32 Cadillacs

Chapter twenty-three

With Kearny gone off somewhere, Giselle had been stuck behind her desk all day. Now, 7:00 P.M., the after-school girls had abandoned the automatic typewriters, the skeleton night staff had arrived — and Giselle was still here. And cranky.

The limo outfit in L.A. hadn’t called back. Dan Kearny hadn’t called in, no idea where the big bum was. Ballard was probably playing footsie with his red-hot Gypsy mama and getting all sorts of hot leads, while Giselle hadn’t even time to ask any hotels if they had an Angelo Grimaldi registered, or to check out who Theodore Winston White III in Marin might happen to be.

And on top of everything else, she still hadn’t found a new cleaning service whose work she’d trust, and the scrap paper was piling up and... oh, to heck with it for tonight. She reached for her purse. Field men were in and out all night, but when she worked the office she liked to be gone before seven. As she stood up, her personal phone that didn’t go through the switchboard rang. Kearny. Finally. She picked up.

“Dammit, Dan, where are—”

“Yeah, where the hell is he?” Stan Groner. Pissed.

“Stan!” She put delight and surprise in her voice. “You’re working late. You want to talk with Dan? He just—”

“Don’t try to con me, Giselle. He missed a ten o’clock this morning, and Jane said he’s out of town. Now, where is—”

“Hot lead on the Gyppos,” she ventured promptly.

“Hot?” he asked in a slightly mollified voice, then turned hard again. As hard as Stan could get. “It better be hot. I’m getting a lot of heat myself, from the president of the bank.”

“Hey, we got three of them already, Stan. What do—”

“Three out of thirty-one.” He became his old querulous self. “What’d you guys do to that one Ballard got, Giselle?”

Since the Sonia Lovari lead had been dug up by Ballard, he had been credited with the Allante.

“We... he got it in front of an Indian bar, Stan,” she said over the clatter of auto typewriters in the big echoing room.

“Indian bar? The Gyppo sold it to an Indian?”

“No, no — her street scam is posing as an Indian. Collects for nonexistent Native American charities and keeps the money.”

“Jesus!” Giselle could almost see him shaking his head. “If they’d put that much energy into working they’d be—”

“Yeah. Rich. But would they have so much fun?”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“The side with the big bucks.”

“Right answer,” he chuckled. “Listen, I want to see Kearny here tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. I mean it, woman.”

Giselle grimaced. She had put down her purse and gotten a cigarette lit while they had been talking.

“I’m not sure he’ll make it, Stan. To tell the truth, we’re not in communication with him right now. Will I do?”

“I wasn’t a married man, I’d take that as a proposition.”

“Sure you would,” she said, and laughed.

Giselle liked Stan, a lot, and knew he would back them as far as he could with the other bank officials. In the midst of her warm thoughts about him, he ruined her evening.

“Remember that old black gal, Maybelle Pernod?”

“Sure, I repo’d her car and she redeemed and—”

“Pick it up again.”

“What?” Giselle was shocked. She had sympathized with Maybelle on some deep level not available to her conscious mind. “As I remember it, Stan, the next payment isn’t due until—”

“The bank’s declaring the contract null and void. They want it picked up for charges. Repo on sight.” He added almost defensively, “Dan told me she’s living out of the darned thing, Giselle, hooking at night, for God’s sake!”

“I know, I know, but I really like that old woman.”

“You know? Why didn’t I know? Repo on sight.”

Giselle heaved a sad sigh as she dug out Maybelle’s file and typed up a new REPO ON SIGHT for her. Legally, if a conditional auto sales contract had late or repo charges pending, it could be declared null and void and the car picked up. She stapled copies of all previous field and skip-tracing reports face-out to the back of the assignment sheet, then hand-wrote and stuck a yellow Post-it note on the sheet that Maybelle had been last seen walking the dog around Divisadero and Turk.

Giselle sighed, “Oh... dammit, anyway!” as she put the assignment into the deadly Ken Warren’s In box.

