Bohemian Heart

by Dalessandro, James

  "Expensive?"

  "Yes."

  "Who paid for them, Mr. Rivera? Who footed the bill?"

  "She did."

  That's right, Ian, the scarlet letter on her chest. Fucked this slick dude with the old man's money.

  "Identify her, please."

  "Colleen Farragut. Mrs. Farragut, right there." He pointed.

  "How do you know she paid for all those rooms, Mr. Rivera? Did you ever see her pay for them at the desk?" Smelling blood, Ian drove the knife home now.

  "No, but I've seen several of the receipts on the dresser, on the nightstand." He put a wisp of Valentino in the nightstand crack. Subtle, but it registered. Minor, minor crowd ripple.

  "You had room service, good wine."

  Calvin objected and was upheld. He looked clumsy, desperate to slow the juggernaut. Exactly what he wanted.

  "How much did the rooms cost?"

  Calvin objected again, got himself overruled. Even Colleen grimaced this time.

  "Three hundred, four hundred dollars a crack. More, sometimes, come to think of it; even six, seven hundred." Tommy was about halfway to a blown gasket, working at his tie, his collar.

  "Why did it end?"

  "She asked me to do something crazy."

  Foot shuffling, notebook pages turning in unison.

  "How crazy?"

  Tommy's face was straining like an overfilled balloon. He tried to answer, swallowed, tried again. To me it was an act, but the jury seemed to see it differently. They looked mesmerized.

  They didn't see Tommy lying. They hadn't seen him come out of the farmhouse in Woodside. They saw a guy distraught about having to rat out his ex-lover. A tortured hero. I could have died watching.

  "Take your time, Mr. Rivera, we know this is not easy."

  I looked around the courtroom, saw that Sherenian and Bearden hadn't cracked a wrinkle. The two of them, Zane, and I, we were the only ones who knew what Tommy was really up to.

  "She wanted me to find some guys to kill her husband." Tommy finally said, blurting it out after a struggle. He swallowed, asked for a glass of water, drank, nodded his thanks to the bailiff. "She offered me a lot of money."

  "How much money?"

  "She never mentioned a price, she just . . . she just said, 'You know a lot of bad people. Find two guys you trust, I'll give you money to pay them, then send them away.' She said she'd pay them well."

  "And you?"

  "She said I'd be a very wealthy young man."

  "How did you react?"

  "At first I didn't believe her, but then she just looked at me and said it wasn't a joke." He rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose slowly.

  "I was so astonished, I couldn't say anything. Here I was, I tried to fix my life, I tried to crawl out of this hole I came from, and she comes along, she makes me feel like I'm the love of her life, and then she asks me to get somebody to kill her husband."

  "Did she tell you why she wanted to murder her husband?"

  "Not that night, she didn't. It was another time."

  "When did she tell you why she wanted her husband killed?"

  Tommy hesitated, looked confused, blurted out, "Ahh, at a hotel in Sausalito. It was my birthday, July seventh. We were in a hotel room in Sausalito."

  "Which hotel?"

  "The Bay View. It was my birthday," he said again.

  I looked to see how Colleen was holding up, but I caught something more interesting: Calvin reacted with a start to Rivera's statement about when and where the offer took place. So did Bearden. Calvin leaned over and whispered to Bearden. If the jury caught it, it looked natural enough—his client had just taken a fatal shot. I smelled a screw-up.

  "So you saw her again, you were with her after she made you the offer, correct?"

  "One time. I was in love with her. She called me, she knew it was my birthday, she said she was sorry. I tried to pretend it never happened, but I had to ask her why."

  "And what was her answer when you asked why she wanted her husband killed?"

  "She said she hated him, that he cheated people, didn't care about anyone, just money. She said he was an animal. She also said he had a girlfriend."

  "So she appeared jealous."

  Calvin ignored a chance to object.

  "I don't know if she was jealous," Tommy answered, then spat out, "she just hated the guy. She thought she married a monster."

  "Did she tell you about her marriage contract?"

