Silent Joe

Chapter Sixteen

Bamboo 33 nightclub was on Bolsa, in the heart of Little Saigon. I parked far back in the lot, shut off the engine of Will’s car. It was eleven o’clock the next night and the lot was half full. The night was clear: no fog, no clouds. Just a warm breeze from the desert to the east, and a sky of scattered stars.

Birch and Ouderkirk arrived a few minutes later and I signaled them with a flash of the headlights.

We leaned against Birch’s Crown Victoria. I could smell the food from the noodle shops mixed with the faint scent of the desert on the breeze. The lights of Little Saigon were bright along Bolsa and the traffic was light but fast.

“I don’t think you’ll get a welcome mat,” said Rick. “If you find Bernadette, show her the picture of her and Gaylen. Tell her it’s pretty easy to drop that picture into Sammy’s cell. See if she’ll come outside where we can all have a little talk.”

I’d wondered about getting her outside. “That might look bad — her leaving with me. Sammy’s going to hear about it.”

Birch handed me a copy of the photo, which I folded and slid into my coat pocket. “If she’ll give you what we need, take it and leave. If you’re not back here in one hour, we’re coming in for a look around.”

I stood in a short line at the entrance, showed my badge. Twenty dollars admission. The woman in the ticket booth didn’t look me in the face, but she waved away the money and pointed to the door.

The security man was huge and looked Hawaiian. His uniform was pressed and his baton had dents in it. He looked at the badge and frowned at me. “No trouble. We don’t have trouble here.”

“That’s an excellent record,” I said.

“Who you looking for?”

“Bernadette.”

“Upstairs table.”

“I appreciate it.”

He eyed me again and swung the door. The room was large and open. The dance floor was a crowded swirl of bodies and light. A glitter ball hung over the dancers and strobes chopped them into herky-jerky motion. There were café tables around the floor. Lots of people at the tables. All Vietnamese that I could see — some young, some old. Mostly suits and dresses, cigarette smoke heavy in the air.

The band was on the stage, playing the Stones’ “Beast of Burden.” The singer was a woman, slender and very pretty, dressed in black pants and vest that were either leather or vinyl. The bar was to my right. There were stairs on either side of the room, leading to tables that had a view of the dance floor.

A lot of eyes on me. I moved to the stairway and climbed up. Eyes still on me. A waiter in a black suit clattered down and past me, balancing his drink tray and watching his feet.

At the landing I stopped and looked down the row of tables along the balcony. Bernadette Lee sat alone where the balcony made its turn. She looked at me, then back down to the dance floor.

When the song ended I walked over.

“I’m Joe Trona.”

“I know. Sammy’s friend.”

“I just guard him. Can I sit down?”

She nodded and I sat. Bernadette Lee was tremendously beautiful. Her eyes were dark and they sparkled. High, arched brows. Strong cheekbones, small nose, graceful lines tapering to full, red lips. Her skin was very pale and she was dressed in a black dress with lace across the top of her chest and down her arms. Her hair was black and cut at her shoulders, with long bangs. Slender white fingers, long red nails. She tapped one of them on a cell phone on the table in front of her.

“Did Sammy send you?” Her voice was soft and a little hoarse.

“He’s worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Because this new guy next to him keeps telling him you’re lonely.”

“Giant Mike?”

“Giant Mike. Look, Miss Lee, I want to talk to you about somebody. It isn’t Sammy.”

“Then who?”

I leaned toward her, but not real close. Her perfume was soft, with the smell of cinnamon in it.

“John Gaylen.”

She looked at me and all the beauty seemed to drain from her face. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Miss Lee, I have a picture in my pocket of you getting into his car.”

She looked away, down at the dancers, dialing her cell phone without looking at it. I couldn’t hear what she said. She punched off, stood and took a purse off the chair beside her.

“Come with me.”

Two young Vietnamese men appeared at the table. Slender, dark suits. One led and one followed as we walked single file down the stairs. We snaked behind the dance floor to the other side of the room. Another young man waited by a door and let us in. The door closed behind us. The hallway was dimly lit and I could hear the band through the walls. Bernadette’s shoes clicked on the old linoleum floor as she led us down the hall and through another door, into a small room. There was a conference table in the middle, six chairs, a refrigerator. Overhead fluorescent lighting that flickered and hummed. Posters of Vietnamese singers on the walls. A small window, blinds closed.

