32 Cadillacs

by Joe Gores

  “Couldn’t be fairer,” he rumbled.

  * * *

  As Joe Adams drove away from BIG JOHN’S BIG BUNGALOWS up in Seattle, down in L.A. Ken Warren was turning his company car into the Sherman Oaks Inn on Ventura and Coldwater. Ignoring the office, he went down the sloping drive and turned left, as Kearny had instructed, to check the under-the-building parking stalls.

  “There they are,” said Trin Morales.

  Next to the end wall was Dona Dulcinea’s Fleetwood Sixty Special four-door sedan. In the stall this side of it was Adam Wells’s Seville. They’d flip a coin to see who had to tow the company car back up north. But Morales spoke abruptly.

  “I’m staying over.” He dug an elbow into Warren’s ribs. “Just came down cause I got a little chiquita lined up, ’course I couldn’t tell Kearny that. You drive one Caddy back up, tow the other— I’ll keep the company car. Got it, dummy?”

  Without answering, Ken Warren got his towbar from the trunk and tried the key Kearny had given him for the Seville. It worked. Kearny’s other key worked in the Fleetwood. Only then did he turn back to Morales.

  “Hndon’ cat’th AIDTH,” he said.

  * * *

  The others had already left when the nigger showed up. Wasn’t nothin’ wrong with niggers playin’ wide-out for the Seahawks, say, goin’ long for them bombs and them Hail Marys. But not around Big John’s subdivision. Hell no. Niggers was lazy and couldn’t keep their eyes and hands off your women.

  This one was a little feller, couldn’t go over 160 pounds, but had the widest shoulders Big John’d ever seen on a man his size. Stood looking around the staked-out subdivision under the lowering skies, clipboard in hand.

  “Looks like you’re going to have some road-paving work done,” he said pleasantly. “All graded and ready to go.”

  Big John fisted his hand around the roll of nickels he’d gotten from the desk drawer before coming down the steps.

  “Ain’t any work, that’s what you’re after.”

  “Not looking.”

  “They’re all sold, closed escrow on the last one yestiday.”

  “Before the streets are in,” marveled the nigger. “Before the houses are even framed up. In a recession economy. You’re a hell of a salesman, Mr. Charleston.”

  “You gettin’ wise-ass with me, boy?”

  The nigger just shook his black poll and said, “Wouldn’t know where I could find your paving contractor, would you?”

  “Joe Adams? Try his office.”

  “Which is…” Ballpoint poised.

  “In Seattle.” Big John chortled at his own wit, then demanded abruptly, “What ya wanna see him about, boy?”

  “I’m with the State Contractors Licensing Commission…” Big John put a hasty hand in his pocket to deposit the roll of nickels there. “Question of whether he has the necessary permits and has paid the necessary fees.” He was looking into Big John’s eyes for the first time, and there was unexpected steel in his gaze. “We don’t want him to do any road paving here on your subdivision until it’s cleared up. Do you understand?”

  The nigger obviously didn’t know about the Greenies’ injunction against any work being done on the subdivision.

  “I most surely do,” said Big John evenly.

  He’d keep away from the job over the weekend, in case this guy did come around and catch Adams paving without a permit. And just to be sure he’d… But he stopped his hand on its way to his money clip. The nigger somehow looked like a bribe offer might not set too well with him. And hell, wasn’t no need. No gov’ment pussy’d ever worked the weekend in the entire history of bureaucracy, and the paving would be done by Monday.

  Which gave Big John his really brilliant idea.

  Make sure this pansy coon came around with his pansy little clipboard on Monday, after the job was finished, so he’d arrest Adams, at least shut him down for operating without a permit. Maybe Big John’d get himself a $60K job for zero K bucks.

  “Mr. Adams plans to start work on the project first thing Monday morning,” he said. “You can catch him here then.”

  * * *

  Bart Heslip drove away satisfied. Josef Adamo indeed was in Seattle, calling himself Joe Adams. And would be out here at this subdivision Monday morning bright and early in his Seville.

  But as he headed north on Empire Way, Bart got thoughtful. Big John Charleston had been too cooperative. What if the work was going to be done over the weekend, not next week?

