Red-haired Robert Manley was soon to find himself in the worst predicament of his life. It began casually enough; he hadn’t been intending to pick up a girl. But there she was—and there was no avoiding it.
He was driving on San Diego’s Broadway in his old Studebaker coupe on a business trip from L.A. Stopping at a signal, he glanced to his right as a car turned the corner. When it passed, he was looking at a very pretty black-haired young woman standing on the corner near the Western Airlines window. At twenty-six, Red didn’t whistle at girls, but if he did, she was someone he’d certainly have whistled at.
The car behind him honked its horn and Red drove ahead, looking more closely at the girl. He turned the first corner past the intersection, then made another quick turn and drove two blocks further to go around once again and see if she was still there.
It was as though she hadn’t moved a muscle. What was she doing there? he wondered. She wasn’t waiting to cross with the signal. The street he’d just turned onto was one-way, so if the girl crossed the street when the light changed, he might not be able to get around the next block to catch her before she disappeared into one of the office buildings.
He pulled over to the curb at the corner, leaned to the passenger window, and said hello to her. “Can I give you a lift?” he asked. She turned her head and wouldn’t look at him.
Edging a little more toward the window, Red told her he was serious, that he didn’t know the town. “I’m here on business,” he said, and if he gave her a lift somewhere, maybe she could help him find his way around.
Without looking at him she said, “I’m on my way home.”
“Well, then, let me give you a ride there,” he said. “I really just want to find out the directions around here.” She looked at him for a moment, then stepped down from the curb and got into the car. Once in, she pulled the door shut and adjusted her skirt, looking at Red with a slight tip of her head. He told her a ride in the car was better than waiting on a street corner.
“What makes you think I was waiting on the street corner?” she asked. Her manner embarrassed him. He said he didn’t mean it that way and introduced himself. She said her name was Beth Short, and reached out her hand. Red shook it briefly, almost awkwardly turning his hand away.
“I don’t live in San Diego,” he said. “I’m a hardware salesman.” He asked if she knew where Huntington Park was—east of the downtown Los Angeles area. “Further south than downtown,” he said, “but in the eastern side of the city.”
She said, “I don’t know if I do or not.”
“There’s no reason you should,” he said, “unless you happen to live there and work for a hardware company. My firm deals in pipe clamps.” He said it wasn’t something he intended to do the rest of his life. “It’s just a job,” he said. Then he told her again he didn’t know the city.
“I don’t know the city either,” she said. “I’m visiting with some friends in Pacific Beach.”
“That’s right off the coast highway,” he said. “I saw the sign coming down here.” She said she had been seeing about a clerical job at Western Airlines. “You married?” he asked, glancing at her hand. She said, no, and then said yes, she was, but her husband had been killed in the war—an officer in the Army Air Corps. It wasn’t that she wasn’t married, but that they were no longer together, she said, “at least, in this life.” Before she got around to asking if he was married, Red changed the subject. He was thinking that he just wanted to forget about that part of his life for the moment—his wife and baby. There had been problems between them since the baby had been born. Red had been telling himself it was only a “readjustment” period.
He told Beth he’d been a musician in the Army Air Corps band. “I’m discharged now,” he said. “I try to keep up with the music, but it’s pretty hard to do it as a profession—unless you’ve got something special.” She asked if he’d been an officer, and he said no, just a corporal. She asked if he knew about the Flying Tigers. Red knew something about them, mostly what he’d seen in the movies. She said her husband, a major, had been with them. She asked how old he was, and when he told her she said he was very young. How old did he think she was, she asked? He couldn’t tell. He thought she was young— younger than he was, but not too young. He said she had a very glamorous air about her, and that sometimes made it difficult to tell the age of a very attractive young woman.
She laughed a little. “You think I’m very attractive?” she asked. He said sure, and that she knew it herself without having to ask. Then he laughed a little, too, as though they’d shared a joke. She directed him to the Frenches’ house where he parked and shut off the motor. He then asked if she wanted to have dinner with him. “I don’t have anything else to do until I make some calls in the morning,” he said. “We can have a few drinks and maybe dance.”
She said she was concerned about what to tell the people she was staying with. He suggested she could introduce him as a business associate. That didn’t sound right to her, she said. She’d tell them he was someone she was working with at Western Airlines. “It’ll seem like we’re associates that way,” she said, “and we have things to talk about, and you’ve asked me to dinner.”
