Chapter 75
THE GARDEN SPOT looked like a different place in the early evening. Maybe it was the setting sun that gave it more of a cheerful atmosphere. Or maybe it was a happier crowd than had been out here yesterday.
After confirming with security chief Bill Simpkins that there had been no new sightings of Nicole Snaff at the Stonestown Galleria, I had taken Alain on a detour out to Ocean Beach, for a view of the fog already rolling in, and then over for the requisite view of Golden Gate Bridge from Torpedo Wharf, with its sea lions.
While we were making our way south on Van Ness Avenue, back to the Tenderloin, my phone rang. Claire Washburn.
“I’ve found a definitive link between the bodies of Tina Barnes and Donna Harris,” she told me. “This case is a lot larger than just the two of them.”
So now I was on my way back to the Tenderloin this evening. Alain was game to follow the leads with me.
I could see exactly what the Duke of the Tenderloin had been talking about.
I noticed a number of attractive girls who all seemed to just be wandering around aimlessly.
It didn’t take me long to realize most of them were waiting for someone to pick them up.
I felt a tingle in my spine. This could be ground zero for my investigation.
It checked all the boxes. Attractive young women who looked like they were doing escort work.
If they all lived at the Garden Spot, it could mean that someone, somewhere, might be missing them.
I found a place a few blocks away to park. Alain and I ambled along the sidewalk. I gave him time to take everything in. As we approached the hotel, he looked up at the faded logo.
I heard him snicker when he saw the carrots that had been turned into penises in a wicker basket.
Alain said, “I’m not saying I agree with defacing property, but that artwork is very good. The whole idea is clever.” He looked at me and added in his wonderful accent, “I realize I am in the minority on this issue.”
As we got closer to the hotel, the same girl I’d seen this morning smiled and said hello to me. She was wearing a different dress, less flashy but more revealing. She also had her hair up in two perky pigtails, which made her look even younger.
“How are sales tonight?”
She flashed a spectacular smile. “Let’s put it this way: I might not need to look for that job in marketing.”
She strolled on in the opposite direction.
Alain waited a beat and then asked, “How do you know that young lady?”
“We bonded earlier over a woman’s need to be self-reliant.”
“Ahh, the best possible subject to bond over.”
After we had walked a few steps more, Alain turned to me with a serious expression. “I’m somewhat surprised not to have seen any uniformed police presence here. This is quite an active area. I would think the SFPD would want to ensure everyone’s safety.”
“Actually, this is exactly where I patrolled back when I was a beat cop,” I told Alain.
“But over recent years people have become uneasy with the number of arrests of individuals who simply don’t have a place to sleep or are struggling with mental health or addiction, prevalent in the Tenderloin.
Plus police are overstretched. We all just do the best we can. ”
We stood and watched more of the activity. There was a sizable crowd in front of the hotel and on the sidewalk. Not thick enough to block your way, but it was definitely busy.
I said, “Do you think any of these girls will speak with us?”
“Will we lose anything by asking?”
“Maybe our anonymity.”
“Let’s see if we can talk to someone off to the side. But I don’t know how we do that without making it look like we want to hire them.”
I saw a girl with a serious purple streak in her otherwise bleached-white hair.
She was sitting on the farther end of a two-foot-high wall around a raised garden bed.
Or what would be a garden, though of course there was nothing growing in it.
Its soil didn’t even look like potting soil.
Just black, sandy runoff. The bed ran along the patch of ground between the sidewalk and the front of the hotel. I pointed the girl out to Alain.
He said, “You mean the girl on the potager?”
“The what?”
“Well, a potager is more of a kitchen garden. But it’s usually raised with a wall around it like that one.”
I said, “Then, yes, the girl on the potager.”
Alain rubbed his hands together and said, “Now we are speaking the same language. Literally.”
We turned toward the bleached-blond girl.