  Considering that rain was forecast for Monday, and considering what he’d learned that day going around to recyclers and paint wholesalers in the greater Seattle area, he’d hold off until Monday. He laughed aloud as he jinked over to the 1–5 skyway that would take him all the way up to Seattle Center.

  Monday was going to be a whole lot of fun.

  Bart didn’t like bigots any more than bigots liked him.

  * * *

  “Sir, you can’t leave those cars there fastened together like that… sir!” Ken Warren, already out of the Fleetwood, just waited. “You’ll have to uncouple them to park them here.”

  Fair enough. Ken bent to the task of getting the Seville off the towbar. He had taken U.S. One up through Big Sur to see firsthand the post-quake repairs they had made on the highway. Had seen HIGHLANDS INN, below that, Pacific’s Edge Restaurant, on a sudden urge had snaked the linked Cadillacs up the one-way blacktop drive to the restaurant looking out over the vast sweep of Pacific. He’d always wanted to eat in one of these fancy places, and Kearny had given him a raise and promised all his expenses on this trip would be paid besides… So why not?

  The trouble was his towbar. New, it had cost him $396.83 including sales tax, and he just knew every son of a bitch in the world would like to steal it. So he wrapped the towbar in an old horse blanket he found in the trunk of the Seville, left the keys with the blond-headed car-parker, and sauntered across a tiled patio filled with fragrant flowers and green sprays of foliage and small carefully tended trees in great terra-cotta pots.

  Inside Pacific’s Edge were thick carpets and a two-tiered dining room with low redwood-beamed ceilings and slanted skylights of tinted glass. He paused at the reservation table. A beautiful brunette with Betty Boop curls dancing beside her cheeks stared up at him in undisguised astonishment.

  Seeing heavy boots, blue-check shirt, thick moleskin trousers resistant to the battery acids often encountered when hotwiring under the hood. Smears of grease on his face and hands. Cradling something metal and lumpy wrapped in a horse blanket as if it were a baby rescued from a Dumpster.

  To her, Ken Warren looked big, dumb, and dangerous.

  And sexy. She asked faintly, “May I… help you, sir?”

  “Hndinna,” he got out.

  She shivered slightly. She could just feel this inarticulate tree falling on her in the night, but Ken didn’t notice. He was staring out over the tops of the down-slope trees outside, awed by the incredible sunset dying on the Pacific rim.

  “Dinner for one? Very good, sir. Ah… would you like to check your…” She wasn’t quite sure what sort of metal monster he was clutching to his chest, but it looked vaguely automotive. Ken shook his head, so she added brightly, “I’m sure your, um, will be safe at your table, sir.”

  Heads turned, heads were shaken, as Ken followed her down to the very front corner of the lower level in front of the wide picture windows. She didn’t care. She was feeling a tingle in the loins very like that felt by Pietro Uvaldi after Ken had slapped him in the face and wrenched the shotgun away from him.

  A waiter in crisp black and white showed up to hold Ken’s chair for him. Before sitting down, Ken put his towbar very carefully in the chair facing him across the pastel tablecloth.

  “Would you like something from the bar to start, sir?”

  Ken shook his head conscientiously. He was driving. The waiter nodded and handed him a menu. “Enjoy your meal,” he said.

  Ken did. The kind of meal he hadn’t known existed. H
is appetizer was a seafood carpaccio served with Chinese black beans, his entree a brochette of scallops and shrimp on a spicy cilantro parsley beurre blanc. The salad had flowers in it—actual flowers! His raspberries were the best he’d ever tasted.

  When he finally left the restaurant, he gave his last $20 bill to the hostess. He didn’t get home until four in the morning, making it only by siphoning gas from the Seville into the Fleetwood’s tank—the dinner had taken his cash, all of it.

  Maybelle woke up when he dragged into the apartment; they sat up until dawn as she extracted from him every last bit of his adventure. Then a crazy thing happened. She threw her big fat mammy arms around him and hugged him close and wept down his shirt. Good tears. The kind they cry in romance novels.

  Craziest of all, Ken found himself crying right along with her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Talk about the luck of the Irish.

