Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Four

The great classic car grab by Daniel Kearny Associates (Head Office in San Francisco, Branch Offices throughout California, Affiliates Nationwide) was over. Wiley’s UpScale Motors was out of business. Or was it? Kearny and his people met in the empty second-floor reception area of DKA’s converted red-brick laundry building at 340 Eleventh Street, in the City’s SOMA District.

Kearny sat on the scarred edge of the old desk, clipboard in hand. Behind him was the old-fashioned waist-high partition and gate that led to the head of the back stairs. Faintly from below came the clack of computers, the shrill of phones, a waft of exhaust fumes from the storage area behind the building.

Larry Ballard was tipped back in a straight chair against the wall, blue eyes sleepy, surfer-blond hair looking windblown. Far from chasing a woman last night, as Kearny had thought, he had been at a karate dojo on Ninth Avenue until midnight, working with the yawara stick the medieval Buddhist priests had called, rather fancifully, the lightning bolt of Siva. O’B and Bart Heslip were sitting on chairs under the windows.

“Eight to go,” O’B said.

“Seven,” Ballard objected. “We got twenty cars.”

Giselle was sitting in what had been the receptionist’s swivel chair, facing Kearny. Beyond the wall behind her were the row of small, neat cubicles, facing the street, in which the field operatives did their paperwork. She brushed a long strand of golden hair back from her forehead.

“Nineteen until we know how Ken made out with that 280Z.”

“Ken doesn’t miss,” said Ballard.

“Where’s Morales?” asked Bart Heslip.

“He went home,” said Kearny.

“He felt sick from—”

“Aw, poor guy,” said Ballard.

“Give him a break,” said Giselle.

“Forget about Morales,” rumbled Kearny. “We’ve got to find those missing cars and drop a rock on them.”

Giselle was handing out the list she had printed up.

“These are the ones that are still out there.”

The Datsun 280Z Ken had gone after was not on the list. Keep the faith, baby. Kearny did the math in his head.

“I make it $290,890 out of sight and out of trust. I have to go back east for the national convention in Chicago this week. Giselle will coordinate from the office, Jane Goldson will assign your current files to the other field men. Get those cars!”

Larry read from the list, “1970 Aston Martin Volante, black with a leather interior. Not many of those tooling around—”

“Not the point, Reverend,” said O’B. He hadn’t had a drink of anything except nonalcoholic beer for almost two months, so his blue eyes were clear in his leathery freckled Irish face. “You know the salesmen are trying to keep those demos for themselves. We gotta get into the UpScale personnel files for their names and addresses and hangouts.”

Ballard gave a skeptical laugh. “Big John would love to catch us trying a little B and E so he could yell for the cops.”

Heavy shoes tramped up the uncarpeted back stairs. Ken Warren’s tough face and big shoulders appeared above the landing.

“The 280Z?” Giselle asked him.

“Hnit’n hnin na mbahn.”

In the barn — meaning, in the bank’s storage lot.

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

“What if they hide another one in his garage just to finesse us?” asked O’B. “We need that salesman list—”

Ken Warren’s big hand slapped a sheet of creased, greasy, lined yellow paper down on the desktop, half a dozen names and addresses scrawled on it. “Hne odtha hnthnailsmn,” he said.

Backward on the storefront window in the lower-rent fringe of San Francisco’s sunny Noe Valley was

Sitting with Lulu in the little apartment behind the shop, Staley Zlachi, King of the Muchwaya, looked anything but the stereotyped Gypsy. No brilliantined locks here, no swarthy skin, no golden earrings or twirled mustachios. Late in his seventh decade, Staley was white of hair, benevolent of belly, ruddy of face, everyone’s ideal Santa Claus. Lulu looked like Mrs. Claus, a jolly round-faced hausfrau up to her elbows in flour.

Together they could have conned the stripes off a tiger.

Almost. Last month in Tennessee they sued a clan of Tsurana Gypsies over a farm equipment deal that had gone sour. Each group had been conning the other, as usual using the gadjo legal system to settle their intertribal differences. But the Tsurana whispered in the judge’s ear that Staley was a Gypsy — and the case was thrown out. Staley paid all costs. A disaster!

