I waited a second for it to sink in.
"There's something that has bothered me about Tommy Rivera testifying since I first heard the story," I went on. "Colleen says she refused Tommy's ludicrous blackmail scheme. So what does a guy with half a brain do in a situation like this?"
"He gives it up," Arnie cut in. "Next case. Nobody but a moron would get up there and lie on the witness stand just to get revenge on somebody."
"That's right," I said, "nobody but a complete moron would actually go through with a stunt like that. And Tommy Rivera is anything but a moron."
"But they bribe him," Henry said, "ye see guys have meeting, make deal, he comes out vith briefcase probhubly stuff vith money."
"I still say there's more to it than that, Henry."
I gave each of them a copy of the police reports Arnie had found. "Three burglaries, all with similar MO's to the Farragut burglary, all in Presidio and Pacific Heights mansions, within eighteen months of the Farragut killing."
"Similar, but not identical," Martha said.
"That's what Inspector Naftulin and his crew decided. Not that I believe a word he says."
"That doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong," she came back.
"There were parties at all three of the burglarized houses within six to eight weeks of the break-ins," I stated. "Fund-raisers. All three of them were attended by Tommy Rivera. You'll notice that Hayden Phillips retraced the cops' steps, except there's no mention of these burglary reports."
"Vich means Phillips probhubly did verk, but not report all he find."
"Exactly. He was more diligent than Naftulin, because he had more time, more man power, and because he desperately needed to find the real burglar. He wanted to find them so he and Calvin could make sure no one accidentally turned up to ruin the lynch party they had scheduled for Colleen."
"Which means," said Martha, "that maybe he did find the burglar in these cases."
"That's exactly what I believe," I said, "which brings us to the missing link. Now, I think that Tommy Rivera would have been too afraid to go to Calvin with that ludicrous blackmail story and ask for hush money. He knew Colleen must have told Calvin, he knew Calvin is a shark and must have been waiting for Rivera to try it again so he could nail him. One of two things could have happened. Calvin could have sent his butt-boy, Bearden, to get Rivera to testify against his own client."
"That's dangerous," said Arnie, playing devil's advocate. "Tommy's offer to Colleen was that he wouldn't testify. Actually getting up there and testifying is another story completely. Tommy could turn on Bearden and Calvin, blackmail them for even more money after the trial. He could also dump it in their laps if something went wrong. Calvin would not take a risk like that with a guy like Rivera."
"Unless they had something on Tommy," Martha said.
"That's exactly right," I concluded. "Tommy's testimony yesterday is what made it click in. What was Tommy's regular line of employment before he got religion? He was a burglar. He was a great burglar. I went after him once; we knew he'd broken into dozens of places but we could never catch him. An old girlfriend ratted him out, told us where he hid the merchandise. We nailed him when he went to retrieve the stuff. If it wasn't for that, we might never have gotten him."
"Which brings us to the second and most likely possibility: Hayden Phillips found the real burglar in those other three jobs and discovered Tommy was involved. I doubt Tommy did the burglaries himself, he's too smart for that. But he set them up. He cased the places during the parties, then sent his stooges to do the dirty work."
"Now, Calvin knew the case against Colleen might not be strong enough to convict her. If she goes free, she gets William's diaries and turns them over to the newspapers. A lot of rich guys, himself included, get a lot of time wearing dresses up at Folsom."
"Calvin knew that in order to get Colleen out of the way and get the diaries, he had to do two things: he had to turn in the worst performance of his career, and he needed to get one more piece of evidence against her. Which Rivera could provide, if Calvin could manipulate Tommy without fear that Tommy would turn on him later."
"So Sherenian sends Bruce Bearden to see Tommy. They have Rivera in a vice. They know he tried to blackmail Colleen, and they know he engineered the other burglaries. Tommy's facing ten, twenty years, maybe more if they can make it look like Tommy did the Farragut job too. But they give him a way out."
"All he has to do is go through with his threat and testify against Colleen—with Sherenian's expert coaching. Instead of going to jail, Tommy winds up a rich man and gets revenge on Colleen for dumping him. And the chances of his coming back on Sherenian are slim and none. If he messes with them, or messes up somewhere, they can send him away for a long, long time."
"Pretty simple choice for a guy like Tommy," Martha said.
"And that brings us to the big question," I said. "If Tommy was involved in the previous burglaries, was he also involved in the Farragut burglary?"
"He'd been in the Farragut house before," Martha said. "I remember seeing a newspaper photo of a SOHO fund-raiser at the Farragut mansion, and Tommy was standing next to Colleen."
It was the first I'd heard that Tommy had ever been in the Farragut house, but it fit perfectly.
"That means if Tommy did engineer the Farragut burglary as well, he's a shoo-in for murder one for masterminding a robbery that resulted in murder."
"Technically he would be Farragut's murderer," Henry concluded.
"Now all we have to do is find the burglar," Martha said, "which is where we came in. And hope that somebody hasn't sent them to Uruguay or the bottom of the Bay, which seems to be a favorite dumping spot. Then we have to connect them to Rivera."
