Blood Walk Part 3

He glanced at Harry, who sat staring at the Adair reports. "What do you think?"

Harry looked up. "I think we'd better get with Faye and Centrello on this."

They made it a five-man meeting in Serruto's office.

With both files in front of him, Serruto said, "I can see definite similarities." He looked over at Harry and Garreth. "Do you want to pool resources with Faye and Centrello on this?"

Harry said, "What I want to do is give Earl and Dean a chance to take over this case if they want it. After all, the Adair thing was theirs."

Centrello grimaced. "I don't want it. You two play with the cult crazies for a while. I'll be glad to give you anything I know that isn't in the reports, but if you solve it, the glory is all yours."

Faye looked less certain, but he did not contradict his partner.

Serruto frowned at the Adair file. "Are you thinking cults on the Mossman thing, too, Harry?"

"I'm certainly going to check out the possibility."

"Don't get too tied into it; it didn't solve the Adair killing."

"Words of wisdom," Harry said as they left for the hotel.

"You know, both men had alcohol in their stomachs, so they were drinking not long before they died." Garreth pursed his lips.

"I wonder if they drank in the same place?"

Harry punched for the elevator. "Adair went to North Beach. When you visit the cab companies, check for North Beach destinations on those trip logs."

Garreth sighed. "You know every jack man of those conventioneers went to either North Beach or Chinatown that night."

Harry grinned and slapped Garreth's shoulder. "You'll sort them out. That's detective work, Mik-san. Think about me, trying to find someone who knows where Mossman went. I can't believe he didn't mention something to someone."

A thought struck Garreth. He frowned at Harry. "You talked to quite a few people?"

"It seemed like hundreds."

"And no one knew a thing. Maybe he didn't want people to know. He's a married man and if he had something hot going . . ."

Harry pursed his lips. "Verneau said this was Mossman's first trip to San Francisco and he didn't make any local calls from his room. If he had a lady, she would have to be either a member of the convention or someone he met Monday. Susan Pegans fainted when we told her Mossman was dead, and that wasn't even telling her how. Skip the cab companies for a bit and help me at the hotel. We'll start with our saleswoman."

10

Susan Pegans stared at the detectives with eyes flashing in outrage. "No! Absolutely not! I didn't go anywhere with Gary. He's a very happily married man. He calls his wife every evening when he's away from home."

But Garreth heard the note of regret in her voice as she said it. He was willing to bet she would have gone with Mossman in a moment, given an invitation.

"Alex Long and I had dinner in Chinatown with a couple of Iowa contractors and their wives. Ask Alex."

They would, but for the moment, Garreth continued to press her. "Had you seen him spending an unusual amount of time with any single person here?"

"He spent time with everyone. What does it take to make you understand that Gary doesn't-" She broke off, eyes filling with tears. She wiped at them with the handkerchief Garreth handed her. "Gary didn't play at conventions, not ever. He worked. Why do you think he was sales manager?"

"But you knew where he was going Monday night. Verneau said he told all three of you," Harry said.

"Yes, so we would know who had been contacted and not duplicate efforts."

"Yet you didn't think it strange when he said nothing to you about Tuesday night?"

She shrugged, sighing. "I wondered, yes, but . . . I thought he'd tell us Wednesday. I-" She broke off again, shaking her head.

"Pity unrequited love," Harry murmured as they left her. "Well, do we take her at her word or start questioning some of the other ladies? You'll have noticed how many really beautiful ones there are here."

"Maybe we ought to think about guys, too," Garreth said. "That would be a better reason for keeping it quiet.""You talk to beautiful young men, then; I'll stick to the ladies. Just findsomeone who went out with him."

Garreth found no one. He worked his way straight down the section of the membership list Harry gave him and heard negative answers in every interview. As far as Garreth could determine, Mossman had said to h.e.l.l with the convention on Tuesday.

Checking with Harry later, he found his partner having no better luck.

"Maybe you ought to start on the cab companies," Harry said. "I'll keep working here."

"Let me bounce one more idea off you. You mentioned that he may have met someone Monday evening. So let's talk to the people he was with on Monday. Do you have their names?"

"Verneau gave them to me." Harry checked off two names on the membership list. "You take this half of the group."

Garreth made it easy on himself. He rounded up both and talked to them at the same time, hoping one might stimulate memory in the other. "Where did you go?" he asked them.

Misters Upton and Suarez grinned at each other. "North Beach. That's some entertainment up there"

"It offers a little of something for everyone. Do you remember the names of the clubs you visited?"

"Why do you want to know about Monday?" Suarez asked. "Wasn't Gary Mossman robbed and killed on Tuesday night?

That's what's going around."

"We need to know about people he met on Monday. Please, try to think. I need the club names."

They looked at each other. "Big Al's," Suarez said.

