32 Cadillacs

Chapter thirty-one

After dropping Giselle at her car, Marino found a payphone and called Gunnarson’s office at the St. Mark. He repitched his voice to the bogus Arab gutturals of his previous terrorist call and became more and more excited, speaking faster and faster in a higher and higher register.

“We failed this morning, but we will strike again. You have opposed us and taken one of ours, so now the St. Mark Hotel is our target! Even if your President escapes our vengeance!”

And hung up. Back at the hotel, he holed up in the Garnet Room while sending word to Gunnarson they had to meet right away. He made it even money whether the Three Stooges or the feds would show up this time, but hoped Gunnarson and his cohort were in too deep to cry wolf now.

He had a drink, then a second, rare for him; not, oddly enough, because he was nervous about a possible federal bust, but because he had been shaken by Giselle Marc.

He wanted her. Physically. Usually, with gadje women, he just serviced them as part of some con he was running. But Giselle was not only stunning, she was row-smart, smart as Yana. Despite their mutual attraction, she would be using him while he was using her, and he found that intensely exciting.

Curly, Larry, and Moe paused in the doorway of the lounge to tell the maître d’ to keep other patrons away from around their table. Marino felt himself relax. No feds.

So, as Grimaldi, he opened with, “Now do you believe me?”

“Believe you about what?” demanded a harried Gunnarson.

Marino realized his fears had been groundless. Call in the feds? These stupid bastards hadn’t even made the necessary connections to do so — connections transparent as glass to him.

Grimaldi snarled, in his Bronx accent, “Whadda ya think? The terrorists. The blonde in the garage this morning, trying to get into the President’s car so she could set a C-4 plastique bomb — and then do a remote detonation by radio signal.”

“What sort of fools do you take us for?” demanded hulking redheaded Shayne. “The underambassador of Kuwait’s wife tries to open the wrong limo, and you try to make her a terrorist?”

“The underambassador from Kuwait, a devout Moslem, has a blond American for a wife?” countered Marino witheringly.

Shayne blustered, “The Secret Service agents—”

“Are stupid.” Not that he really thought so; it was just that he had been running cons since he was three years old, and fortunately these particular agents, hustled, had bitten. “That was not Ali Akbar Zuhrain who took the blonde away from them.”

Little desiccated Smathers bubbled, “But... but... the key fit the underambassador’s limo, they drove away together...”

Grimaldi casually laid on the table a perfectly harmless penlight that looked like an engorged ballpoint pen, and then proceeded to ignore it. Which assured the others couldn’t keep their eyes off it.

“Yeah,” he said sarcastically, “sure. You got it. The underambassador and the terrorist drove away together.”

“You’re trying to tell us,” sneered Gunnarson, “that another terrorist walked in there and rescued her and drove her off in his limo? Just like that?”

“No. I’m telling you that I walked in there and drove her off in my limo — just-like that.”

Shayne chuckled, “And took her where?”

“Out,” said Grimaldi bleakly.

Smathers suddenly had to take off his eyeglasses and start to polish them with his display handkerchief. The quaver was back in his voice, which was almost a whisper. “There... was another phone call... saying... we had taken one of theirs...”

Shayne couldn’t let go of it. His voice was low, intense, furious. “You’re claiming you knocked off this blond bimbo?”

Grimaldi ignored him, spoke instead to Smathers.

“I’ve learned their usual M.O. is to threaten the involved institution directly when they lose one of their people...”

“Well-l-l... yes, the call did... threaten us, but...”

Grimaldi drummed his fingers on the table, frowned, sent bleak eyes around to each of them in turn.

“You don’t have a lot of time, gents.”

Gunnarson demanded abruptly, “Do you have any proof the blonde was a terrorist? Any proof the phone call was real? Any proof that you...” he stumbled over the word, “removed her?”

“What is proof? I imagine the real Ali Akbar Zuhrain has had his meeting with the President by now, am I correct?”

“Yes, but—”

“And has left the hotel, since he is not staying here?”

“I believe so, yes, but...”

