32 Cadillacs

Chapter twenty-one

The Rainbird Lounge, a neighborhood bar in the flats below Potrero Hill, had been rebuilt along with San Francisco after the Big One of ’06. Then known as a “bucket of blood” to the South of Market Irish who frequented it, it became a speak for the Italians during Prohibition. In World War II it was a joint — the kind you drink in, not the kind you smoke — serving cheap booze to G.I.s being shipped out to the Pacific Theater.

After construction of the James Lick Freeway in the 1950s stubbed off its street into a dead end, it should have folded. But, inspired by the name “Rainbird Lounge,” an alcoholic muralista hoping for free drinks forever — as Benny Bufano was getting free food for his fresco in a Powell Street cafeteria — painted a lurid Custer’s Last Stand across the front of it. Lots of scalped horse soldiers littering the Dakota landscape.

His cirrhotic dreams died with a sale to new owners; but the name and the mural somehow became a draw for Native Americans adrift in the big city. Tribal artifacts traded for bar tabs accumulated to lure more Indians: beadwork, clay pots, kachina dolls, doeskin moccasins, woven blankets, even an antique turquoise and beaten-silver brooch hung from a light fixture.

The Rainbird was a comfy sort of place for those who were regulars, while turning a cold shoulder to outsiders who were not Native Americans. There was sawdust on the floor and a half dozen beat-up tables with mismatched chairs. Over the bar along the right wall was a twelve-inch TV tuned to the sports channel — with the sound off so country music could blare from the old-fashioned jukebox. At the Rainbird, a shot and a beer were a mixed drink, a bag of blue corn chips haute cuisine. Patrons drank heavily and fought often, making abrupt visits from the blues of the Southeast Station at Third and 20th inevitable.

The early-season a’s game on the tube was silenced and the juke was between tunes, so Ballard could hear his entrance cut the babble of voices like ammonia squeaking on a windowpane. Every brown face in the joint turned toward his white one through the silence and pall of smoke and reek of stale beer.

There were only brown faces in the joint.

Ballard leaned across the stick and cleared his throat. “Uh... you sell cigarettes here?” He didn’t want to ask for a drink for fear of getting scalped instead.

The bartender, whose face was right off the old Indian-head nickel, wore a cowboy hat with a burst of feathers on the crown. He jerked a brown thumb toward the rest rooms.

“Machine. Back there.”

Ballard waded through utter silence to the swinging door beyond which were rest rooms, pay phone, cigarette machine. As the door shut behind him, the babble started up again.

Three minutes later, sliding in under the wheel of the company car he’d left parked in the yellow zone outside, he dropped a red and white crush-proof box into Giselle’s lap.

“I hope you like Marlboros.”

She said sweetly, “Didn’t want a drink after all?” He seemed too busy making a U-turn back out toward Vermont to answer, so she put the needle in again. “No Gypsies in swirling silks and high heels doing flamencos on top of the bar?”

“Rain dance,” said Ballard shortly and sourly.

“I told you it was an Indian place. Admit it, Larry! Your precious Yana stiffed you for your hundred bucks!”

“DKa’s hundred bucks. We’ll go eat and come back.”

“Can’t admit he’s wrong,” sighed Giselle as if in sorrow.

She actually was delighted, of course, that there had been no Cadillac out in front, no Gyppo in swirling silks and hoop earrings beating a tambourine in one of the booths.

Sonia Lovari parked her shiny new Allante in the Rain-bird’s yellow zone a scant sixty seconds after they had departed. She had no feeling of impending danger: the car was safe there, as was she. She even had told the Indians in great detail about buying it from the insurance settlement of a fictional auto accident, so there was no overt envy over her fancy wheels.

When she had first started coming here, Sonia — known at the Rainbird as Maria Little Bird — had been unnerved by the broken pates, bloodied noses, and blackened eyes on the day the government checks arrived. But now, as a regular, she felt safe and welcome even though sometimes she had to duck thrown glasses and bottles, or grab her own glass and bottle up from the table as a large body crashed across it.

She was always apologized to; being small and an obvious noncombatant, she was never nabbed in the police raids; and at the Rainbird she was careful to never work the scams, cons, and grifts that made her so unwelcome in other South of Market bars.

“You see in the papers ’bout they wanna change the name of the Redskins football team?” asked Perching Raven, the heavy old Paiute woman on the next stool. She was very wide and brown and had the serene seamed face of a desert mountainside.

