“If you knew... where it... was... then why...”
“I thought you understood, my sweet — I want you dead.”
“Mister?” The voice was old and quavery and full of dread, but it called again, “Mister, you all right?”
“In... here...” Ephrem managed to get out.
By squinting he could see the old white-haired lady from next door, for once without her binoculars. Her mouth was slack with fright: who could blame her? Here he was, bleeding on the floor, with his pockets turned out and a knife buried in his gut.
So your nosiness overcame your fear, he thought. Nothing new there. All his life he had known women like that.
All his life he had known women...
Known women... known... women...
“It was my... wife... from... ’Frisco...”
The old woman’s face was down close to his. Not just nosiness. At the end, Rom thief and lonely old gadja woman.
“Oh, you poor, poor man!”
The room was darkening. He felt an overwhelming sadness, a sense of loss, the loss of what should have been.
“Yana,” he croaked. Despite all, he now knew, he still loved her. He cried, “Yana-a-a-a-a...”
Nevermore.
Two
On Tuesday’s beautiful early spring afternoon in Rome, Willem Van De Post was behind his desk getting a phone call from Hong Kong. He was a heavy man but obviously athletic, with shirtsleeves rolled up over muscular forearms, a square Germanic head, sandy hair, and piercing blue eyes. What he heard robbed him of all tranquillity, made him lean forward across the desk, made his hand whiten around the receiver.
“Stolen?” he demanded in impeccable Italian. He listened, then burst out, “I don’t care who threatened who with what, we have a valid contract, the renovation is almost complete...”
He looked diminished in his swivel chair. This acquisition was to have been the crowning achievement of a long and honorable career: how he had fought the board of directors to allocate the funds on the argument that it would bring them international fame!
“Is there any indication of whom—” He listened. “A Japanese?” He paused, said, “What good does it do me if you send my deposit back? I won’t have the—” He stopped again. “I... I will have to call you later.”
He sat staring sightlessly out the window at the green sweeping vistas his office overlooked. Call him back? Why bother? The prize had been stolen by, Willem knew as surely as if he had seen it in a crystal ball, international financier Victor Marr. He’d always known Marr wanted it, but never dreamed he would use the Yakuza gangster Kahawa to steal it and to threaten Brantley with ruin, pain, perhaps even death, to ensure his silence. Only because of their long friendship, he was sure, had Brantley dared call him at all.
Willem could go back to the board of directors, of course, the ministry, even, but what could they do? The facility to house it was nearly complete. So what? Marr would laugh at Interpol, laugh at governments. Would say, Prove I have it.
Then the frown lines eased on his handsome, lived-in face. He could never prove Marr stole it, and he could never match the man for sheer ruthlessness. But... in the wild days of his youth he had done some things to stay alive, and thus already had a wonderful connection in California: his wife’s uncle, Staley Zlachi, King of the Muchwaya Gypsies.
Offered a sufficiently tempting prize, Staley might just be persuaded to do some work on Willem’s behalf. For the first time since hanging up the phone, Willem Van De Post began to smile gently to himself. Devèl knew, Uncle Staley was not ruthless. But he was sly.
Willem Van De Post was suddenly ready to call Brantley back in Hong Kong.
Because of the time zones, that warm afternoon in Rome was a chilly 5:47 A.M. in San Francisco’s foggy Richmond District. Dan Kearny was parked in the Coronet Theater’s no-parking zone on Geary Boulevard. Around the corner behind him, on Arguello, three leased car transports roped exhaust into the chilly dawn air. Ahead, beyond the Almaden intersection, Wiley’s UpScale Motors was crowded with costly sports cars and restored classics.
Kearny was a compact man in his early 50s, heavy of face, massive of jaw, hard of eye, his thinning curly hair gone silver. He unhooked a clumsy handful of mike from the dash of his Ford Escort to thumb the red button on its side. For an operation like this, give him the good old outmoded C/B radio every time.
“This is S/F-One. All units check in.”
Giselle Marc was tall and lean with wicked thighs, blond hair in loose easy waves around her face, blue eyes alight, big brain ticking over. Excitement thrummed in her voice: this was her first time in the field on a dealership raid.
“S/F-Two. A block away on the other side of Geary.”
Next to check in was O’Bannon, the redheaded Irishman with the freckle-splashed leathery face, gargling his Rs as usual.
“Faith an’ BeJaysus, an’ ’tis a frosty mornin’ for poor auld S/F-Three to be up here on Lone Mountain.”
He was in place at Rossi and Turk, two blocks uphill. A couple of years Kearny’s junior, when he left the booze alone O’B was the best all-around field man DKA had after Dan himself.
“S/F-Four, check in,” said Kearny.
Bart Heslip’s heavy baritone growl wore the field-nigger patois it amused him to put on and off at will like an old and treasured sweater. He had a stylishly shaven pate and a thin mustache. “S/F-Four mos’ surely be on Palm below Euclid, waitin’ fo’ word fum de Great White Father, yassah boss.”
When he had quit the ring with still-unscrambled brains to become a repoman, Bart had been a rising middleweight with thirty-nine wins (thirty-seven by KO) out of forty fights put into the record books.
Larry Ballard was next, thumbing his mike with a stifled yawn. “S/F-Five on Anza between Stanyan and Loraine Court, over.”
Not boredom, Kearny knew: probably out chasing some skirt all night. Despite his love of the ladies, despite sun-bleached hair and surfer good looks and a recent black belt in karate, Ballard, Kearny had to admit, was a damned good field man.
Next came a thin and reedy voice so unlike Trin Morales’s usual breathy Latino tones that Kearny barely recognized it.
“S/F-Six, in place by Mel’s Drive-In.”
Morales was just back from a prolonged medical leave of absence after an outraged Latino and three amigos had beaten him to a pulp because Trin had messed with the man’s teenage sister. He had lost much more than forty pounds and his bullyboy manner; he was almost timid now. Kearny had never liked him much, despite his being a tough, treacherous, amoral, first-rate repoman. Now, maybe, not even that. Ballard actively hated his guts.
After waiting in vain for Ken Warren’s check-in, Kearny said, “S/F-Seven, what’s your twenty?” Ken was silent. Kearny repeated his question. “Are you in position, S/F-Seven?”
Finally there came two double-clicks as Warren thumbed his mike on and off twice. Which meant his Dodge Ram was squatting right on the Wiley UpScale Motors front gate with a long-handled chain-cutter waiting open-jawed on the seat.
Dan Kearny checked his watch and said “Go!” into the mike.
The DKA hands burned rubber to close in on UpScale from all sides. The drivers of the auto transporters snapped away their cigarettes while trotting back to their trucks. Ken Warren was out of his Ram to snip the padlock chain on the gate as if the case-hardened steel was Silly Putty.
Big John Wiley threw back the covers in their bedroom a mile or so away on El Camino del Mar to stumble bare-ass across the room and cut the alarm. He had rounded shoulders, a sunken chest, a watermelon belly. Wings of lank black hair hung down on either side of his face. His blue eyes were shrewd, his mouth sensual, his nose well-shaped.