Bernadette slung her purse onto the beat-up conference table. “Let me see it,” she said. She lit a cigarette and sat.

I unfolded the photocopy and set it in front of her. She barely glanced at it, then looked up at me.

“So Giant Mike was right. I was lonely.”

“What about Wednesday night, June the thirteenth? Were you with him?”

She tapped her fingernails on the table, quick and light. She sighed, got into her purse and came out with a small date book. A metal fastener separated the past from the present. She undid it and flipped back a few pages. Then she locked the fastener back on and dropped the book back into her purse.

“No.”

“Where was he, Miss Lee?”

“I have no idea. I only saw him a few times.”

“Enough times to check your date book, though.”

Her beautiful eyes looked cold and a very small sneer came to her red lips. “Enough for that. What could you possibly care?”

“He killed my father.”

She shrugged, eyes wandering the room. “I think people get what they deserve.”

“Did Dennis Franklin?”

“Sammy didn’t kill him. The cops manufactured evidence and the DA is happy to use it.”

“There were two eyewitnesses, Miss Lee. And a bullet in Franklin’s head that came from Sammy’s gun.”

“Evidence can be planted. You know that.” She took a dainty puff on the cigarette then broke the ash off in an ashtray and rolled the edges out. The smoke rose toward the buzzing lights. “So, are you going to rat me to Sammy?”

“I don’t know. Would you deserve that, Miss Lee?”

She looked at me again. “You’re one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen in my life. You think your manners are good but they’re false.”

“I’ve worked hard on them,” I said.

“Go ahead and show Sammy the picture. And live with your conscience after that. But I wasn’t with John Gaylen that night. I was here at the club, alone. The usual.”

“Where was Gaylen?”

She glared at me.

“If you knew where Gaylen was, it could help, Miss Lee.”

“Fuck!” She swept the ashtray and her purse to the floor, standing up so quick her chair flipped over. “Fuck you. You know what Sammy calls you in his letters? He calls you Godzilla!”

I actually did know that, from reading his mail, and from eavesdropping on his friends in the plumbing tunnel of Mod F.

“It’s really just scar tissue,” I said. “Where was John Gaylen that night, Miss Lee?”

“Fuck you.”

“That has happened.”

“What, is that a come-on? You offering me a deal now?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then I’ll offer you one. First you promise that picture doesn’t get to Sammy. Then I tell what Gaylen said about that night.”

“I promise the picture doesn’t get to Sammy.”

“Give it to me.”

“It’s just a copy. It wouldn’t do you any good at all.”

She flipped the chair upright with her foot and caught the back with one hand, then collected her purse off the floor.

I set the picture on the table.

“John said he had a job to do that night. Probably wouldn’t be around for a few days after that. The night before, he was in here, drinking hard. Not saying much. The three guys who got killed and the one still in the hospital — they were with him.”

“When did you see him next?”

“A few days later. In here. He tried to get me to go out with him but I said no. I shouldn’t have gone out with him in the first place. The Cobra Kings don’t play by the rules.”

“Sammy’s rules?”

“Any rules I’ve ever known.”

“What did Gaylen say about how the job went?”

“He said it went fine. He was ready to party, have some fun.”

I heard the band start into another song. The fluorescent lights flickered and trembled.

“Miss Lee, Gaylen wasted two of his own men to keep them quiet. Is that what you mean about the rules?”

She looked at me, then up at the lights. “Maybe.”

“Miss Lee, was John Gaylen in contact with Alex Blazak?”

Another casual glare. “Not that I know. I don’t know anyone who liked to be in contact with that boy. Crazy and dangerous. Not businesslike.”

I said nothing for a long moment.

“I’ve got something for you,” she said. “I can give it to you. But you’ve got to get a rat trap for Sammy. He hates rats. They’re the only thing in the world that he’s scared of.”

“They won’t let him have a spring trap. Custodial is going to put some bait in the heater vents. I told him that.”

