Silent Joe

by T. Jefferson Parker

  I hoped Melissa, my friend in the crime lab, might be able to get DNA for me. Human saliva is rich in it.

  Someone had been using the place to crash. Recently. The food and drinks weren't a week old yet. The cartoon channel didn't seem like pick for Crazy Alex Blazak. He'd probably graduated to Power Rangers. And it was hard to picture him working on a grape sucker.

  Late that night Bo Warren knocked on my front door. When I opened it he smiled at me. His eyes looked merry in the porch light.

  "Joe, I just had to tell you, nobody on Earth can do what you did to me today and not pay a high price for it."

  "I guess that's fair warning, sir."

  "Could be any place, any time."

  "I heard Marchant got pretty close to Savannah down in Rancho Santa Fe."

  Warren shook his head. "Morons. So help us out, Joe. Do what your father did. Find her. The offer stands, the million if you do."

  "You guys spend millions like I spend quarters."

  "That's called noblesse oblige, you dumb ape. And don't forget trickle-down."

  "What do you care if the Bureau finds her first?"

  "Jack doesn't want her shot, for one thing. Alex either. Doesn't want a bunch of press in on it. Just a nice, quiet reunion is what that million is all about."

  I thought about Crazy Alex and his calm, polite sister. "I'll try to find her, regardless of the money."

  He looked at me hard, then. "Why bother?"

  "I liked her."

  He shook his head slightly, like I was crazy. "You're like that Guatemalan the Newport cops iced."

  "In what way?"

  "Trying to get inside. Trying to get where the big people are. Using crude tools and blunt instruments."

  "I think you've got that wrong."

  "We'll see."

  He made a gun out of his finger and shot me in the gut, then in the head.

  "Night, Joe. Don't let the bedbugs bite."

  That night I dreamed poppies because I always dream poppies, a bright orange blanket of them that stretches up a mountain, but when I move closer I see they are not flowers but flames, and they are not on a mountain but on a human cheek magnified greatly, and that cheek is mine. Then I dream the pain.

  I dreamed thick cables. Black pliant cables dangling all around me, covering me, smothering me. All I can do is try to climb them. I grab. I pull. I gather. Then I dream the pain. And when I wake up I'm clawing the scars on my face, trying to pull them away.

  I dreamed waves eating away beaches, revealing bone. Of rain washing rocks that bleed. Of a desert wind that melts the sand and leaves gristle, gums, teeth. Of thick ivy consuming tree trunks made of skin.

  I don't remember the agony, only that there was awareness of agony. I remember understanding that an overwhelming and decisive event happening to me, that it involved one of the two great presences in my life. I remember sudden darkness and sudden light. I remember, later, the patient pulse of scars taking shape, the endless hours it took them to form. To me, that time was geologic. Surgeons. Grafts. Transplants. Patches. Gauze, mirrors, ointments. Half face, Half horror.

  And after all the time that's gone by, these hard scars are still wired to the past like an alarm, and when I brush them now they ignite a moment twenty-three years ago that was loud, crazy and murderous. It's still happening.

  Oh, and I dreamed the faces of beautiful women.

  I always do.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On Monday the FBI launched its public manhunt for Alex Blazak.

  The story of Alex, the disturbed twenty-one-year-old, hit the papers that morning and TV that evening. Plenty of good photographs, accounts of his violence, many references to the fact that he was a "firearms dealer," which he wasn't, and a "suspected trafficker in illegal weapons," which he was.

  Over the next two days there were two hot sightings of Alex, and the Bureau's Emergency Response Team rolled on both of them. But Marchant couldn't get his men out fast enough either time. It was like Alex had a sixth sense. One sighting was up in the mountain resort of Big Bear. Alex had rented a spacious two-bedroom chalet on the north shore. The second was a hotel up on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood.

