Silent Joe

Chapter Twenty

The next morning I was parked outside the Chapel of Light entrance a little after sunrise, waiting for Bo Warren’s red Corvette. The huge parking lot was locked at night, opened by security in the morning. Vandals had broken glass and spray-painted obscenities on the sidewalks a few years back, so Daniel had decided to take preventive measures.

Warren’s car grumbled around the corner and paused at the gate. The gate was iron, with slats running down, big cloudlike curls at the top, and angels playing trumpets above the curls. It was painted white. Warren punched in a code and drove through and I followed him before the gate could roll back.

When he saw me behind him he slammed on his brakes and got out. I met him about halfway between the two cars.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said. “This isn’t just sacred ground, it’s private, too.”

He looked freshly showered: hair damp and neat, clothes crisp, boots almost unbelievably shiny. His sunglasses threw a small rising sun back at me. I thought of another shower I’d taken recently, and had to wrestle my mind off of that memory.

“I want to talk about John Gaylen.”

“Then talk about him, soldier.”

“You met with him in the parking lot of Bamboo 33 the night before he shot Will.”

“Sounds like you should be talking to him, not me.”

“We are.”

“I’ll tell you what I told His Holiness — I didn’t meet with John Anybody. Got no idea where the Bamboo 33 even is. What is it, some gook joint?”

“It’s a Vietnamese nightclub. And we’ve got an eyewitness who puts you there. Car, plates, good description of the driver. You, Mr. Warren.”

He stared at me without moving, face hard, sun bright on his glasses

“Here’s how it could work, Mr. Warren. Rick Birch is lead on Will’s case. If I tell him what I know, he’ll bring you in for questioning. If he brings you in, it’s easy to make sure a reporter or two knows about it. That’s news in this county — Reverend Daniel’s head of security brought in for questioning in the Trona murder case. You being new to the Chapel of Light, it might not be so good for your performance review.”

I could see his jaws moving, the pronounced throb of his carotid. That artery is the first thing a police interrogator looks for when his subject starts talking.

“I thought Daniel was your friend.”

“He is, Mr. Warren, but you’re not.”

“What a pissy way to do business, Joe. Don’t you understand the meaning of loyalty?”

I said nothing.

“Look Joe. Jennifer Avila put me onto a hood named Luz Escobar. Aka Pearlita. Escobar said her friend Gaylen had mentioned Alex Blazak. I thought he might know something about where Alex had gone with Savannah. So I talked to him. He didn’t. Or at least he didn’t tell me. Routine investigation work, Joe. That’s all it was.”

“Who was with you?”

“Pearlita, who do you think?”

“Jack Blazak came to mind.”

Warren smiled and shook his head. Like a boxer who’s been tagged and doesn’t want to show it.

“No. Jack left all the footwork to me. Delegation. That’s what makes him a smart man.”

“Not smart enough to get his daughter back.”

“He’ll get her. Guys like that always get what they want. Everything’s for sale, and they can afford it all.”

“What happened when you tried to pay the ransom to Alex and pick up Savannah? Before Will got involved. What went wrong?”

He shook his head. “Alex didn’t show. So I didn’t leave the money. No Savannah, no money. That was the original deal. That’s where Will blew it. First rule of a kidnapping for ransom — you never pay out before you pick up. I’m surprised an ex-sheriff deputy would have tried something so dumb. Of course, maybe that’s why Alex wanted to use him. The way it played out, Alex got the money and kept the girl.”

“What about the video?”

“Incidental. A bored businessman in a three-way with his own wife and some bimbo. Christ, these rich people are revolting.”

Warren looked over at the chapel. “I’m late for work. And I’m glad to help out, Joe. Now get the fuck off this sacred ground. Your judo might work on me, but you can’t throw God.”

“It surprises me you say that, Mr. Warren. You don’t brim with amazing grace.”

“I brim when the paychecks clear.”

I went back to the car. The exit side of the gate has a sensor so the angels with their trumpets slid open and let me out.

I met June for lunch in a park near her work. I hadn’t seen her since our date, though I’d called her twice and thought about her every few minutes.

I didn’t think she would be as beautiful to me in person again as she was in my memory of that outstanding night. I was wrong about that: when I walked over the grassy rise and saw her standing in the shade of a magnolia tree my heart swelled into my throat and I wondered if I’d be able to say hello.

I managed, barely.

We sat in the shade of the tree and ate cold chicken sandwiches she’d made. She was wearing the bracelet and the ruby earrings. We spread a blanket and lay down and kissed once. It lasted approximately forty-five minutes. My left arm went numb and I finally rolled over onto my back. From there the magnolia tree looked like the quiet spot. I thought how nice it was to be in a quiet spot instead of just imagining one.

“Can I touch your face?”

“Okay.”