There was nothing wrong with that, he said, and suggested picking her up at seven o’clock. She said, “Fine,” and got out of the car. “Don’t walk me up there now. You come to the door at seven.”
Red felt good. He drove to a motel and rented a room for two, writing his address, car model, and license number on the registration card. He then walked back to where he’d spotted a café called Harry’s, ordered a beer, and asked about a “nice place to eat—for dining and dancing.” The Hacienda Club was one of the best, he was told. It was out near the Mission Hills area.
After listening to a couple of songs on the jukebox and thinking about the date, he finished his beer and walked back to the motel. He took a shower and was in the midst of shaving when he began to think about his wife, and it was hard to think about her without thinking about the baby. He had a pretty wife, though she wasn’t as pretty as the girl he was seeing at seven.
He had been married just shortly over a year. He had never stepped out on his wife, but he had lost interest in her. He didn’t want to have sex with her anymore and he tried to avoid her as much as he could. He would find himself wondering why he was doing this. He believed that part of it was the pregnancy— things had changed, and he’d been nervous a lot. The baby made him nervous, and he felt guilty about that. He thought of himself as a rat. He had been over to the veterans hospital a couple of times, and each time the doctors told him that he seemed to he having “the same old problems.” He hadn’t been able to take the army, even though he’d felt good at times as part of the band. But he hated the restrictions—the discipline.
He had received a “Section Eight”—a psychiatric discharge. It was his nerves. Once or twice during the past year he’d said to himself, “Look out, Red, you’re going off the deep end!” But he hadn’t gone off the deep end yet. It was just nerves. He had a bad case of nerves.
The air in San Diego was terrific. He sat on the motel bed breathing deep before the opened window. There were a lot of things that had to be ironed out in his marriage. Maybe many were just small things, but they seemed to get all tangled up. They became a big ball of tangled loose ends that seemed to get away from him when he knew it was important that he keep them all straightened out.
Stepping out on his wife troubled him, but he felt he was facing a kind of test, to see if he still loved her. He changed his shirt, slapped some Aqua Velva lotion onto his cheeks, and made the decision that he wasn’t going to give any more thought to his wife or to the job or to the condition of his nerves. He was just going out to have a little relaxation and a couple of laughs.
He showed up at the Frenches’ a few minutes before seven, and introduced himself as someone from Western Airlines. He did say that he had worked for a hardware manufacturer previous to the airlines, but to the Frenches he didn’t seem to know much more about San Diego than Beth. Both of them were like strangers from some other place, and meeting in the Frenches’ living room as though it were some kind of play they were performing. “Beth was almost brusque,” Dorothy would later recall, “and she walked out before Red could give any details to Elvera. ‘I’ll try to stop by the movies and say hello,’ Beth said.”
“I feel bad about fibbing to them,” Beth said in the car. “They have been very helpful to me. But I think I’ve outworn my welcome.”
“Well,” Red said, “maybe you’ll feel better after a bite.” He wasn’t sure of the directions to the restaurant and by the time they arrived at the Hacienda Club it was almost nine. Jerry Leonard’s Band was playing, and after a couple of drinks Red and Beth danced. He had the feeling that she was watching him, sort of measuring him as though looking for mistakes he’d make. She asked if he was married and he said yes, but they were at a halfway point—and maybe it wasn’t going to work out.
Beth opened her purse and brought out a clipping, handing it to him. He read about Matt Gordan and asked about the scratched out part. She said the paper had made a mistake. He mentioned in the car she’d told him her name was Short. She said she returned to using her maiden name. Red said it was too bad about him getting killed, just as the war ended. He ordered more drinks, and she put the folded clipping away and said she was hungry.
“This place is dead,” he said, and asked what she wanted. But she said she didn’t want anything on their menu. “I want a sandwich or something,” she said. “Something that’s simple. I’m not hungry for a fancy dinner. . . . Why spend money on a fancy dinner anyway? I’ve been having it pretty hard, and staying where I am isn’t easy. I’m out of work. And it isn’t a good idea to spend a lot of money on something that’s probably not any good.”
“How do you know it won’t be any good?” he asked.
“Well, look around,” she said. “What do you see?”
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“That’s what I mean,” she said. They found out the kitchen was closed for the night, so they finished their drinks and left. Beth said she was a little tipsy and he said they’d find a restaurant on the way back to town.
