Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Thirty-two

Cruising, Trin Morales spotted the ’99 Honda off the constantly updated hotsheet fastened to his visor in hope of that rarest of scores, a drive-by repo. He stopped in a fire hydrant red zone to dig out the file on the red Civic. Sí! REPO ON SIGHT. Client, Earl Watters Motors at the top of the hill in Daly City; Subject, Gustave Dumont; three payments down, dead skip from the given address.

A Ballard account, reassigned to Trin while Ballard was off dicking around on some hotshot special assignment. Might have known. That cabrón couldn’t find his butt with both hands.

But the Cisco Kid could. He’d take care of Gustave Dumont.

Except the last thing he needed was a big crowd of gawkers at ten o’clock on a Friday night in the Castro. When Trin got back to the Civic, the Castro Theatre two blocks away was just letting out and 18th Street was crowded with people strolling through the usually quiet neighborhood. Two nuns, cowled and wimpled and wearing long black habits, stopped to watch him.

“What do you think you’re doing, young man?”

She had a rather deep voice. Trin gave her a sickly smile that flashed his gold tooth in the streetlight.

“Well you see, sister, I lost my keys and...”

He trailed off in mid-sentence. Both nuns had beards. Not nuns at all. Fruiters, practicing up for Memorial Day.

“Are you sure that’s your car, young man?” asked the other.

“It sure as hell ain’t yours,” grunted Morales, and made a nifty move with his slim jim down the outside of the window to hook the locking arm for the doorlatch. The knob popped up.

As he slid into the driver’s seat, a different voice spoke up behind him. “Show the sisters some respect.”

Shit. He’d have to wire it under the dash, but he didn’t want to stick his head under there with some guy egging on the crowd. He leaned back out of the car and spoke to the big black-bearded guy who had his arm around a wispy blond guy.

“They ain’t sisters, they’re—” He stopped. The crowd was so gay it was giddy, and had grown exponentially. “They’re in costume,” he finished lamely.

Few years ago, this wouldn’t of happened. The gays had been in the closet where they belonged, you could grab a car off the street in the Castro any freakin’ time you wanted, nobody would of dared lift a finger. Now everything had changed. Gay rights. Gay pride. Hell, the Chairman of the Board of Supes was gay, for Chrissake, and had run for mayor last year!

Trin fought an urge to jump into the car and slam the door. He’d be safe, but he wouldn’t be able to drive away. The bearded guy put hairy-backed fingers on the edge of the open door.

“Maybe you’re a gay-bashing car thief working here in the Castro because you figured we’d be easy pickings.”

The crowd gave an approving rumble. Trin stepped back out of the Honda, thinking: if they come after me, the slim jim’ll make a good weapon. He hadn’t thought that way in months. Caramba, such thoughts felt good. Real good.

Just then a handsome dude with bright dark eyes and high cheekbones and some sort of soft flat cap down over one ear turned to face the crowd with his arms spread wide.

“This man is a member of a minority, just like us,” he said in some sort of continental cadence. “He didn’t have any choice about being Latino.” He turned to Trin with his hand out. “Besides, I know him. How’s it been, amigo?”

“Uh — fine,” said Trin. They shook hands. “Haven’t seen you around lately.” He’d never laid eyes on the guy before.

“I’ve been out of the country on vacation. In Paris.”

The crowd was losing its cohesion. The surface tension had been broken, like water flowing down the sides of an overfull glass if a finger touches the surface. The man winked at Trin.

“I’ll drop around to the bank on Monday for a chat.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

The guy melted into the quickly dispersing crowd. Trin got into the Civic, pulled the door shut, locked it, and opened his right hand. On his palm rested the ignition key Gustave Dumont had slipped him. He started the motor. Clever dude. Hoped he wouldn’t have too far to walk.

The town-house complex at Townsend and the Embarcadero had an under-the-building parking garage where entry was by electronic door-opener only. Ken Warren knew the ’66 Mustang would be stashed behind those formidable overhead steel doors because he remembered what Larry and O’B said when he brought in Benny Lutheran’s 280Z on the day of the classic-car raid.

“That’s one guy we won’t have to check out.”

“Sure we will. They might play liar’s dice with those cars, maybe hide another one in his garage just to finesse us.”

Ken trudged stolidly up the front steps of the gleaming high-rise condo building just as a skinny guy came out wearing a psychiatrist’s beard and a Shetland wool tweed coat with elbow patches. With him was a slim blonde with an improbable bosom under a bright red woolly sweater.

Before it could close and without checking his stride, Ken was through the door the psychiatrist hadn’t bothered to hold for him. The blonde looked after him with an expression seldom seen outside the boudoir. The bearded man took her arm with some asperity to lead her away from temptation.

When the hall buzzer sounded, Benny Lutheran was taking a drag on his cigarette and staring through the living room picture window at his fabulous view of the Bay Bridge. She was early. Probably some chivalrous gent had opened the door for her. Who wouldn’t? Ever since the black-haired pixie-faced girl in the red warm-up jacket gave him an exuberant finger outside USF’s Lone Mountain campus, Benny Lutheran knew he wanted her. Nineteen years old! Tonight he was going to have her.

A little clear liquid GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate acid) in her Pepsi, along with a shot of tasteless vodka she would know nothing about, and he would feast on her for the rest of the night. She would wake up in the A.M. on her folks’ front porch with a headache and chafed thighs and a bad taste in her mouth, and she wouldn’t be able to remember a thing about any of it.

