Silent Joe

Chapter Nineteen

It was still early when I got home so I put in one of my favorite romantic comedies. It was the first time since Will had died that I’d done anything so unproductive as watch a movie. I was ashamed of myself at first, but by the time boy met girl I was thinking of June and I’d forgotten my shame.

Then the phone rang.

I answered it and heard the sound of a television announcer and voices. I hit the mute on my movie.

“Hello?”

“I need Joe Trona.” A young man’s voice, clear and agitated.

“This is Joe.”

“This is Alex Blazak. I want you to tell my father I’ll sell it to him for two million dollars. And Savannah finally gets to go home.”

“Sell what?”

“He’ll know. You won’t. If we have a deal, be standing alone on the southwest corner of Balboa Boulevard and Pavilion on the peninsula at five o’clock tomorrow afternoon. If I like what I see, I’ll be in touch.”

“I can tell you right now you don’t have a deal.”

“I’ll kill her. Everything you believe is wrong. I will kill her.”

With the remote, I turned off the VCR and hit the cable button, then the mute again.

“I want Savannah,” I said.

“Everyone does. For what?”

“Child Protective Services.”

There was a long pause, then. The background voices were loud and echoed, like in a big bar. I could hear the excited voice of the TV announcer, but couldn’t make out his words. A big cheer went up. I started switching channels.

“Mr. Blazak,” I said. “Tonight I’ll pitch the deal like you want it. If your father agrees, I’ll be standing on the southwest corner of Balboa and Pavilion at five tomorrow. But when it’s time to do the deal, Savannah comes with me.”

“Then to CPS?”

“Correct.”

“Savannah says I can trust you.”

“I do what I say I’ll do.”

Another big cheer, then a big chorus of wooahhh, like somebody had missed a shot or hit one out. I punched in Channel 5 just in time to see the Angels’ first baseman running around the bases, enjoying his home-run jog.

“Perfect,” said Alex Blazak.

He slammed the phone in my ear.

My car idled in the darkness as I waited for Jack Blazak to buzz me through the second gate. I checked my watch: almost eleven. When the gate rolled open I followed the circular drive toward the huge Greco-Roman house. I saw him coming down the broad stairway from the front door, then along the reflecting pool. I pulled up by the pool and Blazak got in.

“Head back out,” he said. “I think Marchant has this entire property wired for sound.”

Blazak said nothing as we drove through the dark hills. We passed the first gate, wound down toward Coast Highway and went through the second. The guard stared at us.

“What do you know about Miguel Domingo?” I asked.

“The cops killed him right there. Machete, screwdriver.”

“His sister was the one who got run over the week before.”

Blazak looked at me, then back out the window. He said nothing as I waited to turn north on PCH.

“I didn’t read that.”

“The papers covered it, back page.”

“We did not employ her, either. Lorna told me about your call.”

We rode for a minute.

“I wish it wasn’t that way,” said Blazak.

“What way, sir?”

“People coming two thousand miles to work for seven bucks an hour. But you know, every once in a while, they get ahead, make it. Odds are better than the lottery. Better than the goddamned jungles where they came from. If I were one of them, I’d come here, too.”

I made the turn and headed north. Off to the left the black ocean and black sky disappeared into a bank of pale fog. The fog just stopped a few hundred yards offshore, like smoke trapped behind a pane of glass.

“Your son called me about an hour ago. He’ll sell it to you, and hand over Savannah. Two million.”

Blazak was looking at me. “Sell me what?”

“You’ll know, I won’t — Alex.”

He looked out the window as I headed up the hill toward Corona del Mar.

“And he’s using you now instead of your father.”

“Apparently, sir.”

“And you’ll get Marchant into it.”

“I don’t know, yet. It depends what you do.”

“That thing with Will — it didn’t have to happen. Alex is insane, Trona. And he’s playing with lives.”

“What’s Alex selling you, along with your daughter?”

“A videotape.”

I waited.

“Me, Lorna, another party. Female. I’ll tell you something, Trona — I’m not ashamed of what I do. It’s just kicks to me and nobody gets hurt. Consenting adults. But I’ve got Lorna to protect. I don’t want that thing out in the general population, if you know what I mean.”

“I wouldn’t either, sir. Did you make it?”

