Silent Joe

Chapter Three

Lunchtime in the Men’s Central Jail mess hall, two hundred fifty inmates and three guards armed with nothing but pepper spray to keep the order. I stood with my back to one wall and watched the men walk in. The rules are: single file, hands in your pockets, seat yourself left to right at the next available table, no talking until you sit down with your tray. No talking with inmates at other tables.

It’s quiet. Most of these guys can get along. Anyone who can’t is put into protective custody in Module J, or given administrative segregation in Mod F, and they eat in their cells. Still, this is where the trouble happens if it’s going to happen. The violence is usually quick. Nobody sees anything.

Last week one of the young Mexicans shanked a big black man — earning respect. The blacks will retaliate somehow, someday. If there’s big violence in the air — the kind that trickles down from San Quentin or Pelican Bay — we guards can feel it. It gets even quieter than usual. Inmates do odd little things that are out of character for them: a glutton doesn’t eat his food; an amiable guy goes froggy on you; nobody wants to use the shower or the day room. So we know something is going down, just by the feel of the place.

The inmates get fifteen minutes to eat and file out. Eyes usually down. Laceless jail-issue sneakers slapping quietly on the floor. They turn their pockets inside out when they pass the guard.

In the mess hall the inmates travel in self-segregated gangs known as cars. We’re a “brown” jail — predominantly Latin. We’ve got two Latin cars — one for citizens, and one for illegal’s. Then there’s the Asian car, the black car. The white car is called the “wood” car. Wood is short for peckerwood. The driver is the guy in the back of each car. He’s the heavy, the leader. If we’ve got a problem with someone, we’ll go to that heavy, let him establish some discipline. Otherwise we’ll punish the whole car. In jail, peer pressure can be intense.

I made it through lunch before Sergeant Delano told me to go home and stay home.

“The shrinks will be in touch with you, Joe — the Deputy-Involved Shooting people. That’s Sergeant Mehring and Norm Zussman. Don’t worry about it, you did the right thing. They’re not out to get you. Besides, you look like you could use some rest.”

“Can’t I come to work, sir?”

“You’re on a paid leave, Joe. Take it. Go to the beach. Date a girl. Go fishing.”

“I’d rather work.”

The fact of the matter was that I didn’t have anything better to do than work. The jail was my world, just as Hillview had been my world until Will Trona took me out of it.

“Go.”

So I didn’t fight it. I was so tired I could hardly get myself to the parking lot. The voice inside started to mock me, but even my conscience was too tired to keep it up.

I just put one foot in front of the other and told myself that Will was dead, but life would go on, life would go on, life would go on.

When I finally got to Will’s car one of the FBI guys from the Federal Building was standing there looking at the BMW. His name was Steve Marchant. Thirty-five, maybe, slender but strong.

“I wish I could work this homicide,” he said.

“Anaheim PD’s got it.”

“Wrong — it’s yours now. Birch and Ouderkirk have it. The sheriff prevailed because you’re one of their own.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wondered how it would go, to have my fellow deputies investigating the murder of my father. Rick Birch in the homicide detail had a great reputation. I’d met him — he was old and weathered and smart. I didn’t know Ouderkirk.

“Joe, this the girl you saw last night with Will?”

He palmed a wallet-sized school picture at me. Held it low and kind of secretively, like he was trying to sell me something he’d stolen.

Easy enough to answer, though.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s Savannah.”

“Bingo,” he said, pocketing the photo. “Describe her clothing to me.”

I did. “Is she okay, Steve?”

“She’s missing.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“Absolutely nothing. Just watch any network news at five-thirty.”

“But she’s all right?”

“News at five-thirty. That’s all I can do for you.”

He stepped up closer to me, looked into my eyes. “Joe, did you see the shooter last night?”

“Not well.”

“Don’t let it get to you, Joe. You can’t be everywhere, see everything. Hang tough. We’ll get that puke and lay him down for a hotshot up in Quentin.”

“Thanks, sir. I appreciate that.”

“Be at my office, eight tomorrow morning, all right? You’ll know why after the news. I’m going to ask for everything you remember about that girl, at least twice.”

I called my mother from the car. Her voice sounded stronger but I could hear the thick catch of grief in it. “Will, Jr. and Glenn are coming into Orange County in an hour, Joe. Their families later.”

“I’ll pick them up, Mom.”

“I’m already on my way.”

“I’ll meet you by the statue.”

She gave me the airlines and arrival times, told me she loved me, and hung up.

I met her by the statue of John Wayne, a huge bronze likeness of the actor in his cowboy getup, full stride. I hugged her and she collapsed in my arms, sobbing. I’d heard her cry before, but never like that: big quivering heaves that seemed to come all the way up from her feet. I led her over to a bench, where some considerate people moved so we could sit down.

When she was in control of herself she looked me in the eyes, ran her hands over my face and asked me how I was. She’s the only person in the world I allow to do that — touch both sides of my face. I told her I was fine and we both respected that lie enough to stand and find our way to Will, Jr.’s arrival gate.