  "Yes, she said she had a prenuptial agreement. She told me that William was going to divorce her and she would lose everything."

  "How many times did you talk about the murder?"

  "Just those two times."

  "And what did you tell her?"

  "I told her she had to be crazy. I told her she would get caught."

  "You had no other contact after that night?"

  "No."

  "And after her husband was killed, did you try to contact her?"

  "Yes. I was freaked out, I wanted to know if she really did it. But she refused to talk to me."

  "Why didn't you come forward with this information right after the murder?"

  "They arrested her a few days after. I thought they had her, I thought she'd just plea-bargain and get one of those richpeople's sentences, you know, eighteen months playing tennis in some country club somewhere."

  Calvin objected. Walters upheld, struck it from the record.

  "When it seemed certain there was going to be a trial, that she was going to deny everything, I called the district attorney's office. They asked me to testify." Tommy was cool again, seemingly in control, the volcano subsiding.

  "One last question, Mr. Rivera." Ian gave it the good pregnant pause. "That first night she brought it up, did Mrs. Farragut say how she wanted to have her husband killed?"

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "She said . . . her idea was to fake a robbery, get two guys to shoot him and make it look like a robbery attempt," Tommy got out, growing more emotional. "It was ridiculous, but she was desperate."

  "What was your reply?"

  "I told her she'd get caught."

  "Thank you, Mr. Rivera. I have no further questions at this time, but I'd like the option to recall this key witness later."

  Walters granted his request, thanked Rivera.

  Instead of moving to cross-examination, Calvin asked for time to confer with his client. Judge Walters banged the gavel, granted a short recess, and the jury was excused. After they left, the bailiffs escorted Colleen, Calvin, and Bearden through the side exit. I waited until they closed the door to follow the shuffling crowd into the hallway.

  Rivera's testimony had been very, very deadly. And not a word of it was true. That was the one part of Colleen's story I believed without question: Colleen could never have been so stupid as to ask someone she'd been sleeping with for a month to have her husband killed.

  I was believing her story more and more by the minute.

  And I now had a new target, a new weak spot in the fabric of lies.

  Tommy Rivera.

  Chapter 18

  Calvin's cross-examination of Tommy Rivera was spirited—and meaningless. He passed briefly over Tommy's criminal past, ostensibly trying to discredit him, but not trying very hard. He challenged him on his recollections, on his delay in going to the police, never once asking if he had tried to blackmail Colleen.

  I cast sideways glances at Calvin and Bearden throughout, to see if they were doing the same with me, to try to find any hint that Lynne McBain had told them of my visit, or that Bearden had detected that anyone had been in his apartment. If they knew, they were too good to let on.

  Tommy Rivera got stronger as the cross-examination went on. Calvin looked defeated, Colleen despondent.

  When Judge Walters banged the gavel at the end of the day, you could hear the bell tolling.

  I had a very simple system worked out with Colleen. At a prearranged time every evening, she would climb the wall behind her
house, where Henry and Martha waited outside to bring her to Telegraph Hill. As I waited for her to arrive the night of Tommy's testimony, I knew I had a major league problem, one not uncommon in my line of work.

  I was duty bound to tell her what I'd found about Calvin's treachery, but I was afraid. I was afraid she'd crack, that even if I told her to say nothing to Calvin and Bearden, they'd sense it in her attitude toward them, that something she might say or do would tip them off that I was on to them.

  I was also legally and ethically bound to tell the court if I discovered a crime in commission, especially one as grave as tampering with the judicial system. Right then, that was the least of my worries.

  I knew I couldn't tell Colleen just yet. For the first time since she'd hired me, I held a small advantage.

  If I couldn't find the burglar by the end of the trial, I could always step forward with the photographs of Calvin and Bearden meeting with Rivera in Woodside and derail the process through a mistrial. That would buy Colleen another six months and probably get Calvin and Bearden disbarred, at least temporarily.

  But that still wouldn't save Colleen. Ian Jeffries would re-file and Colleen would have to do it all again. No assets released. No money, no diaries. Finding the burglar was the only real end to the nightmare.

