Silent Joe

Chapter Fourteen

“Del Pritchard? My name is Joe Trona.”

“I know who you are.”

“Can we talk a minute?”

“I got to punch in. Then I got a job to do.”

He walked past me and into the Transportation Authority maintenance yard headquarters. It was Monday morning. It had taken me an hour to get from my house in Orange to the TA yard in Irvine — a distance of about fifteen miles. My ankle was stiff from working the Mustang’s clutch.

I followed Pritchard, stood behind him while he slipped a timecard into an electronic clock, then into a slotted holder on the wall.

“It might be better if we found a quiet place,” I said.

“Let me get some coffee.”

Pritchard fished out some change and fed it into a machine in the corner. The coffee steamed up in front of his face as he took a sip. He was thick, baby-faced, blue-eyed. My age, maybe younger. His fingers were stained black from his work. His OCTA shirt was clean and his boots looked new.

“What’s this about? You’re a deputy, right?”

“Yes. Maybe we could go outside.”

He looked at me hard, then led the way into the maintenance yard. The big OCTA buses were grouped along one side. The white TA Enforcement Impalas that Will detested so much were parked on another. There were shuttle vans the county used for short bus routes; emergency SUVs; a fleet of sheriff’s department cruisers; another fleet of unmarked county sedans; a dozen new Kawasaki 1200s motorcycles.

There were three big, high bays. I watched an electric door roll up. More vehicles in there. The mechanics were already throwing open engine compartments and raising hoods.

“You do it all,” I said.

“Yep. All the county stuff — sheriff’s, TA, all the buses and emergency vehicles. Anything that rolls. We don’t do the fire trucks or the Jeeps the lifeguards use. Separate garage and mechanics for those. Sanitation does its own thing, too.”

“How about the supervisors’ lease cars?”

“Sure. There’s only, what, seven of them?”

“That’s right. My dad drove a black BMW. One of the big seven series.”

“I remember it. Sorry, what happened and all.”

“Thank you.”

Del Pritchard sipped his coffee again, looked out toward the OCTA buses. “So, what do you want?”

“I want to know who told you to put the homing transmitter on my father’s car. Undercarriage, right side, down between the chassis and the body molding. It has your fingerprints on it.”

His face went red. “You need to talk to my supervisor. I just do what they tell me, you know?”

“We can leave him out of this if you tell me who gave the order.”

He glanced out to the yard, then back at me. “I don’t know anything about a transmitter. Nothing at all. Everything here is by the rules.”

“Then take me to your boss.”

“Come on.”

The maintenance yard supervisor was Frank Beals. Pritchard said they had a problem and Beals excused him, then took me into his office and shut the door. Beals hadn’t heard anything about a transmitter. He called the TA maintenance department manager, Soessner, who lumbered into the office about thirty seconds later. He didn’t know what I was talking about, either, said they fix cars, not bug them. He told me to come with him.

Soessner took me to the office of the Transportation Authority technical director, Adamson.

Adamson, a suit-and-tie man, heard me out.

“Is this part of an official investigation?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought homicide detail would do that.”

“I’m working with Birch.”

“Rick’s a good guy.”

I waited.

Adamson made a call on his cell phone. “Carl, we got a deputy here, Joe Trona, asking about a transmitter on a supervisor’s car. He says the transmitter had one of our guys’ prints on it. Pritchard.”

Adamson listened and nodded, then punched off.

“Rupaski says you’re having lunch today at the Grove. He told me to tell you he’d clear it all up then.”

I got to the Grove a few minutes early. The guard at the first gate took my name and plate numbers, the name of the member I was going to meet, slipped a card under the left windshield wiper, then let me in.

The road wound back into the hills. They were tan by now, wouldn’t green up until the first rain — probably November, maybe later. The air was warm and still. Through the dense trees I could see purple bougainvillea shivering against the stucco of the hacienda-style buildings. I parked in the shade.

An off-duty deputy working the entrance recognized me, made the call inside, then opened the door. I took off my hat and stepped inside to the smell of food, the hushed clink of dishes, soft music and low voices.

The maitre d’ smiled and crossed my name off a list. “Mr. Rupaski’s booth is this way, Mr. Trona.”

