My long-time friend, Zane Neidlinger, senior reporter on the Clarion, had been the first to dig up her story, long before the murder of Farragut at their mansion. He'd told me Colleen's tale over dinner at the Washington Square Bar & Grille in North Beach, years before the national media had picked it up.
Colleen had been raised in some hellhole non-town outside of Modesto in the San Joaquin Valley. When she was fifteen, her step-father, an alcoholic who drove a "honey bucket," a big truck that pumps out septic tanks, tried to introduce her to the joys of posing for home polaroids in the barn. She bit off a piece of his ear and ran away to San Francisco, where, as Zane told it, she arrived with one dress, one pair of shoes, and less than a hundred bucks that she'd earned baby-sitting.
She looked up the girlfriend of her oldest sister, who got her a fake ID and a job waiting tables at one of the Broadway strip joints near Carol Doda's infamous Condor. A now famous picture of Colleen had appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer two weeks after Farragut's murder. Dressed in a black lace corset and fishnet stockings and sitting on the lap of some fat old fart, she looked older than thirty and younger than fifteen. The guy had paid her five dollars to pose with him, and he probably sold the photo to the Enquirer for five thousand.
According to Zane, she had a wizard IQ and had been determined to make something of her life. She kept her nose squeaky clean, passed her GED exams with flying colors, and after two years at City College, got accepted to UC Berkeley. Working nights as a waitress on Union Street by then, she'd managed a double major in art history and foreign languages, graduating summa cum laude. She followed that with a master's degree in fine art.
She was working in a Battery Street art gallery at the age of twenty-five when William Farragut IV came to see a Modigliani collection they were selling. He was thirty-eight at the time. They married nine months later.
Farragut was the exact opposite of Colleen. Like me, he was a fourth-generation San Franciscan. Our great-grandfathers had emigrated within a few months of each other in 1851.
But while I was a fourth-generation cop, Farragut was a fourth-generation builder and real estate speculator. There were two schools of thought on the late Willy IV: according to one, that of his friends and cronies, he was a great "architect" of the city, a master facilitator able to cut through red tape, responsible for renovating and rebuilding slums and modernizing the city's skyline; the second school, of which I was a die-hard member, believed that he cared nothing for the city beyond the profits he could take from her, that his methods were bribery, extortion, intimidation, and worse.
The Farragut haters, and they were legion, saw his "urban renewal" as an excuse to drive poor and blue-collar people out of the city by building highrises and "Manhattanizing" San Francisco until a tiny one-bedroom apartment that rented fifteen years before for one fifty a month now sold for three hundred thousand as a condominium.
The real losers were the families, the working class, the artists and assorted characters that had made San Francisco a comfortable and magical place. What was once a home for the beat generation and Emperor Norton, for merchant marines and mom-and-pop groceries was now an open-air shopping mall for a million camera-toting tourists.
Soon after they married, Colleen built a sizeable reputation as San Francisco's premier patron of the arts and supporter of charitable causes. There were a number of jokes over the years that Willy IV was having trouble stealing fast enough to keep up with his wife's humanitarian endeavors.
Then it got ugly in the Farragut home, or so the newshounds claimed. Colleen and William grew distant, preoccupied with their Simon Legree and Florence Nightingale roles, and found recreational outlets elsewhere. It had been rumored, but not proven, that Farragut had one or more two-thousand-dollar-a-night sweeties to whom he'd play Evil Uncle Ernie, paddling their high-priced behinds with a variety of leather instruments not found at Macy's, unless they have recently opened an equestrian department.
Colleen had been the principal financial supporter of SOHO, an innovative urban renewal project, and eventually became the principal horizontal supporter of its director, Tommy Rivera, a strapping ex-street hoodlum with the looks of a Latin matinee idol.
In the annals of juicy scandals, this was a world-class beauty, and the gossip rags had been writhing in orgasmic delight. The "legitimate press," however, fraught with moral indignity over a woman who had apparently murdered her husband to inherit his estate, were practically screaming for her head behind the Equal Justice for the Rich banner.
