Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Fourteen

By day, Woodside wore a much more benign, bucolic aspect than on a dark and stormy night. Green and rolling fields stretched forever, white-fenced, dotted with expensive show horses and rambling homes like English country estates.

Everything bucolic except Larry Ballard’s big mouth.

“I can’t wait to see where you got shot in the rear,” he said from behind the wheel of his truck, not for the first time.

“That’s ear, not rear,” gritted Bart. Man, it would almost have been worth it to walk down here from the City to retrieve his car, rather than have to listen to Ballard.

“But the blood on that Ferrari’s leather driver’s seat suggests you were sitting on your wound—”

“Slow down, slow down, it’s right up here,” snapped Bart.

The Bear Gulch sign seemed quite visible by daylight. A BMW convertible was just turning in. Larry put on his blinker.

“In the inky darkness the owl of death hoots. Blood spurts from Curt Hero’s shot rea—”

“I’m warning you, Ballard.”

They followed the BMW through the opened gate and up the road. Bart’s eldery DKA Ford Taurus was still in the turn-off beside the road. Larry pulled in behind it.

All four tires were flat.

Bart sighed and started to get out. “Don’t say anything, okay? Just call me a tow truck.”

“Now?” Larry got out and punched the Triple-A button on his cell phone. Then he told Bart, “Okay, you’re a tow truck.”

“Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.” Bart crouched to examine the tires. He straightened up. “Tell Triple-A we’ve got four slashed tires and only one spare. Tow truck driver’s gonna have to bring an extra wheel so he’ll have two tires to tow it in on.”

“How the hell did they know it was your car?”

Bart grimaced in near-agony. “I left Giselle’s hotsheet in plain sight on the front seat.” Before Larry could open his mouth, he added, “Don’t even think about saying it.”

“It,” said Larry, and started laughing so hard he had to repeat everything twice to the Triple-A road service agent.

Never ever live this one down. Never in a thousand years.

Trin Morales plunked himself down across Kearny’s desk from Giselle. Hadn’t slept worth a damn last night.

“What do you have for me?” asked Giselle crisply. She liked Trin a bit better now that some of his cockiness was gone.

“Colton Lewis has skipped from the Russian Hill address,” he said. “No wife, no kids, he was renting furnished.” He made a fly-away gesture with a stubby brown hand. “Vroom. Oklahoma stickers on his suitcase.”

“I doubt that. If he’s driving one of those classic cars, Lewis will be lying doggo somewhere in the City with it. I bet Big John Wiley still thinks of all of those demos as his.”

Actually, she knew how hard this kind of assignment was. Even if this guy Colton had a missing classic, which one?

“I’ll get one of the girls to do a DMV check for any cars Lewis might actually own. Meanwhile, get on the neighbors, see if they know what he drives.”

For a moment his old superior smirk almost curved Trin’s thick lips. “I did that yesterday. Nobody could remember.”

“So write a field report about it, Hot Shot.”

Morales grunted and levered himself from his chair. As he disappeared up the stairs, Kearny’s private line rang.

A thick male voice asked, “Kearny there?”

“Not at the moment. If I could take a message—”

“You know when he will be?”

“If you could tell me what—”

Click.

The voice had sounded like that of Staley Zlachi, the King of the Gypsies. But why would he be in town? And why calling Dan? She shrugged. If it was important, he’d call back.

Josh Croswell was on top of the world. He had sold a flawed emerald for twice what it was worth and was going to report only half the take to his boss. But then super-nerd Donny walked into the store with a worried look and no May on his arm. Josh found a suitable expression to paste on his face.

“I guess you’ve come to a decision about which diamond ring you want...”

“No, I’m here about the emerald. We’ve got big trouble.”

“Ah... the store policy is, ah, no returns after—”

“Returns?” Donny was frowning. “Oh, no, no, I don’t want to return it. I want to buy another one just like it! May says she wants to set them side by side in a platinum brooch.”

A huge jolt of adrenalin whirled through Josh. He thought: I can hit some of the gem-exchange Internet Web sites that Mr. Petrick uses. There have to be 15-carat stones around, maybe even one or two with that unusual Portuguese step cut. I can fill this order. Donny was still talking.