  According to the news, the witnesses said that Savannah was with him in both places. I thought of the fresh food in Alex's warehouse, the unopened loaf of bread, the not-quite-yellow bananas and the sell-by dates on the milk and juice. And I had to believe that somehow, Alex had done what I had failed to do that night. He'd found her in the fog and gotten her into his car. After what happened at Lind Street, she was probably glad to see him. A kidnapping brother must have been an improvement over five murderers in overcoats. I tacked a map to my kitchen wall and drew red circles around the three sightings. Now he had her again and he was moving often and quickly, one step ahead of the snapping jaws of the Bureau. I wondered when, in all running, he'd try to ransom her again. Why didn't he just use his tennis bag million to clear out, dump his sister and head to Mexico?

  I called Marchant twice a day but he didn't call back. I figured maybe he was catching his breath.

  A friend of Will's at Anaheim Medical Center gave me twice-daily updates on the condition of murder suspect Ike Cao: unchanged, extremely critical condition, unconscious in the ICU, round-the-clock security by the sheriff department.

  Dr. Norman Zussman called me twice more, and ordered me to return his call as soon as possible to set up a counseling appointment for the Deputy-Involved Shooting.

  Reluctantly, I did.

  June Dauer of KFOC called to confirm our interview. It fell on the day of Will's funeral, but I confirmed it anyway, because her voice was so; hopeful and pleasant to listen to.

  We buried Will on the first day of summer. It was Thursday, eight days after his death.

  The Reverend Daniel Alter presided over a very crowded memorial service that was held in his enormous tinted-glass house of worship Chapel of Light. But the mourners numbered over two thousand and whenall the seats were filled the overflow crowd was herded into an auditorium with huge closed-circuit monitors on all four walls.

  My brothers, true blood sons of Will and Mary Ann, sat on either of me at the memorial service.

  Will, Jr. wept. He's ten years older than me, married with three children, a patent attorney, lives up in Seattle. Glenn, two years younger Will, Jr., is married also, with young twins. They live in San Jose, where Glenn heads a company that runs fiber optic cable into new subdivision. He stared straight ahead like he was seeing nothing, or maybe everything. Mary Ann sat nearest the aisle, shrouded in black. I could hear quiet sobs throughout the memorial service, and for most of it her eyes were focused on the floor.

  The casket was mahogany and silver. It was donated by friends of Will's who owned the cemetery where he would be buried. Mary Ann decided to leave it open for viewing after talking to us three boys and the Reverend Alter. Glenn said to leave it closed because of the pain that Will's face would cause his loved ones. Ditto Daniel. Will, Jr. voted open, for the same reason. I voted open, too, because I wanted to see him again.

  The dais was covered with white roses, thousands of them, draping from stand to floor, pouring like a liquid over the purple carpet and proscenium steps. They were donated by one of Will's friends, who owned a chain of flower stores.

  Will's burial suit was given by a friend with his own line of Italian designed clothing. His fingers were manicured by Mary Ann's cosmetologist, no charge, of course.

  With some fanfare, the Grove Club Foundation created a memorial fund that would benefit the new Hillview Home for Children. That morning the Orange County Journal reported that close to two million dollars had been donated in just three days—with a million of it coming from Jack and Lorna Blazak.

  The Reverend Alter was very moving that day. He's one of the most emotional evangelists I've ever heard, but his performances are never loud or rhetorical or histrionic. They're solid and deeply felt. Or at least they seem that way. He may be a fine actor, but when his vo
ice caught and his throat tightened and the tears ran off his face like rain, well, it got to me.

  . and God's merciful hands have received you back, Will Trona, you, who offered helping hands to so many. . . .I stared at my own hands, fingers intertwined, the pulse in my right wrist steady and blue. For whatever reasons, I kept an eye on the thick yellow electrical cord trailed by the video cam dedicated to stage left. Funny how your mind will focus on the irrelevant when something important is taking place. But the yellow cord made me think of the two cars trapping us in the alley. Almost everything I saw made me think of those cars and the men inside them. I wondered if Rick Birch had requested log of calls made to and from Will's cell phone that night.

