Silent Joe

Chapter Twenty-Five

I called Valeen Wample that night from home. Grandma. The limp scrap of paper that had held her number in my wallet for all those years came apart as I unfolded it. The ink had faded to the color of a vein. The area code was down in the Southern California desert. She answered on the fifth ring.

“Yeah?”

“This is Joe Trona.”

A pause. I heard TV in the background, and something blowing — an air conditioner or a fan.

“So?”

“Your daughter’s son, ma’am.”

“I know that. What do you want?”

“Charlotte’s address and phone number.”

“I assume she’s dead.”

“The last ones you have, then.”

“Why?”

“It’s important that I talk to her.”

Silence again. “You don’t want to call Charlotte.”

“Why?”

“Exactly. Why?”

“To get some things straight.”

“She’s worthless, gutless and heartless. For starters.”

“Thor isn’t my father.”

“Says who?”

“Thor. Charlotte paid him not to tell why he threw the acid.”

“Oh, horseshit.”

“Maybe, ma’am. But Charlotte can clear it up.”

Another pause. I heard her set the phone down. TV. Fan. Then she was back, ice clinking on glass.

“This number worked five years ago. I called her to get some money. She didn’t give me any. I haven’t called it since then.”

She gave me the phone number and an address in a small town called Fallbrook, not far from San Diego.

“Where do you live, ma’am?”

“Bombay Beach. It’s the worst place in the world. We’re so bad, we made the TV. Dead fish on the sand. Birds fall dead out of the sky from botulism. Filthy Salton Sea. A hundred and ten degrees all summer. Scorpions and snakes. A real hellhole, but I can’t afford nothin’ better.”

“I can send you some money.”

“How much?”

“Would ten thousand help?”

“Fifteen would help more. Zoom it right over, grandson Joe. I need every penny.”

She gave me her address. I heard the ice clinking. “I wish you weren’t going to talk to her. She’s rotten. Ruins everything she touches.”

“I’ll give her your regards.”

“Don’t.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“You call it help. I call it stupid.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“How’d your face heal up?”

“Some scarring.”

“Tough break. Take my advice. Don’t call her. Whatever you got, she’ll make it worse. Oh, she changed her name to Julie. And her last name is Falbo.”

I wrote out a check for fifteen grand. My account was almost empty because the rubies had cost so much. Then I looked through my collection of complimentary Paralyzed Veterans of America greeting cards. I donate once a year and they send me the cards as a thank-you. I found a blank one with a kitten and a ball of yarn on it, but couldn’t think of what to write.

So I drove to the drugstore and looked in the card rack. I wasn’t sure what a grandson was supposed to feel for a grandmother, especially one he’d only talked to twice in his life. She didn’t seem to be a very likable woman, but you can’t judge a person by two calls. I settled on one with a front that looked like a knitted sweater. It said FOR GRANDMA on the label. Inside, it said: Just thinking of you, someone special in my life.

Back home I signed the card “With Respect and Affection,” put the check inside and addressed the envelope. I went ahead and put the return address on it, wondering if she’d write.

I poured a large glass of vodka over ice and took it out to my backyard. In the dark I could hear the squirrels running along the power lines. If they fall the cats get them. The orange tree was losing the last of its blossoms but the yard still smelled sweet and good and it reminded me of those first months in the Tustin foothills with Will and Mary Ann because the citrus was in bloom the first day I walked into that home of dreams.

Rick Birch called me about two minutes later. “Pearlita’s dealing,” he said. “Dent told her he’d withdraw his death penalty demand for Felix. The truth is, he didn’t think he’d get it with that jury, so he’s throwing her a bone she’d probably get anyway. Here’s Pearlita’s ID on the passenger in Bo Warren’s car that night — Orange County Supervisor, Second District, Dana Millbrae.”

A woman’s name. Kind of like Donna or Renee but maybe not either.

Dana.

I called Ray Flatley at home and apologized sincerely for doing so.

“No problem, Joe. I was working through some of that new Warren Zevon on the piano. I guess he’s sort of a bad boy, but he’s awfully funny. And those ballads of his actually make my scalp crawl they’re so beautiful.”

“I want you to help me make a recording.”

