Disturbed Ground (6 page)

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."