“K.C. Chiefs, too,” said Comes By Night from the other side of Sonia. He was a sturdy Oglala Sioux who had been looking for work for two years and looking to live up to his name with Little Bird for almost as long. Work eluded him, and Sonia in her secret soul was a traditional Gypsy: no sex with gadje, which she guessed Comes By Night had to be since he wasn’t rom.

“Atlanta Braves,” nodded Hank Feathers, old Perching Raven’s aged husband, not to be outdone.

“Red pride,” said Perching Raven sagely.

“That’s what I think, too,” said Sonia. Being unable to read and disinterested in anything sportif except the odds, she hadn’t the slightest idea what they were talking about; but this was a safe remark. She gestured for another pitcher to share with her friends. “Us redskins gotta stick together, right?”

“Right,” echoed the others as they filled their glasses.

“Hot damn!” exclaimed Ballard. He drifted the company Ford to the curb and stopped. “Didn’t I tell you?”

Giselle looked at the spanking-new Cadillac Allante parked in the Rainbird’s yellow zone. If the motor was warm and the keys were in it, she was going to scream. Ballard already had his Gypsy case folder open on his knees under the dash light, flicking awkwardly through the repo assignments for Allantes.

She ventured, “We don’t know it’s one of our Gyppo cars.”

“Three Allantes, one of them a red hardtop convertible.” He pointed through the windshield in a maddening manner. “Like that one. Right there. Red hardtop convertible.”

“Shut up,” agreed Giselle.

Ballard ripped away the key for the Allante he had stapled to the repossession order after cutting it himself per the code furnished by the dealer. He had his door open and one foot on the pavement. “You stay here and—”

“No, damn you! I’m not going to sit in the car while you’re out there being Mr. Macho Man.”

Ballard sighed and pulled his leg back in. Didn’t she realize that even as they hassled here, the Gyppo who had arrived while they were eating might come out and drive away?

“One of us should stay with this car, Giselle. If—”

“So you stay.”

“It’s right in front of the bar. Bar repos can get nasty.”

“Nasty? After your Gypsy sweetie set it all up for you? Heaven forfend!”

Ballard looked about to explode, but only gritted his teeth and said mildly, “Okay. We both go. But if any trouble starts, you get the hell out of there, car or no. All right?”

After a long moment, Giselle nodded. “All right.”

The Allante’s hood was still warm. No key in the ignition, but both doors unlocked with the windows down. Would a Gyppo leave his car that way? Maybe check the I.D. number...

The goddamn key didn’t fit.

“I can’t believe this shit,” he muttered to Giselle.

As Ballard got back out of the car, she slid in to start working the key, raking it in and out of the lock, always with a slight sideways pressure to make it pop over if the tumblers decided to click. He bent to speak through the open window.

“I’ll get my ignition switch to replace this one.”

Giselle nodded, kept working the key.

Dammit, he thought, moving away, he really should check that I.D. since his key didn’t work; but by this time he was determined to get the car if it was one of theirs or not. They could always dump it somewhere later if they were wrong.

From the company car he got the plastic letter file box that held his repo kit, and started back toward the Allante.

That’s when the old man and the old woman, craggy of face, dusky of skin, came from the Rainbird. Injuns! He froze, hoping they wouldn’t see Giselle ducked down in the Cadillac; but the bar lights shone right down into the front seat.

“Hey, whatta hell you doin’ in Little Bird’s car?”

Hank Feathers and Perching Raven started forward. Ballard gave a bellow and ran toward them, swinging the heavy plastic letter file in one hand like a weapon. They retreated hurriedly into the bar — but he knew they’d be back.

“Get outta here!” he yelled at Giselle. “Now!”

But the door of the Rainbird burst open to disgorge a dozen Indians on the warpath, led by a short squat girl who looked about 19 and seemed the stereotyped squaw woman.

“She’s stealing my car!”

“She’s not an Indian! She’s a Gypsy!” yelled Ballard, not fooled by Sonia’s bogus squaw woman looks.

At that instant the key turned under Giselle’s fingers and the Allante roared into life. She knew the rules — get the car first, worry about your partner later — so she tromped on it and was gone as Larry stood his ground, whirling the plastic box around in front of him to hold them at bay for her getaway.

Huge craggy Comes By Night swung a two-by-four at Ballard’s head. He ducked under it, rammed a karate blow known as a back fist up into the big man’s crotch. Comes By Night said, “OOOF!” and went to one knee, holding himself.

Ballard ululated “Yi yi yi yi yi!” as best he could at his momentarily disconcerted foes. He had counted coup.