We passed through the main dining room and took the stairs up to the lounge. I looked at the burnished redwood floor, the rough-hewn wooden chandeliers hung by chain from the high ceiling, the billiards table where I’d listened in on Will and the Reverend Daniel. I recognized Rupaski’s driver — Travis — sitting alone at the bar, chewing something. He nodded at me.

Rupaski’s booth was in a far corner. He stood and shook my hand, motioned me to sit. The maitre d’ started to draw the privacy curtain but Rupaski stopped him.

“No need for that, Erik. We’ve got nothing to hide in this booth. For once.”

He laughed and Erik laughed. “But bring me a Partagas Churchill and a Glenfiddich in a water glass. Joe, smokes or drinks?”

“Lemonade, please.”

Rupaski was a big man, seventy maybe, with a high forehead, bald on top with long gray hair combed back on the sides. The hair made a little ducktail flip in the back. His eyes were dark brown and set deep in his face. Thick brows. Black suit and a white shirt, no tie. The jacket was too small for his barrel chest and he looked uncomfortable in it. His hands were thick and rough, his fingers blunt. He was a Chicagoan hired away from that city ten years ago. He grew up poor there, was known to be street tough and able to get his way in a backroom deal. A good boss and a crafty bureaucrat.

“Don’t sweat the bug in the Beemer,” he said. “Will asked me to put one on so I put one on. Simple as that.”

“Sir, it doesn’t sound that simple to me.”

He raised a bushy eyebrow, smiled. His teeth were big and crowded. “I’ll tell you exactly what he told me. He said Mary Ann was keeping some strange dates, late at night. Usually she drove her own car. Sometimes she drove his. He wanted to follow her at a discreet distance. ‘Discreet distance.’ Those were his words. So I had Pritchard do Will’s car one morning out in the maintenance yard. And I gave Will a transmitter to put on Mary Ann’s. Something with adhesive he could just stick right on.”

It almost played. I knew Mary Ann liked to drive the sleek new lease car. A couple of times, out on our night business, we’d use Mary Ann’s Jeep because she wanted the sedan. And she’d told me she liked to drive sometimes, late, going nowhere fast. But Will had never said anything about her going out. If he was worried, why didn’t he tell me? And I’d never seen a radio receiver in Will’s possession — not in the car, not in his briefcase, nowhere. Most of all, Will and Rupaski were enemies. Why trust an enemy with something like that? Why not have your son, driver, bodyguard and gopher do the job?

“I understand now,” I said.

“Good. Hey, smokes and spirits.”

A waiter in a tuxedo set down a big glass ashtray with a cutter, wooden matches and a thick cigar in it. Then a simple water glass with golden liquid in the bottom fourth. And my lemonade.

“The special today is poached Chilean sea bass in a cilantro sauce, served with endive salad and garlic-mushroom couscous.”

“Steak, mashed potatoes and a salad with Thousand Island for me,” said Rupaski. “That would be a T-bone, rare. Get the same for Joe, here. He’s a growing boy.”

“May I cut and light your cigar, sir?”

“Yeah.”

“Slot cut or straight, sir?”

“Goddamned straight cut, Kenny. We go through this every time.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

When Kenny was done cutting the cigar, Rupaski stuck it in his mouth and aimed it up while the waiter torched it with a surprisingly powerful butane lighter. The smoke came out thick and powerful, rising in a lazy cloud toward the ceiling. Kenny bowed and turned away. Rupaski held out the cigar.

“Some guys say they draw better without the band.” His voice was thick, like there was a blanket over him. “I say that’s bullshit.”

He inhaled again, blew another cloud. “Best thing about a private club is you can do what you want. Here in California, Joe, we’ve got teenagers carrying guns to school, but you can’t smoke a cigar in a bar. Something’s wrong when individual rights get smaller and the crimes get bigger.”

We watched an elegantly dressed young woman descend the staircase from the third-level conference rooms. Alone, walking briskly, a small purse in one hand, which she held slightly out, for balance, as she came down the steps. Red hair past her shoulders, green satiny dress. I heard her shoes on the wood.