Now here they were in Baghdad by the Bay, one of the best places in the country to score big bucks in a hurry because here minorities ruled. By Gypsy law, San Francisco belonged to the Kalderasha. The least that dominant tribe’s Baro Rom — Big Man — might expect was a courtesy call, gifts, some quid pro quo. Staley had been left unable to offer any of those things. But Rudolph Marino, his heir apparent, was on his way across the Bay from Richmond. He would know how to raise money.

The phone rang. Without salutation the recognized voice of Willem Van De Post spoke to Staley in Romani.

“What are the Muchwaya doing to celebrate Millennium year?”

“We have many projects in hand,” Staley said untruthfully.

“So. As I thought. Nothing. Come to Rome. It is the two thousandth birthday of our Holy Mother Church. We are having year-long celebrations, festivities, huge crowds...”

Staley had thought of it, of course. The hordes of believers, the urgency of their spiritual needs...

“But the cost!” he exclaimed prudently.

“I can guarantee you will recoup it in a week in Rome if I can use your people for an operation there in California. Here are the facts as I know them...”

When Staley finally put back the receiver, he said, “That was the man in Italy who is married to your niece. I have never appreciated him before.”

“Willem? Willem Van De Post?”

“Yes, Willem. On the side of the angels, and a saint to protect us! Almost, we will have the Italian government behind us.”

But to do what Willem asked they were going to have to poach on Kalderasha territory in a big way, and pool all of their enterprises to raise money besides. Somehow he would have to convince his tribe to do it, and avoid the cops at the same time.

Just then the spring bell on the front door jingled merrily. Lulu went smiling out into the shop and instantly tagged as cops the two bulky men who had just entered.

She chirped, “What can I get for you gentlemen?”

“Ted Terrizi,” said the bald one.

“Ted, better known as Staley,” said the other.

Lulu tilted her head quizzically. “Staley?”

“Staley Zlachi,” sneered Guildenstern, “as in Gyppo.”

“Papa,” Lulu called in a musical voice.

Ted’s business really was fencing hot electronics rather than repairing them. Staley came through the curtain still clutching the hastily snatched-up Chronicle sports section. His reading glasses were down on his nose, an old-fashioned watch chain glinted across his ample belly. He had kicked off his shoes on the way, a nice touch: who committed crimes barefoot?

“Papa, they call you some other name I don’t know...”

With a protective arm around her shoulders, he gave them a saddened, significant Alzheimer’s eye-roll above her head.

“Mama, she don’t always get things so good these days.”

“What she can get us is the present whereabouts of one of your people,” said good-cop Rosenkrantz as bad-cop Guildenstern slapped a faxed photo down on the countertop.

“You know this guy here?”

“He looks dead,” said Staley.

“Dead as disco.” The two old people hurriedly crossed themselves. “The question ain’t whether he’s dead. It’s whether you know him.”

Lulu’s left eyelid twitched. Staley immediately said, “He is one of our people, yes, God rest his soul. Ephrem Poteet.”

“He’s got a wife, Yana,” stated bad-cop Guildenstern.

“Oh, her we wouldn’t know nothing about.”

Lulu spoke over him. “She once was of our kumpania but she has been declared marime.” She addressed herself pointedly to good-cop Rosenkrantz. “You know marime, mister handsome policeman?”

“Yeah. You tossed her out on her can. What for?”

“She stopped following the ways of the Rom.”

Though Gypsies were seldom involved in murder cases, both Homicide cops had picked up enough lore over the years to know that this ritual rejection by the tribe could be for anything from breaking a sexual taboo — showing too much thigh, for instance, as opposed to breast, which didn’t count — to working a straight, gadjo job. In one famous case, a girl’s whole clan had been declared marime because she had joined the Peace Corps.

“So we don’t know where Yana is,” Staley was going on. “Don’t nobody keep track of people who’ve been tossed out.”

“But you know whether she’s in town or not.”

