by Joe Gores
“Hncritn Gnroxbro.”
“Christian Roxborough? He buys his booze here.”
They went into the store and Clarence got down behind the counter with an X-Acto knife to open cases of Early Times. He handed the bottles up for Ken to shelve while they talked.
“Hngew hngow nhwha he’n hndrivin?” Ken asked.
“An old Mustang ragtop in beautiful condition. Maybe a sixty-five, sixty-six, in there.” He stopped, frowning, and shook his tight-curled head. “Ain’t seen it lately, though. Come to think of it, ain’t seen him lately. That cause of you?”
Ken nodded.
“I heard the man just got a job selling cars, starting last week. Mercedes? Lincolns? Maybe it was Cadillacs.”
Cadillacs. After Ken promised to come over to Clarence’s home for dinner the next day, he called the office. Even on a Saturday, Giselle had the info within a few minutes.
“Jack Olwen Cadillac on Van Ness Avenue,” she told Ken on the phone. Which was great. DKA had picked up a lot of delinquent Caddies for Jack Olwen over the years.
For half an hour Ken cruised the streets around the Jack Olwen Cadillac dealership on the sadly depleted Van Ness Avenue Auto Row. No ’66 Mustang. Then he boldly drove into the Olwen service entrance on Washington below Franklin.
Along both sides of the broad open grease-stained concrete floor were work bays, each holding a Cadillac in some stage of undress, like backstage at the ballet. Blue-coveralled mechanics swarmed around the cars like stage-door johnnies around the scantily clad dancers. The place echoed hollowly with the clank of tools and thunk-thunk of compressed air hoses. No Mustang.
So he went down to the ornate Olwen showroom with its lofty fake-marble pillars. Sleek Escalantes, Fleetwoods, Allantes, Eldorados, DeVille DTSs, Broughams, and an Escalade 2000 SUV rested in stately splendor on the gleaming display floor. Each sported its stunning price tag and its new-car smell, like an expensive call girl negotiating her splendid fee while poufing Chanel No. 22 talc in all the old familiar places.
Ken was immune to their charms. No Roxborough, no ’66 Mustang. He went down a narrow aisle between glassed-in cubicles to find sales manager Paddy McBain behind his paper-littered desk. Paddy was a thick-bodied man with most of his hair and the crinkly blue eyes and humorous mouth of the professional Irishman who always leads the parade on St. Paddy’s Day.
“BeJaysus and it’s Ken. And how’s the bhoyo?” He stood, reached across the desk to shake hands.
“Hngfyn,” said Ken.
It was the first of only four words he spoke. McBain was never able to understand one single damned thing he said, ever, so Ken always wrote out what he wanted. McBain scanned his note.
“Yeah, Chris Roxborough, started last Thursday. He’s got a customer out in a demo right now, hell of a salesman. But Chris isn’t driving any sixty-six Mustang ragtop—he drives a van. He coaches Little League, you know.”
“Hgneys, Hny hknoh,” said Ken wearily.
McBain didn’t understand that, either.
Ken left almost convinced Roxborough was as squeaky-clean as everyone seemed to believe. But crossing the showroom he was intercepted by a lean, handsome, impeccably dressed African-American with bright eyes and a pencil-thin mustache. The man jabbed an angry forefinger at Ken’s chest.
“If I see you around my neighborhood again, dickhead, I’m calling the cops. If you said anything to Paddy just now that makes trouble for me here, I’m calling my attorney. If you have a sister, you sorry piece of shit, go on home and fuck her.”
Wrong, all wrong for a guy with his sort of surface charm. He was hiding that Mustang, and he was sore because he was afraid Ken was going to find out where he was hiding it.
Well, Ken was. Make book on it.
twenty-three
Dan Kearny, behind his desk, got out a cigarette, looked at it, and stuck it back into his pack. “I really gotta get serious about quitting.” He lifted his coffee cup, then looked up at Giselle from under raised brows. “Coffee’s still okay, right?”
“Decaf,” she grinned.
He chuckled. “Okay, shoot. I presume Larry’s on Yana’s case full-time, and that he thinks she’s innocent. Right?”
