TWO days later I heard from Detective Sherman.
“Sylvester Waters,” he said. “That’s your man, I think. Unless there are two pimps operating out of the Figueroa Street corridor named Sylvester.”
“Do you have a physical description?” I asked. I was at work in Al’s garage, trying to put together my hours for the month so Chiki could prepare the bills.
“Black, forty-one years old, six foot four. A glass left eye.”
“That’s him,” I said.
“I’ll look at him for those old cases you sent me. But I have bad news for you on Violetta Spees.”
“What?”
“Sylvester Waters was in county serving a thirty-day drug possession sentence on the day she was killed.”
I put my head in my hands. I had been so sure he was the one. “Are you sure? Could there be any mistake?”
“Don’t think so,” Detective Sherman said. “I mean, I’ve heard of guys arrested in a case of mistaken identity, and even made to do someone else’s time, but it’s not real common.”
I must have groaned out loud because the detective said, “If you want I can arrest him on an assault and battery charge. You’ve got a witness, right?”
“I don’t want to put her in the position of having to give a statement. And even if he gets convicted, a judge isn’t going to sentence him to any time for grabbing me.”
“You never know.”
“No,” I said. “But you’ll look at him for those old murders?”
The detective said, “Yeah, I’ll dig around a little. It’s going to come down to finding a witness. I’ve got to at least find someone who can connect him with one or the other of the victims. Someone who can verify if he was pimping for them.”
“That’s not going to be easy.”
“Nope. Especially since the murders were so long ago. Finding someone around who remembers these women is going to be hard. It’s not a lifestyle known for its longevity. But cold cases are all I do. It’s hardly a unique problem for this unit to be dealing with.”
I thanked the detective. In all my dealings with the LAPD I had never come across a cop so helpful, so friendly, and so untroubled by the fact that I was a private investigator. As a rule the police do not like the members of our profession. They resent our intrusion. This is true even in the cases where a sheriff’s department will contract out an investigation to a private firm, which happens not infrequently. But Detective Sherman seemed to suffer from none of these biases. Perhaps he recognized in me something of a kindred spirit. We both had a little bit of the pit bull in us. Like me, he was unable to give up on a case or a problem until he’d seen it through to the bitter end.
Al and Chiki looked at me expectantly. They were almost as frustrated as I was when I told them we were back at square one. I think Al had been looking forward to me wrapping this up and moving on to something a little more lucrative.
I turned back to my white board and crossed Sylvester’s name off. I’d already drawn a thick line through Baby Richard.
“Now what?” Chiki said.
I turned to my columns. Tricks, Boyfriends, Coworkers, Family. I was right back where I started. The Tricks category was where I was most likely to find Violetta’s murderer, and the one category I had no real way of really exploring. I looked down the other lists. My eye settled on a name. Ronnie.
“Now I go to San Diego,” I said.