Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Thirty-eight

O’B finally admitted it: he was having a dry spell in more ways than one. He was off the booze, and he hadn’t repo’d one single car since the Panoz up in Sonoma. At almost the end of May, he was dead last on the repo board in the upstairs office. That had never happened before. Drastic measures were needed, so he was at the DKA office primed for shameful work. It was that or go have a drink, and he wasn’t going to do that.

Long before Jane Goldson arrived at 7:30 A.M. to open locks, switch off alarms, and check the fax and e-mail for overnight assignments, he planned to poach new REPO ON SIGHT assignment sheets from the other guys’ In boxes on her desk. Go grab the cars, up his monthly average, and blandly say they must have been given to him by mistake.

He reached greedy fingers for a juicy new Integra in Trin’s In box, and an angry voice yelled at him from the stairs that led down from the second floor above Jane’s desk.

“Hey, what the hell you think you’re doing there, man?”

Morales vaulted over the railing to grab the repo order out of his hands. Trin grubbed in his box for his other assignments, memos, close-outs, gold-colored copies of the skip-tracers’ work on his various cases, and stormed out. O’B drank six Dixie cups of cold water from the cooler, then meekly followed.

“He’s not a bad man,” said a woman’s determined voice.

She was standing on the sidewalk outside, a little thing in her early 40s, not over five-three, wearing a cloth coat against the morning chill. Her sharp nose had a red tip, her hair was stringy, her eyes close-set, her thin lips determined.

“Of course he’s not,” said O’B heartily, knowing she sure didn’t mean Morales. “What’s the old devil up to these days?”

“As if you didn’t know,” she said almost coyly. Then she was serious again. “The temptation was just too much for Joel, you see. He figured that after a while the big man would stop looking. But he never did. He never said anything, he was just there, waiting, watching, leaving those cards with DKA on them.”

The big man had to be Ken Warren, and this had to be Meg Doman, wife of Joel Doman, ex-UpScale salesman. Meg Doman was rummaging in her purse, still talking.

“You’d think, him being a used-car salesman and all, that wouldn’t bother Joel. But he’s sensitive to pressure. He was going to pieces. So this morning I just did it.”

Her fisted hand came out of her purse convulsively — to press a set of keys into O’B’s open palm. Now that he looked, the car was squatting right in front of the closed sliding doors to DKA’s storage lot: 1990 Jag XJS convertible, champagne over black, just 75,000 miles on the clock, listed retail at $17,995.

“Faith and BeJaysus,” breathed O’B. His long drought was finally broken. He even drove Meg Doman home.

Larry’s descriptions — big and tough — had been apt. When Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern stormed up to Giselle at ten-thirty and badged her, she unobtrusively flicked open the intercom key, hoping Kearny was back from the bank to listen in. Rosenkrantz sat down on the corner of her desk, started idly swinging his leg.

Guildenstern snapped, “Where’s that fucking Larry Ballard?”

“Don’t use foul language in front of me,” Giselle said, hoping to upset their interrogation rhythm.

“Few days ago, Ballard worked us for everything we had on Ephrem Poteet,” said Rosenkrantz indifferently. “Said he hadn’t seen the wife, Yana, for something like six or seven years.”

“Why would he lie?”

Guildenstern leaned across the desk. “Larry lies when he says ‘Hello.’ We start going up Yana’s backtrail, and whadda we find? We find his footprints all over our case.”

Sure enough, it was time for the first joke. Rosenkrantz asked, “How did Pinocchio find out he was made of wood?”

“Don’t,” Giselle warned. “You’re treading on thin ice.”

Rosenkrantz was undeterred. “His hand caught fire.”

“That’s the first time,” she said icily.

“Next,” said Guildenstern, “we find out at Marine World in Vallejo that Heslip was asking a lot of questions about Poteet. So we call Harry Bosch down in L.A., and guess what? There’s Heslip’s big number nines all over Harry’s case. Cops don’t like P.I.’s mixing in murder, so we—”

“Has Yana been charged with murder?” she interrupted.

“That’s police business,” snapped Guildenstern. “This outfit is in a lot of trouble for obstructing our investigation.”

Rosenkrantz asked, “Why are blondes like dog turds?”

Giselle was suddenly as formidable as El Capitan. “I told you not to do that. That’s twice.”

“The older they are, the easier they are to pick up.”

“That’s the third time,” she said, and threw her cup of cold coffee in his face. He jumped off the desk, bellowing. Guildenstern got out his handcuffs.