“Absolutely, until convinced otherwise.” She was rummaging in her purse. “Here’s a number you might reach him, evenings.”
“His latest doxy?”
“She’s a really nice girl, actually. Midori Tagawa.”
“Little Japanese number lives in the back apartment?”
When she nodded, he crumpled up the paper and threw it in the wastebasket. Midori reminded him of Kathy Onoda, their much-missed office manager who had died of a CVA at age twenty-nine; let ’em have their loving in peace. He shook his head.
“Nice girl like that and she gets mixed up with Ballard, for Chrissake. Okay, where do we stand with Wiley’s classics?”
“O’B got the Panoz and Morales knocked off the Acura. And Ken says Roxborough has been driving the sixty-six Mustang.”
“So why isn’t it in the barn?”
“He’s gotta see it first. He’ll get it.”
“When? Stan wants to auction those cars off.”
“Whoa, Dan’l! What about my little red Alfa Quadrifoglio Spider? Give me a chance to get it together. They still haven’t brought in the Aston Martin and the Jag convertible.”
“Okay, okay. So put O’B and Morales back on their regular cases and divvy up Larry’s files between ’em.” He picked up his cigarettes, laid them down again. “And tell you what. On the Gypsy case, line Bart up with a new set of wheels, and send him up Poteet’s backtrail. Maybe have him start with that Bunco guy, what’s his name . . .”
Giselle made a face. “Dirty Harry.”
“Yeah. Him. Maybe he knows what Poteet was doing when he was living up here. If he doesn’t, send Bart down to L.A. to snoop around. I’ll give Staley a toot and ask for information on both Ristik and Poteet.”
How’s that for delaying an auction?
Lulu was still aghast at the idea of using the gadje to look for one of their own even if she was marime.
“What’s he want all that stuff for?” she demanded crossly.
“Kearny thinks Ramon might know things about his sister that we don’t,” said Rudolph.
“You know more about Yana than anybody.”
“Not since the kris declared her marime.”
Staley sighed. “Looking back, maybe that wasn’t such a hot idea, that marime.” He waved a hand. “Okay, let ’em find Ramon. He don’t matter. But Ephrem—why they wanna spend all that money nosin’ around him? He’s dead, he can’t tell ’em nothing about Yana.”
“ ’Cept that she killed him, and he’s already told us that,” said Lulu snidely.
“Okay, you guys, as King, I say we hold off giving Kearny the Marine World stuff on Ephrem.”
Richard Kinsman Robinson was six-foot-one and 225 pounds and had broad meaty shoulders and big hands with thick fingers that could crack walnuts without effort. Most people found his size intimidating; as a guard in the tough state prison at Walla Walla, Washington, he had gotten his edge from intimidation.
But as head of security at Xanadu, Victor Marr’s hilltop sanctuary at the edge of Big Sur’s rugged Los Padres National Forest, he was intimidated by his boss. Victor Marr had eyes that could eviscerate you with a glance, bury you with a glare.
At 9:00 A.M., R.K. was on his rounds with Charon and Hecate, the twin Dobermans. Suddenly the dogs came to attention, ears pricked, lean bodies taut with incipient aggression. Then R.K. heard it, too: the unmistakable whomp-whompwhomp-whomp of helicopter blades.
He knew that chopper. Marr rarely showed up at the mountaintop retreat, and called ahead when he did, which suited R.K. just fine. It gave him a chance to get everything dressed down and tightened up before Marr arrived. Until this morning. He broke into a heavy-bodied run across the broad green grounds.
“The bastard!” R.K. exclaimed bitterly to the dogs.
“Sir! Stop right there!” barked R.K.
“What did you say?” demanded Marr in true astonishment. People didn’t order him around. Marko suddenly had a Glock 17 in his right hand without seeming to have moved at all.
R.K. held his ground. “The dogs don’t know you, sir.”
Hecate and Charon were straining at their leashes, teeth bared, ears laid flat back against their skulls. Marr paused on the third step from the bottom.
“Leicht,” said R.K. in a low voice. R.K. did not speak German, but he’d felt it was his duty to learn a few key words. The dogs relaxed. Marr nodded his approval.
