Goddam bus was just pulling away when he got out to the street. It figured. Another half-hour wait.
May as well check the P.O. box again even though he’d checked it this morning — Kearny might have sent his $100 same-day delivery or something.
To pass the time, Kearny was playing the guessing game about those entering the post office. Three beautiful women in their 20s — easy, actresses from Universal. An older woman with white hair and the bearing of a queen — director, perhaps? A white-haired southern colonel limping along with his gold-headed ebony cane — aging character actor in a TV mellerdrama. A couple of suits — had to be execs from the Black Tower.
But no Ephrem Poteet, Gypsy. Not coming tonight. Kearny’d hang on for another hour just to...
Flash of red! The envelope, please. Never would have taken the old Kentucky colonel for Poteet, must be running a scam. Looking quickly around the lobby — Kearny was glad he was outside in his car — then ripping open the red envelope. Taking out the sheet of letterhead, staring at the $100 folded inside... Pocketing it, quickly caning his way out of the building.
Kearny already had slid down in his seat so he was not visible over the dashboard. This guy was jumpy as a cat. Watched the angled rearview until the Gyppo’s retreating back came into it. Shifted around, staying low in the seat until the bus came and Poteet boarded it.
Tailing a bus is not as easy as it might seem, not during rush hour. You can get blocked off by other cars, lose your man when he debarks. But Kearny was an old hand at it, so he was driving by when Poteet walked into a run-down residence hotel on North Main not far from the old Union Station, was parked in a meter space across the street when Poteet emerged minus his disguise thirty minutes later.
He was sipping a draft three stools down when Poteet got into an argument over liar’s dice and got 86’d from the first of several bars he visited that evening. After the third, Kearny dropped out to buy a cheap camera and film and find a motel for the night. He settled on the Sherman Oaks Inn on Ventura. He still didn’t know what Poteet’s scam was, didn’t have any leverage on him yet. Which meant a busy day tomorrow.
He didn’t bother to call the office. Nothing to report.
Yet.
Chapter twenty-three
With Kearny gone off somewhere, Giselle had been stuck behind her desk all day. Now, 7:00 P.M., the after-school girls had abandoned the automatic typewriters, the skeleton night staff had arrived — and Giselle was still here. And cranky.
The limo outfit in L.A. hadn’t called back. Dan Kearny hadn’t called in, no idea where the big bum was. Ballard was probably playing footsie with his red-hot Gypsy mama and getting all sorts of hot leads, while Giselle hadn’t even time to ask any hotels if they had an Angelo Grimaldi registered, or to check out who Theodore Winston White III in Marin might happen to be.
And on top of everything else, she still hadn’t found a new cleaning service whose work she’d trust, and the scrap paper was piling up and... oh, to heck with it for tonight. She reached for her purse. Field men were in and out all night, but when she worked the office she liked to be gone before seven. As she stood up, her personal phone that didn’t go through the switchboard rang. Kearny. Finally. She picked up.
“Dammit, Dan, where are—”
“Yeah, where the hell is he?” Stan Groner. Pissed.
“Stan!” She put delight and surprise in her voice. “You’re working late. You want to talk with Dan? He just—”
“Don’t try to con me, Giselle. He missed a ten o’clock this morning, and Jane said he’s out of town. Now, where is—”
“Hot lead on the Gyppos,” she ventured promptly.
“Hot?” he asked in a slightly mollified voice, then turned hard again. As hard as Stan could get. “It better be hot. I’m getting a lot of heat myself, from the president of the bank.”
“Hey, we got three of them already, Stan. What do—”
“Three out of thirty-one.” He became his old querulous self. “What’d you guys do to that one Ballard got, Giselle?”
Since the Sonia Lovari lead had been dug up by Ballard, he had been credited with the Allante.
“We... he got it in front of an Indian bar, Stan,” she said over the clatter of auto typewriters in the big echoing room.
“Indian bar? The Gyppo sold it to an Indian?”
“No, no — her street scam is posing as an Indian. Collects for nonexistent Native American charities and keeps the money.”
“Jesus!” Giselle could almost see him shaking his head. “If they’d put that much energy into working they’d be—”
“Yeah. Rich. But would they have so much fun?”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“The side with the big bucks.”
“Right answer,” he chuckled. “Listen, I want to see Kearny here tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. I mean it, woman.”
Giselle grimaced. She had put down her purse and gotten a cigarette lit while they had been talking.
“I’m not sure he’ll make it, Stan. To tell the truth, we’re not in communication with him right now. Will I do?”
“I wasn’t a married man, I’d take that as a proposition.”
“Sure you would,” she said, and laughed.
Giselle liked Stan, a lot, and knew he would back them as far as he could with the other bank officials. In the midst of her warm thoughts about him, he ruined her evening.
“Remember that old black gal, Maybelle Pernod?”
“Sure, I repo’d her car and she redeemed and—”
“Pick it up again.”
“What?” Giselle was shocked. She had sympathized with Maybelle on some deep level not available to her conscious mind. “As I remember it, Stan, the next payment isn’t due until—”
“The bank’s declaring the contract null and void. They want it picked up for charges. Repo on sight.” He added almost defensively, “Dan told me she’s living out of the darned thing, Giselle, hooking at night, for God’s sake!”
“I know, I know, but I really like that old woman.”
“You know? Why didn’t I know? Repo on sight.”
Giselle heaved a sad sigh as she dug out Maybelle’s file and typed up a new REPO ON SIGHT for her. Legally, if a conditional auto sales contract had late or repo charges pending, it could be declared null and void and the car picked up. She stapled copies of all previous field and skip-tracing reports face-out to the back of the assignment sheet, then hand-wrote and stuck a yellow Post-it note on the sheet that Maybelle had been last seen walking the dog around Divisadero and Turk.
Giselle sighed, “Oh... dammit, anyway!” as she put the assignment into the deadly Ken Warren’s In box.
Fat black Maybelle Pernod parked in the shadows near her usual fireplug on Turk Street, and, as usual, had herself a good despairing cry. Then she dried her tears and heaved her hefty body, sausaged into its red sequined dress, out of the car.
If she could turn just three tricks tonight on the front seat of the Lincoln, what with the piecework at the dry-cleaning plant and all, she’d have enough for the April 30 car note and wouldn’t have to do no more whoring again until mid-May.
She hated it, but what choice did she have? Times was hard, she didn’t have no skills, she was 61 years old, she couldn’t lose her car, no place to sleep if she did, and no money to buy another one...
She took up her stroll in front of Red Hot Ribs. The gal on nights, Edwina, didn’t never drop no dime on her to get her busted for soliciting. Back and forth through the puddle of muddy-yellow light, tempting smell of scorching meat and barbecue sauce from inside, light, voices, laughter, people in and out. Black people, her people, she didn’t get much trade from them — look at her, look away. White boys, mostly. Lookin fo Mama.