Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Forty-three

Sunday night, a few minutes before midnight, Giselle parked behind a Porsche and in front of a Mercedes on Mariposa Street across from Jackson Playground. Scattered up and down the street were other expensive cars. When she got out of the Alfa, the streetlight on the corner showed her the buxom Gypsy woman who had approached her in the DKA lot a few nights before.

“We are going to the House of Pain,” she told Giselle. “Stay close to me.”

They fell in behind two stylish mid-40s women who went down the street and turned in at a ramshackle faded-yellow warehouse wearing a broker’s FOR SALE sign with a big red vertical SOLD slapped across it. Another Silicon Valley buyout. The inevitable aluminum-framing and double-glazing could not be far behind.

One of the women tugged at the old wooden door, which slid wide on well-greased runners. The place was cavernous, stretching into obscurity, echoing with a murmur of voices — all feminine — and slapping sounds she couldn’t identify.

A woman in black leather shone a flashlight into the well-dressed women’s faces, passed them through. Giselle and her guide next. Giselle blinked against the light as they went in.

Overriding all else was a rich, dusky incense; underlying this, subtly emphasizing it, a bewildering mélange of perfumes, sweat, and smells Giselle could only think of as... emotions. Fear, perhaps? Even pain, physical or emotional? Or was she projecting because of the muffled cries from the dark interior?

The women ahead of them simultaneously reached up and swung their arms. There was a sharp cry of real pain. Giselle looked up and saw a nude woman in her 30s lying above them face-down in a hammock of woven hemp. The openings between the strands were a foot square; her huge, famished eyes stared down at them through one of them. Her bared breasts hung down through two others; it was those breasts that these other women had struck. She was staring at Giselle.

“Now you do it! Please! Do it! Do it!”

Giselle said coldly, “Pass,” and pushed on by.

Her guide led her down a central aisle past partitioned cubicles some fifteen feet square with floor-length red velvet drapes hanging from brass rings on ordinary curtain rods. From behind the drapes came the strange paddling and slapping noises she was hearing, along with the murmurs and low-voiced cries.

One of the curtains was not drawn completely shut and inside Giselle could just see, by a flashlight’s dim glow, a masked woman in a Gestapo uniform. She was whipping another woman with a riding crop. The victim’s hands were shackled; angry red welts crisscrossed the pale skin that could be seen through rents in her rags. There was blood on the edges of the torn cloth.

The victim cried out, “Auschwitz!”

The Nazi kept right on beating her.

“Auschwitz!” She screamed it this time.

Two husky women in slacks and T-shirts jostled by Giselle and the Gypsy and into the cubicle to grapple with the out-of-control dominatrix. One tossed Giselle a flashlight.

“Hold it steady so we can see what we’re doing!”

They subdued the dominatrix and removed her from the cubicle. They took back their flashlight. Another woman unshackled the sobbing victim.

“We must find the Undertaker,” said the Gypsy.

The large open area at the back of the building was softly lit by strings of small pastel lights. Gen-X music dripped from the speakers. Behind a couple of planks laid across two wine casks, a pair of women dressed only in black aprons served beer and wine. On a corner of the makeshift bar were a big coffee urn, cups, spoons, sugar, non-dairy creamer.

The women crowding the room were dressed in everything from outlandish costumes to wispy bras and panties. Some were masked. Others were nude. Because those around them were fully clothed, the nude women had a vulnerability that Giselle knew full well was deliberate.

Standing in one of the groups, dressed in skintight black leather, was Yana, masked but unmistakable. The women crowding around her were animated, competing for her attention. They all looked like potential victims. What was Yana doing in a place like this? Some of her family surely had died in concentration camps. Forget marime. For the first time, Giselle was struck by just how far Poteet’s wife had journeyed to the dark side. From crystal ball to the palace of evil.

Yana glanced toward them and turned away without the slightest flicker of recognition.

“The Undertaker will come to us. Follow me.”

When Yana saw Giselle’s vivid intent face she turned quickly away; was there still enmity between them? During the great Cadillac caper, they had been foes, outwitting each other turn and turn about. In a Gypsy encampment in Ohio she saved Giselle from a beating, perhaps worse; Giselle owed her for that. But Devla! What had she come to? When she needed an ally, she could trust only a gadja, and a former enemy at that.

Voices floated around her like detritus around a pier.

“Even I don’t want a baby that much.”

Laughter. “Maybe you can get Clinton to donate his sperm.”

