Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Twenty-three

Dan Kearny, behind his desk, got out a cigarette, looked at it, and stuck it back into his pack. “I really gotta get serious about quitting.” He lifted his coffee cup, then looked up at Giselle from under raised brows. “Coffee’s still okay, right?”

“Decaf,” she grinned.

He chuckled. “Okay, shoot. I presume Larry’s on Yana’s case full-time, and that he thinks she’s innocent. Right?”

“Absolutely, until convinced otherwise.” She was rummaging in her purse. “Here’s a number you might reach him, evenings.”

“His latest doxy?”

“She’s a really nice girl, actually. Midori Tagawa.”

“Little Japanese number lives in the back apartment?”

When she nodded, he crumpled up the paper and threw it in the wastebasket. Midori reminded him of Kathy Onoda, their much-missed office manager who had died of a CVA at age twenty-nine; let ’em have their loving in peace. He shook his head.

“Nice girl like that and she gets mixed up with Ballard, for Chrissake. Okay, where do we stand with Wiley’s classics?”

“O’B got the Panoz and Morales knocked off the Acura. And Ken says Roxborough has been driving the sixty-six Mustang.”

“So why isn’t it in the barn?”

“He’s gotta see it first. He’ll get it.”

“When? Stan wants to auction those cars off.”

“Whoa, Dan’l! What about my little red Alfa Quadrifoglio Spider? Give me a chance to get it together. They still haven’t brought in the Aston Martin and the Jag convertible.”

“Okay, okay. So put O’B and Morales back on their regular cases and divvy up Larry’s files between ’em.” He picked up his cigarettes, laid them down again. “And tell you what. On the Gypsy case, line Bart up with a new set of wheels, and send him up Poteet’s backtrail. Maybe have him start with that Bunco guy, what’s his name...”

Giselle made a face. “Dirty Harry.”

“Yeah. Him. Maybe he knows what Poteet was doing when he was living up here. If he doesn’t, send Bart down to L.A. to snoop around. I’ll give Staley a toot and ask for information on both Ristik and Poteet.”

How’s that for delaying an auction?

Lulu was still aghast at the idea of using the gadje to look for one of their own even if she was marime.

“What’s he want all that stuff for?” she demanded crossly.

“Kearny thinks Ramon might know things about his sister that we don’t,” said Rudolph.

“You know more about Yana than anybody.”

“Not since the kris declared her marime.”

Staley sighed. “Looking back, maybe that wasn’t such a hot idea, that marime.” He waved a hand. “Okay, let ’em find Ramon. He don’t matter. But Ephrem — why they wanna spend all that money nosin’ around him? He’s dead, he can’t tell ’em nothing about Yana.”

“ ’Cept that she killed him, and he’s already told us that,” said Lulu snidely.

“Okay, you guys, as King, I say we hold off giving Kearny the Marine World stuff on Ephrem.”

Richard Kinsman Robinson was six-foot-one and 225 pounds and had broad meaty shoulders and big hands with thick fingers that could crack walnuts without effort. Most people found his size intimidating; as a guard in the tough state prison at Walla Walla, Washington, he had gotten his edge from intimidation.

But as head of security at Xanadu, Victor Marr’s hilltop sanctuary at the edge of Big Sur’s rugged Los Padres National Forest, he was intimidated by his boss. Victor Marr had eyes that could eviscerate you with a glance, bury you with a glare.

At 9:00 A.M., R.K. was on his rounds with Charon and Hecate, the twin Dobermans. Suddenly the dogs came to attention, ears pricked, lean bodies taut with incipient aggression. Then R.K. heard it, too: the unmistakable whomp-whompwhomp-whomp of helicopter blades.

He knew that chopper. Marr rarely showed up at the mountaintop retreat, and called ahead when he did, which suited R.K. just fine. It gave him a chance to get everything dressed down and tightened up before Marr arrived. Until this morning. He broke into a heavy-bodied run across the broad green grounds.

