Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Forty-seven

At nine on Tuesday morning, the day after Memorial Day, a grim-faced Dan Kearny stormed into Stan Groner’s office. Groner’s assistant jumped to her feet behind her desk.

“You can’t go in there, Mr. Kearny, he’s not—”

Kearny flung the private door open and started across the carpet, then slowed to a stop. Stan was not alone. Jackson B. Gideon, president of Cal-Cit Bank, was beating the desktop with a sheaf of rolled-up papers and yelling.

“The bank’s image, Groner!” Thunk, thunk, thunk. “You have compromised this bank’s image!”

Gideon, a man with a beaked fleshy nose and pig eyes under eyebrows like bleached fuzzy caterpillars, wore a dove-grey wool suit that wished it was two sizes larger. His mouth was twisted with the same rage that had turned his fleshy face red.

Stan began, “But, sir, you were the one who told me not to do anything to upset—”

“None of your whining excuses, Groner.” Catching a glimpse of Dan Kearny, he pointed a finger at him. “Kearny! DKA will rot in hell before you get any more auto contract recovery assignments out of us.” He stormed toward the door, throwing over his shoulder, “Explain it to him, Groner!” and waddled out.

“Yeah, Groner, explain it to me,” said Dan ominously.

Stan was behind his desk, head in hands. “So sue me.”

Dan sat down. The disaster was not DKA’s alone, obviously. Stan’s feet were also in the fire. It just went on and on.

“Why don’t you take it from the very top,” he said.

“The Baron is no baron. The company in Berlin never heard of him. He conned Cal-Cit corporately, and me personally. The bank — on my assurances — paid him an advance and got stuck with the cost of his hotel suite, the chopper, everything. Marr is of course refusing to honor any commitments we made.” Groner was on his feet, pacing. “And we were made to look like fools with the company in Berlin in the bargain. There never were any merger talks. That bastard Baron just made them up. I’m hanging on to my job by a whisker, Cal-Cit sure as hell isn’t going to pay DKA anything or assign you any repo work. Not now, anyway.”

“If he isn’t Knottnerus-Meyer, who is he?”

“We don’t know. Robin Brantley, the guy in Hong Kong who recommended him in the first place, has disappeared. Gideon is blaming me, but he’s the one who told me to handle the Baron with care and never checked on him with Berlin. So I take the fall.”

“So do I,” said Kearny. “So does DKA. Thanks just a hell of a lot for getting me into this, Groner.”

“I didn’t. Actually, the Baron asked for you by name.”

“I’ve never heard of Brantley. What’d he do for Marr?”

“Purchasing agent for him in the Orient, I assume.”

Kearny paced, blue-grey eyes computing. “And the Baron was the agent for the man in Rome who wanted Freddie.”

Groner was on his feet, too. “Whatever you say. Water under the bridge now. I’ve got to get out of here, get busy on damage control if I’m going to keep my job.”

Kearny waved a disinterested hand after him as he stormed out, and sat back down, thinking furiously.

The Baron had asked for him by name. Logically, the only place he could have gotten Kearny’s name was Cal-Cit Bank. But only Stan at Cal-Cit would have mentioned Kearny. And it was the Baron who had told Groner to get DKA. Who else was there? Himself, he realized with a start. But where to begin? DKA did no work at all for overseas clients.

He gave a sudden grunt, as if someone had poked him in the gut. Then he gave a wry chuckle.

Staley Zlachi, King of the Muchwaya. He had all sorts of overseas contacts, and he had recently been a DKA client. The Gypsies had dropped out of sight when the Homicide cops had shown up with a warrant for Yana. Kearny was suddenly on his feet. What were the Gypsies up to these days? He had to find sly old Staley and shake some answers out of him.

On the sprawling grounds of the Villa Borghese in Rome, Freddie’s facility was much like the one at Xanadu, itself based on Brantley’s setup in Hong Kong. A box of a room with a cage inside it and a one-way glass observation window in the wall. Looking into Freddie’s room through the window was Willem Van De Post. Thanks to the Baron, he had his beloved ape at last.

In Freddie’s room, Robin Brantley, newly arrived from Hong Kong the night before, was outside the open cage door with a half-dozen sealed envelopes. Brantley was very British-looking, tall and almost gangly with a long horse face and a lock of greying blond hair hanging down over one eye.

They were teaching Freddie a new trick; Freddie loved new tricks. Even so, Willem’s voice on the speaker said, “Once more to be sure.”

Brantley carried the envelopes into the cage. Freddie selected one, slapped it against his forehead, held it there. He shut his eyes. He swayed. He opened his eyes and tossed the envelope, still sealed, into a waste bin attached to the wall under the observation window. Then he turned to his computer. After a moment of unmerciful mugging, he started punching keys.

Words appeared on the big monitor screen behind the computer.

Freddie stopped typing. No more words appeared.

“Perfect!” exclaimed Willem’s voice.

Brantley gave Freddie a handful of pumpkin seeds.

When Dan got back to the office, he asked Giselle, “Heard anything from the Gyppos lately?”

“Nada since the cops kicked us off the case.”

“Find them for me, Giselle. And quick. It’s important.”

“Okay, will do, Dan’l,” she said cheerfully.

