Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Twenty-eight

A huge Tyrannosaurus rex, teeth gleaming, roared at them from thick, ferny-looking foliage approximating the primitive angiosperms of the Cretaceous period. A startled Bart Heslip leaped sideways in his motion-simulator seat like a scalded cat.

“Nice reflexes,” said Bruckner.

Bruckner was a medium-size man with very direct eyes in a deceptively placid face, and pale down on the backs of his fingers and sprouting up above the collar of a uniform shirt open at the throat on this day of rest at the theme park.

They exited the 3D DinoSphere TurboRide to walk through a small wooded area to a looming mountain of fake stone. Bruckner stopped. Real-looking lianas hung down in front of a camouflaged door set into the rock wall. He used a key on it.

“We go in here.”

He led the way to a room at the end of a brightly lit cream-colored corridor. Inside, he sat down in a wooden swivel chair behind an elderly oak desk that had a brass HEAD OF SECURITY plaque on it. Facing the desk on a swivel above the door was a big-screen monitor, dark and silent now. Bruckner waved Bart to a white plastic armchair.

“Now, Mr. Heslip, what can I do for you?”

Bart told his story straight through. When he was finished, Bruckner said, “And this Poteet character was murdered.”

“In Los Angeles. His wife may or may not have made herself a widow, but we want to beat the cops to her if we can.”

Bruckner nodded his understanding. “Well, the good news is that you’re right, we did have a pickpocket working the park in March and early April. Took us a month to realize what was going on, but we finally got an identification of him. The bad news is, the I.D. did us no good. It won’t help you, either.”

“Try me.”

“He was a gorilla. At least, a guy in a gorilla suit. Great hit with the kids, so it took us two of those weeks just to figure out he wasn’t employed by the park. By then he was gone.” Bruckner raised his shoulders in resignation. “So if you’ve got a description of this Poteet, it won’t do any good.”

“How about the cops? What do they say?”

“Since we could never give them anyone to arrest, we handled it internally to avoid publicity.”

“The Vallejo police were never involved at all?”

“Never.”

So much for Dirty Harry’s supposed buddy on the Vallejo P.D. Bart sighed, but to be thorough he put Larry’s photo of Ephrem Poteet on the blotter. Bruckner gave it a cursory glance, then paused, frowning. “Hell, I do know that face! He showed up after the gorilla disappeared. But...” The animation left his features. “He can’t have been our pickpocket.”

“Why not?”

“Family man. He and his wife brought her father to the park a few times because the old gentleman liked all the goings-on. One visit they lost him and got in a panic, we finally found him at the petting zoo for the kids. He was Basque, he liked the goats. The wife told me he had Alzheimer’s and it was getting worse, that’s why they were so scared when he wandered off.”

“When was all of this?”

“Probably Easter. I remember holiday crowds.” Bruckner tapped computer keys. “We log in all this stuff... Yeah, here it is. Easter Sunday.”

“What’d the wife look like?”

“Beautiful woman. Flashing eyes, I remember that. Strong features. Sexy mouth. Very animated face. Black hair almost to her waist. Golden brown skin. Great figure. Long legs.”

So Ephrem and Yana were together this spring, running some scam or other with some old guy. Staley Zlachi, maybe?

“The father — can you describe him?”

“Short, frail, white-haired. Handlebar mustache yellowed from chewing tobacco. Name of Eduardo Moneo.”

Not Zlachi. “Was he maybe faking the disorientation?”

“How do you fake that lost look in the eyes? They came once more after Easter, and Moneo looked even more frail than before. Just skin and bones.” He shrugged. “Why don’t you go talk to him yourself, make up your own mind?”

“You have his address?”

“I told you we log all incidents.”

Bart was waggling greedy fingers. “Gimme,” he said.

After the dismissal of all charges against Kearny, the three of them stopped on their way up to San Francisco for either a very late lunch or a very early dinner. They were in the Porker, a ribs joint in Brisbane, that tough little town leaning back against the eastern slope of San Bruno Mountain with a cigarette in its mouth and a sneer on its unshaven face.

“Looking at it now,” Giselle said, “how did they ever think they could get away with it? The husband never saw Larry’s face, and Ellen knew Dan wasn’t the one who’d repo’d the Corvette.”

“Who was she going to tell? She couldn’t stand up in court and say it wasn’t Dan. So she did the next best thing — just what they told her to. Only she deliberately did it too well.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘deliberately,’ ” said Kearny.

“Beat up as she was, she winked at me,” said Giselle. “I read that as letting me know that she was getting back at her husband.”

Hec shrugged and said, “Since Winslett belted her right there in court, they won’t even call Ellen to the stand.” Then he asked, “So do I file against San Mateo County for false arrest? And against the prosecutor for criminal persecution?”

“We file suit,” said Dan, “but then at some point we let them talk us into withdrawing the charges. Leaving them owing DKA a great big favor.” He tipped Tranquillini a secret wink. “But we can go after the Winsletts full bore.”

“Yeah,” said Hec zestfully. “They’ve got assets. His Cherokee, her new Lexus, that house in Pacifica—”

“Don’t you dare!” exclaimed Giselle in outrage.

“Why the hell not?” asked Kearny, too overtly astonished.

“Why not? She’s got a little baby coming! Where’s she supposed to raise the child — in a tent?”

Kearny gestured to Hec. “See what I mean? Women!”

As Giselle realized she’d been had, Kearny’s beeper went off. He took it off his belt to check the number.

“Stan Groner at the bank,” he said.

Giselle wordlessly handed him her cell phone. After a low-voiced conversation, he flipped it closed and handed it back.

“On Monday they’re going to auction off all the classics we’ve recovered so far. Stan wants me there to discuss something he can’t talk about on the phone. And he says he’s sure you’ll be there, too...” He paused. When Giselle was not forthcoming, he asked, “Ah — why’s that?”

“If you must know, I’m prepared to bid on my car.”

“STATO,” said Kearny promptly. “Let’s get back to the office so we won’t have wasted the whole day.”

As if he didn’t know, she thought. He didn’t miss much — and he never forgot a license plate. Especially vanity plates.