Another reason for visiting the Clarion Hotel was that Dorothea Puente's "nephew," Ricardo Ordorica, worked there. A gnomish man of a child's size, Ordorica had worked as a gardener at the Clarion for many, many years. When Ordorica saw her come into view, his sad, droopy face would break into smiles. Dorothea was more than a good friend, she was his tia (aunt). When she'd been in prison, he and his wife had stood by her; now that she was back, everything was fine again.
Dorothea had a special fondness for this little man. She greeted him warmly in Spanish, patting his shoulder, asking about his family. He beamed up at her.
Few people knew that Ordorica was not really her nephew but her landlord. For a time, Dorothea Puente had rented just the top floor of 1426 F Street, with the Ordoricas downstairs, and they'd lived there almost as kin. The children loved her like a grandmother, for Dorothea baked them cakes, took them on trips, and surprised them with gifts.
Now that the Ordoricas had moved into their new home, Dorothea was renting the entire house on F Street, and the children didn't see her as often. But she frequently came to see her "nephew" at the Clarion Hotel, and he regularly stopped by the house to see his tia.
But more than friends, more than "family," they were business associates.
Often when she saw him she would open her purse and, murmuring a few words, take out some checks and hand them to him. Ordorica would nod his head of black hair, fold the checks in his tiny hands, and put them into his pocket.
Dorothea didn't drive, and if she were venturing many blocks from home she always called a cab. These days, her favorite cabbie was Patty Casey, a trusting woman who enjoyed Puente's company and was pleased to oblige whenever Dorothea called. Besides, Dorothea was a good tipper.
When Casey pulled up in front, Dorothea was usually waiting. And, as she hurried out the gate, Casey noticed that she always dressed impeccably, her shoes and handbag matching.
During the week, the landlady often called Patty Casey to take her on errands, to appointments, to the bank, or to shop at nurseries, where she indulged what Casey considered a "fanatical" love of gardening. The cabbie would drop her off at Lumberjack, a huge place, and pick her up when she called a couple of hours later, laden with landscaping supplies.
Back at the house, Dorothea would insist, "Now, I don't want you lifting a thing, Patty, with that bad back of yours. Promise me you'll sit right there. I'll get Bert to come help me." And right away, Bert would come out to hoist the heavy stuff into the house or under the stairs, wherever Dorothea directed him.
(Casey thought Bert such a sweet, likable person that, spying him in the neighborhood, she would sometimes pick him up and treat him to a short ride. She noticed that he loved to "watch the little digits go around" on her meter.)
Casey thought it touching that Bert called Dorothea "Mama," and she considered it bighearted of Dorothea to take Bert in and care for him the way she did. In fact, Dorothea was one of the kindest, most considerate people Patty Casey had ever met.
Dorothea also had a vain streak, Casey noticed, but whatever her faults, she was the anchor of 1426 F Street. A houseful of people relied on her, and week after week, Casey saw how hard Dorothea worked to run the household and care for her marginal boarders.
All this despite Dorothea's own health problems.
On the way to a doctor's appointment one day, Dorothea sadly revealed that she was battling cancer. "Imagine that," she sighed. "I don't even smoke, and I'll probably die of lung cancer."
Casey clucked with genuine concern. With a personality as plain and sturdy as her build, Casey was becoming Dorothea's loyal confidante.
One day early in March, the landlady invited her into the house to pick out a kitten. She carried the mewing little thing home, nursing it like a warm, fuzzy token of their friendship.
On Sundays, dressed with her finest jewelry, Dorothea Puente would ride to the lovely old Catholic church, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, at Eleventh and K streets. But more often, whether or not she admitted it to Patty Casey, her destination would be a bar.
Henry's Lounge, Joe's, 501, Round Corner—she was probably too old to be called a barfly even though she patronized several bars around town. They were simply part of her routine: up before dawn, breakfast at 5:30, housekeeping, errands, then a favorite bar before returning home to put dinner on the table. It was a pattern that she repeated day after day, almost with the regularity of a job.