“I didn’t know you sang.”

“Not music, sir,” I said. “Just a few words.”

“Whose words?”

“Mine. I’m going to play me. You’re going to play John Gaylen.”

A long pause. “And who gets to hear this piece of illegal police trickery?”

“You won’t ever know.”

“When does it get destroyed?”

“By ten o’clock tomorrow night. I’ll hand you a melted glob of tape and plastic if you want, sir.”

Another moment of silence before Flatley’s deep, resonant reply: “Ah, Joe Trona, I can do what you want. When do you need John Gaylen to speak?”

“Right now.”

He gave me his address and hung up.

I was back home by ten. I got Dana Millbrae’s home number from Will’s address book.

Millbrae answered the phone himself. I told him we needed to talk and he didn’t even ask about what.

“Call my secretary for an appointment,” he said.

“It needs to be soon, sir.”

“Police business, Joe?”

I heard the fear in his voice. It was impossible for me not to use it against him. “Yes.”

“Not here.”

“How about the Grove, in one hour?”

“I’m not a member and neither are you.”

“I’ll take care of that, sir. You’ll be my guest.”

I hung up and called Rex Sauers. He said he’d have a booth ready for us.

Dana Millbrae shuffled self-consciously across the Grove lounge toward our booth, hands in his pants pockets and his eyes aimed downward. A sharp suit. He sat down and looked at me. He had a boyish face, earnest eyes and pale hair falling over his forehead. USC, Stanford MBA. This was his first term as a supervisor and he was thirty-four years old. Married, four children. He had told me at Will’s funeral that losing Will was like losing a father: Will had taught him everything he knew about being one of the seven most powerful elected officers in the county.

We shook hands. He sat and glanced at me, then over at a waiter.

“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.

I told him I didn’t. The waiter came and Millbrae ordered a double Stolichnaya martini, up with a twist. He held a lighter to a cigar, puffed it to life and drew deeply on it.

“Okay, what?” he asked.

“You and Bo Warren met John Gaylen in the parking lot of Bamboo 33 the night before Will died. I want to know what you talked about.”

He stood and drew the privacy curtain, looking at me uncertainly as he sat back down.

“We talked about getting Savannah Blazak back.”

“What did Gaylen know about Savannah Blazak?”

“He was in touch with Alex. They’d done business.”

“What did Gaylen say, exactly?”

Millbrae puffed and finally met my eyes. “I don’t remember, exactly.”

“Give me the generalities, then.”

The waiter parted the curtain, set Millbrae’s drink on the table, drew the curtain closed behind him.

Millbrae sipped deeply, then sipped again. “He told us that she was all right. That everything was going to work out.”

“You and Bo Warren drove all the way to Bamboo 33 after midnight, just to hear that?”

He nodded.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ask Bo. That was the truth.”

“Bo said he was there with Pearlita.”

Millbrae cleared his throat, fist in front of his mouth. “No. I was the passenger.”

“I appreciate your honesty. Mr. Millbrae, I’m going to speak frankly to you now. Will knew you were taking money from Rupaski, for your vote on the toll road buyout. Will had you two on tape, talking about a cash pickup at Windy Ridge. I’m sure Carl told you all of this already, right?”

He nodded. He looked like a schoolboy who’d been caught with a cigarette.

“Well, Will also had some unpleasant evidence against Jack Blazak. And some more unpleasant evidence against the Reverend Daniel Alter. He blackmailed you into a no vote on the toll road buyout. He blackmailed Daniel into some cash payments. He was getting ready to blackmail Blazak. And he could have had Carl Rupaski arrested on bribery and conspiracy charges anytime he wanted. I’ve got all this documented in a way that would stand up in court. Does most of this ring true to you?”

Millbrae nodded again. A light sheen of sweat showed at his temples. He took a big gulp of the vodka and washed it down with some more smoke. “That...”

“That what?”

“That fucker had something on everybody.”

“Yes. He did. And that’s why you arranged to have John Gaylen take him out.”

“Absolutely untrue.”

Even in the dim light of the booth I could see that Millbrae’s face had flushed. He kept looking around for something to settle his eyes on, but there wasn’t much to choose from in a booth sealed off by a privacy curtain. So he looked at his cigar.

