32 Cadillacs

Chapter thirty-three

Talk about the luck of the Irish.

Trinidad Morales spent Friday night slipping the old banana to his chiquita, then very early Saturday morning had to go out a window when chiquita’s husband came home unexpectedly. So with the early sun creating long black low-angle shadows across the pavement despite the morning chill, he found himself strutting along Olvera Street puffing his cheap cigar, overnight bag in hand as if he had just hit town, unwittingly projecting earnest, honest, and stupid — none of which he was.

“Pardon me, sir...” A diffident Spanish voice at his elbow. Morales turned.

A tall thin stooped man in a brown suit, apparently a Chicano like himself. Worried brown eyes and a bandido mustache that bracketed his mouth like an inverted horseshoe.

“Yes?” Also in Spanish.

The man looked around nervously, edged a little closer.

“I am... Sir, I need...” Another look around. “Do you know an attorney, sir? One of our own people whom I can trust?”

Morales stood stock-still for a moment, the soft birdsong of Spanish voices around him, the smoke from his cigar rising straight up into the morning air. Then he shook his head sadly.

“Sir, I am sorry,” he said, raising his overnight case slightly, “but I have only just arrived from.:”

He stopped, suddenly as secretive as the tall stooped sad man beside him. The man found a faint smile. “From elsewhere,” he supplied.

“You misjudge me,” said Morales a little stiffly. “I was born in this country, I have money in the bank, transferred here from Florida so I can open a business with my brother-in-law who is a very fine taco cook. I am most sorry I cannot help you...” A delicate pause. “The Yellow Pages, perhaps?”

A violent headshake. “No! I cannot trust anyone unknown with this. I have something... I need advice that...” They were walking through the crowds, the tall man stooped and almost whispered in his ear, “I am an illegal, sir.”

“For this you need no attorney unless you are caught.”

The lips came closer yet, the voice lower still. “But sir, I have won the lottery!”

Morales stopped dead, gaping in surprise. Then he grabbed the thin man’s arm and hustled him across the narrow street to a playground flanked by an elementary school with vivid murals painted on its walls. They sat down on a concrete bench facing the street, where no one could approach them unseen.

“The California lottery?”

“Yes. Last Wednesday’s.”

“Jesus, man, that’s worth...”

The man put his long narrow hand on Morales’s thick blunt one to make him lower his voice. Morales nodded, pulled a folded L.A. Times from the side pocket of his rumpled suit coat, found last Wednesday’s winning number, proceeded in quieter tones.

“You hold that ticket? That one right there?”

“I do, sir.”

Greed shook his voice. “Let me see it.”

The man got out an ancient cheap imitation-leather wallet. From it he removed a battered lottery ticket. It was bent and folded and soiled from being taken in and out of the worn billfold many, many times, but it bore Wednesday’s date and unmistakably matched the winning number from Wednesday’s drawing.

“Blood of Christ!” said Morales in an awed voice that prevented it from being a curse. “That jackpot is seven million dollars! Even if others also hold the winning number...”

The man returned ticket to wallet, wallet to pocket. “You see now my problem. If I present myself with the ticket, being an illegal, perhaps instead of getting my money I will be seized and held by the immigration and sent back to my country.”

“Why not get someone else to cash in the ticket for you?”

“I know no one in this city, sir, except you.” A delicate pause. “And even you, I do not know your name, sir.”

“Morales. Trinidad Morales.”

“Jesús Zaragoza.”

They shook hands, then sat on their bench in companionable silence, contemplating the problem in the unhurried, Spanish way. A distinguished middle-aged gentleman who also looked Latin, wearing a three-piece suit and a dark tie and highly polished black shoes, sat down on the adjacent bench. He took off his old-fashioned Borsalino and with his display handkerchief mopped the brow thus exposed.

Immediately, a couple of pigeons fluttered to the bricks at his feet and strutted about, cooing and cocking sharp eyes at him as if anticipating his 79-cent Big Bite of Granny Goose popcorn. While scattering fluffy white kernels he caught the eye of Morales and Zaragoza. He gave them a small courtly bow.

“Truly,” he said, “it is too hot to wear a suit and tie.”

Other pigeons converged, slipstreaming in to walk and talk and peck. The newcomer beamed at them, dispensed more popcorn.

“When I complete a saddening deposition such as the one just taken, I come here and feed popcorn to the pigeons. It makes me feel less disheartened by the follies of mankind.”

Morales caught Zaragoza’s eye. “Deposition?” he asked after a delicate pause. “Such as a lawyer might take?”

The distinguished middle-aged man brought out a business card and leaned across to hand it to them.

Below that was a Los Angeles address and phone number.

“Immigration law, perhaps?” asked Morales hopefully.

Cerruli shook his head. He shrugged. “Nothing so grand. Small things... wills, divorces, contracts... but it is a living and I feel I serve a useful purpose to my community.”

“We... have a problem...” began Zaragoza hesitantly.

Of course the whole story came out. When he and Morales were finished, so was the popcorn and Cerruli was sitting back on his bench, wiping his face again with his handkerchief.

