Bohemian Heart

by Dalessandro, James

  "Yes. She hates everything every one of the Farraguts did, especially her late husband. She blames him for the way her son turned out. Eileen is one of those poor old women who woke up one day and decided everything she'd done was wrong. I feel sorry for her, living in that house all alone, feeling guilty about the man she married and the son she raised."

  "She could have left her husband any time,"

  "I guess she was just afraid. She was like me, born dirt poor, but in a time when it was a lot tougher for a woman to make a living."

  We sat there silently, watching the lights on the bridge sparkling through my window.

  "Frank, I want you to know something," Colleen began after a while.

  I waited anxiously until she gathered the nerve. I'm always waiting for some kind of bombshell.

  "No matter what happens, whether I'm found guilty or innocent, I just want you to know one thing. I've thought about this a lot. I keep asking myself if these feelings I have for you are those of a drowning woman clinging to her savior."

  She took a deep breath. "They're not. I've never met anyone so alive, so full of magic as you, Francis. I was infatuated with you before we met, and right now I'm more in love with you than I've ever been with anyone. I'll say this now and I'll say it after I'm free: I love you, Francis. You're the greatest man I've ever known. Do you know when I knew for sure that you were the one? The minute I saw you at the opera wearing that string tie with Trigger on it: How can you not love a man with guts enough to do something like that?"

  "In some weird way, if I survive this, I'll look back and see this whole thing as a blessing. I might never have known you otherwise."

  She took my hand and a tear streamed down her cheek. She looked up, and sighed.

  "I'll never forget you, Francis. Even if you say good-bye to me the day after the trial, I will never forget you, not until the day I die."

  Then she just looked at me. I couldn't find anything to say for a few minutes. I'd never thought of that, our meeting a blessing disguised as a nightmare. I told her we'd make it.

  We clung to each other until we fell asleep, the first real night's sleep either of us had had since we met.

  Chapter 29

  We slept until almost eight thirty Sunday morning, awoke fresh, starry-eyed, stupid with love.

  For two hours, we got a respite from it all, a quiet before the climax of the storm. We made love with the room full of morning, my favorite way to do it, ate breakfast in bed, made love some more. The phone didn't ring, no one came to the door. The world didn't exist. It was a strange feeling.

  For the first time since we met, we were cocooned by hope and optimism, a belief that somehow Colleen would soon be free and we'd be able to spend—that was the last scary part—a long time together.

  It was the warmest, most wonderful morning I could ever remember. The city cooperated, glowing an incandescent blue outside the window, with warm, soft breezes filling the air.

  At ten thirty I climbed out of bed, showered, dressed, and went to work. By midday, Henry Borowski was following me in his Rambler, honking and shaking his fist as he tried to keep up with the Norton. We were on Route 101 headed north, back to Forestville.

  I had called the Silver Slipper the night before and learned that Patsy Chandler started her shift at six in the evening. I figured she'd at least come home a little early, shower, change, relax. I could have been wrong about the shower, judging by the condition of her apartment, but I didn't want to risk her getting back before we'd gotten there.

  I brought Henry along for two reasons. That I'd been right on the first count became evident at 3:23 p.m., following two hours of life's most boring endeavor, the stakeout.

  Patsy arrived in the passenger seat of a battered blue pickup with lumber racks and bald, oversize tires on pitted and rusting moon wheels. As she pulled her stuff out of the bed of the truck, Henry and I got a good look at Slick, the new boyfriend. Slim he wasn't. Slick he wasn't, either.

  He was the size of a '59 Cadillac on its hind legs, with a beard like a half eaten alpaca sweater. He was ruddy-faced, potbellied, with blacksmith shoulders and enough tattoos to look like he'd showered and dried off with the funny pages.

  When Henry and I approached and I called out Patsy's name, he made a momentary effort to play hero.

  "What the fuck do you want," he said, his head bobbing back and forth as he alternately attempted to intimidate Henry and me.

  I flashed my ID. "We want to ask Patsy some questions about her mother."

  "And what the fuck if she ain't answerin'?"