“Yes, sir, individual rights. You met Will and Dana Millbrae for lunch here the day before he died. Can you tell me what you talked about?”

He took his gaze off the woman and put it on me. He chuckled. He sipped his Scotch and took another puff of his cigar. “You’re direct. I like that. Sure, we talked about the county buying the toll roads and building the new airport. Will was against both of them, as I’m sure you know. We were just trying to make him see the light.”

“What light was that, sir?”

“Just logic and good common sense. You see, the toll roads can turn a profit if the TA can run them. A big profit, over the years. It’s a sound investment for the county, if you take the long view. But your father didn’t want to see that. He wanted the private consortium to keep taking a shellacking on the things. I’ll tell you something — private roads won’t work in the West. Too much land to cover. The sooner the county can get control of them, the better. I think Will knew that. But it pissed him off to spend public money to bail out private enterprise. Same thing with the new airport. We’ll need one someday, and that day is coming. We were trying to get Will to come over, throw his vote and his influence behind us. It’s a free election in November, but we needed Will to get his first district going our way.”

Rupaski coughed, looked at the cigar, set it in the ashtray. “I’m sorry, Joe. I’m goddamned sorry about what happened. Will and I agreed on nothing. But I loved him. He was a good man and a good enemy and I respected him. How’s Mary Ann holding up?”

“Holding up well, sir, considering.”

He nodded. “Where was she going, so late at night, not telling her own husband?”

“She liked to drive.”

Rupaski shook his head and grunted. Then he took another drink, swirled the liquid, set down the glass. “I didn’t invite you here to talk about politics. Or your family. I invited you here to offer you a job.”

“I’ve got one, sir.”

“Hear me out. Double your salary, which will bring you in at about sixty-five a year to start. Mostly nights, so your days can be free to finish up college, sleep late, bang some women, whatever you want. You give up your Sheriff’s badge and get a Transportation Authority shield. That puts you with me and I’m a good man to work for. It gets you a new county drive-home car — those big Impalas with the V-8s, side spotlights and short-wave radios. Gets you a concealed carry permit for your weapon. It gives you power within TA jurisdiction, which is big and getting bigger — the Transit Department, the Highway and Roads Administration, the Airport Authority. Lots to do. It puts you in line for some fantastic benefits, better than sheriff’s by far.”

“What would I do?”

“You’d be doing for me what you did for Will. Joe, I worry. People are crazy these days. Look what happened to Will. A man of his quality and his standing. You took out two of those bastards before they got to him. I want somebody who can do that. I want somebody just a little bit scary. Son, that’s you.”

I looked at him but said nothing. Everyone wants someone scary. To do what they are afraid of, go to the dark places, get their hands dirty. Will trained me to do that. I understood it while he was making me and I understand it now.

“My scariness didn’t save Will’s life, sir.”

He stopped his glass in front of his mouth. “You don’t blame yourself for that, do you?”

“I just look at the facts as they are.”

“You’re valuable, Joe. Everybody wishes they had someone like you. You’ve got manners and brains and guts. You’ve got style — like what you did with those guys shadowing Chrissa Sands. I really liked that. You got some celebrity. You got a face that everybody knows. You’ve got the respect of people for handling your problems in a good way, for going on with your life when some people would just stay home in the dark all day. You learned a lot from Will, and he was great. I know you know things. But let me show you what I know. Joe, with your years as a deputy, and a few more with the TA, you can go anywhere you want in the county. You’d have depth and contacts and an inside view of how things work. I can see you as a supervisor someday. Or head of the TA, if you liked it. Or even the State Assembly or the House. You’ve got star quality, Joe. I can use you and I can help you.”

“What about Travis?”

“He’d be happy about it if I told him to be.”

“Well, thank you, sir. But no. I like being a deputy.”

“You like jail?”

“I’m on the right side of the bars.”

Rupaski smiled and drank again. The waiter brought the lunches. “Think about it, Joe. Just tell me you’ll think about it.”

“All right. I will. Sir, why do you have Hodge and Chapman shadowing Chrissa Sands?”

“On the off chance that she’ll lead us to Savannah Blazak.”

“But they were following her way back on Wednesday morning, the day Will died. Blazak didn’t go public with news of the kidnapping until Thursday evening.”