Henry's Lounge was a dimly lit, smoky place on Ninth Street that Dorothea frequented. Marjorie Harper, a stocky, no-nonsense bartender who knew all the regulars, said Dorothea was hard to miss: She was always dressed "fit to kill." She always took the same seat at the bar—second from the end, where she could watch everyone—and she'd order a vodka and grapefruit juice. In no time she'd have an audience, and then she'd be off on some "fabulous story," perhaps about being a survivor of the Bataan Death March, or about how she used to be in movies with Rita Hayworth.
One day, a pharmaceuticals salesman sat down next to her. "They discussed drugs for over an hour," Harper recalled. "She had him convinced that she was a retired surgeon."
Dorothea Puente was loquacious, a good storyteller, and a colorful character. If she tended to embroider her tales, well, who could begrudge the old lady's fantasies? Her eccentricity was part of her charm. At least she was entertaining; let her have her little white lies.
Thriving on attention, she stoked a reputation for generosity. Dorothea was quick to give gifts, frequently left five-dollar tips, and on a good day might buy rounds for the house, or even order pizza. "She wanted to do nice things for everybody," according to Harper. "She even said she wanted to buy me my own bar."
With the Camellia Center for Seniors just next door, a lot of elderly folks stopped in at Henry's every day. These were people who didn't sleep much, who might be standing out on the sidewalk, waiting for the bar to open at 6:00 a.m. They really didn't have much of anywhere else to go. True to character, Dorothea would invite a few of them to come to her place for Thanksgiving dinner, or even to move into her boardinghouse.
To the old gents she met in bars, she was an aged angel, a wrinkled coquette. But, as Harper saw it, "Her thing was elderly men with checks."
It seemed that Bert Montoya had struck a maternal chord with Dorothea Puente. She fawned over him and shepherded him so closely that one wouldn't think of accusing her of anything more sinister than of being overprotective. So on Thursday, March 31, 1988, when she dressed nicely as always and took Bert Montoya out, no one thought much about it.
She took him to a redbrick government building on the corner of Fifteenth and L streets, where she took a number and waited. When her number was finally called, Dorothea politely explained to the Social Security Administration representative, "I'm here with Mr. Montoya. He's mentally retarded, you see, and can't really manage his money, so he'd like me to be the payee for his SSI checks."
Not an unusual request. People with mental or physical handicaps that may cause "fiscal irresponsibility" are often encouraged to have their benefit checks handled by someone more competent, usually a relative. (This person serves as a "representative payee" in the Social Security vernacular.)
The elderly woman was handed a form to fill out. In the blank asking her relationship to the applicant, she wrote "I am cousin." When she was finished, she handed back the form, and the process was under way.
Later, the Social Security Administration would contact Bert's psychiatrist, who confirmed that Bert suffered from "psychosis, a degree of mental retardation, and abnormal behavior." Further, the doctor reported, Bert was "nonparticipative in society… withdrawn… generally needing someone to watch out for him." Yes, Social Security would be careful to establish medical evidence of Bert Montoya's mental disability. In that area, it was thorough. Yet no one would check even the most basic elements of Dorothea Puente's background. The Federal Privacy Act prohibited that.
In time, the application was approved, and checks
of $637 per month—intended for Bert Montoya but made payable to Dorothea Puente—were being sent to 1426 F Street.
And at this address, there was one hard-and-fast rule: Only Dorothea could collect the mail.
CHAPTER 5
Tending the private details of her life as fastidiously as she tended her garden, Dorothea Puente enjoyed her secrets. She cultivated contacts, nurtured confidences. And she revealed only what she chose, vigilantly keeping certain segments of her life discrete, which she'd done for so many years now that it was second nature.
Some knew her as a retired doctor, some as a retired nurse, yet she'd had no formal medical training. Virtually everyone believed she was a widow, yet all four of her ex-husbands were still alive. And she'd come very close to marrying a fifth. But such things were nobody's business.
To most who met her, Dorothea Puente was a widowed landlady with a generous streak. They knew her to be a hard-nosed businesswoman with a soft heart, a civic-minded matron who donated money and clothing to charities. She had certain rules, certain standards, but she was willing to grant broad favors to her friends, even to lend some extra cash in a pinch. And she could always be counted on for a fresh cup of coffee and a chat on the porch.