“Want to hear Gaylen tell his version?”

Millbrae colored more deeply. He took another long drink. “No.”

“Listen anyway.”

I got out my micro-tape recorder and played the tape that Ray Flatley had helped me make.

Me: So who spoke to you first about taking a contract on Will Trona?

Flatley: First was Bo Warren. Pearlita put me with him. Then Millbrae, the supervisor, he got into it. There was an asshole named Carl. And the girl’s father, Jack. I thought they’d want the girl back, bad. But what they wanted most was for someone to step on Will Trona. Millbrae was just the gopher. They called him Millie, dissed him when he wasn’t there.

I turned it off, rewound it a bit, then looked at Millbrae.

“We questioned him this morning,” I lied. “He’s dealing you guys away as fast as he can. That tape is about six hours old.”

His face had gone from red to white. He ran a hand over the sweat on his forehead, took another big drag on the cigar. He looked into his empty glass.

“That voice could be faked.”

“Your lawyer can hire an examiner at your expense.”

I put the tape player back in Will’s briefcase, threw open the curtain to let out the smoke, and pointed out Millbrae’s empty glass to the waiter.

A minute later another double martini landed in front of him. He drank some, looked at me with a kind of disheveled malice, then muttered something.

“What was that, Mr. Millbrae?”

“I said your father was a complete asshole.”

I reached out and pulled the curtain shut again. I stared at him.

“Don’t,” he said. “I know you could tear me apart.”

“That would be bad manners.”

“Yeah. A place like this.” He drank again, looked down at the dead cigar. “You going to arrest me?”

“That depends on what you do in the next hour.”

“We could work something out.”

“I’ll listen.”

“I’m not taking a fall for all those guys. I’m the junior man, and I’m not going to do it.”

“Instead, you’re looking for a way to let them take the fall. To let Dana Millbrae float a little closer to the top. Where he wants so badly to be.”

He glared at me again, fumbled with the cigar. “I can trade. Me for them. Can you keep me out of it if I do that?”

“I can keep you partway out of it. Not all the way.”

“I’m basically fucked.”

“I’ll tell you what I can do, Mr. Millbrae. You tell me the truth right now, into that little machine, and I’ll take it as far as I can without you. Gaylen said you were the gopher. I believe that. And if you give me enough to button down Blazak, Rupaski and Bo Warren, then I’ll have what I want. They used you. I understand. I need to know exactly how. And let me tell you one more thing. If I play this tape to those men, they’ll all point straight at you, and you will go to prison for a long time.”

“This is awful. This is terrible.”

“It’s a parlor game, compared to what you did to Will.”

Millbrae tried to bring some hardness to his eyes, but all I could see was a cowardly man and a failed politician. His chin quivered.

“I went into public life to serve the public. Really, that’s true. All I managed to do was fuck them, and myself.”

“You didn’t let the county buy the toll road and make Rupaski’s friends richer.”

He smiled bitterly and drank again.

“Thanks to Will. Whose office was the tape recorder in, anyway — Rupaski’s or mine?”

“Yours. You’ll live to fight another day, Mr. Millbrae. Who knows? If you can help me nail this case shut, maybe it won’t cost you as much as it should. But you were thinking that. You’re already whiffing the sweet scent of opportunity in the stink you’ve made of your life.”

He huffed something like a laugh. Then he actually looked down his nose at me. I wondered which fancy school he learned that at.

“You can change your mind, though, Trona. You could come back and get me anytime you want. You can keep me in your pocket, like your father did to everybody he ever met in his life. This thing I did won’t ever die.”

“That’s correct. Will did the dying.”

Sometimes you’ll see something pass behind the eyes of a man, and you can’t know what it is. And you understand that you could live a hundred more years and see it a thousand more times, and still not know what it was. I saw such a thing in Millbrae’s right then.

“I watched you drive up in his car,” he said. “I see you carry that old briefcase of his. Here you sit, making shady deals with Orange County supervisors at the Grove. You’re getting to be just like him. You must love it. I would. Twenty-four years old, and you got all the same shit your father worked a lifetime for.”

“I enjoy the car.”

