Silent Joe Page 17

  She slapped me, hard, but not on the scar.

  "What were you doing with the cash that Will gave you? I counted and rolled it, so I know how much and how often—it was two grand per week for the last—"

  "I know how much it was!"

  She opened her arms to encompass the street. I noticed the faint tattoo scar just below the shoulder, reaching all the way around the soft flesh of her underarm.

  "It was for us. For them. The poor and the sick. That money was to keep the HACF open during the DA's probe. Our county money stopped when the press said we were flooding the polls with alien voters. That was a lie. So Will helped us."

  She stepped toward me and hissed into my face: "You want to do something useful, Joe? You want to be like Will? Then return Jaime's calls. He's trying to help the family of Miguel Domingo. Jaime needs you just like he needed Will. You're supposed to be his son. So do what your father would do, talk to Jaime."

  "Miss Avila, who were you down for? The tattoo is why I ask."

  "Raitt Street."

  "Pearlita's gang."

  "That was a long time ago. Get away from me. I would never have hurt him. How can you even say that giving his number to a friend is the same as killing him? You don't know anything about friendship and loyalty and respect. You don't know anything but how to take orders from a man who used you to do the things he didn't have the cojones for. He's gone and you still take his orders. So be useful, and call Jaime."

  I felt the heat come into my face. I thought about Jaime and Miguel Domingo and Luria Bias. Maybe I could honor Will by continuing something he believed in. Certainly, I could help a woman that he loved, even if she detested me.

  She turned with a flash of black hair and yellow dress and pulled open the screen door of Cafe Los Ponchos.

  At 10:17 P.M. I parked at the Santa Ana Amtrak depot. I walked into station, then out to the platform and looked at the tracks narrowing back into the darkness. It was cool and cloudy again and there wasn't a star the sky.

  Then the speaker announced the arrival of the Coast Starlight. I walked to the far side of the arrivals room and stood behind a potted palm. Sleepers rose from the wooden benches. A family with lots of children pressed close to the door. A minute later I felt the vibration, then the deep rhythmic rumble of the Starlight. It plowed through the dark and stopped alongside the station.

  I saw him once, through the window, when he got off. Then again he walked into the station. Same as the pictures, same as the dreams; downy white hair and beard, potbelly; big head low on his shoulders like he'd been assembled without a neck.

  He came into the waiting area with a duffel slung over his shoulder stepped away from the tree.

  Thor stopped and looked at me. His blue eyes caught the light, shifted the duffel. He nodded.

  "Joe."

  "Thor."

  "You didn't call the cops on me."

  "I am the cops."

  "Yup. Don't bust me. I can't do lockup again. It'd kill me."

  His voice was high and clear. His teeth showed when he talked, you couldn't say it was a smile.

  A family came up behind him and split into two parts as they walked past. The dad had a kid on his shoulders and the boy towered over Thor. I'd never realized how short he was, though I remembered his height from the intake records I'd gotten from Corcoran: 5'6".

  "You going to let me stay at your place?"

  "No."

  "I already know where it is."

  "Don't show up without an invite."

  He sighed like he was disappointed. "You sure?"

  "Extremely."

  "Yeah, well, I really don't blame you. I'd be pressed out of shape, too."

  Some of the people were watching us now. Thor looked at them and seemed to be smiling. A girl in a pink dress and shiny shoes stopped and looked up at me, then made a face and backed away. Her mother gathered her up and I heard the muffled words, but I hardly paid attention to them.

  I watched Thor. I had no memory of seeing him. I was ready to feel like I was in the presence of something evil and eternal. But with all his stage time in my nightmares, in the flesh he seemed mortal and matter-of- fact.

  "You've been on the TV and papers a lot, Joe. All the way up in Seattle, even. They find that girl and her brother yet?"

  "No."

  "Crazy world."

  "You'd know."

  "Yeah." He took two steps toward me and lowered his duffel to the ground. "Shake my hand."

  I shook it. My scar flared hot and my bones felt frozen. I could barely grip his hard, rough hand. It seemed like every bad emotion was roaring inside of me, every single bad feeling a person could have, all at once. No order or logic to them at all.