But Mrs. Puente had her weaknesses. For one, she had a little trouble with consistency, being the sort who advised against drinking alcohol one day, then offered to spot a few rounds at the bar the next. And then, of course, there was her temper. When it came to certain things that were important to her, she could be downright testy. And Bert was important to her.
Unlike most of Dorothea Puente's tenants, Bert Montoya had a handful of regular visitors, including a couple of nurses. Known collectively as "the two Lucys," Lucy Yokota and Lucy Aquitania had treated Bert along with other tuberculosis patients at Detox. (TB patients often end up living on the street because staying in the hospital is too expensive and board-and-care operators, fearing contagion, refuse to house them.) Now at least one of the nurses would stop by the house twice a week to check on Bert's dormant TB.
Lucy Yokota noticed how dramatically Bert's appearance improved after moving into 1426 F Street. He was clearly thriving in his new environment, thanks to the kind attentions of Dorothea Puente, who said she always stocked cookies for Bert and prepared steak for him every day.
So Lucy Yokota was startled one day to hear the landlady's angry voice on the phone, "just stay away from Bert," she hissed. "Stop visiting. You make him nervous. He doesn't want you coming by all the time." Yokota started to protest, but Puente cut her off, saying she didn't want the nurses coming by to see Bert anymore or he'd "have to be sent back to Detox."
With that, she hung up.
Bewildered, Yokota sat and stared at the phone, wondering what to do. Finally, she picked it up and dialed Mrs. Puente's number. When Dorothea answered, the soft-spoken nurse diplomatically offered, "I think we were disconnected."
"We weren't disconnected!" Puente declared, "I hung up on you!" Then she laughed abruptly and switched to an entirely different tone.
Yokota thought this "a very strange mood swing, from very angry, to all sweetness."
The next time she saw Bert, she came out and asked him, "Do we make you nervous? Do you want us to keep away?"
He innocently told her no.
Yokota didn't quite know what to think of the mercurial Mrs. Puente. She certainly wasn't going to alter Bert's treatment because of her. But after this, she definitely didn't trust her.
When Judy Moise and Beth Valentine came over, Mrs. Puente would crow about Bert's latest deeds, saying, "Let me tell you what he did!" She even boasted with a chuckle that Bert wanted to change his last name to Puente.
One day the VOA co-workers ended up in her kitchen, watching her bustle about as they talked. She pressed them to take home some food. "I made all these tamales this morning," Dorothea said, wiping her hands on her apron and looking around for something to wrap them in. "And I just have more than we can eat. Please. Won't you take some home? You do like tamales, don't you?"
Judy, who had a weakness for all things Mexican, from the artifacts that decorated her home to the dream vacations that lay just out of reach, accepted with thanks.
"You know," Dorothea was saying, "I'm planning on taking everyone to Mexico with me the next time I go down for a visit."
This was a surprise. "Everyone? You mean everyone in the boarding-house? The entire household?"
"Uh-huh. Everyone. Bert and everyone else. We'll all go down and visit my family. They live just outside of Guadalajara, you know, and I think we'd all have a good time."
"I see," said Judy, trying to digest this. "Well, how would you be getting down there?"
"Oh, John Sharp will drive us down," Dorothea replied airily.
Beth thought this was wonderful But Judy gave the landlady a quizzical look. She could scarcely imagine Bert as a tourist. Surely it was unrealistic to expect him to navigate in a foreign city. He could get lost.
It was a brief exchange—a bit peculiar, even eccentric—but nothing ominous. Judy didn't really take it seriously. She let the subject drop.
Now that Bert was doing so well, Judy felt that she and Beth could back off a bit. His condition had miraculously improved, and now she had other, more pressing problems.
And so did Dorothea Puente. If she was unpredictable, she was also clever. Watching, waiting, she methodically wove together elements of a plan that stretched into the months ahead. It was an intricate web, pleasing in its complexity.
