Soon he was selling “solid silver” flatware; soon after that, lead plates (same approximate weight as solid gold) electroplated with a micrometer-thin layer of real 24-carat yellow Saudi gold. It could be gotten cheaply in Arabia with the right connections, and the plates could be sold as solid gold.
Now he could set up and sell the whole season in one place, having calibrated almost to the day when the microscopic layer of gold or silver would wear through to show the base metal beneath.
Tonight he had an appointment in Lincoln Park with a man who wanted a service for twenty of solid-gold plates and flatware. The mark was a 26-year-old stock futures options player who had just gotten his seat on the Exchange and a condo overlooking Lake Michigan. The mark planned to screw blind the old Jew in the skullcap who ate kosher and kept the holy days — not knowing the old Jew was really Nanoosh, who planned to maybe leave him his pants.
Nanoosh used Lake Shore Drive north to go get him.
Bart Heslip had his window open and the Cubs game on the car radio as he drove south on Lake Shore Drive. The old skull-capped Jew who maybe wasn’t Jewish at all deserved another look.
As always as he drove, his eyes were busy on cars passing in the other direction, some unconscious computer in his skull ticking them off, ready to register only if one of the big, dark, bulky cars he was passing was the Nanoosh Tsatshimo Fleetwood.
Lincoln Continental... Acura Legend sedan LS... Mercedes-Benz 300... Buick Riviera... Chrysler Imperial... Lexus LS400... Infiniti Q45... BMW 750iL... Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special...
His old skull-capped Jew behind the wheel! Bart was in the fast lane: even as his mind registered car and driver, he was spinning the wheel and slamming the brakes to put the Seville into a controlled skid. Bounce! thunder! crash! across the grassy center-divider, goose it, hit pavement, tires shrieking, he had it, back on the highway but in the northbound lane.
Eight cars behind the Fleetwood. One car back by the 31st Street intersection. Crowding its tail where Lake Shore splits at Cermak. Ran it off the road not far from the aquarium.
Nanoosh, his nephew, and two young Gypsy bucks in the backseat came boiling out of the Fleetwood even as Bart slammed the Seville to a stop behind it.
Nanoosh bellowed, “WHADDA HELL YOU T’INK—”
Bart roared, “I’M FROM THE BANK AND FM TAKING THAT CAR!”
“The bank? The California bank?”
“Cal-Cit, you bet.” Bart was flying on an adrenaline rush. It was the right car! “Take out your personal crap—”
That’s when the nephew of Nanoosh made a bad mistake. He threw a punch at Bart. Bart slipped it, snapped his head back three quick times with three left jabs, breaking his nose on the second, then came up with a good right cross to put him away.
Nanoosh stayed out of it, leaned placidly against the fender to watch his young Gypsies take Bart apart. But they were bloody and reeling, Bart had only a skinned cheek and a fat lip when the cops arrived, a salt-and-pepper team of suits who came up with only nightsticks because it seemed that kind of beef.
Nanoosh quickly put his skullcap back on. “We are on our way to temple, the black man runs me off the road, tries to steal my car. My sons they defend me...”
That’s when Nanoosh’s nephew made another terrible mistake. Still half-blinded by tears from his broken nose, ashamed of the tears, he swung at the black cop because he thought the cop was Bart. Black is black, right?
Wrong. Thwock!
Nightstick on skull. He folded.
“Peaceful repossession,” panted Bart. “They’re Gyppos.”
The black cop started to laugh as he put the cuffs on the recumbent nephew. “Peaceful repossession?” He laughed again. “That’s a damned nice right cross you got there.”
“Used to scuffle for a living,” said Heslip.
“We’ll take the lot of them in,” said the white cop.
Bart talked the black cop into not charging the nephew with anything worse than disturbing the peace, then spent a half hour side by side with Nanoosh on a hard wooden bench at the cophouse.
“You’re the one from this afternoon,” said Nanoosh finally.
“Yep,” said Bart.
“How’d you know to look for me in Chicago?”
Bart just shrugged and looked wise.
“It was them fucking Lovellis, wasn’t it?”
Bart looked even wiser.
“I knew it! Son of a bitch bastards! Well, let me tell you something about them...”
Bart stayed silent, looking as wise as Solomon, which he proved to be — Nanoosh told him all about the Lovellis.
Finally, the cops admitted that Bart was Bart, that the Fleetwood was a Fleetwood, that Cal-Cit Bank was a bank, and that Bart was indeed their legal representative.
“I want to thank you guys a lot for your help,” he said. “I’ll just take my cars and—”
“What about the writ?” asked the white cop.
Not being a Chicago boy himself, Bart said, “What writ?”
“The writ, the writ, the long green writ!”
Maybe not Chicago born, but no hayseed. Fifty each to the salt-and-pepper team, then from his expense roll Bart started dealing twenties like a hand of cards, one to every cop in the station house. Ten cops, ten twenties. Pick a card, any card.
Back at his motel just across the river from the Loop on South Canal, he found Larry Ballard’s message about Stupidville. He left Larry a more urgent message of his own, got the number of the Jersey motel where Ken Warren would be staying, and finally looked up truck rental outfits to call in the morning.
Bart Heslip had a PLAN.
Chapter forty-one
Ken Warren had been born in Jersey City, within a mile of Journal Square; his father had worked for Colgate. So he had few illusions about the place. Before returning Sarah Walinski’s Dodge Charger to Andy Anhut’s A-One Autos on Kennedy Boulevard, he put something bulky in his topcoat pocket and called a taxi. He gave the cabby an address near Anhut’s, and enough money to keep him waiting there. Ken himself waited across the street from the lot until the two burly salesmen — they looked more like made men — had gone |to lunch. Only then did he drive in.
At the back of the lot he went up three wooden steps and into a little frame office strung with dismal glittery tinsel. Inside was a scarred wooden desk bearing a telephone, a heap of curly black hair the size of a Norway rat, and the shoes of a man reading a skin magazine. Looking at him, Ken remembered a Sunday school phrase about Jacob’s brother Esau: He was an hairy man.
In almost every respect, Andy Anhut was an hairy man. It sprouted above his eyes, it tufted from his nostrils and ears, it matted the backs of his simian fingers and wrists, it curled exuberantly in the open V of his sport shirt and made a nest for the gold medallion on his chest.
Almost every respect. He was bald as a billiard ball. A squashed-down billiard ball with a cigar screwed into the middle of it. He sprang to his feet and clapped the Norway rat to his head when Ken’s shadow fell across his magazine.
“Whadda fuck ya doin’ sneakin’ up?” he yelped.
Ken sent the DKA invoice spinning across the desk with a flick of his wrist, and leaned forward. He was taller, broader, meaner than Anhut; no man can look tough adjusting his toupee.
“Ngcahsh,” expelled Ken.