Stan the Man wilted into Stan the Boy. Ballard turned red trying to keep from laughing. O’B, who had made out a condition report when he had stopped to get the plastic bucket seat, held the completed form out to J.B. Gideon with a straight face.
“If you’ll just sign for it. Reverend, I’ll be on my way.”
Gideon stared at him with real hatred, then turned to Stan the Boy. “I will expect you in my office in sixty minutes, Mr. Groner,” he said thickly. “We have a great deal to discuss.”
He stalked unevenly away across the rubble-strewn storage lot. Stan ran after him for a few paces, but Gideon was already in his Lexus LS400 and slamming the door with eloquent rage. The car sped off. Stan turned blindly back to O’B, who was laughing, and Ballard, who was too solemnly checking the car’s serial number against his list of the Gypsy cars’ I.D. numbers.
“I’m ruined,” groaned Groner.
O’B guffawed and shoved the condition report under his nose. Stan started to automatically scrawl his signature across the bottom of it, but Ballard held up a detaining hand.
They both turned to look at him.
“What?” demanded O’B a bit shrilly. The expression on Ballard’s face had made the laughter die on his lips.
Ballard waved an airy hand at the Cadillac. “This isn’t one of our Gyppo cars. Its l.D. number isn’t on our list.”
O’B turned bone white. His freckles looked like measles against that suddenly ashen skin. “But... it has to be...”
“Okay, you’ve had your fun,” said Groner. “Now go give the man back his car — and get me the right one. Right away. Reverend.” Then Stan the Man started an ugly chortling sound.
He was laughing.
Chapter twenty-six
Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar, incredibly beautiful and incredibly wealthy Brazilian coffee heiress — recently widowed — passed through the gilt-edged motor-driven plate-glass door of bascom’s (rome, london, paris, amsterdam, beverly hills). Even in parlous economic times, these first few blocks of Rodeo Drive north of Wilshire in Beverly Hills are... well, Rodeo Drive. Occasionally Worth Avenue in Palm Beach pretends to the crown, but... after all, Florida...
The diminutive button-eyed youth behind Dona Dulcinea wore the Beverly Wilshire’s distinctive livery and was festooned with boxes: square boxes, oblong boxes, oval boxes, boxes large and boxes small, boxes flat and boxes deep, boxes broad and boxes skinny. All bearing labels from the most exclusive shoppes and boutiques up and down Rodeo Drive.
“My hotel has call,” announced Dona Dulcinea imperiously.
Her hotel hadn’t, but nonetheless Monsieur Bascom himself surged forward with her entrance, practiced eye agleam at the compulsive-shopper possibilities suggested by all those boxes.
“Ah, yes, of course, Madam...”
“Dona Dulcinea Inez Mattheu Duchez Escobar of São Paulo. Brazil.” Her accent made “Bretheel” of the final word. Monsieur Bascom inclined his beautifully greyed coiffeur as she added, “Someone should help the...” She gestured helplessly at the bellhop. “Mmmm, how you say, young servant man...”
M. Bascom was already snapping his fingers without looking around. He had a patrician face with a thin nose pinched at the sides, and thin lips that could by a sycophantic pucker become a rosebud or by simple compression a white line of fury.
“Could the word be ‘bellhop,’ madam?”
“Sim! Bellhop! The hotel has give...” She broke off, looking extremely sexy as she almost giggled. “No, has lend me the bellhop to help with my...” She rolled around the word on her tongue. “... mmm, buying. You sell diamonds, não?”
“Yes, of course. We sell... diamonds.”
Bascom gave the final word the reverence usually reserved for all the names of God. His snapped fingers had brought a magnificent salesman to help the bellboy jettison all those boxes as M. Bascom led the fair Dulcinea to the gleaming glass cases where bascom’s most stunning creations dwelt in luxury.
“If one could inquire as to madam’s diamond needs...”
Again that charming almost half-giggle. “I no really know... but I weel when I see!” Her eyes got very wide and round and her mouth formed a lovely little “O.” “But whatever you show me must be most... tasteful. Nothing, mmm... vulgar, não? The absolute... how does one say...”
“Crème de la crème?” suggested Bascom.
“Sim. Exactissimo.”
Bascom had little Spanish and less Portuguese, so he found himself utterly charmed by Dona Dulcinea’s accent as she went through thirty minutes of brooches, earrings, and necklaces “not quite right” for her needs. Of course, since he had an addiction to scoring sexually with wealthy women no matter what their age or looks, he was already in thrall to the Dona’s bounteous feminine charms. Finally, he suggested that if she could perhaps tell him the occasion she sought to enhance with diamonds...
Sim, but could she have a glass of Pellegrino, perhaps... ver’ hot in here...
Refreshed and restored, she explained that it was a little — pronounced “leetle” — somet’ings for her first dinner party at the hacienda since the death... close to tears here... of her beloved “hoosban” eighteen months before...
Dwelling on this untimely death made her feel “a leetle faint” again, but she recovered quickly when he showed her loose teardrop diamonds set in gold which could be worn as singlets, clustered as a pendant, worn around the neck on a gold chain...
Yes! Dona Dulcinea’s interest quickened at the sight of them.
For some time the bored bellhop had been following them around the store, staring at the wonders being displayed, but unfortunately was just too far away to help catch Dona Dulcinea when she swooned and fell heavily against M. Bas-com.
As her unexpected dead weight bore Bascom to the floor, her hand struck the edge of the velvet display tray upon which the diamonds nestled. Teardrops flew in every direction. Before the salespeople could converge, the bellhop was crouched beside her, mouth working as in distress, cradling her head with his hands.
He gulped back tears. Immediately, her beautiful dark eyes fluttered open and she gazed deep into M. Bascom’s blue ones.
“I am so ver’ sorree,” she said in a little voice. The eyelids fluttered again. “The loss... of my hoosban’... sometime it has seem... I cannot... go on...”
More Pellegrino, a few minutes in a brocaded chair by the office, and Dona Dulcinea was much restored. But too upset
to, mmm, how you say, do more shop today. For now, she would return to the Beevairly Weelsheer to rest...
Without qualms, M. Bascom led her solicitously to the door. One teardrop was missing, a stone valued at $7,000, but she could not have taken it. She was, after all, very wealthy in her own right; and she had been in her swoon at the very moment the diamonds had become vulnerable. Staff was still looking, probably it had rolled under some distant display case...
Dona Dulcinea gave M. Bascom her hand to kiss and flashed her big round eyes at him. “If it is not found by tomorrow when I return, I mus’ pay for the diamon’ who is missing!”
“No need, madam,” said Bascom gallantly. “It will turn up.”
“But I insist — and I have just decide. Tomorrow, I weel buy ten of the teardrops!”
At the curb was her beautiful cream and grey Fleetwood Sixty Special four-door sedan. A grey-haired heavy-jawed man, obviously her hired driver, was doing something under the dash. But as Bascom reached out to open the door for the dona, the man started the Caddy and accelerated away into traffic without a backward turn of his head.