Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

“Has Yana been charged with murder?” she interrupted.

“That’s police business,” snapped Guildenstern. “This outfit is in a lot of trouble for obstructing our investigation.”

Rosenkrantz asked, “Why are blondes like dog turds?”

Giselle was suddenly as formidable as El Capitan. “I told you not to do that. That’s twice.”

“The older they are, the easier they are to pick up.”

“That’s the third time,” she said, and threw her cup of cold coffee in his face. He jumped off the desk, bellowing. Guildenstern got out his handcuffs.

“You’re going down for assaulting an officer, sister.”

“And you’re going down for sexual harassment, brother.”

Sexual harassment. The magic words. The two cops’ eyes met. Rosenkrantz stopped wiping his face with a wad of Kleenex from the box on her desk. His partner’s handcuffs disappeared as Dan Kearny appeared in the doorway.

“You’re supposed to drink that stuff, not swim in it.” He turned away, gesturing. “You can clean up in the bathroom.”

Giselle punched out Larry’s cell phone number as she flipped the intercom switch to listen.

Sitting beside Dan’s desk, a dried-off Rosenkrantz jerked his head at the back room. “What’s biting her? PMS?”

Guildenstern asked, “What do you get when you cross a pit bull with a woman who’s having PMS?”

“You’re treading on thin ice,” said Kearny. “What I want out of you guys is why you’re harassing the help on a referral out of L.A. All you’ve got on Yana is a very shaky eyewitness.”

“You’re wrong. We got a hell of a lot more than that,” said Guildenstern, peeved at not getting to tell his joke.

“Knowing you guys ain’t exactly dummies,” said Rosenkrantz, “we wondered why you was all of a sudden so interested in two old guys up and died of natural causes — Eduardo Moneo in Vallejo and Brian Glosser here in the City. So we got secret exhumation orders on ’em. Purple foxglove poisoning, both of ’em — Digitalis purpurea . That spells a Murder One warrant for Yana.”

Kearny’s private phone rang. He snatched it up. Ballard.

“I’m at Ray Chong Fat’s. Giselle just clued me in on the phone. Should I wait or run?”

“Take your time,” said Kearny. He hung up. “Ballard, checking in. He’s at the Chinese store down the street, drinking soda pop.” He shook his head piously. “I like to protect my men, but Murder One is something else. I guess he’s all yours.”

Rosenkrantz sighed. “We better go piss in his Pepsi.”

They went out the door behind Kearny’s desk. Giselle appeared from the back room to flop down in his client’s chair.

“Why are you throwing Larry to the wolves?”

“Who’s the wolf and who’s getting tossed to who?” said Dan.

Giselle suddenly grinned. “Tossed to whom,” she said.

English letters and Chinese characters spelled out PEKING GROCERY STORE — CHINESE DELICACIES above the door of the narrow storefront. An apparently carefree Larry Ballard emerged eating an egg roll and slupping a soft drink from its aluminum can.

“Hold it right there!” bellowed a heavy voice.

Rosenkrantz, playing good cop, said, “How do you know you’ve met the woman who gives the best head in the world?”

“You’re treading on thin ice,” Larry said.

“Knock off the shit, Ballard!” Guildenstern roared. “You conned us at Beverly’s bar, how you hardly knew Yana Poteet—”

“I told you I hadn’t seen her for years. I hadn’t, and anyway, DKA didn’t want her yet. Then the Gyppos hired us to look for her, sure, but the only one had any suggestions at all was her brother, Ramon.” Larry stuffed the rest of his egg roll into his mouth, said contemptuously, “A few worthless mail drops in the Presidio.” He finished his Pepsi in one long swig, belched, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Then I got lucky. I maybe spotted Yana in Sutter Street.”

“You spotted her or you didn’t,” sneered Guildenstern.

“I wasn’t sure, she was disguised. Brown wig, glasses...” He was gesturing, intense, selling it. “I lost her in the crowd. I started canvassing the businesses along Sutter, and finally found out she was doing makeup and hair on corpses at Brittingham’s Funeral Home under the name of Becky Thatcher.”

Guildenstern was ominous. “Was working there?”

“Yeah, past tense — and don’t blame me she’s gone. Brittingham told me she was living at the Columbine on—”

“We know it,” said Rosenkrantz.

“Gone from there, too. No forwarding. End of story for the moment, but I still think I’m going to find her and—”

“No you aren’t.” Guildenstern’s voice was flat. “DKA is out of it, O-U-T. We got a Murder One warrant out on her now.”

Larry was genuinely shocked. “You mean L.A.’s got a—”

“No. We do. Find out from your boss why.”

As they strutted away, Rosenkrantz asked his partner, “What do you think of that shit?”

“I think we got an expert snow job. I think they maybe even know where she is and are helping her hide from us.” He paused. “Why is it so hard to pronounce ‘fellatio’?”

Rosenkrantz opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“You’re treading on thin ice,” he warned.

Each morning, Geraldine Tantillo put a paper bag containing an apple and an orange and a small carton of Nancy’s Organic Non-Fat Yogurt into the fridge at JeanneMarie’s salon. Each noon she got it out and walked down to the end of Spruce Street to sit on the Presidio Wall under a tree to eat as slowly as she could. She had read somewhere that after twenty minutes the stomach feels full with only a little food in it.

Today her good resolves were nullified when tall, blond, handsome Larry Ballard fell into step beside her.

“Geraldine, how does the Cliff House sound for lunch?”

The Cliff House! It sounded incredible.

They ate crab sandwiches in the upstairs bar overlooking Ocean Beach, a broad swatch of pale sand with long wide white lines of breakers marching in to smash and smoke below them. Black-clad surfers, miniaturized by distance, rode the foaming waves on their boards. Beach and breakers stretched away to the south until they merged with hazy blue sky at the horizon.

“Ah — have you heard anything from Yasmine Vlanko?”

“No.” Excitement made her almost breathless. “Have you?”

His question was the reason for the lunch, a long shot at best, but he’d had to try. Larry sighed and shook his head.

“No. But if you run into her, Geraldine, please tell her DKA has some information she’ll really want to have.”

The three of them sat in the closed electronics shop, drinking Turkish coffee from small brass handleless cups.

Rudolph Marino looked very Rom in a bright red shirt with full sleeves and a kerchief around his neck. He seldom had the luxury of this preferred style of dress anymore; lately, his Angelo Grimaldi persona had almost taken him over. Staley was dressed as a shopkeeper in flannel shirt and polyester pants and his comfortable bedroom slippers. Willem was dressed, as always, like a European businessman. His only concessions to American informality were his loosened necktie and the suit jacket hung over the back of his chair. Staley was telling them about Ballard’s finding and losing Yana.

“She must of got out before he even got to his truck.”

Willem was the first to react.

“Working at a mortuary, handling corpses? You were right to make her marime . She has no respect for traditional values.”

But Rudolph was impressed. “She sure knows where to hide.”