“It would be better than the old turkey baster.”

More general laughter. One of the women touched Yana’s arm and said, “Please, take me into a cubicle. I need...”

“You do not need the level of pain I invariably inflict.”

Yana spoke in a guttural, indifferent voice, letting her contempt for this poor creature show through her words. Akoosh her! It was what she wanted, anyway. Abuse. Degradation.

The curtain’s brass rings made a bright metallic sliding sound on the rod. The Gypsy switched on a flashlight to show rugs, throw-pillows, even a couch. In this enclosed space, the incense and mingled perfumes were insistent, almost cloying.

“Can I get you something to drink? There is herb tea.” Giselle studied the face beneath the makeup and bangles: this was no Gypsy. She saw a round pleasant Mediterranean face and warm brown eyes concealing a lot of pain.

“Italian, right?” asked Giselle.

She might have blushed. “Geraldine. Geraldine Tantillo.”

“You are Yasmine’s contact person?” Geraldine nodded. “Give me your phone number. I might need to call you in the days ahead.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Geraldine did. They waited in silence. Yana did not come.

“ ‘Auschwitz’ was supposed to stop the beating, right?”

“Yes. The house rule is that you must have a word you can use when you’ve had enough — the most sacred word you know.”

“Why ‘Auschwitz’ for that woman?”

“Her grandfather was a guard there, so she wears prisoner’s rags and is beaten by a Jewish dominatrix in a Gestapo uniform. But most of the women who come here were abused as kids — maybe by a father, an uncle, sometimes with their mother’s tacit consent.”

“Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Wouldn’t you want to beat the crap out of somebody looks like the person who abused you?”

“No,” said Geraldine. “Deep down kids trust grown-ups even if they are abused. Even grown up, they feel they deserved the abuse. Being punished makes them feel less guilty — at least for a while.”

A new voice said, “You sound as if you have pity for these sick creatures.” And Yana was there, removing her domino mask.

“Yes,” said Giselle crisply, surprised to realize that she did feel pity, and at the same time finding herself miffed that Yana didn’t. “There’s a lot of pain here. Psychic pain.”

“Pah! What do they know of pain?” In the gloom, Yana’s eyes flashed sudden fire. “I spit on their pain! If they had to live even one day as a Romni... But epesèl, time is short.”

And she was suddenly loud and strident, her voice that of a dominatrix, vicious, cutting, full of contempt.

“You slut! You bitch! Did you think you would not be punished for your disgusting practices? Off with your clothes, you unspeakable whore, and down on your knees...”

By the flashlight’s glow, Geraldine grabbed up a Ping-Pong paddle and began beating the arm of the sofa with loud slapping sounds that covered Yana’s lowered voice.

“Thank you for coming. Only here could we meet safely. I know you have information for me.”

Geraldine interrupted with a little shriek, began panting very quickly like someone in pain. White noise, Giselle thought, like that thrown up against electronic surveillance.

“The San Francisco police have issued a Murder One warrant for your arrest,” she said.

“But... Ephrem died in Los Angeles.”

“This warrant is not for your husband’s murder. It is for the murders of two old men here in the Bay Area.” Giselle studied her, but saw only amazement in Yana’s face. “They believe Ephrem, calling himself Punka Mihai, and you, under the name of Nadja Mihai, were working together.”

Giselle thought she saw Yana stagger slightly, as if from an unexpected blow.

“I have no knowledge of a woman named Nadja Mihai,” Yana said almost formally. “Ephrem conned people, yes. Picked pockets, yes. Christ on the cross gave the Rom permission to scam the gadje. But murder? He would be in terror of the mulos. He would never—”

“Be straight with me, Yana. Did you kill your husband?”

“No.” She paused as Geraldine beat the sofa vigorously and wailed. “I did not even know he was dead until my brother got word to me. I still don’t know the day of his death.”

“Easter Monday,” said Giselle, then added, “Nadja Mihai’s description from the police files matches yours exactly. So where were you Easter and Easter Monday?”

“Why Easter?”

“They have an eyewitness who saw the same woman at Ephrem’s house both nights.”

Yana met her eyes with a surprising directness. “On Easter I went to mass. That evening I was in my ofica, giving readings. It is like that on every religious holiday. People off the street, I don’t know who they are. I have no names. It would be impossible to find them now. I have killed no one, but without proof, I must flee.” She sighed deeply. “There is no rest for me.”