Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Richard Kinsman Robinson was six-foot-one and 225 pounds and had broad meaty shoulders and big hands with thick fingers that could crack walnuts without effort. Most people found his size intimidating; as a guard in the tough state prison at Walla Walla, Washington, he had gotten his edge from intimidation.

But as head of security at Xanadu, Victor Marr’s hilltop sanctuary at the edge of Big Sur’s rugged Los Padres National Forest, he was intimidated by his boss. Victor Marr had eyes that could eviscerate you with a glance, bury you with a glare.

At 9:00 A.M., R.K. was on his rounds with Charon and Hecate, the twin Dobermans. Suddenly the dogs came to attention, ears pricked, lean bodies taut with incipient aggression. Then R.K. heard it, too: the unmistakable whomp-whompwhomp-whomp of helicopter blades.

He knew that chopper. Marr rarely showed up at the mountaintop retreat, and called ahead when he did, which suited R.K. just fine. It gave him a chance to get everything dressed down and tightened up before Marr arrived. Until this morning. He broke into a heavy-bodied run across the broad green grounds.

“The bastard!” R.K. exclaimed bitterly to the dogs.

The big sleek Bell 206 JetRanger came up out of the rising sun, over the tops of the dense stands of evergreens flanking the grounds, the anti-collision beacon on its upper tail fin blinking pink in the bright morning light. It came in almost as if it meant to strafe Marr’s three-story flat-roofed futuristic building, and settled on the roof landing pad. Marr and his entourage came strolling out of the front door just as R.K., panting, arrived with the dogs at the foot of the broad front stairs. With Marr were his pilot, a military-looking man named Carmody who had served in Desert Storm, and Marko, his personal secretary. Marko looked as if any keyboards he was familiar with would wear ammo belts and magazines rather than computers.

“Sir! Stop right there!” barked R.K.

“What did you say?” demanded Marr in true astonishment. People didn’t order him around. Marko suddenly had a Glock 17 in his right hand without seeming to have moved at all.

R.K. held his ground. “The dogs don’t know you, sir.”

Hecate and Charon were straining at their leashes, teeth bared, ears laid flat back against their skulls. Marr paused on the third step from the bottom.

“Leicht,” said R.K. in a low voice. R.K. did not speak German, but he’d felt it was his duty to learn a few key words. The dogs relaxed. Marr nodded his approval.

“That’s very good, R.K.” R.K. Not Robinson. Everything was all right. “What is the attack command?”

It was Angreifen , attack, but R.K. said, “If I told you that in front of them, sir, they’d take it as an order.”

Marr waved a hand at his secretary. The Glock disappeared as easily as it had appeared. R.K. and Marr strolled toward the front gate with the dogs falling into step beside them. At the gate was a uniformed guard with the West Indian oil logo on his military-style cap. He had weasel eyes and a chin going south, but he wore a Sam Browne belt with a holstered pistol on his hip, the holster flap unsnapped. Marr exchanged a few pleasantries with him and walked on, R.K. and the dogs close behind.

“How many men patrolling the grounds?” Marr asked R.K.

“Three at all times besides myself. Our guard complement is twelve men on a rotating basis, each team working eight on, twelve off so nobody gets stuck with night duty all the time. Each team gets four days off the mountain every two weeks.”

“Good. Everything looks in order. It seems you’ve done what I’ve asked, R.K. — made Xanadu secure. But I’ve been warned someone may try to breach our defenses here. I have a security consultant coming from Germany to look over our arrangements.”

“Hell, sir, me and my men can handle anything that—”

“You are to extend every courtesy, Robinson.”

Marr’s face did that thing that meant he thought he was smiling. “When he has made his recommendations, I want your evaluation on how good you think he is at his job.”

“Yessir!” exclaimed R.K. with enthusiasm. He knew already what his evaluation of the security expert would be.

That same afternoon, Larry Ballard got word of Ristik working the Richmond District bars to steer customers to Yana’s ofica on Geary. As a result, he tramped fifteen, twenty miles of concrete in the cold grey Richmond District streets that night and the next day. He almost had to fight his way out of one joint on Clement Street where Ramon had apparently taken some Russian for $500. Eighty-seven people interviewed, five definite Ramon-sightings — but none since Yana had disappeared.

By 10 P.M.. Wednesday, only the thought of Midori was keeping him awake. Leave a blind message on DKA’s unlisted number first, in case they could sleep in the next morning.

After one ring it was picked up with a guarded, “Hello?”

“Giselle, what the devil are you doing working so late?”

“Ah... Mr. Bush! What are you doing calling in? But I’m glad you did. Rudolph called. Some Gyppo spotted Ristik in North Beach tonight. He has a gig at some private club there.”

“Reading the palm of the corpse at a wake? ‘You have a short life line’...”

“Very funny. It seems our Ramon is — also a knife-juggler.”

“A knife -juggler?”

“So says the note Mr. K left.”

“I’ll try to catch up with him, and hope he doesn’t throw one at me.”

The Golden Gate was a roomy box of a place on Columbus Avenue that hosted weddings, bar mitzvahs, and conventions for under two hundred people. Its main claim to fame was a small, arched, foreshortened, slightly tipsy model of the Golden Gate Bridge that you had to cross upon entering from the street.

For an hour, Eli Nicholas played lively baya bashilba on his Gypsy bosh in honor of the happy couple. Wearing his bright Gypsy costume, Ramon Ristik, drunk from endless glasses of the newlyweds’ Korbel champagne, began his knife-juggling routine. Afterward, Eli clapped him on the back and said he was the best Gypsy knife-juggler on the west coast. High praise indeed from the Bay Area’s primo bosho mengro — Gypsy violinist.

But it was a melancholy Ramon who wended his way up Taylor toward Vallejo Street, knife case in hand, at 2:00 A.M. Melancholy because the champagne had been domestic and because his fee had been only $200.

Why couldn’t Yana have stayed in North Beach? He lifted his head and howled at the moon. We didn’t want you to go,because we needed you. But you didn’t listen to us. Together, they had raked it in. But now she, who once aspired to be Queen of the Muchwaya, was marime . And the police were looking for her. Now you are gone, living but no longer alive. It was all the fault of that tall filthy gadjo pig, Larry Ballard. From their sexual liaison, all evil had flowed. He was the thief of Yana’s Gypsy wisdom, he had seduced her and destroyed her. I miss you, Yana my sister...

He imagined Ballard walking into the Golden Gate when Ramon was juggling his gleaming knives. He stopped on the sidewalk to finish the gadjo off, a knife in each hand, slashing, stabbing...

“Jesus, man, I’ll give you the bottle!”

He looked down. A cowering homeless man was holding up a half-empty bottle of muscatel to him with shaking fingers.

Ramon scurried off, the vagrant staring after him bleary-eyed until he was out of sight, then glug-glugging down the wine.

Ballard spent nearly two hours working his North Beach contacts: the drivers at the taxi stand on Columbus; the bartender at Big Al’s; the cook at the unnamed family-style Basque café halfway up narrow Romolo Place above Broadway; waiters, parking attendants, street types, hustlers, hookers. Always trying to get news of a Gypsy who might be doing some sort of sword dance. He got his first real lead from muumuu-clad Mama Gina in the Opera Bar on Broadway at Taylor.