“Zuhrain didn’t have a limo, you can check that out. I do. It’s parked down in the garage with the blond bitch’s scarf lying on the front seat, if you want to go look. Here are my keys.” Grimaldi dumped them on the table in front of Shayne. Shayne made no move to pick them up. His ruddy countenance had paled slightly. Grimaldi pointed at the harmless penlight. “I took this off her body...” — he dropped his transmitter beside the penlight — “and this from her attaché case.”

“What... are they?” quavered Smathers, his calendar age at last. Grimaldi flicked the penlight with a contemptuous finger.

“Pen-bomb. Inside are a miniature receiver, detonator—”

They started back, blanching. “A bomb? Are you—”

“I removed the C-4 from it. It’s harmless.” Grimaldi tapped the transmitter. “Transmitter, present to the same frequency as the receiver in the pen-bomb. Once the President was in the car, all she had to do was—”

“My God!” Gunnarson looked as if he were about to faint. “And now they are threatening the hotel itself...”

A subdued Shayne began, “What if the Secret Service or the FBI or the police find out... find the blonde...”

“She went swimming about thirty miles out,” said Grimaldi. “Got tangled up in some scrap iron and dove out of a small plane that happened to be wave-hopping under the Coast Guard radar.”

“Did you—”

“Personally. One of my people dumped the body, of course.” He said it offhandedly and stood up, pocketing harmless penlight and transmitter. “She’s a freebie, but it’s seventy-five K in forty-eight hours for the rest of them. After the forty-eight there’s nothing I can do for you. My principals are tired of your delays, and I need an answer for them.”

Gunnarson was wiping sweat from his forehead with one of the cloth napkins. “You’re talking about... killing people! You can’t expect us to just—”

“They plan to kill you,” said Grimaldi reasonably.

The forty-eight-hour deadline was genuine — that was as far as he could stretch the Grimaldi persona, then the real Grimaldi was due back to New York from his Maine fishing trip. When he found his apartment rifled and his credit cards gone, he would hit the street yelling and his cards would hit the stolen-card hotline a few hours after that.

Forty-eight hours for $75,000. Or zero.

Same with Giselle Marc. Tomorrow she would come to the hotel and he would feed her some leads to a few of the Cadillacs being driven by Yana’s people. And afterward... perhaps...

It was nearly midnight when Dan Kearny let himself into the office. He had driven directly there after his flight from LAX, rather than home, because he’d had his fun in the field and suddenly, dog-tired as he was, had to touch DKA again. Truth to tell, what was worrying him most was what he and Giselle could do about the mountains of wastepaper and layers of dust accumulating since he’d foolishly dumped the janitorial service...

He stopped dead just inside the front door, keys forgotten in his hand. All the lights were on in the middle of the night, and the whole place was spotless. Almost in time to the gospel music from the back room, he swiped a hand across a desktop — no dust. Giselle must have found a dynamite new service that...

Gospel music? From the back room was coming gospel music!

He went hurriedly back between the deserted desks and through the open doorway. At Giselle’s desk was a fat black woman of about 60 whom he’d never seen before. She wore black stretch pants and a scarlet sweater and her head was wrapped in a bright-hued bandana to keep the dust away. In one hand was a poorboy, in the other a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Her eyes were shut, she was rocking her head from side to side in time with the music, crooning along with it in a rich dark contralto.

This was the new cleaning service?

“Ma’am, pardon me... ma’am... ma’am—”

She shrieked and jumped up, arms and legs going every which way, eyes popping wide in a caricature of black surprise.

“It’s okay,” said Kearny soothingly, making little palm-down shushing movements with his hands. “I just wondered if—”

But she was in motion, hitting the stop button on the boom-box and dropping her sandwich into a paper bag and draining her coffee and dropping the cup into a big trash bucket that stood upright on a two-wheeled cart beside the desk, with brooms and mops sticking out of it. Meanwhile, she kept up a running barrage of chatter as she sped about.

“Scairt me half to death, you must be Mr. Kearny, yessir, all finished up in here, jus on my way out, yessir, finishin up my snack an Ah be outta here, yessir, everything done jus apple-pie nice, didn’t mean to set at no desk, neither, nossir...”

