Perhaps encouraged by his objection, Sonia Lovari spoke up. She wore buckskin and a long plait of black hair down her back because her con was as the last living member of Ishi’s tribe.
“I can go on my own much cheaper than to share with—” She stopped abruptly, then finished up almost lamely, “With some who do not carry their own weight.”
“But Sonia,” said Staley, “who are we individually, you and I, without our kumpania, without our tabor?”
Rudolph said bluntly, “I am already working on our travel plans. We will all go together, as the nation of Muchwaya.”
Staley reminded them of the millions of pilgrims already in Rome for the year-long Catholic celebration of the Church’s 2,000th birthday. The Holy City overflowing with celebrants from every nation on earth, many of them deeply religious, more of them country bumpkins, most of them ignorant of credit cards and even traveler’s checks. There they all were with money in their pockets — and with their arms upraised in praise of God.
Immaculata Bimbai, who was blond and looked like a countess, spoke up. She was 32 and looked 22, and her scam was fainting in jewelry stores.
“Baro Rom, what of the Italian Romi? We are American Gypsies, will they not resent us?”
Staley spoke sagely.
“Are we not pilgrims like any others? For fifteen hundred years the Romi have been going to Rome for pilgrimages and canonizations. Our people were the Papal envoys across the face of Europe during the Middle Ages.”
Posing as Papal envoys, thought Rudolph as Staley pontificated in English, but why put too fine a point on it?
“That is another reason we gotta raise a lot of money quick — so we don’t work no hardship on our European brethren. I have many plans, plans which will astound you. But first — do we have agreement? If so, you all gotta see Lasso here to get passports, and you gotta pay for them yourselves.”
Lasso looked pleased. The Gypsies glanced at one another. They hated to pay for anything, but their imaginations were fired. Were they not all in accord? All but Sonia Lovari, on her feet once again.
“Baro Rom, we cannot leave this city until the soul of our dead brother, Ephrem Poteet, has been consoled. What are we going to do about his wife, Yana Poteet — the woman who murdered him? I spit upon her shadow, I would curse her progeny except the syphilitic whore will never be able to bear children.”
Everyone knew that Sonia hated Yana for telling a gadjo repossessor where to find the Cadillac Sonia was driving. Letting her initiate a witch-hunt would only interfere with their search for Yana on the sly. Lulu rose to speak in council for the first time that night.
“Yana Poteet is a disgrace as a Romni and no longer a member of this kumpania. We have already in solemn kris declared her marime, so leave her to the gadje justice. Murder is a blasphemy that breaks even their teeth. They will avenge our dead brother for us.”
Staley had them in the palm of his hand. He spread his arms wide in benediction, every inch the King.
“Now go, my children, to bring glory upon this tribe!”
The three of them were at last alone in Rudolph’s kitchen. By candlelight, Lulu looked old and worn.
“Best way to go to Rome to bring this glory on our tribe is find Yana and get back for the kumpania the money she stole from Ephrem’s body,” she said.
“Or for ourselves.” Rudolph made a deprecatory gesture. “We shall not forget Yana.”
“We don’t know the gadjo world well enough to find her in it,” Lulu said.
“Since we can’t find her ourselves,” said Staley, “we have to get someone to look for her who does know the gadjo world.”
“Who?” demanded Rudolph with surprise in his voice.
“The repossessors with whom we dealt in the matter of the thirty-two Cadillacs. Daniel Kearny Associates.”
Rudolph started to chuckle; it grew into open-throated laughter as he savored the irony. Lulu, lost in her fears of retribution should they break the marime curse laid on Yana, hadn’t yet caught on. She finished the last of the memorial mixture of wheatberry, cinnamon, honey, and sultanas before objecting.
“How we gonna get them to do our looking for us? Last time around they was hunting us down like dogs.”
“This time around we’re gonna hire ’em,” chortled Staley.
Twelve
The spring fog came over the crest to flow down the eastern slopes of the Coast Range, and it was a dark and stormy night.
Well, not stormy, but man was it dark. And foggy. Bart Heslip pulled into a closed Standard station on Woodside Road to study his battered Thomas Guide Atlas for San Mateo County. Keep on Woodside right through town, maybe a mile, and Bear Gulch Road went off to the right.
Beyond town it was inky, no streetlights: horse country, big-tree country, sprawling-estate country. Most of the roads and lanes and drives leading off Woodside didn’t seem to have any street signs on them, at least not street signs that Bart Heslip was able to see.
Out near Sears Lake, Woodside Road just... ended. He got turned around and went back, his wipers on intermittent, driving five miles an hour with his flashlight angled out the open window so he could eye every track and driveway and road coming in from, now, his left. Cold wet early-hours air brought grass and horse smells and beaded his face and sent a shiver through him.
Finally. A brush-obscured sign: BEAR GULCH ROAD.
He backed up, turned in. Narrow blacktop, twisting and turning up the slanting side of a tree-covered hill. Dark, dripping foliage, drifting fog. A quarter of a mile in, the road widened to a flat area the size of a basketball court, with a black steel gate set in concrete and flanked by chain link fences. By the gate was a board with a number pad beside an intercom phone. No good without the correct combination.
Bart sighed, backed into the rear right corner of the lot, and settled down in the forlorn hope of somebody coming in or going out of Bear Gulch Road at one in the morning.
The 1995 Panoz kit car, sleek and low and gleaming ($39,995 on Giselle’s hotsheet), made a hard right past a redheaded guy asleep in his car on Toyon and into the carport to park over the oil stain O’B had noted earlier. The car was one of the greatest tools in Tim Bland’s seduction kit, but not the only one. Tim was in his early thirties with dark good looks and crisp shiny black hair and bright very direct blue eyes that sold many used cars to female customers; many found him handsome and slightly dangerous and went to bed with him. One would tonight.
Bypassing his apartment, he walked down the blacktop in the drifting mist, his shoes scraping subdued echoes from the tarmac. He had sold the woman’s husband a Honda, one thing had led to another, so now he had something juicy and frustrated and available waiting right on his doorstep.
He’d called ahead, so he went by the unlocked door and into the living room already rock hard. The night taxi driver’s blond wife was waiting for him, leaning forward over the back of the davenport wearing only black lace crotchless panties and a lascivious expression. He entered her from behind, spent almost immediately. They went into the bedroom and Bland sat down on the side of the bed to unlace his shoes. He had plenty of time to finish her off before her old man’s shift ended at 6:00 A.M.