“Unfortunately, sir, I am not a man with the necessary knowledge of INS rulings and immigration law to be of any help to you...” He sat up suddenly, a light coming into his eyes. He checked his watch. “But I have a friend, of our race, who works in the INS office here in Los Angeles.”

Zaragoza shook his head quickly, fear in his eyes.

“Immigration? No! He will just...”

“She is, I assure you, a friend. From my neighborhood.” Señor Cerruli stood up with decision. “She works Saturday mornings, I will call her and present her with a hypothetical case.” He eyed Zaragoza shrewdly. “Perhaps you can offer her a fee... some small percentage of your winnings...”

The three of them ended up crowded around a pay phone, each with his ear close enough to the receiver to hear.

“Immigration and Naturalization,” said a crisp male voice.

“Ms. Trejo, please,” said Cerruli in excellent English.

Concepción Trejo spoke English with a Latin slur, and became first excited and then cautious at the hypothetical case presented to her. Si, la Migra would hear of this illegal’s attempt to cash in his winning ticket, and would find a way to deport him — with the ticket disappearing into some corrupt agent’s pocket. The only way to do it was through a third party, a native-born American impervious to INS pressures. Morales eagerly snatched the telephone receiver from Cerruli’s hands.

“I am such a one! I can cash in the ticket in my name!”

And who was he? They explained. But... delicately... how could they trust him? He became indignant. She was firm. As a favor to her old friend Señor Cerruli, she would meet them, they could talk this thing through, but...

They ended up driving up and down and around and through the curving streets of Echo Park in Señorita Trejo’s splendid new Cadillac Brougham as they thrashed out the details of a transaction that had rapidly become anything but hypothetical.

Señor Zaragoza, as the actual holder of the winning ticket, would receive one-half of the lottery winnings — $3.5 million.

Señor Morales, as the man who would present the winning ticket and have to face all of the attendant public scrutiny, would receive one-fourth of the winnings — $1.75 million.

Señorita Trejo and Abogado Cerruli, for picking a way through the INS and legal minefields, respectively, would each receive one-eighth of the winnings — $875,000 each.

If there were other holders of the winning number, all of these winnings would be scaled down proportionally. So all of the problems were solved except the greatest one — that of trust. Morales, after all, would have to be given the winning lottery ticket — the winning ticket! There had to be some deterrent that would keep him from making off with it and leaving the others without recourse...

“I am an honorable man,” Morales protested. “You need only ask anyone in Miami whether I can be—”

“Unfortunately, this is Los Angeles,” said Señorita Trejo. She was a handsome full-figured woman with snapping black eyes.

“His brother-in-law?” suggested Zaragoza diffidently.

“He would be very difficult to find on a Saturday like this,” said Morales quickly, almost overplaying his hand because, of course, there was no brother-in-law. “And besides, if he heard of this he would want a percentage for his testimonial.”

“There is a way,” began Cerruli carefully. “It is not perfect, perhaps, but it would assure some safety to all...”

What? How?

“How much money have you had transferred from Miami to your bank here for the purpose of starting this taco place with your brother-in-law?” asked Señorita Trejo.

“Fifty-three thousand dollars,” said Morales, but quickly added, “but I cannot... do anything with that money. It is from all the members of my family.”

“You must,” said Cerruli gently. “They all will benefit.”

Señorita Trejo took it up. “It is the only way. You withdraw the money, give it to Señor Cerruli to hold, to show us that you are acting in good faith. Señor Zaragoza gives you the lottery ticket to show that he is acting in good faith. It is he who is at risk. As soon as you divide the first payment between us, he will return your money to you.”

Morales argued and cajoled, but in the end he acquiesced, it only made sense: after all, $53,000 against $1.75 million...

The other three would wait in a taco joint across the street from his bank with the ticket. Morales would get his money before the 1:00 P.M. Saturday bank-close. He was sufficiently excited as he slid out of the booth that he knocked the Señorita’s purse to the floor. He gathered up the various items that fell out of it, returned it to her, and crossed busy Glendale Boulevard with his overnight bag for the money.

A few minutes later he recrossed the boulevard from the bank in which, of course, he had no account. Nor did he cross to the coffee shop. Instead, he went directly to the Brougham.

Morales opened the door of the Cadillac with the keys palmed when he had knocked Señorita Trejo’s purse to the floor. He tossed in his overnight bag, and followed it into the plush interior. The engine caught instantly.

As the three furious Gypsies boiled out of the taco joint to hurl useless threats and imprecations after him, Morales flipped them a bird and drove quickly away; An hour later, the police informed of the repossession and the company car on a towbar behind the Brougham, he was on his way to San Francisco.

He had known the lottery ticket was real, of course, and it really had borne Wednesday’s winning number. But Morales also had known that it was for tonight’s drawing, purchased on Thursday after Wednesday’s winning number had been announced.

For a skilled Gypsy documented child’s play to change May 6 to May 9. For a private detective of Morales’s experience, equal child’s play to spot the alterations. He would not have been the first mark they had hit on with their scheme; but he would have been the first who must have seemed just right: an out-of-towner with money in the bank and a larcenous itch.

So... luck of the Chicano?

Or perhaps just what Bart Heslip already had remarked, a hell of a detective — even if a son of a bitch personally.