An hour later the four of us, in two cars, drove past the news crews and cameras and then up the long shaded driveway of our old home in the Tustin hills. We stood on the front porch while Mom dug out her key. I smelled the eucalyptus and the roses that she had always tended with devotion. I looked at the old redwood door with the window in it and realized that it was the same door that had opened to me twenty years ago, welcoming me to the dreamiest, happiest days of my life. A home.

But when I walked in I felt like I was in a parody of happiness, a spoof on dreams coming true. Will’s home, but no Will.

I shut the door behind me and looked at my brothers and my mother and I couldn’t meet their eyes.

You killed him you killed him you killed him.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Joe?” asked Will, Jr. He put his arm on my shoulder and walked me into the living room.

I don’t remember a lot about the next two hours, except that they were among the worst of my life.

Home. I moved my Mustang out of the garage and parked Will’s BMW inside. Left the windows down. Sat there for a minute, wondering.

Then I got Will’s briefcase and took it into the house. I have three big floor safes — one in the bedroom, one in the second bath, one in the den. The house was built in 1945 on a raised foundation, which made them easy to install. I opened the safe in the den.

To make room, I pulled out the Smith .357 magnum and one of my wooden treasure boxes. The boxes contain things I value from my life — rocks, shells, feathers, trinkets, notes, small gifts. The first thing Will gave me is in one of them: a book called Shag: Last of the Plains Buffalo. I’d been reading a library copy of that book when he first talked to me at Hillview. I was almost five. The next time he came, he gave me my own brand-new copy to keep.

I stared at the briefcase for a long moment, because it reminded me so much of Will. I touched a bloodstain and it left a dark crust on my finger. Good thing Alagna hadn’t seen the blood, but if he was careless enough not to impound Will’s BMW, he probably wouldn’t have done anything useful with the briefcase either. I opened it and considered each mundane item as if it held some grand significance in Will’s life: his last paper clip, his last Board agenda, his last aspirin. Then I closed it and put it on the bottom of the floor safe and set the treasure box on top.

I checked the handgun, wiped it with the oilcloth on which it sat, always loaded and always ready, then shut the safe door and spun the lock.

I walked into the living room and everything looked different. Exactly the same, but totally different. I studied the buffed maple floor, the black sofa and black chair and black ottoman, the magazines neatly in their rack, the chrome reading lamp. I looked at the white walls with the framed posters of race cars, the cheap print of Michaelangelo’s “God Creating Adam” and my many framed photographs of Will, Mary Ann, Will, Jr., and Glenn.

In the kitchen I sat and looked down at the white and black checkerboard tile, the white walls and cupboards and counter and fixtures. The dinette was chrome with white padded chairs and a white vinyl tabletop. Faintly institutional. I’d painted and furnished the place myself. I kept it clean as an operating room. It all seemed so irrelevant now, so absolutely without meaning.

At five-thirty that afternoon, a news conference called by Savannah’s father was carried on all four network news broadcasts.

Her name was Savannah Blazak, she was eleven years old, and she had been kidnapped three days ago, Monday afternoon.

The girl’s father was Jack Blazak of Newport Beach. I knew him on sight because he was one of the county’s richest and most powerful men. And an acquaintance of Will’s. His wife, Lorna, stood at his side during the conference. Along with the Jack Blazaks, FBI special agent Steve Marchant was on hand to answer questions. They had three recent pictures of Savannah, whom her father described as “very intelligent, very sensitive, very imaginative.”

She’d vanished from their home three days ago — sometime Monday morning, Jack said — and he received a ransom demand shortly thereafter. He stuttered briefly, sighed, then admitted that he and his wife had at first agreed to pay the ransom demand out of fear for their daughter’s life. Part of the demand was that if they went to the authorities, Savannah’s head would be mailed to them in “an overnight freezer-pack, UPS.”

Blazak’s larynx bobbed in his throat as he confessed that “after almost three days of living hell,” his attempt to ransom his daughter had “not been successful.” But he had had reason to believe that this evening, Thursday, he could make the payment to Savannah’s kidnappers and secure her safe return. When he heard this morning on the news that a girl named Savannah, matching his daughter’s description, had fled a murder scene the night before, he contacted the FBI immediately.

Blazak begged everyone watching to look out for his daughter. He offered a reward of five hundred thousand dollars for information leading to Savannah’s safe return. Absolutely no questions asked.

Steve took over to explain where and when Savannah was last seen and what she was wearing. He answered questions and gave out a hotline number. He wanted everyone to know that the Bureau was pursuing this case with every resource it had, that the safe return of Savannah Blazak was a priority.

Steve looked eager, a little angry. Jack Blazak looked like he’d been dragged behind a school bus for ten miles. Lorna Blazak looked lovely and fragile and almost absent from the proceedings.

The next segment was all about Will. “Bloodbath in Anaheim. Orange County Runs Red.” News footage of the Lind Street alley, UCI Medical Center, the closed door of his office in the County Building, clips of him in meetings of the Board of Supervisors. They’d gotten a few seconds of us coming down the street toward the home in the Tustin hills, and some footage from behind as we walked toward the front porch.