District Attorney Ian Jeffries, a rat-faced pornography fighter seeking election to the state attorney general's office on the Idi Amin—Benito Mussolini ticket, was asking for the death penalty and promising no less than life without possibility of parole.
Except for her attorney, Calvin Sherenian, Colleen didn't seem to have a friend in the state of California.
I checked the clock for the fifteenth or twentieth time. When it had finally crept to 11:50, I donned my plumber's cap and went down the front steps to the garage.
As I stuck my key into the automatic door opener, I checked in every direction. No one was reading a newspaper in a doorway or sitting in a parked car, so I climbed into the plumber's van and drove off.
I liked to take it easy on the old van, so I avoided the Union Street hills, making a right on Columbus and a left on Bay Street near Ghirardelli Square. I passed Galileo High where Di Maggio, O. J. Simpson, and I had all gone to school, with different results. At Steiner I cut up to Filbert and made my way into the Presidio.
Arriving in Presidio Heights, I cruised the neighborhood looking for reporters or news crews. When I saw the Farragut mansion was dark and without unwanted visitors, I drove to the rear gate, leaned out, and pushed the buzzer.
Several reporters and photographers suddenly appeared from the bushes across the street and made a mad dash toward the van.
Within seconds a tinny voice asked who it was. I barked, "Firenze Plumbing," and was immediately buzzed in. I escaped the fastest of the reporters by less than ten feet. Several frustrated looks appeared in my rearview as the gate closed and I swung around the back of the house.
Chapter 3
As I rounded the carriage entrance at the rear a white garage door, one of eight, opened magically and admitted me to the dark interior. I'd now gone farther into the Farragut sanctuary than I had in my catastrophic two-year pursuit of William IV.
As the door closed and the darkness grabbed me, a light came on, and Consuela entered from a side door. A plain-looking woman in her early forties, short, heavyset, and seeming very shy, she kept her head down as she smiled and nodded for me to follow her.
We walked past several dusty cars that were parked in the garage: a Stutz-Bearcat, a Duesenberg, a gull-wing Mercedes, a few others of equal vintage. Several million on wheels.
We went outside and down a lengthy covered walkway. The moon had just snuck over the trees of the Presidio to the right and was illuminating the house. It was big, the size of your basic airline terminal, and Tudor-style, my least favorite form of architecture. A cow barn with racing stripes. There was one miniscule light coming from a bedroom several stories up. It would have made a nice home for Norman Bates and his mother, had they been more successful in the motel business.
Consuela pulled open a hangar door and we entered through a vestibule into a "family room" big and cold enough to hang meat in. We walked through a dining room the size of the one at West Point continuing through a kitchen and pantry to a private elevator, which Consuela operated. I had to smile at her as we slowly rose five floors to where the mistress of the castle was waiting. I wished I still had my tuxedo on.
Consuela led me down a series of hallways to the room from which the faint light had emanated. I'd been on shorter hikes in the Boy Scouts. Consuela knocked softly before admitting me.
The room was as warm and comfortable as the rest of the house was cold and intimidating. A fire was burning in the huge sto
ne fireplace. From the giant windows at the far end of the huge bedroom, I could see over the trees to what the Pacific Ocean saw when it looked up at the bridge. Lights from Belvedere Island, Alcatraz, and the East Bay sparkled behind it.
Colleen was on the phone when I entered. After a moment she said something into the phone, hung up, and came toward me. She was wearing tight Levi's and red boots with heels, and a V-necked sweater that clung to small, perfect breasts. Her nipples poked upward through the weight of the heavy knit fabric. No mean feat, I thought. I should have run. I didn't.
"Thank you for coming, Mr. Fagen."
"Frank," I said. I saved Frankie for waitresses in doughnut shops. She told me to call her Colleen. I'm always glad when that part is over.
"I asked Consuela to make us some tea. Would you prefer something else?"
