Bohemian Heart

by Dalessandro, James

  Colleen then explained to me that Ghiberti, ever the crafty and calculating artist, had begun his project by first working each design out in the form of a silver plate, knowing they would be immensely valuable when the project was finished. He abandoned the idea after making only four silver plates.

  Two had allegedly been lost, the other two had been bought by William's father at the start of World War II. Colleen told me they were in the display case the night of the murder and must have been taken by William's assailant.

  According to Colleen, the plates appeared on an insurance inventory and had been seen by dozens of witnesses in the spot from which they disappeared. Consuela had signed an affidavit that the plates were on the shelf the day of the shooting.

  "Let's go outside, get some air for a moment. All right, Frank?" I nodded and followed her past the yellow police ribbon and into another room, waiting patiently as she opened enough locks to make a New Yorker proud. The locks were new, untarnished, and didn't fit in with the decor of the room. Obviously added after the murder.

  In back of the house the grass was overgrown, the trees untrimmed. There was a large masonry wall surrounding an enormous gazebo that looked like an outdoor dance pavilion. To the right was a jacuzzi-cabana area and a boarded-up wet bar. It was warmer outside than it was in the house.

  I could tell by the height of the trees behind the wall that there was a long drop from the top of it to the ground inside the Presidio. "Now what do you think, Frank?" she asked, turning to face me. I hesitated.

  "Tell me," she said impatiently. "I don't have much time. In about eight hours it's really going to get ugly." She was suffering, ready to crack at any moment.

  I told her the truth as gently as I could. "It's a hard story to believe. First, it's difficult to imagine that anyone would burglarize this house, especially at night when they'd expect people to be home. Most residential burglaries in houses like this are in the daytime."

  "His gun, your fingerprints, bad sign. No gunpowder on you or your clothes will be easy for the prosecutor to dismiss. Almost nine hours passed between the shooting and your call to the police. You could have taken five showers, and washed the clothes you were wearing. And the jury might have a hard time believing someone gunned your husband down without you hearing the shots, that you slept the night away with the body downstairs. Although I'd suggest that Calvin Sherenian bring the jury out here to see the size of this place for themselves."

  Again I hesitated, but she seemed to be holding up. "You were arguing, he was threatening to divorce you. If the papers are correct, your prenuptial agreement would give you nothing if he could prove you were doing horizontal aerobics with another man."

  She nodded her head. I was kicking a dying horse. I didn't like it but did it anyway. I had a lot of practice.

  "They got you on three of the primary pieces of evidence: motive, because of the divorce threat and prenuptial agreement; opportunity, because the two of you were home alone; and physical evidence, because of your prints on the murder weapon. But that still doesn't mean you're guilty. All that is just circumstantial. You have no criminal record, no history of violence, and your reputation for helping other people shows that you aren't one of those self-indulgent cretins that everyone hates. Calvin Sherenian has won acquittals with more evidence than that stacked against a defendant. The good thing is, no one says they saw you do it or saw you leaving the scene. Eyewitness accounts are the most damning kind of evidence. And no one has accused you of prior intent, of making a previous attempt on his life."

  When I said "previous attempt" she looked up at me, then put her head down and sobbed almost imperceptibly. Her face was strained, but she didn't crack, as though by freezing her face she might freeze her emotions. But her nose was running, and a bubble of saliva slipped from between her lips. She gasped once, wiped her nose and mouth on a tissue she took from her pocket, then pulled herself back together.

  I waited, and then it came.

  "Yesterday, Tommy Rivera . . ." she looked at me, looked away again. "He said—he told the DA, he signed an affidavit and everything. He told them I'd tried to get him to get some of his ghetto buddies to . . . to kill William and that I promised to pay Tommy a lot of money once the estate was settled."

  "I'd figured it was going to be ugly, but not that ugly."

  "He's going to testify against me," she gasped, shaking, and the brave face folded. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she made no attempt to stop them. She had a right to be terrified. That's why Ian Jeffries had taken murder one to murder one with special circumstances: premeditation, prior attempt, murder for financial gain.

