Missed the right key on his first hurried run-through. He patiently started back at the front of the ring.
“HEY, WHADDA FUCK YOU DOIN’ IN MY CAR?”
O’B looked up through the windshield at the man bearing down on him, and his airy quips in response — having a picnic, flying to St. Louis, like that — died on his lips.
Because this wasn’t just a Gyppo, this was, for God’s sake. Paul Bunyan! Seven feet tall and three wide, black curling beard, black curling hair, snapping black eyes, wearing a red plaid lumberjack shirt with the sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulders and even carrying an axe in one hand.
Well, a sledgehammer, really, but at a time like this who the hell cared?
O’B frantically worked his keys, at the same time calling, “From the bank, from the bank, about your auto loa —”
The sledgehammer came whistling in an arc through the open window at his head, wielded by a Schwarzenegger arm lumped and knotted with muscle. O’B ducked; as the sledge took out the windshield from the inside, he threw himself across the soft leather seat, jerked the door handle, and slid headfirst out the far side of the car as the huge man grunted with the effort of his next swing. This one knocked the door off the glove box an inch behind O’b’s departing right heel.
O’B ran around to the front of the car, held up a placating palm. His other hand rested on the hood of the car.
“You don’t understand! I’m from the bank. I’m not a car thief, I’m the legal repre—”
The sledge smashed in the hood where his hand had been a moment before. He ran back around to the driver’s side as his pursuer yelled, “You sonna beech, I gonna kill you!”
Jesus, that huge guy was fast. O’B fled down the side of the car with Paul Bunyan tight behind. Swinging.
CRUNCH! Driver’s door.
SMASH! Rear door.
THUD! Trunk lid.
O’B was able to dive back in through the rider’s side to get in a couple of twists with the next key because the sledge stuck for a moment in the hole it made in the trunk. The next blow just missed his ankle and demolished the Eldorado’s C/D player and tape deck as O’B dove out again.
Going around the front of the car as the big guy came out the driver’s side, yelling, “Gypsies are supposed to be nonviolent!”
Paul Bunyan paused to rip out the front seat and throw it across the street.
“I’LL GYPSY YOU, BASTARD SONNA BEECH...”
As O’B ran yet again, the sledge smashed in the headlights and grille. Back through the car, twist another key, the motor started, leave the key there, out again, run around it again, there went a hubcap wobbling away across the street, a blow at his legs took out the muffler. Back inside, slapped it into gear, crouched in the bare space behind the wheel, goosed it.
Gimpy-gimpy jerk-jerk but fast, must have bent an axle somehow, goddamnedest Gypsy he’d ever...
“KILLYOUKILLYOUKILLYOUKILL YOU KILL... YOU... KILL... YOU... KILL... YOU... kill you... kill...”
THUDS, CRASHES, CRUNCHES as Paul Bunyan ran alongside belaboring the Eldorado with his hammer. O’B finally began pulling away. Just as he reached the corner, Paul Bunyan threw the sledge after him, SMASH, there went the rear window...
Safely away.
Jackson B. Gideon, president of California Citizens Bank, had a poor big devil of a stomach that, like Cyrano’s nose, marched on before him by a quarter of an hour. He also had John L. Lewis eyebrows crawling like hairy caterpillars around the top of his face, a beaked fleshy nose, pouting lips Sly Stallone would have killed for, and two chins with a third working on its growth portfolio. He splayed out of his dove-grey wool double-breasted suit the way a sausage splays out when you cut its skin.
“It just won’t do,” he said. “It just won’t do at all.”
They were in the bank’s cul-de-sac storage lot behind an old factory backed up against the base of Telegraph Hill. Ballard, whose butt still hurt and who thought he was there to be praised for his good work, not reamed out by a bank president, started to speak — but Stan Groner cut in smoothly.
“Well, J.B., they did recover the car under very difficult conditions, and—”
“And the city wants to bring suit against the bank.” Ballard was astounded. “What the hell for?”
“New door for the precinct house,” explained Stan. “New light fixture. New front steps. New balustrade. New—”
“They were trying to kill me, for God sake!”
“Would have been cheaper if they had,” sniffed J.B.
Not that the bank had any intention of paying the city one red cent — J.B. had elucidated the policy at that day’s board meeting — but field men had to be kept firmly in their place.
He added in disdain, “Since it occurred in the course of a recovery action by Daniel Kearny Associates, I feel that the costs should come out of your company’s recompense.”
“Now just a damned...”
Stan Groner caught Ballard’s eye and shook his head slightly. Ballard stopped talking, face rich with unspent anger. Gideon, that smug bastard, had never been out in the field in his life, what did he know?
Stan had once been the same way. But they’d gotten him liquored up at one of Kearny’s infamous spaghetti feeds, and had taken him out on a salty repo in the Hunter’s Point housing projects, where a favorite sport at the time had been shooting windows out of Muni buses. Sitting behind the wheel, Bart Heslip had read the repo’s operating manual aloud to Groner by dashlight, hoping to find out how to release the handbrake, while the registered owner had been running upstairs for his shotgun.
They had made it away with nothing worse than a trunk lid full of buckshot, but Stan had been on their side ever since. Even now he was trying to pour oil on the troubled waters.
“I’m sure this sort of thing won’t happen again, J.B. Gypsies are nonviolent creatures who...”
His voice was drowned out by a terrible racket echo-chambered and amplified by the sounding-board walls of the deserted factory. RATTLE! of loose tinwork, COUGH! of ruptured muffler, SCRAPE! of rubber on pounded-in fenders, BANG! of misfiring engine, THUNK-THUNK of flattening tire.
All eyes turned toward the cacophony of noises coming their way; all breaths were bated. Somehow, all three of them knew.
Yes. Oh yes indeed. O’B. In a brand-new Eldorado.
Brand-new? But how could this be? Fenders smashed in, a tire flat. The top was crushed down to the window tops, the windshield was gone, the door panels were pounded in, the trunk was flattened, the hood was history, the grille was gone, various fluids dripped as smoke rose from both ends of the car.
O’B stepped gently on the brakes as he came up level with them. The engine died with a pop, pop, grunt, grunt, poof... silence. He had found a plastic bucket somewhere to upend where once the sleekly upholstered seat had been, and was hunkered down on it, under the flattened roof, as he drove the car. He shoved a shoulder against the door to open it. The door fell off with an agonized CLANK! of overstressed metal.
Totaled.
O’B stepped out and said jauntily to Stan, “The lighter still works, Reverend.”
“But... but... but... this... this can’t be... be... one of ours...” Groner managed to stammer out.
“It can. It is. He beat it to death trying to get me.”
“Gypsies are nonviolent,” snapped J.B. in his nastiest give-the-teller-hell voice.