“Down where?”
“What they call SoMa now. That’s where Rose and the dog woman were having their toddies.”
“Do you remember the name of the cocktail lounge?”
“Rose never said. Why do you care what cocktail lounge?”
“Curiosity. What was Rose’s last name?”
“O’Day. Rose O’Day. Pretty name.”
“Yes. When did—”
“Irish,” Mrs. Hightower said.
“… Pardon?”
“Rose. She was Irish.”
“When did she move out?”
“Well, let’s see. Must’ve been more than three years now. That’s right, three years in February.” Click, frown, double-click. “Kind of funny,” she said.
“How so?”
“Never said good-bye. Just up and left. And us with a date to play bingo over at the church. I saw the dog woman, McManus, down at the market a few days afterward and asked her how come Rose left so sudden. Said she went back to Michigan—that’s where she’s from, Saginaw, Michigan, like in the song. Moved back to Saginaw, Michigan, to live with her brother.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t,” Selma Hightower said, “and neither do I. Rose told me she was an only child.”
“Well, people sometimes say that if they’re estranged from a relative—”
“Hah. Rose didn’t have anybody to be estranged from. She didn’t have anybody, period. Alone in the world after her husband went to his reward. All her family dead and gone and her all alone in the world.”
* * *
Half an hour after I left Mrs. Hightower, I finally located somebody who’d seen David Virden on Tuesday. Two somebodies, in fact. Both of them in the same place—a watering hole on Third just around the corner from 20th Street called, appropriately if unappealingly, The Dog Hole.
It was one of those venerable neighborhood places that cater to a mixed clientele. At its peak hours you’d probably find blue-collar workers, Yuppies, bikers, scroungers, retired people, lonely individuals of both sexes looking for companionship of one kind or another, and maybe an upscale hooker or two trolling for customers. At this time of day, early afternoon, what you had was a small core of habitual drinkers and pensioners with no better spot to spend their time. Three men were drinking beer and playing cribbage in one of a row of high-backed booths. A rail-thin man in his seventies and a heavily rouged fat woman twenty years younger occupied stools at the bar, neither of them having anything to do with the other.
The bartender was a bulky guy in his forties—a weight lifter, judging from the bulge of his pecs and biceps in a tight short-sleeved shirt. I ordered a draft Anchor Steam, and when he brought it I showed him Virden’s photograph and asked my question. He gave the snapshot a bored study, started to shake his head, looked again, and said, “Yeah, he was in here. Double shot of Jameson, beer back.”
“What time?”
“Around this time.”
“Alone?” I asked.
“All alone. You a cop?”
“Private. He’s missing; I’m looking for him.”
“That right?” But not as if he cared. Life outside a gym and a weight room probably bored him silly. “Never saw him before or since.”
The old gent got off his stool and sidled down to where I was, bringing his empty glass with him. “Mind if I have a look?” I held the photo up so he could squint at it through rimless glasses. “Yep, I seen him, too. Stranger dressed real nice, suit and tie. But it wasn’t around this time.”
“No? When was it?”
“Well…” He set his empty on the bar and licked his lips in a mildly suggestive way. I gestured to the bartender, who shrugged and filled the glass from a bottle of port wine.
“Thank you, sir. To your health.” He had some of his port, an almost dainty sip as if he intended to make it last. “Must’ve been about one thirty when the fella come in. No more’n five minutes after I did. Remember, Stan?”
Another shrug. “If you say so.”
“You didn’t happen to talk to him?” I asked.
“No, sir. He wasn’t the sociable type.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Fella had a mad-on about something. Face like a thundercloud, you know what I mean? Sat there and swallowed his drinks and then all of a sudden he smacks the bar and out he goes.”
“Smacked the bar?”
“Real hard. Went out of here like something just bit him on his ass.”
Or he’d made up his mind about something, I thought. Like maybe going back for another conversation with the woman who was supposed to be his ex-wife.