Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Eleven

After the ritual fruits and grains, the pomana grew boisterous, as wine loosened tongues and limbs and sharpened memories of the deceased. The zengin saz played, weaving a long road of melody back to a time and place only the oldest of them remembered, but where they, and Ephrem Poteet, had nevertheless been together. The men danced their souls, heavily, but with grace. Women set down their dishes and reached for their daires and tambourines. Staley, sensitive to the moment, signaled the musicians, who called to the dancers with a Bibke bibke bibke romke udt!, bringing them together to the strains of naçti uçava. He cannot get up. Ephrem had fallen on the Longo Drom, but they were people of the road. If they listened, they could hear his darbuka made of clay playing now.

Staley, Baro Rom of the Muchwaya, nodded the band to silence, and began to speak a ritual opening in Romani.

“By your leave, Romale, assembled men of consequence, heed my words. A journey lies before us. In my hand I hold an invitation from the Holy Father himself. This year marks the two thousandth birthday of Holy Mother Church. We were in Rome before the Church was born. We were among those who built it. And now our tabor shall be there for the canonization of one of our own, Ceferino Jiminez Malla!”

He had used the word tabor — a large group of related Gypsies traveling together in horse-drawn wagons — deliberately, and was gratified that many responded to the dream. There was a buzz of astonishment in the room. Few of them knew the saint-to-be, but none would admit it. The first ghost of a challenge was raised by Josef Adamo, who scammed the gadje as a paving contractor. He had an important stomach and greying ringlets and black eyes that missed nothing.

“We should have been planning this a year ago. Nearly five months of Millennium year have passed. We should be there now.”

Sly Lulu had asked him to raise the question to forestall other challengers. By arrangement, Rudolph Marino answered for Staley. Being the heir apparent, he was listened to as closely as the King himself.

“We will be there next month, believe me. With six months to carry out our plans. There is the promise of a very quick and very large score.”

“Promised by who?” Adamo asked bluntly.

Staley smote himself on the chest with a clenched fist.

“By your King.”

There was a smattering of appreciative laughter. Nobody was better than Staley at finding ways for the Muchwaya to score.

“I am satisfied,” Adamo said formally, and sat down.

But then Wasso Tomeshti said, “We must go in style as befits American Gypsies returning to the homeland.”

When not working, he was the most traditional-looking of Gypsies: a day’s beard, twirling mustachios, a red bandanna around his thick neck. When working, he shaved and wore suits and bought electronic appliances with checks that bounced, then sold them with phony service warranties at cutthroat prices out of storefronts rented by the week in big-city low-income areas. The government never saw the sales taxes he collected.

“To this end, I can offer all of my brothers the very best deals on cell phones, beepers, pocket calculators, travel clocks, earphone radios...”

Staley waited for someone to question him about the myriad details attendant upon such a move, details he might have forgotten himself, which was not so uncommon these days. Again it was Adamo who obliged him.

“How do we finance such a journey?”

Before anyone else could speak, a female voice asked, “And what will we do once we are there?”

At this last, silence fell over them. Pearsa Demetro, who had sung the incantation over Lulu’s objections, had so far forgotten herself as to speak out in a formal kris.

“GO!” Staley roared at her. “Go, wash the dishes!” He waved a peremptory arm. “All of you cshays, go!”

The four teenage girls fled into the kitchen in frightened silence. Staley turned back to the adults.

“The voyage will pay for itself once we are there. But... to get there...” He paused dramatically. “I have a plan. It is based on the trust the Muchwaya have for their King.”

“I will hear my King!” declared Nanoosh Tsatshimo.

His specialty was bogus electroplating. He operated in Jewish neighborhoods and indeed, looked more Semitic than Rom. It was he, backed by Sonia Lovari, whose scam was as a Native American, who first called for a formal kris to declare Yana Poteet marime. His reasons, unlike Sonia’s, were traditional.

Staley let his eyes flash with delight, patted his paunch.

“Good! Then I will tell you what will be necessary if we are to succeed. Each Muchwaya clan — Johns, Millers, Costellos, Ristiks, and Steves — must contribute one-third of all the money they make to our common travel fund for the next month.”