  Trinidad Morales spent Friday night slipping the old banana to his chiquita, then very early Saturday morning had to go out a window when chiquita’s husband came home unexpectedly. So with the early sun creating long black low-angle shadows across the pavement despite the morning chill, he found himself strutting along Olvera Street puffing his cheap cigar, overnight bag in hand as if he had just hit town, unwittingly projecting earnest, honest, and stupid—none of which he was.

  “Pardon me, sir…” A diffident Spanish voice at his elbow. Morales turned.

  A tall thin stooped man in a brown suit, apparently a Chicano like himself. Worried brown eyes and a bandido mustache that bracketed his mouth like an inverted horseshoe.

  “Yes?” Also in Spanish.

  The man looked around nervously, edged a little closer.

  “I am… Sir, I need…” Another look around. “Do you know an attorney, sir? One of our own people whom I can trust?”

  Morales stood stock-still for a moment, the soft birdsong of Spanish voices around him, the smoke from his cigar rising straight up into the morning air. Then he shook his head sadly.

  “Sir, I am sorry,” he said, raising his overnight case slightly, “but I have only just arrived from…”

  He stopped, suddenly as secretive as the tall stooped sad man beside him. The man found a faint smile. “From elsewhere,” he supplied.

  “You misjudge me,” said Morales a little stiffly. “I was born in this country, I have money in the bank, transferred here from Florida so I can open a business with my brother-in-law who is a very fine taco cook. I am most sorry I cannot help you …” A delicate pause. “The Yellow Pages, perhaps?”

  A violent headshake. “No! I cannot trust anyone unknown with this. I have something… I need advice that…” They were walking through the crowds, the tall man stooped and almost whispered in his ear, “I am an illegal, sir.”

  “For this you need no attorney unless you are caught.”

  The lips came closer yet, the voice lower still. “But sir, I have won the lottery!”

  Morales stopped dead, gaping in surprise. Then he grabbed the thin man’s arm and hustled him across the narrow street to a playground flanked by an elementary school with vivid murals painted on its walls. They sat down on a concrete bench facing the street, where no one could approach them unseen.

  “The California lottery?”

  “Yes. Last Wednesday’s.”

  “Jesus, man, that’s worth…”

  The man put his long narrow hand on Morales’s thick blunt one to make him lower his voice. Morales nodded, pulled a folded L.A. Times from the side pocket of his rumpled suit coat, found last Wednesday’s winning number, proceeded in quieter tones.

  “You hold that ticket? That one right there?”

  “I do, sir.”

  Greed shook his voice. “Let me see it.”

  The man got out an ancient cheap imitation-leather wallet. From it he removed a battered lottery ticket. It was bent and folded and soiled from being taken in and out of the worn billfold many, many times, but it bore Wednesday’s date and unmistakably matched the winning number From Wednesday’s drawing.

  “Blood of Christ!” said Morales in an awed voice that prevented it from being a curse. “That jackpot is seven million dollars! Even if others also hold the winning number…”

  The man returned ticket to wallet, wallet to pocket. “You see now my problem. If I present myself with the ticket, being an illegal, perhaps instead of getting my money 1 will be seized and held by the immigration and sent back to my country.”

  “Why not get someone else to cash in the ticket for you?”

  “I know no one in this city, sir, except you.” A delicate pause. “And even you, I do not know your name, sir.”

  “Morales. Trinidad Morales.”

  “Jesús Zaragoza.”

  They shook hands, then sat on their bench in companionable silence, contemplating the problem in the unhurried, Spanish way, A distinguished middle-aged gentleman who also looked Latin, wearing a three-piece suit and a dark tie and highly polished black shoes, sat down on the adjacent bench. He took off his old-fashioned Borsalino and with his display handkerchief mopped the brow thus exposed.

  Immediately, a couple of pigeons fluttered to the bricks at his feet and strutted about, cooing and cocking sharp eyes at him as if anticipating his 79-cent Big Bite of Granny Goose popcorn. While scattering fluffy white kernels he caught the eye of Morales and Zaragoza. He gave them a small courtly bow.