  I saw his blue eyes studying me in the light from the station. "It don't really look that bad, Joe. Hurt?"

  "Sometimes."

  "You look good in the hat and suit. Expensive, I can tell."

  "I shop the sales."

  He eyed me. "Well, look now. I'm sorry for what I did and I need you to forgive me. I've checked out a bunch of religions. And any one that's got any kind of hell, a guy like me goes right to it."

  "You should have picked a religion without one."

  "No. I wanted a God with some teeth in Him. These touchy-feely ones don't get through to me. The Bible says I ought to square things with you and I believe it. Eye for an eye, and all that. I got some acid in a peanut butter jar, right there in my duffel. You can pour it on me if that will get you to forgive. It's more than got poured on you. Then you could tell it's okay, what happened. You could see there's more to your old man than the worst thing that happened in his life."

  "I forgive you," I said. It surprised me. "But if I ever see you again I'm going to empty my gun in your heart. From this second on, you don't exist."

  With shaking hands I got out my wallet and found three hundreds. I handed them to him.

  "Good luck, old man. That ought to be enough to get you home."

  "Thank you, son. Great to see you. Good luck to you, too."

  I drove the 241 Toll Road fast, up over a hundred and thirty as I whizzed past the Windy Ridge toll plaza, windows down and sunroof open and wind slamming into my face.

  Then a high-velocity merge onto the 91 and a tire-screeching exit Green River, where I turned around and roared back the way I came.

  Sometimes you just can't go fast enough to get away. Because it's inside you and the speed doesn't matter.

  I needed a baptism but couldn't get one this late, close to midnight. I drove down to Diver's Cove in Laguna, where I'd gone snorkeling with Mom when I was little, and I walked out into the water with all my clothes on except shoes, guns and wallet, and went under and held my breath. I drove my fingers into the hard bottom sand and felt the surge try to draw me in and out. Like a piece of driftwood or a big snarl of kelp. I came and got another big breath and went down again. I wished I could hit one-thirty under water because I thought that would rub it all off—the scar, past, the fear—everything, polish me clean and shiny like a shell. Then I got so cold it was worse than shaking hands with Thor so I pushed off the surface and dove into a breaking wave that carried me to shore.

  Back home I broke down both my .45s—one of them, a replacements for the weapon that Dr. Zussman had taken—then cleaned and oiled them. Next the .32. Nervous activity is all it was, because the guns were already clean and oiled and perfect. I thought about Thor and cleaned them all again. Then I cleaned and oiled the shells before loading them into the clips.

  I called Jaime Medina. He'd been sleeping, but his mood cheered when I told him I was ready to help him. I made a date to talk to him and Enrique Domingo, brother to the slain Miguel.

  "You're doing the right thing, Joe," he said. "Just like your father always tried to do. You'll see, Miguel Domingo was a hero, not an insane criminal, like the cops made him out to be."

  "The media said that, sir. Not the cops."

  "You will see."

  "I hop
e so, sir."

  Melissa had called so I called her back. She said the fingerprints on the transmitter belonged to Del Pritchard, a pay-grade three automobile and bus mechanic employed by the Orange County Transportation Authority. She'd done a check on him as a favor to me, and Del had come back clean.

  I took a long hot shower, then got into bed. I stared up at the ceiling. I'd tacked a picture from a magazine up there, just like Sammy had taped his picture of Bernadette. It showed a huge oak tree on a gentle, summer-tan central California hillside. The tree cast a dark blue shadow on the dry grass. High up in the oak tree the leaves were so dark and dense you couldn't see anything behind them, not even sky. And there in that dark canopy was my quiet spot, the place I could go and see but not be seen, hear and not be heard. I went there. My eagle friend was there, too. He moved over and made room for me. I looked down at the tawny hills and the golden grass and the smooth dirt road leading around a bend. The big bird pushed off from the branch and sailed away. I could feel the branch jiggle, lighten. So I pushed off too, unfurled my arms and followed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Del Pritchard? My name is Joe Trona."

  "I know who you are."

  "Can we talk a minute?"