  When Colleen arrived I asked for her help. I mentioned nothing about Sherenian or Bearden, their treachery, or Bearden's involvement in McBain's murder.

  "Tommy Rivera testified you made the murder proposition at the Bay View in Sausalito the night of his birthday."

  "I never offered him anything, that smug, lying little bastard." She was so angry she was shaking. I gave her a minute.

  "We were in a hotel room in Sausalito on his birthday, that part is true," she said when she'd calmed down enough. "I remember it well because it was the next day that William confronted me about my affair with Tommy."

  "Tell me what William said. How did he find out?"

  "He said he had evidence, hard evidence."

  "Did he say what kind?"

  "Not really. He said 'irrefutable evidence, the kind that stands up in court'. Those were his exact words."

  I thought for a minute, had the answer. She pulled it out of me.

  "If he had stand-up-in-court evidence, he didn't mean a sighting by a friend or acquaintance. Did you ever enter a hotel lobby together, leave together, were you ever seen holding hands or kissing in public?"

  "Never. We were fanatically discreet. We always entered and left separately, never went near each other in public."

  I drifted off again, reluctant to tell her what I thought.

  "You said we'd work together, Frank. Tell me."

  "I think your husband or Sherenian had their private detective, Hayden Phillips, bug your room, or worse, make a video."

  "Oh, God," slipped from her lips, and I knew that if there was a video it would be a beauty. Even the audio would be a blockbuster.

  "Your husband would never have pulled a stunt like that without involving Sherenian, and Sherenian always uses Phillips. This is right up Hayden's alley; he built half his agency by trapping women with their lovers so the husbands could use the evidence in divorce proceedings. You're sure it was the very next day, the day after you and Tommy celebrated his birthday in Sausalito that William confronted you?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Then Tommy may have made a fatal mistake on the witness stand. If a tape was made of you two that night, William would have confronted you the next day. In my experience, no man waits a week before confronting his wife with evidence like that. And the tape would prove you never offered Tommy money to have William killed."

  "You're right. William started the whole argument by asking where I'd been the night before, what had I been doing. And if I tried to pull a stunt like that, offering money to have my husband murdered, and William found out, don't you think he would have done something about it? Gone to the police, had me arrested, something—anything? My God, that tape could prove that I never offered Tommy a thing."

  She put her face in her hands as if she was trying to rub the pain, the fatigue away. "This is just great. Instead of dying in the gas chamber I can die of embarrassment while the whole world watches the tape. I can just see it, those nice newspaper photos with black strips across your tits and your butt."

  "That won't happen. All that's important is the audio part. We could kick Tommy's testimony, prove he's lying."

  "That still might not get me an acquittal. This is a nightmare, Francis."

  "Let me worry about it. Let me find out where the tape is."

  I figured Calvin had the tape. Farragut always hid behind his lawyers.

  If I could get it, it would give me one more monkey wrench to throw into the works if I couldn't find the burglar. It would also strengthen my chances of nailing Sherenian, Bearden, and Rivera for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

  All I had to do was burglarize Calvin's home and office and find the right tape.

  I showed Colleen the reports Arnie had found of the three similar burglaries committed in her neighborhood in the months preceding William's death. I asked what she knew about them.

  "Only what I read in the files," she said. "Calvin told me the police had investigated and found no connection between them and the burglary at our house."

  "And Hayden Phillips found nothing either?" I asked.

  "I don't know. I guess not, or they would have made an issue out of it. There's a lot of burglaries in those neighborhoods. Calvin just said there was no link."

  I handed her the burglary reports for the homes of the Schmidbaums, Castellanos, and Rosenzweigs.

  "Do you know these people, Colleen?"

  "Yes. I know them well. They're involved in a lot of the same things I am—charities, fund-raisers, gallery openings."

  "Do they throw a lot of parties?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact. You know, lawn parties, fund-raisers for political causes, for homeless missions. They're very active."

  "Did any of them have parties around the time of the burglaries?"

  Colleen looked at each name and date carefully.

