Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Thirty

Oh, how wonderful! You’re a friend of Madame Miseria’s!” Meryl Blanchett leaned across the wooden table next to the glass windows to the garden. “I haven’t been able to reach her. How is she? Where is she?”

Ballard said, “I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”

He had been expecting, if not Sophia Loren, at least Rene Russo. Meryl Blanchett had fluffy, gold-highlighted hair and a plain and serious face that lit up at mention of Yana. Now it had darkened with concern.

“I have such good news for her, but she just disappeared from her ofica and I haven’t been able to reach her. You must be a very good friend to be so concerned.”

Larry told her a tale of being madly, passionately in love with Madame Miseria. That it had once been true gave the lie weight and substance. A doomed love, of course, star-crossed lovers... Which inevitably elicited Meryl’s own tale of romantic adventure.

“The day after I... the day after the... the potion... well, on the day after the dark of the moon, Theodore proposed marriage to me.” She reached across the table to squeeze Larry’s hand. “And we’ve been deliriously happy together ever since.”

Larry noticed that the engagement ring was only one of several pieces of discreet but expensive-looking jewelry she wore. Obviously, the lady was loaded. But the younger and oh-so-handsome Theodore seemed to be truly in love with her, not her money. If Larry didn’t know better, he might have thought that Yana’s potion actually had done something to make Theodore... Nah. Couldn’t be. Could it?

“When was the last time you saw Madame Miseria?” he asked.

“Oh, weeks ago. But she called me just before the new moon to ask a favor.” Meryl took a forkful of lemon meringue pie. “As if I could ever in my whole life deny Madame Miseria anything she asked.”

She told Ballard about the $5,000 check made out to Yasmine Vlanko, Madame Miseria’s real name. She told about it being forever uncashed because Madame Miseria wanted Meryl to arrange a job for a young woman as a hairdresser at JeanneMarie’s salon.

Made sense, thought Ballard. JeanneMarie’s would be a perfect place for Yana to hide out from gadje and Romi alike. But none of the beauticians was Yana, not even in disguise.

“Were you able to do it?”

“Oh, yes. She was the one who told you I would meet you here. Geraldine Tantillo. She’s wonderful. She’s already getting a following. She reminds me of... well, me.” She met Larry’s eyes across the table. “Pleasant-faced, a bit overweight, and a... a sort of ugly duckling among the swans.”

“That isn’t true of you!” exclaimed Larry, really meaning it. “Look at handsome, distinguished Theodore falling in—”

“That’s all Madame Miseria’s doing. Of course Theodore doesn’t know about the potion. He must never...”

Ballard made a zipping motion across his mouth, and Meryl giggled, as if they were schoolchildren with a secret. After paying for her coffee and pie, he walked her to her apartment.

Monday for Geraldine — if necessary. He was glad to have a lead himself, if a tentative one, to match the one Bart had bragged about on the cell phone. If only he hadn’t been such a wise-ass about Bart’s Woodside misadventures...

After a brutal twenty minutes, Bart relented and together they drove to a spotlessly kept-up three-story off-white house in the 100 block of Warren, a leisurely Forest Hill street winding along the foot of Mount Sutro. As they left Bart’s Caprice in the spring dusk, streetlights came on. A straight flight of stairs led up the right side of the house to a small square second-floor landing.

From inside, faintly, came television sounds. They rang the bell. The door was opened by a redhead in her late 20s with freckles on her face and a baby cradled in her left arm.

“Oh! I was expecting my little brother with another load of our stuff.” She had an open tomboyish face. “But it’s okay, HRH here likes to answer the door.” She chucked the baby under the chin with her free hand. “Don’t you, Poogie?”

The baby gurgled with glee while reaching out exploratory pudgy fingers toward Heslip’s dark visage. Apparently Poogie hadn’t seen too many of the brothers in his short lifetime.

Stooping to get mauled, Bart couldn’t help asking, “HRH?”

“His Royal Highness.”

Ballard said, “We understood the Mihais lived here.”

“Oh, no, an old man named Brian Glosser had it before...” She paused uncertainly. “You’d better talk with my husband. He handles the finances.” She raised her voice. “Honey?”

Justin MacGregor also had reddish hair and freckles, but he was nearly seven feet tall. His arms under a short-sleeved striped shirt looked as if they had a heart and lungs of their own. His testosterone rumble sounded like a freight train going through a tunnel. No wonder his wife had answered the door so carelessly at night. Mighty Joe Young was on guard.

“Better take Himself off to bed, sweetie.” Watchful blue eyes swung back to Ballard and Heslip. There was challenge in them neither man felt like taking up, not in this lifetime. “You boys look a little old to be working your way through college.”

Heslip explained they were trying to find a Nadja Mihai who had given this address to a Novato woman back in April.

“And you are who, exactly?”

They hauled out their P.I. registration cards. The big man looked the I.D.’s over carefully, then gestured them to chairs in the living room and switched off the TV with the remote.

“Who’d you say? Mihai?”

“Punka and Nadja,” said Ballard.

“Yeah, well, they’re brother and sister, not husband and wife. Nadja was married to old Brian Glosser. He had Alzheimer’s and just sort of wasted away. Punka, the brother, took care of the old man while Nadja was at work.”

“You know where that was?” asked Ballard.

“She never said.”

Bart brought out his photo again. “Is this Punka?”

“That’s him, okay,” agreed MacGregor.

“And did you have any trouble with your title papers?”

MacGregor gave him a sharp, almost suspicious look.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “But just a couple of weeks ago it got straightened out. The Realtor told us we’re going to escrow. That’s why we’re finally moving all our stuff in.”

Jacques Daniel’s was Friday night jumping. Beverly’s partner, Danny — short, quick, muscular, and French — had a sun-browned face and dark piratical eyes. He set bottles of designer beer on their table around behind the jukebox, and laid a hand on Bart’s and Larry’s shoulders. The three of them had been through some things together.

“On the house tonight, mes amis. It is not certain, but Beevairly is perhaps enceinte. Pregnant.” He held up a hand. “It is still a secret, hein? Until we are sure.”

After Danny had hurried away, Larry said, “Isn’t that great? Things are working out for one of my ex-ladies.”

They poured beer, drank, and their mood darkened.

“Whadda we got here, Larry?” asked Bart. “Ephrem and Yana are husband and wife in Vallejo, brother and sister here. In both places we got an old man with Alzheimer’s who died of a wasting disease and left his worldly goods to Yana.”

“We can’t be sure that Nadja is Yana,” said Larry a little desperately. “You didn’t get a positive I.D. of her—”

“Only because I didn’t have her picture. Husband — or brother — Punka sure as hell is Ephrem. Positive photo I.D. from three different people. Both deals stalled over a problem with the title papers after Ephrem suddenly disappeared. Two weeks later he turned up in L.A. — stabbed to death. Almost immediately, both buyers got word that the title papers were now available so the sales could go through.”

“Goddammit, Bart! Yana just isn’t... she wouldn’t just go around murdering people. She was never about just money.”

“She seemed to me to be only about money.”

It was a wake, of sorts, for the Yana Poteet they thought they had known. And in an odd way, for their own innocence.