Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
Charley-Anna wasn’t short in the looks department. She’d have a chance at any guy she took a run at, including a Robert Mitchum type, especially in that black dress. Wilde headed over to the El Ray Club to see if anyone knew who Mitchum was. The front door was locked and the place was dark but he headed around back just in case. A beer truck was parked behind the club and the back door was open. Inside, two men were in the basement stacking cases.
One had the barrel body and the tanned left arm of a truck driver.
The other was a scraggly guy.
A memory of sneaking down there one drunken Saturday night and screwing the socks off Mary Browning flashed briefly in Wilde’s brain. He let it play for a few moments then focused on the ratty looking guy.
“You work here?” Wilde asked.
Yes.
He did.
“I’m trying to find a guy who looks like Robert Mitchum,” he said. “He was here Friday night.”
“Don’t know him.”
“You never saw anyone like that?”
“I only work days.”
“Okay,” Wilde said. “Thanks.”
He was almost to the steps when a voice came from behind him. “There’s a night bartender who might know. Her name’s Michelle Day. She lives over on Delaware just past Colfax.”
“Thanks.”
“If you wake her up tell her Joey sent you,” he said.
“I take it you’re not too fond of her.”
“No, not really.” The man walked over and held his hand out. “That’ll be a dollar.”
Fair enough.
Wilde paid and headed upstairs for a phone book.
She was there-1732 Delaware.
He drove a 1947 MG/TC named Blondie, British Racing Green over tan leather, a two-seat roadster only made from 1946 to 1949. The English steering wheel was on the wrong side and the vehicle didn’t have bumpers or a heater or a radio or hardly any other amenities, but it did have a drop top and a Moss Magnacharger engine. It also tended to make the women spread their legs ever so slightly when they sat in the passenger seat.
He took the top down.
The sunshine spilled in.
The drive to Michelle Day’s house took hardly any time. He found a slot on the street for Blondie two doors down and headed back on foot.
The door was shut and the house was quiet.
If he knocked, he’d wake her.
That would be the second one today.
“One more reason I’m going to hell,” he told himself.
Then he knocked.
No one answered.
No sounds or vibrations came from inside.
He knocked again, harder.
No answer.
He turned the knob just for grins and found it unlocked. He opened the door far enough to get his voice through and said, “Anyone home?”
No answer.
Louder, “Michelle, are you here?”
No answer.
He stepped inside, leaving the door open.
The place was trashed.
It wasn’t the kind of trashed that came from sloppy housekeeping, it was the kind that came from someone tearing the place apart.
His pulse raced.
A quick search of the first floor turned up more disorder but no humans.
He headed upstairs two at a time.