Blood Hunt

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Authors: Lee Killough
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make on Madelaine Bieber. “One prior, an arrest for assault and battery. No conviction. The charges were dropped. Nothing since. She’s probably mellowed with age.”
    Garreth raised a brow. “Mellowed with age?”
    “ Yeah,” the Records clerk said. “The arrest was in 1942.”
    Garreth had the case file pulled for him. Madelaine Bieber, he read, had been singing in a club in North Beach called the Red Onion. A fight started with a female patron over a man, and when the woman nearly had her ear bitten off, she preferred charges against the singer. Miss Bieber, aka Mala Babra, was described as five ten, 130 pounds, red hair, green eyes, claiming a birth date of July 10, 1916. The mug shot looked exactly like Lane Barber in a forties hairstyle.
    Garreth stared at the file. If Lane were born in 1916, she was now sixty-seven years old. No amount of facelifting would ever make her look twenty-one. This Bieber must be a relative, perhaps Lane’s mother, which would explain the likeness and similar choice in professions. But why was Lane receiving her mother’s mail? Perhaps the mother was a patient in a nursing home and the mail went to her daughter. It was something to check out. Another question remained: Why have a false driver’s license and a car registered to that false license name?
    Mystique? Lane generated nothing but, it seemed. The lady definitely deserved further attention.
     
    9
     
    At eight o’clock, when Lane came out through the curtains for her first song, Garreth sat at a table talking to a barmaid while he ordered a drink. “How long has she been singing here?”
    The barmaid, whose name tag read Samantha, shrugged. “She was here already when I came last year.”
    “ What do you think of her?”
    Samantha sighed. “I wish I had her way with men. They fall all over themselves for her.”
    Lane worked her way through the club as she sang. On one turn, she saw Garreth. For a moment, her step faltered and a musical note wavered, then she smiled at him and moved on.
    After the last song of the set, she came over to his table. “We meet again. I thought you weren’t going to work overtime tonight.”
    He smiled. “I’m not. I’m here for pleasure. I’d also like to apologize again for disturbing you this afternoon.”
    She smiled back. “That isn’t necessary; I realize you were only doing your job.”
    “ Then may I buy you a drink?”
    “ Later, perhaps. Right now I’ve already promised to join some other gentlemen.”
    Samantha, passing the table, said, “Don’t waste your time; you’re not her type.”
    Garreth watched Lane sit down with three men in flashy evening jackets. “What is her type?”
    “ Older guys in their thirties and forties. Guys with bread to throw around. And her man of the evening is always a tourist, an out-of-towner. She only likes one-night stands.”
    Garreth recorded it all in his head. He asked casually, “Man of the evening? She lets herself be picked up often?”
    “ Almost every night, only she does the picking up. The suckers just think they picked her up.”
    “ Really?” Be an audience. Keep her going, Garreth, my man .
    “ Really. She chooses one, see, and tells him to leave but that she’ll meet him later. She never goes out the door with one of them.”
    “ Then how do you know that’s what happens?” He kept his voice teasing.
    “ Because...” Samantha lowered her voice. “...I’ve overheard her giving them instructions. She tells the guy that the boss is her boyfriend, see, and that he’s very jealous, but then she tells the sucker he’s turned her on so much, she’s just got to see him. He leaves thinking he’s really a superstud. Every night she tells a different guy the same thing.”
    “ Always a different guy? No one ever repeats?”
    Samantha shook her head. “Sometimes they try. She’s polite, but she never goes with them again.” She sighed. “She must do something they really dig. I wonder if I should try the

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