“I got a green one, same model, but seventeen-inch rims.”

“The big wheels are cosmetic. They detract from the handling and the fuel economy.”

He looked at me, and took another drink. “Get out that shitty little machine of yours, Trona. Man... I can’t believe this is happening. I’m about to see how good I am at covering my own ass.”

“You’ll do just fine, Mr. Millbrae.”

“It was a combination of things, Trona. It was like that perfect storm, when three meteorological events happened at the same time. Except there were more than three, maybe twenty or a hundred. It was like history made it happen, circumstances just came into alignment against Will. First, there was the tape that Will had against Carl and me. I shouldn’t have been taking money to influence my votes, but I did. I got the kids’ college to pay for and a big mortgage, and supervisors’ salaries aren’t exactly huge. But it was wrong. And Will caught me at it — caught us at it. You know, when he played me that tape on the same machine you’re using right now, it was like he had my entire life at his disposal. I was dead. Everything I’d worked for could be taken away, if that tape got into the wrong hands.”

Millbrae sighed and looked down at the table.

“How about another drink, Mr. Millbrae?”

“Why not?”

I signaled the waiter for another round of drinks. We sat silently until he brought them and I slid the curtain shut again. He ran his lemon twist around the edge of the glass then dropped it in and took a swig.

“Carl was furious. Of course it was my fault that one of our conversations got recorded. Carl needed that yes vote on the toll road buyout, but I couldn’t defy Will. He had us and we knew it. Carl got some of his guys to follow Will around at night, trying to get him at something. We all knew that Will had a soft spot for the ladies, so we were hoping we could get something to cancel out what he had on us. Carl even had one of his guys put a radio homer on Will’s BMW when it came through the Transportation Authority yard for service. That’s how Carl found out that Will was in contact with Savannah Blazak. Carl and I talked to Jack.

“All of us got together on Monday night, two nights before Will was killed. Right here at the Grove. We shot some pool and had some drinks and talked up some of the women. But mostly we just stewed about Will Trona, and the way he could play so damned dirty and get away with it. Jack introduced me to Bo Warren, and Warren implied that even the Reverend Daniel Alter was having some trouble with Will. It was like a love fest in reverse — a bunch of people admitting to each other how much they hate somebody. No, not hate, but... fear. I mean, Will was always doing something like this. He spent his life collecting dirt and confessions and favors and money and using all of them to build his own power. He was the Prince, man, right out of Machiavelli. Then things started getting kind of. . serious. It came out that night that Jack had found this hood named John Gaylen, and hired him to scare the piss out of his son. Jack was making arrangements through Will to pay a fat ransom and get his girl back. But when it came time to get Savannah, Jack wanted to make sure that Alex got the scare of his life. Gaylen and his guys were supposed to claim the girl, beat the piss out of Alex and take the money from Will back to Jack. Teach the kid a lesson, right? For a price, of course.”

“What price?”

“Blazak never said. So, we’re here shooting pool and Bo Warren says, why don’t we pay Gaylen to rough up Will, instead? Maybe get him to back off, think twice about the shit he’s pulling on everyone. And that would mean Gaylen wouldn’t even have to beat up Alex, because working over Will right in front of him and Savannah would provide all the scare a young man needs.”

Millbrae drank again. Then he picked up the cigar and lit it, settling back into a blue-gray cloud.

“That was when I looked at Carl and he looked at me and we read each other’s minds. And I looked at Warren and Blazak and they were right there too, right exactly on the same wavelength as Carl and me. Dan Alter was talking to this alleged personal astrologer who I must say was one strikingly beautiful woman. Talking about God, no doubt. So he missed it, but we didn’t. No one had to say anything, but in about five seconds, roughing up Will turned into something else. And that’s exactly when I said no. I said count me out. And Carl said he thought roughing up Will a little was a good idea, and you, you little fuck — that meant me — are going to talk to John Gaylen about it.”

This was Millbrae’s out, and I let him have it.

“How much did you offer him?”

“Nine thousand dollars.”

