32 Cadillacs

Chapter eight

“A license to steal, that’s what it’s like. I gotta hand it to you, Giselle.”

They were back at DKA, for some reason upstairs in the disused reception area from which the laundry’s billing had once come, rather than down at Kearny’s desk.

“Dan Kearny, if you try to put one of your fancy moves on Stan Groner after I as good as promised him—”

“We’re gonna have to be thieves, and tricky ones, to walk away from this one without a bloody nose.”

He spoke without his usual steamroller optimism. She had a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She had been delighted with herself at that unbelievable fifteen percent of recovered value. Why, if you took $25,000 as a median dealer cost per car, DKA would be paid $3,750 per recovery, plus expenses. Even when Kearny had pointed out they were talking about Gypsies here, she had just assumed the Great White Father would have a dozen ways to break the universal Gypsy solidarity against gadje attempts to pry information out of them. But now...

“Damn good car thieves, you mean?” she ventured hopefully.

“I don’t know what I mean.” Kearny was stone-faced as always, but after all these years she could read him as she could a case file report. “This is a lot of cars and a lot of Gypsies, Giselle. Or maybe I’m just getting old.”

“How are things at home?” she asked, surprising even herself. She just didn’t ask that kind of question of him.

He answered readily, if vaguely, “Spare-room couch.”

Giselle knew and liked Jeanne, had often taken care of the kids when they were growing up. “Is... it anything I can...” He just shook his head. The moment had passed. She ventured, “Wh... what’s our first move with the Gypsies?”

“You tell me.”

In a small voice, she said, “Check out all those references they gave the dealers, even though we know they’re false?”

“That’s a start. Put the skip-tracers on it right away. Use the after-school girls, too — forget about the legal letters for the time being. The Gyppos might have slipped up somewhere and given us a crumb. You can coordinate that part of the investigation from here in the office while the field men—”

“No,” said Giselle.

Kearny looked astounded, or as astounded as his tough, uninformative face could look. “No?”

“I want out in the field on this one. I’m the guy who went up there and—”

“You are, aren’t you?”

“—nailed Stan’s foot to the floor and—”

“You did, didn’t you?”

“—got us fifteen percent, and so I expect to...” She ran down when she realized that Kearny wasn’t arguing with her.

“Like I said, a license to steal.” She had to admit, he gave credit where credit was due. Or blame. “Stan wasn’t going to go over ten percent with me no matter what, because ten percent was the most I thought I could squeeze out of him. But he was in a panic and you were sore enough at me to believe you could get more — so you made him believe you could. Of course now we gotta find the cars...”

He stood, started pacing, abruptly sat down again.

“Call him, tell him we need a contract spelling out the terms exactly. They’re desperate now, but if we start turning these babies they’re going to think it’s easy and start wanting to cut that recovery percentage fee.”

“You’re godfather of Stan’s daughter, for Pete sake. He wouldn’t try to—”

“Stan is just a unit president, he doesn’t run the bank. So do it. And get a guarantee of exclusivity, too. If recovery is slow, we don’t want some flunky VP to panic and start shoveling out these assignments to other agencies. We gotta hit the Gyppos hard and fast, get all we can before they realize we’re after ’em — ’cause once they do, they’re gonna disappear into the woodwork.” He was pacing again, thoughtfully. “We got that Gypsy informant with the letter drop down in L. A....”

“The one calls himself Ephrem Poteet? He just wants to get back at other Gypsies he imagines have done something to him.”

“Listen, at least one of our thirty-one is just sure to of stuck a finger in his eye sometime. Send him a list of all the cars — motor I.D. numbers, color, and model — plus the names they were purchased under. Send it fast mail, okay? Overnight. Tell him a... oh, a hundred bucks per recovery we make off his information — and stick in a fifty-buck bill to prime the pump. Then run some extra copies of Stan’s list—”

“For our affiliates around the country?”

He shook his head, pulling down the corners of his mouth.

“Put this info into the hands of other agencies, and it’d be open season on every new Cadillac with paper plates between here and Key West. I want it in-shop only. Don’t even memo our own branch offices on this one for the time being.”

“Getting a little paranoid, aren’t we, Dan’l?”

“Ever think how often paranoiacs are right?”

Well, yes, paranoia, come to think of it, was part of this business. An operating asset, as it were. Kearny’s moment of hesitation, or introspection, or whatever it was, had passed; he was his old hard-driving self again. The lump suddenly was gone from the pit of her stomach. Kearny was on his feet.

“We’ll use this office as command headquarters.” He bent to smear out his butt, then banged his hand on one of the filing cabinets that had held the laundry’s paperwork. It echoed hollowly. “Keep the case files in these babies, plug in some phones, bring up a computer terminal and one of the printers. Everything centralized so the field men can have easy access.”

