“But it’s not my money,” said Kearny with a great show of reason. “It’s your money.”
The big redheaded one, Shayne, with the gun under his arm, suddenly said, “I don’t know what sort of games you guys play back there in Washington, Kearny, but out here—”
“Washington?” Kearny jerked a thumb at his own chest. “Like the card says, Daniel Kearny, licensed private detective right here in San Francisco...”
Gunnarson waved him silent with almost a smirk.
“You’re a licensed private investigator from California. We accept that.” He opened his hands and beamed. “So why won’t you accept that we never had a guest at this hotel named Angelo Grimaldi? No Angelo Grimaldi ever tried to extort money from us. And we certainly—”
“His real name is Rudolph—”
“Please. And we certainly never gave any Angelo Grimaldi any seventy-five thousand dollars.” He turned to look at his two associates, and chuckled. “Why, we wouldn’t keep our jobs very long if we went around dishing out free cash to just anyone who came through that door, would we, fellows?”
They also laughed. Dan Kearny looked from face to face. Never-Never Land? Alice down the rabbit hole, for Chrissake!
“Grimaldi told you that a blond terrorist was going to blow up the President and he said he killed her and dumped her body in the ocean...” They were all staring at him blandly. He added with a dash of desperation, “The blonde isn’t dead — she’s my office manager, for Chrissake! I can get her in here—”
“A terrorist for an office manager?” Smathers made little tutting noises with his birdlike mouth. “I don’t know if this is a bet, or a prank, or what, Mr. Kearny, but we’re busy men...”
Shayne picked up the satchel, clicked it shut, and slammed it against Kearny’s chest so Kearny had to grab it or let it fall to the floor. And he suddenly understood.
They hadn’t told the feds about Marino’s threatening phone calls! So now they could never admit anything to anyone!
Back at the office, Giselle Marc was sitting on the top of his desk, idly swinging her legs and smoking a cigarette.
“He wouldn’t take back the seventy-five thousand dollars,” she said.
Kearny set his satchel down next to her plastic suitcase.
“Neither would they.” He fired up one of her cigarettes, then shrugged. “But at least I can take a triangle flight up to Seattle tonight on my way to Steubenville, and give that guy back the thirty thou Bart found and messengered to us.”
“Nossir, I don’t know nothing about no thirty thousand bucks I was supposed to of paid some road contractor.”
Big John Charleston was glowering at him from across the desk in the office Big John could no longer pay for on Queen Anne Ave near the Seattle Center.
“He was a Gypsy,” said Dan Kearny, trying to keep tension out of his voice. It was happening again! “He put crank-case oil mixed with paint thinner on the roads of your subdivision—”
“I ain’t got no subdivision,” snarled Big John.
“Because you guys at the state took it away from him!” chimed in Little John from his smaller desk in the corner.
“I’m not from the state! I’m a private investigator—”
Big John was on his feet.
“Then investigate how to get to hell outta my office ’fore I throw you through the window! You guys ruin me an’ then come around tryin’ to trap me into damaging admissions...”
Which meant Dan Kearny had to fly back to San Francisco to redeposit the $30,000 before catching a flight east to Iowa. He didn’t know what else to do with it — for the moment. But all that money was giving him ideas...
The flight back to San Francisco, however, was going to put him into Stupidville well after the fireworks had started there.
And in Nebraska.
And in New York City.
Chapter forty-two
Pearso Stokes was a beautiful Gypsy woman of 26 who managed to look like a misfit Iranian student of 19. Her lustrous coiling black hair was skun back into a bun with a rubber band around it, huge glasses magnified her truly astonishing eyes into terrifying bug eyes. She carried a chemistry and a physics textbook under one arm, though she could neither read nor write.
But boy, could she count! She entered her fourth midtown bank of the day to work the scam supposedly originated by the legendary Tene Bimbo some seventy-five years before. The con was so old nobody remembered it anymore, especially not the harried Manhattan tellers to whose windows she shuffled. Here she put down her books and fixed the teller with her fearsome bug eyes.
“My fadder has send me money from Tehran.”
The teller leaned forward. “What?”
Her accent was truly atrocious, guttural and thick, her
voice low. He could barely understand what she said. While honking at him again, she dug through her voluminous purse for a crumpled $500 bill she handed him like a fragment of the Koran.
“What?”
—“I said I want five one-hundred-dollar bills.”
But as soon as she had them, Pearso changed her mind.
—“No, no, wait. I need three hundred in fifties and two hundred in twenties.”
The teller started over again with fifties and twenties. The line of impatient customers behind Pearso was growing. She picked up her new money, hesitated, thrust it back again.
—“Make the fifties tens, and one of the twenties fives.”
Somebody behind her exclaimed just loudly enough, “Aw, for Chrissake!”
Pearso was undeterred. The teller was flustered. He had just finished the count when she gave it all back again.
—“No. I need four fifties, ten twenties, nine tens, ten dollars in quarters, and fifty dimes.”
He had to write that one down. The line behind her was grumbling like a thunderstorm. He lost his count twice.
After all that, she exchanged the silver for two $5 bills, got another ten and four twenties, and the rest in hundreds. The patrons behind her started clapping as she left. Pearso didn’t mind: she could laugh all the way from the bank. Her silver Eldorado with its M.D. plates had the driver’s-side visor turned down to show her printed sign, EMERGENCY — DOCTOR ON CALL, so the car was unticketed even though left in a No Parking zone.
She had palmed one of the original hundreds.
Then a fifty and a twenty.
After that, two tens and a five.
On the final exchange, a fifty, two twenties, and a ten.
She had given the teller $500, had gotten $500 back, and had palmed an additional $295 that the teller wouldn’t discover was missing until he tried to balance at the end of the day.
Time for tea at her sister’s mitt-camp in the Village. But a cruising Ken Warren spotted her at Seventh Ave and West 14th, and fell in behind her. Everything fit. Eldorado. Silver. M.D. plates. Woman driving who looked like a Gyppo.
Follow until it roosted, then drop a net over it.
Despite the fancy shingle out front, READER AND ADVISOR, it was a mitt-camp. Ken parked a short block away on the narrow busy street, started to get out — and there was a wiry little guy with a sharp nose who didn’t look like any Gyppo Ken had ever seen just getting into the Caddy.
He unslotted the Toyota, followed him. When the guy stopped, Ken would grab the Caddy. Only he picked up two more guys and some luggage. One was tall and bony and middle-aged, not much heat if Ken had to dance with them. But the other one was an elephant in clothes. Not a fat elephant, either.