“That’s very good, R.K.” R.K. Not Robinson. Everything was all right. “What is the attack command?”
It was Angreifen, attack, but R.K. said, “If I told you that in front of them, sir, they’d take it as an order.”
Marr waved a hand at his secretary. The Glock disappeared as easily as it had appeared. R.K. and Marr strolled toward the front gate with the dogs falling into step beside them. At the gate was a uniformed guard with the West Indian oil logo on his military-style cap. He had weasel eyes and a chin going south, but he wore a Sam Browne belt with a holstered pistol on his hip, the holster flap unsnapped. Marr exchanged a few pleasantries with him and walked on, R.K. and the dogs close behind.
“How many men patrolling the grounds?” Marr asked R.K.
“Three at all times besides myself. Our guard complement is twelve men on a rotating basis, each team working eight on, twelve off so nobody gets stuck with night duty all the time. Each team gets four days off the mountain every two weeks.”
“Good. Everything looks in order. It seems you’ve done what I’ve asked, R.K.—made Xanadu secure. But I’ve been warned someone may try to breach our defenses here. I have a security consultant coming from Germany to look over our arrangements.”
“Hell, sir, me and my men can handle anything that—”
“You are to extend every courtesy, Robinson.”
Marr’s face did that thing that meant he thought he was smiling. “When he has made his recommendations, I want your evaluation on how good you think he is at his job.”
“Yessir!” exclaimed R.K. with enthusiasm. He knew already what his evaluation of the security expert would be.
That same afternoon, Larry Ballard got word of Ristik working the Richmond District bars to steer customers to Yana’s ofica on Geary. As a result, he tramped fifteen, twenty miles of concrete in the cold grey Richmond District streets that night and the next day. He almost had to fight his way out of one joint on Clement Street where Ramon had apparently taken some Russian for $500. Eighty-seven people interviewed, five definite Ramon-sightings—but none since Yana had disappeared.
By 10 P.M.. Wednesday, only the thought of Midori was keeping him awake. Leave a blind message on DKA’s unlisted number first, in case they could sleep in the next morning.
After one ring it was picked up with a guarded, “Hello?”
“Giselle, what the devil are you doing working so late?”
“Ah . . . Mr. Bush! What are you doing calling in? But I’m glad you did. Rudolph called. Some Gyppo spotted Ristik in North Beach tonight. He has a gig at some private club there.”
“Reading the palm of the corpse at a wake? ‘You have a short life line’ . . .”
“Very funny. It seems our Ramon is—also a knife-juggler.”
“A knife-juggler?”
“So says the note Mr. K left.”
“I’ll try to catch up with him, and hope he doesn’t throw one at me.”
twenty-four
The Golden Gate was a roomy box of a place on Columbus Avenue that hosted weddings, bar mitzvahs, and conventions for under two hundred people. Its main claim to fame was a small, arched, foreshortened, slightly tipsy model of the Golden Gate Bridge that you had to cross upon entering from the street.
For an hour, Eli Nicholas played lively baya bashilba on his Gypsy bosh in honor of the happy couple. Wearing his bright Gypsy costume, Ramon Ristik, drunk from endless glasses of the newlyweds’ Korbel champagne, began his knife-juggling routine. Afterward, Eli clapped him on the back and said he was the best Gypsy knife-juggler on the west coast. High praise indeed from the Bay Area’s primo bosho mengro—Gypsy violinist.
But it was a melancholy Ramon who wended his way up Taylor toward Vallejo Street, knife case in hand, at 2:00 A.M. Melancholy because the champagne had been domestic and because his fee had been only $200.
Why couldn’t Yana have stayed in North Beach? He lifted his head and howled at the moon. We didn’t want you to go,because we needed you. But you didn’t listen to us. Together, they had raked it in. But now she, who once aspired to be Queen of the Muchwaya, was marime. And the police were looking for her. Now you are gone, living but no longer alive. It was all the fault of that tall filthy gadjo pig, Larry Ballard. From their sexual liaison, all evil had flowed. He was the thief of Yana’s Gypsy wisdom, he had seduced her and destroyed her. I miss you, Yana my sister . . .
