Cons, Scams, and Grifts

One

On that Easter Monday at Universal Studios, just over the hill from Marr’s Sunset Boulevard office, a shaggy black bear came down a flight of stairs with the shambling side-to-side gait of an animal not used to walking upright. In front of him half a dozen orderly queues of Easter week vacationers waited for open trams that would take them on the last of that day’s famous Universal Studios backlot tours.

Among them was a small black girl of about five, pink dress, matching pink shoes, with pink-beribboned pigtails sticking straight out from each side of her head. When she saw the bear, her eyes flew wide, whites showing all around, even as her face scrunched up to deliver a wail of urban terror.

The bear stepped off the curb in front of her, tipped his Smokey Bear forest ranger’s hat down over one eye, and did a soft-paw shuffle as he sang in a fine bear-i-tone voice.

The child’s face was illuminated by a radiant smile. The bear did the old vaudeville head dip so his hat rolled down his arm on its rim to land in his wide clumsy bear’s paw.

And by some strange magic it wasn’t a hat anymore, it was a magnificent paper lily all of gold.

And somehow his lily had been transmogrified into a paper rose.

The bear stepped back to do a clumsy bow for the laughing children, lost his balance, and went sprawling over the curb right in front of them. As they OOOHHH’ed in alarm, he clambered clumsily to his feet, opened his arms, and finished his song:

And yes! His single paper rose had become a small circlet of tiny, real, red tea roses with green leaves and interwoven stems. Which fragrant crown he balanced on the little black girl’s pigtails. Somehow, for a moment, wearing her tippy crown, she was the regal woman she would become.

The trams were there. The bear hugged the little kids and even their mommies, and posed for pictures with them all. He ended up sitting on his haunches with his upside-down Smokey hat rematerialized in his hand. This gave the jovial, invigorated people the chance, should they so desire, to drop change into it as they boarded. Many did.

Br’er Bear shambled away from the deserted tram stop. He stepped over a waist-high barrier to slip into the janitors’ shed where he had hidden his vinyl satchel. In a few moments he had become just a shaggy puddle of fake fur on the concrete floor out of which Ephrem Poteet emerged as butterfly from chrysalis.

Poteet was an almost-swarthy gent in his late 30s, with dark eyes he could make glisten like those of Antonio Banderas. He was still handsome despite new fine lines etched into his face by weeks of strain. Strain indeed. Terrible things had been done up in San Francisco, but that was all over now. He was once more wuzbo, pure and unashamed, back where he belonged, his secrets safe. No one knew he was here, especially not his wife, who was utterly ruthless and had strange powers that he feared.

All the time he had been cavorting around, Poteet’s long-fingered hands had been busy through slits under each front paw of his suit. Now he dug into the long, hidden pockets he had sewn down the outsides of the bear’s legs. Lo and behold, here were wallets rich with cash, here were credit card folders and a poker hand of phone cards, here even was a folded sheaf of old-fashioned traveler’s checks. All of them lifted from purses and wallets and handbags and back pockets.

The wallets would go into a series of convenient trash cans on the way home; their credit and phone cards, soon to be traded for cash, would temporarily rejoin Br’er Bear in the satchel. The cash would go into his pockets; through a series of small purchases he would convert the traveler’s checks into more cash.

Half an hour later Ephrem Poteet, satchel in hand, strolled Universal’s CityWalk like any other tourist. Past Gladstone’s, with sawdust on its floor and open barrels of salted peanuts in the shell. Past the thirty-foot-high King Kong scaling the wall of the video store. Past Wizard’s Magic, the magic-themed restaurant under the high-glassed dome roof. Finally, past the fountains that sprang up randomly to wet down those who challenged them.

In the back of a foyer housing several ATM machines was a door with DO NOT ENTER above it and a red light beside it. A notice warned that a bell would sound if the door was opened. Poteet opened it. No bell sounded. Parked under a NO PARKING sign outside in the alley was a golf cart. He putt-putted down the same winding road up which the daytime trams had toiled laden with sightseers, left the cart among several others parked behind Building 473 by the creative types from the Editorial Building.

A bus dropped Poteet on Highland in an area of Hollywood where no tourist from the Universal tour would venture after dark. On North Whitley, next to a distributor of naughty underwear, he entered the Hurly Burly. The saloon stank of illicit smoke, stale beer, and fresh urine. The juke was wailing a 1940s song about a lady they called the Gypsy. She could look in the future, said the song, and take away all your fears. Unless the Gypsy was Yana of fear and longing, of course.

A very fat woman in a fuzzy red sweater sat at the left end of the bar, swollen feet hooked over the rung of her stool, massive thighs stretching her stretch slacks to their utmost.

“Buy a girl a drink, dearie,” she simpered, gap-toothed.

Pointing at her glass, Poteet chose the opposite end of the bar. There was no one in between, nor in any of the four booths along the side wall. The Hurly Burly’s solvency obviously did not depend on its booze sales.

The bartender slid another drink down to the fat woman. He wore a gold hoop earring in one ear and a knife scar on one swarthy cheek. Blue veins stood out on his temples. His eyes had seen all that his particular world had to offer.

“Ephrem the Dip,” he said, “long time no.”