Giselle slid the Allante to a stop at the dead end of the cul-de-sac, slammed it into reverse, head and one arm out the window, and goosed it. Okay, she’d secured the car like she was supposed to; now she’d run down the goddam redskins if that was what it would take to save Ballard.

Who had just been caught on the shoulder by a thrown brick that knocked him off balance. He spun, the swinging box cracking the side of a face, his foot lashing out in a side kick that sunk into a beer-soggy gut. Stale beer sprayed his face.

A great red monster chased by a twinned fan of brilliant light roared backward out of the darkness upon them, horn braying, engine wailing. Giselle slammed on the brakes for a half-skid that scattered Indians in every direction.

“The window!” she yelled at Ballard.

Still spinning on one foot, he tossed the box in the open window on the rider’s side and leaped in after it. But as the Allante roared away backward toward Vermont Street, someone grabbed Ballard’s legs. He heard a ripping sound and felt cold air, heard a grunt of effort behind him — and a splintery two-by-four slammed against his bare butt with stunning force.

“OWWWW!”

Comes By Night had counted coup back at him by scalping his behind. Cars were roaring into life all around them. At Vermont, Giselle, still running backward, mashed the brakes and spun the wheel and simultaneously goosed it.

“Jesus!” Ballard took the Savior’s name in vain as the torque almost tore him out of the window again.

It was Little Bird who stared sadly after the disappearing vehicles from in front of the emptied Rainbird — even the bartender had joined in the chase. But it was Sonia Lovari who sighed and started away on foot: she really had begun to think of herself as Indian, but eventually these genuine Indians would realize she was a Gypsy and would reject her.

And she knew who to blame. Only Yana would have told the gadje where to find her.

Giselle bit her lip hard enough to draw blood when one of the pursuing cars rammed the rear bumper.

“Hang on!” she yelled at Ballard, flooring it.

“What the hell do you think I—”

A brick whizzed by his head to scar the Caddy’s paintwork. Cars were coming up on either side of them, the one on the right running with one set of wheels on the sidewalk, the other in the gutter. It hit a power pole and was out of the running, but another swerved around it to keep coming.

Giselle slewed into 16th Street as if she knew where she was going. Ballard hoped to hell she did; he didn’t have a clue. He tried to pull himself inside, but the pursuer swerved in to crush him between the cars. He jerked up tight against the side of the Caddy as metal ground metal just below him.

Giselle screamed the Allante into broad Third Street, ran the red at the next intersection, horn blaring. They were outrunning their pursuers: the Caddy’s big V-8 generated a lot of power. But a car shot across Third directly in front of her, she hit the brakes, slid almost sideways down the street, so numb by this time that she felt only a mild detached curiosity about whether she would miss it or not.

She did, but the skid had let the Indians catch up. They were cutting in, forcing her to the curb, roaring war chants.

But she was there! Horn blaring, she jumped the curb. Ballard, still half out of the car, hung on for dear life as the Allante leaped up three concrete stairs at a steep 45-degree angle to splinter the double doors at their head with its front bumper. A tire went BANG! The old-fashioned globe light above the cophouse door POPPED! to drift sharded glass down on them.

Uniformed cops, wearing astounded, half-scared faces, poured out of the Southeast precinct house past the Allante with guns in their hands. This flushed the covey of pursuing Indian cars, which burst out in every direction with squealing tires.

Ballard had managed to get his feet on one of the steps by this time, too dazed to know his ripped pants were puddled around his ankles so he was buck-ass naked from the waist down. He was waving his arms around in front of him, panting as if he’d just run a footrace.

“Peaceful repossession, peaceful repossession!” he yelped at the dozen guns’ big unwinking eyes staring at him.

“The hell you say,” drawled the Irish desk sergeant.

“From... the Rainbird... Lounge...”

“Ah,” said the sergeant in soft understanding, and holstered his weapon. All the cops knew the Rainbird. After a moment, the rest followed suit, putting their guns away also.

Giselle staggered around the car from the driver’s side, blood running down her chin from her bitten lip.

“I checked... I.D. number... we got... right car...” Then she saw Ballard and laughed weakly. “So this... is how it’s done... maestro?”

“It got done,” said Ballard with great dignity.

Looking at Giselle looking at Ballard, the sergeant said, with Irish rectitude, “Hey, Sam Spade, better get your pants on.”

Ballard, suddenly realizing his condition, jerked his pants up with a savage gesture.

And shrieked in pain as the rough fabric scraped across innumerable splinters to drive them deeper into his bruised and lacerated rear end.