She pulled the cord, left the streetcar at the transit transfer point on Seventh and Market so as to not walk too directly to Columbine Residence for Women on Breen Place above the old Main Library. Single women only, no men above first-floor administration, and you had to check in before midnight, no matter what your age.
White-haired, stern-faced Mrs. Newman was already behind the check-in table set four-square across the entryway.
“Good evening, Mrs. Newman,” said Yana gravely.
“Good evening to you, Miss Thatcher,” Newman said, beaming at the taffy-haired Yana. Such a wholesome girl.
Working in a mortuary was unclean employment for any Rom, but the women’s residence was spic and span. No cop, no Gypsy, no husband in L.A., if still alive, would ever think of looking for her at either place. In many ways she was more comfortable right now as a hillbilly lady named Miss Becky Thatcher from Arkansas’s Ouachitas Mountains than she would be as a Muchwaya Romni.
In her room, she removed her raincoat and saw Yasmine Vlanko in the mirror. She felt anger. She could thank Ephrem Poteet for putting her through the last two weeks. He was causing her even more trouble dead than alive.
By an effort of will she calmed herself. Za Develesa, Ephrem, she whispered. Go with God.
Twenty
Stroll south from the Ferry Building on the once-proud Embarcadero, and you will run into a new, gentrified water-front of high-price condos and inset-tile walkways and lampposts with wrought-iron scrollwork. Stroll north, and you will run into the almost-desperate carnival-house gaiety of Pier 39, and, beyond that, Fisherman’s Wharf crowded not with the crab and salmon fishermen of yesteryear, but with tourists.
Midway between these two extremes, shoehorned in between two empty piers abandoned as the shipping moved away to other ports, is a tiny, forgotten waterfront bar called the Marlin Spike, where it is always 1947. You drink straight shots with longneck beer chasers, you eat steak sandwiches on crusty French rolls with a side of fries, and nobody has ever heard of cholesterol. Above the bar is a faded ten-foot-long photo of thirty naughty bare-butted women wearing only sailors’ caps and middy blouses, winking bawdily over their shoulders at the camera.
It was nearly midnight when Nanoosh Tsatshimo slid into the high-backed booth in a corner overlooked by no windows. This con, as this city, was new to him: he usually worked silver-plating schemes in Chicago’s teeming South Side where the Jewish working-class ghetto rubbed elbows with the black working-class ghetto. He took a long, grateful gulp of the proffered icy beer.
“You have chosen well,” he said.
Immaculata Bimbai was in her foreign countess mode tonight.
“We can speak freely here. The bartender is one of us.”
In Immaculata’s jewelry-store cons, youthful Lazlo, her little brother, usually carried luggage as a bellboy, or carted around empty boxes from upscale shops. Immaculata had made him a major player for the first time; he could no more contain his excitement than a puppy can contain its wriggling.
“How did it go?” he demanded eagerly.
Immaculata said to him sharply, “Show respect, Lazlo. This is an important man in our kumpania — an elder.”
Lazlo muttered his abashed apology; Nanoosh merely grinned.
“My children, let me tell you. First, I was never any closer to L.A. than Rudolph’s house in Point Richmond.”
Lazlo said, “How did you make the jewelry-store guy think you were there?”
“Rudolph did it with his computer. He says e-mail responses on the Internet can seem to originate from wherever you say they originate.”
“So he sent the guy an e-mail that was supposed to come from that Los Angeles Gemstone Mart you made up?”
“Exactly, Immaculata. He was kuriaio — he was greedy, he wanted to make all his money at once. I told him I wanted seventy-five thousand dollars for the emerald, and he offered only thirty-seven-five. Then...”
And with exquisite timing, Nanoosh fell silent.
“Don’t do that to us, Nanoosh!” pleaded Immaculata. Her life was jewelry-store cons; if this one came off as hoped, she foresaw great things in it for her and Lazlo.
Nanoosh, milking his moment, said, “Then I took his check.”
“His check?” exclaimed Immaculata, appalled. “No! Cash!”
Was this how he conned ’em back there in Chicago? If so...
“Certified,” said Nanoosh.
And started to laugh as his thick fingers upended his crumpled Safeway shopping bag. Thick sheafs of banded green-backs spilled out on the tabletop.
“How much?” Lazlo asked. He looked even younger than he had while playing Donny, the nerd from Silicon Valley.
“Fifty thousand,” said Nanoosh in phony indifference.
“Take out my twenty-five thousand seed money, and that’s twenty-five net,” breathed Immaculata. She was still as beautiful as she had been while playing May, the putative bride; but with her own character back in her face and eyes, she looked closer to her real 32 than to May’s 22. “That’s eight thousand two hundred and fifty for the Muchwaya—”
“And five thousand, five hundred eighty-three and change for each of us three,” supplied Nanoosh.
Immaculata, her busy fingers already opening the packets, said with a sort of wonder, “And we didn’t break a single law.”
Several vineyards around the small wine-country town of Sonoma have tasting rooms that bring throngs of tourists and Bay Area locals during daylight hours. Flowers are everywhere. General Vallejo’s home and grounds have been rigorously preserved. The bakery’s French bread lures San Francisco insomniacs to Sonoma at 6:00 A.M. so they get it hot from the oven. Picturesque shops and restaurants try to hang on to tradition while catering to the tourist buck. It is a mostly successful attempt.
But now, on these small-town, weeknight streets, everything was closed except a lone bar facing the town square. No car moved, no pedestrian strolled. To O’B, parked on the far side of the square from the bar and staring across its ponds and playground, dominated by the 1800s town hall, Sonoma looked like a 1950s movie set. He felt frustrated. He had already checked the only phone directory available, back at the crossroads leading into town; no Blands listed. And he couldn’t really ask anyone questions anyway. If Tim Bland had local ties, a question might inspire a phone call that would alert him to the search.
A patrol car pulled up beside O’B. The lone cop stuck a square, tough, sleepy-looking face out of his window.
“You need any help, sir?” Both question and voice were courteous; but the eyes were the cynical cop’s eyes issued with the uniform at every police academy’s passing-out parade.
O’B took a chance. “You know a guy named Tim Bland?”
“Don’t ring a bell. Why you lookin’ for him?”
Just what he didn’t want, a curious cop. He said quickly, “Tim and my kid sister had a fight. She’s damn near forty, he’s thirty, and now she’s sorry, and she wants me to find him tonight...”
The cop yawned involuntarily. “Family,” he grunted, and departed. O’B sighed. He hadn’t eaten anything since lunch.
After thinking long and hard, Trin Morales left his apartment in his usual circuitous fashion, at DKA surreptitiously switched into a 1997 Honda Accord repo awaiting transport back to Skokie, Illinois. Driving repos, ever, was strictly against DKA policy; but who cared about the rules? Trin was maybe talking his life here. He left a phone message for Milagrita to catch the Mission Street BART — Bay Area Rapid Transit — at the 23rd and Mission station in time to reach the Ocean Avenue station at 2:00 A.M. Take the covered walkway to Geneva Avenue. Be alone.