32 Cadillacs (8 page)

*   *   *

By 10:30
A.M.
Yana and Ristik had gotten the calls on all seven vehicles; they shut down the phone room just as Marino slid a withdrawal
slip across the polished surface of a teller’s window in Cal-Cit Main at One Embarcadero Plaza.

“I want to withdraw ten thousand in cash from my account.”

“Ten thousand? Cash? That’s—”

“Miss Wooding assured me there would be no problem.”

Helen Wooding appeared as if on cue. With continental flair, Marino kissed the air a millimeter above her hand.

“What’s the trouble here?” she demanded sharply of the teller. “Mr. Grimaldi’s account certainly is good for the withdrawal
and it meets the fed’s ten thousand limit, so—”

“Right away, Miss Wooding.” The girl was blushing. She started putting away her rubber stamps and locking up her drawers so
she could go get that large an amount of cash.

“Trainees,” said Helen in a voice deliberately loud enough for the departing teller to hear. She added with a coquettish laugh,
“You should have come directly to me, Angelo.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you with such a trifle.” His fine dark eyes lit up. “Since I hope to be settling here on a permanent
basis, I have been looking for a house to buy as a company investment. And I have run across a marvelous bargain out in the
…” he paused, grinning, “the Avenues, is that right? Off Sloat Boulevard? An old Italian gentleman who said I reminded him
of his son…”

“The Avenues. Yes. South of the park is the Sunset. North of it is called the Richmond District.”

“Sunset… Richmond… I’ll remember.”

The teller had returned. She counted out the cash, Marino put it in his slim attaché case, saying to Helen, “Maybe we can
go see the property on Monday.”

“Monday?”

He snapped shut the case. “Lunch—remember? And perhaps, since seeing the house will be a business activity for you, we could
take the whole afternoon… perhaps spend the evening together…” He made subdued kissy-kiss noises with his lips. Helen Wooding
actually blushed. “I’ll call you Monday morning first thing…”

“Oh, yes,” she said breathlessly. “Call me.”

*   *   *

Forty-five minutes later, Marino deposited the $10,000 cash in the San Rafael Blue Skye account. He didn’t invoke Rita Fetherton’s
assistance for the deposit as he would for the withdrawal; banks are delighted to see cash come in the door.

As he walked out, one of the two phones began ringing in a small office over an electronics store on lower Fourth just three
blocks away. Immaculata Bimbai, who fainted in jewelry stores, spoke breathily into the mouthpiece.

“Five-four-nine-oh… Yes, this is Fashion Fabrics… Credit Department?” Immaculata, who was slim as a pencil and elegant as
the diamonds she was always trying to steal, gave a sensual full-bellied laugh that suggested a woman with three chins and
a milkshake in each hand. “Honey, I’m the whole ball of wax here. Owner, president, credit manager, sales manager…” Another
pause. “Tibo Tene? Sure, Tibo’s been our fabric buyer for, oh, hell, I can get the records, but over ten years, anyway…”

As she talked, the other phone began ringing. Josef Adamo, the fat bogus road-paving contractor, picked up.

“Three-seven-six-six.”

Like San Francisco, the North Bay operation would account for eight Cadillacs, but was more spread out: the calls would be
coming in from Corte Madera in Marin County; Vallejo in Solano; Petaluma, and Santa Rosa in Sonoma; Napa in Napa County (the
wine country); and Ukiah in Mendocino, way up there in the redwoods.

At 1:00
P.M.
, Marino took the $10,000 in cash back
out
of the San Rafael account, and drove across the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge to deposit it in the East Bay account. At the
same time, Immaculata and Josef closed down their San Rafael phone room and two other Gypsies opened theirs over a Greek
taverna
on Clay and Second near Oakland’s Jack London Square.

The whole operation was completed clown in San Jose just at 6:00
P.M.
bank-close, exactly as planned.

*   *   *

The dealers’ credit managers cleared their desks on Friday night, dropping all the paperwork, including the downstroke checks
for the thirty-one Cadillacs, into their Out boxes to the four Cal-Cit Bank branches. But the bank’s zone men, who handled
conditional sales contracts on chattel mortgages generated by these auto dealers, didn’t work Saturdays. As a result, the
computer wouldn’t be pushing any of those thirty-one down-payment checks through the accounts of origin until Monday morning.

