32 Cadillacs

Chapter twenty-six

Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar, incredibly beautiful and incredibly wealthy Brazilian coffee heiress — recently widowed — passed through the gilt-edged motor-driven plate-glass door of bascom’s (rome, london, paris, amsterdam, beverly hills). Even in parlous economic times, these first few blocks of Rodeo Drive north of Wilshire in Beverly Hills are... well, Rodeo Drive. Occasionally Worth Avenue in Palm Beach pretends to the crown, but... after all, Florida...

The diminutive button-eyed youth behind Dona Dulcinea wore the Beverly Wilshire’s distinctive livery and was festooned with boxes: square boxes, oblong boxes, oval boxes, boxes large and boxes small, boxes flat and boxes deep, boxes broad and boxes skinny. All bearing labels from the most exclusive shoppes and boutiques up and down Rodeo Drive.

“My hotel has call,” announced Dona Dulcinea imperiously.

Her hotel hadn’t, but nonetheless Monsieur Bascom himself surged forward with her entrance, practiced eye agleam at the compulsive-shopper possibilities suggested by all those boxes.

“Ah, yes, of course, Madam...”

“Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar of São Paulo. Brazil.” Her accent made “Bretheel” of the final word. Monsieur Bascom inclined his beautifully greyed coiffeur as she added, “Someone should help the...” She gestured helplessly at the bellhop. “Mmmm, how you say, young servant man...”

M. Bascom was already snapping his fingers without looking around. He had a patrician face with a thin nose pinched at the sides, and thin lips that could by a sycophantic pucker become a rosebud or by simple compression a white line of fury.

“Could the word be ‘bellhop,’ madam?”

“Sim! Bellhop! The hotel has give...” She broke off, looking extremely sexy as she almost giggled. “No, has lend me the bellhop to help with my...” She rolled around the word on her tongue. “... mmm, buying. You sell diamonds, não?”

“Yes, of course. We sell... diamonds.”

Bascom gave the final word the reverence usually reserved for all the names of God. His snapped fingers had brought a magnificent salesman to help the bellboy jettison all those boxes as M. Bascom led the fair Dulcinea to the gleaming glass cases where bascom’s most stunning creations dwelt in luxury.

“If one could inquire as to madam’s diamond needs...”

Again that charming almost half-giggle. “I no really know... but I weel when I see!” Her eyes got very wide and round and her mouth formed a lovely little “O.” “But whatever you show me must be most... tasteful. Nothing, mmm... vulgar, não? The absolute... how does one say...”

“Crème de la crème?” suggested Bascom.

“Sim. Exactissimo.”

Bascom had little Spanish and less Portuguese, so he found himself utterly charmed by Dona Dulcinea’s accent as she went through thirty minutes of brooches, earrings, and necklaces “not quite right” for her needs. Of course, since he had an addiction to scoring sexually with wealthy women no matter what their age or looks, he was already in thrall to the Dona’s bounteous feminine charms. Finally, he suggested that if she could perhaps tell him the occasion she sought to enhance with diamonds...

Sim, but could she have a glass of Pellegrino, perhaps... ver’ hot in here...

Refreshed and restored, she explained that it was a little — pronounced “leetle” — somet’ings for her first dinner party at the hacienda since the death... close to tears here... of her beloved “hoosban” eighteen months before...

Dwelling on this untimely death made her feel “a leetle faint” again, but she recovered quickly when he showed her loose teardrop diamonds set in gold which could be worn as singlets, clustered as a pendant, worn around the neck on a gold chain...

Yes! Dona Dulcinea’s interest quickened at the sight of them.

For some time the bored bellhop had been following them around the store, staring at the wonders being displayed, but unfortunately was just too far away to help catch Dona Dulcinea when she swooned and fell heavily against M. Bas-com.

As her unexpected dead weight bore Bascom to the floor, her hand struck the edge of the velvet display tray upon which the diamonds nestled. Teardrops flew in every direction. Before the salespeople could converge, the bellhop was crouched beside her, mouth working as in distress, cradling her head with his hands.

He gulped back tears. Immediately, her beautiful dark eyes fluttered open and she gazed deep into M. Bascom’s blue ones.

“I am so ver’ sorree,” she said in a little voice. The eyelids fluttered again. “The loss... of my hoosban’... sometime it has seem... I cannot... go on...”

More Pellegrino, a few minutes in a brocaded chair by the office, and Dona Dulcinea was much restored. But too upset

to, mmm, how you say, do more shop today. For now, she would return to the Beevairly Weelsheer to rest...

Without qualms, M. Bascom led her solicitously to the door. One teardrop was missing, a stone valued at $7,000, but she could not have taken it. She was, after all, very wealthy in her own right; and she had been in her swoon at the very moment the diamonds had become vulnerable. Staff was still looking, probably it had rolled under some distant display case...

