I didn't know what was happening, and the scariest part was, I really didn't care.
Chapter 9
I spent the next few days running into more walls and roadblocks than the Volvo test dummy. One of the things I'd most admired about my former SFPD cohorts had borne true in the Farragut case: they were relentless. They had run down every lead and "usual suspect" in all of California and half the western states.
They'd run hundreds of burglary suspects through the computer, eliminating most of them. In addition, they checked every one of scores of tips from people who thought they knew or had seen something relating to the case. Again, nothing.
The potential suspects among known burglars had been grilled, trailed, threatened with probation violations, offered immunity and preferential treatment for any information leading to the identification of the burglar. Nothing, not even the faintest clue.
Arnie had read the file of every suspect and picked out the ones who could conceivably have been the perpetrator. Henry and I repeated the efforts of the department, offering bribes, favors, anything we could to get a handle. We went everywhere from crack galleries to halfway houses to strip joints. I won a three-hundred-dollar bet, my only chance to diffuse a very ugly situation, outside a biker bar in Oakland, when Henry easily whacked out two ex-cons who looked like bowling balls with hair. Henry enjoyed himself so much I had a hard time getting him to take the three hundred. It was just how bad things were going.
Next I concentrated on finding the phantom Bondage Queen and Hawk, the lovesick blackmailer. I had an artist visit Colleen's journalist friend, Alice Stein, who provided us with an astonishingly good description of the woman, down to bone structure, eye color, and the size and shape of the scar on the woman's mouth.
We visited the hotels where Farragut had used his credit card to charge rooms or buy dinners and drew more blanks. No one remembered or wanted to remember the blonde who entertained William IV.
We tried bars, restaurants, nightclubs, anything that appeared on any of his credit card statements. We worked at a frantic clip, interviewing hundreds of people. Nothing.
Then Arnie found a listing at the city assessor's office indicating that Farragut had been a partner in the Orso, a small, very exclusive hotel in Pacific Heights. A converted Mediterranean-style mansion only a half mile from the Farragut place, it was more like a posh boarding house where out-of-town businessmen could rent rooms by the month with services like secretaries and translators.
We'd been on the case over a week, four of us working night and day, and nothing. When you added the years my family had been on the Farragut case, it seemed a hopeless eternity. I was just about at the end of my rope. My fears for Colleen were growing by the minute.
When I entered the place, I noticed an old friend of mine, Fred Worley, setting up the bar in the hotel's lavish dining room. Ignoring the stares of the desk clerk and indignant clientele, I walked into the bar and sat at a stool.
I'd known him since high school. I had boxed with him at Billy Newman's gym and studied Shorinji Ryu karate with him at Clarence Lee's studio in the Haight. He was the original stand-up guy, tough, a gifted actor who periodically went to Los Angeles for small film roles.
I showed him the composite of the mystery woman. He recognized her instantly. My heart jumped.
"I was working dinner here a few weeks before I went to L.A. I've seen some beauts, but this one was something. Hard not to notice the scar on her mouth. She was nervous as hell, scared, guzzled down about three gin and tonics in fifteen minutes. She looked like a scared little girl in a woman's body. Long legs, phony boobs. When she went to the bathroom she left a copy of the personal ads from the San Francisco Weekly Guardian. I looked to see what she'd circled. It looked like she'd advertised for a sugar daddy, you know, 'Tall, blond, wild imagination seeks very generous older man for discreet indiscretions.' She had the time and the address here written in."
"Did you see who she met?"
"After she went upstairs I saw a green jaguar sedan pull up and in walked William Farragut, the guy who got murdered." He looked at me. "Shit, you think this girl killed him?"
"I don't know. Farragut's wife is the one they're trying to hang it on."
"Anyway, I saw Armando, the manager, come out from behind the desk, shake Farragut's hand, and give him a room key."
"Did you see him leave?"
