Bohemian Heart

by Dalessandro, James

  "She had a raspy voice, she sounded older, she wheezed when she talked, you know, hehhh, like she was sucking in air real hard."

  I knew who it was instantly, but I wanted confirmation. "Look, Lynne, if you'll give me a few more minutes of your time I won't bother you again. Provided you're telling me the truth. If Hawk was murdered, this woman might be involved. If you help me a little more, it might lead me to his killer."

  She nodded. I asked if I could use her phone and was able to reach Zane at the Clarion offices just as he was returning from court. I asked him if he had any of the tape recordings of the countless interviews he'd done with Farragut's stooge, Supervisor Helen Smidge. He said he did, that he had some of them in a collection he kept in his locker. I told him to go get one as quickly as his legs would carry him, put it in his portable cassette, and call me at the number I gave him.

  We sat without talking, Lynne McBain and I, the only sound her sniffling as she tried to choke back tears. In the grand scheme of things, I really didn't have much sympathy for her. What sympathy I had I usually reserved for the poor black and Hispanic kids growing up in Hunter's Point, the homeless old people living in the Tenderloin.

  Zane called back and told me he had a tape of a recent interview with Supervisor Helen Smidge all cued up. I handed the phone to Lynne. Her eyes lit up as she listened.

  She nodded. "That's the woman who called me, who made all the arrangements. That's Evelyn," she said.

  Chapter 10

  I left Lynn McBain and returned to Telegraph Hill. Martha Walley was waiting with a report on Colleen Farragut that she had written after reading the depositions and police reports in the evidence files. Arnie and Henry Borowski soon joined us.

  Before I listened to any of them I called Lloyd Dinkman, an old SFPD friend in records. I asked him to make a copy of the police file and autopsy report on Andrew Simcic's death and bring it to my house when he finished his shift. He hemmed, hawed, then agreed.

  I informed my team that I'd found Farragut's mistress, Lynne McBain, and confirmed a story that Colleen had told me, that McBain's boyfriend had tried to blackmail Colleen and I told them that the meetings between McBain and Farragut had been set up by Supervisor Helen Smidge.

  That got their attention.

  Then I told them about Simcic's alleged suicide, shortly after Colleen had rejected his demands for money, and what Lynne had said about the gun, the booze, and the pills not being part of Simcic's repertoire.

  "They had him killed," said Martha.

  "They being Farragut and Smidge," Arnie added.

  "That's the way I figure it. After Colleen turned Simcic down, he called Farragut himself. Farragut probably freaked out, blamed it on Smidge. The onus would have been on her. Imagine how furious Farragut must have been."

  "What does all this mean to Colleen's case?" Arnie asked. "If ol' Smudge had Simcic killed, it's not logical she would have killed Farragut even if Farragut was threatening her. He was her cash cow, her meal ticket; she'd be more inclined to try to woo him back. And Smudge was his ally, his pipeline to City Hall. She can't be a viable suspect."

  "I think Arnie's right," Martha said, "but I think we should trace all the phone records of Smidge, this Lynne McBain, and Simcic. McBain has to be a prime suspect right now, regardless of her alibi for the night of the murder."

  I agreed.

  "One other possibility," Arnie said. "What if Smidge or Farragut did hire somebody to off Simcic? What if the guy turned on them, tried to blackmail Farragut, and Farragut didn't comply?" It seemed farfetched, but so was everything else in this case.

  "I guess we have a decision to make," I said, "If Simcic was murdered, establishing a link between that and the Farragut murder might be a real long shot. I'm afraid to get sidetracked and waste what little time we have."

  "I'll take it," said Martha. "I'm done with Colleen's files; I'll start on Simcic, McBain, and Smidge. If there's a link, I'll find it."

  "A day or two, that's it," I said, the mere thought making me more nervous by the second. We were ready for Martha's report on Colleen.

  Martha gave me one of those quick looks, like she knew of my attraction to Colleen and was about to tell me something painful. Martha can look at you and tell what color shorts you're wearing or the name of the girl you slept with a week ago.