He pulled into the first drive-in, leaving the radio on because she liked the music. She ordered a sandwich and Red had a hamburger.
“Halfway through the meal,” Red says, “she heard the guy on the radio say the time—which was almost one o’clock, and she said she had to get back. I told her I had to get up pretty early, so maybe it was a good idea to call it a night. I didn’t ask her to stop back by the motel for a nightcap—though that had been in the back of my thoughts since I’d taken the room that afternoon.”
At Pacific Beach, Red parked the car and took her hand. He told her he would like to kiss her. She turned, facing him, and he bent forward a little and put his lips on hers. After a moment she drew her head back and said she had to go into the house.
“What about one more kiss?” he asked. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, but hers were cool and hardly moved. Then she opened the car door. “I’ll walk you to the house,” he said.
She smiled and took his hand after he came around the car. He said, “After I finish some business in the morning, I’m heading back up to L.A. You haven’t got a phone here, so how can I call and leave a message for you?”
The Frenches didn’t have a phone, she said, and she’d been using the neighbor’s, but that was becoming difficult. Red said he’d send a telegram to the house, letting her know when he’d be down. “We can have dinner,” he said. “I’d really like to see you again.”
It was okay with her. She wasn’t sure how long she’d be staying where she was, but she’d expect his telegram.
Red drove back to the motel and sat in the chair feeling awful. He’d only kissed the girl. Feeling awful was stupid, he told himself.
The following morning, after grabbing breakfast at Sheldon’s Sandwich Shop on the highway, he drove to the Pacific Beach area and stopped at the house. When he knocked on the door, it was opened by the young woman he’d met the night before. Dorothy told him that Beth wasn’t there. She said she thought Beth was at work, but wasn’t sure. Red asked Dorothy to tell her he had stopped by and would see her later.
The first telegram that came for Beth was not from Red. It was an apology from Gordan, and contained the one-hundred-dollar money order. She told Dorothy, “I’m shocked. I didn’t expect Gordan to wire the money.”
She walked to Sheldon’s, where she made a number of collect calls and told the waitress that she was expecting a long-distance person-to-person call. The waitress said, “Don’t worry, honey, if your call comes when you’re gone I’ll put the message on the spindle at the register. It’ll be here late tonight or tomorrow for you.”
Back at the Frenches’ she wrote again to Gordan. “I think I’m going to be coming back to Chicago to do some work. . . . I am sorry that you feel as you do, and I hope that you can find a nice young lady to kiss every New Year’s Eve. I believe it would have been wonderful if we belonged to each other now. I do want you to know that I’ll never forget coming west to see you. Even though it has not worked out that you did take me in your arms and keep me there. Honey, it was nice as long as it lasted. . . .”
She folded the letter into her handbag, along with the other unmailed letters. It was Christmas Eve, and Beth waited at the movie theater for Dorothy to get off work to return to the house with her. But a young man stood talking to her for a little while, and then Beth told Dorothy that the young man had asked her to have dinner at his house. Beth did not return to the Frenches’ until late Christmas day, with small presents for everyone.
The following week was difficult for everyone. Dorothy saw that something had happened with Beth and she had no way of knowing what it was. It was as though Beth had suddenly pulled down a window shade on anything to do with her life or what she was planning to do. She lounged around the house most of the time and fiddled with her clothes, laying them out again and looking at them, or ironing. She wrote letters and read magazines, and sent Cory on errands. The boy didn’t mind, but Elvera felt it was wrong for him to be used as a coolie, which is what she told Dorothy. Beth had asked him to buy sanitary napkins and scented stationery. Dorothy suggested that she could buy those things for Beth, since Cory wouldn’t understand what he was buying. Beth took Dorothy’s hint as an offer to do something for her and was glad, she said, “because you could pick out better things.”
Beth wrote a letter to her mother, and another one to Gordan, then another one to Duffy in Chicago. Dorothy mailed the letters on her way to work at the movie theater.
“On New Year’s Eve she was at the El Cajon Club with a date, and she became drunk and passed out,” Dorothy says. “Her date brought her back early in the morning, and Beth slept until almost noon,” and then spent the rest of the day in her Chinese robe chatting with Dorothy or Elvera—flighty or nervous, Elvera observed. Later in the day she wrote to Ann Toth again, asking her to send some money that she would repay when she was back in L.A. Beth didn’t have any of the hundred dollars left and she had not given any money to Elvera or Dorothy.