  It also elevated the circumstantial evidence to the level of corroborating evidence.

  I waited a minute. "Why would he do that?" I asked. "Why would Tommy Rivera pull a stunt like that?"

  "Money—and revenge I guess. He hated me because I dumped him, and a few months after the murder he came to me and said he'd tell this story to the police unless I gave him money. A lot of money."

  "Did Calvin try to trap him, to prove he was extorting money from you?"

  "Yes. Calvin had a tap on the phone when I spoke to Tommy several times afterward, but I could never get him to repeat anything incriminating. He was too smart. He told me when he threatened me that he would never mention it again, but that he'd be 'most grateful' if I offered him a palimony settlement. He just called from time to time and said, 'How 'ya doin', can I help?' When I changed my number he sent me cards that said 'Been thinking about you, let me know if there is anything you need or anything I can do. Love, Tommy.' The guy is scum, I really didn't think he would go through with it."

  She was dead meat, I didn't care how good Calvin Sherenian was. My partner and I had busted Tommy once when he was an eighteen-year-old gang-banger. Even then he was glib, cocky, with a lightning-fast mind. I doubted if even Sherenian could rattle him on the witness stand.

  There was a bench nearby. Colleen stumbled over and slumped down on it as if her knees had gone on strike. I paced forth and back, staring up at the moon, which was now higher in the sky out over the Pacific, bathing everything in cold, pale light. I offered her no comfort.

  "Frank," she said. "My attorney has had a dozen private detectives looking for the burglar ever since the murder. They've found nothing, no burglar, no silver plates, nothing. The cops have been doing 'due diligence' and haven't found anything either. Unless someone finds the person who did this . . ." She was too scared to finish the sentence.

  In my mind, I finished it for her. While the death penalty seemed unlikely—an educated woman with no criminal record was unlikely to be condemned—the mere possibility would reduce anyone's heart to jelly.

  And the alternative was even worse. A lifetime at Frontera Women's Prison, growing old in a five-by-ten hellhole surrounded by a mix-'n'-match collection of the biggest fuck-ups and psychopaths society had to offer. Being raped and tortured for the rest of your life could make death seem like an enviable alternative.

  If acquitted, she'd inherit three hundred million, the artwork, the opera seats, the car collection, and Castle Farragut. Skiing and aperitifs at Gstaad. Regattas on the Costa Brava, sunsets at Portofino. And the only way she could guarantee herself an acquittal was for someone to find the Invisible Burglar.

  "My husband hated you, Frank. You know why? Because he couldn't buy you. Because you almost ended his little reign of terror over this city. He used to brag that you were the hotshot young detective in San Francisco, the most obsessive man hunter the department had. He gloated over beating you, because he said you were the best. How good are you, Frank? Can you find someone no one else can find?"

  People usually tell you you're the best when they're trying to get you to work for free. Judging by the lack of heat and maintenance at the Castle, I figured that was next. I answered the question as quietly as egomania allows.

  "I'm a good detective. I've always considered myself one of the best. But I'm not Merlin. I
can't find someone who doesn't leave a trail, who hasn't made any mistakes. And I'm extra bad at finding someone who doesn't exist."

  She looked at me with a start, but I had to do it. I had to clue her in that I still had problems with her story.

  Gritting her teeth, she went back on the offensive. "I want someone who will work for me, for me only. I don't trust anybody right now, I'm just too scared. I got through life trusting my own instincts, relying on myself when things got rough. I don't have much money left; the court froze everything, the cars, the art, all but my personal property. I've sold my car, my jewelry, what little artwork I owned. I've used it all to make bail, pay Calvin's fees and expenses, and to pay for an army of private detectives—who found nothing.

  "I have ten thousand dollars to my name. I need a little so I can eat and pay Consuela. She's my only friend now. I'd go nuts in this house without her. But I'll give you most of what I have for expenses. And, if you find whoever did this—who killed William, who stole those silver plates—if you save me from this nightmare, I'll give you one million dollars when the estate is released by the court."