I shook my head, then followed her across the bedroom through open French doors into an enormous sitting room filled with gray leather furniture and more paintings than you are likely to see at the De Young Museum. I counted three Magrittes, two Dalis from his Soft Watches Period, a Matisse, several Modigliani's, a half dozen of Duchamp's best, and a liberal sprinkling of Man Ray's photographs, plus a handful of up-and-coming San Francisco painters. A tasteful and valuable collection, some of the best the twentieth century had to offer. We sat. Neither of us smoked. She was nervous. I was nervous. There was a lot of nervousness.
"I don't know where to start."
"Start anywhere."
"What do you think of my case?"
"I only know what I read in the papers."
"You're ducking the question."
She'd challenged, I accepted. "You're in a lot of trouble. The DA wants to hang you, the evidence is one-sided, and the newspapers think you're the Wicked Witch of Presidio Heights. The biggest thing in your favor is the sharpest mouthpiece in town, and the fact that he hasn't lost a big one since they discovered penicillin."
"And I'm terrified I'll be the first," she said.
She got a moment's reprieve as Consuela entered with a tray bearing a teapot, two cups, and an antique honey jar. Consuela poured and handed us cups. Colleen raised hers to her lips, hands trembling. She blew on the surface of the hot tea, took a sip, gathered her nerve as best she could.
I felt sorry for her, even if she had pulled the trigger. To be a murderer you have to kill something human, and there were a lot of people who felt the late Mr. Farragut didn't qualify. I was one of them.
"It wasn't just business between you and William, was it?" she asked me when Consuela had left.
"It was never just business with me, that was my problem. I despised every drunk driver, child molester, every white-collar crook I ever busted. I wasn't a cop, I was the graceless crusader. Well, here I am, living proof that no good deed goes unpunished."
I drained my teacup and wished I had accepted something stronger. She'd got me going, but I'd learned a little over the years; I reined it in. Now it was her turn.
"Come on," she said, "I want to show you something."
We walked through her bedroom and back into the Hallway Without End. We passed the elevator, two more bedrooms, another bathroom, a game room, and a library. An easy fifteen-dollar cab ride later, a marble and brass staircase brought us to the floor below.
The third floor was taken up almost completely by a bedroom the size of Pittsburgh. "I had just gone out into the hallway from my room above when I heard him get off the elevator. I came down to tell him his mother had called. He was pretty drunk.
"We had been arguing for weeks. He found out about my affair with Tommy Rivera and was saying he'd divorce me, take away everything, including what I'd earned myself."
I asked her how William had found out. She suspected he had hired a private detective. I made a mental note to find out who the detective was, and where and when he'd caught her.
"In the middle of the argument, he suddenly decided he needed another drink, so he went downstairs to the bar."
"Why did he do that?" I asked. "You have servants, and there must be a bar in here somewhere."
"The only servant who ever lived in was Consuela and she has Monday nights off She takes BART, then a bus, to San Jose to stay with her brother and his kids. And the bottle of Glenlivet in the bar over there"—she pointed to an armoire in the adjacent sitting area that looked like it had once held Napoleon's favorite suits—"was empty. Glenlivet is the only thing that William drank."
She motioned for me to follow her. We trekked back down the hallway, descended the stairs again.
Within the hour we arrived at a den filled with overstuffed red leather furniture, the walls covered with college graduation certificates and awards for citizenship and humanitarian achievements given to William and his ancestors. I had my own opinion about these last awards, but kept my tongue. A long marble-topped bar along one wall was better stocked than the ones I usually visit. Adjacent to that was a set of French doors where they let the Hindenburg in and out.
There were a few other things that made it different from the average den. The first was a yellow banner across the entrance reading DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINES and a court order tacked to the wall. Then there was the chalk outline of a body in the middle of the thick gray carpet, and two large bloodstains that coincided with the account in the police report, which stated that Farragut had taken two slugs, one through the pumper and one through the right lung. Several drawers had been pulled open and dumped, trophies and knickknacks were scattered on the floor, and some broken glass.