“Then how about more phone time?”

“I just got him more phone time.”

“It isn’t enough.”

I thought about it for a moment. Getting more phone time wasn’t a problem. “I can get him another five minutes a day.”

She huffed quietly, blew some more smoke. “Five minutes? I thought you were an important man.”

I waited.

“The night before the murders I saw John meet some people in the parking lot here. Two people. One driving, one in the other seat. The passenger rolled the window down and they talked. Five minutes, maybe more. He told me later it was about the job.”

“Can you ID them?”

“No.”

“Describe the car.”

“A red-and-white Corvette. Old. Good paint, very shiny.”

BoWar.

Bernadette watched me like a poker player. “Then the Corvette laid down some rubber and smoked out of here.”

Warren, I thought, but who was with him?

“I’m going to educate you, Mr. Trona,” said Bernadette Lee. “You don’t even have to give Sammy anything for this. You listen to me and you’ll learn something. It’s just like in ancient Rome, or China or anywhere. If a man like your father gets killed, his friends do it.”

“His friends didn’t kill him, Miss Lee. His enemies did.”

“Friends? Enemies? Call them what you want. They’re the same. People who knew him. People who worked with him. That’s who did it. Not John Gaylen. You Americans are naive. You always look at everything but the obvious.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Here’s another obvious thing I should probably be thinking about. My father disrespected you and Sammy one night, at the grand opening of this nightclub. He mad-dogged Sammy and Sammy lost face. That’s a license to kill, if you’re a gangster.”

She shook her head. “Sammy outgrew that kind of thinking years ago.”

“Did you?”

“The disrespect wasn’t worth our energy. Our code applies to the people we take seriously. Your father wasn’t that. He was only a politician.”

What I said next surprised me. It came out faster than I could analyze it. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

“Cao woke up this afternoon,” I said. “Only for a few minutes, but the doctor told me that usually means they’re going to make it.”

Bernadette Lee studied me. Her eyes were placid and unblinking.

“What did he say?”

“I haven’t been told. But two homicide investigators will be there the next time he comes to. They’ll have their tape recorders on and their pencils ready.”

She lit another cigarette. “Liar.”

I smiled. I never smile because it’s an ugly thing, but I thought it would communicate all the satisfaction I would feel if Ike Cao really had come out of his coma.

She pouted at the ceiling; out came the smoke. Her eyes never left my face. I saw mostly the whites, like a shark’s.

Back out in the parking lot I told Birch and Ouderkirk what she’d said.

“Gaylen had something going on Wednesday, the thirteenth,” I said. “And he wasn’t with Bernadette Lee.”

Birch scribbled something into his notepad, then looked at me over the tops of his glasses. “All four of those men were with him the night before?”

“That’s what she said.”

I told them about Gaylen’s furtive meeting with two men in an old, shiny red-and-white Corvette. I even told them who it probably belonged to.

Birch looked at me. His expression reminded me of Bernadette’s— controlled but hungry. “Blazak asked Reverend Daniel to help find his daughter, right?”

I nodded. “And Reverend Daniel used his security man, Warren, to handle the ransom money and the exchange. Until Will came on stage.”

Birch said nothing for a moment. He scribbled something else into his notepad. “Then was Gaylen passing information to Warren, or the other way around?”

“I’ve been thinking about that ever since she told me about the Corvette.”

We stood for a minute, leaning against the Crown Vic, not speaking. The cars sped in and out of the Bamboo 33 lot, many of them the low-slung Hondas with the noisy headers.

I watched them but didn’t really see them. I was haunted by the image of Warren’s red-and-white Corvette parked right here in this lot, and John Gaylen leaning toward the passenger’s window.

Who was the Mystery Passenger in that seat?

Why were Warren and Mystery Passenger talking to Gaylen?

One of the little Hondas screamed across the asphalt, fishtailing, raising acrid white smoke from its tires, music pounding from the trunk woofers.

It brought me back to the present.

“Sir, I told Ms. Lee that Ike Cao came out of his coma this afternoon, briefly, and talked. I said I hadn’t been told what he said. That a doctor told me that kind of thing usually means a patient is going to pull out of it. That two homicide investigators would be there the next time Cao said anything. I said it all before I had time to think about going to prison for falsifying evidence.”