Dorothy recalls, “A couple of days later some people came to our door and knocked. There was a man and a woman, and another man was waiting in a car parked on the street in front of the house. Beth became very frightened—she seemed to get panicky, and didn’t want to see the people or answer the door. They finally went back to the car and drove away. Even our neighbors thought all of this was very suspicious.”
Western Union delivered a telegram on January 7th. It was from Red. He hadn’t been able to forget the girl he’d met in San Diego. A few days before he sent the telegram he complained to the veterans hospital that he thought he was having “a nervous breakdown.” The doctor told him he seemed in control. Perhaps it was the job—or the stress of his marriage problems. He certainly loved his infant son, but there seemed to be a lot to think about. He needed time. He needed a break. He wanted to see that other girl again.
On January 8th Red covered the territory he’d been assigned in San Diego and arrived at the Western Airlines office about four in the afternoon. He waited for about thirty minutes, but Beth didn’t show up. He then drove back to Pacific Beach, to the house where she was staying.
As soon as he climbed out of the car he saw her at the front door. She looked upset as she came to the car and said, “I have to make a call. Will you take me down to the highway so I can make it?” Red wanted to say he’d do anything she asked. She climbed in and he drove down the hill. When they reached the highway she seemed to have relaxed a little. She asked what time it was and he told her. “It’s too late now to make the call,” she said. She seemed worried and he wanted to know what was wrong. “Well,” she said, “I’m leaving here. I’m really glad you sent me the cable. Maybe you can take me someplace to get a room for the night and I can take a bus in the morning.” She said she had to get back to L.A.
When they returned to the house for her luggage, Red walked her to the door. Beth’s suitcases were just inside and he said he’d put them in the car.
He put the suitcases in the car and glanced back to see her talking in the doorway to the woman. Beth was giving Elvera a hat—saying something about it wasn’t much except she knew she liked it. Beth seemed happy, almost laughing when she got in the car. Red started it up and drove down the hill toward the highway. “When I didn’t find you downtown, I thought it was best that I went out to the house,” he said. “I guess that shows how much I wanted to see you.”
“I appreciate that,” she said. “You’re being very sweet. I’m sorry if things are a little mixed up.”
“I’m concerned about what you’re going to do,” he said to her. “I’ll get you a room for the night and maybe you’ll want to go out to dinner.”
Once Beth got her room, she brought in her makeup kit, sat on the edge of the bed, and began to comb her hair. He asked if she was getting hungry and she nodded, smiling, applying lipstick, and using a small dauber to touch up the corners of her lips.
“Do you feel like something fancy or just grabbing a bite?” Red asked. But before she replied, recalling how she got tipsy the last time, he said, “We can go over to the Hacienda Club again. You feel like doing that?”
She said all right, “I’d like to stop at Sheldon’s on the way.” Red said that was fine with him, and when they got to Sheldon’s Beth wanted to sit in a booth and order a sandwich. Red got a couple of beers and played the jukebox with Beth picking out the songs. Red kept checking his hair in the mirror behind the counter, and she was laughing. She told him he seemed to comb his hair a lot. “It’s lying wrong,” he said, and he needed a haircut.
He told her he was glad that she was feeling better and maybe they could make a grand night of it. But he didn’t let her know that he was thinking about the motel room. Then she said there was another place she’d like to go, since she wouldn’t be coming back to San Diego for a while—the U.S. Grant, a big hotel that had a band. Red said it sounded like a good idea, and asked the waitress for directions.
It didn’t take them long to find the hotel, but while the band was there the dance floor was almost deserted. Red ordered drinks and soon noticed that Beth’s mood had changed. She became quiet and kept glancing to the door or to the back of the room as though looking for someone. It gave him the feeling that she’d wanted to stop there to see somebody else before leaving town.
Next they drove to the Hacienda Club, where people were dancing and the music was playing. Beth’s mood again changed, and to Red she seemed to be having a swell time. They danced and had more drinks; it was getting late. Beth told him she wanted to leave. Back in the car, she said, “Maybe I should take a bus.”