“The bastard!” R.K. exclaimed bitterly to the dogs.

The big sleek Bell 206 JetRanger came up out of the rising sun, over the tops of the dense stands of evergreens flanking the grounds, the anti-collision beacon on its upper tail fin blinking pink in the bright morning light. It came in almost as if it meant to strafe Marr’s three-story flat-roofed futuristic building, and settled on the roof landing pad. Marr and his entourage came strolling out of the front door just as R.K., panting, arrived with the dogs at the foot of the broad front stairs. With Marr were his pilot, a military-looking man named Carmody who had served in Desert Storm, and Marko, his personal secretary. Marko looked as if any keyboards he was familiar with would wear ammo belts and magazines rather than computers.

“Sir! Stop right there!” barked R.K.

“What did you say?” demanded Marr in true astonishment. People didn’t order him around. Marko suddenly had a Glock 17 in his right hand without seeming to have moved at all.

R.K. held his ground. “The dogs don’t know you, sir.”

Hecate and Charon were straining at their leashes, teeth bared, ears laid flat back against their skulls. Marr paused on the third step from the bottom.

“Leicht,” said R.K. in a low voice. R.K. did not speak German, but he’d felt it was his duty to learn a few key words. The dogs relaxed. Marr nodded his approval.

“That’s very good, R.K.” R.K. Not Robinson. Everything was all right. “What is the attack command?”

It was Angreifen, attack, but R.K. said, “If I told you that in front of them, sir, they’d take it as an order.”

Marr waved a hand at his secretary. The Glock disappeared as easily as it had appeared. R.K. and Marr strolled toward the front gate with the dogs falling into step beside them. At the gate was a uniformed guard with the West Indian oil logo on his military-style cap. He had weasel eyes and a chin going south, but he wore a Sam Browne belt with a holstered pistol on his hip, the holster flap unsnapped. Marr exchanged a few pleasantries with him and walked on, R.K. and the dogs close behind.

“How many men patrolling the grounds?” Marr asked R.K.

“Three at all times besides myself. Our guard complement is twelve men on a rotating basis, each team working eight on, twelve off so nobody gets stuck with night duty all the time. Each team gets four days off the mountain every two weeks.”

“Good. Everything looks in order. It seems you’ve done what I’ve asked, R.K. — made Xanadu secure. But I’ve been warned someone may try to breach our defenses here. I have a security consultant coming from Germany to look over our arrangements.”

“Hell, sir, me and my men can handle anything that—”

“You are to extend every courtesy, Robinson.”

Marr’s face did that thing that meant he thought he was smiling. “When he has made his recommendations, I want your evaluation on how good you think he is at his job.”

“Yessir!” exclaimed R.K. with enthusiasm. He knew already what his evaluation of the security expert would be.

That same afternoon, Larry Ballard got word of Ristik working the Richmond District bars to steer customers to Yana’s ofica on Geary. As a result, he tramped fifteen, twenty miles of concrete in the cold grey Richmond District streets that night and the next day. He almost had to fight his way out of one joint on Clement Street where Ramon had apparently taken some Russian for $500. Eighty-seven people interviewed, five definite Ramon-sightings — but none since Yana had disappeared.

By 10 P.M.. Wednesday, only the thought of Midori was keeping him awake. Leave a blind message on DKA’s unlisted number first, in case they could sleep in the next morning.

After one ring it was picked up with a guarded, “Hello?”

“Giselle, what the devil are you doing working so late?”

“Ah... Mr. Bush! What are you doing calling in? But I’m glad you did. Rudolph called. Some Gyppo spotted Ristik in North Beach tonight. He has a gig at some private club there.”

“Reading the palm of the corpse at a wake? ‘You have a short life line’...”

“Very funny. It seems our Ramon is — also a knife-juggler.”

“A knife-juggler?”

“So says the note Mr. K left.”

“I’ll try to catch up with him, and hope he doesn’t throw one at me.”