  "Then we'll give the fifty grand to someone else."

  He got real friendly after that. I peeled off a hundred-dollar bill and placed it in his paw, where it looked like a green Band-Aid. I told him to go have a few beers while Patsy and I talked. She nodded for him to go. He couldn't wait.

  Henry and I lugged her suitcase and sleeping bag inside, where she turned on the lights, keeping the curtains and windows closed against the beautiful day, and lit up a cigarette. The place smelled like a nicotine factory.

  Patsy was doing her part to make sure the nineties would be remembered as the decade of the bad haircut. She had stringy, chewed-up bangs and a mop of uneven shag-cut hair reaching the middle of her back, a good six inches of dark roots showing under the bleached blond frizz. She was hawk-nosed, beady-eyed, and wore a shapeless denim dress with polished aluminum stars and half moons sewn into it, topped off by enough felony blue eye shadow to alert the fashion police a mile away.

  Her hands shook as she smoked with every other breath.

  "We know most of the story, Patsy, but we're missing a piece or two. We know your mother was a burglar, we have her rap sheet, and we know that she burglarized at least two houses in Presidio Heights, including one in which a man named William Farragut was murdered. They're trying to pin it on Farragut's wife, and we're convinced she didn't do it.

  "We know that your mother sold her confession and possibly things from the burglary, to a man named Hayden Phillips. Then she gave the money to you. That's how you bought that big-screen TV and the bedroom set in there, and the Camaro you're driving."

  She just sat there, stunned. I let it sink in, staring at her.

  "Look, we're not cops," I said. "We're not here to arrest you. I know you couldn't have burglarized the place where the man was killed because you were eight months pregnant when it happened."

  "How you know all this stuff?"

  "I get paid to know it."

  "Then why don't you give me some of that money?" I liked Patsy. She was too dumb to be dangerous.

  I counted out five crisp, fresh hundred-dollar bills, real slow, watching Patsy's eyes grow larger, her breathing pick up noticeably. I made sure she saw the rest of the ten grand I was holding as I put the envelope back in my pocket and slowly handed her the five hundred. I hoped she wasn't going to have an orgasm on me.

  "How's that for a down payment, Patsy?"

  "That'll do just fine. Now, what can I do for you so's maybe you can do a little more for me?"

  "Did your mother ever tell you about the burglaries she committed?"

  "My mother was scum, Mr. Fagen, but she didn't tell nobody nothin'. Not me, anyway. I knew she ripped people off but she never told me no details. Nothin'." Her tone was soft, direct, disappointed. Fifty grand worth of disappointed.

  "Do you know who your mother's burglary partner was?"

  She shook her head. "No. I didn't see my mother for a couple of years, not very often, anyway. She'd just call once in a while, ask me for money, tell me where she was moving to. Just, you know. Stuff."

  I looked at Henry, then at Patsy.

  "Look, Patsy, I'm not interested in causing you any trouble, but there's a fifty-thousand-dollar reward, in cash, if you can help me find her accomplice. Do you know the names of any of her friends?"

  "Believe me, if my mother was still alive I'd give her up for fifty grand, let alone one of her junkie friends. My m
other give me twenty grand the day before she died, and I ain't got but eight hundred left. I don't know anybody she hung out with. Like I said, me and my mother didn't quite see eye to eye on a lot of stuff; and I hardly ever seen her. I been livin' up here in Sonoma now about five and a half years, and I ain't been to the city but two or three times to see a Grateful Dead concert. My ex-old man was a Deadhead, you know what I mean?"

  I said I did and got her back on the subject.

  "Did she ever mention the name Tommy Rivera to you?"

  "My mother never dated no beaners, she was KKK all the way, know what I mean?"

  "You said your mother called to tell you when she moved. Did you write down any of those addresses?"

  "As a matter of fact, I did. I got 'em in my address book."

  She went over to the table she'd dropped her purse on, opened the purse, and pulled out a ratty-ass old address book. My heart jumped.

  "Here they are . . . shit, I never even crossed out the old ones, I just wrote the new one under it. Must be five addresses, goin' back probably the last four, five years."