  ... so as we mourn this death let us not forget to celebrate this life

  Big jerks of Will, Jr.'s chest. He's always been an emotional guy. Once he shot a sparrow with a BB gun, cried hard. I told him not to shoot things for fun. He took it to heart. Because of my face, people like to think I’ve got insight, moral weight. As if the uglier you are on the outside the more beautiful you are inside. Nice little formula, but not true. The only thing I had over Junior was I knew what pain felt like, and I'd figured the sparrow did, too.

  I set my hand on my brother's knee. I gave him one of my monogrammed handkerchiefs Will taught me to always carry for the ladies. Before leaving home, I put four of them into various pockets of my black funeral jacket. I'd already given one to Mom. Two down.

  …. and let rapture of God's glory be felt in the rapture our sadness. . . .

  I turned around just once to look at the crowd, a sea of grieving faces stretching all the way back to the blue glass walls that rose in dizzying bevels into the pale June sky.

  Just when I thought the service was over, the upper glass walls of the Chapel of Light receded into the lower sections and a great warm huff air swept in. A collective murmur. Then thousands of white doves rose from behind the Reverend Alter. He spread his arms skyward and it looked like they were flying out his fingers. Their wings beat loud and climbed in the hushed chapel and you could hear the panic beginning them. But then they realized that the sky was all around them on four sides and they lifted away into the afternoon. They were pen-raised birds never flown before. White feathers dusted us as we made our way out of the chapel for the cemetery. I thought of Savannah Blazak, going over wall and into the cool suburban night.

  Maybe half the people wanted to see Will's body one last time. It took an hour. I was the second one, right after Glenn. I had seen cadavers in the lab and accident fatalities still bleeding. I'd seen Luke Smith and Ming Nixon. But this was my first viewing. Nothing had prepared me for the shock of seeing death on the face of someone I loved. I looked at him and I realized what a great power, what a great presence, what a great life had ended. I kissed my fingertips and ran them over his hard cheek and walked outside.

  Tears swelled from my heart, and a cold passion for revenge rose up with them. I pulled my hat down low.

  What I remember about the burial was the bright green expanse of grass on the hillsides and the long black motorcade inching to a stop around the hole in the ground. The hole was covered by a black tarp, betrayed only by the mounds of orange earth around the cover.

  I stood there and watched the cars arrive, and I wondered how those shooters had known where Will and I would be.

  Had they followed us, or had they been told where we were going? Did the people who sent us to that address also commit the murder? Was Will sent there to save Savannah Blazak, or only to die?

  I hoped those killers had been waiting for us. Because, if they'd been waiting for us, I'd simply missed them. Maybe someday I could forgive myself for being surprised. But if they'd followed us, I'd failed Will in an even more flagrant way.

  Mouth shut, eyes open.

  My mind wandered, but it kept coming back to those cars, those men, that night. I knew I should feel pity for the men I'd shot. And guilt for taking their lives. I tried to allow myself to feel those things but I didn't. There's a cold place inside me where I put the bad things. It's like a freezer but the door is heavier. And once I put them in there, it's hard to get them out. I told myself that they were bad men who would have murdered me next, absolutely. This justified what I'd done, and the freezer door was closed now. But I couldn't close the door on all of the ifs: if I'd seen them earlier, if I'd thought faster, if I'd listened to my unsettled nerves, if the fog hadn't rolled in.

  I watched from a distance as the mourners filed past my family. I'd said all I could say to anyone. So I faded back under a dense elm alone, eyes open and mouth shut, hat brim down for privacy and shade.

  I knew most of the people there. I saw Will's fellow supervisors; mayors and assemblypersons; judges; sheriff's department brass; the governor of California; two Congressional Representatives. Some were friends some were enemies, but they all came.

  The developers were all there. Land is still the most valuable commodity, the biggest money-maker in Orange County. Will had had disagreements with every one of them. And in his own strange way, friends with many of them, too. I recognized the foot soldiers—the well-spoken guys and gals who make multimillions for their companies every year---The Irvine Company, Philip Morris, Rancho Santa Margarita Comp Their bosses were there, too, the CEOs and CFOs, chairmen of boards--the kinds of guys who come and go in their own jets and helicopters.