  "That crack they made about her giving his money away as fast as Farragut stole it was not far from the truth. You can't believe the organizations she supported: Children of the Night, Para Los Niños, the women's shelter, St. Anthony's soup kitchen. Not only that, but she worked in all of them as well. This is some woman, Frank." I knew Martha was stalling, sugarcoating.

  I asked her about the affair with Tommy Rivera. "I don't think she dumped Tommy Rivera, I think she wore him out. Thirteen expensive hotel rooms in one month in Marin and Napa Valley."

  I suffered from the same apprehension as a lot of men. We all want the woman in our life to be a world-class lover but no one wants to know with whom she took her batting practice.

  But there was nothing else of any value. Hours of reviewing documents had failed to give Martha any clues to Tommy's motivation for trying to blackmail Colleen, other than the obvious one.

  After Martha, Henry, and Arnie left, Lloyd Dinkman arrived with a copy of the evidence file from the Simcic "suicide." I thanked him heartily, gave him an envelope with two hundreds in it, and promised him two of my season tickets to a 49ers game when the season started.

  I had an hour or two before Colleen arrived for dinner, so I sat down and started digging through the file.

  Several of Simcic's friends had told the investigating officers that he was depressed over the fact that the love of his life had become the mistress of some rich guy whose name they didn't know. None of them believed he was suicidal.

  Two other things made me sit up and pay attention.

  One was the report from the toxicology lab that arrived seventeen days after the alleged suicide and was marked confidential. It showed a very high level of the barbiturate Seconal in Andrew Simcic's blood. It also showed a blood alcohol level of .022 percent, almost three times the amount needed to convict someone of drunk driving. The combination of alcohol and Seconal should have made a blob out of Simcic, who was five feet nine inches tall and weighed only one forty at the time of death, provided he had no acquired tolerance.

  I flipped through the file and found they'd done a work-up on liver and fatty tissue samples from Simcic's body, something the coroner often did when drugs and alcohol were a contributing factor in a violent death.

  The reports confirmed what Lynne McBain had said about Hawk. There was no trace of liver scarring of any kind, and no trace of any drug residue in the fatty tissues of his body. The kid was not a drunk or a doper. With that level of booze and barbiturates in him, he was probably in a coma when he allegedly put a bullet in his head.

  Nevertheless, the conclusion of the coroner's report was "death by self-inflicted gunshot wound."

  But what really disturbed me were the two names attached to the report. The first was the assistant coroner, Dr. Michael Wentworth, a polyhidrotic pervert whose appointment to the ghoul crew had been arranged by Helen Smidge despite his shoddy med school record. He'd botched more postmortems than the rest of the coroner's office combined.

  I had long believed that not all of his botched exams were accidents. Doc Wentworth had a drinking problem, a gambling problem, and on two occasions, vice officers had picked him up for jerking off in the bushes outside some poor woman's bedroom window. The story had been squashed and his job saved by someone at City Hall, probably someone named Helen Smidge. He was the perfect candidate for a postmortem hatchet job on crucial evidence.

  The second name, however, was the real show stopper. The police report had been signed by Inspector John Naftulin, Investigating Officer. The same John Naftulin who handled the Farragut murder investigation and was the first witness for the prosecution at Colleen's trial. The same J
ohn Naftulin who had been second in command of the investigation of Mayor DiMarco's murder and had blasted my allegations of a conspiracy to kill DiMarco and the subsequent fix in Warren Dillon's trial.

  Little by little, the past was catching up with me, the characters trotting out of their graves to shake a bony finger in my face and say; We're not through with you yet, Peekaboo. It was getting more difficult to determine exactly whose case I was working on, Colleen Farragut's or my own.

  Chapter 11

  I was jolted awake by the sound of my door buzzer. I'd nodded out in my reading chair, an evidence file over my eyes as though I might learn something by osmosis. It was six thirty, I assumedp.m., and that I'd been asleep for an hour and not unconscious for thirteen.

  When Colleen entered, she looked strained, anxious, but still kept up a strong front. Once again, a tailored suit over a lacy white blouse did nothing to knock the edge off her beauty. In the evening light her eyes were still the most mesmerizing green I'd ever seen.