“You find me an emerald that May’s Mom can’t tell from the other one, and I’ll pay you $75,000 for it. In cash.”

Seventy-five thousand! And Mr. Petrick wasn’t due back until next week. Find that duplicate stone, sell it to Donny for 75K, and keep the net money for himself!

He couldn’t get Donny out of the store fast enough. After he put up the CLOSED sign, he rushed back to the office, and started scanning the gemstone Web sites on the net for emeralds at offer. Finding nothing even close, he put out his own message:

Wanted immediately: single emerald, rectangular, 15 carat, Portuguese step cut...

Geraldine Tantillo exited through the impressive inset portico — flanked by four double sets of Ionian Greek pillars — of Brittingham Funeral Directors. She was a somewhat over-weight woman in her late 20s, and could hardly wait to get to a lesbian bar on 20th off Castro for her nightly glass of white wine. She was beat. Came from hating your job. She lived just a few blocks away from the bar and it had become her local. She could nurse a single white wine through a whole evening, the girls were friendly, and the bartenders knew her name. Just like Cheers.

Sappho’s Knickers was a warm, narrow place that kept the lighting dim, the drinks strong, and the old-fashioned juke loaded with romantic oldies made for dancing cheek-to-cheek. The dance floor was so tiny that while dancing with one girl you’d be rubbing butts with another. A turn-on indeed for a lonely lesbian lady from Dubuque.

Not that Geraldine did much dancing with anyone: she was too shy to ask and not pretty enough to often get asked. But tonight she had been there only a half an hour when the most beautiful woman she had ever seen sat down across from her.

“I am Yasmine Vlanko,” the woman said.

Yasmine Vlanko was ageless: she could have been 18, she could have been 48. Her hair was long and black and lustrous, her eyes deep pools, her teeth small and gleaming between beautifully rounded lips. Her lithe full-bosomed figure was clad in skintight black leather, like Emma Peel wore in the old Avengers show that sometimes still appeared in rerun.

“And I’m Geraldine Tantillo.”

Poor Geraldine knew instantly that she was in love. As if sensing this, Yasmine leaned toward her across the table.

“Please, do not form fantasies about me, Geraldine. I am celibate because I have dark and powerful energy fields that shift in dangerous ways when I have sex with anyone.” Indeed, Geraldine could feel that energy enveloping her. Yasmine continued, “I felt your energy from across the room. You are troubled. I often can help those in trouble. A year ago you came to San Francisco from...” She shut her magnificent eyes for the moment, opened them. “Somewhere in the Midwest...”

“I... Dubuque, Iowa,” Geraldine heard herself saying. “I had a good beauty salon job in Dubuque, and I had a secret lover — Ariane. I was happy. But Ariane said she... yearned for the open minds and heady freedoms of the west.”

“And she betrayed you.”

“On our second weekend here.” Geraldine realized that tears were running down her cheeks. “She ran off with a hot-eyed Latina salsa dancer and my seven thousand dollars in savings.”

“So you were stranded,” murmured Yasmine Vlanko.

“Yes. And finding a job was horrible.” She gestured at herself. “I’m shy. I’m overweight. I have no color or clothes sense. Not a problem in Dubuque, but here, all the beauty salons are run by Vietnamese or French or Italian women who hire by nationality or percentage of body fat, I’m not sure which. Not one of them would even take my app. I finally got a job in a funeral home doing cosmetic and hair work on corpses.”

“And you have hated every minute of it,” said Yasmine. She reached across the table to take both of Geraldine’s hands in hers. She closed her eyes. She crooned something under her breath. She opened her eyes again. “Quit your job,” she said. “Then meet me here a week from tonight at ten o’clock — and I will change your life forever.”

She let go of Geraldine’s hands. She stood. Geraldine stood also, impelled by forces she couldn’t understand.

“Here,” said Yasmine. “One week from tonight. If you have quit your job, your life will be changed forever.”

And, somehow, she was gone.