“QUIT ACTING LIKE GODDAM TEENAGERS THE PAIR OF YOU!”
“He—”
“She—”
“Cry on your own time.” But advancing into the room, he stopped to stare openmouthed at the money on Ballard’s desk. He faltered, “What in heaven’s name... is going on in here?”
They talked over one another like siblings vying for a parent’s attention, Kearny listening with darkened face.
“What pink Cadillac?” he asked finally in ominous calm.
“The pink Cadillac the dying King wants to be buried in.”
Giselle added, “Rudolph wants to be King—”
“And Yana wants to be Queen,” finished Ballard.
“Dying King, huh?” said Kearny, a sudden gleam in his eye too brief for either of them to catch. “Pink Cadillac. Yana. Rudolph.” He looked from one to the other of them. “What the hell else don’t I know?”
“Nothing,” they chorused too quickly, not meeting his eyes, then told him they didn’t even know where the King was dying.
“Steubenville, Iowa.” This riveted their attention: where the King was dying, there would be Rudolph and Yana. He suddenly thundered at them, “Put that goddamned money in the safe until I figure out what to do with it! Get hold of O’B in Florida and Bart in Chicago and tell them to meet us in Steubenville. Counting the one in Baja last night, we’ve only repo’d eleven, leaving us twenty to go — twenty-one if we add that pink Cadillac. Most of them ought to be at Steubenville.”
They started moving, reaching for the satchel and stuffing loose greenbacks back into the green plastic garbage bag.
“You two ought to fit right in there.” He smiled like a fat-smeared bear trap smiling in ambush under the dry leaves. “The locals call it Stupidville.”
Under the bluffs a mile downriver from Stupidville, on the wide rolling field of a farmer who’d needed the money, the Gypsy encampment was swelling. Trailers and RVs and pickups with camper beds on the back, vans and trucks and dozens of new and beat and battered Cadillacs, fifty other cars of assorted makes and ages. Even a dozen horses and three or four old-fashioned Gypsy caravans. They had been brought out to honor the dying King born in the early days of the century when creaking canvas-covered horse-drawn wagons were the Gypsies’ only transportation.
Hundreds of rom y more arriving by the hour, in every conceivable sort of dress. Underfoot and assaulting the ears, countless dogs and cats and children, even chickens. Overhead, a pall of sweet-scented applewood smoke from their cook fires.
In town, the encampment’s presence already was being felt. Christ Himself, remember, had given the Gypsy a dispensation to steal from the gadjo; so Stupidville’s original pleasure to have so many new spenders in town was being hourly reduced to dismay.
All the tools had disappeared from Klinger’s Garage.
Ben Franklin Five and Dime was seeing its shelves cleared as if by goods-eating locusts.
The Deli Ice Cream Shoppe (“I’ll Be Dipped!”) had been forced to remove all their sugar cones from the front display case, and were considering locks on their freezers.
All the summer dresses — along with their mannequins — had disappeared overnight from Sylvia’s Dresse Shoppe’s front windows. Sylvia had checked her insurance, closed her doors, and gone visiting her sister in Dubuque.
Himmler Clothing (“Boys’ Wear to Outwear the Boy”) avoided similar problems only because Doug Himmler had played nosetackle for the Ohio State Buckeyes and would break bones if anyone messed with him. Gypsies were partial to their bones.
Kay Wenzel’s Jewelers (“It’s Okay to Owe Kay”) had a sophisticated alarm system and put all of their stock in the safe at night, so they were so far untroubled by missing jewelry. Of course Immaculata Bimbai had not yet hit town.
Also untroubled were Steubenville General Hospital, the adjacent Hansel and Gretel Park (“Has Public Water Access”), and the block-long marina (“The Boat Float”) the hospital overlooked.
But there were reasons for that. To have Barney Hawkins realize Staley was a Gypsy — King of the Gypsies, no less! — would be fatal. Until Democrat National coughed up money for Karl Klenhard’s terrible tumble down the escalator stairs, Lulu had to keep the rom away from the hospital.
The tableau was familiar: Staley lying on his back with his eyes shut; Margarete in her chair beside the bed, bird-bright eyes fixed on the pudgy Hawkins; Hawkins pacing up and down the tiny free area in the middle of the room.
“All right, I got a little... upset last time,” he said. “But goddammit...” He got control of his voice. “But I have to get this thing settled.” He turned to Lulu. “Mrs. Klenhard, you have to see my position—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” said Staley in sepulchral tones. Lulu kept silent.
“That just isn’t reasonable, Mr. Klenhard. Now, the offer I made last time, twenty-five thou—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” said Staley.
“Okay, because I gotta close this one out, thirty—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” said Staley.
Hawkins’s veins and eyes were beginning to bulge again. He had stopped, squarely facing Staley on the bed. Even though Staley’s eyes were closed, it was mano a mano. Lulu was out of the loop and glad of it. Staley had never lost mano a mano in his long life.
“Thirty-five—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Forty, and that’s the last—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Goddam you, fifty, and if you think—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Fifty-five—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
Hawkins was red as a turkey wattle. “Sixty—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Son of a bitch bastard, sixty-five—”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
Hawkins threw up his hands in defeat. He’d like to choke the scrawny old bastard to death, but the wife would probably kill him and his company would have to pay for his burial.
“All right!” he yelped. “All right all right all right! You win! Seventy-five...”
Staley at last opened his eyes. Was that a twinkle deep in their opaque depths? “Acceptable,” he said.
Barney Hawkins left the hospital within seven minutes of his humiliating capitulation. As he drove south out of town along the river, he sneered at all the bums and drunks and hoboes and homeless who were congregated in some hick farmer’s field back under the bluff... Except, Christ, he might soon be one of them. He had made a $75,000 settlement when the home office was expecting $15,000! Beaten by some 77-year-old fart you had to move from place to place with a shovel!
Which old fart at that very moment was polkaing his lady in a breathtaking whirl around his hospital room to oompah music from the radio, both of them giggling like teenagers, until the sound of Dr. Crichton’s footsteps in the hall sent them scurrying to hit their respective marks in their little domestic farce, his the bed, hers the chair.
Seventy-five thousand dollars.
Yes!
Chapter forty
The burly Jew in the skullcap took the tarnished metal object from the black man’s fingers and said to his young bright-eyed assistant in Yiddish, “Vi heyst dos?”
“Vaz.”
“Yo, yo, vaz,” he said impatiently. He moved the vase slightly. “Zilber?” The assistant shrugged. He turned back to the black man. “You want to know if this is a silver vase?”