Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Twenty-two

Larry Ballard woke at eight on Monday morning with the heady smells of Midori still on his body. He unsuccessfully groped for her in the bed beside him before sitting up under the twisted bedclothes. Swinging his feet to the floor, he padded through into the living room with its pathetic kitchen alcove.

“Midori?”

Then he remembered. Monday morning. She had promised Nordstrom’s she’d be back to work on Monday. Feeling at once almost frail and like the biggest stud in the world, he crossed the living room to twitch aside the bulbous bay window’s oft-mended lace curtains to look out across Lincoln Way into the green depths of Golden Gate Park.

No green depths. Just a solid bank of early fog swirled and whipped by icy gusts off the Pacific. Out here in the ironically named Sunset District there was usually fog in the morning and evening with a four-hour window of milky sunlight in between.

Ballard let the curtain fall back. Not only would Midori be riding the streetcar out to Stonestown in her thin coat — the only one she had — she still had classes to attend. She’d go right from her half-day at Nordstrom’s to S.F. State.

Forgetting his naked state, he strode down the hall to her apartment and crossed her tiny living room calling, “Midori?” She was in the bedroom, in bra and panties, just dropping a black dress with a mid-calf skirt down over her head.

She turned. “Rarry! I try not to wake you. What is—”

“It’s cold out, you’ve got classes this afternoon, I want to drive you to work.”

“Like that?”

He looked down. Whoops.

Midori was already giggling and sliding her panties down and off under her dress. And just like that, Larry got to live out his fantasy of flipping her skirt over her head and having his way with her while she was fully dressed. Turn on!

He even got her to Nordstrom’s on time afterward.

Back in his apartment in a lovely haze, he walked in on a ringing phone and Giselle’s crisp Monday morning voice.

“Mel’s Drive-In on Geary Boulevard in thirty minutes, Hot Shot. Breakfast is on me.”

“Make it forty-five. I need a shower.”

The great Yana hunt had begun.

Competing with the clatter of silver and the rattle of plates were a dozen flavors of English from Mel’s usual crowd — black, brown, yellow, white, and every shade in between. Larry looked around.

“We’re only two blocks from UpScale,” he said. “Isn’t that a little risky?”

“With UpScale closed down, I figured this would be the safest place in town to meet. Especially in this crowd. I had trouble spotting you myself.” She paused. “So where were you this morning, Hot Shot? I’ve been calling since dawn.”

Larry cleared his throat. “Uh... I’ve had a lot to do...”

“To whom?” She held up a detaining hand. “Whoever she is, you’re going to have to refocus your energies on your old flame Yana for a while. She’s missing, and Dan has accepted an assignment from Staley to find her.”

Larry laughed. “From Staley? The Great White Father must really want to put me to work. This puts me back in the field with billable time and mileage to cover my salary, and the Rom won’t want written reports.”

“Just don’t show up at the office and screw up the court case and get yourself sued personally.”

“I won’t.”

He leaned back, one hand idly turning his teacup.

“So why do they want Yana?”

Giselle looked at her notes. “It’s a confused story. The long and the short of it is, she’s wanted for the murder of her husband.”

“Poteet?”

Giselle nodded.

“That flake,” muttered Larry.

“But apparently she had been ostracized by the tribe before this happened.” She circled something on the page in front of her. “Something called marime.”

“Marime! Any idea what for?”

Giselle gave him a wide-eyed look from beneath arched eyebrows.

“Could it be... Satan...?”

“Knock it off, Giselle, Yana and I were friends as well as... well, friends. I helped teach her to read, for God’s sake!”

“Be that as it may, all the evidence points to her in the murder of Ephrem Poteet. His dying statement — legal bedside testimony, by the way — an eyewitness next door.”

Larry waved dismissively.

“Eyewitness is the worst kind of evidence. They got her fingerprints? Hair and fiber samples? DNA? They able to put her in L.A. that night?”

“They’ve got to find her first,” conceded Giselle. “But she’s slippery. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern had her in their hands and she waltzed right out from under their noses.”

Larry looked at the table for several moments.

“Let me tell you a story that Yana told me,” he said. “A true story. There was a big shoot-out down in Mexico City between two feuding Gypsy families from Puerto Rico and Cuba. A bunch of people were killed. Each family was tried by a kris—”

“A court?”

“Yeah. And each family was given a marime sentence. It was the worst disgrace in the history of the Gypsies on this continent. That was in 1947 and even now, fifty-three years later, neither extended family has recovered from the disgrace. They’ve lost their businesses, other families won’t marry their grandchildren, and they are afloat between two cultures, considered pariahs in both. The way Yana told that story, I could see how horrified she was, and how much her tribe meant to her.”

“Maybe she doesn’t believe in marime anymore,” Giselle said gently.

“And murder!” Larry said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “There’s something called a mulo — the ghost of the victim. I don’t believe in ghosts, but Yana was a powerful person, and she did. None of this makes sense.”

“Well, find her.” Giselle’s voice had an edge of impatience. “Maybe you can sneak a peek at her crystal ball and get the answers you’re looking for.”

Larry stood up. “Ask Dan to make Staley point me in the direction of Yana’s brother, Ramon Ristik. I’ll try to get a line on what the cops have, too.” He looked ruefully at his empty plate. “I guess I’ll have to start with Beverly at Jacques Daniel’s. I swear those guys eat lunch there two-three times a day.”

