Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Thirty-one

As Larry and Bart drank beer in solemn memory of the Yana they thought they had known, the real Yana, temporarily taffy-haired and temporarily Becky Thatcher, was still at Brittingham’s Funeral Parlor, working Grecian Formula into the hair of a midlife bicyclist run down by an early-morning garbage truck.

Yana usually rode buses to and from Brittingham’s, but tonight she felt so good about the job she’d done on her final Beloved of the week that she decided to walk home. Delighting in the sights and sounds, she went down Polk Street through the Friday evening crowds with the long swinging stride she thought a Becky Thatcher from Arkansas’s Ouachitas Mountains might have.

Suddenly she felt the cold wind she could never ignore blow through her, emptying her, making her feel hollow and close to death. She turned blindly in at a tiny Greek café called the Parthenon, and saw, reflected in the moving glass as she pulled the door open, Rudolph Marino coming down Polk Street toward her! She slipped into a chair in the dark rear of the room and watched like a cat as he passed, in earnest conversation with a big handsome 60-something gadjo with ashy-blond hair and a dark suit of European cut.

That didn’t mean a thing. Yana slupped thick black Greek coffee and wolfed a wedge of honey-dripping baklava while thinking things through. Her one break was in being an outcast: any contact with one who was marime was forbidden. That should stop Rudolph from ridding himself of the gadjo and coming after her himself, unassisted.

Yellow hair and slanty glasses and a toed-in walk, she decided, would not deceive Rudolph’s keen eyes. So the only question was: had Rudolph seen her? The cold wind blowing through her body had already told her the answer.

Just a glimpse of a taffy-haired gadja going into a Greek greasy spoon. But that gadja moved like Yana. Had been Yana? Willem was saying, “Next week we will set it in motion and soon will have—” when Rudolph interrupted him in Romani.

“A woman with pale brown hair who moves like a cat...”

“Yes. I saw her enter the Greek café.”

“I think she is the murderous Yana — the one Staley told you about. She does not know you. If she comes out, follow her. I will do the same if she tries to leave by the rear exit.”

No rear exit. Only an alley fire door that would sound an alarm if opened. But over the sink in the filthy, cramped, and stinking ladies’ room was an opaque window with chicken wire embedded in the glass. Though her hands were strong from shampooing the hair of dead people, Yana could not open the window’s dirt-encrusted latch. She tried the buckle from her purse strap. The buckle bent, skinning her knuckles.

How could she have gotten so careless? Because in handling corpses she had broken so many Gypsy taboos that she had a feeling of false security in her freedom from the Romi code? Would any Rom believe she would do such things?

The window went up with a squawk like a garroted parrot. Someone tried the locked door. A guttural male voice called out.

“Hey, whatta hell you do in there?”

Stavros the Greek. As she climbed up on the sink, Yana made loud vile retching noises in her throat.

“I am very sick,” she yelled, “from the street sweepings you serve as baklava. Go away. If you make me come out, I will vomit on the floor in front of your customers.”

There was thunderous frustrated pounding on the door, then muttered Greek curses retreating down the hallway.

She already had her hips and legs out through the window, was squirming around facing into the room. Her skirt rode up to her waist as she slid down the rough exterior wall. From the lid of a garbage pail a scarred old coal-black feral alley cat examined this intruder into his domain with his surviving eye. He was huge and lithe and scruffy and obviously had owned the two short blocks of Olive Alley for a very long time.

Ač tu, ač tu, čá mánge; ăć tu, ăć tu, ăć káthe!” exclaimed Yana. “Be thou, be thou, only mine, stay thou, stay thou, stay here!” The tomcat meowed. She scratched him behind a shredded ear, added, grinning, “Stay here and keep watch. If Rudolph comes, delay him. Ahayàva?”

The cat purred. Sternly.

Rudolph slipped the ladies’ room lock, then went through the open window in a gymnast’s dive learned during two boyhood years with one of the Midwest’s last traveling tent shows. He landed in a shoulder roll that brought him to his feet just short of the far side of the narrow blacktop alley.

To be struck in the face by eighteen pounds of clawing, snarling fury. A one-eyed black tomcat almost took his eye, shredded his ear, then disappeared into the shadows with a shriek of triumph.

Rudolph leaned against the brick wall, bleeding, panting. Now he was sure the woman was Yana. His lacerations were real even though the black cat that had made them was not, only some malevolent spirit set there by Yana to guard her backtrail. Rudolph would make no further attempt to find her in person. Let the gadje detectives of DKA feel the weight of her occult powers.

