Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

“Why not? Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are flashing her pic all over town, why can’t we?”

“They’re cops, for God sake. I’m a cop. They got the right to show it around and you...” She paused, sighed. “Oh, okay. But next Sunday we go up to the wine country in your little red car for the entire day. Just you and me, with the top down. Chasing after any foxy guys we see.”

Brother Bonaventura emerged from a rose-colored building on Vicolo della Cinque in Rome’s Trastevere quarter, contemplating the fact that sin was not new in this world. For at least two thousand years, pickpockets and fingersmiths had dwelled in this short street close to the River Tiber. Pilgrims’ purses from distant Anglia, porte-monnaies from Gaul, oversized fine Moroccan leather wallets, all had been emptied here, then thrown into the blond river to float down to the sea. The street’s name, cinque, referred to the five fingers of a pickpocket’s hand.

There wasn’t time to stroll along the Lungotevere to the Basilica of St. Peter, so he cut across Piazza San Egidio past the large entablatured windows of Vicolo del Cedro, judiciously cross-barred with heavy iron grillwork not even a two-year-old could penetrate. The young Brother swung along at a thoughtful, contemplative pace, his summer robe flapping happily around his sandals, his tonsure, surrounded by black curly hair, growing warm in the sunshine.

After dropping Bart at the airport limo to SFO and his flight to Burbank, Corinne Jones drove against the grain of rush-hour traffic up into Marin. She crossed the San Rafael — Richmond Bridge to Point Richmond, soon was drinking coffee with Johanna Knudsen in the triangle park across from Johanna’s office.

“I knew he was too good-looking and well-mannered to be true,” Johanna lamented. “Alberto Angelini, Angelo Grimaldi, those names are close — and he fits your Rudolph Marino description to a T. I put his people on Alitalia’s daily flights to Milan, spread over four days, ongoing to Rome.”

“They probably went on phony passports and stolen credit cards,” Corinne warned. Johanna shrugged.

“The bank and the feds and the airline can fight that one out. I’ve gotten my commission and I’m hanging on to it!”

Bart Heslip parked his rental car in front of Etty Mae Walston’s white frame house on Marathon Street in L.A. Someone new was living in Ephrem Poteet’s place next door; one of the fancy lightweight silver kid’s scooters called Razors was lying abandoned on the porch beside the front door. He wondered if the tenants knew that a man had been murdered in their bedroom.

Etty Mae’s front room curtains stirred, the door opened before he could lay his finger on the buzzer. She dragged him into the sitting room for iced tea, then was disappointed when he took out the envelope that held Yana’s mug shots.

“Aren’t you supposed to show me a bunch of other women’s pictures at the same time so I can pick her out by myself?”

“I’m not a cop and this isn’t a formal identification.” They were going through the glossies of Yana’s full-face and profile together. Yana glowed with beauty. “They’re police mug shots, which should be pretty good for identifi—”

“This isn’t her.”

“What?” Bart was stunned. “Now take your time, Miz Walston. It was night, it was dark—”

“I don’t need any time. Remember, I saw that woman two nights under a streetlight with my binoculars. She’s got more of a hawk nose, different-shaped forehead, fuller mouth, rounder face. She’s not this woman. I’ll swear to it in court any day.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Bart Heslip.

“Have some iced tea instead,” suggested Etty Mae Walston.

Incense thickened the air inside St. Peter’s ornate Basilica. Great spiraled pillars supported the domed tentlike canopy over the main altar, which had been covered with red and white linens. Ramon Ristik, mating Gypsy adroitness with the respect his tonsured scalp and clerical garb demanded, had passed with many other pilgrims through the immense crowd to the end of the pew closest to the wide central aisle. Tears came to his eyes when the wail of a bosh — the Gypsy violin — rose to the vaulted dome. A soulful Spanish guitar accompanied the choir’s traditional Latin chanting. The Pope wore unusually colorful vestments: fiery red, yellow, and orange that looked like flames.

During the processional the Papal entourage of bishops and cardinals in red robes and tall mitres walked right past Ramon. He was so awed he didn’t even think of picking anyone’s pockets.

Outside in St. Peter’s Square, big as a couple of football fields laid out side by side with a huge fountain in the middle, was a different story. It was jammed with forty thousand people, which meant at least eighty thousand pockets. The sun was glaring now. Ramon wiped sweat from his tonsure with a handkerchief. In bringing his hand down, he jostled a fat balding tourist wearing plaid shorts and a T-shirt reading LIONS TEN — CHRISTIANS ZERO.

“Scusi, Signore,” said the bogus Brother Bonaventura, using a tenth of his entire Italian vocabulary with those two words.

His handkerchief-shielded hand dropped the tourist’s wallet into the long pocket of his soutain to join the dozen-odd other wallets already there. The pig deserved it, wearing an irreverent T-shirt like that to St. Peter’s.

A long red banner unfurled from one of the top windows of the Papal apartment overlooking the square and the Pope’s frail white-clad figure appeared in the open window.

“Viva il Papa!” thundered forth, and again, “Viva il Papa!”

The Pontiff, voice amplified by speakers hidden among the carved biblical figures topping the pillared walls, announced the canonization of the first Gypsy saint in the church’s history. In 1936, Ceferino Jiminez Malla was arrested by Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War for defending a priest. When he wouldn’t renounce his faith, he was executed.

“Ceferino Malla brought to all of us his heart, rich with faith. It is time to take up his journey, on which we are announcers and witnesses.”

While the Pope spoke, Gypsies wearing bright bandannas worked the crowd. A score of them were selling Jiminez Malla’s finger and toe bones. A dozen more were explaining that the fifth nail — the one meant for Christ’s breast, which had been stolen by a Gypsy at the foot of the cross — had come down to the new saint in Spain and here was that very nail, right here, which the owner must now sell to be cured of his maladies.

All this activity made Ramon nervous. With so much going on, someone was going to get arrested, and he didn’t want it to be he, unable to talk himself out of trouble because he couldn’t speak the language. He drifted silently away to slip between the ranks of tour buses parked behind the square in Piazza Leonina. Someone grabbed his arm. He spun around, ready to run — but it was a nun in the brown and black ankle-length habit of the Franciscans. She put out her arms as if to embrace him. He stepped back, shocked and disoriented.

“Brother of mine, aren’t you glad to see me?” she said.

“Yana! But... the San Francisco police—”

“This is Rome.” She was leading him past the buses and away from St. Peter’s Square. “You must find me a boojo room — and a Romni who does not know that I am marime to lend me her infant for a few weeks. For a small cut of the take, of course.” She slipped her arm through his. “In the meantime, what’s this pretty story about the American Muchwaya?’

He was confused, then beamed. “Oh Yana, wait till I tell you!”

Giselle buzzed Dan Kearny with the news from Corinne Jones that the Gypsies had decamped for Rome, and for some reason he didn’t seem surprised. Two hours later, her private phone rang. She picked up.