Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Over Per Pieta Non Dirmi Addio from the jukebox, she shouted, “A Gyppo violinist is playing at a Bohunk wedding at the Golden Gate; maybe he brought your knife-fighter along with him. It’s a private reception, that’s why you can’t find it, honey.”

Ballard gave her a hug, and went striding down Taylor toward Columbus, hoping the reception hadn’t already ended.

Full of hostile thoughts about Ballard, Ramon glanced up as he heard approaching footsteps, to stare into Ballard’s eyes.

Full of sexual thoughts about Midori, Larry glanced up as he heard approaching footsteps, to stare into Ramon’s eyes.

Ramon leaped back as he threw aside his knife case. A huge knife was in each fist. He yelled, “Gadjo pig, you sullied my sister’s honor! I challenge you to a Gypsy duel!”

“A Gypsy duel? I guess that’s where you have two knives and I don’t have anything.”

A moment’s reflection. Ristik handed him one of the knives. Ballard gripped it gingerly in the utterly wrong position for a knife fight — blade pointing down as if for stabbing.

They were at the mouth of a half-block alley, narrow, dim, wet with drifting fog. Water dripped, light gleamed off uneven cobbles. Why didn’t he just throw down the knife and run like hell? Practicing unarmed hand-to-hand techniques against an armed assailant in the dojo was one thing, but facing a guy with a real knife in his hand, a guy who juggled them for Chrissake...

“We don’t have to do this, you know, Ramon.”

“Yes we do.” The recently despised domestic champagne was now singing in Ramon’s blood. “Unless you are daranòok as well as a gadjo pig!” He whipped the red and yellow and green kerchief from around his neck and held it out to Larry. “We each take an end of this diklo in our teeth—”

“Are you crazy?”

“You are the crazy one, for dishonoring my sister. We will fight to the death...” A wisp of his usual caution drifted through his mind. “Or, ah.... until one of us admits defeat.”

Larry said instantly, “I admit defeat.”

Ramon laughed a great triumphant laugh. Oh Devèl! it felt good to have this cowardly gadjo cringing before him! Brought to Aladdin Terrace by the power of Ramon’s killing fantasy of a few minutes before. Maybe he had some of his sister’s powers.

“Until we fight, you cannot quit.”

“Aw, shit.”

Larry took one end of the kerchief between his teeth. Ramon did the same. They began circling each other, two feet apart. The only sounds were sparse traffic on Columbus, the drip of water, their shoes on the wet uneven pavement. He tried one more time, his voice muffled and distorted by the sweaty diklo reeking of smoke and champagne clamped between his teeth.

“I just want to ask you a couple of questions, Ramon—”

But Ristik feinted at Larry’s face, then slashed at his knife hand. Ballard’s left arm automatically blocked Ramon’s blade outward, even as his right foot delivered a lightning-fast karate front-kick to Ristik’s already-tender balls. Ballard didn’t pull it as he did in training. Not totally, anyway.

Ramon doubled over with a great WHOOSH of air and dropped his knife as the diklo floated to the ground. He fell on top of the bright silk in a fetal curl, wheezing.

“That’s a Larry Ballard duel, asshole.”

No response. Larry sighed and kicked the knives away and sat down on the curb. Ramon half-sat up, gingerly.

“You have ruptured me,” he moaned.

“Again, I admit defeat, okay? Will that satisfy your fucking Gypsy honor?”

Ramon said, “I feel sick,” and proceeded to prove it.

“Wonderful,” said Ballard, on his feet to avoid the mess. As Ramon wiped his mouth with the diklo , Larry added, “Tell me everything you can about your sister and I’ll be on my way.”

“Never!” Ramon managed to wheeze out.

“I found you once, and look what’s happened. You want me to find you again?”

“I’ll die before I betray another Rom to the gadje.”

Larry crouched beside him. “I’m working for the Muchwaya.”

“I do not believe you.”

He punched in a number and held out his cell phone.

“Call Staley, ask him.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Ramon could not stand the thought of news of his defeat moving through the Romi community.

Larry walked the limping Gypsy back to the house of an Italian family who thought he was an illegal immigrant from their grandparents’ hometown of San Benedetto del Tronto on the Adriatic Coast north of Bari. Ramon didn’t have the slightest notion of where to find his sister.

All he had was a bunch of Presidio message-drops they had never used, and the name of one of Yana’s boojo clients who lived on Chestnut Street.

It was 5:00 A.M. when Larry fell into bed with the rueful realization that he was older, no wiser, and worst of all, alone.

At 7:00 A.M., a nude, hot-bodied Midori slipped into his bed. She brought him awake in the most amazing manner possible, then kept them both hovering on the edge of orgasm for forty-five minutes before they lost control and came together. He slid down the silken rope of sleep with a big amazed smile on his face, the smell of Midori in his nostrils, Midori’s self-satisfied giggle in his ears.

Two hours later, Bart Heslip waited across the desk from Dirty Harry’s empty swivel chair in Bunco, looking at the brass plaque Giselle had described: FEEL SAFE TONIGHT — SLEEP WITH A COP. Slimeball Harrigan finally showed up, smelling of Polo aftershave.

“So what’s the beef?” he asked in a disinterested voice.

“Bart Heslip with Daniel Kearny Associates. We’re trying to trace the movements of a man named Ephrem Poteet.”

There was a flash of alarm in his eyes at mention of Poteet. “Gyppo. Fucker’s dead. Got scragged down in L.A. by his Gyppo wife. End of story.”

He spoke with flat, quick disinterest. Was it too flat, too quick? Why would Bart’s innocuous question about a man killed in L.A. push a San Francisco Bunco cop’s panic button?

“We have a client who’s interested in Mr. Poteet and his contacts here in the Bay Area.”

Again, that flash of alarm. “Client got a name?”

“Sorry. Confidential.”

“Well, hell, you want me to spill my guts, but you—” He stopped abruptly with a little embarrassed chuckle. “Sorry. I was up all night shovin’ my spittin’ cobra into this little old gal gets turned on by the uniform—”

“Ephrem Poteet,” interrupted Bart coldly.

Harry got a faraway look in his eyes. “Seems to me a cop pal of mine on the Vallejo Pee-Dee told me Poteet was pickin’ pockets at Marine World up there. Guy was a hell of a dip.”

Wait a minute! Poteet was living in the Bay Area? “Wouldn’t know where he was living then, would you?”

“Sure wouldn’t,” said Dirty Harry in great disappointment.

“Would your friend on the Vallejo police know?”

“Hell, don’t you know, he retired and moved to Oregon.”

Bart went back to his new car — a nifty Chevy Caprice Giselle had found for him that was only two years old and even had a tape deck and C/D player — and thought about Dirty Harry. Then he called Giselle at the office.

“You got contacts at SFPD records, right?”

“One, but she’s a personal friend,” said Giselle.

“Think she could find out whether Dirty Harry ever busted Yana for anything — or Ephrem either, for that matter?”

“I can work on her. I can’t promise anything.”

As soon as Bart cleared Bunco, Dirty Harry went down the hall to make a panicked phone call. He caught her just as she was leaving for her gadjo job.