  The best I could do was stare. I stared a long time. She stared back, barely blinking. I'd been offered a lot of things in my P.I. life, from stud-fee shares in a blue-ribbon pig to a ménage a trois with a ballet dancer and her twin sister. One of which I accepted.

  But never a million dollars. And never anything by anyone as sad and beautiful as Colleen Farragut.

  "The trial should only last a month, Frank. It's a month out of your life, and if you're successful you will get your million dollars. I'll put it in writing. I need to know now. I've got no place to hide and nowhere else to go."

  I gave myself another minute, cleared my throat of the phantom million stuck there, and answered her.

  "I'm sorry. I'd have to get my three other detectives working around the clock, and the expense money wouldn't even pay their wages. If the cops and the other private detectives couldn't find the perpetrator in nineteen months, the chances of me doing it in thirty days are next to impossible. The million means nothing unless I catch the perpetrator. I don't think I'd do you any good, and I'd just be taking the last of your money. I'm also having a hard time believing your story."

  I thought that would put the last crack in her dam but it had the opposite effect. She sucked it up and came back at me, a real fighter.

  "You lost your whole career because of my husband."

  "Not exactly. I lost my career because I was naïve and I had an ego the size of this house. Your husband was just the object of a bad case of temporary insanity. Besides, you can't wave revenge in my face. Somebody already got it for me, better than I ever could."

  "Then I only have one more thing to offer you," she said. She stood and approached me so we were eyeball to tear-filled, magnificent eyeball. My heart jumped and my breathing stopped. It seemed the erotic mysteries of the universe were about to be dumped into my lap. I wondered how I would say no if she offered. I wouldn't. She didn't. She did, however, read my mind, surprised and pleased at the effect she had. Then she set the smile aside and got back to business.

  "I wasn't here when it happened, but I read the old newspaper articles and heard William talk about it constantly. You lost your job because you accused him of being involved in the murder of the mayor. You believed William wanted Mayor DiMarco dead because DiMarco was trying to stop all the high-rise building in the financial district and south of Market Street. William and his buddies had millions invested in the Marker Street corridor. If DiMarco had been able to stop them, they would have lost everything."

  "That's right," I said. "DiMarco would have put an end to all that horrendous building if Warren Dillon hadn't killed him in his own office. With DiMarco out of the way, the power downtown shifted from the save-the-city group to the developers. We got skyscrapers forty-eight stories above the San Andreas Fault, and your husband made millions."

  I suffered an instantaneous fuck-up flashback, a mental replay of a young inspector ranting and raving to the press about corruption and cover-up after ex-cop Dillon received a measly four-year sentence for murdering the mayor. And I saw the same young inspector alone in his house on Telegraph Hill, crying like a lost child after he'd been fired and humiliated by the city for being "unstable," "irrational," "unprofessional," and "suspected of using illicit substances." My breathing went from zero to turbo, my chest heaving up and down as she talked.

  "One night, a few months after Dillon was paroled, I overheard William talking in his den to a woman with whom you must be very familiar, Helen Smidge, Supervisor Helen Smidge? They were talking about Dillon getting out, they were afraid he'd talk and tell the whole story, how'd they'd pushed him into it, promised him they'd fix his trial and take care of him when he got out. They were talking about where to hide him and how much money it would cost."

  "Several times I heard my husband having angry conversations with Dillon over the phone. William told him to keep his mouth shut and said he'd give him more money and have him moved to a different location. Then, about a year later, I heard on the radio that Dillon had committed suicide, and all day William walked around with a big grin on his face."

  "In my husband's safe-deposit boxes, which I can't get to unless I'm acquitted, are diaries and records that he kept every day of his life. He told me once right after we were married that if anything ever happened to him I was to take all those records and diaries and burn them. He told me to make sure I got two particular diaries, the diary from the year that Dillon murdered the mayor and the one from the year Dillon was released and supposedly committed suicide."