And, pushing the big metal trash bucket on its two-wheeled frame, she was through the back door and gone. Kearny blinked after her as if he’d just seen a UFO, then shook his head and went back out to the front office and down to his desk.

He stood there idly leafing through the teetery mountains of billing, subconsciously hearing voices coming down from the second floor through the narrow stairwell behind his desk. Somebody working late. Dozens of files. Looked like the place ran better without him... than... with... him...

The top file on the stack was PERNOD, MAYBELLE.

Maybelle Pernod, fat, black, and 61, streetwalking to keep her impossibly expensive Continental. Giselle had fallen for her hard-luck story like a ton of bricks...

New cleaning lady, fat, black, probably 61...

And it was Giselle’s voice he was hearing from upstairs, along with a male rumble out of which he could pick no words. No she didn’t! Giselle didn’t get away with this crap!

Kearny took the stairs two at a time, went along the hall to a cubicle where Ken Warren was typing, a thick stack of finished reports beside the machine. Giselle was sitting on the edge of the desk, swinging her feet and talking.

“... and he’s been running this elaborate scam on—”

She broke off abruptly when Kearny appeared.

“No,” he snarled.

“No to what?” She stood slightly taller than he, and so slid off the desk to look down at him as she always did when they were about to go at it.

“Maybelle Pernod. No way she’s going to—”

“Hnyeth thnee ith! Hnit wasth hmy indea!”

Kearny was frozen in openmouthed astonishment. Warren, having had his say, began doggedly hitting the keys again.

“Ken repossessed her Continental as ordered,” said Giselle, talking fast. “She’s living at a friend’s apartment until she gets enough for first and last and security deposit on her own.”

“Yeah, well, she ain’t gonna get it from us.”

Warren ripped the report from the typewriter and stood up. He jerked his windbreaker off the back of the chair and started to shove his arm into the sleeve all in the same motion.

“Hnen Agh nquitt!” he exclaimed.

CLOSE AND BILL on WALINSKI, SARAH.

CLOSE AND BILL on UVALDI, PIETRO.

The guy was an absolute killer. Kearny got in Warren’s way as the big man tried to storm out of the room.

“You can’t quit,” said Kearny reasonably. “I need you to go down to L.A. with Trin Morales and ferry up a couple of Gyppo Cadillacs. Besides, your registration hasn’t come back from Sacramento — and your raise hasn’t come through yet.”

Storm clouds still churned in Warren’s eyes. “Hngmaybelle?”

“A steal at forty a night, Dan,” said Giselle quickly.

“Hear that?” said Kearny. “A steal at forty a night.”

Warren looked suddenly flustered; he ducked his head and mumbled something and gathered up his folders and patted Giselle on the shoulder and was gone.

“What’d he say?” asked Kearny.

“He has to drive Maybelle home.”

“He’s the friend whose apartment she—”

“Yep. He knew her son in Vietnam. I didn’t know that when I assigned the reopen REPO ON SIGHT to him. He went out on it and rescued her from some rednecks and then repo’d her car.”

“How the hell do you find out all this stuff? The guy doesn’t say two words to me, and when he does I can’t...”

“Maybe ’cause I listen?” she said. Kearny shrugged, half shook out two cigarettes, extended the pack to her. She took one, adding, “And how’d you know I’d started smoking again?”

He gestured at the ashtray of butts. “Warren doesn’t.”

They lit up. Giselle said casually, “Maybelle does a hell of a job, doesn’t she? A steal at forty a—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time.”

Ballard and Yana both came at the same time, crying out together wordlessly in their mutual release. After a long minute of dying spasms and thrusts, they fell apart and lay on their backs, sweating, panting, staring up through the semi-darkness at the plush hangings over Yana’s bed. Incongruously holding hands.

Almost unwillingly, Yana rolled toward him and put her head on his shoulder and gave him a few leads on some Marino clan Cadillacs. And then asked him for that favor she had in part brought him back here a second time to get.

At such a moment, what man in his right mind would say no?