Free 32 Cadillacs by Joe Gores Page A

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