Colleen didn't say anything when I entered. She looked demure, drained, but very game, sporting the bravest, most convincing smile. I couldn't keep my arms from going around her. I could feel the shaking ease after a long minute.
"I'm starved, I need some energy." Nothing killed her appetite, a good sign. I called Irene at Cafe Roma and ordered a small feast, uncorked a Montefalco Rosso, poured two glasses.
She got right to it, filling me in on the day's courtroom events. Ian Jeffries had recalled John Naftulin for the second part of his testimony. Naftulin reported that after twenty months of investigation, no sign of the burglars or the allegedly purloined silver plates had been found.
The food arrived, and the mood changed, temporarily.
"You're more than I bargained for," she said out of the clear blue. "Once in a while William would replay the tape of you attacking the verdict in Warren Dillon's trial, and while he was laughing and telling everyone how his biggest enemy had self-destructed, I just stared at the screen, fascinated. That took guts, Frank. Whatever happened to men with guts, with moral courage? I haven't asked much of you, have I? Be my lover, be my friend, save me from the worst fate imaginable. Oh, yeah, and I'll pay you later."
We both grinned.
"We'll make it, won't we, Frank? We're going to be all right, aren't we?"
She came around the table, put her arms around me, and squeezed. I could feel warm tears on my neck. "Thank you, Frank, for being more than I bargained for."
"We'll be all right, Colleen. I promise. We're getting close now. If I have to, I can buy you some time. That's all I can say. We'll make it, I promise you."
She straightened up, sniffled, sat on my lap. "Just do me one favor, please, Frank. Let me help if I can. I can't live in the dark. Not knowing where I stand is turning me into a mental case. Just tell me where we are, who we're looking for. If I have a chance, if I can help myself, keep busy, I can keep my spirits up, and that's getting tougher every day. That's all I ask."
I promised I would let her in. Half promised, actually, knowing that I would keep Calvin's betrayal secret until it was all over.
Colleen and I were clearing the table an hour later, after planning our lives post acquittal, when the bell on the agency door rang. I called Martha to the kitchen, told her to stay with Colleen and take her down through the hidden door and out through the alley if there was any trouble. I took my .45 from the drawer, cocked it, stuck it in my waistband at the small of my back, and went downstairs to the office.
A man who introduced himself as Guillermo Estrella, Angela's brother, stood on the porch with a cardboard box in his arms. He was sweating despite the fact the temperature was in the upper forties.
"Angela asked me to deliver these things," he said, and I reached into the box and pulled out some files as he explained that they were the records of Tommy Rivera's former welfare cases. I took the box from him and he left, relieved.
In the box were over three hundred files of women who had once passed through Tommy Rivera's caseload. There were also confidential interdepartmental memos on Tommy's activities, a number of them charging him with sexual harassment of both coworkers and ADC recipients. A gutsy addition on Angela and Guillermo's part.
I went to my office and set the box down. When Colleen came in, I sat her down and looked for a good place to start. I was careful again to omit any reference to the Calvin hatchet job.
I told her I thought Tommy Rivera was responsible for the break-ins at the Schmidbaum, Castellano, and Rosenzweig houses and that the MO's of the burglars in the three cases made me think there might be a connection to the burglary of her own house.
"You think Tommy burglarized my house? Frank, do you think he shot William? Do you think that's why he's lying on the witness stand?"
"I don't think he shot William," I said, although the thought did not seem so ridiculous for a split second. Could Rivera have killed her husband out of jealousy and hit the daily double when she was charged with his murder? That would be a great incentive to commit perjury.
"I think he might have had something to do with the planning," I said. "I would be very surprised to find out he was actually there."
"But he knows," she said, "Tommy knows who did it."
"That's my theory. Tommy knows who did it because he sent them. Tommy organized the whole thing."
"But that would still make him William's killer. Whether Tommy did it himself or arranged for somebody to do it for him, he's lying to protect himself." She paced anxiously as she spoke.
"Yes. If he planned it and pulled it off; it doesn't matter where he was at the time. It's murder one."
"What are you going to do, Frank? How can you ever prove it?"
"I went to see a woman today . . ." I hesitated, thought it over. This much I had to tell her. "Angela Estrella."
"Angela? I know Angela well, she's a great lady."
"She told me she hired Tommy at the Welfare Department, she was his supervisor. Do you know that he was almost fired because he exploited some of the women he was supposed to be helping? He gave them extra payments for sexual favors, and she says he even recruited some of them to commit burglaries for him?"
"I've never heard that before. What scum, what . . ." She was at a loss for words to describe Tommy.
"Did he ever mention the names of any of the women in his caseload to you? Did he ever receive any phone calls from a woman? Did you ever see his phone book or any notes with women's names and numbers on them?"
She thought for a second. "No, never."
"What else do you know about Tommy?"
"Alice Stein, the journalist who caught William with the call girl? She investigated SOHO when it got pretty big, found out a lot of things but couldn't prove them. She couldn't get access to the files."
"But she was convinced that Tommy was tipping off my husband to which properties south of Market were going to go into foreclosure or were about to be condemned, so that William and his cronies could buy them before the city took them over. Helen Smidge would get them approved for demolition instead of renovation and give Willy and the boys big tax write-offs. He was getting them for nothing, just a promise to 'upgrade' and getting tax credits to do it."
The last bit was a shocker. It raised the distinct possibility that William had known all along that his wife was having an affair with Tommy and William could have set the whole thing up to discredit his wife in case she tried to take the matter to court and be released from her prenuptial agreement.
"I think I know how Tommy committed the burglaries." I started pulling the files from the box. "These are the files of Tommy's welfare clients," I said, putting a few in her arms. "They're in alphabetical order. My theory is he kept his connections with some of these women, women he'd used in the past." Just saying it made it again seem weak, desperate. It was the best shot I had. Where else would Tommy find these women?
"Look at every name in this file, see if any rings a bell, if by chance you remember any of them from the time you spent with Tommy."
Fatigue was playing with my mind. Doubtful I could make it even a few days more without getting caught, I suffered a wave of paranoia that I'd be discovered by Calvin. Every door I knocked on, every question I asked raised the level of fear.
I was starting to get my first touch of a familiar nightmare, a giant fist pounding on the door, a disembodied voice mumbling "The party's over."