"No, but I saw her leave. She came down, and there was a cab waiting for her. She didn't look so good. She was sort of dazed, wobbly, her hair was messed up. Actually, it was pretty sad. She looked like an amateur turning her first trick."
"Did you check her I.D.—get her name?"
"No. Sorry."
"You said it was just before you went to Los Angeles for a film. When was that?"
"Well, I left for L.A. on April first, April Fool's day, kind of a good day to start your film career in Hollywood, right? Let's see, the newspaper comes out on Thursdays, and I remember this was Friday because it's always nuts in here Fridays at dinnertime. It was either three weeks before I left, or maybe two weeks, between March seventh and March fifteenth, as close as I can figure it."
I got down off the stool, dropped a healthy tip, and shook his hand. We promised to see each other again. Then I went out, climbed on the Norton, and broke all the speed limits en route to the Weekly Guardian office south of Market, where I barged in on Alan Jenkins, Zane Neidlinger's old protégé at the Clarion, now editor of the Weekly Guardian. I told him I needed to see back copies of the paper from two years ago and he took me to a large basement where the papers were stored in cardboard boxes by weeks and years. Within half an hour we'd found the ad I was looking for. Alan told me if the woman who placed it paid by credit card, they'd still have it in their computer.
Fifteen minutes more and I had the name of Lynne McBain, her American Express account number, and the address of her apartment in the Outer Mission. Fatigued as I was, I felt like a miracle had happened, like I'd found the Grail. On my way to Lynne McBain's apartment, I sobered up and realized I hadn't even begun to get close to it.
When I arrived I learned she had moved. I located a former friend of hers, a washed-out, strung-out-looking white girl living down the hall. At first, she didn't know what had become of Lynne, but a hundred dollars later she regained her memory. Lynne had bought a condo along the Embarcadero.
After canvassing every residential building on the waterfront, I found the one that had a mailbox in the name of L. McBain at the foot of Telegraph Hill, literally a stone's throw down the hill from my house. I pressed the buzzer, got no answer. I decided to wait.
I sat on the curb outside and stared at the open space above the Embarcadero Buildings, a space once occupied by an overhead freeway that had been destroyed by the "World Series Earthquake" in 'eighty-nine. It was the only improvement in the city's skyline in fifty years, giving everyone on the east side of town an uninterrupted view of the Bay.
I sat on the curb for an hour, watching the giant cargo ships passing en route to the East Bay. Once the West Coast's greatest port, the ships and the legions of longshoreman were now gone, working overtime in Oakland. The old docks and warehouses had become tourist restaurants, T-shirt shops, and cookie factories where pudgy tourists could get lost in thirty-seven languages. The stevedores had been replaced by dancing mermaids and cotton candy clowns. A city without a backbone, a beauty queen without substance, without heart, shallow and frivolous.
I thought about the kiss. I hadn't seen Colleen in three days, though we spoke every evening on a secure line I'd arranged. She asked if she had offended me. She'd done a lot of things with one kiss, but offending me wasn't one of them.
As I sat waiting for Lynne McBain, Colleen was in court, a special Friday session. That meant the pace was accelerating and the end of the trial was a day closer than expected. I was going to see Colleen that night at my place, and I hoped I had something positive to tell her.
A green Morgan sports car with r
unning boards and a leather strap across the hood made a ninety-degree turn at my feet, and sped toward the condominium complex behind me. It was driven by a blonde in big sunglasses with a distinctive scar across her right upper lip.
I caught up with Lynne as she bent into the trunk of the Morgan to remove packages from expensive Union Square department stores. She wore a short black skirt and spike heels. I approached quietly and offered her a helping hand.
She reacted with a start. I used my most charming voice and had my choir boy smile working overtime. It didn't help at all.
The scarred mouth a temptation to ask what happened. She had long, thin legs, a lean, almost hipless body, and two humongous, XXL better-living-through-surgery boobs with razor sharp cookie-cutter outlines just below the collarbone. The monster chest and skinny body looked like two bowler hats on a hat rack.
