Along both sides of the broad open grease-stained concrete floor were work bays, each holding a Cadillac in some stage of undress, like backstage at the ballet. Blue-coveralled mechanics swarmed around the cars like stage-door johnnies around the scantily clad dancers. The place echoed hollowly with the clank of tools and thunk-thunk of compressed air hoses. No Mustang.
So he went down to the ornate Olwen showroom with its lofty fake-marble pillars. Sleek Escalantes, Fleetwoods, Allantes, Eldorados, DeVille DTSs, Broughams, and an Escalade 2000 SUV rested in stately splendor on the gleaming display floor. Each sported its stunning price tag and its new-car smell, like an expensive call girl negotiating her splendid fee while poufing Chanel No. 22 talc in all the old familiar places.
Ken was immune to their charms. No Roxborough, no ’66 Mustang. He went down a narrow aisle between glassed-in cubicles to find sales manager Paddy McBain behind his paper-littered desk. Paddy was a thick-bodied man with most of his hair and the crinkly blue eyes and humorous mouth of the professional Irishman who always leads the parade on St. Paddy’s Day.
“BeJaysus and it’s Ken. And how’s the bhoyo?” He stood, reached across the desk to shake hands.
“Hngfyn,” said Ken.
It was the first of only four words he spoke. McBain was never able to understand one single damned thing he said, ever, so Ken always wrote out what he wanted. McBain scanned his note.
“Yeah, Chris Roxborough, started last Thursday. He’s got a customer out in a demo right now, hell of a salesman. But Chris isn’t driving any sixty-six Mustang ragtop — he drives a van. He coaches Little League, you know.”
“Hgneys, Hny hknoh,” said Ken wearily.
McBain didn’t understand that, either.
Ken left almost convinced Roxborough was as squeaky-clean as everyone seemed to believe. But crossing the showroom he was intercepted by a lean, handsome, impeccably dressed African-American with bright eyes and a pencil-thin mustache. The man jabbed an angry forefinger at Ken’s chest.
“If I see you around my neighborhood again, dickhead, I’m calling the cops. If you said anything to Paddy just now that makes trouble for me here, I’m calling my attorney. If you have a sister, you sorry piece of shit, go on home and fuck her.”
Wrong, all wrong for a guy with his sort of surface charm. He was hiding that Mustang, and he was sore because he was afraid Ken was going to find out where he was hiding it.
Well, Ken was. Make book on it.
Twenty-three
Dan Kearny, behind his desk, got out a cigarette, looked at it, and stuck it back into his pack. “I really gotta get serious about quitting.” He lifted his coffee cup, then looked up at Giselle from under raised brows. “Coffee’s still okay, right?”
“Decaf,” she grinned.
He chuckled. “Okay, shoot. I presume Larry’s on Yana’s case full-time, and that he thinks she’s innocent. Right?”
“Absolutely, until convinced otherwise.” She was rummaging in her purse. “Here’s a number you might reach him, evenings.”
“His latest doxy?”
“She’s a really nice girl, actually. Midori Tagawa.”
“Little Japanese number lives in the back apartment?”
When she nodded, he crumpled up the paper and threw it in the wastebasket. Midori reminded him of Kathy Onoda, their much-missed office manager who had died of a CVA at age twenty-nine; let ’em have their loving in peace. He shook his head.
“Nice girl like that and she gets mixed up with Ballard, for Chrissake. Okay, where do we stand with Wiley’s classics?”
“O’B got the Panoz and Morales knocked off the Acura. And Ken says Roxborough has been driving the sixty-six Mustang.”
“So why isn’t it in the barn?”
“He’s gotta see it first. He’ll get it.”
“When? Stan wants to auction those cars off.”
“Whoa, Dan’l! What about my little red Alfa Quadrifoglio Spider? Give me a chance to get it together. They still haven’t brought in the Aston Martin and the Jag convertible.”
“Okay, okay. So put O’B and Morales back on their regular cases and divvy up Larry’s files between ’em.” He picked up his cigarettes, laid them down again. “And tell you what. On the Gypsy case, line Bart up with a new set of wheels, and send him up Poteet’s backtrail. Maybe have him start with that Bunco guy, what’s his name...”
Giselle made a face. “Dirty Harry.”
“Yeah. Him. Maybe he knows what Poteet was doing when he was living up here. If he doesn’t, send Bart down to L.A. to snoop around. I’ll give Staley a toot and ask for information on both Ristik and Poteet.”
How’s that for delaying an auction?
Lulu was still aghast at the idea of using the gadje to look for one of their own even if she was marime.
“What’s he want all that stuff for?” she demanded crossly.
“Kearny thinks Ramon might know things about his sister that we don’t,” said Rudolph.
“You know more about Yana than anybody.”
“Not since the kris declared her marime.”
Staley sighed. “Looking back, maybe that wasn’t such a hot idea, that marime.” He waved a hand. “Okay, let ’em find Ramon. He don’t matter. But Ephrem — why they wanna spend all that money nosin’ around him? He’s dead, he can’t tell ’em nothing about Yana.”
“ ’Cept that she killed him, and he’s already told us that,” said Lulu snidely.
“Okay, you guys, as King, I say we hold off giving Kearny the Marine World stuff on Ephrem.”
Richard Kinsman Robinson was six-foot-one and 225 pounds and had broad meaty shoulders and big hands with thick fingers that could crack walnuts without effort. Most people found his size intimidating; as a guard in the tough state prison at Walla Walla, Washington, he had gotten his edge from intimidation.
But as head of security at Xanadu, Victor Marr’s hilltop sanctuary at the edge of Big Sur’s rugged Los Padres National Forest, he was intimidated by his boss. Victor Marr had eyes that could eviscerate you with a glance, bury you with a glare.
At 9:00 A.M., R.K. was on his rounds with Charon and Hecate, the twin Dobermans. Suddenly the dogs came to attention, ears pricked, lean bodies taut with incipient aggression. Then R.K. heard it, too: the unmistakable whomp-whompwhomp-whomp of helicopter blades.
He knew that chopper. Marr rarely showed up at the mountaintop retreat, and called ahead when he did, which suited R.K. just fine. It gave him a chance to get everything dressed down and tightened up before Marr arrived. Until this morning. He broke into a heavy-bodied run across the broad green grounds.
“The bastard!” R.K. exclaimed bitterly to the dogs.
The big sleek Bell 206 JetRanger came up out of the rising sun, over the tops of the dense stands of evergreens flanking the grounds, the anti-collision beacon on its upper tail fin blinking pink in the bright morning light. It came in almost as if it meant to strafe Marr’s three-story flat-roofed futuristic building, and settled on the roof landing pad. Marr and his entourage came strolling out of the front door just as R.K., panting, arrived with the dogs at the foot of the broad front stairs. With Marr were his pilot, a military-looking man named Carmody who had served in Desert Storm, and Marko, his personal secretary. Marko looked as if any keyboards he was familiar with would wear ammo belts and magazines rather than computers.
“Sir! Stop right there!” barked R.K.