Rupaski nodded. “Right, but he went private with it. Straight to me. We’re friends, Joe. We talk. I knew his son was crazy — last year the dumb kid ran one of Jack’s Jaguars into the Windy Ridge toll plaza, took out a wall and trashed the Jag. He was drunk and high, and when my men dragged him out he tried to pull a gun on them. Luckily, they had the presence of mind to kick the shit out of him. Anyway, I offered to help find Savannah. I think Savannah Blazak is one of the sweetest kids I’ve ever met. Love her. So we shadowed the girlfriend. We’re still shadowing the girlfriend. A few years ago, Jack Blazak helped persuade the county to establish the Transportation Authority. He helped me get the top spot. He’s a friend and friends help each other. Same way I’d use the power of the TA to help you, if you were one of us.”

“You ought to tell your men to be more polite to her.”

“Thanks for bringing that to my attention, Joe. And to theirs.” Under the thick brows. Rupaski’s eyes glittered merrily. “Joe, I’m going to make you work for me, whether you want to or not.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. I guess I’ll have to come up with a better offer. How about that car of Will’s? Two-year lease, isn’t it? I can arrange for you to keep it, then buy it dirt cheap when the lease runs out. Consider it a signing bonus. Yours for the asking. And I’ll still throw in the hot Impala, for work-related stuff.”

I had to smile to myself at the idea. “I’ll think about that.”

The lunch was excellent. The only way it could have been better was if the food wasn’t touching on the plate.

Halfway through lunch, a young guy in a tuxedo ambled down the stairs from the conference level. His hair glistened from a shower, or maybe hair gel. Tall glass of orange juice in one hand, a silver Halliburton case in the other. Lifted his glass to Rupaski when he spotted us.

I drove back down to the toll road, thinking about something Will had said to me a hundred times: Save your friends, spend your enemies.

Enrique Domingo was short and thin, with large clear eyes and black hair. His English was poor, so we spoke Spanish. Will had insisted that I learn Spanish, and I’d done okay with it at school.

The three of us met in Jaime’s HACF office. Jennifer Avila nodded at me in greeting, but said nothing.

Jaime asked Enrique to tell me his story. In a quiet voice, he did.

He explained that he was fourteen years old. Miguel, his brother, had been sixteen when the police shot him. His older sister, Luria Bias, had been eighteen when the Suburban hit her on Pacific Coast Highway.

His sister.

I saw him differently then, knowing that he’d lost not only a brother, but a sister, in just a few short weeks. He seemed to me so completely alone, even sitting there with Jaime and me. Solitude surrounded him, like rings around a planet.

I told him I had no idea that Luria was his sister. Why did she have a different name?

He said that Bias was the name she used to enter and work as a domestic in the Estados Unidos. She’d used it to qualify for a green card, claiming to be the sister of a family friend who was now a citizen.

Enrique’s face colored as he told me this.

“Very common,” said Jaime. “They do what is necessary to get papeles.”

“Why haven’t the police and the newspapers made that connection?” I asked.

Jaime stretched out his arms, hands up. “They know, but they don’t care. The police say an accident is an accident. A coincidence is a coincidence. The English newspapers ran very small items — so small that you yourself did not see them, correct? Our Spanish newspaper has run the story much larger, but who listens? This is why we were hoping for your help.”

I told him I was sorry for what had happened to his brother and sister. He looked away.

Then he told me that for a while things were good for him and Luria and Miguel. They were able to send money home to Guatemala to their parents and young siblings. Enrique and his brother both worked as gardeners, had gotten on with a regular crew that did lawn cleanup and light tree trimming. Eight dollars an hour. Luria worked as a domestic and had twelve regular households she cleaned, two each, six days a week. Sixty-five dollars per house. She was popular because she worked hard, was pleasant and beautiful, but not expensive.

But over the months, Luria had become sullen and withdrawn, not herself. Usually, she was a very happy person. And she began going out at night with girlfriends who had cars, who dressed in expensive American clothes. She wouldn’t come home until late. She drank liquor often and cut back her domestic work, then stopped doing it altogether. But it seemed that the less she worked, the more money she had to spend. She sent less of it home, said Enrique.