  She took her coat off, sat in the chair I offered her, kicked off her high heels and accepted a glass of wine. A solid pull at the wine and she seemed ready to talk.

  "How did it go today?" I almost hated having to ask.

  "Not much different. More lab reports, fingerprint expert saying they were my prints on the gun, a crime lab guy reconstructing the scene, saying the shooter was to the inside of William, you know, William was closer to the French doors, like the shooter came from inside the house instead of outside."

  Once again I wondered how she did it, how anyone guilty or not stood up to a murder trial. Being innocent and on trial for murder had to be the ultimate nightmare. "What plans do you have for tonight, Frank?"

  I hesitated for a minute, wondering why she asked.

  "Evidence files. I still have a lot to cover." I left out the part about being down to the last three weeks and getting more nervous by the minute.

  "Can we have dinner somewhere, somewhere I might not be recognized?"

  Outside of Tonga, I wasn't sure where she had in mind.

  "I have a friend in Santa Cruz," she said. "A retired schoolteacher, Virginia Riley. She has this great old Victorian house on Depot Hill in Capitola, a bed-and-breakfast place she runs in the summer. She lets me come down anytime I want."

  She stood up, and my heart raced a little as I started sorting out all the reasons to say no; time, professionalism, my own fear that she'd be gone in three weeks if I couldn't find a way to save her.

  "Look, Frank, I don't know how to put this," she said, sounding a little sad, and serious. "I'm not a fool; I know what I'm facing if you don't find the burglar. This may be my last three weeks of freedom. I've been thinking about this for more than a week." She hesitated, then said, "I haven't been with a man in almost two years."

  The potential, I surmised, was enormous.

  "I'm crazy about you, Frank. For years I've seen your newspaper photos, read the stories about you, heard William and his friends talk about you. I don't want you to think I'm a desperate woman reaching out for just any man. I could have done that anytime. And I'm not doing this to coerce you to try harder or do anything dangerous. I know you're doing everything possible. If I only have three weeks left, I don't have time to be coy or clever."

  "I know it's a lot to ask of a man, to get involved with a woman he might never see again. But I don't want to go to prison without something to remember, wishing I had known you better."

  She lowered her head and a few tears ran down her cheeks. Once again, she fought it off, wiping the tears away with her hands, looking at me, fresh tears magnifying the jade eyes.

  My heart was pounding. It was tough to talk. "I had all these reasons worked out in case this came up," I said.

  "Just say yes, Frank. Do what you want and not what you should."

  "Yes."

  Thirty minutes later, I parked the Corvette along the side of the road in the Presidio and made a mad dash through the woods, grateful that none of the photographers had staked out the stone wall behind the house.

  When I reached the stone wall, I chucked a rock over.

  Moments later a suitcase came over the wall, followed by Colleen, dressed in tight faded blue denim, tan cowboy boots, and sunglasses. She slithered down the wall, dropping to the ground.

  We ran to the car, laughing, a little giddy.

  I took the scenic route through the Sunset District, past the Cliff House and along the ocean on the Great Highway.

  We were in Pacifica in a matter of minutes, despite the Friday night traffic. Once we had rounded Devil's Slide to the south, the traffic disappeared and the Pacific stretched endlessly ahead.

  There are some great roads in the world, but Highway 1 from San Francisco to Santa Cruz and beyond to Carmel and Big Sur can match sights and stories with any of them.

  This is God's back porch. An occasional farmhouse nestled among the hills, and redwood forests, pumpkin farms, blackberry fields, spectacular beaches, green hills, jagged cliffs rolled by. We rode for a long time in silence, enjoying the moonlit sights, the smell of the ocean, the pine forests, the eucalyptus and redwood. It eased a lot of wounded spirit.

  We passed the old whaling town of Davenport, now a haven for time-warped hippies, artists, and potters, past the beaches where I'd spent a lot of my summers as a child surfing and sunning: Hole-in-the-Wall, Red White and Blue, Four Mile. Many were hidden from the road, accessible only by winding, narrow paths filled with the fragrance of wildflowers.