“How can we do that?” Voso Makri asked softly. He was a startlingly handsome blue-eyed Greek Gypsy with a great shock of golden hair, recently arrived from Thessaloniki. Not yet well known in the kumpania, he was said to have computer skills equal to those of Rudolph himself. “The Bay Area is Kalderasha territory. We can barely eke out a living here, let alone contribute a third of our meager gleanings to the tabor.”

Perhaps encouraged by his objection, Sonia Lovari spoke up. She wore buckskin and a long plait of black hair down her back because her con was as the last living member of Ishi’s tribe.

“I can go on my own much cheaper than to share with—” She stopped abruptly, then finished up almost lamely, “With some who do not carry their own weight.”

“But Sonia,” said Staley, “who are we individually, you and I, without our kumpania, without our tabor?”

Rudolph said bluntly, “I am already working on our travel plans. We will all go together, as the nation of Muchwaya.”

Staley reminded them of the millions of pilgrims already in Rome for the year-long Catholic celebration of the Church’s 2,000th birthday. The Holy City overflowing with celebrants from every nation on earth, many of them deeply religious, more of them country bumpkins, most of them ignorant of credit cards and even traveler’s checks. There they all were with money in their pockets — and with their arms upraised in praise of God.

Immaculata Bimbai, who was blond and looked like a countess, spoke up. She was 32 and looked 22, and her scam was fainting in jewelry stores.

“Baro Rom, what of the Italian Romi? We are American Gypsies, will they not resent us?”

Staley spoke sagely.

“Are we not pilgrims like any others? For fifteen hundred years the Romi have been going to Rome for pilgrimages and canonizations. Our people were the Papal envoys across the face of Europe during the Middle Ages.”

Posing as Papal envoys, thought Rudolph as Staley pontificated in English, but why put too fine a point on it?

“That is another reason we gotta raise a lot of money quick — so we don’t work no hardship on our European brethren. I have many plans, plans which will astound you. But first — do we have agreement? If so, you all gotta see Lasso here to get passports, and you gotta pay for them yourselves.”

Lasso looked pleased. The Gypsies glanced at one another. They hated to pay for anything, but their imaginations were fired. Were they not all in accord? All but Sonia Lovari, on her feet once again.

“Baro Rom, we cannot leave this city until the soul of our dead brother, Ephrem Poteet, has been consoled. What are we going to do about his wife, Yana Poteet — the woman who murdered him? I spit upon her shadow, I would curse her progeny except the syphilitic whore will never be able to bear children.”

Everyone knew that Sonia hated Yana for telling a gadjo repossessor where to find the Cadillac Sonia was driving. Letting her initiate a witch-hunt would only interfere with their search for Yana on the sly. Lulu rose to speak in council for the first time that night.

“Yana Poteet is a disgrace as a Romni and no longer a member of this kumpania. We have already in solemn kris declared her marime, so leave her to the gadje justice. Murder is a blasphemy that breaks even their teeth. They will avenge our dead brother for us.”

Staley had them in the palm of his hand. He spread his arms wide in benediction, every inch the King.

“Now go, my children, to bring glory upon this tribe!”

The three of them were at last alone in Rudolph’s kitchen. By candlelight, Lulu looked old and worn.

“Best way to go to Rome to bring this glory on our tribe is find Yana and get back for the kumpania the money she stole from Ephrem’s body,” she said.

“Or for ourselves.” Rudolph made a deprecatory gesture. “We shall not forget Yana.”

“We don’t know the gadjo world well enough to find her in it,” Lulu said.

“Since we can’t find her ourselves,” said Staley, “we have to get someone to look for her who does know the gadjo world.”

“Who?” demanded Rudolph with surprise in his voice.

“The repossessors with whom we dealt in the matter of the thirty-two Cadillacs. Daniel Kearny Associates.”

Rudolph started to chuckle; it grew into open-throated laughter as he savored the irony. Lulu, lost in her fears of retribution should they break the marime curse laid on Yana, hadn’t yet caught on. She finished the last of the memorial mixture of wheatberry, cinnamon, honey, and sultanas before objecting.

“How we gonna get them to do our looking for us? Last time around they was hunting us down like dogs.”

“This time around we’re gonna hire ’em,” chortled Staley.