“The car wash attendants,” I said. “What do they wear?”
“Nothing orange that might fit with that oddball fiber you found. Most of ’em wear jeans, running shoes–all of ’em have on these blue shirts with ‘Masterwash’ embroidered in white on the pocket. I looked over everything while I was there. Nothing hit me. Only other fabric-type shit I saw was the barrels of white towels they use to wipe down the cars.”
“Doesn’t sound very promising,” I remarked, pushing away my plate. At least Marino had an appetite. My stomach was still knotted from New York, and I was debating whether to tell him what had happened.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But one guy I talked to made my antenna go up.”
I waited.
“Name’s Al Hunt, twenty-eight, white. Zeroed in on him right away. Saw him standing out there supervising the busy beavers. Something clicked. He looked out of place. Clean-cut, smart, like he ought have been wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase. I start asking myself, ‘What’s a guy like him doing in a dead end like this?’ “He paused to sop his plate with garlic bread. “So I wander his way and start shooting the breeze. I ask him about Beryl, show him her picture from her driver’s license. Ask if maybe he remembers seeing her there, and boom! He starts getting antsy.”
I couldn’t help but think I would start getting antsy, too, if Marino “wandered” my way. He probably ran over the poor man like a Mack truck.
“Then what?” I asked.
“Then we go inside, get coffee, and get down to serious business,’ Marino replied. This Al Hunt’s a first-class squirrel. To start with, the guy’s been to graduate school. Gets a master’s degree in psychology, then goes to work as a male nurse at Metropolitan for a couple years, if you can friggin’ believe that. And when I ask him why he left the hospital for Masterwash, I find out his old man owns the damn place. Old man Hunt’s got his fingers in pies all over the city. Masterwash is just one of his investments. He also owns a number of parking lots and is a slumlord for half of Northside. I’m supposed to automatically assume young Al’s being groomed to move into his daddy’s shoes, right?”
I was getting interested.
“Thing is, though, Al ain’t wearing a suit even if he looks like he should be, right? Translated, Al’s a loser. The old man don’t trust him in pinstripes and sitting behind a desk. I mean, the guy’s standing out there in the lot telling drones how to wax cars and dress the bumpers. Tells me right away something’s off up here.”
He pointed a greasy finger at his head.
“Maybe you should ask his father that,” I said.
“Right. He’s going to tell me his great white hope’s a dumb ass.”
“How do you plan to follow up?”
“Already did,” he answered. “Witness the videotape I brought, Doc. Spent the entire morning with Al Hunt down at HQ. This guy will talk the wood off a door, and he’s overly curious about what happened to Beryl, said he read about it in the papers–”
“How did he know who Beryl was?” I interrupted. “The papers and television stations didn’t have any photographs of her. Did he recognize her name?”
“Said he didn’t, had no idea it was the blond lady he’d seen at the car wash until I showed him the picture on her driver’s license. Then he put on the big act of being shocked, real tore up about it. He was hanging on my every word, wanted to talk about her, was real intense for someone who supposedly didn’t know her from Adam’s house cat.”
He placed his rumpled napkin on the table. “Best thing’s for you to hear it yourself.”
I put on a pot of coffee, gathered the dirty dishes, and we went into the living room and started the tape. The setting was familiar. I had seen it numerous times before. The police department’s interrogation room was a small, paneled cubicle with nothing but a bare table in the middle of the carpeted floor. Near the door was a light switch, and only an expert or the initiated would notice the top screw was missing. On the other side of the tiny black hole was a video room equipped with a special wide-angle camera.