He blushed again as he told me that.

One night she had come home with one eye purple and swollen shut. She was very frightened. Miguel was furious.

Two weeks later, she was killed just a block from their apartment in Fullerton.

Enrique looked out the window in Jaime’s office as he told me this. His eyes were set high in his face and shaped like almonds. It looked like he was going somewhere else in his mind, back to a time when his brother and sister were alive, maybe, back to a time when what little he had seemed enough. I wondered if he had a quiet spot to go to, an eagle to perch beside, some view of a better world when he needed it.

He said that Miguel was distraught over Luria’s death. Enrique had seen him, the night after Luria died, trying to disguise a machete in a couple of old jackets. Miguel told Enrique that he was investigating her death. Miguel, he said, was a very hot-blooded man.

He looked at me, and in a quiet voice said that five days after Luria was killed, Miguel was shot by the police.

Enrique told me that Luria was more sympatico with Miguel than with him, because Enrique was much younger and wouldn’t understand adult problems.

I thought about it, but couldn’t see what Miguel had to investigate. Luria’s death was an accident. The woman who hit her stopped and tried to help.

“I thought the same thing you’re thinking, Joe,” said Jaime. “So I called a friend in the coroner’s office. They did an autopsy on Luria, as they do with any violent or questionable death. But they will answer no questions from me. Because I’m not family. I’m not law enforcement. It makes me believe what any sane man would believe — that they are hiding something.”

I weighed the possibilities, but said nothing.

“I suspect foul play, Joe. This is more evidence of foul play against Latinos in America, and nobody is interested. The DA will not return my calls. The police in Newport say that Miguel Domingo brandished weapons and failed to surrender them to officers of the law. The police in Fullerton say that Luria died strictly of an accident. How can I believe this? What if these people were not the Latino poor? What if it had happened to you, Joe? Your father would never have let this be ignored. This is why Will was a great man. Now, what can you do to help us?”

“Let me think about this.”

“Your father would do more than think.”

“He’d think first, Señor Medina. And please don’t tell me what Will would have done. With all respect, señor, I knew him a lot better than you did, no matter what he did for the HACF.”

Jaime stood and exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry, Joe. You’re right. I’m like Miguel. I have hot blood sometimes, when I see injustice. Please, I apologize very sincerely to you.”

“I’ll find out more.”

I told Enrique that I needed the names and addresses of Luria’s twelve employers. He told me he would try, but didn’t think he could do that. Luria didn’t tell him everything, like she told the older Miguel.

Jaime walked me to the door. “I was wrong. You are just like your father, Joe.”

“Thank you, sir. But I know I’m not.”

I drove to the coroner’s facility near headquarters, went in and asked for the director. Brian McCallum had been close to Will — they played tennis together as a doubles team, and liked to hit the club bar after their matches. McCallum was a heavyset man who moved surprisingly well on a tennis court. I remember noticing how strong his wrists were because he moved the racquet so easily. He told me he’d played baseball through college, which explained it.

He took me into his office and nodded along as I told him part of what Enrique Domingo and Jaime Medina had told me.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I was the one who talked to Medina. He’s prying, pushy, acting like he owns the place because tax dollars pay our salaries. He told us that Bias and Domingo were brother and sister, and I passed that along to Newport and Fullerton. He wanted information on Bias, but the policy here is if you’re not family or law enforcement, we’re not going to give you information about autopsies. We just don’t do it.”

“Can you tell me?”

“Are you doing them a favor?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked at me for a moment, then sat back. “Luria Bias was hit from behind by a Chevy Suburban. The time was about three P.M., a Thursday. The impact point was her shoulder blade, and the collision threw her away from the vehicle instead of under it. Death occurred within twenty minutes. Her lungs and heart were heavily contused, her neck was broken in two places. Twelve breaks in eight different bones. The x ray of her left shoulder blade looked like... well, multiple fractures. The internal hemorrhaging was severe, considering her heart only had a few minutes of life left in it. Cause of death was cardio-pulmonary collapse due to impact. If by some miracle she’d lived, she’d have been paralyzed from the neck down.”