"Who are you?" she asked. "What do you want?" I pulled out my identification. She lowered her sunglasses, revealing cynical powder blue eyes.
"Francis Fagen. I'm a private investigator."
I could practically see her heart jump up into her throat. "And what do you want with me?"
"It's about William Farragut."
"I don't know anything about William Farragut."
"Really? I have a tape recording of him tying you to a table at the Fairmont Hotel and whipping your fanny with a riding crop, so you must know something about him. I also have a copy of an ad you took out in the Weekly Guardian two years ago, along with your credit card number."
She got an instant case of the homicidal eye. "I got nothing to say to you, Mr. Fagen. You can call my attorney." She said "Mr. Fagen" the way someone says your name right before they shove you from a moving car.
"I'll call your attorney after I call the police, at which point you may be either a suspect in a homicide or a material witness. The cops will probably call the IRS, and I'm sure they'd just love to hear how a twenty-four-year-old unemployed woman pays for a seven-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar condo, an eighty-thousand-dollar car, and shops all day at Macy's and Magnin's." I waited for it to sink in. "Or, you can invite me inside, answer a few questions, and when it's all over, you can forget you ever saw me."
I was inside and sipping a cold beer before the minute hand on my watch moved. As I paced the living room, Lynne took the packages into her bedroom, on the ground floor, leaving me to wonder what was in the loft on the second floor. When she returned, I asked.
"Well, why don't you come up and I'll show you." It was not the friendliest invitation I had ever had. As I followed her toward a heavy oak door, I had visions of a King Kong boyfriend looming behind. I unzipped my jacket, reached inside my coat, removed my Walther, and stuck it in my hip pocket, along with my hand. I thumbed the safety off.
At the top she unlocked the dead bolt and pushed the door open, revealing a pitch black, seemingly windowless room. She turned on the light and we stepped inside.
It was a sado-masochist's wet dream. The walls were completely covered in black leather held in place by silver studs. One wall was lined with whips, paddles, hand-carved wooden switches, leather handcuffs, dildoes for every occasion, and a hundred other devices not usually found at Rotary Club picnics.
Special features included a trapeze-like device with leather restraints for fastening someone's hands overhead, tables for lying on and bending over, a stockade, two heavy metal cages and a large X-shaped frame with restraints at the four points. Prominent in the room was a large-screen TV and a video camera on a tripod, probably for recording the festivities for future family gatherings.
"You ever had your ass paddled, Francis?" She had her best leer going full tilt.
"Not since I got caught goosing Mary Louise Kennedy in the third grade. Didn't like it then, don't care for it now. Especially at your prices."
"Oh, no charge at all. I'll just slip into a corset, some fishnets, and thigh-high boots."
"Listen, lady, spare me the routine. I can see you're just thrilled about graduating from a nail to a hammer, but I really don't give a rat's ass how you make a living. All I want to know about is William Farragut."
Lynne wasn't finished yet. She smiled, walked over to a wall that wasn't really a wall, and pushed on a spot above her head. A door popped open. After examining the stack of video tapes inside, she picked one out, giving me one of those Jayne Mansfield third-rate come-on looks as she slid the tape into the VCR. I was tired and out of patience.
As the big screen kicked to life she doused the lights, and we sat in matching black leather chairs while on-screen a masked, naked man with half a hard-on was being tied to the bondage table by the leather-clad McBain. "Do you recognize him?"
I said that I didn't, not having much of a memory bank for those particular body parts. But when she started asking him if he was "ready" and he answered, "Yes, please," calling her Mistress, I recognized Farragut's voice.
After she whipped his little fanny carnation red, she went to the display wall, took down a leather belt, went to a drawer and pulled out a perfect plastic replica of a male member. Just before she drove it up the Farragut Highway, I realized it was a perfect reproduction of Farragut's own member. That's when I hit the stop button on the remote. The rich, they are different from you and me.