She reached across my face and set her hand on my cheek. I could smell her body and her perfume and I tried to concentrate on those things. Her fingers were soft. When a scar like that gets touched it feels like the whole thing is trying to move. Like a plate. She pressed gently on the bottom, down at the jawline, and the top of it — up above my eye — moved against the good flesh around it.

“Does it hurt?”

“Hot and cold, yes. Touch, no.”

“How do you shave?”

“Very extremely carefully.”

She laughed. I smiled.

“You should do that more.”

“I’ve seen it in the mirror. Tough sledding.”

“I disagree. Joe Trona doesn’t feel sorry for himself, does he?”

Her fingers moved up my cheek. Flowers on rock.

“I try not to. I try very hard to realize that Will was right. The first time I met him he said everyone has scars but most people have them on the inside.”

“That’s beautiful and true.”

“He said good things. He did good things.”

“Why did they do that to him?”

“I don’t know.”

We were quiet for a while. The breeze hissed and rattled the big magnolia leaves and the grass was cool on my back through the blanket.

Her fingers came up around my eye. Petals on steel.

“Would you walk through Hillview with me and my mike sometime? Remember for me and talk about it? If Joe Trona going back to visit Hillview isn’t Real Live material, nothing is.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Am I taking advantage?”

“It’s not that. But the wrong people will notice. Your show, when we talked? I was saying things I’ve never said before to anyone. If we do it again, people might know.”

“Are you making your father’s enemies?”

“I think I am.”

“And you think they’d hear us and try to hurt me to hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck ’em, Joe. Let’s do the interview right now.”

I rolled over and looked at her. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand that it doesn’t scare me.”

“It scares me, June. I love you and if anything happened to you I’d lose it.”

Silence, then.

“You’re right. And I was being flip.”

“I am right this time. You’ve got courage to burn. Bum it at the right times.”

One more kiss, ten minutes, more or less. June broke it off.

“It’s showtime,” she whispered. “Time to go yap.”

When I got home I removed the radio transmitter from Will’s car and locked it in one of my floor safes. I was getting that feeling again, of things lining up in bad ways. The same feeling I’d had that night with Will. This time, I tried to listen to it a little more closely.

The feeling got even stronger when I picked up the mail at my cubby later that afternoon. Another postcard — this time from Monterey, California:

I was standing on the corner of Balboa Boulevard and Pavilion at 4:58 P.M.

Alex had picked a good place to lose himself and observe me. The boulevard was crowded with cars going both directions, but the traffic was moving along well. Pavilion was a smaller street that emptied into parking lots on either side of Balboa. There were pedestrians all over — tourists and beachgoers, boogie-boarders and fishermen, students and families and retired couples. There were two bars and two restaurants with easy views of my corner. Even a hotel. Alex Blazak could have been in almost any car or behind almost any window and I couldn’t have seen him. He could have been one of the tourists or the students. He could have glassed me from the foot of the pier or from the beach.

Marchant had planted agents in the area, but he didn’t tell me how many and he didn’t tell me where.

I headed for my car, feeling seen.

I drove back up Balboa Boulevard and called Marchant, told him Alex was a no-show.

“Of course he’s a no-show,” said Steve. “He’s just getting you used to taking orders, seeing if you can keep your word. We won’t get a look at him until he’s coming for the money. He might have you run a few more senseless errands for him. Always agree, always do what he says. And always tell me.”

I had just driven off the peninsula when Rick Birch called. “Good news,” he said.

“I would like some.”

“McCallum ran the slug that killed Ike Cao through the Federal Drug-Fire registry. We got lucky. The same gun that fired that bullet also fired bullets into two Lincoln 18th gangsters — Felix Escobar’s victims.”

“Pearlita’s brother,” I said.

“Maybe he gave it to her for safekeeping. Maybe she wanted to keep it in good working order, so she used it on Cao. Anyway, we picked her up half an hour ago on suspicion of first-degree murder. She had a twenty-two auto in her glove compartment.”

“Maybe she’ll roll over on Gaylen.”

“Let’s hope so. She did him a big favor, with Ike Cao. Now we’ll see if she’s stand-up or not.”

“If she could ID the guy in Bo Warren’s car that night, I’d be pleased.”

“So would I. We’ll let her get used to lockup tonight, then see if she wants to deal.”

I drove to the Grove, waiting for my cell phone to ring again, but it didn’t. I listened to June’s show. Her guest was the general curator of the Los Angeles Zoo, who had grown up in Orange County. As a boy, he’d kept a crocodile in his backyard, an anteater in his bedroom and a collection of snakes in his garage. Driven his mom crazy. Sounded like a nice guy. At the sound of June Dauer’s pleasant whisper of a voice I could feel my skin warm and my heart beat harder. I wanted to pull her out of the radio and kiss her for a few hours.

The head of security at the Grove Club is Bob Spahn, a retired sheriff department lieutenant. Tall, slender, pale gray eyes and short black hair. He was still the Department martial arts instructor, in spite of giving up his job. Rumor had it that he had tripled his salary going private for the Grub.