  I held my hand out. Patsy got smart all of a sudden.

  I reached in my pocket, counted out another thousand dollars. Her eyes were glued to the rest of my stash. I thumbed through it like I was going to give her more, changed my mind, held the thousand out toward her.

  "That's fifteen hundred for your mother's old addresses, Patsy. You want any more than that, you gotta give me somethin' bigger."

  She handed over the address book. I ripped the page out, ignoring her when she winced, folded it, and put it in my shirt pocket.

  "Did your mother ever tell you about any silver plates, expensive silver plates she and her partner stole from the Farragut house?" I handed over the insurance photos of the plates.

  "No. I never seen these before."

  "Let me ask you one last thing, Patsy. If you hardly ever saw your mother and the two of you didn't see eye to eye, why'd she give you all that money just before she died?"

  I'd saved the question to see if I could trip her. She barely blinked.

  "Everybody gets sorrowful before they die, I guess. She was a shit mother and she give me the money hopin' it would make things right for me and my kids. Besides, there wudn't no pockets in the coffin, know what I mean?"

  "Where are your kids?"

  She didn't say anything, just put her head down. I'd noticed earlier there weren't any pictures of them. I waited, asked again.

  "They're livin' with their grandparents, their daddy's ma and pa. They're in San Diego."

  "You gave 'em up after your mother gave you all that money?"

  "You're pretty smart for a private dick."

  She belonged on the cover of White Trash Magazine. I walked over and handed her my business card.

  "Keep this card, and keep our visit here to yourself. If you can think of anything—anything that leads me to your mother's accomplice in the burglary at the Farragut house—I'll give you the rest of the fifty grand, understand? But you got forty-eight hours to do it."

  She looked at the card for a long moment. "The Farragut murder trial? I seen that on TV. Ain't that that rich bitch? I mean that bitch from Modesto or wherever that married that rich dude and shot him so's she could keep his money?"

  I said nothing.

  "Hope they fry the bitch," she said, "bitches like her get all the fuckin' breaks while the rest of us gotta bust our asses, and for what? Nothin'!"

  I had to get out of there before I killed her.

  The second reason I had brought Henry was so he could watch the apartment while I sped back to the city.

  Patsy had no phone, so I knew that if she had to make a call to warn someone, she'd have to run out to do it. But I had a nasty hunch she was telling the truth: she really didn't know anything.

  Chapter 30

  Henry kept surveillance on Patsy Chandler until 5:45 Sunday evening, knowing that Martha Walley was inside the Silver Slipper, waiting for Patsy to begin work.

  An hour later he was back in the office. Patsy hadn't left the apartment to phone or visit anyone. She'd stayed inside until it was time to go to work, emerging in a wool skirt and frilly white blouse. She didn't seem anxious or in a hurry, according to Henry.

  I had him and Arnie take Colleen back to her house that night instead of the next morning, in case Calvin or Bearden got suspicious and decided to check up on her. Henry would follow Colleen over the back wall and spend the night outside her bedroom door. When I kissed Colleen good-bye, she was smiling and full of hope. I was anxious and full of fear but did my best to hide it.

  Once they'd left I went to my storage room and pulled out some city maps I'd had for years. They were detailed surveyor's maps of every real estate lot in the city, used by the building department and city utility companies to check property lines. Each one had the property address written next to the lot number.

  When Arnie returned, he told me the media circus outside Colleen's house had grown to epic proportions. They were smelling the kill. I knew it would be too risky to sneak Colleen in and out over the next few days. I resigned myself to not seeing her until the trial was over.

  We started putting the last phase of the plan together. I was still convinced—partially convinced, but saying my Hail Marys—that Tommy had recruited a woman from his caseload, who then recruited Candira Chandler. Once again, I fought the feeling that it was ludicrous.

  We marked all five of Candira Chandler's addresses from Patsy Chandler's address book. They were all within a two-block radius, ten blocks south of Mission Dolores and the park. Then we went through the records of every woman who'd been a welfare client of Tommy's, marking the locations of anyone who'd ever lived within five blocks of Candira.

