Late morning, Colleen tuned in to KCBS news talk as she drove over to Paris Street to check in on the Davis household. She heard the name “Jim Davis” mentioned, turned the volume up. SFPD were questioning transients in Golden Gate Park and around the Fort Funston area. Colleen shook her head as she drove. Blame it on the transients.
On Paris Street she slowed down as she approached the Davis house. No blue C10 pickup parked outside today. No black-and-whites either.
Mary Davis wouldn’t be ready to entertain her visit.
But her son—Steve? He might. He might have a lead on his father.
She peered up at the attic room as the Torino crawled by. That’s where the rock-n-roll emanated from. But no lights. No movement. She drove around the block. Nothing.
Down on Mission, Colleen parked half a block down from Dizzy’s. There was no need to advertise her presence. A few minutes later, she pushed through the swinging door of the bar, looking for Frank Madrid or anyone who might resemble her two arsonists.
Dizzy’s was near empty. One poor soul was hunched over a drink, talking to it. At the pinball machine a guy with a scraggly beard banged and coaxed the thing as it rang and flickered with lights. The bartender, Brenda, looked up with surprise from the newspaper laid out on the bar before her.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I think I left my keys here the other night,” Colleen said. “I was right over there.” She nodded at the spot by the serving hatch.
Brenda looked under the bar, came up with a shoebox, fished through it.
Shook her head no.
Colleen thanked her, left, just as the pinball man swore, the machine buzzing on her way out.
She loaded up the parking meter and made herself comfortable in the Torino, turning up KCBS, watching Dizzy’s from her vantage point, seeing who came and who went. The only time she got out of the car was to reload the parking meter with dimes and duck into a greasy spoon to order a burger and Coke and use the restroom.
She ate her lunch in the car, listening to an announcer hold forth about how the transients were ruining the city. She watched Dizzy’s. The people who came and went were the kind of people who hung out in a bar like Dizzy’s during the day. But no one she recognized. Like Frank Madrid. Maybe he’d had a late night last night, driving arsonists around. Ramon had said he’d seen a truck like his exit H&M at high speed.
At 2:30 p.m. she fired up the car and headed back to H&M to meet with the fence contractor she was supposed to meet at three.
By 4:00 p.m. he was still a no-show. Frustrated, she went up to her office and called. No answer. She called her answering service. No call from the fence guy. But Jonathan Marsh, the owner of 413 Frederick, had returned her call. He could talk to her after 5:00 p.m. and left a number.
That’ll do, she thought.