Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Twenty-five

Two hours later, Bart Heslip waited across the desk from Dirty Harry’s empty swivel chair in Bunco, looking at the brass plaque Giselle had described: FEEL SAFE TONIGHT — SLEEP WITH A COP. Slimeball Harrigan finally showed up, smelling of Polo aftershave.

“So what’s the beef?” he asked in a disinterested voice.

“Bart Heslip with Daniel Kearny Associates. We’re trying to trace the movements of a man named Ephrem Poteet.”

There was a flash of alarm in his eyes at mention of Poteet. “Gyppo. Fucker’s dead. Got scragged down in L.A. by his Gyppo wife. End of story.”

He spoke with flat, quick disinterest. Was it too flat, too quick? Why would Bart’s innocuous question about a man killed in L.A. push a San Francisco Bunco cop’s panic button?

“We have a client who’s interested in Mr. Poteet and his contacts here in the Bay Area.”

Again, that flash of alarm. “Client got a name?”

“Sorry. Confidential.”

“Well, hell, you want me to spill my guts, but you—” He stopped abruptly with a little embarrassed chuckle. “Sorry. I was up all night shovin’ my spittin’ cobra into this little old gal gets turned on by the uniform—”

“Ephrem Poteet,” interrupted Bart coldly.

Harry got a faraway look in his eyes. “Seems to me a cop pal of mine on the Vallejo Pee-Dee told me Poteet was pickin’ pockets at Marine World up there. Guy was a hell of a dip.”

Wait a minute! Poteet was living in the Bay Area? “Wouldn’t know where he was living then, would you?”

“Sure wouldn’t,” said Dirty Harry in great disappointment.

“Would your friend on the Vallejo police know?”

“Hell, don’t you know, he retired and moved to Oregon.”

Bart went back to his new car — a nifty Chevy Caprice Giselle had found for him that was only two years old and even had a tape deck and C/D player — and thought about Dirty Harry. Then he called Giselle at the office.

“You got contacts at SFPD records, right?”

“One, but she’s a personal friend,” said Giselle.

“Think she could find out whether Dirty Harry ever busted Yana for anything — or Ephrem either, for that matter?”

“I can work on her. I can’t promise anything.”

As soon as Bart cleared Bunco, Dirty Harry went down the hall to make a panicked phone call. He caught her just as she was leaving for her gadjo job.

“There was a private eye around asking questions about your husband’s movements for the last month or two...”

When he was finished with his sad tale, she said, in the saccharine tone she knew angered him, “God, you’re a kekeno moosh. All you did was get him suspicious, Mr. Nobody.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t there, I was.” He went on the offensive. “What about my cut? I told you I wanted—”

“And I told you that you’ll get your cut when I feel it’s safe to get mine. Then I will be your little sapengro again.” She gave a dirty laugh. “Your little snake charmer.”

Despite this promise of future sexual delight, Harry hung up with panic nibbling at the edges of his mind.

Josh Croswell fought panic. Mr. Petrick was due back tomorrow. Better remind the silly little nerd Donny that the emerald was here in the safe waiting for him.

Josh dialed the 650 area code number on the faux-engraved business card Donny had left with him. Three-tone beep.

“The number you have dialed is not in service at this time. Please recheck the number and try again.”

“Hello, Josh, how did it go while I was away?”

He dropped the phone as if it were red hot. Burton Petrick, back a day early!

“It was, ah, er... quiet, sir.”

Petrick was a skinny hollow-chested man just into his 40s, with coal-black hair slicked straight back, piercing dark eyes behind heavy-rimmed glasses, and a prim mouth under a small and rather narrow but bristling black mustache.

“Not too quiet, I hope. I spent a lot of money in Holland. A lot of money. But wisely, Josh. I spent wisely.”

He was twirling the knob of the office safe. Trying to forestall him, Josh said, “I, ah... I sold that fifteen-carat Portuguese step-cut emerald.”

A pause. The piercing eyes regarded him. “For how much?”

“Uh — twelve-five.”

The thin mouth smiled. “Excellent! Secured funds?”

“Uh — cash.”

“Ah, yes, the most secured funds of all. What else?”

By then the safe door was open. Petrick took out the chamois bag that held the emerald Josh had bought from Solly David. He spilled the stone out onto his flattened palm.

“I thought you just told me you sold—”

“That’s a, uh, different stone that I bought because—”

“How much?”