“Will all of the field men be on this, or—”

“No. Regular business is picking up again and some of our people will have to cover that.” He looked at his watch. “I want you, O’B, Heslip, and Ballard here at five-thirty for a headbanger. Spaghetti feed afterward at the New Pisa...”

Surprising herself with a sudden rush of feminine emotion, Giselle began, “Dan, Larry’s head is still—”

“I want Ballard here if he has to come in carrying his head under his goddam arm, you got that?”

“Yessir,” she said immediately and meekly. Why push her luck? She’d gotten what she wanted: she was going to be out in the field playing with the big guys on this one.

“Why are we so sure they’re Gyppos, Dan?” asked Heslip.

It was nearly 6:00 P.M. Giselle, O’B, Heslip, and Kearny were in the disused upstairs reception area for the headbanger. Ballard of the shiny red forehead was supposed to be on his way in. Kearny had announced they were going after a band of Gypsies and had outlined the scams used against the bank. Man, not just one or two Gyppos, but thirty-one of the mothers.

“Because of the names,” said Giselle.

O’B was frowning. “Grimaldi isn’t Gypsy, it’s not even one of their usual phonies. Since he’s the guy who set up the bank accounts—”

“But look at the others.” Kearny was flipping through the list of names under which the Cadillacs had been conned out of the dealerships. “Gregory Kaslov. Kaslov is a Gypsy name. Stokes. Often a Gypsy pseudonym. Sally Poluth. Gypsy all the way. Tibo Tene? You can hear the tambourines. Yonkovich... Demetro... Petulengro... all Gyppo tribal names.” He was flipping faster now, selecting pseudonyms the Gypsies habitually stole from the straight populace. “Hell, listen to these. Adams, Evans, Green, Miller, Mitchell, Steve, Stokes, Wells...”

Man, Heslip thought, this was big. No wonder Dan wanted Ballard there. Larry’d worked that Gypsy mitt-reader down in Palm Desert, who’d put that curse on him; and when the state had been trying to take away DKa’s license, Larry’d gotten something going with that Gyppo crystal-ball gazer up in Santa Rosa...

A tall form at the head of the stairs said in a sepulchral voice, “Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night—”

“I didn’t know we was gonna do this in blackface.”

“Whadda you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Ballard’s two blackened eyes were staring pointedly at the white bandage still around Heslip’s head. Sooty calipers extended down on either side of Ballard’s nose to the corners of his mouth. His forehead was just one large purple bruise.

“You look like you need a slice of watermelon,” said Heslip judiciously.

“You’re late,” said Kearny coldly.

“Why am I here at all?” said Ballard cautiously.

“Gypsies,” said Giselle without inflection.

When she’d called to tell Ballard there was a meeting he had to get to, she hadn’t told him what it was for. She knew her Larry. Curiosity would bring him in like nothing else would.

“Thirty-one Gypsies,” said Heslip.

“Aha,” said Ballard. Something besides fatigue gleamed in his eyes. He took off his topcoat and tossed it on the desktop.

Kearny said, “Thirty-one Gyppos who conned the dealers out of thirty-one Cadillacs. All financed through Cal-Cit Bank.”

Ballard sat down between Heslip and O’B. They all listened while Kearny sketched out what he had already told the others.

“I bet poor old Stan wishes he’d died in the quake,” said Ballard. “How’d they work the downs?”

“A smooth and handsome guy looks like Omar Sharif in his movie-idol days shows up at Cal-Cit Main and approaches a woman AVP,” said Kearny. “He’s out from New York looking for investments, so he opens an eleven-thousand-dollar business account. Makes sure there’ll be no trouble to make an unannounced ten-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal if he gets a good ‘investment opportunity’ — you with me so far?”

Ballard nodded. “Sure. Then, from what you tell me, he goes and opens three more accounts in three branch banks—”

“For a thousand each.”

Somehow a drink had materialized in O’b’s hand. “So last Friday people with ethnic names start going into the dealers and snapping up Caddies and making the downs with checks drawn on those Cal-Cit accounts. Starting in the City and then moving to Marin and then East Bay and then San Jose just at bank-close.”

“Damn, that’s clever,” said Ballard admiringly.

“He closes the accounts out in order, too,” said Heslip. “After the calls come in to confirm there’s enough money in each account to cover the downs on the cars in that area, but before any checks can actually be presented for collection.”

“Why doesn’t the bank just charge ’em with felony fraud and get the cops involved?”

“He’s too smart for that,” said Kearny. “He doesn’t really close out the accounts. He pulls ten grand — in cash — from Cal-Cit Main but he leaves a grand behind. Deposits the ten K in each account in turn; then, a couple of hours later, after the queries on the accounts’ status have all come in, pulls it out again. Leaving the original thousand behind in each case.”

“If somebody catches up with him,” said Giselle, “he just says it was all a mistake, he got confused between accounts.”