Staley nodded unwillingly. “I hear maybe she is.” Lulu’s right eyelid gave a slight twitch, so he added smoothly, “She’s a fortune-teller when she’s working, I hope that helps you out.”

“Calls herself Madame Miseria,” nodded ever-helpful Lulu.

As Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern were leaving, a lean, very handsome man with gleaming black blow-dried hair brushed by them in the doorway without apology. His high-cheekboned face had the piratical lines of a mob attorney of Sicilian heritage, and his suit definitely wasn’t from the Men’s Wearhouse. The cops appreciated expensive clothes as only honest men who can’t afford them do; they knew it took a K or two, easy, to waltz that grey wool number out the door.

“Looks like a Mafioso,” said Rosenkrantz, “so why’s he goin’ in there? In that suit he didn’t fall off a potato truck.”

“Gonna put a horse’s head in their bed,” Guildenstern wheezed. “He wasn’t carrying anything he could fence, and besides, we’re Homicide.” As they were getting into their plain sedan, he added, “You catch Mama’s twitching eyelid?”

“Alzheimer’s,” said Rosenkrantz wisely.

“Yeah. Guy goes to the doctor, doctor says, ‘I’ve got bad news and worse news. You got cancer and you got Alzheimer’s.’ ”

“ ‘Thank God I don’t have cancer,’ ” said Rosenkrantz.

Guildenstern chuckled, then sobered. “Madame Miseria. At least we got a name to give Dirty Harry down at Bunco.”

Staley hung up the phone and sat back down at the kitchen table. The fragrance of Lulu’s thin stogie filled the room.

“The L.A. cops refuse to release Ephrem’s body and they’re holding his possessions as crime-scene evidence.”

“I’m still gonna hold a pomana for him,” insisted Lulu. A pomana was a ritual feast for the dead at which only fruits and grains are served. “Even if we don’t got his body.”

“We can hold it at my place on High Street in Point Richmond,” said Rudolph Marino. “Big brown shingle house with a great view across the bay. The owners are on a world cruise and the neighbors think I’m their nephew.” He changed the subject. “Why’d you tell ’em that Yana reads fortunes as Madame Miseria?”

“Why shouldn’t I of told ’em?” Lulu was just short of defiant. “They wanted to notify her that Ephrem had been killed, that’s all. You got a problem with getting her into trouble with the cops? She’s been declared marime, what more do you need?”

Staley said cautiously, “How much trouble we talkin’ here?”

“They’re from Homicide, not General Works,” said Marino.

“How d’ya know that? They didn’t say nothing like that.”

“Mama, they showed us a picture of Ephrem — dead,” Staley reminded her. “And then started askin’ about Yana.”

Rudolph added, “Ephrem fingered her as his killer before he died. He said, ‘It was my wife from ’Frisco.’ And at the last second he yelled her name, ‘Yana-a-a-a-a...’ — just like that.”

“How you know all this stuff?” demanded Lulu in a suddenly subdued voice. If Yana was guilty of preplanned murder, she had broken one of the most deeply held Rom taboos.

“The bartender at the Hurly Burly in L.A. is a Kalderasha with a pipeline to police headquarters.”

“Why would she kill him?” asked Staley. “Ephrem never had no money. He always drank or gambled away everything he made.”

“This time he had money.”

“From where?” asked Lulu with a new gleam in her eye.

“He made a big credit and phone card score at Universal Studios and cashed it in at the Hurly Burly two hours before he died. Bragged that he’d taken a lot of cash and traveler’s checks, too. After Yana stuck him and emptied his pockets, she took apart the ceiling light fixture.”

“How’d she know he might of hid anything up there?” asked Staley. “They ain’t lived together for six-seven years, right?”

“Yana’s got the second sight,” said Lulu decisively.

No one could challenge this. Staley fell silent. He felt momentarily old, happy to have an heir apparent. Rudolph could do the heavy thinking.

“Whatever she did,” said Rudolph, “we have to try and get to her before the gadje cops.”

Staley took control of things again. “Call to make sure she’s there, but go in person, Rudolph. Phones got ears.”