Fat black Maybelle Pernod parked in the shadows near her usual fireplug on Turk Street, and, as usual, had herself a good despairing cry. Then she dried her tears and heaved her hefty body, sausaged into its red sequined dress, out of the car.

If she could turn just three tricks tonight on the front seat of the Lincoln, what with the piecework at the dry-cleaning plant and all, she’d have enough for the April 30 car note and wouldn’t have to do no more whoring again until mid-May.

She hated it, but what choice did she have? Times was hard, she didn’t have no skills, she was 61 years old, she couldn’t lose her car, no place to sleep if she did, and no money to buy another one...

She took up her stroll in front of Red Hot Ribs. The gal on nights, Edwina, didn’t never drop no dime on her to get her busted for soliciting. Back and forth through the puddle of muddy-yellow light, tempting smell of scorching meat and barbecue sauce from inside, light, voices, laughter, people in and out. Black people, her people, she didn’t get much trade from them — look at her, look away. White boys, mostly. Lookin fo Mama.

Several hours after the office had closed for the night. Ken Warren arrived to rifle his In box for new assignments, closeouts, memos, and skip-trace reports on current cases. He went through them quickly, stopping at the new REPO ON SIGHT assignment on MAYBELLE PERNOD, res add unknown.

“Oh, hndammit, nhanywhay!” he exclaimed aloud when he saw her name on the case sheet.

Lord, Lord, nuthin ever seem to work out the way you want it to. Maybelle sang in a soft rich contralto:

No action, none at all on the street tonight. The ribs joint had closed hours ago, she was all souls alone out here, her varicose veins hurt, and not a single trick to show for all the hours, not one, not even gas money. And no chance of any now. Not much traffic on the street, let alone pedestrians.

Time to drive down and park in her usual spot under the freeway off Alameda where a lot of other homeless gave safety in numbers. Get her shower in the morning at the cleaning plant...

A long-bed pickup pulled over to the curb and stopped. It had a camper on back and three white guys in the cab. The window was open.

“Hey, lookit the nigger cow,” exclaimed a cracker voice right out of south Georgia.

She didn’t turn her head, just quickened her pace for the corner of Turk. These men wasn’t no tricks, she wouldn’t get no money from them, just trouble. Just a few more steps... But the truck backed up to keep pace with her, rolling slowly, motor mumbling, exhaust rising in white puffs on the chilly night air.

“Hey, Mama, how about you do us right here on the street?”

She turned the corner. They were behind her now. But the pickup backed around the corner into Turk and kept on coming. For the first time since she had started hooking, she wished a cop would cruise by. Wanted to run but she was too old, too fat, too scared. Besides, it was when the deer ran that the feral dogs chased it and dragged it down, any country gal knew that.

Squeerg of brakes. Creak of doors. Hurried heavy feet on the sidewalk. She speeded up. Get to her Connie, jump in sudden, they wouldn’t expect that, slam the door, hit the automatic door lock... Safe then. Just a few more steps...

The three men were upon her, surrounding her. Tall men, two bulky, the third lean and athletic. Maybe she could still make it turn out right. Maybe they’d be satisfied with some head, specially she didn’t charge. She found a pathetic simper.

“Ah... you gemp’men lookin’ for a little fun?”

“Lookin’ at you, Mama, I’d say a lotta fun!”

He wore a soiled white cowboy hat and a soiled expression on a heavy red face with burst capillaries in nose and cheeks. Probably weighed 250. He hefted one of her massive mammy breasts with one hand. His fingers had black hairs on the backs of them.

“Dug of the month!” he exclaimed.

He ripped her dress down off her shoulder, half baring one breast.

“Flavor of the month — chocolate!” exclaimed the Athlete, making slurping noises with his mouth. He had styled blond hair and a striking profile and a high skinny laugh. White shirt under a blue and white sweater, the collar points outside the sweater in Joe College style.

“In the truck,” said Cowboy Hat.

“In the back — in the camper,” amended the third.

He was very wide, weight-lifter shoulders and chest, day’s growth of beard, grimy green gimme cap with a darker green shamrock on it, a black warm-up sweatshirt with the hood back. Fleshy nose, heavy lips, slitted mean angry eyes.