“You mean tonight?” Red asked. She didn’t know. He said, “We’ve got the room—maybe a good night’s sleep. . . . I’ll take you to the depot, if that’s what you want, but I’ll drive you to L.A. in the morning. You’ll probably get there sooner than the bus.”
They didn’t say anything for a while, and then he asked if she was hungry. She said she was. “Let’s grab something to eat,” he said. “Maybe taking a bus isn’t such a good idea.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “My stomach is bothering me.” Red suggested getting something to go and taking it back to the motel where she could relax. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me—I need something to eat,” she said.
They drove to the highway café where Red asked them to bag a couple of hamburgers and sodas. When they returned to the motel, Beth changed into a sweater and pushed the sleeves up when she tried to eat. Noticing the red scratch marks on her arms, he said that one of them seemed to be bleeding. She looked at her arms and, smiling a little, said, “I have a jealous boyfriend.” “You mean to say someone did that to you?” he asked.
“He’s Italian,” she said. “He’s not a very nice guy at all.” She said it had happened quite a while ago, but she’d been picking at it, and it started bleeding. Then she started to shiver and said she was cold.
She picked up Red’s topcoat and put it around her shoulders to keep warm, saying she wished they had some heat in the room. He said, “You want me to light the fire?” She said please, in a soft voice as though suddenly tired, and sat in the chair with her legs curled up under her. He lighted the fire but she didn’t seem to get any warmer. She nibbled on the hamburger as Red moved the chair right in front of the fire. He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to make conversation with her, but she was shivering.
“I’m very cold,” she said, and he took two blankets off the bed to wrap around her.
“Is that better?” he asked. She nodded. She wanted her suitcase out of the car—the smaller one—and asked if he could get in. Red wanted to know if she wanted something from the drugstore—was there anything he could get that would make her feel better?
“No,” she said, huddling in the blankets. She just stared at the fire. Red got her suitcase and the other things from the car, and then drank the rest of the soda. He was thinking about how gay and lively she’d seemed at the Hacienda Club. She hadn’t been cold or sick then.
He sat down on the bed and said, “I’m going to try to get some sleep. Do you want to lay down and try to get some sleep? I can sleep in the chair—it’s okay with me.”
“No, I’m too cold to sleep right now,” she said. “You go ahead and sleep on the bed.”
While her back was turned, Red removed his shirt and trousers and climbed quickly into the bed. He felt peculiar. He thought about his wife and the little baby and he felt sad. It wasn’t his nerves—just kind of sad, like he had burdened himself in some way with this girl. In the back of his mind he’d pictured romance, and he kept thinking of how they’d danced, how he’d felt her breasts against him and the aroma of her hair and whatever that unusual perfume was.
Shutting his eyes, he felt as though he was still back at the Hacienda Club dancing with her. How well she danced and how easy it had been—and her laughter, her head going back slightly and all that black hair fanning out about her head. He had an image of a bottle of thick ink turned upside down and the way it would spill and spread out.
Now he didn’t feel romantic at all. He just felt tired. He couldn’t even remember falling asleep.
When he opened his eyes again it was daylight but he didn’t know how early it was. His muscles jumped slightly like he was suddenly falling and had to catch himself. He raised his head. Beth was propped up with a pillow on the other side of the bed, wide awake. “How do you feel?” he asked. She had chills all night, she said. “You haven’t slept?” he asked. She shook her head and he looked at his watch. “I’m late!” he said. “I’ve got an appointment!”
He was going downtown and they decided she’d wait in the motel room until he returned. She asked if he would take her shoes to a shoe repair and have new taps put on the heels. “When you come back,” she said, “we can leave and go up to Los Angeles.”
“That’s the plan,” he said, taking her shoes. “Noon is checkout time, and I’ll be back by then.”
But it was almost twelve-twenty when Red returned to the motel. His business appointment had run longer than expected. There were new taps on the shoes and she was ready to go. She looked lovely, he thought; a black tailored cardigan jacket and skirt, a white blouse with a very fine sort of lace at the collar. She slipped her feet into the black suede pumps and offered a beautiful smile, thanking him for the taps.
Within minutes they were heading north on the coast highway, and Red said, “I’ve got a call to make on the way. It’s business and I’ll try to make it fast.” She didn’t say anything, just kept staring straight ahead.
The stop at a plumbing supply company took a little while, and when he got back into the car she said she was hungry. “We’ll get something first place we come to,” he said.