This spring, the white-haired landlady had big plans for her yard. On several occasions she called her favorite cabdriver, Patty Casey, and asked that she drive her to landscape supply stores, where she purchased building materials, plants, seeds, and ready-mix concrete.
Of course, this little old lady, hardy though she was, didn't plan on doing all the yard work herself. Much as she enjoyed gardening in the cool morning air, for any heavy labor she always called the Sacramento Valley Correctional Center (SVCC). A halfway house for convicts with just a few months left on parole, it would send out work crews of nonviolent offenders, and Dorothea paid them each twenty dollars a day for doing odd jobs around her house.
Not many private individuals were even aware that a halfway house could supply laborers. But Dorothea Puente was conversant with ex-cons; she knew about parolees and work furlough. In fact, she knew many things that others did not.
Parolees worked at the F Street house off and on during the months of April, May, and June. As the air grew hot and the season turned the dry corner toward summer, the grounds were transformed. Sinewy workers arrived early and left late, sweating over their labors. Mrs. Puente directed them and John McCauley supervised as they continued painting, cleaning, digging trenches, mixing and laying cement, even building a shed in the yard.
At noon, the landlady always invited the young men upstairs for a midday meal—an unnecessary but highly welcome gesture. And over lunch, she revealed a secret side of herself. "I know what it's like, being an ex-con," she confided, "because I've been in prison myself."
To these men who'd endured hard times and were hoping for better, Mrs. Puente was a kind soul who didn't condemn them for past mistakes. She gave them a chance. One wiry young fellow named Don Anthony even said she was "like a mother."
Some may have found it refreshing that the old landlady was investing so much effort in her yard (this wasn't one of the nicest neighborhoods after all, and few on the block seemed to sweat much over their property), but the landlord next door, forty-eight-year-old Will Mclntyre, wasn't thrilled about his neighbor's noisy projects. It seemed endless, he thought. For nearly two years now, he and his tenants had put up with Puente's racket. It seemed to him that she was always hammering, always improving. In fact, Mclntyre was not at all enamored of little old Mrs. Puente. "She could be very nice," he admitted, but he'd seen her "turn in a minute," treating the object of her wrath to "a vocabulary that could make most sailors blush."
Some neighbors found her extraordinarily friendly, but others called her "weird" or "off the wall," noting that she was "always yelling at people if they put even a step onto her lawn."
That temper.
Eventually, Dorothea brought up the subject of Mexico with John Sharp, the one tenant who had a car. She suggested that they might all travel down to Guadalajara after he got his SSI payments started and asked if he would drive.
The prospect of driving all the way from northern California into Mexico, shut inside a car for days with his dubious housemates, seemed about as appealing as self-flagellation. John Sharp was no martyr: He told her no.
Sharp didn't socialize much with the other boarders. He found Bert uncommunicative and childlike, sitting in the living room and watching cartoons. Sometimes, tormented by voices, Bert would stomp on the floor in frustration, "having a tantrum," in Sharp's view, until Dorothea would come and calm him, uttering motherly reassurances in Spanish.
John Sharp's vice was poker, not liquor, and the sober old gent didn't find much in common with the drinkers of the house either. But on a couple of occasions, he did enjoy standing outside and conversing with Ben Fink and his younger brother, Robert, who visited him there. Ben, who had moved into Dorothea's place in March, wasn't too bad a fellow, really. But it was mainly Robert, who looked like a rugged extra from a Clint Eastwood movie, who was sober and coherent enough to hold Sharp's attention.
Ben Fink never really bothered anybody, and though his room was just a thin wall away, Sharp didn't spend much time with him. He knew Fink was quite a drinker, and he could hear him moving about, coming and going. Each month, after receiving his benefit check, Ben would go on a major drinking binge until the money ran out.
In the spring of 1988, though, things were about to change.
Sharp heard Ben Fink come to the back door, heard him fumbling with his keys. Sharp's door was open, as usual Ben staggered past, bleary-eyed, his hand wrapped around a bottle in a paper sack. In a minute, his neighbor's door closed, then he heard the familiar creak on the other side of the wall as the bed accepted Fink's weight.
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