Easier said than done. She could use none of the usual skip-tracing avenues — friends or relatives, credit or DMV applications, medical records — to find them. Gypsies left no paper trail, not even any Internet trail, because none of them ever used the same name twice.

Four hours later, she still hadn’t found a single Rom. Staley’s number at the hot-electronics shop was disconnected. So was Rudolph’s East Bay number. So was that of Eli Nicholas, the Gypsy guitarist. So were all the other Gypsy contact numbers DKA had accumulated over the years. Her Rolodex came up empty.

Had Yana disappeared also? Not likely, with the cops after her and no access to a Gypsy documenter for a passport. And it was time for Giselle to make the decision she had been mulling over since Sunday night. She dialed the contact number Geraldine had given her. The phone was picked up but nobody spoke.

“This is Giselle,” she finally told it. “Let’s meet.”

“Sappho’s Knickers,” said the phone. “Eleven tonight.”

Larry and Midori were eating pasta with mizithra sauce at the Lakeside Café on Ocean Avenue just a few blocks from the Stonestown Mall.

“We one person short in menswear,” said Midori. “Luminitsa taking leave of absence.”

Larry asked sadly, “Old Whit?”

Her nod danced lustrous black hair around her face.

“She say he’s” — she raised her eyebrows — “sinking fast?” Larry nodded. “So she gotta take care of him until he dies.”

“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” drifted from the old-fashioned jukebox. Red candles lit the tiny tables. Cozy little place, Sappho’s Knickers. Giselle tried to imagine Ken Warren here. Or Larry, or even Rudolph. Orientation aside, few men would be comfortable in this place.

She barely recognized the woman waiting in a booth. Yana was now blond, but beyond that, by some subtle shift of attitude and skillful use of makeup, she looked just a whole hell of a lot like a very specific blonde. Giselle Marc, to be exact.

Deliberate? Very deliberate, Giselle decided, but didn’t comment on it. She was committed. She hesitated, then put a manila envelope full of money on the table.

“If I’m wrong about you...”

“You’re not,” said Yana.

She met Giselle’s eyes. Limpidly. She had succeeded in conning Giselle Marc! But she also had an absurd impulse of gratitude. Careful, Yana. That would show weakness.

“Where will you go?” asked Giselle.

“Wherever the first plane out takes me,” Yana lied. Because of a remark overheard the night she met Giselle at the House of Pain, Yana knew exactly where she was going. And what she was going to do when she got there.

It’s better than the old turkey baster.

Corinne Jones, Bart Heslip’s ever-loving lady, ran her own travel agency in the 400 block of Sutter Street. She had a classic Nefertiti profile, gleaming ebony hair to Giselle’s spun gold, café au lait skin to Giselle’s alabaster. The next evening she sat down at Giselle’s table in the Jeanne d’Arc, a French bistro in the basement of the Cornell Hotel on Bush Street.

“Great place!” she exclaimed, looking about the narrow restaurant with its snowy napery and gleaming silver.

“The food’s even better,” said Giselle.

Then she launched into an explanation of what she hoped Corinne could help her with. Corinne listened, her almond-shaped eyes brimming with good humor and intelligence.

“Are these the same Gypsies you guys messed with over all those Cadillac cars a couple of years back? The ones that Bart’s been working on in Vallejo and down in L.A.?”

“The very same. The whole tribe of them took off for parts unknown very recently, in a hurry, probably en masse by plane.”

“Charter flight? No. I doubt they could find one in a hurry this time of year. They might use scheduled flights, individually or in small groups... You have any names for me?”

Giselle handed her a list. “These are the names we know them by. Look especially for Rudolph Marino under the name Angelo Grimaldi or something really Italian like that. He’s been living over in Point Richmond, if that’s any help.”

“It might be. I’ll get on the Net tomorrow with a bunch of other local travel agents and see what I can find out.”

Scorning the creaky old elevator, Yana trudged up to her third-floor room at the Hotel Canada on Via Goito, just a few blocks from Rome’s Stazione Termini, the central train and bus terminal built by Mussolini in the 1930s, where many of Rome’s Gypsies hung out. She tossed her two suitcases on the bed, took from one a small carryall, and went out again.

Just after dark, the well-dressed young woman set her carryall down on the stazione platform. Instantly two ragged ten-year-old kids with shoe-button eyes approached her, one from either side. “Signorina!” exclaimed one of them. When she turned toward him, the other snatched the carryall.

Yana grabbed each boy by one arm, sinking her fingers into the flesh. “Muchwaya?” she demanded. They shook their heads. She let go, gestured at one boy to open the carryall. He boldly unzipped it. It was stuffed with cheap plastic toys, red and blue and yellow, silver and gold. Their eyes widened in astonishment.

“Muchwaya?” she asked again.

“I Muchwaya Americani. Ma non sono qui, Signorina. Sono in Trastevere.”

“Trastevere?” she asked.

They both nodded and gestured vigorously. The second one said, “Trastevere, si! Il Papa. Il Vaticano. Hanno fatto una bella storia, i Muchwaya Americani!”

A pretty story? Back at the hotel, she used the lobby pay phone to call Geraldine in San Francisco and tell her about a rather astounding phenomenon that she thought might interest some of Geraldine’s friends. She was sure some of them would want to take advantage of it.