‘Can you remember what he looked like? And maybe his age?’
Mel huffed. ‘Not really. He was maybe about five feet ten. Dark hair, collar length, kind of boring looking, a wee bit overweight. I’d say he’d be about thirty-five. Bri usually went for the flash types, pretty boys and bad boys. So, when she went off with him at the end of the night, we were all gobsmacked.’
‘Do you think you might recognise the guy if you saw him again? Maybe if I showed you some photographs?’
Mel made a face. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. It was ages ago. But I have seen him again, maybe three years ago.’
Narey’s pulse quickened. ‘Where?’
‘In town. It was near Central Station. It took me a minute to think where I knew him from, but it was him. Thing is, the bastard was married. He was hand in hand with this woman all happy husband and wife. He saw me and he knew I knew.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Definite.’
CHAPTER 51
Salgado had grabbed some sleep but was feeling the worse for it. He was disorientated as much by the two hours he’d slept as he was by the body in the bathroom of the Aster. They had a sense of Garland now. They knew how he worked, how he was wired, but it still wasn’t enough.
The Aster had felt right, and in some ways it was. Old LA, an old haunt of the Garlands, the Black Dahlia connection. After the visit to the Aster they had officers call on the house that now sat on the once vacant lot on South Norton where Elizabeth Short had been found, but it was a perfectly normal family home with no skeletons in any of the closets. The same went for the house on Talmadge Street in Loz Feliz where Ethan had grown up. All hunches. All wrong.
Dylan Hansen hadn’t moved, hadn’t seemingly breathed, in the time Salgado had slept or in the half hour he’d been awake again. Opinions were spilt between what they could see and what they could believe. Cold realism versus hope. Salgado continued to cling to hope.
‘You awake in there, Detective?’
He looked up from his desk to see Howie Kelsey walking in slowly, like a man bearing bad news.
‘Hey, Howie. What’s up? You been made lieutenant yet?’
Kelsey grimaced. ‘I think that’s going to have to wait a while.’
Salgado tried to read the man’s mood. ‘You got news?’
Kelsey advanced his right hand and tilted it side to side. Maybe yes, maybe no.
‘I don’t want any bad news, Kelsey. We don’t have time for any of that.’
The tall man looked mournful and in no mood for jokes. ‘So, let me tell you what I’ve got. I managed to get three detectives on this, used your kidnap guy to convince my boss it was urgent. We tried to track down all the employees from Delmonico’s who appeared on the witness statement that Mortimer and Crouch took in 1947. It was a long shot but three of them are still alive and still living in LA.’
‘Jesus, how old are they?’
‘Viola Facci is eighty-nine. Domenico Sciarra is ninety-five. And Tony Giordano is ninety.’
‘Giordano is the guy who owned the sedan?’
‘Right. So, first of all, Sciarra is alive but has dementia. His doctor says he’s as happy as Larry but couldn’t tell us what he had for breakfast never mind what happened seventy years ago. But Viola and Tony are sharp as tacks.
‘Viola is in a retirement home in Westlake. Chirpy and chatty and remembers Delmonico’s as if it were yesterday. And she remembers Zac Garland very well. Want to know the first thing she said when we told her we were cops and wanted to talk to her about Zachary Garland? “I’ll bet this is about the Black Dahlia”.’
‘Whoa . . .’
Kelsey held up a hand in warning.
‘No, hold on. Don’t get too excited. It’s all about why she remembers him and the Dahlia. Viola said, and I quote, “Zachary Garland was full of shit.” She said he was a born liar, always making things up to try to impress people. Particularly women. She said she wouldn’t believe that guy if he told her the sun came up in the morning.
‘Viola said that probably most people in Los Angeles were talking about the Black Dahlia murder but that everyone in Delmonico’s was talking about it. The cops found the shoes and the purse nearby, that was the first thing. But the staff just assumed they’d been dumped there and that was that. But then cops came looking for a guy named Frankie Wynn who’d said he worked there. Of course, there was no Wynn there but it had them all scared and excited and talking, talking, talking.
‘She said it was maybe a month after that when Zac Garland began telling people he was Frankie Wynn. He’d tell one or two, like a confession, and then let them tell other people. At which point he’d deny it. She said, and again I quote, that “he started to wear the name like a coat.” She said he was always this weird kid who wanted to be more interesting than he was. Said he was dating starlets when he wasn’t. That he’d got into fights when he hadn’t. Killed someone when he hadn’t.’
‘She was sure?’
‘She was certain. She remembers one of the waiters saying he was out on the town with Zac, hitting a few bars and hitting on a few girls. Says the first thing Garland did was introduce himself to the girls as Frankie. But no one had ever heard him use the name before the cops came calling.
‘Viola says Garland hit on her, told her all kinds of stories, but she knew they were bullshit, knew Zac was full of it. I asked her if there was any chance he’d killed the Black Dahlia and she nearly died laughing.’
‘Wait. But what about the car?’ Salgado was reaching. ‘Zac Garland owned the sedan that was seen on Norton, right? Durrant had no doubt about the age, the shape, the paint job.’
Kelsey shook his head. ‘He owned a sedan, that much was true. But remember, we don’t even know if Ralph Asdell’s sighting on Norton was the guy who killed Beth Short. And, anyway, that brings us to Tony Giordano.
‘So Tony is in a home in Montecito Heights, a very dapper OG, shirt and tie every day. Likes to chat to the ladies. Got all his marbles, maybe just a bit slower than he was. He had to think a bit more before things came to him, but he got there. Tony, like you say, owned a 1935 sedan. But he was working the night Elizabeth Short was murdered, went straight home to his wife and was there all night. Checked and confirmed by our guys at the time. Completely in the clear. He got a paint job done on his car, simple as that, but it was enough to draw cops to the restaurant.
‘So, I ask him about Zac Garland and got nothing until I prompted him about his sedan. And then he was like, “Yeah, Garland. I remember that son of a bitch. He bought a sedan, same as mine. Even got a black paint job on it, same as mine. He was one crazy son of a bitch.”
‘Bottom line is, Tony Giordano has zero doubt that Zac Garland bought the sedan way after the Dahlia murder. He bought it because he was obsessed with the Short killing. Because of Giordano, he knew the cops thought a guy with a ’35 sedan was the killer, so he bought one to make people think it was him. Crazy fuck. Giordano says the staff all called him the Dahlia killer. Like it was one big joke.
‘I’m sorry to say it, Salgado, but Zac Garland was a fantasist. A dangerous fantasist going by the rest of the stuff you told me, but there’s nothing to think he had anything at all to do with the Dahlia murder. Any bad shit he got into was after that, and yeah, maybe because of it. But he didn’t murder Elizabeth Short.’