I looked at Colleen, waiting for her to continue. She took a deep breath. I could see her pulse beating beneath the almost translucent flesh of her neck.
"As soon as William went downstairs, I went back to my room and took a shower, to try to calm down. I never heard the shots: the walls of this house are as thick as a vault."
"How long was it before you went downstairs and found his body? It was you that found him, right?"
"It wasn't until the next morning. After I took my shower, I just figured he'd stayed downstairs because he was drinking and he'd lost interest in fighting. I was dead tired and I went to bed."
"You weren't sleeping together?"
"No. I was sleeping upstairs in the room we were just in. We hadn't slept together in months. Not since I'd found out about the S&M adventures with his high-priced girlfriend."
"Then what happened?" I asked.
"Next morning, before Consuela returned from San Jose, I went downstairs. It was real creepy. All the lights were on, and it was deathly silent. I could see the curtains blowing in the den at the end of the hallway; the French doors were open. I saw him lying on the floor. I thought he'd passed out, or fallen and hit his head, or maybe had a heart attack. When I got up closer . . ." She covered her face with her hands. "That's when I saw the blood on his clothes, two huge stains. I'll never forget his eyes, wide open, staring at the ceiling. I had this weird, creepy feeling that if I looked in his eyes I'd see the person who shot him, you know, like his eyes were a camera or something."
She shivered. I got an Indian blanket from the adjacent parlor and wrapped it around her shoulders. It gave her time to catch her breath and compose herself.
"The gun was lying there, where the X is." She pointed to the chalk mark on the carpet. "There was an officer here in less than three minutes. He was only a few blocks away when he got the call. I showed him the body, and he said William had been dead for hours. The blood had coagulated on his shirt and on the rug. Then the paramedics and a dozen cops showed up, the coroner, everybody."
"What made you think that the murderer, or murderers, was already gone and that you weren't in danger?"
"I didn't. I never thought about it. When I saw the gun on the floor, I figured whoever did it dropped it on the way out."
"And it was your gun?" I asked.
"It was William's. He kept it in a drawer by the bar, since he spent a lot of time in his den and always had the French doors open. He used the Jac
uzzi almost every night and worried that someone might come over the wall behind the house. The other side is just woods. The land belongs to the Presidio."
"The papers said the gun had your fingerprints on it, as well as his."
"I'm a farm girl; my stepfather had guns all over the place. I'm not afraid of guns. But Consuela is. William had a habit of getting drunk, taking the gun out, and forgetting to put it away. Consuela wouldn't even go in the room unless I put it in the drawer."
Classy stuff. One of the country's wealthiest men, loaded on scotch and playing country club cowboy with a loaded revolver.
"How long before the shooting had you last handled the gun?" I asked her.
"About a week."
Fingerprints could last for months, even years. "And the only prints were yours and William's?"
"Yes. Two hours after the police came, I submitted to a blood test for drugs and alcohol. Then they ran a test to see if I had fired a gun. There was no gunpowder residue on my hands or on my clothes."
"Was anything taken?"
She pointed to a display case nearest the door. "Do you know the Italian artist Ghiberti?"
"Yes. If you've ever been to Florence, it's impossible not to know him." Ghiberti sculpted the brass doors on the exterior of the Baptismal, the octagonal building constructed as a tribute to John the Baptist. It stands in front of the Church of Santa Maria Del Fiore, third largest church in the world, atop which rests Brunelleschi's Duomo. The dome is considered the greatest architectural achievement of the Renaissance.
Ghiberti's creation, dubbed "the Doors of Paradise," is divided into panels, each meticulously sculpted to depict a scene from the Bible, each in solid brass and weighing scores of tons. They are the most famous doors in all the world and took Ghiberti fifty-one years to complete. Only one of the doors has ever been reproduced. It stands at the main entrance to San Francisco's Grace Cathedral.
Bohemian Heart Page 3