Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Thirty-five

Dan Kearny and Knottnerus-Meyer flew into Monterey in a high-winged ARV Super2 with a tricycle landing gear suitable for the small wind-blown airport. If security conditions at Xanadu were satisfactory, the Baron would jet back to Germany over the Pole in the morning. If not, then... Well, he hadn’t confided what his next step would be if his findings were negative.

The Baron seemed happy to let Dan Kearny do the driving of the rented Nissan Xterra SUV that awaited them at the airport.

“I haff an international driver’s license, but I’m used to dot Autobahn. I haff heard dis Big Sur iss very... rustic.”

“Where we’re going sure as hell is,” agreed Kearny.

He was dressed for the backcountry; hanging from his neck were the binoculars he used at the racetrack. One of his lace-up hiking boots had a survival knife scabbard stitched to the outside. The scabbard was empty: Kearny had burned a hole right through the knife’s blade trying to jump-start a repo with a bum solenoid one stormy night on the north coast above San Francisco.

The Baron was dressed as if he were going grouse-hunting, right down to one of the plaid deerstalker caps made famous by Sherlock Holmes. All he lacked was a shooting stick.

Kearny began, “Should we call ahead to let them know—”

“Our arrival must be a surprise,” stated the Baron coldly. “Vut sort uff security expert are you?”

Not much of one, thought Dan, but he said, “They already know we’re coming, right?”

“Not de day uff our arrival.” Knottnerus-Meyer paused dramatically. “Today iss dot day.”

Dan drove out the Carmel Valley through rolling horse country with rambling houses perched on the hillsides. Some thirty miles south, well into the rugged pine-covered terrain flanking the eastern slope of the Los Padres National Forest, he pulled off to consult the map.

“Our road turns west into the Coast Range at a T-junction just short of a little burg called Sycamore Flat. Exactly two point three miles from the junction our gravel track goes off to the north.”

It did. Immediately, it began climbing and twisting through a stately mixture of hemlock, fir, and blue spruce. Kearny put the SUV into four-wheel. Knottnerus-Meyer screwed his monocle into his eye, took a deep breath of the bracing air.

“De Black Forest iss more orderly,” he observed.

Kearny took the Xterra around yet another hairpin turn to yet another switchback and mashed the brakes. They skidded to a stop in a cloud of grey-white dust two feet from a partial road cave-in. He backed and filled, turned, went on.

Knottnerus-Meyer, who had been hanging on with whitened knuckles, said abruptly, “Brachiation proved to be de key to de survival uff de great apes.”

“Brachiation?” asked Dan.

The Baron unclawed his right hand from the crash bar to wiggle his fingers in illustration.

“Using deir hands. Svinging below de branch rather dan running along de top uff it. De apes dat made de adaptation survived, dose dot did not vent extinct. At least tventy-two pithecoids disappeared, thirteen species in Africa alone.”

“I’m really glad to hear that,” said Dan.

“Goot! You make another joke!”

Another rise put them at the top of the world. Dan stopped the Xterra. To the east was spread out California’s great central valley, robbed of detail by distance. Far beyond was the Sierra, a long dark uneven band running along the horizon.

To the west, the Pacific. The horizon was ruler straight, two blues meeting without mingling, so distant the surface looked like glass. Closer in, Kearny knew, breakers would be smashing on black rocks, spume would be flying, gnarled black Monterey cypresses would be twisted into frozen agony by the never-ending wind, gulls would be swooping and skirling like bagpipes against the clamor of the sea. Up here all was stillness and serenity.

“Looks like we made it,” said Kearny.

“Magnificent!” breathed Knottnerus-Meyer. The monocle had fallen from his eye to dangle forgotten on his chest.

They were at one end of a vast mountain meadow. Close-packed sedges and grasses waved in the cool high-country air. At the far end stretched ten acres of achingly green grounds dotted with artfully planted shrubs, bushes, and hardwoods, crowded on three sides by pine forest. All of it enclosed by a formidable cyclone fence.

Dan raised his binoculars, adjusted them. Around the inside of the fence ran a single-lane dirt vehicle track. No petunia borders for Victor Marr. Their gravel road wended its way across the mountain meadow to stop abruptly at an electrified gate topped with barbed wire. The glaring white three-storied flat-roofed futuristic building in the center of the compound could have been a mortuary.

A guard was strolling a pair of leashed Dobermans along the crushed-gravel walk between the building and the gate. Kearny lowered his glasses. “You’d need an army to bust in there.”

“Indeed.” Knottnerus-Meyer abandoned his monocle for a pair of miniature opera glasses from his jacket pocket. After a moment, he lowered them. “Indeed,” he said again.

Larry Ballard’s props were few: a blue windbreaker hanging open over a tieless white shirt; dark glasses; a billed delivery-man’s cap from the DKA personal effects storage room; and a bouquet of long-stemmed calla lilies from a Sutter Street florist.