“Not long enough,” Ephrem said, glad to see him. “Draft.”

He slid one of the purloined credit cards across the stick to the bartender. The man regarded it, nodded.

“How many and how fresh?”

“Twenty-two — maybe five hours old.” Poteet mated the credit card with a phone card. “And seven of these.”

“I’ll move ’em back east tonight. What price we talkin’?”

Twenty minutes later the deal was struck, and the cards and a good deal of cash surreptitiously changed hands. Ephrem barely wet his lips with beer. When he drank, he drank too much too quickly with generally disastrous results.

Etty Mae Walston was a small-boned but wide-beamed widow lady with slightly bowed legs and bifocals and wispy dead-white hair piled atop her head like shaving cream. She had lived in the 2800 block of Marathon in L.A.’s Silver Lake district for enough years to register the neighborhood’s distressing decline. Heavens to Betsy, these days your car could be stolen right off the street and the police might not show up until the next day.

Since TV, save televangelists and infomercials, had little on it a decent body wanted to watch, Etty Mae spent much of her time spying on her neighbors from between front-room lace curtains washed thin by time. Her binoculars had been bought by her late husband, God rest his soul, for Dodger home games.

About two weeks earlier an almost-swarthy gent had moved into the paint-peeling white-frame house next door. He was very frustrating to Etty Mae; because he received no mail, she could not get his name from the postman or by snooping in his mailbox. He seldom came home before midnight, and seldom stirred outside before noon. Why, only the good Lord knew who he really was and what he was up to.

A terrorist planning to bomb Parker Center? A white slaver seeking to abduct teenagers for the vile uses of Saddam Hussein? One of those rapists who drove around after dark in a closed van grabbing innocent women right off the street?

Tonight, just after The 70 °Club, her vigilance was rewarded. As on the previous night, the underdressed woman came clicking up the sidewalk in her high heels to pause under the streetlight. This time Etty Mae’s binoculars were ready to bring her into focus: long black hair, oval face, strong nose, red-gleaming lips. Tight dress, white gloves.

Just like last night, the hussy went up the steps of the terrorist/white-slaver/rapist’s unlighted house to meld with the shadows on his porch. Why, oh why, wasn’t the front door angled so Etty Mae’s binoculars could probe whether she went inside?

Just after midnight, Ephrem Poteet unlocked his front door to go yawning into the echoing, half-empty house. The way to the single bedroom lay across the living room and down the short hallway. He didn’t bother with lights; there was almost no furniture to run into anyway.

Perfume stopped him dead in the bedroom’s open doorway. Familiar perfume. Lights blazed to squint his night-adjusted eyes. She had been sitting on the bed in the dark, waiting for him. Young and beautiful. Rich curve of breast and hip emphasized by a thin, clinging dress that showed extravagant cleavage. What powers had she used to find him so soon?

“My beloved wife!” he exclaimed ironically, carefully schooling superstitious dread from face and voice.

“The title papers,” she purred. “I want them. And the money. Everything is mine.”

He knew he would give her what she wanted — all of it. He would give her today’s take, too, if it would get her out of his life. But to give in too easily would make her suspicious.

“The money is spent,” he lied. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to touch a cent of it. Why had he even taken it?

She stood with a lithe movement, advanced on him even while smoothing the skimpy fabric down over her hips to emphasize their curves. Her eyes twinkled as her mouth made a moue.

“All of it gone? Every penny? Bad Ephrem!”

She slid her arms around him, pressed her open mouth to his. Her tongue darted. Her hips ground against his. She triggered his arousal as she always did. She giggled.

“Aha, my Ephrem, I feel that you are glad to see me.”

“Yes. But still, I should get something for the papers.”

“So you shall, my Ephrem. Here.” Her hand came out of her purse to slide razor-sharp steel into his belly. She jerked the blade sideways and up. “Like it?”

He gasped and fell, wide-eyed, as she skidded the straight-backed chair over under the ceiling’s old-fashioned light fixture. Even then, going into shock, he tried to outwit her.

“An old fox... doesn’t use... the same den twice...”

“But you are a stupid old fox, my Ephrem. I made sure last night that it was all hidden right up here in the ceiling.”

“If you knew... where it... was... then why...”

“I thought you understood, my sweet — I want you dead.”

“Mister?” The voice was old and quavery and full of dread, but it called again, “Mister, you all right?”

“In... here...” Ephrem managed to get out.

By squinting he could see the old white-haired lady from next door, for once without her binoculars. Her mouth was slack with fright: who could blame her? Here he was, bleeding on the floor, with his pockets turned out and a knife buried in his gut.

So your nosiness overcame your fear, he thought. Nothing new there. All his life he had known women like that.

All his life he had known women...

Known women... known... women...

“It was my... wife... from... ’Frisco...”

The old woman’s face was down close to his. Not just nosiness. At the end, Rom thief and lonely old gadja woman.

“Oh, you poor, poor man!”

The room was darkening. He felt an overwhelming sadness, a sense of loss, the loss of what should have been.

“Yana,” he croaked. Despite all, he now knew, he still loved her. He cried, “Yana-a-a-a-a...”

Nevermore.