  To the left were the roads that snaked through the Santa Cruz Mountains to Boulder Creek and Bonny Doon, thick with towering redwoods, pine and eucalyptus, roads with names like Pine Flat and Ice Cream Grade.

  I told Colleen a story for each spot, each road, from my youth spent in paradise. I felt like a tour director for a dying woman, as though this was the only time she might see them, as if the gravity of her final visit had become an unseen weight, affecting the way I'd look at this road, these places for the rest of my life.

  Capitola is another of the country's great towns, four miles south of Santa Cruz, a tiny village of four streets filled with shops, restaurants, a two-dollar movie theater, and enough charm to make you forget a lot of things you want to forget.

  Virginia Riley's Victorian stood on Depot Hill overlooking the town, the oldest in a row of Victorians that had been built near the start of the century, all painstakingly restored and preserved.

  Virginia had left Colleen a key and a note, telling her she'd had to go "over the hill" to visit her daughter in Los Gatos and would be spending the night. We had the run of the place, a creaking, antique-filled old house with a spectacular view of the ocean, the cliffs, the town. A burnt-orange sunset draped the western sky.

  I called an old friend, a sculptor who worked nights waiting tables, got a reservation for a table at the Shadowbrook, which overlooked the river and village. I asked for the private dining room downstairs, near the riverbank, offering a healthy bribe for the maitre'd.

  Colleen and I dressed in separate rooms, emerging tense, excited. She wore a skintight black dress of antique lace through which was visible a silky black camisole. The dress had a scooped, slightly revealing neckline and a row of buttons down the front. The hem was six inches above her graceful knees. She wore sheer black stockings and black patent leather pumps that made her only an inch shorter than I. She looked classy enough for a fashion layout, sexy enough to get a rise out of a dead man. I forget what I was wearing.

  She slipped into a thin coat, presumably to prevent domestic upheavals as we passed through town. We took the back streets to avoid being seen, crossed the bridge over the Capitola River, hiked up a short hill, and got into the tiny tram car that is the Shadowbrook's trademark for the ride down from the parking lot.

  As soon as I closed the tram door the car started its snail-like crawl down the hill. Colleen got a wild look in her eye, and asked how long it took the car to reach the bottom.

  "At least a minute,"
I said.

  She leaned into me, and I felt my hands on her hips, her leg between mine. We kissed, more intensely than the first time. The effect was dizzying. The world spun a little, the tram cable groaned beneath us, a tall pine creaked against another in the wind. I was hers, I was had. She kissed better than most women make love.

  Opening one eye, I noticed we were approaching the restaurant and gently pushed Colleen away. She sighed and stared into my eyes, more alive and animated than I'd seen her yet.

  The tram thudded softly to a stop, the door opened, and a family of seven, complete with bespectacled grandma wearing a blue corsage, nodded hello and told us to "have a nice dinner." We told them we would.

  I tipped the hostess to lead us outside the restaurant, across a brick patio overlooking the slow-moving river, where several young couples paddled boats among the ducks and geese.

  We entered through a door off the patio, Colleen causing a bit of neck strain, male and female, as we made our way to a large round table in a corner of the restaurant's lowest tier. We sat in our private corner, ate, held hands, smiled ourselves stupid. In the middle of dinner Colleen leaned over and kissed me, slid her left hand into my lap and started stroking, ever so gently.

  The look on her face was subtle, restrained, her eyes searching to see how long the effect would take to reach my face, my voice. "How is it," she asked, not specifying the dinner or the warm feeling that had flooded the Fagen organ.

  I croaked, "Great," and tried to eat, which is difficult with a hard-on.

  She stopped for a second, unbuttoned a few of the lower buttons of her dress, folded it away from her leg, and put my right hand on the inside of her left thigh. I could feel the silk top of her black stocking, her garter belt, the smooth, hard expanse of thigh.

  "I like to play a little," she said. "Do you mind?"

  I called a cab to take us back to the house after dinner.

  She led me into the living room, eased me down into a large, black leather armchair. "I saw you staring at my body the first time we met," she said, "when I was walking out of the box at the opera."