Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

The only person in or out of the building was a handsome mid-30s guy with distinguished-looking touches of grey at his temples. He led a pair of leashed dogs up Walnut from the Presidio Wall and into the apartment house. The hulking black schnauzer with the magnificent walrus mustache pretended not to be with the white miniature poodle barking and circling him.

Ten minutes later, the front window curtains were opened in Meryl Blanchett’s second-floor flat. She must have come in the rear entrance. Ballard climbed the stairs to ring the bell. The door was opened by the handsome dude with the dogs.

He would have made a hell of a con man, Larry thought. Broad forehead, wide limpid brown eyes with long lashes, full lips, high cheekbones. As tall as Ballard, and as wide, but obviously a lover, not a fighter. Cashmere cardigan over a T-shirt with IN DOG YEARS I’D BE DEAD BY NOW on it. The black schnauzer leaned against his left thigh, the white poodle against his right ankle.

“Good afternoon,” he said in a sonorous voice.

Larry made a slightly confused gesture. “Mr. Blanchett?”

“I’m Meryl’s fiancé,” he beamed. “Theodore Mumford. And these are our children, Wim and Milli. How can I help you?”

The living room overlooked Walnut Street through rounded turret windows. Photos covered the mantel over a fireplace of whitewashed fire brick. Theodore adjusted one of a pleasant-faced woman of a certain age, with affection bordering on awe. On a polished antique oak sideboard was a bowl of what Larry thought was the most perfect wax fruit he had ever seen, until he realized it was real fruit, without blemish. Larry crouched to scratch ears and tickle chins.

“I’m Larry Ballard. I hoped Mrs. Blanchett might put me in touch with a mutual friend.”

Mumford looked disappointed. “Meryl’s getting her hair done. And we’re going out this evening...”

“Maybe I could catch her at the hairdresser’s.”

“Excellent!” beamed Theodore, and gave him the address.

JeanneMarie Broussard et cie hairdressing salon was in a converted Victorian on Spruce just below Sacramento. The salon’s blue door was up a flight of six red-stone stairs; pots of glowing yellow chrysanthemums graced the corners of the landing.

Unlike other salons Larry had been in, this one was devoid of sharp chemical odors. The five chairs were occupied by women with hair in various stages of disarray. None was young, and none looked like a siren capable of luring a much-younger hunk like Theodore onto the shoals of matrimony. Only one hair dryer in the corner of the room. Blow-dryers were the rule of the day.

Two of the beauticians were young, pretty, slim, chic, and ignored him. The pleasant-faced somewhat overweight girl sweeping gold-highlighted hair from around her chair gave him an almost shy smile. A petite woman in a white smock and a boy-cut left her client to approach Ballard with quick steps. She had level Gallic eyes and a French accent.

“I am JeanneMarie. May I help monsieur ?”

“Mrs. Blanchett’s fiancé said I might find her here.”

JeanneMarie beckoned to the heavyset girl, who went over to the woman under the hair dryer, checked the dial on the hood of the machine, and spoke near the woman’s ear. The three clients with their hair in different stages of completion looked at Ballard in their mirrors. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of the woman under the hair dryer. The girl returned.

“Mrs. Blanchett will be ready in fifteen minutes, sir. Then she is agreeable to taking coffee with you at Beyond Wild Dreams around the corner.”

Sir? thought Larry Ballard. Suddenly he felt old.

Oh, how wonderful! You’re a friend of Madame Miseria’s!” Meryl Blanchett leaned across the wooden table next to the glass windows to the garden. “I haven’t been able to reach her. How is she? Where is she?”

Ballard said, “I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”

He had been expecting, if not Sophia Loren, at least Rene Russo. Meryl Blanchett had fluffy, gold-highlighted hair and a plain and serious face that lit up at mention of Yana. Now it had darkened with concern.

“I have such good news for her, but she just disappeared from her ofica and I haven’t been able to reach her. You must be a very good friend to be so concerned.”

Larry told her a tale of being madly, passionately in love with Madame Miseria. That it had once been true gave the lie weight and substance. A doomed love, of course, star-crossed lovers... Which inevitably elicited Meryl’s own tale of romantic adventure.

“The day after I... the day after the... the potion... well, on the day after the dark of the moon, Theodore proposed marriage to me.” She reached across the table to squeeze Larry’s hand. “And we’ve been deliriously happy together ever since.”

Larry noticed that the engagement ring was only one of several pieces of discreet but expensive-looking jewelry she wore. Obviously, the lady was loaded. But the younger and oh-so-handsome Theodore seemed to be truly in love with her, not her money. If Larry didn’t know better, he might have thought that Yana’s potion actually had done something to make Theodore... Nah. Couldn’t be. Could it?

“When was the last time you saw Madame Miseria?” he asked.

“Oh, weeks ago. But she called me just before the new moon to ask a favor.” Meryl took a forkful of lemon meringue pie. “As if I could ever in my whole life deny Madame Miseria anything she asked.”

She told Ballard about the $5,000 check made out to Yasmine Vlanko, Madame Miseria’s real name. She told about it being forever uncashed because Madame Miseria wanted Meryl to arrange a job for a young woman as a hairdresser at JeanneMarie’s salon.

Made sense, thought Ballard. JeanneMarie’s would be a perfect place for Yana to hide out from gadje and Romi alike. But none of the beauticians was Yana, not even in disguise.

“Were you able to do it?”

“Oh, yes. She was the one who told you I would meet you here. Geraldine Tantillo. She’s wonderful. She’s already getting a following. She reminds me of... well, me.” She met Larry’s eyes across the table. “Pleasant-faced, a bit overweight, and a... a sort of ugly duckling among the swans.”

“That isn’t true of you!” exclaimed Larry, really meaning it. “Look at handsome, distinguished Theodore falling in—”

“That’s all Madame Miseria’s doing. Of course Theodore doesn’t know about the potion. He must never...”

Ballard made a zipping motion across his mouth, and Meryl giggled, as if they were schoolchildren with a secret. After paying for her coffee and pie, he walked her to her apartment.

Monday for Geraldine — if necessary. He was glad to have a lead himself, if a tentative one, to match the one Bart had bragged about on the cell phone. If only he hadn’t been such a wise-ass about Bart’s Woodside misadventures...

After a brutal twenty minutes, Bart relented and together they drove to a spotlessly kept-up three-story off-white house in the 100 block of Warren, a leisurely Forest Hill street winding along the foot of Mount Sutro. As they left Bart’s Caprice in the spring dusk, streetlights came on. A straight flight of stairs led up the right side of the house to a small square second-floor landing.

From inside, faintly, came television sounds. They rang the bell. The door was opened by a redhead in her late 20s with freckles on her face and a baby cradled in her left arm.

“Oh! I was expecting my little brother with another load of our stuff.” She had an open tomboyish face. “But it’s okay, HRH here likes to answer the door.” She chucked the baby under the chin with her free hand. “Don’t you, Poogie?”