It was twenty minutes farther, and before they got out of the car at the restaurant she reached down and straightened the seams of her stockings. She looked at Red sadly and said, “It’s the last pair of stockings I have.”
They got a quick sandwich, then drove as far as Laguna Beach where he had to stop for gas. While the attendant was filling the tank, Beth told him she wanted to write to him, if that were possible—with the situation with his wife. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it would be better if I wrote to you.”
“You can give me your business card and I’ll send a note there,” she said, “telling you where I’ll be.” She smiled and added, “You don’t have to worry—I’ll make it sound like it is business.” Red said all right, but then he couldn’t find a card. He tore off the company name from a slip in his salesbook, and she folded it into her handbag. “You’re very sweet,” she said.
Still on Highway 101, they stopped for some more coffee and something else to eat. When they came out Beth said she had to make a phone call, and Red waited by the car while she gave a number to the long-distance operator. He got into the car and waited for her. When she got back in, she had a small address book open and said her sister lived in Berkeley and was married to a professor from the college there. She told Red his name was West and that her sister was going to meet her in L.A.
“I feel better about that,” he said. “Are you going to Berkeley with her?”
“We have to talk about that,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll probably be up there with her for a couple of days, and then I’ll be going to Boston.” “Boston?” he said. “You really move around.” “That’s where my home is. I’m from the Boston area.”
Red said he didn’t know that—she didn’t talk like someone from Boston. “Well,” he said, “it’s on to L.A, for now. Where are you meeting your sister—” and without waiting for her to answer, he added, “— at the Biltmore?” He didn’t know why he asked that. He was being a little sarcastic.
She said, “Yes, that’s where I’m meeting her.” That sounded funny, but Red said that’s where he’d take her. She said she’d appreciate that very much.
They continued to drive north, but before arriving in downtown L.A. Beth opened her suitcase and took out a beige topcoat, then drew on a pair of white dress cotton gloves. She said, “I want to check my bags first. Can we do that?”
It was between four-thirty and five. The traffic was bad. Red parked in front of the Greyhound Bus depot on 6th Street. He got out and carried her suitcases into the depot so she could check them. She checked the hatbox with the suitcases and said he had better move the car while she was checking her bags. He said he would go around the block and pick her up in front. It was a kind of bad area, he said. She was smiling as she checked the luggage, he noticed, and then he went out and drove the car around the block. He stopped again in front and waited several minutes until she came out. “Biltmore Hotel, right?” he said, still feeling funny about that. She nodded and sighed like she was suddenly tired again. It had been a long drive. “Okay,” he said.
The Biltmore was only a few blocks west. Red found a place to park and they walked around the corner of 5th and Olive, going into the Biltmore Hotel lobby. “I have to go to the little girls’ room,” she said. “Would you mind checking at the desk to see if my sister has arrived?”
The desk clerk told Red that no Mrs. West was registered, nor was there a message for anyone from a Mrs. West. While waiting for Beth to return from the ladies’ room, Red wondered if perhaps her sister had not registered but was somewhere in the lobby—waiting for her.
He noticed two blonde women who looked like they might be waiting for someone. He asked each one if they were waiting for their sister. One woman seemed to get annoyed, and Red sat down in the lobby.
When Beth returned, he told her what the desk clerk had said. “I’m probably too early,” she said. She would wait there, she told him, but it wasn’t necessary for him to stay. Red had already done enough for her, she said. He looked at his watch. It was six-thirty. It was getting late, he said, and he had to drive to Huntington Park.
She was just looking at him—smiling at him. Her eyes looked very clear and blue and they seemed to be shining. He said, “Well . . . all right,” and told her she could send him a letter at the business address, and let him know where she was going to be. She said she would do that and he turned around and headed for the Olive Street door. He glanced back to wave to her, but she was talking to the cashier at the cigar stand. She handed him a dollar and he returned some change. She was still standing there when Red left the hotel.
Several of the Biltmore Hotel employees noticed her waiting in the lobby. A number of times she walked across the marble floor to the telephone booths, and seemed to be making calls. The desk clerk would remember her sitting opposite the bell station for some time, then getting up and walking to the Olive Street door.
Outside, the doorman greeted her and watched as she walked toward Sixth Street. He would become the last known person to see her alive. Elizabeth Short would seem to vanish—to disappear. Her mutilated body would be found six days later in a vacant lot.