I don’t know if Dana Millbrae saw my disbelief. He was drunk and confessing to a conspiracy to commit a murder that he wouldn’t admit was murder, so he might have been a little distracted. And I shouldn’t have been surprised. I know of contract murders set up for anywhere between three and ten thousand dollars. But just the idea of Will’s life being bought away for nine thousand dollars brought everything home to me in one instant: the ugliness and smallness of what these men had done, their greed and their cowardice, their arrogance. I couldn’t shake the image of Daniel Alter talking up the astrologer while his friends planned the murder of my father. Add ignorance and vanity and lust to the list.

“And you have to understand, Trona, that nine grand was to rough Will up.”

“Rough him up? Were those your words to Gaylen?”

“Yeah, and he said what’s that mean? What do you want done?”

“And I said break his knee, because in the movies they always talk about breaking knees. And break some of his ribs, too. But don’t mess up his face or his teeth, I said, because that seemed like a low blow.”

“That was considerate.”

He glanced at me, then looked away. He sighed loudly and drank more. Then choked down another big hit of blue smoke.

“Mr. Millbrae, how and when did John Gaylen’s work order get upgraded to murder?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that it did. It didn’t come from me. Ever. Nobody ever said anything about murder.”

“Gaylen never said anything about a beating. To him, it was a contract on a life.”

“The word murder was never used.”

“No. Men here at the Grove don’t use that word.”

Millbrae tilted up his glass and finished off the martini. His eyes widened a little and he wiped his face with his hand. His lank hair was damp and clung to his forehead.

“I didn’t know.”

I stared at him but said nothing.

He looked away. “Am I off the hook?”

“You’re finished.” His mouth opened and his eyes wavered back up to mine.

“Finished?”

“For now.”

“Oh, yeah. Finished for now.”

I drove long and hard that night, out the 241 and onto the 91, then the 55 and the 5 and the 133 to the 241 again, then off on the 261 and back to the 5, then down to the 405 to Jamboree to Pacific Coast Highway then back up the 55 to the 91 toward home.

During that windows-down, one-hundred-and-forty-mile-an-hour run I thought about Will’s life sold for what you’d find in a rich man’s pockets. And I thought about what he’d said that last night, Everyone, and I realized he was telling me right then who had done it, everyone had done it. Will knew that much. And I also thought about what Millie had said about history lining up to take out Will, the way a dozen things had to quietly conspire in order to get those bullets into him: the Blazaks and Bo Warren, the Reverend Daniel Alter and Luria Bias, Gaylen and Alex, Jaime and Miguel Domingo, Pearlita and Jennifer, Rupaski and Millbrae. Even Joe Trona. Joe, who should have seen it coming, should have smelled the betrayal in the fog that night, should have questioned the sweat on his palms and the tingle of his scar, should have listened to the voice of warning deep in the clamor of his heart.

Everyone.

I got some fast food and parked outside June Dauer’s apartment for a while. I didn’t go in. I ate. I looked at her windows and her door and didn’t know why I was there, except that The Unknown Thing had brought me back again, just like Will had told me it would. I wanted to be baptized but it wasn’t practical unless I rousted Reverend Daniel Alter from sleep and forced him into the Chapel of Light. I imagined the Reverend Daniel at the Grove, talking to a beautiful astrologer while the bureaucrats and captains of industry plotted the death of Will. If I was an old master I would have painted the scene. I didn’t think a baptism from him would do the job.

I eased down, set my hat on the seat and leaned my head back, looking out at the apartment and the power lines and the stars.

I closed my eyes and pictured June. And imagined that first day I’d walked into my new home in the Tustin hills, the sunlight hitting the red hibiscus and the white roses in the Trona garden.

I imagined Shag and the last of his herd retreating from the plains and into the chill of Yellowstone, to be safe from the men who had tried to exterminate them. There was snow dusting their big drooping manes and their eyes were small, bright and full of soul.

My cell phone rang at two-thirty.

“This is your old friend Bo.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Things are in the wind, Joe.”

“What wind?”

“I talked to Millbrae. Then I talked with the guys, you know who, and we came up with a solution. It involves quite a lot of money.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Don’t be in a hurry. Think about what that tape is worth.”

I hung up and thought about it for five minutes. I shut my eyes again.

The next thing I knew it was hours later and the first rays of the sun were shooting off the rearview mirror and into my eyes.