Three of the UpScale classics were still outstanding: a black 1970 Aston Martin Volante; a champagne 1990 Jaguar XJS convertible; and a red 1966 Mustang convertible. So Ken Warren wanted to check out the rest of the former UpScale salesmen.

Christian Roxborough lived in a gray two-story house at 557 Raymond Avenue in Visitacion Valley. In this mixed brown/black/yellow neighborhood, nobody would tell Ken anything. He was white, he was tough-looking, and he talked funny. And Roxborough was a community pillar: married, family man, Little League coach, wife a churchgoer.

It was a tough stakeout. The houses faced the sharply rising eucalyptus-dotted slope of McLaren Park, so Ken had to park in the turnaround at the street’s dead end behind a big powerboat on a six-wheel trailer under a blue tarpaulin cover. He never saw Roxborough; but the wife parked her Dodge van in the double garage under the house. If Roxborough had made Ken, which was likely, he could leave and enter the house in the back of the van where Ken couldn’t see him. Of course he might not be hiding one of the classics at all.

But Ken kept right on checking the neighborhood for info on what cars Roxborough drove. Early Saturday morning, he got to Discount Liquors on the old Bayshore just as the owner was unlocking his black steel thief-guard shutters.

“Hnood hnmornin,” said Ken to the guy’s back.

The big black man whirled around. “Kenny!” he exclaimed in a big booming bass voice, his ebony features aglow with delight.

In pre — Pac Bell Park days, Ken and Clarence Withers had parked cars for the Giants’ home games in a cheapo dirt lot across the street from Candlestick’s regular lot. They’d had some times together for sure, before Clarence got married and got religion during a single disastrous weekend.

“Hyna nrepomnan neow,” said Ken.

“A repoman?” Clarence went into a bout of high hee-heehee laughter. “Ain’t after my slick, is you, man?”

“Hncritn Gnroxbro.”

“Christian Roxborough? He buys his booze here.”

They went into the store and Clarence got down behind the counter with an X-Acto knife to open cases of Early Times. He handed the bottles up for Ken to shelve while they talked.

“Hngew hngow nhwha he’n hndrivin?” Ken asked.

“An old Mustang ragtop in beautiful condition. Maybe a sixty-five, sixty-six, in there.” He stopped, frowning, and shook his tight-curled head. “Ain’t seen it lately, though. Come to think of it, ain’t seen him lately. That cause of you?”

Ken nodded.

“I heard the man just got a job selling cars, starting last week. Mercedes? Lincolns? Maybe it was Cadillacs.”

Cadillacs. After Ken promised to come over to Clarence’s home for dinner the next day, he called the office. Even on a Saturday, Giselle had the info within a few minutes.

“Jack Olwen Cadillac on Van Ness Avenue,” she told Ken on the phone. Which was great. DKA had picked up a lot of delinquent Caddies for Jack Olwen over the years.

For half an hour Ken cruised the streets around the Jack Olwen Cadillac dealership on the sadly depleted Van Ness Avenue Auto Row. No ’66 Mustang. Then he boldly drove into the Olwen service entrance on Washington below Franklin.

Along both sides of the broad open grease-stained concrete floor were work bays, each holding a Cadillac in some stage of undress, like backstage at the ballet. Blue-coveralled mechanics swarmed around the cars like stage-door johnnies around the scantily clad dancers. The place echoed hollowly with the clank of tools and thunk-thunk of compressed air hoses. No Mustang.

So he went down to the ornate Olwen showroom with its lofty fake-marble pillars. Sleek Escalantes, Fleetwoods, Allantes, Eldorados, DeVille DTSs, Broughams, and an Escalade 2000 SUV rested in stately splendor on the gleaming display floor. Each sported its stunning price tag and its new-car smell, like an expensive call girl negotiating her splendid fee while poufing Chanel No. 22 talc in all the old familiar places.

Ken was immune to their charms. No Roxborough, no ’66 Mustang. He went down a narrow aisle between glassed-in cubicles to find sales manager Paddy McBain behind his paper-littered desk. Paddy was a thick-bodied man with most of his hair and the crinkly blue eyes and humorous mouth of the professional Irishman who always leads the parade on St. Paddy’s Day.

“BeJaysus and it’s Ken. And how’s the bhoyo?” He stood, reached across the desk to shake hands.

“Hngfyn,” said Ken.

It was the first of only four words he spoke. McBain was never able to understand one single damned thing he said, ever, so Ken always wrote out what he wanted. McBain scanned his note.

“Yeah, Chris Roxborough, started last Thursday. He’s got a customer out in a demo right now, hell of a salesman. But Chris isn’t driving any sixty-six Mustang ragtop — he drives a van. He coaches Little League, you know.”

“Hgneys, Hny hknoh,” said Ken wearily.

McBain didn’t understand that, either.

Ken left almost convinced Roxborough was as squeaky-clean as everyone seemed to believe. But crossing the showroom he was intercepted by a lean, handsome, impeccably dressed African-American with bright eyes and a pencil-thin mustache. The man jabbed an angry forefinger at Ken’s chest.

“If I see you around my neighborhood again, dickhead, I’m calling the cops. If you said anything to Paddy just now that makes trouble for me here, I’m calling my attorney. If you have a sister, you sorry piece of shit, go on home and fuck her.”

Wrong, all wrong for a guy with his sort of surface charm. He was hiding that Mustang, and he was sore because he was afraid Ken was going to find out where he was hiding it.

Well, Ken was. Make book on it.