I imagined the scene, though I didn’t want to. “How fast was the vehicle going?”

“Accident investigators put it between fifty and sixty. Skid marks after impact. The driver said she never saw the woman. Like she jumped out into the boulevard.”

It was hard to reconcile the newspaper pictures of Luria Bias’s lovely smile with a Suburban going sixty.

“There was more, Joe. First, the woman had been severely beaten before she died. Abdomen, ribs, sternum all bruised. Two ribs cracked. Some bleeding from the liver and pancreas, not associated with the blow from the car.”

“Beaten with what?”

“Hard to say. Fists, probably. Nothing that left any trace evidence on her skin. No chips or shards, nothing.”

“How long before she died?”

“Frank Yee said within twenty-four hours. He’s good at the times. She was pregnant, too. Six weeks. The beating didn’t kill the fetus. The Suburban did.”

Again I imagined Luria Bias meeting her end against a Chevy Suburban doing sixty. “She staggered into the boulevard,” I said. “Not in control of herself, because of the beating?”

McCallum nodded. “Sure. She could easily have been disoriented. She was certainly in some pain. No drugs in her system. No alcohol. She could have thrown herself in front of the car, that’s a possibility. There’s one small point of light we came up with — flesh under the nails. Maybe she got a piece of the beater. She got a piece of somebody. We checked her very closely for marks, thinking reflexive or self-inflicted. It wasn’t herself she clawed. But tell Jaime Medina not to worry — Fullerton PD is up to speed on all this.”

I sat for a moment, remembering Enrique’s tale of his sister’s withdrawal and unhappiness. Young, poor, unmarried, in a foreign country and pregnant.

What would you do?

It made me think of Will, because all sadness made me think of Will. I shook my head, trying to separate the two, trying to give Luria Bias the respect she deserved.

“What are you thinking, Joe?”

“What a waste it all is.”

“Sometimes it seems that way.”

“Thank you. Medina wanted information because he’s tight with Luria’s brother.”

“I figured. I know Jaime does good deeds.”

“They think it’s tied in with the brother getting shot.”

McCallum raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “I don’t see how.”

“Can I look at Miguel Domingo’s personal items, the things he had on him when he died?”

“We’ve got everything but the weapons.”

He led me back to the property room, talked to the sergeant on duty. He made a call. A few minutes later a deputy brought a plastic box to the counter and set it down. McCallum signed for it and we took it back to the lab.

There wasn’t much: a plastic bag with $6.85; a pack of matches from a convenience store; a black plastic comb; an OCTA ticket stub; a wallet and a ballpoint pen. A bloody shirt in white butcher paper. Bloody pants. Another bag with socks and underwear. Two worn athletic shoes with the laces tied loosely together.

“The wallet, may I?”

“Go.”

I opened the bag and took out the wallet. It was old and worn and lopsided the way a wallet can get. One picture of five children and two adults, all standing in front of a wall with climbing roses on it. I recognized a face that looked like Enrique’s, one that looked like Luria’s. No ID. In the billfold was a small, folded piece of newsprint. I unfolded it and saw the Journal article that told of Luria Bias’s accidental death. I folded it and put it back.

“Pants?” I asked.

“They’re a mess.”

I worked the butcher paper loose. Black jeans, bloodstains a deep rust color on the fabric. Nothing in the front pockets. Nothing in the back. I slipped a finger into the watch pocket and felt something slick. I worked my finger around and tried to get it out but it was stuck. I used the tweezers on a pocketknife I carry. The tweezers slipped off twice before the dried blood gave way and a square of paper came out. I unfolded it and flattened it against the table. It looked like part of an envelope — you could see the diagonal seam in the paper. It had been torn into an approximate square, about five inches on each side. One edge was dark and wilted with blood.

The handwriting was cramped and difficult to read.

Señora Catrin — Puerto Nuevo

Señor Mark — Punta Dana

Señora Julia — Laguna

Señora Marcie — Puerto Nuevo

The first three names had lines through them. Senora Marcie of Newport Beach did not. I read them twice.

I remembered Bo Warren’s words from that first time we’d talked in the Blazak living room: Marcie, that’s the head maid here.