  "The Schmidbaums and Castellanos did for sure; I went to both. I remember when they were burglarized. The Rosenzweigs, I'm not sure . . . I think they did, but I missed it. I think they gave a big party before William was murdered, a few months before, but I had tickets to see Cats at the A.C.T. that night and I missed it."

  "Did Tommy Rivera go to those parties?"

  "I don't remember, exactly, but—wait. Yes, he was definitely at the Schmidbaums', that was the first time I'd seen him in a long time. The Castellanos' party . . . yes, I remember seeing him at the Castellanos' because he spoke Castilian with Castellano."

  I asked her to call Mrs. Rosenzweig to see if Tommy had been to their party the night Colleen had gone to see Cats. Before she did, I activated the "bug catcher" to see if my line was tapped. It wasn't.

  Mrs. Rosenzweig confirmed that Tommy Rivera had been to the party at their house six weeks before they were burglarized.

  Chapter 19

  Calvin's treachery and Rivera's testimony went a long way toward convincing me of Colleen's innocence. It also helped me to stop mistrusting her. It broke down a wall that I kept my strongest feelings behind.

  What I imagined was a serious case of oh-Lord-I-think-I-love-her had really been a devastating wave of want and passion, plus that rarest of all things, recognition of a kindred spirit, a soul mate.

  To trust is to go beyond the last barrier, to let go of the fear one clings to like a life jacket. In my case, I had more than ordinary cause for apprehension.

  That night when we made love, it was deeper, stronger, slower, looking and kissing, body watching, staring unwaveringly into each other's eyes. There was no distance between us, the barriers were gone.

  I hadn't felt that in a long, long time. I'd never felt it stronger. We'd turned the corner from fucking, sweet and urgent as it was, and we were fuc
king better than ever, everything fearless, everything open. In our fatigue we settled for a short, sweet, emotional encounter, then drifted to a void approaching coma.

  Four hours of sleep and I was back in the hunt.

  I prayed Tommy Rivera was the last piece in the puzzle, that I was creeping up on a merciful end to Colleen's nightmare, to the long Fagen nightmare, to my own protracted horror.

  I made breakfast, and while we ate I alternated between looking at Colleen and worrying somewhere out in space. She noticed it, the worry, the wondering. The gravity of what awaited her was now weighing on my heart as well as my mind.

  Just before she left I nonchalantly asked her to keep tabs on Calvin and Bearden, their schedules, the places they went after court. When she asked why, I told her I was afraid to run into one of them while running down information and leads. She seemed to buy it. We kissed good-bye, and then Martha and Phil took her through the basement to Martha's waiting car. The simple act of sneaking her in and out, of protecting her, of being with her, was becoming more dangerous, more difficult.

  Two minor league screw-ups, I thought when they'd left, two small but crucial mistakes that had turned the whole thing around, given me hope, direction.

  The first was the fact that Fred Worley, my old acquaintance who tended bar at Farragut's hotel, remembered Lynne McBain, and remembered reading the personal ad she left unattended.

  The second was that when Bearden had checked out Lynne McBain, he'd paid for his drinks with his credit card, leading us to the discoveries we'd made in his home, the note about meeting J.N. with ten grand. That in turn had led me to tail Bearden to the meeting with Sherenian and Rivera in Woodside.

  Too close. Just thinking about it made me nervous.

  All I had to do was break into Sherenian's home and/or office and find a tape of Colleen's rendezvous with Tommy at the hotel in Sausalito—and risk losing my license and being thrown in jail. Before the Bearden break-in I hadn't committed burglary on a case in seven years; now I was working on my second one in a week.

  A half hour later, Martha, Arnie, Henry, and I met in the City Lights office and went over recent developments.

  "I'm convinced that Helen Smidge had both Simcic and McBain killed, and that Bearden or John Naftulin either did the killing or hired the killer. Whoever did it probably did Flynn Pooley as well." I pointed out that if Calvin could get Colleen convicted, he would be named executor of Farragut's estate, and would be free to destroy Farragut's diaries, and send the whole dirty history up in flames.