Silent Joe

Chapter Eighteen

Later that evening I walked into the house in the Tustin hills just as I had a hundred thousand times. And I felt exactly what I’d felt every one of those hundred thousand times except maybe the first few hundred: safe and part of.

Not much had changed. Same worn Mexican paving tiles, same white walls in the entryway, same black wrought-iron table with a big cobalt-blue vase for flowers, same mirror that threw your reflection back at you as soon as you opened the door. I was eleven before I was tall enough to see my whole face in that mirror, and I remember believing that when I was tall enough to see it, I’d be a man and not a boy. I also remember believing that by the time I was tall enough to see my whole face, they would have found some cure for it. Neither was true, but the belief was.

I hugged my mother, then followed her down the hallway, past the TV room on our left, then around the corner and into the big living room. Same good leather furniture, same smell of fresh-cut flowers and sautéed garlic and the faint, high-pitched scent of the ammonia that Mary Ann used to clean the windows every week. Can’t have a clear view through dirty glass, can you, Joe? I used to help her with that chore, her on the inside and me outside, worrying away the streaks with our squeegees and newspaper. It was one job she didn’t leave to the maid. Between us, we never left a streak.

“Sit, Joe. I’ll make drinks.”

“I’ll help.”

“Get a lemon, will you?”

I went out the slider to the backyard and picked a good lemon. The Tustin hills are lovely in the evening, with the light softening and the trees drooping in the heat and the precise lines and angles of the homes showing through the foliage. I wanted to be ten again, living there with Will and Mary Ann and Junior and Glenn.

Mom made lemonade and vodka, sliced two wheels off the lemon and floated them on top. We took the drinks back outside and sat by the pool. The pool furniture was new, bright blue canvas on white enamel frames. A big umbrella, tilted west. Made you feel like you were in a resort. I took off my hat and set it on the table, hung my coat over the back of the chair.

“What’s wrong, Joe?”

I told her about Luria and Miguel, Ike Cao. I told her about Savannah and Alex. “Sometimes I wish I could just wash it all off.”

“It doesn’t help, working in the jail.”

“No.”

Mom cleared her throat, took a sip of her drink. “Have you ever thought about dropping that line of work? I know you wanted to be a deputy. I know Will pushed you into it, because that’s how he started out. But really, you’ve got a four-year degree and a good head on your shoulders. You’ve got friends in the community, people who know you. You can choose something different if you want.”

“I like it.”

“But what about it do you like?”

It took me a minute. Answers are hard for someone brought up not to question. “The usefulness.”

“Of being a cop?”

I nodded. I looked at the breezy glimmer of the pool and thought about a baptism I had in Los Angeles one hot May morning, a full-immersion one with a band playing Christian rock in the background. One of the best I ever had, even though I think Christian rock is bad for both God and rock and roll. I don’t know why, but that baptism just seemed to wash everything away, and the feeling lasted a full week.

“Well, there’s a million other ways to be useful, Joe. And they don’t leave your heart stained at the end of the day. Will got out just in time. Almost twenty years for him, with the sheriff’s. When he got elected supervisor, it was like a new world for him.”

“He planned it that way.”

“Maybe you should have a plan, too.”

“Carl Rupaski tried to get me over to the Transportation Authority. Big pay raise, different kind of work. He said I could go anywhere from there. It would be more of a white-collar kind of job. I think he changed his mind, though.”

She was quiet for a while. “Rupaski’s unprincipled.”

“He put a homing device on Dad’s car.”

“Why?”

“He says he hoped Will would lead him to Savannah. But I think Rupaski was looking for something to shut Dad up. Something to use against him. Dad had proof of some pretty big money going from the Grove Action Committee to Rupaski to Millbrae. For Millbrae’s vote on the toll road sale to the county. Will was using that proof to buy Millbrae’s vote back to his side.”

“Will was blackmailing them.”

“Yes.”

I told her about the tape I’d just listened to, and the notes Will had written. I even told her how the mini recorder got attached to Dana Millbrae’s desk.

She sighed and set her drink down on the table. “Always collecting on the sly. Always finding things out without anyone knowing. It seemed harmless enough when we were young, because Will was a cop working vice and that’s what vice cops do. And he was always kind. So, I adjusted to it. But the older he got the more.. surreptitious he became. I mean, a week before he died he spent three hundred dollars on some gadget you put on the phone, encrypts your voice or something. He... he actually filmed us in the dining room once, without my knowing. I was furious when he showed it to me. He’d hidden the camera in a special briefcase with a hole for the lens. Another stupid toy he bought, I suppose. It disgusts me that he’d put you up to breaking the law, to advance his career. Bugging a supervisor’s office! I’m getting furious at him again, Joe. I don’t like it. But I can’t help myself.”

“I was always eager.”

“Because he made you that way. And you know something, Joe? I asked him about that. I asked him if he was drawing you into all that night business, all his games. He said he wasn’t. He said you were just driving and watching out for him. What an idiot I was. What a naive fool.”

I was culpable, and I knew it. Over the years I could have told her any time what Will had asked me to do. The bug in the desk was only one of scores of furtive deeds I did for him. There was the summer job he got me with the County Risk Management Department so I could report which deputies and firemen were suspected of scamming the county with phony bad backs. I was eighteen, then. There was the famous defense lawyer’s Cadillac I disabled late one night outside a yacht club in Newport Beach; the college professor accused of statutory rape that I roughed up in a university parking lot, my face hidden inside one of Mary Ann’s cutoff panty hose. There was the house I’d burgled while Will was attending a fund-raiser hosted by the owner of that house. I’d found what Will suspected was there — counterfeit stocks and bonds — and weeks later, they busted the guy. There were the envelopes I’d shuttled from various drops to various destinations. For that matter, there was the standard cheap briefcase that Will had purchased and given me to make “movie-friendly.” I’d managed that with an Xacto knife, jigsaw, some padding, glue and black window screen. For that matter, just keeping my mouth shut about his affairs was furtive ten times over.

But I never told her. I didn’t because I loved Will and I loved her and I loved doing what he needed me to do. Because I loved being useful.

A dog can keep a secret, but a man has to learn when he’s doing more harm than good with it.

“I’ve been a fool, too,” I said.

“Get out from under it, Joe,” she said. “Drop it, lose it, start over. Get a job with the forest service in Utah, do anything but work in that filthy jail with the ghost of your father everywhere you look. You deserve better than that.”

She tipped back her glass and emptied her drink down to the ice. She set the glass on the table with a smack. Then she shook her head.

“Don’t try to be him,” she said.

“I need to finish a couple of things.”

“Don’t risk your life for revenge, Joe. Will won’t profit from that. I won’t. You won’t.”

“It’s not revenge. It’s justice.”

“Don’t let justice be an excuse.”

I stared out at the hills and houses, heard a car winding down the road. I looked at the darkening water of the swimming pool, watched a moth struggle his way out of it and labor through the air. I’d never seen a moth accomplish that before.

“I’ll make dinner,” I said.