The water was a foot below the driver's window, still impossible to open the door. Then I noticed that the windows had hand cranks and not buttons. I felt stupid, embarrassed, but not as much as I felt thankful and relieved. Furiously, I rolled down the window and swam to safety.
It was only a few icy strokes to the pilings beneath the dock. I climbed the cross-braces and clambered up onto the dock platform outside the chop shop. Shivering, I stood watching as the van sank below the surface of the water. The area was dark, remote from the restaurants a few blocks away, with no boats passing nearby. I could have drowned without anyone knowing.
I was dripping wet and furious, not because my life had been endangered but because I'd been made to feel so foolish and helpless. Light shone through a crack in the outer doors of the chop shop. Peering in, I could see that the steel inside doors were closed. Only a hook held the outer doors shut, so I fished out my pocket knife, slipped the blade inside, worked it a moment until it popped.
Paramount in my mind was putting .9mm slugs in the kneecaps of the two clowns who'd shoved me in the freezing Bay. Fortunately there was no one inside.
It was a beauty of a chop shop, acetylene torches, refrigerator-sized toolboxes, hoists, a hydraulic lift, enough parts and accessories to open your own Pep Boys.
I found a bathroom, flipped on the light. There, taped to the walls, were the "secret papers" that had the attaché on the edge of a coronary. I dried my hands and face on paper towels, then carefully removed the tape and called Henry from a pay phone on the bathroom wall. Within an hour the SFPD had arrived, arrested everyone in the place, and gotten a nearby diver who'd been replacing dock pilings to have a look below. He found another dozen vehicles rusting on the bottom of the Bay.
I gave my report to Inspector Manny Torres, an old friend, and climbed into Henry's Rambler for the ride back to the office. As we drove away, I saw the garage clowns being led away in handcuffs beneath a sign that read SAN ANDREAS TOWING—IT'S NOT OUR FAULT.
My shoes squeaked and water ran down my neck as I walked into the office with Henry. Arnie Nuckles and Martha Wally were reading files for an upcoming insurance fraud case. Arnie was my best friend, a walking charm factory; tall, black, and handsome. A former Golden Gloves champion, he worked for me days and spent his nights as a stand-up comic in local clubs, waiting for fame to call. He was a natural actor, master of a thousand characters and voices, the only one in the agency who'd never been a cop.
Martha Wally was a superb athlete, blonde, blue-eyed, even brighter than she was beautiful. She'd been with the San Jose Police Department until she got tired of the ass pinching and harassment. When she dressed up and smiled, strong men would tell her anything.
They both looked me up and down, raised their brows, and waited silently until I explained.
"I went for a swim in the Bay."
"With your favorite jacket on," Martha said.
"I found some top-secret Russian documents my client had in his limousine when it was towed."
Martha held her hand out, as did Arnie. "You sure you want to see these?" I asked Martha, unable to keep a straight face. She grabbed a few out of my hand.
"Jeez," Martha said, "the attaché is pretty limber for an old guy."
She was looking at the one where Kostonoviev was bent backwards over a chair with a woman straddling his Johnson and another one sitting on his face.
"I heard he was a gymnast," I answered.
"I don't recall any of these events at the competition," Arnie added, examining a Western tableau with the naked attaché being ridden by a pasty white whore sporting pink hair, cowboy boots, and a ten-gallon hat.
"Commie bastards," said Henry. "But Frankie iz not only find limo, he iz fix crooks good at tow-hink garage. Kill two bird viz vone rock!" Henry had once made the Malaprop Hall of Fame by telling the female director of an erotic art exhibition that "booty was in the eye of the beholder."
It'd been a slow day, a slow week, and the pictures were a cheap thrill. As they were passed around, Martha handed me a square envelope, the kind greeting cards come in. It was addressed by hand: Mr. Francis Fagen Only.
"A Hispanic woman brought it by at five forty," Martha added. "She rang the bell, handed it to me, and left."
