32 Cadillacs

Just so you know

I offer the usual disclaimer: the characters, events, and places in this novel are totally fictional, products of the author’s lively imagination. Now, having said that:

Once upon a time a band of Gypsies really did rip off thirty-two cars from a large San Francisco Bay Area bank in a single day. During the next months David Kikkert & Associates, hired to recover them, grabbed twenty-nine of the thirty-two all over the U.S.A. (including Hawaii) and in Mexico.

Here’s where, in 32 Cadillacs, the currency of truth becomes funny money, for not every repo in the novel took place while tracking down these Gypsies during a twenty-six-day time frame. Some were “stretched” a bit, others were from elsewhere in my dozen years as a legal car thief, but all really happened — even Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and the Lovellis in Nebraska.

Although my stance toward the rom during my detective career was strictly adversarial, my Gypsy lore in 32 Cadillacs is as honest as research and experience can make it, as are their scams, cons, and grifts. And I have tried to make my fictional Gypsies realistic — and fun — without sentimentalizing them. If you sentimentalize Gypsies, you run the risk of ending up with a car that won’t run, a roof that won’t stop the rain, or a driveway that comes up on the sole of your shoe.

On that note: our society becomes ever more bland, ever more afraid of countless pressure groups poised to scream foul if their particular toe gets stepped on. In 32 Cadillacs they can find a lot to scream about. But to sanitize the tough and lively world I am writing of would be to make its people mere hollow reeds, the novel itself an exercise in futility.

The amount you can withdraw from a bank account without federal scrutiny is under $10,000, so actually my Gypsies should be moving $9,999.99 around during their bank scam. It was just a lot less cumbersome to make it an even 10K.

Bizarre as they might seem, the shenanigans at the Giggling Marlin in Cabo San Lucas are a real, nightly occurrence.

Finally, I want to round up the usual suspects:

First, foremost, and always, Don — beloved wife, best friend, peerless editor, critic, greatest support — who bled a lot over this book and lent it her own invaluable Gypsy research.

My agents, Henry Morrison and Danny Baror, poked and prodded and threatened and cajoled and never lost faith.

Otto and Carolyn Penzler, early enthusiasts when they were Mysterious Press, and Bill Malloy, who continued their enthusiasm after he took over as editor-in-chief of Mysterious.

Martin Cruz Smith shared his research from Gypsy in Amber and Canto for a Gypsy, his lovely wife, Em, did the same with the notebooks and diaries from her remarkable clergyman grandfather’s lifelong involvement with the Gypsies.

Inspector Victor Rykoff, SFPD Bunco, is not anything at all like Dirty Harry Harrigan; and no one like Stan Groner was ever remotely involved in the Great Gypsy Hunt.

Don Westlake found these tales amusing over a long Mohonk weekend, and later, during a train ride in Spain, suggesting sharing a chapter of this book with one of his own (it turned up in his Dortmunder classic, Drowned Hopes).

Finally, the real guys and gals of the once-real DKA:

Dave Kikkert (R.I.P.)

Hiroko Ono (R.I.P.)

Ronile Lahti

Maurice James O’Brien

Floyd Ryan

Ken Warner

Isadore “Izzy” Martinez

and

the Me I was then

Gang, I couldn’t spin all these tales without you.

Joe Gores

San Anselmo

April, 1992