“Yeah. I disguised it in the cover of one of Savannah’s old cartoon videos. Something she’d outgrown. Stashed way in the back of my movie collection, which is substantial and somewhat cluttered. But Savannah is into everything. Plays this game called Savannah the Spy — always digging around in my stuff, Lorna’s stuff, anybody’s. Apparently, it was in her backpack when she was taken. They must have tried to watch it. Alex realized he could add that to the ransom demand. A two-for-one offer. He can keep the damned tape, for all I care. My daughter, he cannot keep.”

“How long will it take you to get up the money?”

“I’ll have it at ten tomorrow morning. Trona, I got ripped off once doing this. I love my girl, so I’m willing to risk getting ripped off again. I’m not willing to expose her to gunplay and the kind of bullshit my son thinks is so amusing. If I don’t want to risk the FBI shooting them both dead, I’ve got no choice but to trust you. So I’m going to trust you. But you should know not to fuck with me. I’m just a businessman, but when I need to have ass kicked, I find a way to kick it.”

I looked out at the juice stand and the thick trees bunched in a gully between the highway and the ocean.

“Sir, you’re not hugely impressive to me. Your threats are really just bad manners.”

He chuckled. “You’re a weird guy, Trona. Not hugely impressive to you. I like that. And I like what you did to Bo in my living room.”

I made a U-turn at Poppy and headed back toward Blazak’s home.

“I’m demanding that you leave Marchant out of this,” he said. “That’s my condition.”

I thought about that. “They’re good at this kind of thing.”

“I remember how good they were at Waco and Ruby Ridge.”

“They got Elian back to his father.”

“Elian wasn’t being held by someone who set a homeless guy on fire then pissed on him to put it out. Or dropped his own cat into a bucket of acid. Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

“I’m over it, Mr. Blazak. Even if my face isn’t.”

His wave got us through the first gate.

“No Marchant. I’ll have the money at ten,” he said. “When we need to talk, call Lorna at the house. She’ll get me and I’ll call you back. Marchant’s got tape recorders on the phones.”

We wound up into the dark hills toward the second gate.

“My father was shot by a gangster named John Gaylen. We’re closing in on him.”

“Congratulations.”

“The night before he killed Will, he met with Bo Warren.”

In the periphery of my sight I saw Blazak studying me. He said nothing for a long minute. I listened to the grumble of the Mustang’s V-8 as we cantered up the road.

“I’ve got no idea what that sonofabitch Bo would be talking to this gangster for. He’s Dan Alter’s man, not mine.”

“He looked like he was yours in your house that day.”

“On loan. He’s all bluff and no results. He failed to secure my daughter. He succeeded in costing me one million dollars in cash.”

“We think Gaylen was hired to hit Will.”

“And you think Warren had something to do with it?”

“I think Warren is a gopher, sir. That’s what you called him. But he wasn’t alone with Gaylen. He had someone in the car with him. I want to know who.”

Blazak shook his head. “How would I know that? You guys. You cops. You FBI men. You head-of-security types. People like you and Will and Rick Birch and Steve Marchant. You see plots inside plots. You have the nerve to polygraph me and my wife, then act secretive about the results. All this conjecture you come up with, all the coincidence and speculation. And all I want is my daughter back. One small eleven-year-old girl is all I want. You figure out Bo Warren and the killer. I can’t. I don’t even care. I’m a businessman. I get things done. You guys are a totally different breed.”

“Yes, sir. We clean up messes for people like you.”

He shook his head and flicked his hand, like he was waving a bee off a picnic plate. “Maybe you can ask Alex when you drop off two million more of my dollars and pick up Savannah. I’ve never even heard of this Gaylen character until now.”

“Everything’s going to go right with Savannah.”

“Stop at the gate, Joe. Look, I’ll do anything to get my daughter back safely. If you’re the one I need to work with, then I’ll work with you. I’ll consider you a business partner until you show me I should consider you something else.”

He slammed the door of my Mustang and went to the gate pad to punch in his code.

When I was back on Coast Highway I called Steve Marchant’s pager, hung up and waited.

He called back in less than one minute. I told him that Alex Blazak had asked me to broker a deal for his sister and a dirty movie. Cost to Jack, two million in cash. Jack had agreed.

“Finally,” he said. “Now we’ve got some room to move. You and I are going to kick some ass and get that girl back. I’ll call Sheriff Vale, see how he wants to work this.”