"Thanks for sharing that with me, Lynne. Nice trick, the dildo clone, probably make a nice addition to someone's Christmas catalogue. Let's talk about William Farragut, what do you say?"
She was exactly what Fred Worley had said, a little girl in a woman's body. She was just a scared, lonely kid, trying to play big, tough, and better. The whole facade was paper thin. She had shown me the tape to prove she had gotten the upper hand with Farragut.
I asked her about the blackmailing boyfriend, including enough detail that she was at a loss to deny anything. I told her I wanted to know Hawk's full name and where he was.
She nodded for me to follow her downstairs, where she opened a drawer and pulled out a newspaper clipping from an old issue of the Clarion, dated six weeks before Farragut's death. Then she handed me a copy of a death certificate, signed by the San Francisco County deputy coroner.
According to the article and the death certificate, Andrew Simcic, then aged twenty-four, had killed himself at a recording studio South of Market by firing a single shot from a .38-caliber pistol through his right temple.
"It would have been pretty hard for Hawk to kill William, since he supposedly killed himself six weeks earlier. And I was in Big Sur the night of William's murder, at Ventana, with a girlfriend. We danced at the River Inn until the bar closed, and eighty people saw us."
I asked her what she meant when she said Hawk "supposedly" killed himself, and she burst into tears. She said Hawk had told her about the attempted blackmailing of Farragut several days before his death. He had been distraught when he found out she was turning tricks to support herself. He was a struggling musician, madly in love with her, and when he found out about Farragut he went crazy. Had Colleen paid the blackmail money, he planned to give it to Lynne so she would stop turning tricks.
"But he didn't kill himself. Look at the coroner's report. They said he was loaded on booze and pills and shot himself with a stolen gun. Hawk hated guns, he never drank hard liquor, and he never took pills. Somebody killed him. That's what I told the cops when they came. They didn't believe me."
"Did you tell them about him trying to blackmail Farragut or his wife?"
"No."
"How many times were you with Farragut?"
"Maybe thirty or so, I lost count. Every time it was different, but it always involved spankings or bondage. Once he had me fuck another girl while he watched. One time he just videotaped me masturbating. He paid me two thousand the first time, more after that. He was obsessed with me; he would have seen me every night, but I wouldn't do it. Once, twice a week was all I could handle."
"And what about the video I saw? When did you two decide to switch places?"
"It was my idea. I met this gi
rl, she was in the life, S&M, she said it was a hell of a lot easier that way and men would go for it if you put it to them right. I talked Farragut into it. It was like, he'd already done everything else, he was bored. She knew this place, they made plastic replicas of gay porno stars' dicks. She came over one night and made a clay cast of William's. It was my chance for a little payback." She put her head down and wept softly to herself, no more facade, no more Bondage Queen, no more tough girl.
"Did he know you were videotaping him?"
She shook her head.
"No."
"Did you kill Farragut?"
"No."
"Do you know who killed him? Did you have someone do it for you to get even with him because you thought he had Hawk killed?"
"No." Tears were falling on her crossed arms and the front of dress. There was nothing bitter or hostile in her voice, nothing that made me feel she was not telling the truth. She found a tissue, wiped her eyes, blew her nose. I gave her a minute to get her composure.
"How did Farragut reach you? Did he call you at home?"
"He never called me."
That one threw me. "How did he reach you?"
"A woman called me. She's the one who called when I placed the ad. She called and told me she had one of the richest men in California for me to see, that I had to see him and him only and submit to a blood test for AIDS, and that he was very kinky and would pay me a lot of money. A lot of money."
"Do you know who she was?"
"No. I only talked to her on the phone. She told me I had to go sit in this bar and have a drink so someone could look me over. I never knew who it was. She called me back the next day, said I was the one he wanted. She said her name was Evelyn."
"What bar did you go to?"
"Bajilla, on Market Street."
"What did the woman, Evelyn, sound like? Anything distinctive in her voice? A foreign accent, a Southern accent, maybe a stutter?"
Bohemian Heart Page 9