Benny admired himself for a final second in the bathroom mirror, spritzed breath-freshener into his mouth, and went down the hall and across the living room to swing the front door wide with welcome.

His eyes bulged. “You!” He tried to slam the door.

Ken Warren, the original immovable object, was in the way. Benny fisted his big right hand. His broken nose had a Pavlovian flashback. His hand unfisted. Ken’s even bigger right hand was extended, palm up.

“Hgna Hmuhntang,” he said. “Hgna hknees.”

This time, Benny Lutheran had no difficulty at all in understanding him. The Mustang. The keys. He didn’t own a gun. If he tried to defend himself with a knife, the blade would shatter when it struck the big retard’s flesh.

“I...” He held up a finger. “Just a second...”

He dashed madly back to his bedroom to rummage through drawers and briefly considered calling the cops. No. Bad move. After cringing when he dropped the keys into the outstretched hand, he tried to reupholster his self-esteem with bluster.

“You got your keys, asshole, you got your car, now get to fuck outta here. I don’t ever wanna see you again.”

But all was not lost. Even as the retard turned away, Colleen was coming up the hall, all bright eyes and saucy black ringlets and a tight skirt that ended a foot above her knees. Great cheerleader legs! Innocence aching to be defiled. And Benny was just the boy to defile it.

But Ken Warren stopped in front of the girl, once again the immovable object. He held up his hand.

“Hgno!” he told her.

She gazed up at him, wide-eyed; she came only to his chest.

“Okay,” she said, and turned around and went back down the hall with him. Benny slammed the door so hard it resonated until they reached the elevator.

Colleen thought the Mustang was so, like, awesome, that Ken let her drive it back to DKA for him, gave her $25 as a driver’s fee, and drove her safely to her folks’ place. He even got her home before midnight.

Trin Morales stopped on Mission Street for the pizza he hadn’t gotten last time around. Yeah, that pizza joint. Where Milagrita worked. But he’d been a scared rabbit then; now, the Cisco Kid rode again. Besides, she worked weekdays and this was midnight on a Saturday night. He just wanted a pizza, right?

But when he went in, his eyes instinctively sought out and, amazingly, were rewarded by her slim and graceful person. She was there, waiting tables! Pulling a split shift? Filling in for someone out sick? Maybe she had switched to nights. He slid into an empty booth so when she came over to take his order he could flash his biggest gold-tooth grin at her.

“I just made an estraño repo,” he said, “an’ I wanna—”

“No!” She thrust out both hands, palms-forward, as if to ward off el diablo himself. “Go! Get out! Esteban...”

If Esteban hears you were in here, he will kill you.

Too late, survival instincts revived. In a window booth were four young Latino bucks with beers and cigarettes in their hands — who had the balls to bring up no-smoking laws to them? They were galvanized to action by Milagrita’s cry of warning.

Trin’s choice was simple: flight or fight.

If he fled, they would own him forever.

If he fought, he would be smashed up again. Maybe killed.

Nine months ago, fuck ’em, he would have fought.

But now... Now, he ran for his life in blind panic, away from his car — they would drag him down on busy Mission Street before he could even get the door open. Instead, he sprinted left and around the corner and three doors down to the fleabag hotel where he’d been a bellhop when he was 18. He remembered that in recent years it had become a sort of residence hotel for old geezers on Social Security.

He jammed an elbow through the glass of the door, twisted the knob to open it, and flung himself into the dust-shrouded and night-deserted lobby. The shoes of his pursuers thudded on the sidewalk. He skittered around the corner beside the deserted check-in desk. If the utility room was unlocked as it used to be... Yes!

Trin slammed shut the heavy old hardwood door, rammed home the deadbolt. That would hold them only until they realized the hinges were on the outside of the door.

Each breath was like a razor blade in his chest, not from exertion but from terror. Sweat stung his eyes. During his bellhop days, the room was crammed with maids’ carts, the shelves stacked with linens and towels. Now, crammed with old suitcases, dusty boxes of abandoned belongings, broken TV sets, three-legged chairs, bureaus without drawers, cracked mirrors...

He fought his way around, through, under, over, and between the obstacles to the back wall. Behind him were excited hunting cries, the thud of shoulders against the door.

Then a shout, “Los goznes! The hinges! Get out the pins!”

At eighteen, Trin often escaped the house dick’s wrath by throwing himself headfirst down the laundry chute to land in the dirty sheets piled in the basement laundry room below. Twenty years later, he gingerly levered himself into the chute feet-first — if he got stuck, they would carve him out of it like corned beef from the tin. Hell with it. He let go, slid down into darkness. The lost forty pounds was just enough. He landed on water-puddled concrete, somehow retained his footing. From the storage room above came the crashing of boxes being hurled aside.

Trin dragged a wooden crate under one of the high narrow windows, smashed loose the wire mesh with the butt of his hand. Seeing blood on his knuckles, feeling nothing, he rolled out into the alley that would take him around the block to his car.

Couldn’t go back to his apartment. Not now, not in any future he could foresee. His desperate mind leaped to DKA.

That was it. Hide his car in the fenced storage area they couldn’t get into, sleep in the personal property storage room on the second floor with a lot of locked and burglar-alarmed doors between him and them. Let nobody at DKA know he was sleeping there. Safety. For the moment.

To a despairing, self-adjudged coward like Trin Morales, safety for the moment was enough.