“Jesus,” said McCallum. “We missed this. What, just names and cities?”

“Miguel was distraught. He was investigating Luria’s death. Maybe these are contacts, or suspects.”

“Well, the Suburban driver was Gershon — Barbara Gershon. Her name was published. It wasn’t withheld.”

I tried to come up with a logical explanation but I couldn’t. Although I knew there was one phone call I’d have to make, soon.

“Joe, I’ll have to log this in, make sure Newport PD knows about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You okay?” McCallum asked.

“Yes. I’m just tired of bullets and blood and broken bones.”

“Job security,” he said.

I stopped off at the bank to retrieve the contents of the safe-deposit box. Crap. Nothing. Even if that was true, it was time to deal with it. I emptied the box into Will’s briefcase, signed myself out and headed back over to the sheriff’s department shooting facility.

I drew and fired one hundred rounds through my .45s, half right-handed and half left. Fifty with the .32 on my ankle. I shot the Tall One and Whoever Beat Luria and Whoever Kidnapped Savannah, if someone even had. I shot Thor, but took less pleasure in it than usual. Then I shot some monsters and some ghosts and some demons. I shot Satan himself, right in the heart.

I’m good with the left hand but there’s less endurance. The last ten rounds went all over the torso at fifty feet, but at least they hit black. I don’t use wad-cutters for targets. I use the full-grain loads, copper-jacketed bullets, factory brass. I don’t want anything behaving differently if I have to hit something other than paper. The devil, for example.

When I was done I broke down the guns and cleaned them. Light oil. Wonderful smell, Hoppe’s gun oil. My left hand was buzzing and sore, and both of them smelled like gunpowder.

“Luz Escobar,” said Ray Flatley. “Aka Pearlita. That’s her name with the Raitt Street Boys. She carried a pearl-handled derringer in her pocket when she was thirteen. Still does, for all I know.”

“May I see the file?”

He handed it across to me. I looked at her mugs. She was five feet six, 170 pounds. Hair cropped short.

“She dresses like a man,” said Flatley. “We had her for a drive-by in Santa Ana. But our witness was shot dead one night in his living room. Good-bye case against Pearlita. She’s a shot-caller, Joe. Runs the hits and the retaliations. We’ve got our witness against Felix under protective arrest in another state. We keep waiting for Pearlita’s punks to make a move, but so far, he’s still alive.”

I looked at the picture again. Even with the killers and rapists I’d guarded in jail, I’d rarely seen such malice in a person’s face. She didn’t look like a woman. She didn’t look like a man. She looked like something neutral and mean.

“What’s up?” Flatley asked. “What’s your interest in Luz Escobar?”

“Will talked to her on the phone the night he died. I think she wanted to get him to influence Phil Dent.”

Flatley stared at me. “Rick know?”

“I came clean, sir. Everything.”

“Good, Joe. Because Pearlita is bad company. And if Will wasn’t willing to talk to Phil Dent on the behalf of a cold-blooded killer, maybe Pearlita’s famous temper was tripped.”

“Do the Raitt Street Boys and the Cobra Kings mix?”

“They hate each other.”

I spent a few minutes over in Mod F, locked in the plumbing tunnel. I sat behind a cell occupied by a low-level Asian hood named Hai Phan. I leaned back against the dusty wall and looked at the pipes and the ducts. Phan was talking to the guy next to him — another Asian gangster — but they were speaking Vietnamese. I remained still, trying to overhear anything that might relate to Will or Savannah or Alex.

Nothing. I may as well have been listening to cats fighting or trees hissing in the wind.

Then I went to the guard station in the mess hall and watched the inmates filing in for dinner. Dinner starts at four. It looked like it always looked: an institutional dining room, guards with their backs to the walls, a seemingly endless river of orange jumpsuits filing in and out. As usual, the Mexican car was the biggest, then the wood car, the black car, the Asians. Sullen. Quiet. Orderly. Another peaceful day, so far.

I went to my cubby and picked up my mail.

One item only: a postcard from Las Vegas. It showed a big hotel made to resemble an Italian city. The handwriting was neat and large.

It was postmarked three days earlier. I called Steve Marchant.