I got another round of shivers and noticed that my prized black leather jacket was turning chalky gray from the salt water. Putting the hand-delivered letter atop the rest of my mail, I dragged myself upstairs, feeling so low I'd need a stepladder to bite myself on the ass. My secret Russian documents were nothing but bad porno pictures. My cellular phone and best camera were at the bottom of the Bay, and tomorrow I'd have to tell my cousin Jimmy his custom van was now a fish tank.
Going into the kitchen I switched the light on, dropped the mail on the table, and began peeling off my jacket, shirt, boots, and denims. Then I found a clean towel and stood shaking as I stared out across the rooftops of the city at the crystal-clear skyline and the bridge. It was hard to be miserable in front of a sight like that, but I managed just fine. I had a good bummer going and I wasn't about to let anything ruin it.
I looked down at the hand-delivered letter, trying to figure what it could be as I dried my hair. Putting the towel around my neck, I ripped open the envelope.
The first thing I found was a single ticket to that night's opening of the San Francisco Opera, where José Carreras was scheduled to sing the part of Don Giovanni in Carmen. So far so great. The second was a note written in a woman's hand, strong, elegant, not flowery or pretentious. The linen paper was expensive.
Dear Mr. Fagen
Sorry for this unusual approach to a meeting, but you'll understand when we speak. I wish to employ your services on a matter that is most certainly one of life or death—mine. Please come. When you arrive at the opera house, do not ask any of the ushers for help but take the small stairs on the north side of the auditorium and find your own way to my box.
Box, it said. I checked the ticket and noticed there was no seat number, just the box letter, which I reckoned was to the right of the stage, second level. You needed more money than a creative savings and loan executive and better connections than the pope to get one of those, especially on opening night. "My box" probably meant she'd had it for some time.
It was signed with the initial C.
I didn't know who I was meeting or what it would lead to, but this was the panacea my old heart needed. Carreras,Carmen. A matter of life or death. A woman with money and good handwriting.
Then I checked the clock. The curtain would rise in thirteen minutes and I was filthy, unshaven, and starving.
I leapt for the shower and managed a comprehensive cleanup and shave in less than five minutes without cutting my throat.
In three and a half minutes more I was dressed and flying down my stairs.
Chapter 2
I should have driven my '63 Corvette convertible, the proper ride for such an occasion, but tardiness prohibited. Besides, it would have deprived the city of a chance to see a six-foot-three-inch P.I. on a Norton Commando, dressed in satin tuxedo pants, a full set of leather tails tied carefully around his waist to avoid an Isadora Duncan, a snow-white Guatemalan wedding shirt, and a Mississippi string tie fastened by a chunk of polished Carraran marble bearing a perfectly engraved bas-relief portrait of Trigger.
I was a sight, even in San Francisco.
Although I was a big hit with the multinational parking crew when I arrived, I chained the bike to a lamppost in front and sprinted inside.
A handful of people were scurrying toward their seats, the curtain delayed a few minutes to accommodate them. I reached the staircase at the north end, took the steps two at a time, and jerked open the door to the box just as the conductor stepped to the podium and received a wave of applause.
The box was empty. I checked the ticket, checked the door, shrugged. An empty box on the busiest night of the opera season. I settled into a seat away from the door.
A paranoid, I bel
ieve, is someone who has been given all the facts. The facts are, I'd been a cop and a P.I. long enough that anonymous meetings under strange circumstances always made me a little uneasy, especially when the other party didn't show. Uneasy enough to sit to the backside of the door and check in my pocket to make sure I could get my gun out of my pocket in a hurry if I had to. As always, I felt ridiculous doing it, but I'd rather be silly and alive than the other way.
As the music started, I scooted up to the edge of my seat and peered at the audience below—at the San Francisco Opera, the audience is half the show. Most of the crowd was standard issue: gray-haired gents with patent leather shoes and all the answers; old women swimming in a sea of blue hair, shellacked to bulletproof perfection, sporting enough diamonds to end poverty in Haiti. Occasionally one of the old geezers would trade down the food chain for a culture-proof blonde with a low-cut display of the latest in elective surgery. He would, on such occasion, parade his catch around hammer locked to her waist, eyeball to saline bosom, the way Hemingway might have posed with a giant blue tuna.