Thus, on Sunday, the eve of destruction, Stan (the Man) Groner, efficient and ambitious president of Consumer Loans for the
entire California Citizens Bank system, still could have a wonderful evening eating popcorn and laughing at
America’s Funniest Home Videos
(their bridge over troubled generational waters) with his 15-year-old daughter. Never for a moment did Stan suspect that
starting that week, April would become the rottenest, lousiest, most stinking month of his entire life.

Because when Monday’s computers started humming, down payments started popping in Cal-Cit Banks all over the Bay Area with
a zest that would have made Orville Redenbacher and his wimpy grandson happy and proud. Stunned zone men started grabbing
telephones and waving their arms and screaming. Stunned dealership finance managers started screaming back, turning white
and dropping their phones and sometimes their pants.

Damage assessments started reaching Stan Groner’s desk in Consumer Loans that same afternoon. He called for files. But it
wasn’t until early
A.M.
Thursday that the tally he’d come in early to get was complete. Then the stack of manila folders in the center of his desk,
stinking of economic brimstone and glowing pinkly from the ghastly financial fires within, made him quickly reach for
his
phone.

G
iselle Marc and Dan Kearny usually shared the day’s first cup of coffee while going over the probable shape of DKA’s day;
but when the phone rang early on Thursday morning, their chat had degenerated into a verbal brawl because Kearny had asked
whether Ballard was showing up for work yet.

“He’s still home, Dan. Still has that lousy headache.”

“From a concussion?” His voice was disbelieving. “I think he’s on a toot.” Kearny’s slang was mired in the ’40s. He added
illogically, “And if it is a concussion, he got it falling down drunk in some barrel house. He’s been working too many cases
with O’B lately—try to bend an elbow with that guy and pretty soon you’re dipping your beak in paint thinner.”

“You should see the lump on Larry’s forehead.”

“All I see is his caseload getting fat without him doing anything about it. Hell, he’s got four new assignments without twenty-four-hour
first report, and sixteen others that—”

“I could pick up the slack on those unworked first-report cases,” said Giselle quickly around her cup, as if muffling the
words might keep Kearny from really hearing them.

“I need you here in the office. Besides, you’ve been acting so unprofessional lately that you can’t keep up with the cases
you’ve got.”

“Just what is that supposed to mean?” she demanded coldly.

Kearny fired up a cigarette, watching her slyly past the smoke. “I hear your galfriend Maybelle is doing more than just
living
in the backseat of that Connie of hers.”

Giselle dunked a doughnut in frosty silence. Her emotions were still tender from the scene with the Brit, and here was Kearny,
just as she’d known he would, zeroing in on the very thing that had caused that painful rift in her personal life.

“She’s on the hustle.” When Giselle didn’t dignify this with a reply, he added, “The Mary Magdalene lay. And eventually I
gotta tell the bank about it.”

Giselle stood up abruptly; she didn’t want to think about May-belle losing her car all over again, this time for good.

“I have to get to work,” she said. Which is when the phone rang. Already on her feet, she snatched it up and snapped into
it, “Daniel Kearny Associates.”

“Tellkearnyineedhimuphererightawaynohesitationsnoexcuses rightnowfiveminutesorimcallingholstromautorecoverybureau…”

She picked out a word here and there from Stan Groner’s long high scream of anguish, enough to know Kearny was wanted at the
bank and wanted
now
.

She said, “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying, but I recognize your note of hysteria.”

“Goddammitgisellewereouthundredsthousandsmillions…”

“I still can’t understand you but we’ll get on it right away,” she said crisply, and hung up.

“Get right on what?” demanded Kearny. “Who was that?”

“Wrong number.”

“
Wrong number?
I just heard you say that we’ll…”

Giselle was already gone down the office with long, clean-limbed strides. She’d handle this one herself, and show Kearny just
who the real professional was around here. She made an abrupt left turn through the sliding glass door to the back office
that was her domain, then kept on going right out the back door and into the storage lot where her company car was parked.

Kearny morosely smoked another cigarette, stubbed it, took a slurp of coffee. Stone cold. The phone rang just as he reached
for it to bitch at Giselle about the coffee, so he snatched it up to snarl at it. It snarled at him first.

“DAMMIT, KEARNY, WHY AREN’T YOU HERE YET?”