Birch and Ouderkirk both stared at me. Then they started laughing. I wasn’t sure how to take it. But they didn’t stop. I turned away, not sure what to do.

“Joe’s a cop,” said Birch. “Look at that, a twenty-four-year-old new-jack and already a cop.”

Ouderkirk was shaking his head. “I’ll get a twenty-four-seven on Gaylen, Rick.”

“Well done, Harmon. Well done, Trona.”

“What did Lee look like when you told her that?” Ouderkirk asked.

“Like a white shark, sir.”

Laughter again.

“Man, I love this job,” said Ouderkirk. “Joe, when you’re old enough to work homicide, I’ll take you as a partner.”

“I’d be honored.”

Bernadette Lee strode quickly across the lot, a remote pad in her hand. I heard an alarm chirp and saw a light go on.

“Sirs?” I nodded at her.

“Let her get in,” said Birch.

As soon as she did, we slipped into the Ford. I sat in the back and looked between Birch and Ouderkirk as Lee’s black Jaguar slid onto Bolsa. Rick followed without the lights until he hit the boulevard.

“I predict seven-forty-one Washington Street in Garden Grove,” said Ouderkirk. “That’s Gaylen’s place.”

But she didn’t stop in Garden Grove. She sped out Bolsa until it changed into First Street in Santa Ana. Then a left on Raitt Street, and into the barrio. She made a quick right turn and I knew she’d see us if Rick followed, but he played it cool, passing straight through the intersection, then looping back fast, but not fast enough to screech the tires. We saw the Jag pulling into a driveway, through a wrought-iron gate opened by two Latinos in baggy clothes. Two pit bulls sniffed the car tires as it came to a stop inside.

Birch turned the other way, took another turn before coming back around. He parked on the opposite side of the house, four doors down.

“Let’s magnify this situation,” said Ouderkirk, pulling a small pair of binoculars from the glove box. “Ah. Two unidentified males and the Dragon Lady, going through the front door. Dogs are Staffordshire terriers, aka pit bulls. One brindle, one white. There’s no street number on the house. Looks like two rooms lit inside. Iron gate, iron windows, iron door. Fancy filigrees on it, like it’s trying to be decorative. Flowerpots on the porch, no flowers. Trees and hedges trimmed back — nowhere for a shooter to lie in wait. Floodlights in the side yard and over the driveway, hence my detailed reporting. Uh, floodlights out now — they’re in lockdown mode.”

“Come on,” said Birch. “Can’t you read the names on the dog tags?”

“One says ‘Gang,’ the other says ‘Banger.’ ”

“Descriptive,” said Birch.

We sat and waited. We had to roll down the windows to keep the car from fogging up. Even with that, Birch kept wiping the windshield with his hand.

The house to the right had an address stenciled on the curb. Using that, I knew the two possibilities for this house, and I recognized one of them from the phone company call list for Will’s cell phone.

“It’s Pearlita’s house,” I said quietly.

Birch turned to me and I saw the uncertainty register, then resolve. “The call sheet,” he whispered. “You’ve got a good memory, Joe.”

“It’s eidetic.”

“That’s a nice gift,” he said. “So, now we’ve got a woman with a Cobra King boyfriend, and urgent business with the Raitt Street Boys. This is interesting. Makes you wonder what would bring two gangs like that together.”

“Money, money and money,” said Ouderkirk.

Half an hour later the outside lights came on and Bernadette stepped onto the porch. The two baggy-clothed males were with her, and another, much wider guy. Maybe two hundred pounds, I guessed. He wore loose chinos and what looked like a Pendleton shirt, untucked, shiny black boots. His hair was cut short, no cap. Sunglasses, even in the dark. He walked Bernadette Lee to her car. His walk was loose, ambling. I could see that they were talking, but all I could hear on the damp summer air was the distant murmur. The pit bulls came to the gate and sniffed the air.

“No Pearlita,” whispered Ouderkirk. “She’s not home, or she stayed inside.”