  There were twenty-seven women who had once been on Tommy's docket and had lived at some time in the same buildings as Candira Anne Chandler. We'd already spoken to twenty-one of them and gotten nothing.

  I decided to expand the search. Not only would we concentrate on those twenty-seven women, but in all five buildings we would knock on every door and make our reward offer. And we still had almost forty women from the original list of two hundred fifty that we hadn't found.

  I called Lloyd Dinkman and told him I needed any existing rap sheets on the twenty-seven women who had lived in Candira's buildings, adding I needed them by morning. I also asked for anything and everything on Patsy Chandler. She said she'd only been in the city two or three times in the past five and a half years, to see Grateful Dead concerts; I wanted to know if she'd gotten any parking tickets, if she'd bounced any checks, if she bailed anyone out of jail.

  Lloyd was scared, reluctant. I offered him two thousand dollars. He didn't sound very happy about it, but he agreed to do it anyway. I wasn't too happy either—I worried that I might cost him his job, his pension. When I hung up, I put my head in my hands and prayed it would all be over soon.

  Martha arrived at the City Lights offices shortly before two a.m. She had stayed at the Silver Slipper until a little before one, when things got so slow they closed. Patsy made no phone calls from the pay phone, nor had she huddled suspiciously with anyone in the bar. Just as I expected.

  Arnie and I had already broken down the buildings and neighborhoods, drawing up assignments for each of us. I gave Martha her list. For our own safety, Martha and Arnie each slept in one of the empty bedrooms, guns under their pillows. If they slept at all. I didn't sleep a minute.

  At five thirty I was up and making breakfast. Martha and Arnie appeared within minutes, dressed and ready to go. We talked, drinking coffee, fighting nerves, running things through our heads, looking for an angle, anything we had missed. Going back to some of the women we already interviewed made us uneasy. It made us wonder if we'd already missed the key clue or the prime suspect and were now staggering blindly toward oblivion.

  I called Zane Neidlinger and asked for his read on the jury. "They seemed really torn until Tommy Rivera took the stand; that was
the backbreaker. Sherenian's so weak, the jury believes that even he thinks she's guilty. You might get one or two of them to hold out for acquittal, get yourself a hung jury, but I doubt it. I think the ones who're strong for guilty will win out. Now, how are you doing?"

  I told him he was either going to have the story of his life or a good friend who'd wasted a month of his own. All he said was, "You better hurry, Frank."

  Henry returned at 7:45, following his all-night watch on Colleen. He announced he was fit enough to continue throughout the day. Because some of the neighborhoods were particularly rough and Henry's interview techniques were restricted by his English, I asked him to accompany Martha and keep records.

  At eight, we left for our assignments.

  I started in a five-story apartment house in the Mission District that hadn't been painted since the original Armistice Day, the place Candira was living when she died. I started on the top floor and worked my way down.

  At 9:30, after eleven interviews with women who didn't know who killed Abe Lincoln, let alone William Farragut, I imagined the prosecutor, Ian Jeffries, was telling twelve ordinary citizens that the evidence of Colleen Farragut's guilt was undeniable and overwhelming.

  The rest of the morning was no better. I knocked on doors and showed my credentials, starting out strong and ending every conversation with almost a plea for help. I emphasized the fifty thousand, told people that no one would be hurt, no one would get in trouble, and no one would be prosecuted. I sure didn't tell them they'd have to testify in court; I'd save that for later.

  My eyes got red, my throat was parched, my feet turned numb as I moved from apartment to apartment, trying not to become so robotic that I failed to get my story across, missed something, failed to catch a guilty glitch somewhere.

  And I watched the clock.

  At noon, I stopped in a Latino bar filled with construction workers eating lunch and watching the news on Spanish language television. They reported that Ian Jeffries had methodically recreated the crime scene with large, poster board drawings, demonstrating that Farragut was between the French doors and his assailant when shot, reiterating his claim that the shooter had come from inside the house, not outside.