Dona Dulcinea gave M. Bascom her hand to kiss and flashed her big round eyes at him. “If it is not found by tomorrow when I return, I mus’ pay for the diamon’ who is missing!”

“No need, madam,” said Bascom gallantly. “It will turn up.”

“But I insist — and I have just decide. Tomorrow, I weel buy ten of the teardrops!”

At the curb was her beautiful cream and grey Fleetwood Sixty Special four-door sedan. A grey-haired heavy-jawed man, obviously her hired driver, was doing something under the dash. But as Bascom reached out to open the door for the dona, the man started the Caddy and accelerated away into traffic without a backward turn of his head.

Leaving Bascom on the curb with his hand outstretched and his mouth, for once, hanging open in utter astonishment. He turned to Dona Dulcinea for enlightenment, and was even more astounded to see the Brazilian heiress running out into Rodeo Drive, skirts flying, face contorted, vapors forgotten.

“You son of a bitch!” the dona screamed after the departing Fleetwood. “I know who you are, faggot repo bastard! I curse your eyes and the eyes of your children! I spit into...”

Dona Dulcinea caught herself, realizing the figure she was cutting, and turned back to the curb with an embarrassed little moue. But her accent had derived from no farther south than, say, South Jersey, and, since diamonds were involved, this stripped off a good bit of Bascom’s veneer. His shit-kicker granddaddy had come west from Ada, Oklahoma, during the dustbowl ’30s, after all, to get land-rich during the postwar California ’50s, and Mama Bascom hadn’t raised no fools.

So Immaculata Bimbai spent two most uncomfortable hours in Bascom’s office with Bascom himself and a brace of Beverly Hills cops, during which time it was discovered that the Beevairly Weelsheer had never heard of her or the bellhop, and that the boxes he had been carting around all day were empty.

But finally they had to let Immaculata go, along with her young servant man. Lying to a jeweler, even a Beverly Hills jeweler, is no crime, and she was getting vocal in the way only a rom woman can while extricating herself from trouble. Most importantly of all, however, a separate strip search of her and her son — the cops never uncovered their real names or relationship — could not turn up the missing bijou.

So Immaculata came away scot-free; it was her son Lazlo who had a few bad hours in their West Hollywood motel. He ate many a slice of Wonder thin sandwich bread to coat the swallowed diamond on its way through his intestines, and brought forth just about the time Peter Jennings did the same with the evening news.

They cleaned up the teardrop and admired it, a wonderful $7,000 score; but their elation was tempered by the loss of their lovely loaded $50,000 Fleetwood Sixty Special. Not even all of Immaculata’s Gypsy curses could bring that back again.

Just about the time Lazlo swallowed the diamond, O’B poured beer for Ballard at Ginsberg’s Dublin Pub on Bay Street up in San Francisco. Under cover of CCr’s “Bad Moon Rising” on the juke, O’B was pleading, actually pleading, for assistance, which gave Ballard a wonderful chance to be sanctimonious.

“Absolutely not,” he said, not for the first time, “I am not going out to Oriente Street with you, and that’s final.”

“But Larry...” O’B again plied Ballard with beer. “Think of all the times I’ve helped you out—”

“All the times you’ve got me in trouble, you mean. No! I keep telling you, O’B, since we got no plate numbers you gotta check those Gyppo serial numbers before you grab the cars!”

Conveniently forgetting he had done the very same thing on the Sonia Lovari Allante. But that had been the right Caddy.

“There just wasn’t time, Larry. It was squatting right on the address. You know I usually always make sure before I—”

“Usually always,” said Ballard, then added, “Fairfield.”

In Fairfield late one St. Paddy’s Day, a tipsy O’B had grabbed a hearse while Ballard was inside the mortuary learning the undertaker had just caught up the payments. Even worse, O’B hadn’t checked the rear of the vehicle...

“The guy paid with a rubber check,” said O’B virtuously. “And we dumped that personal property at Eternal—”

“I don’t want to hear about it. The answer is still no.”

Actually, there was a certain logic to Ballard’s refusal. Returning the car could get messy, and a cryptic message from Yana at the DKA office meant that tonight he was getting his fortune told. And maybe getting some other treasure besides?

“Paul Bunyan really tried to kill me, Larry. I go back out there alone, and...”. O’B drew a slicing hand across his throat.

Two beers later, Ballard relented, drove O’B back to the storage lot, and helped get the Eldorado started. He even found another bucket to sit on — gingerly, his lacerated butt was still sore — so they could plan strategy while riding out to the Portola District together. He considered it simple.

“If he isn’t around, we just drop it at the curb and run.”

“If he is around, we hit him on the head with a tire iron until we get his attention.”

“He can’t be that big and tough, O’B.”