“I want you to do two things,” he said. “One, put it in a paper bag, touching only the edges. Use tweezers or tongs. Two, bring that bag over here immediately or sooner.”

Marchant took me into the small FBI workroom on the third floor and shut the door. He took the bag and slid out the postcard, using his pen to right it on the light table in front of him. He swung an infrared lamp over the light table and clicked it on.

“IR will illuminate the salts in body oil,” he said. Then, “Look at this.”

He stepped aside and let me look. I could see the nice thumbprint. It looked like it had been rolled in a booking room.

“Wait here.”

He slammed the door behind him on his way out, slammed it when he came back in. He set two fingerprint cards and a folder on the table next to the postcard, then swung out a magnifier that was clamped to the table.

“Yeah, cute. Real cute.”

He whispered something I couldn’t hear, then stepped away. I looked down through the magnifier at the print, then at the thumb cards, then at the print again.

“To the naked eye, that’s Savannah Blazak’s,” said Marchant. “I’ll get Washington to run the points and make it official.”

He clicked off the IR light and pushed the magnifier back against the wall. He turned and looked at me, and I could see the anger in his face.

From the folder he removed a handmade Mother’s Day card and slipped one of the clear plastic holders over the top. It said “Mom, I love you more than all the stars put together. Your Girl, Savannah.” Marchant pushed the postcard up next to the card, then used a pair of tweezers to turn it over.

I looked over his shoulder. The writing was identical.

From the other folder he brought out a sheet of stationery with “Alex Jackson Blazak” embossed at the top, and his home address at the bottom. I read the salutation and first two lines.

“Savannah wrote the postcard,” said Marchant.

“And she’s afraid of what might happen.”

He stood back and looked at me. “I’m going to get this guy, and I’m going to spring his hostage. You can quote me on that.”

I nodded.

“Thanks, Joe. Thanks for the quick heads-up. Excuse me now, I’ve got to get on the line to Las Vegas. Interstate flight with a juvenile, for immoral purposes. We’ve got so much mileage out of the Mann Act you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Do you believe the immoral purposes part?”

Marchant thought a moment. “I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t. Don’t let it leave this room. We polygraphed the mom and dad as soon as they came to us about their daughter. They both passed, but I didn’t like some of what I saw with Jack. That’s all I’m going to say right now.”

“I found out yesterday about the arrangement with Ellen Erskine.”

“Your father kept her in the dark, didn’t even give her Savannah’s name. Erskine wasn’t sure if he was on the level about it or not.”

I waited for more, but Marchant said nothing. Then: “What about you? You still think he was on the level?”

“Yes. I’d bet my life on it.”

On my way home I called Lorna Blazak on my cell phone.

“Mr. Trona, have you heard from her?”

“She sent me a postcard from Las Vegas. I got it just an hour ago. She’s fine, Mrs. Blazak, but she’s afraid.”

“Dear God... and my son?”

“I can only assume he’s there with her.”

“I don’t know what to do. Tell me what I can do.”

“Wait, Mrs. Blazak. Help the Bureau help you.”

Silence.

“Mrs. Blazak, did you employ a woman named Luria Bias as a house-cleaner?”

“No. Why?”

“I have some evidence that she was in contact with Marcie.”

“That may well be, but no one named Luria Bias has worked here in this home. She was the one killed in Fullerton, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“My heart goes out to her and her family, Mr. Trona. But please don’t add her to our list of woes here.”

“I won’t do that, Mrs. Blazak. I was just checking on a lead. It’s important to follow through.”

“I understand.”

“Marcie is your main domestic help, correct?”

“Yes.”

“May I have her last name?”

Silence again. “Diaz. Mr. Trona, bear in mind there must be more than one Marcie doing domestic work in this county.”

“I will. And thank you. Ma’am, we’re doing everything we can to find your daughter and son.”

“It’s absolutely frustrating, Mr. Trona. They’re seen, they disappear. They’re seen again, they disappear again.”

“Please be patient.”

“I need something I can hold on to.”

“Hold on to the knowledge that Savannah is alive. Hold on hard, Mrs. Blazak.”

“Thank you. And thank you for calling.”