"And we also have to hope that either Calvin or Hayden Phillips didn't get Ghiberti's plates and destroy them," Arnie added. "They might be our only physical evidence."
We also had to hope that I was right. We were doing a lot of hoping.
Martha asked for the game plan. The clock was running, and everyone was on edge.
"An all-out assault on Tommy's involvement in the burglaries. I want each of you to take a file and we'll go out and visit the Schmidbaums, Castellanos and Rosenzweigs. Ask them if there's anything that they can add, any piece of information that's come to them weeks or months after the burglary. Were any items taken that weren't discovered missing until later, no matter how insignificant. A scarf, a handkerchief, anything."
"Tommy's old rap sheet is easy to get, I can have Lloyd Dinkman run a copy in no time. What I'm interested in is what he's done since he supposedly went straight. I want to know every move he's made. I want phone records, credit card receipts, names of old girlfriends, old running buddies. We're going to start twenty-four-hour surveillance on Bearden and Rivera. Bearden's the one doing the dirty work; Calvin's smart enough to let his flunky handle all that. Colleen will tell me about all of Sherenian and Bearden's activities, but she doesn't know about any of this yet. I haven't told her that Sherenian wants her convicted."
"That's dangerous," Martha said. "Not to mention unethical."
"I know. But right now I think we have a slight edge on them. I don't think Lynne McBain told them about me, or they would have made some move already. My guess is she just told Smidge she heard her voice on a newscast or an interview and recognized it. If I tell Colleen, she might accidentally tip them off that we're on to them."
"There's one other thing I want to do. Rivera and Colleen really were in a hotel room in Sausalito on his birthday two years ago, which he claims is when she offered him money to murder her husband. It was the next day that Colleen's husband confronted her about her affair with Tommy. Farragut said he had solid proof, proof that would stand up in court."
"Probably an audio or video recording," said Martha.
"Right, and I think Hayden Phillips made it and gave the tape to Sherenian so William could use it against Colleen in the divorce proceedings. If we can get that tape from Sherenian, we can use
it to prove Colleen never asked to have her husband killed, and that Rivera lied on the witness stand. That and the photos of Calvin and Bearden group-groping the prosecution's star witness would trigger a mistrial and maybe even get Sherenian and Bearden disbarred and sent to jail."
"That might not save her from a retrial," Arnie said, "and that also won't get you Farragut's diaries. The longer those diaries are out of our hands, the greater the chance of someone else getting to them and destroying them."
"That's why we have to nail Rivera and find the burglar," I said. "After we break in to Calvin's place and find a tape of Tommy and Colleen in the hotel."
"That's the riskiest stunt of all," Martha said. "If we get popped for breaking and entering we'll be in jail waiting for her when she arrives. There won't be anybody to help her."
I just waited, looking at their three gloomy faces. Martha agreed first, then Henry and Arnie.
"One last thing just occurred to me," I said. "What if Tommy Rivera does screw up somewhere? How's he going to explain his sudden, newfound wealth? As much as they have on him, he's still a loose cannon, and this group obviously hates loose cannons."
"They're probably phoning his measurements in to the undertaker right now," said Arnie.
"And we need him alive, at least until the trial's over," I added. "That means that while we're running surveillance on Tommy, we might have to stop somebody from killing him."
Chapter 20
The simplest approach to detective work is to look for flaws. A weakness in the story, a mistake, a tiny lie, an alibi that doesn't coincide perfectly, a parking ticket near a crime scene, a telltale credit card receipt.
I have another rule that has always served me well: when you want something on somebody, forget about his friends. Known accomplices, past partners in crime, all they will do is lie to you and tip off the suspect that you're on his tail. Give me an enemy every time.
Someone who's been double-crossed, cheated, unpaid. A betrayed partner, a jilted lover, a spiteful neighbor, a vindictive wife. When I have to get something on a suspect, I search the court records for delinquent alimony and child support payments, uncollected debts, assault charges, lawsuits.
I spent the morning studying old files at the Clarion building, compliments of Zane Neidlinger, going over newspaper clippings and microfilm files of everything they had ever written on Tommy Rivera.
That's when I found her, kind of cursing myself for not thinking of it before.
Angela Estrella.
Angela was born in the Mission District, daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, a high school cheerleader and debate champion, now a community activist. She graduated from S.F. State six years after I did and quickly became the head of Social Services in the city.
She had been a director of Para Los Niños, an organization that helps poor and homeless children, plus a dozen other groups. She was appointed to the board of directors of Tommy's SOHO project when they started getting massive grants from the city and state. According to one of the articles, she resigned from the SOHO Board over "unspecified differences" with Rivera.
Angela had been a supervisor at Social Services during Tommy's three-year tenure as a case worker.
From various other articles, I learned that eleven years earlier Angela had married a prominent expatriate Chilean architect, a former Allende supporter and Pinochet hater named Francisco Mena. From the circulation department of the Clarion, I got their address in the Mission District.
Five minutes on the Norton and I was ringing Angela's doorbell. Her house was a beautiful restored Queen Anne Victorian overlooking Dolores Park.
Angela answered the door wearing an apron and wiping flour from her hands.
