As she approached Quick Express, Cindy noticed the cab company’s vehicle entrance on Turk: a cave of an opening that sheltered a ramp down to the lower parking levels. Yellow cabs were lined up at the curb. Men stood in the drizzle, smoking on the sidewalk, taking swigs from paper bags.
Cindy walked up to the window and saw the dispatch office on the other side of the glass, much like a ticket office in a movie theater but bigger. She knocked on the glass.
The man in the office was regular height, in his forties, with dark hair and a pale moon face. He was wearing a rumpled plaid shirt and khakis. He looked agitated as he worked the phone lines while delivering blunt instructions into a radio mic.
Cindy had to speak loudly over the sound of incoming radio calls.
“I’m Cindy Thomas,” she said into the grill. “Are you the owner here?”
“No, I’m the manager and dispatcher, Al Wysocki. What can I do for you?”
“I’m a reporter at the Chronicle,” she said. She dug her press pass out of her handbag and held it against the window.
“What’s this about?”
“One of your drivers might have saved someone who was having a heart attack. The person who called the paper only remembers that the driver was in a taxi minivan,” Cindy lied.
“You got a name?”
“No.”
“And what’s the driver look like?”
“All this person remembers is that the minivan had a movie ad on it.”
“Gee. A movie ad,” Wysocki said. “Okay, look. We have six vans in the fleet. Three are in. Three are out. But you understand, none of the drivers has a call on any of these cabs. They drive what’s here when their shifts start.”
“May I take a look anyway? It shouldn’t take long.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Wysocki told Cindy that the garage had three levels — the main floor, which she was on, and two subterranean levels. Two of the vans were on the first floor down, and the third was on the second floor down.
Cindy thanked the man and began her tour of the parked taxis in the dark, grimy, stinking-from-gas-fumes underground garage. Twenty minutes later, she’d located all three vans, none of which had a movie ad on its side.
She took the stairs back to the main floor and left her card with the dispatcher, taking his card in return.
“Okay if I call you again?”
“Feel free,” said Wysocki, who grabbed his microphone and barked a street address to a cabbie.
Cindy left the garage through the front door on Turk and found Richie waiting for her on the street corner.
“You were suppposed to wait for me in the coffee shop,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Rich. I was a bit early so I thought I’d follow up on something. Honey, this is just legwork. And this is just a cab company.”
“A cab company, and you suspect a cabbie of being the last person to see a woman who was drugged and raped.”
“Well, none of the cabs here is the one.”
“I don’t like the chances you take to get a story, Cindy,” Rich said, opening the passenger-side door for her. “This is mugger’s alley. I’m dropping you home. Then I’ve got to meet Lindsay.”
Cindy looked up at her fiancé, stretched up onto her toes, and kissed him. She said, “You’re very damned overprotective, Richie. And this is the weird part: I kind of like it.”
Chapter 59
CONKLIN AND I met with the Richardsons once again i