  She was telling the truth about the existence of the Farragut diaries. The last thing I'd come up with in my attempt to nail Farragut with DiMarco's murder was a former secretary who'd told me that Farragut kept meticulous diaries. My last official act as a cop was to request a search warrant and subpoena for Farragut's personal safe and safe-deposit boxes. When the judge refused I went crazy and made my second and fatal outburst to the media.

  I asked my hands and knees to behave themselves, and fought the gagging feeling in my throat.

  "I know where those diaries are, Frank, and I'll give you any one you want. You can have them all. You can have a record of every bribe, kickback, and dirty deal William and his friends ever pulled. But most of all, you can clear your name.

  "A million dollars and the chance to vindicate yourself in front of everyone, Frank. All you have to do is find the people I'm looking for and prove what I'm telling you and everyone else—that I am not a murderer."

  My first reaction was to run, to disbelieve everything, to let the whole ugly thing stay buried. That lasted five seconds, tops, and then the old fight started welling up inside of me.

  I looked at her and saw the pain, the determination, the pleading. For the first time, the one question I'd been unable to shake since we met started to make sense.

  Why was she doing this, if there really wasn't a burglar on the loose? Why would she go to these lengths, giving up what was obviously her last money to find someone if that someone didn't exist? She was desperate, but she didn't seem crazy.

  She had offered me the ultimate reward, the one thing that could have gotten me to take her case: the chance to prove, once and for all, that I was right and the rest of them—the department, the city, everyone had been wrong. I couldn't get revenge, but I could get something better: revenge's big brother, redemption.

  I'd had some wild dreams of vengeance and vindication in my decade-long season in hell, but nothing, nothing like what was staring me in the face. All I had to do was find someone that no one else could find.

  "I'll have a contract drawn up tomorrow," I said. "Where are the evidence files?"

  She smiled a relieved but painful smile and led me down the hallway to a wood-paneled office. In the center of the floor were two pushcarts filled with identical boxes filled with identical files.

  "Consuela and I spent days ju
st copying them. The one on the right is yours."

  I don't remember much of anything after that; loading the boxes in the Firenze Plumbing van, trading phone numbers, receiving five thousand in cash. I'm not sure what route I took home, if I passed any cars or saw any buildings or streets that may have looked familiar. I pulled into my garage, got out of the van, and loaded the boxes into the dumbwaiter I'd installed for my late grandmother, pressing the button that sent everything to the fourth-floor loft.

  I climbed the stairs and exited onto the roof, taking in the San Francisco skyline, still numb, still afraid of what I was about to undertake. Along the Market Street corridor the hulking high-rises blocked what had once been an uninterrupted view of the Bay. My endless reminder, my personal hammer from Farragut and friends that after DiMarco's murder, the city had been theirs for the taking.

  Behind me I heard a heavy bellow, the sound a sea lion on steroids might make: the first foghorn in over a month. I turned and saw the first of the fog creeping above the hills of Sausalito, feeling as though a vice had been removed from my heart. The world had regained some equilibrium.

  Until that night, I had tried to put the whole Farragut mess behind me. I thought I had finished suffering a decade earlier. I'd spent a month, post dismissal, as an inarticulate lump. My firing had made me so miserable I eventually bottomed out on misery. One day I forced myself to crawl out of the Fagen ooze and found the sun still set behind the bridge and people still coughed in the movies. I counted my arms, my legs, my eyes, and my balls and still had two of everything. I paid my bar tabs and canceled my account at the liquor store and tore up several napkins on which I'd written the numbers of women who hadn't been able to quench the pain. I decided to go back to living.

  But that night, looking at the desecrated San Francisco skyline, I realized that for ten years I hadn't been living.

  I clenched my fists and shook them at the heavens, heart soaring, toes curling, and let the tears run down my face. I thanked God for my life and for the second chance to fight the fight that had almost killed me. Suddenly remembering I had neighbors all around, I looked to see if any of them had seen the lunatic flailing his fists on his rooftop, waved to the invisible gallery, smoothed my hair, and went inside. I remembered I had a job to do. The celebration would have to wait.