He imagined Ballard walking into the Golden Gate when Ramon was juggling his gleaming knives. He stopped on the sidewalk to finish the gadjo off, a knife in each hand, slashing, stabbing . . .
“Jesus, man, I’ll give you the bottle!”
He looked down. A cowering homeless man was holding up a half-empty bottle of muscatel to him with shaking fingers.
Ramon scurried off, the vagrant staring after him bleary-eyed until he was out of sight, then glug-glugging down the wine.
Ballard spent nearly two hours working his North Beach contacts: the drivers at the taxi stand on Columbus; the bartender at Big Al’s; the cook at the unnamed family-style Basque café halfway up narrow Romolo Place above Broadway; waiters, parking attendants, street types, hustlers, hookers. Always trying to get news of a Gypsy who might be doing some sort of sword dance. He got his first real lead from muumuu-clad Mama Gina in the Opera Bar on Broadway at Taylor.
Over Per Pieta Non Dirmi Addio from the jukebox, she shouted, “A Gyppo violinist is playing at a Bohunk wedding at the Golden Gate; maybe he brought your knife-fighter along with him. It’s a private reception, that’s why you can’t find it, honey.”
Ballard gave her a hug, and went striding down Taylor toward Columbus, hoping the reception hadn’t already ended.
Full of hostile thoughts about Ballard, Ramon glanced up as he heard approaching footsteps, to stare into Ballard’s eyes.
* * *
Full of sexual thoughts about Midori, Larry glanced up as he heard approaching footsteps, to stare into Ramon’s eyes.
Ramon leaped back as he threw aside his knife case. A huge knife was in each fist. He yelled, “Gadjo pig, you sullied my sister’s honor! I challenge you to a Gypsy duel!”
“A Gypsy duel? I guess that’s where you have two knives and I don’t have anything.”
A moment’s reflection. Ristik handed him one of the knives. Ballard gripped it gingerly in the utterly wrong position for a knife fight—blade pointing down as if for stabbing.
They were at the mouth of a half-block alley, narrow, dim, wet with drifting fog. Water dripped, light gleamed off uneven cobbles. Why didn’t he just throw down the knife and run like hell? Practicing unarmed hand-to-hand techniques against an armed assailant in the dojo was one thing, but fac
ing a guy with a real knife in his hand, a guy who juggled them for Chrissake . . .
“We don’t have to do this, you know, Ramon.”
“Yes we do.” The recently despised domestic champagne was now singing in Ramon’s blood. “Unless you are daranòok as well as a gadjo pig!” He whipped the red and yellow and green kerchief from around his neck and held it out to Larry. “We each take an end of this diklo in our teeth—”
“Are you crazy?”
“You are the crazy one, for dishonoring my sister. We will fight to the death . . .” A wisp of his usual caution drifted through his mind. “Or, ah.… until one of us admits defeat.”
Larry said instantly, “I admit defeat.”
Ramon laughed a great triumphant laugh. Oh Devèl!, it felt good to have this cowardly gadjo cringing before him! Brought to Aladdin Terrace by the power of Ramon’s killing fantasy of a few minutes before. Maybe he had some of his sister’s powers.
“Until we fight, you cannot quit.”
“Aw, shit.”
Larry took one end of the kerchief between his teeth. Ramon did the same. They began circling each other, two feet apart. The only sounds were sparse traffic on Columbus, the drip of water, their shoes on the wet uneven pavement. He tried one more time, his voice muffled and distorted by the sweaty diklo reeking of smoke and champagne clamped between his teeth.
“I just want to ask you a couple of questions, Ramon—”
But Ristik feinted at Larry’s face, then slashed at his knife hand. Ballard’s left arm automatically blocked Ramon’s blade outward, even as his right foot delivered a lightning-fast karate front-kick to Ristik’s already-tender balls. Ballard didn’t pull it as he did in training. Not totally, anyway.
Ramon doubled over with a great WHOOSH of air and dropped his knife as the diklo floated to the ground. He fell on top of the bright silk in a fetal curl, wheezing.
“That’s a Larry Ballard duel, asshole.”
No response. Larry sighed and kicked the knives away and sat down on the curb. Ramon half-sat up, gingerly.
