Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

“How’d she know he might of hid anything up there?” asked Staley. “They ain’t lived together for six-seven years, right?”

“Yana’s got the second sight,” said Lulu decisively.

No one could challenge this. Staley fell silent. He felt momentarily old, happy to have an heir apparent. Rudolph could do the heavy thinking.

“Whatever she did,” said Rudolph, “we have to try and get to her before the gadje cops.”

Staley took control of things again. “Call to make sure she’s there, but go in person, Rudolph. Phones got ears.”

At forty-three, Dirty Harry Harrigan (his red hair faded to pink by the gray that Just For Men somehow didn’t quite hide), had pond-scum eyes and a brass plaque on his desk: FEEL SAFE TONIGHT — SLEEP WITH A COP. He already had in his twenty with the SFPD, and during his years on the force had never fired his weapon at anyone. But his gun, sheathed in latex, was another matter. He fired that at anything hot, hollow, and female he could find.

He tried for Giselle once when she came to Bunco with questions about Gypsies, but she turned him down. He went to what he thought was her apartment anyway; she’d slipped him the address of a radical lesbian women’s-rights martial-arts self-defense collective. His evening had ended badly.

Rosenkrantz sank with a sigh into one of the chairs across the littered desk from a brass INSPECTOR HARRY HARRIGAN nameplate that had Dirty Harry underneath the name.

“Dirty Harry,” he said. “ ’Cause they give you all the shit details, right?”

These two guys only came to him when they wanted to pick his brains. He snapped, “You fuckin’ guys say that every time you come in here. Say what you want, and leave.”

“Madame Miseria. We wanna talk to her.”

“Talk to her about what?”

“Police business,” said Guildenstern in a cold, dead voice.

Harry felt the chill. “Yeah, well, she’s Muchwaya, and I hear they’re back in town. Fact is, a Russian barkeep I know out on Clement called to report a Gyppo-looking guy took one of his regulars for half-a-K after trying to steer him to a lady fortune-teller.” He shrugged. “Coulda been Madame Miseria.”

“Her old man got aced down in LaLa Land last night, died sayin’ his wife did him.”

That changed things. “Yeah, I remember now. Madame Miseria’s supposed to have a mitt-camp out on Geary Boulevard.”

“Geary,” said Guildenstern flatly, “which runs parallel to Clement — where a guy tried to steer someone to a Gypsy fortune-teller. How come we know more about that than you do?”

After the two big Homicide men had departed, Harry went out to a pay phone. If Poteet’s wife had killed him, she now had the money and papers he had run off with two weeks earlier. Goddam her, she hadn’t bothered to tell Harry. Probably thought he’d never hear about it.

Yeah, well, he had. He savagely punched out her number. He wanted his cut pronto . And she’d better be wearing that see-through red lace bra and those red crotchless panties when he came to collect.

In a suddenly deep, growling voice, the young, beautiful, brightly clad Gypsy woman calling herself Madame Miseria intoned:

The merest hint of incense made the air slightly heavy. Yana raised her head to look deep into the eyes of the woman across the table from her. Meryl Blanchett was matronly, mid-50s, but fighting it with a too-short skirt and bright blouse and jangly jewelry. Round face with tuck marks in front of the ears, warm eyes that crinkled at the corners when she smiled.

They were in Yana’s ofica on Geary Boulevard, in the duikkerin room where she did her boojo : crystal-ball gazing, psychic reconstructions, and Tarot card readings. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with blood-red plush drapes to soak up street noise. The only light came from a cantaloupe-size crystal ball glowing between them on a three-foot-square table covered with black velvet.

Back against one wall, a museum-quality Greek icon of St. Nicholas, alive with gilt, shared its tabletop with a ceramic springer spaniel, minus a leg, won at a carnival midway. A cheap ceramic fat grinning Buddha from Chinatown, acrawl with ceramic children, wore a rosary of exquisite Danish floating amber around its neck. Red, blue, and gold votive candles softly lit an acupuncturist’s chart that mapped chi points of the human body.

Madame Miseria translated in a softer, more feminine voice:

“Yes!” cried Meryl in her soft, I-want-to-please-you voice. “I want to give Theodore back his luck.”

“Then go to the place where you two first met—”

“Julius Kahn Playground inside the Presidio Wall just down from my apartment,” Meryl interrupted breathlessly. “Theodore has a wonderful schnauzer, Wim, and my little Milli—”

“Your white miniature poodle.”

“How did you know who Milli was? I never told you...”

Yana thought, Because you flashed its picture when you took out your wallet to pay me last week. She leaned forward to lock eyes with the woman across the gently pulsing crystal ball.

“I know many more things than I wish to know.”

Yana was not yet 30, full-bosomed, with lustrous, shining black hair that, let down, reached nearly to her waist. Her oval face was truly beautiful: small, full-lipped mouth and short, straight nose. Her long-lashed, dark, deep-set liquid eyes could be stern or melting, could seem to pierce to the very soul, or fill with all of this world’s saddest wisdoms.

More things than I wish to know. Where had that come from?

“Should you know them, you would never sleep again.” The phone call had changed everything; now she had to rush to the client. “At the playground you will select a blade of grass and take it in your mouth. Then you will turn first to the east and then to the west, and say...” And she deepened her voice again to chant:

Meryl exclaimed despairingly, “I’ll never be able to learn either one of those. I’m terrible with languages.”

“I have written out translations for you to memorize.”

In her mind’s eye she could see Theodore and Wim: a pair of handsome devils. Theodore with touches of bogus grey at the temples, Wim with a magnificent walrus mustache. The pair of them trolling the Presidio Wall for foolish females. A scoundrel, Theodore. He would take Meryl for much more than Yana ever would — including her happiness. Yana would have liked to crush this Theodore like a grape. Or really bind him to Meryl.

She sighed inwardly, softened her voice to warm and melodious as she gave Meryl the chant’s translation.

She said sternly, “You must cut the blade of grass into small pieces and put it into his food — a salad is best. When he eats of it, he will be moved to love you, to be truehearted.”

Meryl laid five $100 bills on the table, belatedly kept her hand on them as if fearing that mere money would not buy her what she so desperately sought. Yana was counting on this.