Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Twenty-four

The Golden Gate was a roomy box of a place on Columbus Avenue that hosted weddings, bar mitzvahs, and conventions for under two hundred people. Its main claim to fame was a small, arched, foreshortened, slightly tipsy model of the Golden Gate Bridge that you had to cross upon entering from the street.

For an hour, Eli Nicholas played lively baya bashilba on his Gypsy bosh in honor of the happy couple. Wearing his bright Gypsy costume, Ramon Ristik, drunk from endless glasses of the newlyweds’ Korbel champagne, began his knife-juggling routine. Afterward, Eli clapped him on the back and said he was the best Gypsy knife-juggler on the west coast. High praise indeed from the Bay Area’s primo bosho mengro — Gypsy violinist.

But it was a melancholy Ramon who wended his way up Taylor toward Vallejo Street, knife case in hand, at 2:00 A.M. Melancholy because the champagne had been domestic and because his fee had been only $200.

Why couldn’t Yana have stayed in North Beach? He lifted his head and howled at the moon. We didn’t want you to go,because we needed you. But you didn’t listen to us. Together, they had raked it in. But now she, who once aspired to be Queen of the Muchwaya, was marime. And the police were looking for her. Now you are gone, living but no longer alive. It was all the fault of that tall filthy gadjo pig, Larry Ballard. From their sexual liaison, all evil had flowed. He was the thief of Yana’s Gypsy wisdom, he had seduced her and destroyed her. I miss you, Yana my sister...

He imagined Ballard walking into the Golden Gate when Ramon was juggling his gleaming knives. He stopped on the sidewalk to finish the gadjo off, a knife in each hand, slashing, stabbing...

“Jesus, man, I’ll give you the bottle!”

He looked down. A cowering homeless man was holding up a half-empty bottle of muscatel to him with shaking fingers.

Ramon scurried off, the vagrant staring after him bleary-eyed until he was out of sight, then glug-glugging down the wine.

Ballard spent nearly two hours working his North Beach contacts: the drivers at the taxi stand on Columbus; the bartender at Big Al’s; the cook at the unnamed family-style Basque café halfway up narrow Romolo Place above Broadway; waiters, parking attendants, street types, hustlers, hookers. Always trying to get news of a Gypsy who might be doing some sort of sword dance. He got his first real lead from muumuu-clad Mama Gina in the Opera Bar on Broadway at Taylor.

Over Per Pieta Non Dirmi Addio from the jukebox, she shouted, “A Gyppo violinist is playing at a Bohunk wedding at the Golden Gate; maybe he brought your knife-fighter along with him. It’s a private reception, that’s why you can’t find it, honey.”

Ballard gave her a hug, and went striding down Taylor toward Columbus, hoping the reception hadn’t already ended.

Full of hostile thoughts about Ballard, Ramon glanced up as he heard approaching footsteps, to stare into Ballard’s eyes.

Full of sexual thoughts about Midori, Larry glanced up as he heard approaching footsteps, to stare into Ramon’s eyes.

Ramon leaped back as he threw aside his knife case. A huge knife was in each fist. He yelled, “Gadjo pig, you sullied my sister’s honor! I challenge you to a Gypsy duel!”

“A Gypsy duel? I guess that’s where you have two knives and I don’t have anything.”

A moment’s reflection. Ristik handed him one of the knives. Ballard gripped it gingerly in the utterly wrong position for a knife fight — blade pointing down as if for stabbing.

They were at the mouth of a half-block alley, narrow, dim, wet with drifting fog. Water dripped, light gleamed off uneven cobbles. Why didn’t he just throw down the knife and run like hell? Practicing unarmed hand-to-hand techniques against an armed assailant in the dojo was one thing, but facing a guy with a real knife in his hand, a guy who juggled them for Chrissake...

“We don’t have to do this, you know, Ramon.”

“Yes we do.” The recently despised domestic champagne was now singing in Ramon’s blood. “Unless you are daranòok as well as a gadjo pig!” He whipped the red and yellow and green kerchief from around his neck and held it out to Larry. “We each take an end of this diklo in our teeth—”

“Are you crazy?”

“You are the crazy one, for dishonoring my sister. We will fight to the death...” A wisp of his usual caution drifted through his mind. “Or, ah.... until one of us admits defeat.”

Larry said instantly, “I admit defeat.”

Ramon laughed a great triumphant laugh. Oh Devèl! it felt good to have this cowardly gadjo cringing before him! Brought to Aladdin Terrace by the power of Ramon’s killing fantasy of a few minutes before. Maybe he had some of his sister’s powers.

“Until we fight, you cannot quit.”

“Aw, shit.”

Larry took one end of the kerchief between his teeth. Ramon did the same. They began circling each other, two feet apart. The only sounds were sparse traffic on Columbus, the drip of water, their shoes on the wet uneven pavement. He tried one more time, his voice muffled and distorted by the sweaty diklo reeking of smoke and champagne clamped between his teeth.

“I just want to ask you a couple of questions, Ramon—”

But Ristik feinted at Larry’s face, then slashed at his knife hand. Ballard’s left arm automatically blocked Ramon’s blade outward, even as his right foot delivered a lightning-fast karate front-kick to Ristik’s already-tender balls. Ballard didn’t pull it as he did in training. Not totally, anyway.

Ramon doubled over with a great WHOOSH of air and dropped his knife as the diklo floated to the ground. He fell on top of the bright silk in a fetal curl, wheezing.

“That’s a Larry Ballard duel, asshole.”

No response. Larry sighed and kicked the knives away and sat down on the curb. Ramon half-sat up, gingerly.

“You have ruptured me,” he moaned.

“Again, I admit defeat, okay? Will that satisfy your fucking Gypsy honor?”

Ramon said, “I feel sick,” and proceeded to prove it.

“Wonderful,” said Ballard, on his feet to avoid the mess. As Ramon wiped his mouth with the diklo, Larry added, “Tell me everything you can about your sister and I’ll be on my way.”

“Never!” Ramon managed to wheeze out.

“I found you once, and look what’s happened. You want me to find you again?”

“I’ll die before I betray another Rom to the gadje.”

Larry crouched beside him. “I’m working for the Muchwaya.”

“I do not believe you.”

He punched in a number and held out his cell phone.

“Call Staley, ask him.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Ramon could not stand the thought of news of his defeat moving through the Romi community.

Larry walked the limping Gypsy back to the house of an Italian family who thought he was an illegal immigrant from their grandparents’ hometown of San Benedetto del Tronto on the Adriatic Coast north of Bari. Ramon didn’t have the slightest notion of where to find his sister.

All he had was a bunch of Presidio message-drops they had never used, and the name of one of Yana’s boojo clients who lived on Chestnut Street.

It was 5:00 A.M. when Larry fell into bed with the rueful realization that he was older, no wiser, and worst of all, alone.

At 7:00 A.M., a nude, hot-bodied Midori slipped into his bed. She brought him awake in the most amazing manner possible, then kept them both hovering on the edge of orgasm for forty-five minutes before they lost control and came together. He slid down the silken rope of sleep with a big amazed smile on his face, the smell of Midori in his nostrils, Midori’s self-satisfied giggle in his ears.