Even a picture of me, with “sources within the Sheriff Department confirming” that I’d fatally shot two of the killers while trying to protect my father. One other was reported dead, one critically wounded.

Dead suspects not yet identified.

No known motive at this time.

My phone rang every few minutes. Friends from the academy, the department, old friends, relatives. I talked to my family but let the strangers talk to the machine: Bruce, a newspaper reporter in New York; Seth, a television news-magazine producer in Los Angeles; June Dauer, a local radio host; Dr. Norman Zussman, the psychiatrist who would lead me through the Deputy-Involved Shooting Program.

I heated up three TV dinners and set them on the table with a carton of milk. I liked the institutional taste of TV dinners, and the compartmented trays — more leftovers from my days at Hillview.

I was just ready to eat when someone rang the doorbell. It was Rick Birch, looking tired and old. I invited him in, offered him one of the hot dinners. He declined.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I just have a question or two.”

I put the dinners back in the oven and sat down across from him. He looked around the room like he was taking inventory. He wore rimless glasses with thin, tinted lenses.

“How old are you, Joe?”

“Twenty-four, sir.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Three years.”

“You keep it nice and neat.”

“Thank you. I like things neat.”

“The two guys you shot were Cobra Kings.”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“Ray Flatley in the gang unit can give you a rundown. But basically, they’re thieves who don’t mind committing murder when they feel like it.” He slipped a small notebook from his coat pocket, which was apparently already open to the right place. “You got Luke Smith and Ming Nixon. Ages twenty-seven and thirty-one, respectively. ‘Luke’ got changed from Loc. Nixon was a name the other guy got stuck with growing up a bastard in Saigon. The third deceased hasn’t been identified yet. The one still alive is Ike Cao — nineteen and a card-carrying Cobra King.”

He watched me over the top of his glasses, head tilted down. I didn’t know how to react. I felt bad for killing them, but not that bad.

“I guess you’ve got some time off from work,” he said.

“I didn’t want it.”

“Take your leave. You don’t go through something like this and not have it change you. Norm Zussman’s a good shrink.”

“I wish I could keep working.”

“I understand the need.”

Birch blinked his pale blue eyes. He looked like a farmer: weathered face, big hands, an inner stillness that comes from watching things grow.

“Joe, tell me about your father and Savannah Blazak.”

“I don’t know much.”

“No?”

“No, sir. Will wasn’t leveling with me about the girl. I’m his son. I was his driver and his guard. Sometimes he told me what he was up to, and sometimes not. I’d never heard of Savannah until last night around nine. When we went to Lind Street to pick her up. I didn’t know anything about a kidnapping until five-thirty tonight when I watched the news.”

Birch thought for a moment. “Let me get this straight: the girl’s kidnapped Monday morning. The family can’t seem to make the ransom payment, even though they’ve got the money and they’re willing. By Wednesday night, Will Trona has found her. Explain that.”

“I can’t.”

“You see the shooter?”

“Not well. The fog hid him.”

“Could you ID him in a lineup?”

“If he spoke.”

“Explain.”

I did — the quality of the voice, the strange cadence.

“A voice ID does us no good at all. It’s not enough to even hold someone on.”

I knew that. So I said nothing.

“You know who did it, Joe?”

“No, sir. Of course not.”

He rested his calm eyes on my face. “There’s a whole bunch wrong with this.”

“I think so, too.”

“Can you give me a full statement tomorrow? I’ve got Alagna’s tape, but I want to ask my own questions.”

“Absolutely.”

He nodded, looking around again, then back at me. “Have you talked to Marchant yet?”

“Tomorrow.”

Birch drummed his fingertips on the table, fast. “Did he have this girl abducted?”

“Will?”

“I’m not the only one who’s going to ask you that. She’s kidnapped and she’s last seen with him. You can draw a pretty straight line between those points.”

“I’m sure he didn’t, sir.”

“You’re not sure of much else.”

I wondered how I could suggest that Birch get a phone company printout without also suggesting that I was holding out on him. I believed that there would be a time to come clean with Rick Birch. But I didn’t believe it was then.

He waited for me to add something, but I didn’t. He gave the impression of being able to wait forever.

“How were Will’s finances?”

“Good, sir. Will’s salary wasn’t bad and my mother is wealthy. He never liked spending money.”

He waited again, but I said nothing.

“Blazak didn’t say what the ransom demand was.”

My turn to wait. I can wait forever, too.

“Okay, Joe. We’ll get to the fine print tomorrow. Do me a favor and write down what happened last night. Everything you can remember. It’ll help both of us.”

“Okay.”

He stood. “I’m sorry. I really am sorry for you.”

“Thank you.”

We set a time and Rick Birch took one more look around my kitchen, shook my hand. I showed him to the door.

After dinner Jack Blazak called. He wanted me to be at his home in Newport the next morning, early. He didn’t ask me anything about his daughter. He put on his wife, Lorna, to give me directions to “the Newport house.”

She did. Then, “Don’t hang up, Mr. Trona. I just have to ask you — how was she? Did she look okay? Was she upset or hurt or anything? I haven’t seen my child in three days.”

“She looked fine, Mrs. Blazak. She looked fine when I saw her.”