“Legally he can do that?” asked Ballard.

“Under California law, criminal intent can be assumed, and fraud charged, only if the account doesn’t exist or has been closed prior to the presentation of the check.”

Heslip’s mind was momentarily drifting. It was at these conferences that he most keenly missed Kathy Onoda, dead at age 29 of a busted blood vessel in her head. CVA, they called it. Cardiovascular accident. Some accident. Icepick-slim Kathy, button-black eyes shining, classical Japanese features alight with excitement...

Him and her off in a corner giggling at each other’s dirty jokes like a couple of schoolgirls... Neither one of them ever told off-color jokes to anyone else. It was like their little minority secret together, and...

Aw, dammit to hell, anyway.

Ballard was musing in an awed voice, “One-point-three-two-five million bucks!”

“Until this morning, when Stan finally collated all the contracts, the bank didn’t know how bad they’d been stung. And until we told ’em, they didn’t know it was Gypsies who’d hit them.” Kearny slapped his palm on the files on the butt-scarred desktop. “These don’t have a single name, address, credit reference, residence or work address that’s genuine.”

“But they look wonderful,” said Giselle. “The dealer credit managers did everything right, made all the requisite background phone checks — work adds, home adds, personal refs, pay experience with other lenders. Everything. They all checked out. On paper and over the phone, pure as the driven snow.”

“Like a certain Colonel Buford Sanders, USAF Retired,” said Ballard slyly.

They looked at O’B and laughed. DKA had repo’d nine Caddies from the larcenous colonel before he took an insurance company for $275,000 in a fake injury accident scam. O’B went after him, but instead of proving the con, ended up being an affidavit eyewitness in support of the colonel’s fraudulent claims.

“I’ll still nail that guy one day,” O’B muttered darkly.

“Maybe we ought to hire him,” said Kearny.

“Why Cal-Cit Bank?” demanded Heslip.

Kearny stood stock-still for a moment.

“Damn good question, Bart.”

Giselle added a note to the list on her shorthand pad. “Hmmm... yes... He could have gone to four different banks — going to branches of the same one made it a lot harder because he put himself in a time bind. He had to make the withdrawals and deposits in cash all in one day so the bank’s in-house computer wouldn’t catch up with him before bank-close. Why?”

“I’m still bothered by that non-Gypsy pseudonym for their main man,” said O’B.

Heslip said, “Yeah, he’d have to have valid-looking I.D., just in case he got questioned on one of the ten-thousand-buck withdrawals — but why not use a familiar Gyppo pseudonym?”

“Maybe he already had the Grimaldi I.D. for some other scam he was working,” said Kearny. “Giselle...”

She was already writing it in the notebook. Ballard, still catching up, asked, “How did they work the phones? It’s a lot more sophisticated than pigeon drops or Jamaican switches.”

“In each area,” said Kearny, “all the purchasers used the same sets of phone numbers to confirm all false credit data and false personal and business references on the applications.”

“Why four phone rooms? Why not just one?”

“They were working across area codes, and they’d want to keep everything local to help avoid raising suspicions.”

“If you hustle cars for a living in the middle of a recession,” said O’B cynically, “how suspicious are you gonna be when you’re looking at the commission for a forty-K sale?”

Ballard: “Phone rooms — how do they help us?”

Heslip: “Somebody had to rent the rooms to them.”

Giselle: “And Pac Bell had to put in the phones.”

O’B: “All places to start.”

Kearny stood up abruptly.

“Okay, that’s enough for tonight. We’ve got a packet for each of you with all the information we’ve got so far, plus dupe keys and info on all the vehicles. Each of us runs down whatever leads he develops himself, but meanwhile check out any Caddy with paper plates that fits the description of any car on this list.”

“How tough do we get?” asked Ballard.

“As tough as we have to.”

Heslip muttered, “A felony a week if we need it or not.”

“Current workloads?” asked Giselle.

“Turn ’em in tomorrow morning, reports current, for reassignment. I want to be able to get someone else out on them over the weekend so our regular billing doesn’t suffer.”

“Not Uvaldi,” said Ballard hotly at the same time that Heslip exclaimed, with equal heat, “Not Walinski.”

“Don’t be a sap, Larry,” said O’B. “Let somebody else get the next headache.”

“Turn ’em in day after tomorrow,” snapped Kearny. “All of ’em. From now on all our energies have to be focused on the Gyppos.”

Ballard and Heslip exchanged looks that said: we got tomorrow to drop a rock on Uvaldi’s Mercedes and Walinski’s Charger. Kearny caught the look but said nothing. He wouldn’t have wanted his men to feel any other way. Getting even was better than getting screwed without intercourse, every time.

On the other hand, they were going to have to move damned fast on the opposition. Being Gyppos, those guys wouldn’t be standing still.