Telegraph Hill by John F. Nardizzi Read Free Book Online Page B

number. After rummaging for a few hours, Ray found mug shots of
prostitutes from the 1960s.
    Ray looked at the photos. One girl, a bruised face
set with eyes that were elfin and sprightly. She wore a stiff collared dress
that reminded him of dancers he had seen on old TV shows like Laugh-In. An
older black woman, looking off to her left, the picture faded, blurry, like a
jazzy snapshot of a Harlem after-hours club. A Midwestern farm girl with
heavy-rimmed glasses that made her look like a high school math teacher.
    He wondered what had become of the women. Dead
probably. He knew of a famous Boston call girl known as the Leopard Lady on
account of a spotted coat she usually wore while picking up johns in the
theater district. Supposedly she married a high-tech mogul in the western
suburbs. The exception. The mug shots, so different than the ones of the men,
capturing a strange feminine disregard for the cop—it had probably been a
man—taking the picture. Almost like they never saw him, looked through him. A
sliver of terrible light in those eyes. Not innocence, but something else, a
grim illumination. He felt a sadness looking at the photos, but there was
something else too, something almost holy. He could not stop poring over the
faces.
    Waymon had quite a collection, Ray thought. He
spent over an hour before finding a stack of color photos from the 1990’s. They
were smaller, laid out on a page according to case number. He peered through
several pages of photos.
    He recognized her immediately, the intelligent
eyes gleaming even in a mug shot, the tender mouth. Ray flipped over the photo,
and read: Tania Kong: DOB 04/26/73; 639 Jones Street, Apt. 12, San Francisco,
CA. Charge CPC 309.
    Ray sat back, very pleased. He peered through a
few more photos, but found none of Tania. He looked around at the chaos—boxes, photos,
the musty pleasures of an old basement. He walked upstairs to find Waymon
sitting on one of his atrocious brown sofas.
    “What did you find?”
    Ray flapped a photo he held in his hand. “Mind if
I make a copy of this?”
    “Sure. You had some luck. Good. I never throw out
anything, you know. I’m a pack rat of the first order.”
    Ray handed Waymon the photo. He studied it for a
moment. “Nope, never met her. Even if I met a million like her.” He handed the
photo back to Ray. “You can have it.”
    Ray took the photo, thanked Waymon, and then left.

Chapter 10
     
    Ray raced back to San Francisco over the Bay
Bridge. The morning grayness had burned off, leaving the sky blue and wide.
Treasure Island loomed as he entered the tunnel, then the gray jigsaw of
downtown skyscrapers, and the pale upraised finger of Coit Tower to the north.
In the distance, the Marin Headlands shouldered its rocky bluffs into the
sun-ripped Pacific.
    He exited on Bryant and headed up 8th Street to
Taylor, took a left on Eddy, and drove toward the library.
    The San Francisco Public Library, a fog-gray
granite and glass monolith, was designed by an architect renowned for working
with expansive rotundas and soaring spaces of light. Unfortunately, he was not
a librarian. Once the library opened, his design was discovered to have left
very little room for books. Nonetheless, the building emitted light like a
shooting star, and even if people frequently searched in vain for a book, they
all paused to admire themselves in the various reflective surfaces of the
library.
    He walked to the reference room. Rows of old phone
directories, maps, heavy volumes of government documents that no one ever
seemed to read. Ray pulled reverse directories for the early 1990’s, and sat
down at a table. He reviewed the resident listings for 639 Jones Street,
Apartment 12. The 1996 directory listed a T. Kong in Apartment 12. It also
listed Steven Moran as a tenant. He jotted down the name, and headed back
toward the lobby.
    He exited the library, blinking in the sun. Might
as well try Moran on Jones Street now; it was a beautiful day. He walked