission. But she was secretly grateful: it was so easy to lose face by not pleasing a customer.

“Grab those two young guys just coming in,” urged Luminitsa sotto voce as she turned away with the old man firmly in tow, her arm through his. Her dark eyes gleamed, her almond skin glowed. “You come over here, Mr. Stabler, I have some other things you’re just gonna love.”

“Mr. Stabler, that was my dad,” he said spryly. “I’m Whit, that’s short for Whitney...”