“Fif... uh, fifty, uh...”

“Fifty thousand?” Petrick asked in incredulous tones. “You paid fifty thousand dollars for this stone?”

“It’s from a hidden mine in Colombia, where the very best emeralds come from. They are very high in chromium, which gives them their unique deep green color and—”

“You dummy, it’s the same stone! You sold it to one con man for twelve-five, and bought it back from another con man for fifty! How did you pay fo—”

Petrick stopped in mid-word. He flipped open the three-tier corporate checkbook, stood looking at it for the longest moment in Josh Croswell’s young life. Then he dialed 911.

“I wish to report an employee embezzlement.”

Burton Petrick, unlike Josh, had not been born yesterday.

After getting Beverly’s call, Larry Ballard strolled into Jacques Daniel’s at 9:15 A.M., still yawning. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern were at the bar telling Beverly a joke.

“So this guy comes home from work and he finds his live-in girlfriend packing her bags,” said Rosenkrantz. “The guy says, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ She says ‘I’m leaving.’ The boyfriend says ‘Why’s that?’ And the girlfriend says, ‘Because I just found out that you’re a pedophile!’ ”

Guildenstern took it up seamlessly. “‘Pedophile?’ he says. ‘That’s a mighty big word for an eight-year-old.’ ”

“You’re both disgusting,” said Beverly. She turned to Larry. “Danny had to go down to the union hall.”

Larry shrugged and said, “Could I have a liverwurst and Swiss on a French roll with everything on it, Bev?” When she nodded, he turned to the cops. “You two guys ever do anything besides hang around here telling Beverly feelthy jokes?”

“Sure,” said Rosenkrantz seriously, “we protect and serve.”

Making his sandwich, Beverly said disingenuously, “Larry, they were telling me about some Gypsy girl they’re looking for. Didn’t you guys have a big Gypsy case a couple of years ago?”

“Thirty-one Cadillacs for Cal-Cit Bank.” Ballard nodded solemnly. “Maybe a draft with that sandwich, too, Bev.”

“You get all of ’em?” asked Rosenkrantz.

“Of course they did.” Beverly set Larry’s sandwich down in front of him. “They work lots of Gypsy cases.”

“So you know all about the Gyppos.” Suddenly, as Larry had hoped, the two cops were working.

“Not all. Not much, even.” He took his first big bite of sandwich. “They’re as hard to get information out of as the Chinese. All of a sudden nobody speaks English. But sometimes they’ll sell each other out if they’ve been feuding.”

Rosenkrantz leaned forward to talk around his partner.

“Harry Bosch, homicide cop down in L.A., does us a favor from time to time, he asked us to try and grab a Gypsy gal gutted her husband down there earlier this month. Name of Yana Poteet. The vic was Ephrem Poteet. Yana ran a mitt-camp on Geary at Twelfth. Ever hear of either one of ’em?”

“I questioned her six, seven years ago at her mother-in-law’s fortune-telling joint up in Santa Rosa. She was just a kid then — eighteen, nineteen years old. At the time, the mother-in-law was calling herself Madame Miseria.”

“That’s the name this Yana’s using now,” mused Rosenkrantz.

“The husband, what’s his name, Ephrem — him I never met.”

“You sure as hell won’t meet him now,” said Guildenstern. “Got some other names to throw at you. Staley and Lulu Zlachi — they both got bunco records — and a slick-looking article calls himself Angelo Grimaldi who isn’t in the computer.”

“Staley and Lulu — they’re the King and Queen of the Muchwaya that we took the Caddies away from.” He paused, a bogus thoughtful look on his face. “Grimaldi is an Italian name.”

“He figures as a Gyppo, though.”

Then they dumped the bag for him. Even walked him out to their car to give him a photo of the dead Ephrem Poteet.

“You don’t have one of Yana, do you?”

“She ain’t officially a suspect — yet,” said Guildenstern.

“We got this one of Ephrem from Harry down in L.A.”

Larry went inside to find Beverly shaking her head.

“God, Larry, you’re an awful liar.” She grinned up at him. “I’m sure glad I’m not involved with you anymore.”

“So am I.”

“Bastard!” She dug him in the ribs, then got serious. “They’re going to be really mad if they find out you were stringing them along just to get information out of them.”

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” said Larry sententiously. And did what he had to do. Paid for his sandwich. When he got back to his apartment, Bart was waiting.