Yana had glanced toward the door to the embalming room just as some deliveryman with an armful of flowers was turning away from the observation window. The silhouette of his exaggerated profile on the wall gave her Larry Ballard’s nose and chin despite his peaked cap and sunglasses.
She was already taking off her crisp white medical coat and surgeon’s gloves. A year or two ago, when DKA took thirty-one Cadillacs away from the Gypsies when nobody else could even find them, she had been impressed. Especially with Larry. Now, when the Gypsies had to find Yana in the gadjo world, who would they turn to? DKA, of course.
Devèl, Ballard was good at what he did! But it didn’t matter how he’d found her. She had to be gone from here and from her room at the Columbine within the hour. She was so fast out of Brittingham’s that she saw Ballard’s broad, tapered back as he walked up Sutter toward his car. She turned the other way, toward Polk Street. To go where? No enchanted alley cat to help her out this time. But maybe... just maybe...
The uniformed guard was waiting for Dan and the Baron with the two Dobermans outside the closed gate. He had his holster flap unbuttoned and his hand on his pistol butt. The guard dogs strained at their leashes with delighted fury. An open Jeep raced from behind the building on the dirt track inside the perimeter fence.
The Baron said, “Ve shall please to get out now.”
Kearny opened his door, the guard released the dogs. Dan jerked his leg back in and slammed the door just as the Dobermans smashed against it. But damned if Knottnerus-Meyer hadn’t already opened his door and was stepping out.
“Dogs are genuine optimists,” he said. “Always cheerful.” The dogs flew around the front of the SUV to attack. Dan had to admit some slight hope the man would get mauled. He was so damned smug, so sure of himself, so damned... Teutonic.
But the Baron said in a low voice, “Are ve so ill-behaved?”
Hecate and Charon skidded to a stop. Hecate rolled over onto her back, legs in the air. Knottnerus-Meyer leaned down and scratched the proffered tummy. Kearny got out of the SUV gingerly. The guard pressed forward, angry and astounded. The Baron straightened. The mild look was gone. He screwed in his monocle, suddenly extremely Prussian.
“Your top shirt button iss open,” he said coldly. “Your boots do not haff a sufficient shine. Your uniform does not haff a sufficient press.” He gestured at the fawning Dobermans. “Choke collars on guard dogs are not permitted at dis facility.”
Just then the Jeep came tearing up the dirt track to skid to a stop, spilling out a burly uniformed figure. He had a gun at his belt and a swagger stick in his hand.
“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” he yelled.
Thirty-six
R.K. Robinson, the veins standing out at his temples and his big jaw muscles knotted, was not looking at the surprised Knottnerus-Meyer. He was glaring at Dan Kearny.
“R.K.,” said Dan affably, “long time no see.”
“Not long enough, you fuck,” snarled R.K.
The gate guard was relaxed now, the dogs along with him. The Dobermans sat on their haunches watching the proceedings with interested eyes and their tongues hanging out.
A few years back, following his stint as a Walla Walla state prison guard, R.K. had drifted south to San Francisco and Dan had hired him as a repoman with DKA. He was big enough, and tough enough, and had to have some moderately hairy balls to have been a screw at Walla Walla. But he didn’t work out. R.K. needed structure in the workplace. Rules and regulations posted on the wall, on-shift at eight, off at five, chicken on Sunday, a gun on his belt and a nightstick to slap against his palm.
A repoman out there in the field all by his lonesome had to make his own decisions. E.T. couldn’t phone home. R.K. couldn’t handle that. Kearny let him go.
R.K. belatedly turned on Knottnerus-Meyer.
“And just who the hell are you supposed to be?”
The Baron drew himself up to his full impressive height that equaled R.K.’s, monocle and sneer firmly in place.
“I am de expert brought from Chermany to examine de Xanadu security. Herr Marr hass informed you uff my coming. Vhy haff you not demanded to see my credentials?”
“I, ah, oh, er... Mr. Marr briefed me on your description.”
“How could he? Herr Marr hass not yet met me. My contact iss wit California-Citizens Bank.” He turned to snap at the guard, “You — vut are you gawking at? Return to your post. Ven your relief arrives, drife de vehicle back to de compound.” To R.K. he said, “Ve shall valk de grounds.”
The trio walked across the tightly mown lawn toward the facility. R.K. was slapping his swagger stick across the palm of his left hand with exaggerated precision, rebuilding self-esteem.
Kearny saw that the shrubbery had been planted well back from the wall, creating a six-yard-wide dead zone. He began looking for concealed sensors. Yep. He pointed out one of them as they passed beneath it. Knottnerus-Meyer followed his gaze.
“Vut iss it?”
“Infrared sensing devices in the trees with interlocking arc sweeps of the cleared areas. The sensors pick up the body heat and movement of even a squirrel and sound the alarms.”
The Baron turned to R.K. “You shall please to demonstrate de vorkings uff dese infrared sensors.”
“Yeah, sure, Baron — it’ll be my pleasure.”
R.K. spun and threw a sudden right-hand uppercut at Kearny’s jaw. Dan slipped it. The momentum of R.K.’s missed punch carried him forward. Dan stuck out a foot. R.K. tripped over it and, arms semaphoring for balance, went down face-first.
Sirens screamed. Whistles blew. There were startled shouts from inside the building.
Even before he got up, R.K. was scrabbling at his belt. He got his cell phone up to his face, shouted into it, “FALSE ALARM! FALSE ALARM! THIS IS FADED ROSE PETAL! FALSE ALARM, GODDAMMIT!”
“Faded Rose Petal?” asked Dan.
R.K. scrambled to his feet. “Fuck you, you sack of shit!”
“A most zatisfactory demonstration,” said Knottnerus-Meyer in an impeccably neutral voice. But Dan saw, or imagined he saw, a twinkle in his eye. At that moment Dan Kearny started to like the Baron. Who said, “Ve shall continue our tour.”
Larry’s phone call caught Giselle once more at Kearny’s desk. He said, “Listen, I think somebody’s sleeping in the personal property room. I was up there this morning early to get a cap and the cot was messed up. When I came back, it had been made up.”
Trin Morales, she thought. Had to be. Sacking out at DKA to avoid the pack of vengeful Latinos on his trail. She still hadn’t laid eyes on him, but she knew he was around. He was turning in field reports and had made a dandy dead-skip repo in the Castro over the weekend. But Larry didn’t need to know any of that, not the way he felt about Morales.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” she said. “Last Friday night Rudolph spotted Yana on Polk Street!”
“Not surprising,” said Ballard. “Yana’s setting hair and painting faces on corpses at Brittingham’s Funeral Parlor in Sutter Street. I’m staked out here now to follow her home when she gets off work. I just got the lead yesterday.”
“Lead from whom?”
“Not our clients, that’s for sure. If Rudolph spotted her in Polk Street, why wasn’t the place flooded with Rom within fifteen minutes? There aren’t enough Gypsies in this thing, Giselle.”
“Maybe because they think working in a funeral parlor is not a right livelihood for a Gypsy woman?”