“That’s her,” I whispered back. “The guy is Pearlita. She dresses like a man. I’ve seen pictures of her face and that’s her face.”

“No way.”

“Way, sir.”

“If I was that ugly I’d shoot people, too.”

“The others might be brothers,” said Birch. “She’s got two more. Twenty-one and twenty-five, something like that. Allegedly, no gang affiliation.”

“Obviously not,” said Ouderkirk.

Ahead of us, headlights swung onto the street and came our way. We melted into the vinyl, below the window line.

“I feel like a five-year-old when I do this,” Ouderkirk whispered. “It’s fun.”

“You should try sleighriding in the jail, sir.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

I listened to the car approach, saw the headlights wash through the Ford and continue down Raitt Street.

A moment later we all sat back up. Lee’s Jaguar was backing out, the gate almost open. The fat gangster stood with her hands on her hips, watching. The two others turned and went inside.

Bernadette swung her car onto the street in a tight reverse turn, then put it into forward gear and sped off. Pearlita watched her. She shook a smoke from a pack in her flannel shirt, used a lighter on it. A moment later the floodlights went off but I could still see her standing in front of the porch, with the cherry of the cigarette slowly growing larger and smaller, larger and smaller. Then the cherry dropped in a little shower of sparks. The door opened and Pearlita went in, the dogs barging ahead of her.

Five minutes later we pulled away from the curb and U-turned, heading out the opposite direction of Lee.

Gaylen and Pearlita, I thought. The Cobra Kings and the Raitt Street Boys. “Since when do street gangs care who runs the county government?”

“They don’t,” said Birch. “The question isn’t who was helping Gaylen, but who hired him.”

On the way back to Bamboo 33, all I could think about was Bo Warren and his Mystery Passenger, huddling with John Gaylen in the parking lot.

I told Ouderkirk about sleighriding — rolling down the guard walk in Mod F of Men’s Central, lying on the mechanics’ sled, then sneaking a look at what the inmates were doing. He said he wanted to try it and I told him to talk to Sergeant Delano.

Half an hour later I parked three houses down from Gaylen’s home. Same faux Swiss window trim, same non-Swiss palms. Same lights inside and on the porch. I half expected to see Bernadette Lee’s Jaguar there, but it wasn’t. I half believed that Lee would have already called him to say that Cao was getting strong enough to wake up and point a finger at him, that Gaylen would be packing up his Mercedes for a long trip.

Neither seemed to be true.

So I leaned my head back and watched.

Forty minutes later the front door opened. Gaylen came out, walked halfway across the yard and stood under one of the palm trees. He was wearing jeans, no shirt, no shoes. He looked like a guy who ran a lot and lifted weights — ropey muscles but not big ones.

He got something from his pocket and looked down. Both elbows came up but I couldn’t see what he had in his hands. Something small and white fluttered to the ground.

Then he looked up at the sky and lit a cigar, rotating the end in the flame of a lighter. He blew a cloud of smoke against the tree trunk.

A girl walked out of the house. Fourteen, sixteen, eighteen — hard to tell. Short, very slender, straight black hair. Black robe cinched tight, bare feet. She came up behind him and slipped her arms around his back. Her black hair fell down across her face. She reached around Gaylen with one hand, took the cigar, drew on it, and reached around him again to put it back.

She took his free hand and pulled him toward the door but he swatted her away. I could hear her quiet laughter.

A few minutes later they went inside. I waited another hour, then turned off the interior lights so they’d stay off when the door was opened. I got out and nudged the door shut with my hip.

I kept to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, then jogged a straight line across to Gaylen’s yard. I found the white thing on the grass under the palm tree and cupped it up like you would a butterfly. I hustled back to the sidewalk with long light steps.

Once I got on the freeway I hit the reading light and pulled the white object from my coat pocket.

Pay dirt, just what I’d expected: a Davidoff cigar band cut neatly in two, curved into its original shape.

I wondered what Gaylen had talked to Alex Blazak about in the gun warehouse that night. Wondered what took a half a cigar apiece for them to decide.

You with Alex?

You’re with Alex. Laughter. Little shit too scared to show his face, ah?