“They plan to... to kill the President? In my hote—”
“Yes. You could notify the Secret Service now, of course,” said Marino. “But...”
Smathers, lips parted, bird-bright eyes gleaming like those of a whiskey jay spotting a shiny coin, couldn’t resist.
“But what?”
“You already didn’t tell them about the bomb threat—”
“There haven’t been any more,” pointed out Shayne.
“That doesn’t negate the one there was.”
Dull, unimaginative Shayne, focus among them of opposition to Marino’s sting, stubbed out his just-lit second cigarette. His resistance seemed to have given Gunnarson back some of the bluster the word “assassination” had scared out of him.
“I’m not so sure,” Gunnarson said. “What if that threat was just some kook who thought he’d get his kicks making it? We have only your word that the Saladin even exist...”
Shayne added, “With the Secret Service guys and my own security people on watch, nobody can get through to do anything to the President anyway.” He pressed his point. “So yesterday we decided that we don’t need you or your ‘people’ on this.”
Gunnarson concurred by refusing to meet his eyes, so Marino turned to Smathers, who lathered his little hands with the invisible soap of distress and squeaked, “I’m not management! As corporate counsel I can only advise! This decision was reached over my most strenuous objections! I was overruled!”
Marino had been counting on the tiny desiccated attorney, but now saw he’d been wrong. Well, he hated to waste such a beautiful vehicle, but his limo had been gotten as the final convincer, and this was the biggest sting of his life. So, better go over to Richmond and get it wired up by Eli Nicholas, who had served in ’Nam.
He slid out of the booth and smiled down at them. None of the faces was really happy. The limo would do it for sure.
“Your funeral,” he said in his slightly grating Joisey voice. “Or rather, the President’s.” He started away, then turned back. “You’re gonna get bloody on this one, y’know.”
It was a hell of a good exit line, even if he had stolen it from Lethal Weapon.
Chapter twenty
Giselle and Ballard planned to talk about Gypsies over a drink at Fifi’s on Union Street, but Ballard was late and Giselle, because of that pesky concussion he’d suffered, was feeling almost... maternal about him. Which was silly, since they’d worked together for eight years and were great friends. Friends. There could never be anything... personal between them.
It was just that he seemed so vulnerable and...
He also seemed to be twenty minutes late, she thought, but even her irritation was mild. Just like that Larry.
Leaving her wine and newly purchased pack of cigarettes and disposable lighter on a table facing Union Street through plate glass, she wormed her way through noisy bar drinkers to the payphone. Jane Goldson’s noncommittal “Hello?” was the response prescribed for all unlisted DKA skip-tracer numbers.
“Jane? Giselle. Did Larry call in to say that he’s still planning to meet me at Fifi’s?”
“There’s a message for you, luv, but not from Larry. From dear old Mr. Anonymous.” Her cheery cockney voice changed to a reading singsong: “ ‘In Tiburon. Theodore Winston White the Third.’ ”
Whatever that meant. She said, “I’m impressed — the Third, yet. But nothing from Larry...”
“No — well, a message for him, actually. A woman.” Jane giggled. “Sexy-sounding wench, she was.” The singsong again. “ ‘Rainbird Lounge. Tonight.’ ”
Larry’s call was none of her business, and Giselle’s own anonymous call couldn’t be about Gyppos. The only informant she had spoken with was Dirty Harry, who didn’t have her real name or number. Besides, Theodore Winston White III was no Gypsy name.
Just to be sure, she tapped out 411. No listing for White in the Tiburon/Belvedere area. No listing for him anywhere in Marin County. And no way until tomorrow to run him down through the Civic Center records in San Rafael.
Sonia Lovari was 32 and looked 19, and helped nature along with simple artifice: since she had a short chunky body and swarthy skin and a round face with an inappropriate beak of a nose, she plaited her long hair into a single lustrous black braid that reached to the small of her back, wore jeans, run-over cowboy boots, and a fringed jacket of phony buckskin. Thus attired, she neatly fit the gadjo stereotype of squaw woman.
Sonia shook the one-pound coffee can with the slot in the top and MIWOK INDIAN SUPPORT GROUP — GIVE WHAT YOU CAN pasted around it. She kept it almost empty at all times; a few lonely coins rattling around inside attracted sympathy.
“The Miwoks are starving, sir. The Great Spirit will bless you if—”
“Everybody’s starving,” snapped the man she’d stopped.
He obviously wasn’t. Florid face, fat stomach, three-piece suit, three-martini breath. Sonia welcomed the challenge. An argument always made other people stop and listen.
“Not like my people, sir. We—”
“You can’t kid me — the last of the Miwoks died off last year!” he said with inaccurate belligerence. “Ishi, that was his name! There was a movie on Showtime about him—”
Sonia, who had never heard of Ishi, interrupted with glib and equal inaccuracy. “Ishi was a Tamalpais Miwok. We are Coast Miwok.” In her eyes were Native American patience and pain. “There are only thirty-three of us left — the same number as our dear Savior’s years when He was crucified.”
A crowd of curious commuters was gathering. The man looked around and saw only sympathy for Sonia on the attentive faces. He muttered under his breath while digging in his pants pocket for a crumpled bill to stuff into her tin can.
“Here, for Chrissake.”
“The Great Spirit blesses you, sir.”
But it was a Bay Area Rapid Transit guard, not the Great Spirit, who materialized behind her to lay an ungentle hand on her shoulder. “No panhandling in the BART station, sister.”
Undismayed, Sonia displayed the bogus Chamber of Commerce “registered charity” badge that she’d paid a Gypsy documenter in San Jose $50 for. She didn’t know what it said, not knowing how to read, but it always worked like a charm.
“I’m not panhandling, sir.”
The guard’s hostility had lessened. He gestured at the broad yellow line at the edge of the platform where the silver bullet-shaped BART projectiles would come roaring past.
“You still can’t solicit in the BART station — it’s just too dangerous for the customers.” He gestured. “But you can do it upstairs, at the street entrance.”
“I’m sorry. This is my first day. I’m only nineteen.”
He hesitated. “Miwok, huh? I heard you say—”
“Only thirty-three of us are left, sir.”
“Aw, what the heir?”
The guard shoved a dollar in the slot. Sonia thanked him and managed to rattle two more donations into her coffee can on her way up to the Market/Powell entrance. The streetlights were on and the stream of BART commuters had thinned to a trickle; until Memorial Day brought summer’s tourist wave, she had to depend on the locals. Five more minutes, she’d quit for the day.
Rattle-rattle.
Clink.
“Great Spirit bless you, ma’am.”
The Miwok scam was a new one for her; for years, up and down the coast, she’d done Navajos. But last month she’d been forced to spend an afternoon hiding out from a Marin County bunco cop at the Miwok Museum in Novato; since she couldn’t read the captions under the displays, she’d followed around a schoolteacher explaining the exhibits to her second-graders. Sonia had immediately switched scams. In the Bay Area, she reasoned, local Miwok was bound to arouse more sympathy than far-off Navajo.