“Fine, Stan, thanks for asking. How’s the family?”

“DAMMIT, I TOLD GISELLE I NEEDED YOUR BUTT HERE RIGHT—”

“
Giselle?
When?”

Some of the hysteria was fading from Groner’s voice. He must have looked at his watch. “Well, maybe like only fifteen, twenty
minutes ago, but this is… oh, here she is now…”

“Giselle? There?”

“At least
she
knows how to respond to a client…”

He was talking to an empty phone: Kearny was on his way.

What the
hell
did that woman think she was doing?

*   *   *

But Dan Kearny was too old a hand to let a bank man’s panic panic him, so he parked in the usual lot and strolled across Battery
to the glittering marble and glass monolith of One Embarcadero Center. It was one of those San Francisco spring mornings,
clear and bright and crisp without a hint of fog, that make the gulls swoop and squawk raucously and dive-bomb passing pedestrians
for handouts.

He wandered through the Consumer Loans Division, nodding to a man here and winking at a woman there, whatever her age and
shape and marital status. It was ritual, like the bottle of decent bourbon each of them got, man and woman alike, at Christmastime.
He knew that most of the women would have preferred a box of Sees chocolates, but candy didn’t fit the DKA image. DKA was
the rough-and-ready crew that took all the assignments the bank’s men were scared of, closed out all the cases the other repo
agencies struck out on. Kearny wanted the bank people to get a whiff of predator whenever DKA padded by.

The door with STANLEY GRONER—PRESIDENT—CONSUMER LOANS DIVISION gold-leafed on its pebbled glass hissed shut behind him with
a pneumatic sigh. Groner was a traditionalist: the dark-paneled room had sporting prints on the walls, heavy hardwood and
leather furniture, art deco lamps. Only thing missing was a brass spittoon beside the antique oak desk.

“Here I am, Stan, now what…”

Groner, a normally placid and pleasant-faced man of 42, addicted to soft tweeds and knitted wool ties, was walking around
his desk in tight circles. His arms were waving and his normally warm brown eyes were casting fell looks and foul toward the
couch from behind his hornrims. Kearny took the ire to be directed neither at Giselle, sitting there rifling a manila folder,
nor at her cigarette smouldering on the chrome smoking stand at her elbow. So Groner apparently was upset by the messy stack
of files on the coffee table in front of Giselle.

Cigarette?
Kearny thought belatedly. Damn! Giselle had started smoking again.

But he said only, “Files,” and then added, “so?”

Giselle answered for Groner, excitement sparkling in her eyes like diamonds.

“Last Friday, Dan, the Bay Area’s twenty Cadillac dealers, from Ukiah down to Salinas, wrote conditional sales contracts on
thirty-one new Cadillacs. The works—Allantes, Broughams, De Villes, Fleetwoods, Eldorados, Sevilles, even a special-order
stretch limo from Jack Olwen on Van Ness.”

In a hushed voice, Kearny began, “You mean to tell me—”

“Yeah. Skips. All thirty-one of them. By these files,
dead
skips.” In finance parlance, a “skip” is someone who has literally “skipped out”—usually with mortgaged property, such as
a car, he has not yet paid for. A “dead” skip is one on whom there are no apparent live leads for finding him and bringing
him back. “Eight financed through this office, eight through Cal-Cit San Rafael, eight through Oakland, seven through San
Jose.”

Kearny turned. “How’d you get onto it so quick, Stan?”

“The downs bounced,” groaned Groner.

“All thirty-one of them?” Kearny was disbelieving.

“They were drawn on only four accounts,” said Giselle. “One account at each branch.”

“But… credit checks… reference and employment and residence verification…”

Groner’s speaking voice was normally high-pitched; now it was pitched even higher, tumbling out excited words with fire-hose
pressure and speed.

“Hell, Dan, you know the drill!” He was pacing again. “We make a big show of checking references, but it costs us a hundred
bucks a head if we do a thorough credit check of all prospective car buyers. If we don’t check anything out, and prorate the
collection and repossession costs over
all
our auto contracts, it costs us
twenty
bucks a head. So we trust the dealers’ credit managers to size the person up, make a few phone calls… But
this
…” He waved an unbelieving hand. “They hit every damn Caddy dealer in the Bay Area,
every one!
”