Ballard had managed to get his feet on one of the steps by this time, too dazed to know his ripped pants were puddled around his ankles so he was buck-ass naked from the waist down. He was waving his arms around in front of him, panting as if he’d just run a footrace.
“Peaceful repossession, peaceful repossession!” he yelped at the dozen guns’ big unwinking eyes staring at him.
“The hell you say,” drawled the Irish desk sergeant.
“From... the Rainbird... Lounge...”
“Ah,” said the sergeant in soft understanding, and holstered his weapon. All the cops knew the Rainbird. After a moment, the rest followed suit, putting their guns away also.
Giselle staggered around the car from the driver’s side, blood running down her chin from her bitten lip.
“I checked... I.D. number... we got... right car...” Then she saw Ballard and laughed weakly. “So this... is how it’s done... maestro?”
“It got done,” said Ballard with great dignity.
Looking at Giselle looking at Ballard, the sergeant said, with Irish rectitude, “Hey, Sam Spade, better get your pants on.”
Ballard, suddenly realizing his condition, jerked his pants up with a savage gesture.
And shrieked in pain as the rough fabric scraped across innumerable splinters to drive them deeper into his bruised and lacerated rear end.
Chapter twenty-two
Because Giselle was out in the field chasing Gypsies, Dan Kearny was stuck in the office with all the routine paperwork they usually shared. And it was making him feel old.
Time was, his field agents needed him to clean up their messes; now, he’d trained ’em to be the best in the business.
Time was, at Walter’s Auto Detectives — before he founded DKA with Giselle and O’B and Kathy Onoda, God rest her soul — he was the best field agent in the business.
Now... Old. Mighty old.
His phone rang. Jane Goldson’s voice was in his ear. “A man calling himself Ephrem Poteet is on line—”
Kearny, suddenly twenty years younger, punched into the blinking red light. “Whadda ya have for me?”
A recognized chuckle and heavy tones came at him over the wire. “Always right to business with you, ain’t it, Kearny?”
“Gadje manners.”
“Okay. Los Angeles. Silverlake District. Wasso Tomeshti. TV sets. And I’ll take my hundred bucks now, up front.”
“Not for that you won’t. I need more. What’s the scam?”
“Factory-direct to consumer. That’s all you get.”
Kearny recognized finality, but more than that, had a flash of inspiration.
“Your hundred’s in the mail.”
He hung up, sat there behind his desk. Fired up a Marlboro, forgot to shake out the match until the flame touched his fingertips. In all the years he’d dealt through various P.O. boxes with Poteet, they had never laid eyes on each other. He took a puff of his cigarette.
“No,” he said aloud. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”
Not this time. This time he needed leverage, or Poteet would string out his info for weeks in an attempt to raise the $100-per ante — while the subject Gypsies scattered like quail.
Right now Poteet was calling the shots, and Dan Kearny didn’t like anyone calling the shots on him.
He didn’t like feeling old, either.
He shook his heavy silvered head, chuckled, jerked open a drawer to grab out one of the made-up Gypsy folders with everything they knew on each Cadillac. He didn’t have a set of keys cut for the cars, but what the hell? Stay hungry.
As he went past Jane’s desk, she piped up cheerily, “Where to, Mr. K? Your meeting with Stan at the bank isn’t until—”
“Cancel it.”
“But—”
“And hold my calls.”
“But—”
“Hold tomorrow’s calls, too.”
“But...”
“And maybe the day’s after that.”
From her wastebasket he grabbed a discarded FINAL NOTICE window envelope with a canceled stamp on it — a shocking-red envelope designed to catch a delinquent’s eye — and took a sheet of letterhead from her desk. Then he was gone.
Few would recognize Wasso Tomeshti in sleek Mr. Adam Wells.
Wasso Tomeshti was a greasy-curled rom who wore a heavy curled mustache with a day’s beard, bright shirts, a brick-red bandana around his thick throat, and black jeans tucked into the tops of black leather hack boots. Mr. Adam Wells, his finest creation, wore a painfully close shave, too much cheap cologne, a gangrenous three-piece electric-green suit, a purple and gold plaid shirt, a paisley tie mostly orange, and black loafers.
“Want a little air?” Mr. Adam Wells asked expansively.
“No, I’m fine,” said Sam Hood.
If Sam Hood thought Adam Wells sleazy — a compliment in Sam’s book — he also knew Adam Wells was making enough of those big fat greasy bucks everyone yearned for to tool along Ventura Boulevard in a white Seville STS four-door notchback that went for $40,000 stripped. And this baby was loaded. Ultra-soft leather seats, hand-fitted to the car with French upholstery seams; air, Delco AM/FM stereo deck and C/D player, custom phaeton roof, power everything... still had paper plates and the new-car smell.
Like riding on a cloud.
“Trade every year,” Wells was bragging. “One a these, then a Lincoln Town Car, then a Chrysler Imperial.” A chuckle. “Gotta keep the Big Three going, y’know.” Sam Hood knew. He also knew he wanted some of Wells’s big fat greasy bucks. Wells added, “Yeah, strictly American, that’s me.”
“Except for TV sets?” Sam put a sly question mark on it.
“The TV sets are business.” Wells slapped the steering wheel with beringed fingers. “This here is personal. This here is love of country.” He gestured with the stogie. “There she is, just ahead.”
“She” was a nearly completed motel on the south side of the Boulevard near Tujunga that damn near popped Sam’s eyes out of his head. Behind it rose green-foliaged hills studded with million-dollar homes. There was an obscene amount of construction going on along Ventura, but none of it was more opulent than this block-square U-shaped motel complex.
Wells pulled the Seville over to the curb to gesture.
“In the middle there’s gonna be a fountain. Palm trees, lots of shrubbery. We got a Spago’s coming in, shops, boutiques, indoor an’ outdoor pool, sauna, a World Gym...”
Having a little trouble with his voice, Sam asked, “How many color TV sets did you say you’re gonna need from me?”
“I didn’t, but maybe three hundred to start. Sure, that’s chicken feed, but we’ll double-deck next year and’ll need another five hundred. Not much even then, I know, but—”
“No, no — no job too small,” said Sam quickly.
You bet your butt, thought Wasso. Three hundred would clear out this gadjo’s stock on hand — he’d checked. That’s why Wasso had picked him even though he might be connected. A dangerous man, perhaps, but hungry enough to be stupid.
When Wells had wanted “a few” color consoles for “his” motel at a discount off the already low wholesale delivery price that was Sam’s stock-in-trade, Hood had pictured a couple dozen run-down units huddled around a postage-stamp pool with dead bugs floating around in it. But this...
This was money in the bank. His entire stock in one transaction! Since all his TVs fell off the back of the truck, anyway — with the driver’s reimbursed cooperation — he was going to make a dizzying amount of money off this turkey.