Then there were the other, more colorful coterie. Young radicals in granny dresses and earth shoes, men in leather jeans and rainbow-colored Indian shirts, a half dozen drag queens, an occasional biker in full-dress leathers.
As I peered along the row of boxes, I noticed something out of whack: few in the high-priced seats were watching the stage. Most were staring at me.
Some of them were craning their necks, some had their opera glasses to their faces, but everywhere there was someone staring intently in my direction.
Easing back into the shadows, I wondered whose box I was in. It was obviously someone of great interest to the Chablis-and-fondue set.
Carreras took the stage, found his cue, and instantly transported the audience to the old Latin Quarter in Paris. I relaxed and went with them, not knowing what was ahead except that one of the masters had come to sing. I did laugh, however, remembering that it was the same role, Don Giovanni in Carmen, that Caruso had sung here the night before the 1906 earthquake. The thought brought on a bad case of omen-itis.
As intermission approached, I was still alone and almost didn't care. When I pushed the black button I found a waiter appeared. I ordered an abalone steak and two Heinekens. As the music ended and the curtain began to fall, we all leapt to our feet, rocking the place with applause.
That's why I didn't hear her enter. I jumped when she said, "Mr. Fagen?"
I turned, totally unprepared for what I saw. Her face was a foot away, and her eyes were almost on a level with mine. Jade green eyes, heart-stopping eyes. She had flawless alabaster skin and dark hair with one thin, natural gray streak in it, the kind you will occasionally find with a true Irish girl.
I have seen some beautiful women in my life but this one sucked the breath right out of me. She fixed her gaze on me for a second, looked right through me, smiled, then gazed down at my mouth intently.
"The first act must have been pretty exciting. Your lower lip is bleeding." She reached in her purse and pulled out a tissue and touched it to my lip. I didn't tell her I'd bitten myself performing the Amazing Flying Van feat. I didn't move or say anything.
As she dabbed away, she noticed the polished marble clasp on my Mississippi string tie. She made a feeble attempt not to smile, then looked at me questioningly.
"Trigger?" she asked, pressing the tissue against my lip. I nodded.
"I apologize for being so late. I was at my lawyer's office going over some last-minute depositions for the trial tomorrow." She took the tissue away from my mouth. It was then and only then that I realized who she was, despite having seen her in the papers and on the news without stop for a year and a half.
"I'm Colleen Farragut," she said. "I guess you must have heard about my legal problems."
Only a head trauma victim could have missed them. I felt a strange rush in my ears, the noise of the audience suddenly disappearing. A painful and half-dead part of my past welled up inside of me: I could feel sweat break out on my forehead.
The Farragut murder case. That's why everyone in the surrounding boxes had been staring, to catch a glimpse of Colleen Farragut if she appeared.
The trial, scheduled to begin the next morning, was the most sensational murder case since the trial of Warren Dillon for the murder of San Francisco mayor Alan DiMarco. And not since Patricia Hearst or the Reverend Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre had a San Francisco story received such national attention. The defendant, the woman accused of murdering one of San Francisco's most powerful men—her husband—was standing in front of me.
"I've heard," I said, as softly as I could.
"I need your help, Mr. Fagen. My situation is desperate." From what I knew of her situation, desperate was an accurate assessment.
"I'm sorry to ask you here like this, but it seemed . . . I don't know what it seemed."
I came out of my coma and tried to help her out. "This seemed the easiest place, in the shadows, away from all the scandalmongers. You sent me the hand-written note because you're even afraid your phone is tapped."
She seemed impressed by my deduction, as most people will be if you talk fast enough. I'm not the world's greatest detective, but I am hell on the obvious.
She looked around the opera house, regained her composure quickly; secure in the fact that we were out of sight at the rear of the box.