Spahn had agreed to talk “a quick five minutes” before he left work at six. His office was on the second floor, down the hallway from the bar kitchen. An off-duty Santa Ana PD patrolman walked me through the dining room, up the stairs, past the private booths and the pool tables.

Spahn rose from his desk and shook my hand. His hand felt thick and padded, something I recognized from my own competition days in the martial arts. We used to spend hours a week stabbing our fingers and fists into buckets of bird seed. Later, we graduated to beach sand. It strengthens the joints and builds calluses on the fingertips and knuckles.

“Still training, I guess,” he said.

“Just twice a week now, sir.”

“Miss the competition?”

“Yes. The sparring isn’t fast enough.”

“Yeah. What can I do for you, Joe?”

“I want to know who brought Luria Bias into the Grove. It was a fund-raiser for Millbrae, April of this year.”

“I remember it. You think the businessmen know how to party, until you see the politicians. Get them together and watch out.”

“I’ve seen that too, sir.”

“Bias... killed by the Suburban, right?”

I nodded.

“She an outcall girl?”

“I think it’s possible she was prostituting herself.”

“You sure she was here?”

“Yes.”

“Grove policy is no prostitutes of any kind, any time. Strictly enforced.”

“Of course. But sometimes it’s hard to make the call, isn’t it?”

He looked at me. “Well, yeah — a billionaire with a well-dressed woman — you can’t do much with that. No singles, though, unless we know them. They’ve got to have class and manners. You need those women around just for atmosphere. Like good furnishings.”

“Yes, sir, furnishings.”

“Anything else, Joe?”

“So there’s no real policy on who the members bring in, so far as female company goes?”

He studied me again, then shook his head. “Not really. I’m not paid for that. The Grove is for the members. They rule. I’m a glorified babysitter. My main job? Make sure the staff leaves the silverware here. Make sure the bartenders don’t raid the till. Really, it’s pretty sandbox.”

“Can you help with Luria Bias, that night?”

“Why should I?”

“She was poor. She was pregnant when she died. She was beaten before she died. Her brother got killed, looking into who did it.”

He shrugged. I waited.

“You sound like your father,” he said. “But I liked that about him — always a friend of the underdog.”

“I like underdogs, too, sir.”

“But Will, you know, always careful to look out for himself, too. No martyr in that man. What’s in this for you?”

“Just this. I met Luria’s other brother. He struck me as a nice boy.”

He was nodding again. “I’ll see what I can find out. Give me your number and the date again, would you?”

I thought of something. “Sir, if a party is held here at the Grove, does the host need to reserve a suite, or the restaurant, or whatever he needs?”

“Yeah, sure. Chaos, otherwise.”

“Who signed for the Millbrae hospitality suite that night?”

“That’s confidential, Joe. We’re a club.”

“I understand that.”

“Then understand why I can’t tell you. I’ll look into the Bias thing. But I won’t lose my job over it.”

“No, sir. And thanks again.”

Once I got off the 241 Toll Road and back into cell phone territory I called the general manager of the Grove. His name was Rex Sauers and he was an old friend of Will’s. He ran some places on the Lower East Side for twenty years, then a resort in Palm Springs, then a five-star restaurant in Newport Beach until the Grove hired him away. His secretary put me through when I told her I was Will’s son.

“Joe, how are you?”

“Things are okay, Mr. Sauers. I miss him.”

“We all do. What do you need?”

“I’m going through my father’s bills. He’s got a payable here for his part of the Millbrae fund-raiser back in April. It says three thousand plus change, but there’s nothing on the note about who to pay.”

“Lemme check.”

I waited a moment, listened to the static.

“Jack Blazak.”

“Thank you, sir. Most of the creditors have called me. But Mr. Blazak probably just felt uncomfortable, trying to collect from a dead man’s family.”

“Jack’s a good guy. Hey, come by sometime and let my buy you dinner. I’d like to keep in touch.”

“I’d be honored, sir.”

“You guys close to an arrest?”

“We’ve got a suspect. We’re building a case. It’s been hard because I heard the shooter talk to Will that night, but I couldn’t see him. What I think is, my father got in the middle of something he didn’t understand.”

“I think it stinks — Will trying to help out with Jack’s daughter, and this happens. My opinion of Will Trona went way up when I heard what he was doing. He and Blazak didn’t get along. They were opposites on everything. But Will put that aside to help Jack. That says a lot to me about what kind of man he was.”

“He was a great man.”

“Amen. Keep in touch, Joe. Lemme know if I can help again. You want a table for you and a lady friend, you’re my guest. If Will’s got any more payables here at the Grove, forget them. They’re covered.”

The idea struck me that I was inheriting my father’s friends, as well as his enemies. I just wasn’t positive which was which. I wondered if Will was. You only had to be wrong once.

Love a lot. Trust a few.