Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

He didn’t have the interview room bugged. He didn’t have to. When Ellen and Garth Winslett brought in their complaints against Daniel Kearny, he knew he had a winner. A crowd-pleaser. A vote-getter. The brutality of the assault, the brazen smashing of the garage door, the purloined Corvette, the business card, those damning Polaroids of the battered Ellen...

That’s why he’d told Sergeant Willis Franks to bring Kearny in fast and hard, show him who was in charge from the git-go. He first eyeballed Kearny in Judge Valenti’s modern but pleasant South San Francisco courtroom overlooking Mission Road, with San Bruno Mountain lurking in the background. Kearny was a tough-looking fifty-something, with a square jaw and slightly flattened nose and cold eyes. All bluff. He was scared. Had to be.

Looking at the reddened marks on Kearny’s wrists from the tightness of the cuffs clapped on as they’d crossed out of San Francisco County, Scarbrough thought maybe he shouldn’t have told Franks to be so enthusiastic. But slimeball repossessors were never popular with jury members driving financed cars.

“Mr. Scarbrough?”

Judge Anthony Valenti was a burly 60, with a wealth of his own grizzled hair and the huge hands of his Italian grandfather, a fisherman in the days when Monterey’s Cannery Row had been the sardine-packing capital of America. Rimless specs perched on his broad fleshy nose.

“Ready for the People, Your Honor.”

“Is the defendant in court and represented by counsel?”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Tranquillini’s voice suddenly bore the subtle Italian lilt of his ancestors from northern Italy’s Lombardy district. “Ettore Tranquillini for the defense.”

Ettore? Kearny suppressed a grin. Hector was Ettore only over a plate of Mama’s pasta — or in front of an Italian judge.

Scarbrough almost felt sorry for the defendant. This was Kearny’s attorney? A little pipsqueak with not much black curly hair, and so short . Surely not even marginally competent.

Hector was on his feet. “Your Honor, I would like to bring to the court’s attention the treatment my client has received. He is a respected San Francisco businessman, yet a San Mateo deputy sheriff dragged him from his office in handcuffs—”

“He assaulted a pregnant woman!” Scarbrough burst out.

Judge Valenti said mildly, “Surely not proven yet, Mr. Prosecutor. And I want to hear you on the subject of handcuffs.”

Scarbrough said defensively, “He’s a repossessor, he—”

“Your Honor!” Tranquillini was on his feet again. “Those handcuffs were ratcheted down brutally tight — look at Mr. Kearny’s wrists.” Dan held his arms aloft; the reddened, scraped skin showed up nicely against the muted courtroom colors. “All of this without even a courtesy call to my office so I could surrender my client in the usual manner.”

“Is this true, Mr. Prosecutor? Was no attempt made—”

“We... didn’t know who his counsel was, Your Honor.”

“And you didn’t ask?” The judge heaved a deep sigh. He said to Kearny, “How do you plead, sir?”

Dan stood up respectfully. “Not guilty, Your Honor.”

“So noted. And in the matter of bail?”

Scarbrough said quickly, “A hundred thousand, Your Honor.”

“Did the complainant lose her baby?”

“Well, no, Your Honor, but—”

“Was she hospitalized?”

“No, Your Honor, but we have Polaroid photos showing—”

The judge gaveled him silent. “Those are for the trial, not here. Bail is set at ten thousand dollars, cash or bond.”

“Your Honor,” said Hec, “we request a speedy preliminary evidentiary hearing, so the court can determine whether the state has sufficient evidence to bring my client to trial.”

“Sufficient—” The judge stopped himself. He expected delaying tactics by the defense, not a rush to judgment. He said thoughtfully, “I see.” He looked over at Scarbrough. “Any objections, counselor?”

Scarbrough was secretly delighted. He had planned to ask for a fast prelim himself, giving Valenti a chance to eyeball Ellen Winslett in court before her bruises faded and before she gave birth. Beat up and pregnant. A dynamite combo. He had more than enough to bind Kearny over, and at trial the jury would convict without leaving the box. Tranquillini was a clown.

“None at all, Your Honor. We are happy to oblige the accused.”

“All parties will be advised of a court date,” Valenti said formally. “Defendant is released subject to bail being posted.”

Next morning at Brittingham’s Funeral Parlor, every viewing room was occupied, with several more Departeds on the runway, as it were, like jets waiting for clearance to depart. Two Rosaries tonight, three Viewings, in the morning four Funerals.

One result of all the hurry and worry was that Brittingham forgot all about Mrs. Karposki until a scant hour before her Viewing. He had left her hair and makeup to that strange little female person who had come around asking for the cosmetician’s position. Oh my!

He rushed down to the sterile, brightly lighted embalming area to find Harvey Parsons passing the time with eighty-three-year-old “Tex” Watkins. Tex was supine on a stainless steel table, nude, staring up into the round overhead lamp with in-different eyes. Harvey was about to drive a thick hollow steel spike down into his solar plexus to start the embalming process.

Nowadays they made a small incision above the clavicle and used an aneurysm hook to fish out the main carotid artery, put in an insertion tube, and pump in some formalin solution such as PSX. But Brittingham had trained Harvey himself in the old ways he secretly felt were still the best ways, and now couldn’t spare him for the time it would take to retrain him.

“Harvey, did that new girl, Miss Thatcher, come in today?”

Harvey was a strapping young man with a clean-featured, almost ascetic face, a shaved head, and no instinctual empathy for Bereaveds. But what that lad could do with viscera...

“She’s in the Readying Room, sir, with the Jones baby.”

Brittingham felt a thrill of anxiety. A baby! He trotted, slightly knock-kneed, across the cold, sterile embalming room to the pastel colors and soft lighting of the Readying Room. A place of preparation, a place of — dare he think it — hope?

A stranger in a white floor-length smock turned at his entrance — and was Becky Thatcher transformed. Gone under her crisp white cap was the mound of taffy curls. Gone the slanty glasses, gone the Day-Glo dress, the run-over shoes, the jangly jewelry, the garish lipstick. In their place, a doe-eyed refined-looking young woman of remarkable beauty and serenity. Only the soft voice with its tinge of accent remained the same.

“Oh, Mr. Brittingham, I’m so glad to see you, sir!”

And she stepped aside so he could view the infant. He almost cried out, My God, we’ve made a terrible mistake, that child is alive! But then he realized it was just her remarkable skill. Life glowed in the little cheeks, the chubby hands seemed to reach out for a hug, surely any moment childish prattle... He felt salt tears start in his eyes. Becky spoke earnestly to him.

“Babies is easy, Mr. Brittingham. Ones this small, they’s not much been did to them before...” She paused. “Now Mrs. Karposki, poor woman, she seen some rough things in her day.”

An abusive spouse, for one. Brittingham turned to the other wheeled gurney. All the physical bruises and psychic pain of assault were gone from the dead woman. She was surely only sleeping. And her hair! A silver halo around that thin, finally serene face.

“Miss Thatcher, what can I say?”

Becky suddenly giggled. “How about, ‘You’re hired, Miss Thatcher’? You say that, I’m one happy little hillbilly lady.”