“Bigger,” said O’B. “Tougher.”

They couldn’t ease the Eldorado back to the curb exactly where O’B had gotten it, because another car was parked there. You guessed it. Another brand-new Eldorado. With paper plates.

“That’s Yonkovich’s car!” bellowed O’B as they came rattling, clunking, banging, and thunking up the street. “I’m sure of it!”

“Maybe,” Ballard yelled back cautiously over the din.

O’B shouted, “In your heart you know that it’s the —”

“It’s nice to sneak up on him this way!” shrieked Ballard.

O’B eased the totaled Eldorado to the curb in front of the house being torn down a few doors away from Yonkovich’s place. He killed the engine. Ballard rubbed his tortured ears.

“I’ll check the I.D., you run the keys,” he said firmly.

O’B responded weakly, “Oh Jesus Christ!”

Ballard turned to follow his stricken gaze. Thundering down the front steps of the half-demolished house was the biggest biped he’d ever seen outside 49ers game days at Candlestick Park. Before they could move he was upon them, engulfing O’b’s right hand in his own, roughly the size of a Virginia ham, and pumping it up and down with great energy.

“Geez, am I glad to see you! I really gotta apologize.” He turned to include Ballard in his remarks. “I got this terrible temper, see—”

“I wouldn’t have known that,” said O’B mildly, trying to massage feeling back into his fingers. “Anyway, no harm done. At least, not to me...”

By this time, Paul Bunyan was examining his car with professional interest, hands on hips, shaking his head fondly.

“Geez, see what I mean? My dam’ temper. I roont it.” He turned back to O’B. “Called the friggin’ bank soon’s you was gone an’ I calmed down. Tol’ ’em I was sorry they hadda send somebody — got so much demolition work goin’ on around town I just dead forgot to make the payments. Tol’ ’em I was payin’ it off — penance, y’see what I mean? Authorized a transfer right on the phone. They said they’d check an’ get you right back out here with the car, an’ here you are.”

O’B cleared his throat. “You, ah, was this, ah... I mean, which bank did you...”

“B of A, of course. Dumbbutt I talked to didn’t even know they’d sent you out after it, but that’s okay. Here you are an’ here it is.” Paul Bunyan laughed a great laugh. “Yeah, here it is! Jeez, here it is!”

Ballard opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. What was there to say? Luck of the Irish?

“Couple days, I call the insurance company an’ say it was stole. Cops get it on the hotsheet, find it parked somewhere, like this...” His massive head suddenly swung toward them, his brows drawing down frightfully. “ ’Less you got some moral qualms ’bout sticking it to the insurance company...”

They protested qualmlessness with upraised palms. Paul Bunyan laughed and nodded and again hoped O’B had no hard feelings and again shook hands with both of them. Then he turned and nodded at the other Eldorado. And laughed again.

“Same freakin’ car, ’cept for the color.”

O’B said smoothly, “And would you believe, sir, that we also have a repossession order on that very car? That’s why I brought my colleague with me when I came back...”

“No kiddin’!” He almost collapsed into helpless laughter as they walked over to the Gyppo Caddy. “How the hell you gonna tell it’s the right one, without a license plate on it yet?”

“I.D. number,” said Ballard, this time very firmly.

And began checking it. As O’B began working his keys on the locked door.

“Right car,” said Ballard.

But he used a desperate sotto voce because the door of the house had burst open and seven obviously Gypsy males were running down the walk at them. And still the keys stubbornly refused to work here in the right car, when they had perversely worked fine in Paul Bunyan’s wrong car.

Ballard went into a defensive stance, but Paul Bunyan stepped in front of him to pluck the Gypsies’ obvious ringleader from the ground with one hand, and shake him. The man’s eyes bounced around in his head, his hands flapped at the ends of his arms like clothespins on a line. The other Gypsies faded back.

“You owe the bank on that car?” roared Paul Bunyan.

“Yee... ee... ee... ees... sss... sssirrrrr...”

“Then you give that man the keys, y’hear what Vm sayin’?”

He slammed Yonkovich back down on his feet like slamming a beer mug back on a table. Tucon dug through his pockets with shaking fingers to find the keys and give them to O’B.

Using them, O’B asked, “Any personal possessions in here?”

Yonkovich shook his head mutely. Perhaps all of his voice had been shaken out of him with “Yessir.” O’B gave Ballard the keys to his company car, knowing Ballard would figure it was parked around the corner out of sight.

He paused to shake hands with the hulking demolition man. “Thanks for savings our butts, Mr... er...”

“My pleasure!” roared Paul Bunyan. “I hate the kinda deadbeat s.o.b.s get their cars repossessed!”

Luck of the Irish, thought Ballard fatalistically as he trudged away to get O’b’s car and drive it back downtown.