Between them, Suarez and Upton named half a dozen of the better known clubs. Garreth jotted the names down. "Any others?"

"Oh, yeah. We must have hit a dozen or more. We'd just walk down the street and drop in, see a girl or two dance, and go on."

"Did you talk to anyone?"

Their eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Garreth gave them a man-to-man smirk. "You were five guys out on the town alone. Didn't you buy drinks for any girls?"

The contractors grinned. "Well, sure. We kind of collected four and took them along with us."

Four. Garreth raised an eyebrow. Who had not had one? "Did Mossman pay special attention to any of them? Did he ask any of them back to the hotel?"

"No."

"Are you thinking he met someone Monday he might have seen again Tuesday, and that's who killed him?" Suarez asked.

"We're checking all the possibilities. Can you give me the names of the girls? I also need to know if he met anyone outside your group."

"The girls only told us their first names, and Mossman didn't talk to anyone except us and the girls," Upton said.

"Give me the girls' names then and their descriptions." Inwardly, Garreth groaned. Track down four girls in North Beach by first name and description. s.h.i.t.

"Except the singer," Suarez said.

Garreth blinked, feeling he had missed a connection somewhere. "Except what singer, Mr. Suarez?"

The contractor shrugged. "We were in this club-I don't remember the name-and Mossman couldn't do anything except stare at the singer. She kept looking at him, too, giving him the eye. I remember he hung back a bit as we left, and when I looked around, he was talking to her. It was just for a minute, though."

"What did this singer look like?"

Suarez grinned. "Spectacular. Tall, and I meanreally tall, man. Her legs went on forever. She was built, too."

Something like an 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?"

"Or taller. She had on these boots, see, and-"

"What color was her hair?"

"Red. Not that bright color but darker, like mahogany."

1

Harry was dubious. "He had a few words with a red-haired singer Monday night. What makes you think he went back to do more on Tuesday?"

"A hunch."

Certainly he could think of 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 be the same. Still . . . two mysterious deaths and two memorable redheads. He had a feeling about it.

"My Grandma Doyle gets what she calls Feelings . . . that's with a capital F. She's Auld Sod stock, full of blarney and superst.i.tion, but-well, that Green Bay-LA game that wiped out my brother's knee, we were all watching the TV and at half-time she went to her room. She said she didn't want to watch Shane get zapped. And sure enough, in the middle of the third quarter . . .

scratch one knee and one Rams end."

"Coincidence?" Harry suggested.

"Except that's just one instance. My grandmother's Feelings are famous in our family. On the other hand, maybe my hunch is nonsense, but crazies come in all shapes and sizes so we'd better check the redhead out."

Harry nodded. "That reason I'll go along with. But let's eat first; I'm starved."

So was Garreth. Lunchtime had long pa.s.sed. "How about Huong's?"

Huong's, though a hole-in-the-wall greasy chopsticks eatery up a side street off Grant Avenue, served some of the best fried rice and egg rolls in San Francisco. For love of them, Garreth had learned to ignore the greasy smoke that seeped out of the kitchen and covered the walls and Chinese signs on them with a uniform coat of dingy gray, and to beg silverware from waitresses who understood little English and barely more of Harry's and his fractured Chinese.

Harry considered. "It'd be too much trouble to drive over there when we have to come back here again. How about settling for less this time?"

With stomach longing for fried rice, Garreth settled for a club sandwich in the hotel coffee shop.

"One thing," Harry said while they ate. "Whether the redhead is in it or not, we need to know where Mossman went."

"I'll get on the cab companies."

He called them from the a.s.sistant manager's office. To be on the safe side, he expanded the time limit and asked for single fares picked up at the hotel between 7:00 and 8:30 P.M. Garreth expected to develop writer's cramp, but while it appeared that fleets of cabs had picked up pa.s.sengers Tuesday evening, most trips carried groups. Less than a dozen cabs made single-fare trips in that time period.

He wrote down the cab number, destination and cabdriver's name for each trip. Then it became a matter of having drivers on duty stop by the hotel to look at a picture of Mossman that the Kitco booth supplied him or calling on them at home. "Was this man a pa.s.senger in your cab Tuesday night?" He particularly pressed the five whose destinations had been in North Beach. However, none could identify Mossman.

"That doesn't mean I couldn't have taken him," one female cabbie said. "I just don't remember him, you know?"

Garreth met Harry back at the hotel. "Zero. Zip."

Harry looked at his watch. "Well, let's call it quits here, then."

Garreth seconded the motion and they headed back to Bryant Street.

While they typed up reports at the office, Harry 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 eat at Huong's and fall into bed early."

"You sure?" Harry whipped his report out of the typewriter and signed it after a fast proofreading.

"Go home to your wife."

Harry waved on his way out.

Garreth kept typing. Some time later Evelyn Kolb came through. She said, "There's a telex for you from Denver. I think Art put it under something on your desk."