  Then the entrepreneurs, the billionaires who did it on their own: technology whizzes, young darlings of the NASDAQ, inventors, marketers of all kinds. Jack Blazak, who'd made his first fortune with yellow lawn sprinklers that wouldn't clog, was there, of course. He looked even worse than the last time I'd seen him, as if every day his daughter was gone another cubic foot of life out of him.

  Next on the power scale were the bureaucrats. Will's cohorts, the pit bulls of government—humble and unassuming one minute, territorial unmoving the next. They work for Districts, Agencies, Bureaus, Offices, Administrations, Commissions, Services, Sections, Departments, Boards, Authorities. They've got no money compared to developers or entrepreneurs, but they have power over them. That power can be friendly helpful and profitable for everyone at times. It can make or break. The cost is negotiable.

  Will was a bureaucrat. I may be one someday, too. I have probably the best training a bureaucrat can have: my first five institutional years. Then there were his friends and family and neighbors and acquaintances; his doctor, his barber, his tennis pro. Even our old trash collector was there, a young father of three way back when I was a kid, now middle-aged man with gray hair, a stiff body and lines of sadness around his eyes. Will used to yak it up with him on Wednesdays at 6:30 A.M., trash day on our street, before he dropped me off at the bus stop, then went on to the sheriff's department headquarters for work.

  I watched them and wondered at how many lives a life is made up of. I felt proud and empty at the same time. I felt invaded and defeated.

  I felt betrayed when Jennifer Avila, chokingly beautiful in black, spoke to my mother.

  Betrayed by Will, and somehow, by Jennifer, too.

  My heart pounded hard, then hardly at all. The things I looked at were a little blurred—my eyes weren't working right. I felt a thick hot sweat on my back. How was I going to talk to a radio host in just a few short hours? I actually shuddered, hot as I was in my black suit.

  Old Carl Rupaski, head of the Orange County Transportation Authority—and an admitted political enemy of my father's—lumbered over to my tree and shook my hand. His eyes were moist. I could smell tobacco and alcohol on him. "I want to talk to you sometime, Joe. Maybe when we're both not in shock. How about lunch next week, Monday, say?"

  "Yes, sir. That would be fine."

  He clamped a heavy hand onto my arm. "This is really the shits, kid. Really the shits."

  Jaime Medina joined me in the shade after that. He looked more forlorn and wronged than usual, more stooped and hapless. We talked about Will for a while, and Jaime told me how much Will ha
d done for the HACF, how things were going to be tough now, with their champion in government gone, and a criminal investigation pending.

  "I never told those guys they could vote before they were citizens," he said. "It's a misunderstanding. That's all. What's a few dozen votes, anyway?"

  I shrugged. I couldn't get worked up about HACF problems right then.

  "You want to help us?"

  "How, sir?"

  "I got someone I want you to talk to. It's a big scandal. You can make some waves, become famous."

  "I don't want to be famous."

  "You already are. This would make you the new champion of justice. Look, talk to this boy. He's the brother of Miguel Domingo, the one cops murdered. He's got a story to tell. You see, Miguel Domingo had reason for trying to get into that gated place in Newport Beach. It's got to do with the woman."

  "What woman?"

  "Luria Bias, killed outside her apartment. Interested?"

  "No, thank you. I have a lot to do right now."

  "Such as what, Joe?"

  "Look around you, sir."

  Jaime did. He sighed. "I'm going to call you. We'll talk at a better time."

  A few minutes later, Rick Birch ambled up. He stood beside me, nather than in front of me, which I thought was interesting. He looked out a crowd with me. I liked the fact that he didn't say anything for a while. When he did talk, it wasn't about anything I could have anticipated.

  "My brother was murdered when I was ten," he said. "He was eight years older than me—tough kid, tough neighborhood up in Oakland. Found him in a gutter behind a bar. No arrests. Made me want to become a cop, catch creeps, put them in jail."

  "That's a good reason, sir."

  "You holding up?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Look, I've got John Gaylen coming in for a little informal talk tomorrow. I'd like you there, on the other side of the glass."