'We missed it when we searched. Inside the door handle on the service porch. It was probably an emergency stash,' Carr said.
The phone rang.
'Carr.'
'This is Kelly. I'm down here at the morgue. I just talked with the coroner himself. He says it was heroin, not poison or anything, and it was usual strength. She O.D.'d. See you in an hour. I gotta stop for a bite.'
'Thanks.' Carr put down the phone. 'The coroner says she O.D.'d on smack. She wasn't murdered-unless somebody gave her a hotshot on purpose.'
'I wonder if she committed suicide,' Delgado said.
Carr wasn't listening. He faced Delgado. 'Let's look at the big picture right now. We're looking for two suspects: a young guy and a middle-aged, balding, red-haired man. The only witness who can identify the red- haired man just checked out of the world. Leach, the man with the samples, won't talk. We've got a stack of one hundred and forty-six photos of red-haired men. That's what we've got. Nothing more, nothing less.'
'Only one way to go,' Delgado said.
'One way. We'll check up on every red-haired man. See what he's up to, who he hangs with. One of them has got to fit into the picture.' Carr turned to look out the window.
'It's a long shot,' Delgado mumbled.
'I know it.'
FIFTEEN
Carr walked toward a run-down stucco house. A FOR SALE sign was stuck in the middle of the tiny yellow lawn. It was as hot as August can be, and his suit and tie felt like a damp strait jacket.
Of course, without the tie, people would never open the door. It was more important than a badge and credentials. Kelly had proved it on a Chinatown bet once by pasting a picture of a monkey over his credentials photo and conducting a whole day of interviews. No one had noticed. And as he told it at Ling's, one lady had mistaken him for an FBI agent.
Carr rang the doorbell. Immediately footsteps clacked on what sounded like a hardwood floor.
The door was opened by a tanned, middle-aged woman in a bikini bathing suit and wooden sandals. She held a TV Guide. Behind her he noticed Danish modern furniture, but no carpeting.
Carr flashed his badge. 'Special Agent Carr, U.S. Treasury Department. May I come in?'
'Cute little badge,' the woman said. 'Come in.'
She waited for him to enter and closed the door.
'What have I done to deserve a visit from a T-man?' She walked daintily to a portable bar, picked up a beer glass, and sipped.
'I'm conducting an investigation on someone who lives here in the neighborhood. I have a photo I'd like you to look at.' He removed the photo from his shirt pocket. She sauntered to him and examined the photo, holding it gingerly by one corner. She blushed and handed it back.
'Which one of the nosy neighbors told you to come here?' She spoke with her teeth together.
'I may or may not have talked to your neighbors. Right now I'm talking to you. Do you know this man?' Carr took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.
'Of course I know him; he lives next door,' she said.
'Who lives with him?'
'He has a wife and three children. Is that what you mean? What kind of investigation is this?' she snarled.
'A background investigation,' Carr said. 'Do you know any of his friends?'
'Maybe.'
Carr took out his pen. 'How about some names?' he said.
She slammed her glass down on the bar and began shouting. 'What do you mean 'How about some names?' Let me tell you something. This may be a low-rent neighborhood but I've only lived here since my divorce. I used to live in San Marino, but I ended up with nothing except some goddamn furniture!'
'Hold it a minute. .' He raised his hand like a traffic cop. 'All I want to know is…'
'No! I know one of the goddamn nosy neighbors told you to come here because he and I…are friends. His stupid wife started the rumors about us. Did you see the 'For Sale' sign when you walked in? That's why I'm moving.'
'Lady, I'm not interested!' The woman looked foolish standing there screaming in her bikini.
'Does this have something to do with his child support? Did his first wife send you here? Can't you people give somebody a break? You've got him in jail on a failure-to-provide warrant. What else do you want-blood?'
'When was he arrested?'
'Two weeks ago. He's been in jail since then.'
'Thanks. I don't have any more questions.' Carr almost trotted to the door.
'Why don't you do something about dope pushers instead of nosing into people's private lives!' she shouted.
Carr walked to the car, drove around the corner, and parked. He wrote 'In jail past two weeks' on the reverse of the photograph and threw it in the glove compartment with the others that had turned out to be dead- end leads.
His notations on the photos showed that three of the men were currently serving time in prison, and one was in the hospital the day Rico was murdered. Another carrot-top had been dead for over a year.
It had taken Carr all day to find these things out.
By 10:00 P.M., he had eliminated two more redheads. He drove to Chinatown and found Kelly sitting in a booth at Ling's. The bar was full of detectives, because it was federal payday. The atmosphere was rowdy.
'Get this,' Kelly said, digging his hand deeply into the bar peanuts. 'I showed one of the photos to this guy today and he tells me he thinks the photo looks like me. I look at it and by God he's right! Except for the red hair, the picture did sort of look like me. I hadn't looked at it that close before. I felt like a real donkey. He must have thought I was walking around showing mug shots of myself. Do you believe that?' Throwing his head back, he accepted the entire handful of peanuts into his mouth.
Carr almost guzzled his first drink. He had been thinking about it for hours.
Rose stood at the end of the bar under a pink light, lifting drinks onto her tray. Her long black hair contrasted oddly with the bright-blue sheen of her dragon-embroidered cheongsam. Even in high heels, she was tiny, the spread of her buttocks from a tiny waist being her only striking physical quality. In the pink light of the bar, just as up close, she appeared drawn, tired, and less than happy, as if it had taken longer than usual to become forty years old.
She smiled at Carr, and he gave a quick wave. He thought of how he waved at her as he drove away from her house after they had made love the first time. Standing at the window in her kimono she had waved back. He hadn't really wanted to leave. 'Very embarrass when children wake up in morning,' she had said, with her head slightly bowed.
He wasn't sure why he continued to see her. The meetings were infrequent and always seemed a little strained. They never had a great deal to say to one another. Her husband was dead, and she had to work, and he was a federal cop and lived at the beach. That was about it.
But he kept going back to her wan smile and the way she modestly covered her smallish breasts when she crawled into bed.
She made her way to the booth and handed Carr a Scotch-and-water. Kelly excused himself and got up.
'Sit down for a minute.' Carr pointed to the seat.
She shook her head. 'Too busy right now. Ling get mad.'
'How was Lake Arrowhead?'
'We have a real nice time,' she said. Her voice was just loud enough to be heard. 'Boys catch fish in the