He waited in his car until Carter Brittingham IV went to lunch. Wouldn’t do for Brittingham to run into the grief-stricken nephew of poor old Mrs. Henderson so soon again.

Ballard picked a name off the list inside the mortuary door, poked his flowers and capped head into the reception room. A somberly dressed woman in her 30s was using her handbag mirror to put on cherry-red lipstick. Mirror and lipstick were whisked from view when Larry spoke.

“Paul Weissman?”

She consulted her own list. Her half-made-up mouth made him think of Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns.” “Viewing room six at seven-thirty this evening. I can take those flowers—”

“No can do. I gotta personally deliver ’em to a Ms.... ah, Becky Thatcher. For inclusion in Mr. Weissman’s casket.”

“With the Beloved?” She looked mildly surprised, then shrugged, losing interest. “The stairs at the end of the hall, past the NO ADMITTANCE sign. She’ll be down there somewhere.”

Larry tipped his cap to her — a nice touch, he thought — and turned away. She was already bringing the lipstick and mirror up from below her desktop. She wouldn’t remember him past the Kleenex blot of the lips. Good. A short attention span was one of the great boons to private detectives.

At the foot of the stairs was a door that, when opened, led into the embalming room. The cold white sterile blare of overhead fluorescents wiped out every shadow. Ballard squinted his eyes against instant headache and crinkled his nose against the acrid chemical odors of old-fashioned embalming.

A husky kid with a shaved head and a ring in his ear was bending over a cadaver on a stainless steel table, scalpel in hand. He whirled at Larry’s entrance, advanced with menace.

“You can’t come in here!”

“Mind the scalpel, I’m not dead yet.” Hell, hadn’t he won a fight with a Gypsy knife-juggler? “I’m supposed to get these flowers to a Becky Thatcher. You don’t look like her.”

After a moment, the man shrugged and pointed with the scalpel. “She’s prettying up a stiff in the next room.”

The tiled floor had a large circular meshed drain in the middle of it. Larry eased an eye around the edge of the window in the door the embalmer had indicated. If she saw him she would split. In the next room a white-smocked, taffy-haired woman was applying eyeliner to a dead woman wearing a green taffeta dress. Taffy-Hair stepped back to get the effect of her ministrations, and was Yana.

Larry turned away, flowers still in hand, the harsh light behind him casting his shadow through the window onto a pastel wall. Upstairs, he put the calla lilies on a casket in a viewing room, and departed. The great Yana hunt was over.

Yana had glanced toward the door to the embalming room just as some deliveryman with an armful of flowers was turning away from the observation window. The silhouette of his exaggerated profile on the wall gave her Larry Ballard’s nose and chin despite his peaked cap and sunglasses.

She was already taking off her crisp white medical coat and surgeon’s gloves. A year or two ago, when DKA took thirty-one Cadillacs away from the Gypsies when nobody else could even find them, she had been impressed. Especially with Larry. Now, when the Gypsies had to find Yana in the gadjo world, who would they turn to? DKA, of course.

Devèl, Ballard was good at what he did! But it didn’t matter how he’d found her. She had to be gone from here and from her room at the Columbine within the hour. She was so fast out of Brittingham’s that she saw Ballard’s broad, tapered back as he walked up Sutter toward his car. She turned the other way, toward Polk Street. To go where? No enchanted alley cat to help her out this time. But maybe... just maybe...

The uniformed guard was waiting for Dan and the Baron with the two Dobermans outside the closed gate. He had his holster flap unbuttoned and his hand on his pistol butt. The guard dogs strained at their leashes with delighted fury. An open Jeep raced from behind the building on the dirt track inside the perimeter fence.

The Baron said, “Ve shall please to get out now.”

Kearny opened his door, the guard released the dogs. Dan jerked his leg back in and slammed the door just as the Dobermans smashed against it. But damned if Knottnerus-Meyer hadn’t already opened his door and was stepping out.

“Dogs are genuine optimists,” he said. “Always cheerful.” The dogs flew around the front of the SUV to attack. Dan had to admit some slight hope the man would get mauled. He was so damned smug, so sure of himself, so damned... Teutonic.

But the Baron said in a low voice, “Are ve so ill-behaved?”

Hecate and Charon skidded to a stop. Hecate rolled over onto her back, legs in the air. Knottnerus-Meyer leaned down and scratched the proffered tummy. Kearny got out of the SUV gingerly. The guard pressed forward, angry and astounded. The Baron straightened. The mild look was gone. He screwed in his monocle, suddenly extremely Prussian.

“Your top shirt button iss open,” he said coldly. “Your boots do not haff a sufficient shine. Your uniform does not haff a sufficient press.” He gestured at the fawning Dobermans. “Choke collars on guard dogs are not permitted at dis facility.”

Just then the Jeep came tearing up the dirt track to skid to a stop, spilling out a burly uniformed figure. He had a gun at his belt and a swagger stick in his hand.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” he yelled.