“You’re going down for assaulting an officer, sister.”

“And you’re going down for sexual harassment, brother.”

Sexual harassment. The magic words. The two cops’ eyes met. Rosenkrantz stopped wiping his face with a wad of Kleenex from the box on her desk. His partner’s handcuffs disappeared as Dan Kearny appeared in the doorway.

“You’re supposed to drink that stuff, not swim in it.” He turned away, gesturing. “You can clean up in the bathroom.”

Giselle punched out Larry’s cell phone number as she flipped the intercom switch to listen.

Sitting beside Dan’s desk, a dried-off Rosenkrantz jerked his head at the back room. “What’s biting her? PMS?”

Guildenstern asked, “What do you get when you cross a pit bull with a woman who’s having PMS?”

“You’re treading on thin ice,” said Kearny. “What I want out of you guys is why you’re harassing the help on a referral out of L.A. All you’ve got on Yana is a very shaky eyewitness.”

“You’re wrong. We got a hell of a lot more than that,” said Guildenstern, peeved at not getting to tell his joke.

“Knowing you guys ain’t exactly dummies,” said Rosenkrantz, “we wondered why you was all of a sudden so interested in two old guys up and died of natural causes — Eduardo Moneo in Vallejo and Brian Glosser here in the City. So we got secret exhumation orders on ’em. Purple foxglove poisoning, both of ’em — Digitalis purpurea. That spells a Murder One warrant for Yana.”

Kearny’s private phone rang. He snatched it up. Ballard.

“I’m at Ray Chong Fat’s. Giselle just clued me in on the phone. Should I wait or run?”

“Take your time,” said Kearny. He hung up. “Ballard, checking in. He’s at the Chinese store down the street, drinking soda pop.” He shook his head piously. “I like to protect my men, but Murder One is something else. I guess he’s all yours.”

Rosenkrantz sighed. “We better go piss in his Pepsi.”

They went out the door behind Kearny’s desk. Giselle appeared from the back room to flop down in his client’s chair.

“Why are you throwing Larry to the wolves?”

“Who’s the wolf and who’s getting tossed to who?” said Dan.

Giselle suddenly grinned. “Tossed to whom,” she said.

English letters and Chinese characters spelled out PEKING GROCERY STORE — CHINESE DELICACIES above the door of the narrow storefront. An apparently carefree Larry Ballard emerged eating an egg roll and slupping a soft drink from its aluminum can.

“Hold it right there!” bellowed a heavy voice.

Rosenkrantz, playing good cop, said, “How do you know you’ve met the woman who gives the best head in the world?”

“You’re treading on thin ice,” Larry said.

“Knock off the shit, Ballard!” Guildenstern roared. “You conned us at Beverly’s bar, how you hardly knew Yana Poteet—”

“I told you I hadn’t seen her for years. I hadn’t, and anyway, DKA didn’t want her yet. Then the Gyppos hired us to look for her, sure, but the only one had any suggestions at all was her brother, Ramon.” Larry stuffed the rest of his egg roll into his mouth, said contemptuously, “A few worthless mail drops in the Presidio.” He finished his Pepsi in one long swig, belched, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Then I got lucky. I maybe spotted Yana in Sutter Street.”

“You spotted her or you didn’t,” sneered Guildenstern.

“I wasn’t sure, she was disguised. Brown wig, glasses...” He was gesturing, intense, selling it. “I lost her in the crowd. I started canvassing the businesses along Sutter, and finally found out she was doing makeup and hair on corpses at Brittingham’s Funeral Home under the name of Becky Thatcher.”

Guildenstern was ominous. “Was working there?”

“Yeah, past tense — and don’t blame me she’s gone. Brittingham told me she was living at the Columbine on—”

“We know it,” said Rosenkrantz.

“Gone from there, too. No forwarding. End of story for the moment, but I still think I’m going to find her and—”

“No you aren’t.” Guildenstern’s voice was flat. “DKA is out of it, O-U-T. We got a Murder One warrant out on her now.”

Larry was genuinely shocked. “You mean L.A.’s got a—”

“No. We do. Find out from your boss why.”

As they strutted away, Rosenkrantz asked his partner, “What do you think of that shit?”

“I think we got an expert snow job. I think they maybe even know where she is and are helping her hide from us.” He paused. “Why is it so hard to pronounce ‘fellatio’?”

Rosenkrantz opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“You’re treading on thin ice,” he warned.