  "I got to punch in. Then I got a job to do."

  He walked past me and into the Transportation Authority maintenance yard headquarters. It was Monday morning. It had taken me an hour to from my house in Orange to the TA yard in Irvine—a distance of al fifteen miles. My ankle was stiff from working the Mustang's clutch.

  I followed Pritchard, stood behind him while he slipped a timecard an electronic clock, then into a slotted holder on the wall.

  "It might be better if we found a quiet place," I said.

  "Let me get some coffee."

  Pritchard fished out some change and fed it into a machine in the corner. The coffee steamed up in front of his face as he took a sip. He thick, baby-faced, blue-eyed. My age, maybe younger. His fingers were stained black from his work. His OCTA shirt was clean and his boots looked new.

  "What's this about? You're a deputy, right?"

  "Yes. Maybe we could go outside."

  He looked at me hard, then led the way into the maintenance yard. The big OCTA buses were grouped along one side. The white TA Enforcement Impalas that Will detested so much were parked on another. There were shuttle vans the county used for short bus routes; emergency SUV’s; a fleet of sheriff's department cruisers; another fleet of unmarked county sedans; a dozen new Kawasaki 1200s motorcycles.

  There were three big, high bays. I watched an electric door roll up. More vehicles in there. The mechanics were already throwing open engine compartments and raising hoods.

  "You do it all," I said.

  "Yep. All the county stuff—sheriff's, TA, all the buses and emergency vehicles. Anything that rolls. We don't do the fire trucks or the Jeeps the lifeguards use. Separate garage and mechanics for those. Sanitation does its own thing, too."

  "How about the supervisors' lease cars?"

  "Sure. There's only, what, seven of them?"

  "That's right. My dad drove a black BMW. One of the big seven series."

  "I remember it. Sorry, what happened and all."

  "Thank you."

  Del Pritchard sipped his coffee again, looked out toward the OCTA buses. "So, what do you want?"

  "I want to know who told you to put the homing transmitter on my father's car. Undercarriage, right side, down between the chassis and the body molding. It has your fingerprints on it."

  His face went red. "You need to talk to my supervisor. I just do what they tell me, you know?"

  "We can leave him out of this if you tell me who gave the order."

  He glanced out to the yard, then back at me. "I don't know anything about a transmitter. Nothing at all. Everything here is by the rules."

  "Then take me to your boss."

  "Come on. "The maintenance yard supervisor was Frank Beals. Pritchard said they had a problem and Beals excused him, then took me into his office and shut the door. Beals hadn't heard anything about a transmitter. He called the TA maintenance department manager, Soessner, who lumbered into office about thirty seconds later. He didn't know what I was talking about either, said they fix cars, not bug them. He told me to come with him.

  Soessner took me to the office of the Transportation Authority technical director, Adamson.

  Adamson, a suit-and-tie man, heard me out.

  "Is this part of an official investigation?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "I thought homicide detail would do that."

  "I'm working with Birch."

  "Rick's a good guy."

  I waited.

  Adamson made a call on his cell phone. "Carl, we got a deputy he Joe Trona, asking about a transmitter on a supervisor's car. He says transmitter had one of our guys' prints on it. Pritchard."

  Adamson listened and nodded, then punched off.

  "Rupaski says you're having lunch today at the Grove. He told me tell you he'd clear it all up then."

  I got to the Grove a few minutes early. The guard at the first gate took my name and plate numbers, the name of the member I was going to meet, slipped a card under the left windshield wiper, then let me in.

  The road wound back into the hills. They were tan by now, would green up until the first rain—probably November, maybe later. The air was warm and still. Through the dense trees I could see purple bougainvilla shivering against the stucco of the hacienda-style buildings. I parked in shade.

  An off-duty deputy working the entrance recognized me, made the call inside, then opened the door. I took off my hat and stepped inside to smell of food, the hushed clink of dishes, soft music and low voices.

  The maitre d' smiled and crossed my name off a list. "Mr. Rupask booth is this way, Mr. Trona.