"I'm Francis Fagen," I said, holding up my ID. "I'm a private investigator. I'm working on the Farragut murder case. Can I ask you a few questions?"
"Is this about Tommy Rivera?"
I nodded. She opened the door and invited me in.
We trudged up the endless steps that sadistic architects designed into half the houses in San Francisco, arriving at a rambling, sun-filled upper floor filled with paintings and sculpture by Mexican and South American artists.
Angela led me into an enormous parlor with a view of the park, where she called for someone named Anna to come and remove the two children who'd come and clung to her, staring at the leather-jacketed stranger. Anna appeared, heavyset and Nordic, and took the children, promising to return with tea.
"Are you the same Fagen that got kicked off the police force over the DiMarco murder?" she asked. "You had some kind of nickname . . ."
"Peekaboo," I said.
"What can I do for you, Francis?"
"How'd you know I came about Tommy Rivera?"
She went and pulled shut the heavy sliding door that closed off the parlor.
"I've been waiting a long time for somebody to nail that sleaze-ball piece of human garbage. I read in the paper this morning about his testimony against Colleen Farragut."
I waited patiently while she looked down for a moment, gathered her thoughts.
"You don't know the kind of stuff Tommy has done to people, Francis. You don't know," she said.
"Tell me."
"He's lying. Colleen Farragut never asked him to have her husband killed, I don't believe it. I knew her when she sponsored SOHO, when I was on the board of directors. She was kind, she cared about people. She had a real heart."
"How do you know he's lying? How can you tell for sure?"
She shook her head slowly, almost embarrassed.
"You worked with Tommy at the Department of Social Services. Were you his Supervisor?" I asked.
"Yes. I hired Tommy Rivera. I brought him into the department. I was his supervisor for three years, until he got SOHO off the ground and started working there full time."
"What did he do, Angela? What can you tell me about him?" I was starting to sound a little desperate, and I didn't like it.
"He used people. He left the Welfare Department because he was forced out, they were going to fire him. He is an evil man, he speaks for no one, not poor people, not Hispanics, no one but himself."
"Why was he going to be fired?"
"He used to make deals with the welfare recipients. Women he'd caught committing fraud, women who didn't quite qualify or who wanted more money than they were entitled to."
Anna knocked, and we waited patiently as she brought the tea and then departed.
"Be specific, Angela. I need to know."
"He used these women. He found the best-looking ones, gave them extra money, gave them payments for five kids when they had only one or two."
"And for this, they gave him sexual favors?"
"Yes. And kickbacks. Sometimes even more than that."
"What do you mean, more? What else did they give him?"
"They did things for him . . ." She was clearly having a rough time just talking about it. "They sold dope in their neighborhoods. I know because I heard from a very reliable person."
I looked at her and waited.
"Three different women on welfare had jobs working as maids in big houses. Tommy knew about it and let them keep their jobs, provided . . ." She had to struggle for a few seconds to keep her composure.
"Tommy made them scout out burglary victims for him. They wrote down things about the places they worked, made a list of all the valuables. Then he'd send people there when he knew the owners were not home.
"I got an anonymous call one day, a woman told me Tommy was doing this to her sister. She said her sister knew of two other women to whom Tommy had done the same thing."
"Rivera was the sister's case worker?"
"Yes."
"Do you know the names of any of the women?"
She shook her head.
I asked a few more questions without learning much, and when she showed me out I promised to tell no one of our conversation if she would do the same. She agreed.
Back on the street, I unchained the Norton
from a no-parking sign and kicked it to life. I hadn't asked why she never reported Tommy when she was his supervisor, or why she accepted a seat on the SOHO board knowing what she did about Rivera. From the newspaper articles I'd studied, I knew that Angela had married Francisco Mena exactly two months after Tommy Rivera left the Welfare Department. That was eleven years ago.
On the mantel in Angela's living room were photographs of Francisco and their four children. The oldest, a girl of about ten, bore a striking resemblance to Tommy Rivera.
Maybe Francisco Mena had never noticed.
Chapter 21
It was midafternoon when I finished lunch at Franchino's on Columbus. I had lingered over the osso buco, thinking it all over.
One of the burglars at the Schmidbaum house had definitely been a woman, not a very bright one, who left lipstick and teeth marks on a piece of cheese. She'd probably been the one who'd stolen Mrs. Schmidbaum's favorite hat.
Angela said Rivera had used women from his case load to commit burglaries for him. A real stand-up guy, the more you knew about him. Was it possible he still used his connections from his days as a case worker?
A wave of anxiety went through me. I just wanted to fold, to find a hole to crawl into and pretend none of this had ever happened. If I had guessed wrong, if any of the story I had pieced together proved untrue, it was Colleen who would pay the most terrible price.
I fought off the panic. I made myself believe I was right. Tommy had once been an ace burglar himself. He had switched to using poor, desperate women to do his bidding. My longest hunch to date was that he was still using women he'd met during his days as a caseworker.
Originally, the trial was expected to last a month. But with a Friday session, and short appearances by Tommy and several of the witnesses, the pace was accelerating.
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