Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

That’s when stocking-footed Midori slammed her in the back of the head with the frying pan she had carried up from the kitchen after sneaking in despite Larry’s order.

Twice, driving in to work, Giselle caught a glimpse of the same dark sedan behind her. Her phone was ringing when she got to her desk. It was Larry Ballard. When he hung up, she was no longer worried about being tailed. She counted on it. She called Geraldine, caught her going out the door to work.

Rosenkrantz spun off the wall to smash the heel of his heavy shoe into the flimsy door just at the latch. It flew back against the wall with a crash. He went in low and to the left, Guildenstern, behind him, high and to the right. Two women were in the room. The cops holstered their pieces.

“Okay, you’ve had your little joke!” yelled Guildenstern. “Now, where in the fuck is Yana?”

Giselle Marc said to the round-faced Italian-looking woman with her, “The hairball is Guildenstern, the cueball is Rosenkrantz. They’re supposed to be Homicide cops.” To the cops, she said coldly, “I believe Yana has left the country.”

“How? She doesn’t have a passport, she can’t get one from a Gypsy documenter because she’s marime ...” Rosenkrantz stopped to point at Giselle. “You! You gave her your passport!”

“My passport was recently stolen, yes,” Giselle admitted haughtily. “I have reported the loss to the State Department and have applied for a replacement document.”

Guildenstern grinned evilly. “You ain’t gettin’ away with that one, sister. We’re gonna fry your pretty little butt—”

“Oh, grow up. Yana isn’t your killer.”

“I suppose you’re gonna tell us who is,” he sneered.

“I sure am. A woman named Luminitsa Djurik. She married Ephrem in a civil ceremony as Nadja Mihai. Together they murdered two old men with what she called magic salt.”

Despite himself, Rosenkrantz was listening.

“But those two old guys died of digitalis poisoning.”

“Magic salt is dried, crushed foxglove leaves. She would sprinkle it over their food like salt in small progressive doses like arsenic poisoning. Eventually they’d just... waste away.”

“Where do we find this mythical broad?” asked Guildenstern with a sneer in his voice.

Giselle smiled sweetly. “After she killed Ephrem, she started slowly poisoning a third old man named Whit Stabler—”

Rosenkrantz, obviously now a believer, was aghast.

“You knew this and you didn’t report it so we—”

“Would you have listened to me? This way, Mr. Stabler is safe in the hospital and Larry Ballard is at his home on Portola Drive right now, holding Luminitsa Djurik for you. She was trying to kill him and got knocked out with a frying pan.”

Guildenstern sighed. “Let’s go get her, partner. This lady here is just too goddammed much for me.”

When they were gone, Geraldine asked, “Can I tell Yana the news?”

Giselle was a bit surprised. “You know where she is?”

“She calls me from Rome.”

“Rome again,” said Giselle. “Dan Kearny’s in Rome. He’s staying at a place called San Filippo Neri.”

“A convent?” asked Geraldine.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I’m Italian, remember. I know my Italian saints.” She sighed. “I don’t know anything about the world. San Francisco is the farthest I’ve ever been from Dubuque.”

An hour later, Yana called Geraldine from Rome. An hour after that, she descended from her room at the Hotel Canada with both suitcases in hand. All her sophistication of dress and manner were gone. Her hair pulled back, her face without makeup, she looked like a schoolgirl in Rome for the religious celebrations. The thick-featured balding man at the front desk looked at her in heavy-lidded surprise.

“Parte già, Signorina?”

“I’m going to my cousin’s,” she laughed. She shook her hand in that very Italian gesture, with the limp fingers waggling from side to side. “Everything costs so much!”

She caught a bus to the Stazione and after three streetcar rides checked into the convent of San Filippo Neri.

Dirty Harry climbed the stairs silently. Already his one-eyed snake was twitching in his pants in expectation of the sexual delights to come. Whit’s room was dim; the shades were down, the curtains closed. A motionless form was just visible on the bed. The old fart must already have died.

Then the dead man sat up . Harry gave a strangled cry of terror — and the lights went on. Rosenkrantz was sitting under the covers, beaming at him.

“Harry my man, who makes the ideal groom for a murderess?”

Guildenstern said to Harry’s back, “An old guy with a million-dollar house who dies on his wedding day.”

“Except Whit didn’t die.” Rosenkrantz was off the bed.

Harry found his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just going to—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Guildenstern advised him.

“Until we can read you your rights,” explained Rosenkrantz.

And snapped the cuffs around Harry’s wrists. Really hard.

When Dan Kearny returned to the San Filippo Neri convent, the chapel and kitchen were dark, the office closed and locked, the TV turned off in what had probably been the sewing room. The polite nun from India who had checked him in was nowhere about. He was vaguely disappointed. He enjoyed talking with her. Nobody else even knew he was in Rome and he was a little lonely.

He got into the tiny elevator, punched three. When it shuddered to a stop at his floor and he turned toward his room, a nun passed him in the hall. Her black veil and starched wimple were unlike the habits of the nuns of San Filippo Neri, and left little of her demurely downturned face to be seen.

“Good evening, sister,” Kearny said as they passed.

“Buona sera,” she replied in a muffled voice.

At his room, the heavy slatted wooden window shutters he had left open on the latch let in just enough light for him to see the unsealed envelope on the floor inside the door. He stepped back into the corridor to read the bold block lettering.

He had been wrong. Someone in Rome knew him after all.

Just north of the Aurealian wall lies the 17th Century Villa Borghese, six kilometers in circumference and still a place of harmony in the heart of the Eternal City. Twelve hectares are given over to the Giardino Zoologico. At 4:00 P.M... an iron-haired, stern-faced priest entered the zoo through the main entrance and did a quick tour of the grounds. Dan Kearny had noticed that the clergy seemed able to move around Rome without anyone noticing them; with his lack of the language, he needed any edge he could get.

The zoo seemed to have too many bears and large cats, not enough primates. But a new small modern-looking building caught his eye. A large sign on its locked door announced grandly, INSTITUTO DEI PRIMATI.

“This’ll be it,” he muttered to himself.

At four-fifty, when the zoo started closing for the night, he buried himself in a dense thicket near the new facility. It was a warm evening and the light lingered until nearly ten o’clock. After the voices of departing patrons died down, he dozed off.

Just at midnight, a dozen dark figures passing close by woke him up. He followed them discreetly.

Looking like a Rom was an asset for this scam. Nanoosh Tsatshimo and Wasso Tomeshti, dressed in Gypsy garb, let half a dozen of the English-speaking believers they had encountered in the bar in Piazza Leonina into Freddie’s room after collecting their hefty fee. Rudolph was waiting outside Freddie’s cage to give note paper and an envelope to each mark.