Or were collected by the girls. “Did Mossman pay special attention to any of them? Did he ask one of them back to the hotel?”
“No. He didn’t pair up with any of them.”
“Do you remember the girls’ names? I also need to know if he met anyone outside your group.”
Upton hesitated before replying, with a show of straining his memory, “I think Mandy was one of them. I don’t remember her last name.”
Mandy being the one who came back to the hotel with him, no doubt.
“Lana was another,” Suarez said. “Mossman didn’t talk to anyone except us and them.”
“Describe the girls please.” Though what were their chances of finding them by first name, probably not even real ones, and description? Probably zip.
“Except the singer,” Upton said.
Garreth looked up from his notebook. “Singer?”
The contractor nodded. “We were in this club — I don’t remember that one’s name either — and Mossman couldn’t do anything except stare at this singer. Not that I blamed him. She was something special, and boy could she sing. She kept giving him the eye, too. I remember he hung back as we left, and when I looked around, he was talking to her. Just for a minute, though.”
“What did the singer look like?”
Suarez grinned. “A real babe! Tall, and I mean really tall, man. She had these boots with spike heels that made her legs look like they went up to her shoulders. Nice set of jugs, too.”
Something like electric shock trailed up Garreth’s spine, raising every hair on his body. He stared at Suarez, hardly breathing. “Do you think she was five-ten?”
“Who could tell with those boots? She looked taller than me in them, and I’m six feet.”
“What color was her hair?”
“Red. Not that Las Vegas red but darker, like mahogany.”
Red-Haired Woman
1
Harry was dubious. “He had a few words with a red-haired singer Monday night. What makes you think he went back for more than that on Tuesday?”
“A feeling.”
Certainly he had no other reason. No real evidence connected Mossman to this woman any more than evidence connected Adair to that other redhead. Only the similarity in height and coloring suggested that the two women might even be the same. Still…two mysterious deaths and two memorable redheads…
Harry quirked a brow at him. “A feeling…like the ones your grandmother has?” He sang the Twilight Zone theme: “Doo-doo doo-doo.”
If only. Harry might consider his Grandma Doyle full of blarney and superstition but everyone in the family took her Feelings seriously. They rarely missed. Harry himself had witnessed one instance, when she came for a visit after they learned Marti was pregnant. At Harry’s with them, watching his brother play for LA, she went outside suddenly, saying she could not bear to watch Shane get hurt. Sure enough, just before the half, he went under a pile-up. Scratch one knee and one pro football career. Let Harry call it coincidence; Garreth wished he had some of that gift.
“No, it’s just a hunch. But I want to check out this redhead. Crazies come in all shapes and sizes.”
Harry considered. “That I can go along with. First we need to see if Mossman went back to North Beach Tuesday.” He checked his watch. “Too bad the evening doorman isn’t on duty yet. He might remember Mossman catching a cab. Let’s get on those cab companies, then.”
At the Hall they let their fingers do the walking…still a slow process. Each call met the same initial response: did they have any idea how many pickups the company made at the Westin in an evening!
Garreth tried to simplify their task. “This would be for a single passenger…” Easier to find on their trip logs since he estimated most of the fares would be couples or groups. “…picked up between eight and eight-thirty.” Figuring Mossman used an hour or so to return to the hotel, shower, call home, and dress in his red coat.
By the end of the afternoon he and Harry learned that only six cabs from four companies picked up single fares in that time period. Four went to North Beach, one to the Opera House in the Civic Center, one to the Haight-Ashbury district. Yes, those drivers routinely picked up fares at the Westin.
Now they needed to determine if any of those fares were Mossman.
Harry checked his watch again and stood, stretching. “The evening doorman might be on duty now. Let’s go show him Mossman’s picture.”
And the cabbies, too.
The doorman did remember Mossman…at least the coat…but not the cab company nor the destination he gave the driver. They missed the driver whose fare had gone to the opera but eventually caught the others. The one remembered his Haight-Asbury fare, and it was not Mossman, nor was one of those going to North Beach. The remaining three drivers could not identify Mossman’s photo.
“That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have taken him,” one female driver said. “I just don’t remember him. They get in, ride quietly, don’t stiff me on the tip or give me a big memorable one and they’re just another fare, you know?”
Finally Harry called it quits. While they typed up reports back at the office, he said, “What do you say to taking Lien out for a change? I’ll call her, and you make reservations for three somewhere.”
Garreth shook his head. “Tonight you have her to yourself. I’m going to grab a quick bite somewhere and fall into bed early.”
“You sure?” Harry whipped his report out of the typewriter and signed it after a fast proofread.
“Go home to your wife.”
Harry waved on his way out.
Garreth kept typing. Some time later Evelyn Kolb came in and picked up her tea thermos. “Did you get your teletype from Denver? I think Leyva put it under something on your desk.”
“Under?” Under, for God’s sake. It could have vanished forever.
But he found it under the bodega murder book…a description of Mossman’s jewelry. A man’s gold Rolex with functions doing everything but answering the telephone; a plain gold man’s wedding band, size 8 inscribed: B.A. to G.M. 9-4-73.
Next week was their wedding anniversary. What a hell of a present.
The last item caught his interest even more than the Rolex…a sterling silver pendant two inches long, shaped in the outline of a fish with the Greek word for fish inside the outline. Was that enough silver to bother stealing?
Maybe the killer just disliked Christian symbols. Faye and Centrello looked at cults in the Adair murder.
The teletype went on to report that Mossman’s wife knew of no enemies, just business rivals. Of course, that would have to be checked out. For now he typed up the jewelry descriptions for a flier to distribute to the pawnshops, then finished his reports.
2
“No more. Bu yao,” Garreth said to the waitress who extended the coffeepot toward his half-empty cup.
Instead of catching a quick bite, he had come to his favorite Chinese place, Huong’s. A hole-in-the-wall greasy chopsticks eatery up an alley off Grant Avenue that served some of the best fried rice and egg rolls in San Francisco. Marti had loved the food, too. For Huong’s, they learned to use chopsticks and ignored the greasy smoke that seeped out of the kitchen, covering the walls and Chinese signs on them with a coat of dingy gray. And they had Lien teach them enough Chinese to order, and tease the waitress.
With a nod and a smile, the girl turned away.
He drained the cup and stood, reaching for the check with one hand and into his pocket for the tip with the other. At the cash register he paid the withered little old woman almost hidden from sight by the machine. “Delicious, as always, Mrs. Huong.”
She smiled in return, bobbing her head. “Come back again, Inspector.”
“Count on it.”
Outside, he walked down the steep alley to Grant Avenue and stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by passing evening throngs of tourists and the bright kaleidoscope of shop windows and neon signs with their Chinese pictographs. Rather than go home, maybe he should turn over a few rocks in Wink O’Hare’s neighborhood. This was about the time of day the little vermin was most likely to stick his head out of his hole. On the other hand, just a few blocks up the hill, Grant Avenue intersected with Columbus Avenue and Broadway in the beginning of North Beach’s bright-lights section, and somewhere among the bars and clubs sang a tall red-haired woman who might or might not be involved in murder.