Maybelle felt herself shrinking, heard her own voice, little, as she’d been when, pigtails sticking straight out from the sides of her head, she’d been chased into the barn by some white boys...

The little voice said, “Please, don’t... hurt me...”

But by now they were already guffawing and pinching and feeling and poking. Cowboy Hat grabbed her hand, tried to shove it down the front of his pants. Athlete came up behind her, put his hand up under her tight red split skirt.

“Into the fuckin’ camper,” he ordered.

Maybelle wanted to scream then, because she knew that if she got into that camper they would hurt her real bad ’fore they let her out again. As if in confirmation, Green Cap suddenly had a big bowie knife in his hand.

“Into the camper, bitch, or I’ll...”

Just as suddenly he was gone. Flying, had to be almost a dreamy sensation. Except a lamppost was coming at him, coming at him hard, CRUNCH! face-first into the curved metal cylinder, fell in a heap on the sidewalk amid his sharded teeth.

Athlete whirled, nimble and quick, reaching into the cab for his baseball bat — but the big mean-looking mother with short-chopped brown hair slammed the door on his wrist. He started screaming, high and thin like a grammar-school girl finding a snake in her bed.

The attacker picked up the bowie knife. Cowboy Hat ran, so fast his ten-gallon Stetson flew off and landed in the gutter. He was bald under it, somehow vulnerable without it.

The big mean-looking dude stood on the hat, ripped it in half with the knife, but let the man go. Maybelle was glad. She couldn’t take no more people gettin’ hurt, not even bad people.

Totally ignoring the fallen warriors, the man smashed in the windows of the pickup with the baseball bat, slashed all four tires with the bowie knife — in this part of town, no windows would go up, no police patrols would come.

Finally, he reached in and twitched out the keys to drop them and the knife down the nearest sewer grating. Then he came back to Maybelle and looked her up and down, thoroughly and unhurriedly, taking in her tight red sequins and too much lipstick and breast half-exposed by the torn dress.

Only then did he yell at her.

“Gnew awtta nbe hathamed!”

Ken Warren took off his tan corduroy jacket and draped it around her shoulders. Maybelle couldn’t quit crying. She was ashamed, and terrified, and knew God had let him see her like this as punishment for what she was doing to keep her big fancy prideful Continental.

Warren drove the company car in on Post toward the Tenderloin with Maybelle sobbing beside him on the front seat as if her heart would break. He looked glumly over at her.

“Nthtop nhat!” he finally ordered.

Maybelle seemed to have no difficulty in understanding him. She reduced the crying to sniveling, then stopped altogether.

“Where you be takin’ me?” she asked in a small voice.

His apartment, that’s where, he told her. He’d just moved in last week, had this new good job so he was out all hours, anyway, looking for people, cars, how’d she think he’d found her? She could sleep there until she got something better.

“Lord, Lord, child, how’m I gonna get somethin’ better?” she asked him, the tears coming again. “Ah cain’t...”

She fell silent. She’d raised her son Jedediah without a man to home, raised him, as he’d always said with laughing eyes, with the Bible in one hand and the hairbrush in the other. Then God had forsaken her, and killed him. Killed her son. Her Jeddie gone, and her still here. Lord, Lord, it wasn’t fair.

“Takin people’s cars,” she said finally. “Whut sorta job is that to—”

“Mbesth tl’ve never ntad,” said Warren.

At his apartment over a liquor store he made her some soup, made up the couch for himself while she drank it, then got her into his bed when she started falling asleep spoon in hand.

Maybelle’s last thought before going down, down into sleep between those clean, cool sheets, was that she knew, deep inside her secret heart, that Kenny’d been sent by God because Jesus was giving her one more chance to repent.

Then she was snoring, out cold, not even any REM going on behind her eyelids. Ken Warren shut the bedroom door quietly, tiptoed out of the apartment, and drove back out to the Fillmore to repossess her Lincoln Continental for the bank.

No more of that streetwalking shit for Jedediah’s mother, even though his buddy was eighteen, no, nineteen long years dead in the jungles of Vietnam.