  “Truly,” he said, “it is too hot to wear a suit and tie.”

  Other pigeons converged, slipstreaming in to walk and talk and peck. The newcomer beamed at them, dispensed more popcorn.

  “When I complete a saddening deposition such as the one just taken, I come here and feed popcorn to the pigeons. It makes me feel less disheartened by the follies of mankind.”

  Morales caught Zaragoza’s eye. “Deposition?” he asked after a delicate pause. “Such as a lawyer might take?”

  The distinguished middle-aged man brought out a business card and leaned across to hand it to them.

  Manuel Cerruli

  Attorney at Law

  Below that was a Los Angeles address and phone number.

  “Immigration law, perhaps?” asked Morales hopefully.

  Cerruli shook his head. He shrugged. “Nothing so grand. Small things… wills, divorces, contracts… but it is a living and I feel I serve a useful purpose to my community.”

  “We… have a problem…” began Zaragoza hesitantly.

  Of course the whole story came out. When he and Morales were finished, so was the popcorn and Cerruli was sitting back on his bench, wiping his face again with his handkerchief.

  “Unfortunately, sir, I am not a man with the necessary knowledge of INS rulings and immigration law to be of any help to you …” He sat up suddenly, a light coming into his eyes. He checked his watch. “But I have a friend, of our race, who works in the INS office here in Los Angeles.”

  Zaragoza shook his head quickly, fear in his eyes.

  “Immigration? No! He will just…”

  “She is, I assure you, a friend. From my neighborhood.” Señor Cerruli stood up with decision. “She works Saturday mornings, I will call her and present her with a hypothetical case.” He eyed Zaragoza shrewdly. “Perhaps you can offer her a fee… some small percentage of your winnings…”

  The three of them ended up crowded around a payphone, each with his ear close enough to the receiver to hear.

  “Immigration and Naturalization,” said a crisp male voice.

  “Ms. Trejo, please,” said Cerruli in excellent English.

  Conceptión Trejo spoke English with a Latin slur, and became first excited and then cautious at the hypothetical case presented to her. Sí, la Migra would hear of this illegal’s attempt to cash in his winning ticket, and would find a way to deport him—with the ticket disappearing into some corrupt agent’s pocket. The only way to do it was through a third party, a native-born American impervious to INS pressures. Morales eagerly snatched th
e telephone receiver from Cerruli’s hands.

  “I am such a one! I can cash in the ticket in my name!”

  And who was he? They explained. But… delicately… how could they trust him? He became indignant. She was firm. As a favor to her old friend Señor Cerruli, she would meet them, they could talk this thing through, but…

  They ended up driving up and down and around and through the curving streets of Echo Park in Señorita Trejo’s splendid new Cadillac Brougham as they thrashed out the details of a transaction that had rapidly become anything but hypothetical.

  Señor Zaragoza, as the actual holder of the winning ticket, would receive one-half of the lottery winnings—$3.5 million.

  Señor Morales, as the man who would present the winning ticket and have to face all of the attendant public scrutiny, would receive one-fourth of the winnings—$1.75 million.

  Señorita Trejo and Abogado Cerruli, for picking a way through the INS and legal minefields, respectively, would each receive one-eighth of the winnings—$875,000 each.

  If there were other holders of the winning number, all of these winnings would be scaled down proportionally. So all of the problems were solved except the greatest one—that of trust. Morales, after all, would have to be given the winning lottery ticket—the winning ticket! There had to be some deterrent that would keep him from making off with it and leaving the others without recourse…

  “I am an honorable man,” Morales protested. “You need only ask anyone in Miami whether I can be—”

  “Unfortunately, this is Los Angeles,” said Señorita Trejo. She was a handsome full-figured woman with snapping black eyes.

  “His brother-in-law?” suggested Zaragoza diffidently.

  “He would be very difficult to find on a Saturday like this,” said Morales quickly, almost overplaying his hand because, of course, there was no brother-in-law. “And besides, if he heard of this he would want a percentage for his testimonial.”

  “There is a way,” began Cerruli carefully. “It is not perfect, perhaps, but it would assure some safety to all…”

  What? How?