Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Nineteen

A sober, rejuvenated O’B was questioning people on Toyon Court as they got home from work. At the naked taxi driver’s house the door was flung open by a slender pretty barefoot blonde in tight jeans and a scoop-neck sweater that advertised her lack of a brassiere. Her lean face almost burned with intensity.

“You’re the redhead was askin’ questions about Tim Bland.”

“Guilty.”

In the living room, that morning’s Chronicle was a paper blizzard across a sagging chintz couch facing the TV. She swept the paper to the floor, sat down, gestured at O’B to join her. The couch smelled of chips, stale beer, sweat, tobacco.

“Jake’s sty,” she said. “He’s a fuckin’ pig. Oink oink.” On the coffee table was a shaker and a full martini glass. “I’m Vix as in vixen. You want a drink?”

“I’m O’B as in I’m on the wagon.”

“I oughtta be.” She shook out a Virginia Slim, lit up, blew smoke from the corner of her mouth away from him, took a hefty slug of her drink. She blinked. “Whew! I musta forgot to wave the vermouth bottle at this one. You a friend of Tim’s?”

The moment of truth so often faced when you were trying to get information rather than just thug a car. Take a chance.

“I want to take his car away from him.”

“That dark green Panoz kit car?” she demanded avidly. He’d chosen right. She said, “No wonder he took off when I mentioned you’d been askin’ Jake questions about him.”

“Any idea where he might have gone?”

She stood, drained her martini in a single gulp, began walking with quick, angry strides about the living room.

“When Jake’s working overtime, bastard Tim likes to drive me in his precious car up to his old man’s cottage in Sonoma so he can spend the weekend shoving that cigarette-size dick of his into me.” She hurled her martini glass into the fireplace, shattering it, yelled, “G’wan, get outta here, ya nosy bastard!”

O’B got out before she threw the martini shaker at him. He could be in Sonoma by 11:00 P.M.. Check on a phone listing for the father. Cruise the grid of downtown streets. He didn’t know what a Panoz looked like, but Sonoma wouldn’t have more than one.

Geraldine Tantillo nursed her glass of white wine in Sappho’s Knickers. One week ago, at this very table, strange, exotic Yasmine Vlanko told her to quit her job and promised to show up tonight at ten and change Geraldine’s life forever. Geraldine had quit the job, the hour had arrived — but no Yasmine. Geraldine sighed. Ariane all over again.

“Hello, Geraldine,” said the deep, rich, contralto voice.

Dark, beautiful, mysterious Yasmine, sexy in her skintight black leather, was sitting across the table from her.

“How did you... I... I thought you weren’t...”

“I said I would be here.”

Geraldine tamped down her hopeless passion: Yasmine had to remain celibate if her strange powers were to be effective.

“What... what happens now?” Geraldine asked timidly.

Yasmine leaned toward her. Her perfume was more like an incense than a scent. “Now I help you,” she said. “As I promised. Then you will not see me again.”

“No!” Geraldine was aghast. “You can’t just—”

“If I am here for you to lean on, you will never develop fully as a woman. You will never find another lover who will nourish you.” She sang in a low, liquid voice:

She then sang the translation:

“I... I don’t understand.”

“It refers not to a real bird, but to a cloud in the east on Whitsunday — which would mean you would find no lover that year. Should I stay, I would be that cloud in the east for you.”

She slid a sheet of paper across the table.

“That is the address of JeanneMarie Broussard et cie, a beauty salon on Spruce Street in Laurel Heights. They will expect you there at nine on Monday morning to start work at ten.”

Geraldine cried, “I know this place! I tried to apply for work there, they wouldn’t even talk to me. How did you—”

She looked up from the paper, sudden dread constricting her throat. Rightly so. Yasmine Vlanko had vanished.

Yana Poteet sank back in her seat on the almost empty downtown Market Street streetcar. A light raincoat hid the tight fuck-me black leather. Her slumped position and the scarf swirled around her head added fifteen years to her age. But inside she was jubilant. She’d pulled it off! She had an honest job in the gadjo world and a safe place to live in that same world.

Deciding she should work at a mortuary, following Geraldine from work, scoping out which of Geraldine’s buttons to push. Conning Meryl Blanchett into getting Geraldine a job at JeanneMarie Broussard et cie. Easing Geraldine out of the job she hated and into the new one with JeanneMarie. Geraldine might even find the new life Yana had promised her. Who could know?

She pulled the cord, left the streetcar at the transit transfer point on Seventh and Market so as to not walk too directly to Columbine Residence for Women on Breen Place above the old Main Library. Single women only, no men above first-floor administration, and you had to check in before midnight, no matter what your age.

White-haired, stern-faced Mrs. Newman was already behind the check-in table set four-square across the entryway.

“Good evening, Mrs. Newman,” said Yana gravely.

“Good evening to you, Miss Thatcher,” Newman said, beaming at the taffy-haired Yana. Such a wholesome girl.

Working in a mortuary was unclean employment for any Rom, but the women’s residence was spic and span. No cop, no Gypsy, no husband in L.A., if still alive, would ever think of looking for her at either place. In many ways she was more comfortable right now as a hillbilly lady named Miss Becky Thatcher from Arkansas’s Ouachitas Mountains than she would be as a Muchwaya Romni.

In her room, she removed her raincoat and saw Yasmine Vlanko in the mirror. She felt anger. She could thank Ephrem Poteet for putting her through the last two weeks. He was causing her even more trouble dead than alive.

By an effort of will she calmed herself. Za Develesa, Ephrem, she whispered. Go with God.