“There! There! And lookit there! And what about my neck? Very severe whiplash. And my back. Very dangerous slipped disk.” He was growing paler by the moment, experimentally moving his legs around beneath him, the knees now slightly bent as if he couldn’t straighten them. “And torn ligaments in both knees, too, from hittin’ them on the dashboard. That means I gotta see three doctors, go to hospital, get X rays, lose time on job...”
He was still holding his neck and holding his back and keeping his knees bent when the traffic light changed to green. Kearny simply walked away from him and slid into the driver’s seat of the Cadillac. Belatedly, the Gypsy leaped erect beside the two cars, eyes bugging out, whiplash and slipped disk and torn tendons all suddenly and miraculously cured.
“Hey, what the hell you think —”
Kearny goosed the Eldorado across the intersection with the green light and the door still hanging open. The Gypsy ran after him for a dozen paces, shouting and waving his arms; then, as Giselle started to accelerate behind him, whirled to stand in her path, holding his arms out like he was herding sheep.
“Hey, you, stop —”
She whipped the wheel over, hard, floored it, bounced across the corner of the intersecting curbs with a loud crash! and screamed around the corner into Tenth Street. He slammed an angry hand against her rear fender, but she was already by him.
And gone.
As Kearny was gone in the Eldorado.
Ah. First blood.
Chapter fourteen
Second blood to, of all people, Trinidad Morales. Who wasn’t working the Gyppo files, wasn’t even supposed to know about the Gyppo files, Kearny’s paranoia about them being what it was. But on Friday afternoon he had snooped the supposedly empty file cabinet upstairs that seemed to hold so-much fascination for Kearny, Giselle, O’B, Heslip, and Ballard. And had leafed through enough of the Gypsy material to know that almost any new Caddy with paper plates and a swarthy driver would be fair game.
Then he heard someone on the stairs, so he snatched one of Giselle’s lists — the cars’ colors and descriptions and model and I.D. numbers — eased the file drawer shut, and was halfway down the hall by the time Kearny appeared.
“Lose something, Morales?”
“Just findin’ my office, Mr. K, just findin’ my office. Lot different here from over to Seven Sixty.”
Not that Morales intended to go out looking for Gypsy cars off that list. He had been hired to work the cases abandoned by those assigned to the Gyppos, and besides, there weren’t any direct leads to work yet. For now he just wanted to know what was going on. Knowledge was power, and all that. And he would keep checking. There might be a way to snatch some meat from the jaws of the other guys for a quick buck or two.
But that was Friday. Now, on Saturday afternoon, Morales was not thinking of Gypsies. He was, instead, over in the East Bay trying to find a welfare cheat Ballard had been chasing for his Mazda. Typical Ballard shit, he thought, booting the file all over the lot with that phony concussion of his.
He still hated Ballard’s guts from the Maria Navarro thing.
Golden Gate Fields is shoehorned between I-80 and the fringes of the bay at Albany, just south of Richmond. This Saturday was a race day, and since a remarkably large percent of welfare checks in California, state or federal, are cashed at racetracks, and since the Mazda man had a history with the ponies, cruising the parking lots at the track offered good odds.
He waited until the third race, so most patrons already would be there, then for thirty minutes methodically checked for the blue 1990 Mazda 323/Protege hatchback with, noted from an earlier Ballard repo, a grey leaded-in left front fender.
Pretty easy to spot if it was around. It wasn’t. And that’s when he got his bright idea.
Racetracks were also dandy places to look for Gyppos.
Most of them were damned good with horses from the days when they rode around in wagons instead of Cadillacs; Gypsy horseplayers were legion, and a lot of others were seasonal trainers or grooms or even practice riders. For all he knew, there were even Gyppo jockies. He’d never met a legit Gypsy yet, not one, not ever, but he guessed there had to be some.
There was a separate lot at the rear, on the other side of the access road, where owners and trainers parked dozens of R/Vs and horse trailers and big muddy luxury cars. Within five minutes he had spotted three new Cadillacs and felt the old adrenaline surge. Gyppos were the hardest game there was to track; to a manhunter, getting one was like wing-shooting a crow, that wiliest of birds.
And technically, he hadn’t really gone looking for Gypsies, had he? Of course not. But if one of their cars should happen to fall into his lap, he couldn’t be blamed for that, could he?
He parked across and down from the Caddies, studied the list of models and colors and engine I.D. numbers. Cad One was out. It had current California plates and it was just too soon for any of the Gyppo Cads to have plates — unless they were stolen or off a wrecking yard junker. Not likely, not yet. The Gyppos still would be thinking they were too smart for anyone to guess who they were, let alone find them. So, scratch Cad One.
Cads Two and Three were real possibilities.
But even as he thought this, a very tall, very lanky, very blond, very Anglo woman whose pale skin had the translucency of alabaster, wearing a beautifully tailored red hacking jacket and pearl-grey jodhpurs, appeared between the horse trailers. With her was a grizzled old man wearing a cloth cap and knee-high rubber boots spattered with dried horse manure. They shook hands and the blonde got into Cad Two. Before driving off she used her handkerchief to wipe the hand that the old geezer had shaken.
If she was a Gypsy, Morales was Madonna.
That left the silver Coupe de Ville loaded with one of the many Cadillac option packages. He itched to get out of his dumpy little company car and wander over there and try to get a squint at the I.D. number. But if it was one of the Gyppo cars, and he got spotted checking it out, they’d be gone in a flash.
When in doubt, do nothing. For the next twenty-seven minutes he kicked around what he might do if he did snag the car. He was on DKA time here, a field agent hired by the company, but the bank wouldn’t know that. So could he turn it in on the sly, operating under his own still-active P.I. license? He’d probably get a hell of a lot more from the bank direct than the wages and expenses and — maybe — percentage of the repo fee he’d get from DKA. Assuming Kearny had cut DKA the kind of sweet little per-car recovery deal that Morales supposed he had.
No, ashcan that. He didn’t like Kearny, but he was smart enough to fear him. He’d only get the one Gypsy car, then Kearny would find out about it and would have his butt. And if the state did lift his license, he would be out in the cold.
So, since there was no other option, be a good guy. Win one for the Gipper...
A short swarthy man and a beautiful girl of about 15 — the age Morales found himself liking more and more these days — were coming his way. They both had brown skin and shiny black hair: Gyppos, sure as hell. Man and wife? Gypsy marriages were arranged for bride price... Naw, by the way they related to each other, father and daughter. Now, if they stopped at the Caddy...
They did. Okay, then if he got a chance to grab it he would, even though he wasn’t rock-certain it was one of the bank’s cars. Without a key, he’d need a few minutes to break in unseen, check the I.D. against Giselle’s list, pop out the ignition lock and substitute one of his own...
The girl got in behind the wheel of the De Ville but didn’t start the motor. The man talked to her through the open window and Morales slipped out of his car unobserved, a plan half-forming in his mind. When the Gypsy started away between the trailers, Morales, who could pass for rom himself with his heavy features and cruel, thick-lipped mouth, angled quickly toward him. Gyps often posed as Chicanos when working welfare and street scams; Morales now planned to return the favor.