  "We passed through the main dining room and took the stairs up to lounge. I looked at the burnished redwood floor, the rough-hewn wooden chandeliers hung by chain from the high ceiling, the billiards table where I'd listened in on Will and the Reverend Daniel. I recognized Rupaski's driver—Travis—sitting alone at the bar, chewing something. He nodded at me.

  Rupaski's booth was in a far corner. He stood and shook my hand, motioned me to sit. The maitre d' started to draw the privacy curtain but Rupaski stopped him.

  "No need for that, Erik. We've got nothing to hide in this booth. For once."

  He laughed and Erik laughed. "But bring me a Partagas Churchill and a Glenfiddich in a water glass. “Joe, smokes or drinks?"

  "Lemonade, please."

  Rupaski was a big man, seventy maybe, with a high forehead, bald on top with long gray hair combed back on the sides. The hair made a little ducktail flip in the back. His eyes were dark brown and set deep in his face. Thick brows. Black suit and a white shirt, no tie. The jacket was too small for his barrel chest and he looked uncomfortable in it. His hands were thick and rough, his fingers blunt. He was a Chicagoan hired away from that city ten years ago. He grew up poor there, was known to be street tough and able to get his way in a backroom deal. A good boss and a crafty bureaucrat.

  "Don't sweat the bug in the Beemer," he said. "Will asked me to put one on so I put one on. Simple as that."

  "Sir, it doesn't sound that simple to me."

  He raised a bushy eyebrow, smiled. His teeth were big and crowded. "I'll tell you exactly what he told me. He said Mary Ann was keeping some strange dates, late at night. Usually she drove her own car. Sometimes she drove his. He wanted to follow her at a discreet distance. 'Discreet distance.' Those were his words. So I had Pritchard do Will's car one morning out in the maintenance yard. And I gave Will a transmitter to put on Mary Ann's. Something with adhesive he could just stick right on."

  It almost played. I knew Mary Ann liked to drive the sleek new lease car. A couple of times, out on our night business, we'd use Mary Ann's Jeep because she wanted the sedan. And she'd told me she liked to drive sometimes, late, going nowhere fast. B
ut Will had never said anything about her going out. If he was worried, why didn't he tell me? And never seen a radio receiver in Will's possession—not in the car, not in briefcase, nowhere. Most of all, Will and Rupaski were enemies. ^Why trust an enemy with something like that? Why not have your son, driver, bodyguard and gopher do the job?

  "I understand now," I said.

  "Good. Hey, smokes and spirits."

  A waiter in a tuxedo set down a big glass ashtray with a cutter, wooden matches and a thick cigar in it. Then a simple water glass with golden liquid in the bottom fourth. And my lemonade.

  "The special today is poached Chilean sea bass in a cilantro sauce, served with endive salad and garlic-mushroom couscous."

  "Steak, mashed potatoes and a salad with Thousand Island for me,'' said Rupaski. "That would be a T-bone, rare. Get the same for Joe, here. He's a growing boy."

  "May I cut and light your cigar, sir?"

  "Yeah."

  "Slot cut or straight, sir?"

  "Goddamned straight cut, Kenny. We go through this every time."

  "Yes, sir. Of course."

  When Kenny was done cutting the cigar, Rupaski stuck it in his mouth and aimed it up while the waiter torched it with a surprisingly powerful butane lighter. The smoke came out thick and powerful, rising in a lazy; cloud toward the ceiling. Kenny bowed and turned away. Rupaski held the cigar.

  "Some guys say they draw better without the band." His voice was thick, like there was a blanket over him. "I say that's bullshit."

  He inhaled again, blew another cloud. "Best thing about a private club is you can do what you want. Here in California, Joe, we've got teenagers carrying guns to school, but you can't smoke a cigar in a bar. Something's wrong when individual rights get smaller and the crimes get bigger."

  We watched an elegantly dressed young woman descend the staircase from the third-level conference rooms. Alone, walking briskly, a small purse in one hand, which she held slightly out, for balance, as she came down the steps. Red hair past her shoulders, green satiny dress. I heard her shoes on the wood.

  "Yes, sir, individual rights. You met Will and Dana Millbrae for lunch here the day before he died. Can you tell me what you talked about?"