"I also wanted to come here to hear Carreras sing," she said quietly. "One of the great joys of my life has been coming to this beautiful place, listening to this wonderful music. I'm afraid that, after tomorrow . . ."
After tomorrow her life looked like a short walk to the gas chamber or a long stay in a living hell.
"Mr. Fagen," she said, her eyes growing slightly moist, making her even more beautiful, "I don't want to talk here. I just wanted to meet you on neutral ground. Please come to my house after midnight so I can tell you everything. If you have another engagement, I'm asking you to break it. Please."
I just nodded my head.
"I assume you know where the house is?"
"Yes." Of all the houses I knew in San Francisco, hers was preeminent in my memory, but for all the wrong reasons. "I have a van I use for surveillance, painted with Firenze Plumbing on the side. I'll go to the back entrance of your house and press the buzzer."
She nodded. "Consuela will let you in."
Her voice was seductive, disarming. She stared at me for a second, managed a smile and turned to leave. Near the door she stopped and looked back. "Did you know Caruso sang the part of Don Giovanni the night before the 1906 earthquake?"
"Yes, and when it hit he stormed through the lobby of the Palace Hotel bellowing 'Non ancora cantero qui!'"
"Never again will I sing here," she translated perfectly.
I nodded good-bye and watched her exit, silhouetted by the hall lights outside. Six feet in her heels, she must be five foot nine barefoot.
Her every movement was graceful, feline, erotic. She wore her tight black dress above the knee, the way a panther wears her hide. Her back, visible through an oval opening, was lean, muscled, V-shaped – all flowing into a set of fluid-motion hips.
It was the legs, though, that really did it: a Pacific Coast Highway of endless beauty. Shaded in black stockings, her calves swept in graceful lines from perfect knees, melted into thin, perfect ankles, then disappeared into patent leather pumps. It was moments like this that reminded me of God's innate glory and cruelty.
Why would He create such a woman as this, then tell a few hundred million men they couldn't have her?
The waiter came. I tried to eat and couldn't. A great meal was wasted by the goulash of emotions that swirled inside of me. I was overwhelmed by her beauty and, by that dizzying hope that beats in the heart of any male when he meets such a woman. That was replaced by guilt for having stared into the face of a desperate woman and thinking first of her beauty.
Worst of all was a crushing dread evoked by memories of her late husband,
William Farragut IV, a real estate developer, a fiscal Einstein with the morals of a hired killer, the pursuit of whom had cost me my job when I was a young SFPD inspector in charge of the white-collar-crime division.
I couldn't figure what she wanted with me. Her lawyer was Calvin Sherenian, who'd once told the graduating class at Hastings Law that he could get the Devil's loss to Daniel Webster overturned on appeal. In the hierarchy of great American trial lawyers, Edward Bennett Williams, Gerry Spence, "Race Horse" Haynes, et al., Sherenian was chauffeur to none of them. He had personally tried eleven capital murder cases in the past twenty-five years, winning acquittal in every one.
Sherenian had been the attorney, confidant, and occasional business partner of the late Mr. Farragut, and now that Farragut's wife was charged with her husband's murder, Sherenian was defending her. Normally tight-lipped when trying a case, he had been ferocious in his public declarations of Colleen's innocence. The biggest show in town, it was tailor-made for Calvin.
Calvin also had access to every imaginable resource, including an army of private investigators. So why was she coming to me, the night before the trial?
I tried to watch the final act, but I wouldn't have known if poor Carmen turned the tables this time and stabbed Don Giovanni. I kept running Colleen's story through my mind, trying to access random information so I'd seem like the genius I liked to imagine myself
When the last note was sung—and I'm not sure by whom—and the audience jumped to its feet, I took advantage of the opportunity and made a hurried exit. I flew down the steps, leather tails streaming behind me, looking, I'm sure, like the Phantom himself.
I hopped on the Norton, roared down Franklin to Union and back to my digs on Telegraph. As I peeled off the penguin suit and slipped into overalls, I ran through the rest of Colleen Farragut's story. My heart pounded with anticipation of the unknown.
Bohemian Heart Page 2