She was only five blocks from the women’s residence, but Yana told the old black cabbie who picked her up on Van Ness to take her to the Exploratorium, two miles in the opposite direction. She would take no chances on being followed home.

The driver had kinky white hair and melting chocolate eyes that held hers in the rearview mirror.

“Exploratorium’s closed this time of night, missy.”

She gave him a dazzling smile, said, “I’m meeting my friend there,” and paid him off with too much money. Then she rode a bus up to Lombard Street and caught another cab to City Hall, two blocks from Columbine House.

During the cab ride she realized she knew the big handsome 60-something gadjo with the ashy-blond hair. He had been raised in a vitsa in Holland and was married to Lulu’s Italian Romni niece and had some high-powered gadjo job. Where was it — Georgia? Florida? — maybe fifteen years ago, when she was twelve, he and his wife came to visit Lulu. Yana had a secret crush on him for a long month after he’d left.

Now it all made sense. Rudolph was after the money and the valuable papers taken from Ephrem’s light fixture the night he’d... departed. To say nothing of the proceeds from his big Universal Tour score that day. Once Rudolph had the money, he’d turn her in to the police because Rudolph was a man and she was a woman and, after all, marime.

No, Devèl! Never! She would bide her time until she saw a way to safety.

At 9:30 P.M., Ken Warren left his truck in his usual spot at the end of Raymond Street behind the all-too-familiar boat and trailer, and walked down to 557. He was just going to ask where the Mustang was and demand the keys. He laid one big forefinger against the doorbell and left it there. After thirty seconds, the door opened on the chain to let the dark face of Christian Roxborough’s wife peer out at him. He took his finger off the bell. Recognition entered her eyes. The door slammed.

Ken laid his finger against the bell. Left it there.

Rattle of security chain. The door was suddenly flung wide by an enraged Christian Roxborough, dressed in designer running shoes and designer jeans and holding a pump shotgun at port arms across his body. He pumped it once, loudly. He didn’t sound like any leader of the community to Ken.

“Warned you gonna blow your shit away motherfucker!”

Ken snatched the shotgun out of his hands with a movement almost too quick to follow. He twirled it like a marine at dress-parade, slammed it stock-down against the wall beside the door frame even as his forefinger found the safety and pushed it in. Then he waggled a monitory finger in Roxborough’s face, turned, and walked back down the stairs. His massive moral indignation kept him from even glancing back to see whether Roxborough had snatched up the shotgun again. At the end of the street, he got back into his truck.

He had barely settled in before red and blue revolving lights approached, fast. From his inner jacket pocket, Ken removed a folded piece of paper. The silhouetted shape of Roxborough capered around in the street, waving the forgotten shotgun as a patrol car slewed sideways to a stop. A bullhorned voice bellowed.

“Drop the shotgun!”

“It’s okay! It’s okay! I’m the one who—”

“DROP THE SHOTGUN!”

Roxborough threw the weapon away in sudden panic as the cops emerged with drawn guns. He pointed up the street at Ken’s truck, the words tumbling out of him.

“I’m the one who called you. Him, right up there at the end of the street in his truck, he’s the one you want! He came to my door and threatened my wife, and—”

“With the shotgun?”

“No, that’s mine, but—”

“What did he threaten her with?”

“Well, nothing, but—”

“What did he say to her?”

“He never says anything, that’s the trouble. He just keeps harassing us. I’ve filed complaints with the precinct...”

“We’ve read them,” said the tall one without enthusiasm.

The shorter, wider one added in neutral tones, “Seems you allege he spends a lot of time sitting in his truck at the end of the street.” By this time they were within a dozen feet of Ken’s truck, their weapons still in their hands. Short-and-Squat pointed a powerful flashlight at the windshield, dazzling him. “Out of the car, pal, and keep those hands in plain sight.”

Instead of getting out, Ken, with no sudden moves, pressed his sheet of paper, face-out, up against the window with a splayed hand. The light shifted to the paper. Hard cop’s eyes in a round red cop’s face under a blue cop’s hat stared at the paper, turned away to Roxborough.

“Shit, pal, he’s legal, he’s got a repo order on your car.”

Roxborough was jumping up and down again.

“But that’s what I’m telling you! He’s harassing me for a nineteen sixty-six Mustang convertible that I don’t have!”

“California-Citizens Bank says you do.” The flashlight went out, the guns disappeared. The tall cop said, “Guy’s sittin’ in his truck on a public street, you’re runnin’ around wavin’ a shotgun. Argue it out with the bank.” He shook his head. “Saturday night fever in Visitacion Valley.”

Ken started his truck as the cops, chuckling, walked back to their cruiser through the crowd of gawkers. He knew now where the Mustang had to be hidden.