Chapter thirteen
But it was Dan Kearny, as you might expect, who actually drew first blood. He’d been let back into their nuptial bed from the spare-room couch, but with Jeannie still prickly as a hedgehog he’d fully expected to stay home all day on Saturday. Spend a little quality time with the wife, mow the lawn, maybe get a start at repairing the front fence whacked by Wednesday’s windstorm. He’d even resolutely refused to bring any of the Gypsy files home with him for work over the weekend.
But by early afternoon, as he dumped the last bale of grass clippings onto the backyard mulch heap, he found himself still bugged by the name the Gyppo had used at all the branches of the bank. Angelo Grimaldi. Usually they went for the short, Anglo-Saxon pseudonyms, so why such an atypical name to open those accounts? All at the same bank? Maybe he’d just drive in to the office through the sparse Saturday traffic to check those files again. They needed to get some kind of handhold on the smooth surface of the con.
So he went into the house and called Giselle at her apartment in Oakland. Got her. And spoke almost accusingly.
“I thought you might be at the office.”
“Nope. Washing dishes, and clothes, and my hair — I like to do that when I can’t tell anymore if I’m a blonde or not.”
“I thought you were going to talk with the bunco cop at SFPD who specializes in Gypsies.”
“He’s off until Monday.”
“I’m going to run into the office and go over that folder on Grimaldi—”
“I’m off until Monday.”
“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
He hung up before she could object. He knew she needed time for herself, to live some kind of normal life, meet the right guy, get married, have kids. At 32, her — what did they say — her clock was running? But not right now. Right now they had these Gypsies to contend with.
Until last year, when she’d learned how to drive and had gotten her license, Giselle had ridden in to work with him five mornings a week. He didn’t realize it, but those forty-five daily minutes in the car had played a big part in DKa’s success. Cut off from phones and interruptions, they’d reviewed operations, planned client strategies, discussed field men’s productivity. They’d argued about computerized report-writing, insurance, health and pension and profit-sharing plans, automated legal and skip letters. They’d fought about hiring ex-cons as field men and about dying investigations and about dead skips.
During those drives, over the years, DKA had become DKA.
Now they tried to do it at his desk in the morning before things got too hectic, but it wasn’t the same.
Giselle was dressed in jeans that looked like someone had spilled acid on them, and a mauve sweatshirt with figures leaping like lightning that spelled out Alvin Alley. Without makeup and with her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail under a billed Giants cap, she looked about 12 years old. A tall, shapely 12.
But as she got into the car the angry gleam in her eye was anything but juvenile. On the other hand, she was carrying a fistful of folders. So she hadn’t been as dedicated to free time on the weekend as she had let on.
“Dammit, Dan, I deserve a little personal time to—”
“You too, huh?” he interrupted without sympathy.
They were coming up to the metering lights on the Bay Bridge approach, inactive now for the weekend. She fastened her seat belt and squirmed around to get comfortable. She fought a grin. Finally nodded ruefully.
“Yeah. Me too. On Monday I’ll check with the Gypsy guy in Bunco — an Inspector Harrigan — and the Better Business Bureau and the state Consumer Fraud Division.”
“Why now, Giselle? This is a major, major con, one that’s going right into the Gyppos’ book of tall tales. Somebody really bright — obviously this guy calling himself Grimaldi — had to think and plan a long time to set this one up. Why’d he spring the trap right now?”
Out beyond her window and the whizzing railings of the bridge, the bay was whitecapped with hundreds of sailboats heeled over by a stiff breeze through the Gate.
“He was ready to move. He had everything in place, so—”
“I don’t buy it.” Kearny was frowning behind the wheel. “I think we ought to check with our law enforcement and P.I. informants around the country who work with Gypsies, find out if anything big is happening in their world.”
“I thought we didn’t want anyone to know about this case.”
“We don’t tell ’em anything — we ask.” He paused. “Yeah, and when you see that bunco cop, check with him for any other odd incidents involving Gyppos and new Caddies during our time frame — hell, make that any Caddies during the past couple weeks. I think it’s like you said — this guy Grimaldi was using that name to set up some nontypical Gypsy scam. Something really big, well-planned... It had to be something even bigger to make him endanger that by activating this Cadillac grift in such a hurry.”
They were still kicking it around as they came down off the skyway at Eighth, intending to run out Harrison to Eleventh and the office. This was the heart of San Francisco’s light industrial area, shabby and blue-collar with dirty intersections weekend-deserted, the lights clicking red and amber and green and red again in a senseless roundelay for nonexistent traffic.
Which made the car ahead of them in mid-block stand out. A white/blue Eldorado with the optional cabriolet roof. Without plates but with a paper sticker in the corner of the windshield.
“That’s one of ours,” said Kearny in a taut voice.
“You can’t be sure, Mr. K—”
“Lookit the guy driving! Gyppo all the way. I’m sure.” And he was, she knew. A savage intuition that made him the best in the business. “Get ready to slide over.”
“Dan’l—”
But Kearny had drifted into the far left lane behind the Eldorado so he was close behind it. Too close behind it. When it braked for the red light at Tenth, he ran into the rear end.
“Daniel, are you crazy? What—”
But Kearny already had the car in neutral, motor running, and was jumping out. He left the door open. Ahead of them, the driver of the other car was doing the same, leaving his door open also, outrage flooding his dark, saturnine features. Giselle understood suddenly, even as she was sliding into the driver’s seat. She wanted to pound the steering wheel with delight.
Outside, Kearny and the Gypsy — surely, he was a Gypsy — were meeting where Kearny’s front bumper was just touching the Eldorado’s rear one. The Gypsy was holding his neck.
“What the hell you do? Where the hell you learn to drive? I got whiplash—”
“It was your fault,” Kearny exclaimed. “Running fast up to the light that way, then slamming on your brakes.”
“Slam on my brakes? You were right on my bumper.”
Giselle eased the door shut almost silently, just enough so the latch clicked to hold it in place, then backed up slightly. Kearny squatted to look at the bumper of the Cadillac her move had exposed.
The Gypsy started to squat, too, holding his neck and grimacing theatrically as if from pain. But then he shrieked and struggled erect again, now holding the small of his back also.
“Not a scratch on it,” Kearny was saying.
“Besides my whiplash, I think I got a slipped disk.” He was groaning, still holding his neck with one hand, the small of his back with the other. “And whadda ya mean about the car? Looka that crease! That indentation! That chipped paint!”
“Chipped paint?” yelled Kearny. “You’re crazy!” He was erect again, pointing accusingly at the car, drawing the Gypsy’s eye to the back of the Eldorado. “There’s no—”