Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

“You are here today to bear witness to the martyrdom of an innocent woman.”

She leaped up, thrusting the infant high above her head as if to dash it to the marble floor. Several women gasped. The child gurgled sleepily. Sister Maria Innocente was motionless.

“I am bound by my final vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. I honor them. I am poor. I am chaste. I am a virgin. And I am mother of this child.” She lowered the infant, cradled him to her bosom. “When I was a teenager, God told me my destiny was as a bride of Christ. I embraced that vocation.”

But after she took her final vows, visions started to come. Of a child. She told Mother Superior of her visions. Mother Superior reproached her for the sins of pride and presumption.

One day, as she prayed alone in the motherhouse garden, a voice spoke to her in a strange tongue.

“I do not understand!” Sister Maria Innocente cried out.

“Listen... listen... and repeat...”

After three times she could recite the words perfectly, right down to their inflection — and suddenly she understood them. She never heard the voice again. Then she missed her period. When the morning sickness came, she went to Mother Superior with the whole story. She was ejected from the convent.

“I brought my child to Rome to seek wisdom of holy men and women assembled for the two thousandth birthday of the Church.”

One of these holy men had a housekeeper who, like the women gathered here today, could not abide the thought of a man touching her. But she desperately wanted a child.

“I told her there was nothing I could do. Secretly, I was terrified. What if my visions and my voice had come, not from God, but from Satan? But she pleaded and pleaded...”

They prayed together, and Sister Maria Innocente spoke the words over the housekeeper three times. The woman became pregnant. She told others of the miracle.

Sister Maria Innocente slumped in her chair, exhausted. The monk told the women, “You have come from America, even farther away than Trieste. You have chosen to live your lives without men, yet you desire children. God has given Sister Maria Innocente the gift of immaculate conception. Only during this Millennium year can she perform this miracle for you.”

The nun was on her feet, fatigue gone. The monk accepted the infant from her arms and left. This was women’s work.

“At the moment I speak the sacred words, six of you will be impregnated by the Holy Ghost. There can be no turning back, no changing of minds. Do you wish your donation returned?”

No one spoke. No one moved. The pairs of women knelt on the hard marble floor in front of Sister Maria Innocente. She spread her arms wide and chanted:

She repeated it, then said it a third time in English:

Sister Maria Innocente lowered her arms. “Those of you who have chosen to be mothers are now pregnant,” she said.

The monk escorted them out. That evening, the twelve chairs lining the hallway were once again filled with hopeful women without men, who wanted babies and who were there because of Sister Maria Innocente’s fame, just in case, just in case.

They were yelling, sweat was flying, Midori’s nails were raking his back. One last tremendous thrust took them right off the side of the bed. Even at that ultimate moment, Larry the karate kid spun them in a nifty one-eighty so he was underneath when they hit the floor. The impact made them both come.

They just lay there for a time, holding each other for dear life, laughing with the sheer joy of it, panting, spent, sated. Midori still had an hour before she had to get to work; they untangled and squirmed around to sit side by side with their knees drawn up, their bare backs against the bed.

Midori giggled and panted, “You... very bad... man, Rarry.”

“And you... very bad... girr, Midori,” he panted back.

When he said “bad girl,” dark images of Luminitsa Djurik and the old man she was taking care of sprang to mind. Here were he and Midori, young and crazy in lust — maybe even in love — and there was that poor old geezer, on the way out.

“How’s old Whit doing?”

She shook her head, bottomless dark eyes suddenly somber.

“Midori not know, Luminitsa quit her job, no work no more.”

Larry jumped to his feet. “Jesus Christ!”

“What’s the matter?” Frightened, Midori sprang up also.

He was pulling on his pants. “Whit said she sprinkled magic salt in his soup.”

“Sure, he say it better’n Viagra. But...”

“What’s Whit’s last name?”

Midori paused, pulling on her wispy underwear. “Stabrer.”

Larry grabbed her two-year-old phone book off the bedside table, muttering to himself, “Stabler. Whitney Stabler.” On Portola Drive. He dialed the number. Not in service. She’d had it changed, sure as hell.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get over there!”

Dirty Harry picked up the phone and heard, “Call me.”

He sauntered out of the Bunco bullpen and down the hall to the bank of pay phones, tapped out the number, got Luminitsa.

“Last night he signed the deed and the power of attorney,” she said. “I can list the house and close out his brokerage accounts this afternoon. With a good dose of magic salt in his breakfast, another at lunchtime, he’ll be gone by nightfall.”

“Shouldn’t I be with you? All that cash...”

The greedy turd: eventually, he’d have to go, too.

“Relax, lover. Come around six, we’ll drink champagne and hold his hand while he goes.” Her throaty chuckle was like her hand caressing his groin.

Larry ducked in and out through the thickening clots of morning traffic on 19th Avenue, took a left into Sloat, squealed uphill into Portola Drive, stood on the brakes. It was a modest stucco two-story in the 900 block, but in San Francisco’s red-hot real estate market probably worth close to a million bucks. Plenty to kill for, if you were the killing kind.

Midori was holding back. “Luminitsa my friend! She no do anything like—”

“You may not believe it, but Whit needs help. You stay here.”

Midori, good submissive little Japanese girl, stayed. A short flight of terrazzo steps led to a minuscule porch. Larry put his finger on the bell and left it there, Ken Warren — style. The door was flung open. Luminitsa Djurik glared out at him.

Her magnificent body was barely concealed by a filmy negligee; he could see the sharp brown thrust of her nipples against the thin bodice. She really did look a lot like Yana, though she sure didn’t sound like her.

“Go goddam away. I’ve got a sick fucking man here.”

To the left was a stairway leading to the second floor; to the right a living room with a nice fireplace. Ballard strode through it to the dining room, through that into the small neat kitchen. Luminitsa was right behind him. No Whit.

“Where is he?”

“In bed, you goddammed fool! He’s sick, for Chrissake!”

“Yeah, and we both know what made him that way.”

Luminitsa grabbed a butcher knife off the rack and was only a dozen seconds behind him into Whit’s room at the head of the stairs. Larry bent to scoop up the frail old man from his bed.

“I’m taking him to the hospital. They’ll run blood tests and find out just what the hell you’ve been pumping into him.”

With a shriek, Luminitsa leaped at him, sweeping down the foot-long razor-sharp blade over his shoulder and at his chest.