Silent Joe Page 22

  I wanted my mommy, too. So I called her and we talked and made date.

  Bridget Andersen told me it wouldn't be good to be seen with me. We set up a noon meeting at a park up in the Orange hills. I was early so I found a picnic bench in the shade and sat. I smelled the sagebrush and listened to the cars hissing on the avenue far below.

  Bridget, brightly blond with big dark glasses, parked and walked toward me. Blue skirt and heels, white blouse, a purse over one shoulder. She smoothed her skirt with her left hand as she sat down across from me. She looked uncomfortable with herself, like she often did. Like she didn’t know what to do with the fact that she was attractive. When she took off her glasses I saw that her stunning, ice-blue eyes were shot with pink.

  "What? Didn't the eyedrops get the red out?"

  "Not all of it, Ms. Andersen."

  "Bridget. What took you so long to call?"

  "I'm slow sometimes. But I finally heard the tape of Millbrae and Rupaski."

  "Ah, of course. Your father's bounty."

  "I wasn't sure what to make of it."

  "Will was."

  "Can you explain it?"

  She put her glasses back on. "I trusted your father. Can I trust you?"

  "I'm here for him, not for myself."

  Her gaze was calm and discerning, in spite of the bloodshot eyes. "He trained you well."

  Even a dog can keep secrets.

  "Look, Joe," she said. "Everybody knew that Rupaski's unofficial bosses wanted to unload the 91 Toll Road on the county because they're losing their shirts on it. You know the cast—Blazak and his developer friends, that ilk. Price? Call it twenty-seven million, round figures. But they needed the Board of Supervisors to approve a county purchase. Three against. Three for it, with Millbrae undecided as of February. Well, the Grove Club Research and Action Committee came up with some funds to influence the right people. Most of it went to the PR flaks, to get the public to see it their way and pressure the pols. Some was soft money for PACs, the usual unregulated bribery. Some of it was not-so-soft. Will smelled weakness in Millie. He was ready."

  "He had me put in the tape recorder."

  She smiled without any happiness at all. "That was nice work, Joe. You even cleaned up the drill shavings."

  "Thank you."

  "Rupaski was in charge of the hard money disbursements. Millie's part was put into brown bags and set in a gully, by a bush exactly one hundred feet northeast of the Windy Ridge toll plaza. The bush is a wild buckwheat, to be precise. That was what Rupaski called 'the usual spot.' I know because Millbrae sent me to pick up those bags."

  Will's handwritten notes, I thought: dates and amounts. "That's what the taped conversation is about."

  "Exactly—another slop bucket, filled up and ready for Millie's pale little fingers. It was the big bucket, too, because the vote was the following Thursday. This was about a month before your father was killed."

  "But Millie voted against the sale. He sided with Will."

  "That he did."

  I remembered the night very clearly. The look on Rupaski's face. The way Millbrae hustled out of the meeting. Will's gloating in the car later, about Millie voting the sonofabitch down for once.

  It took me just a second to figure out what had really happened.

  "Oh," I said. "I see."

  "Like father, like son."

  "Will played the tape for Millbrae before the vote."

  "They call it blackmail, Joe."

  I thought for a moment. Millbrae getting payola from the Grove Trust Research and Action Committee. Rupaski the bagman. Will with the incriminating evidence. And Bridget making the actual pickups.

  "Did Millbrae know you were helping Will?"

  "No. Millie thinks everyone loves him as much as he loves himself.'

  "Did Millbrae tell Rupaski why he had to vote no?"

  "Sure he did. The first thing any politician learns is to pass the blame. Millie's a natural."

  "So both of them realized that Will had them over a barrel."

  She nodded, studying me. "They were terrified he'd go to the grand jury or to his friends on the Sheriff's. He never would, of course, because that would sink me, and maybe even himself."

  "They didn't know that."

  "No, they didn't. Will had them good and tight. They even argue about whose phone had the bug on it. I'd pulled out the tape record before Millie started looking."

  Bridget took a deep breath and sighed. She looked past me with one of those gazes that see nothing but the backside of thoughts. Then she laughed quietly. "Will drove us out to Windy Ridge the night of the last payoff, before he'd played that tape for Millie. He took the:money out of the bag, put in some sand and rocks, handed the bag to me. delivered it to Millie, per usual. Innocent, loyal Bridget, doing her mule work. I didn't see Millie's face when he opened it, but I wish I could have. Will told me Jaime over at the HACF needed a shot of help. Ninety grand must have gotten them something."

  Didn't the ninety help?

  Will, I thought. Robin Hood of Orange County. Fine, until it gets you killed.

  "Joe, I'd have shot Millie with poison darts if that's what Will wanted me to do. I loved your father."

  "I know."

  "What did he say about me?"

  "He said you had the biggest, meanest heart in Orange County."

  She thought about that, and finally smiled. "He liked to cast me against type. I almost got an ulcer, knowing that telephone was bugged."

  I could have said that Will told me The Unknown Thing ran amok in Bridget Andersen, but I didn't.

  She stood up and walked back to her car.

  Driving back out of the hills I realized that Rupaski and Millbrae had good reasons to hate my father. Good enough reasons to kill him, too?

  I kept my appointment with Dr. Zussman, though I had nothing I wanted to tell him. My heart warmed with even so much as a thought about June Dauer, but she wasn't for Dr. Zussman, or for anybody else. She was for me. So I told him about my years at Hillview and my relationships with Will and Mary Ann and my brothers. Then we talked about the shooting again, and I told him I felt the same as before. He brought up what I'd said about half a coffee cup's worth of remorse and I said that was still a good comparison. He seemed disappointed. He kept asking me about remorse and denial and anger and sublimation. I could tell I wasn't telling him what he wanted to hear. He said he thought I could go back to work in a week. Then it was my turn to be disappointed, and I told him so. He smiled and nodded and we made another appointment.

  I spent part of the afternoon alone in the plumbing tunnel of Mod F, just listening randomly, hoping to pick up something useful. I learned about some dope being smuggled in through the staff dining kitchen, and that some of the inmates were passing kites in the chapel on Sunday mornings. Nothing new. Somehow, being locked in that narrow little tunnel made me feel secure. I took the mechanics' sled for a sleighride, and got a good look at a couple of Aryan Brotherhood thugs in the day room, tormenting the Mexican gangster in the cell next door. The Aryans sang one of their racist songs loud, together, saluting with their arms straight out, laughing in between the verses.

  Later, when I told Sergeant Delano what I'd learned, he chewed me out for being stupid enough to come back here when I didn't have to. But he let me hang around in the bubble for a while—that's the main guard station in the intake-release center—not working, just being.

  I talked briefly with the Mod J guards and inmates. Sammy Nguyen had seen the rat again, was agitating for the trap I told him he'd never get. He asked me for a small flashlight, one of the good MagLite brands, so he could see the damned rat in the dark and throw something at it. Flashlights were forbidden in the jail, and I told him so. I told him that Bernadette was doing well and missing him very much. He gave me a suspicious stare, then flopped onto his bunk and stared up at her picture.

  Giant Mike Staich was in a holding tank while they searched his cell; someone had ratted him out for having a weap
on. I watched the search detail work through the small cell. They found nothing, left Giant Mike’s few possessions in the middle of the floor and walked out.

  Dr. Chapin Fortnell was in trial.

  Dave Hauser, assistant DA turned drug supplier, showed me a picture of the property he and his family would purchase as soon as he got this "stupid misunderstanding cleared up." The property had palms and a white sand beach and a lagoon of water the same color blue as the sky above

  Serial rapist Frankie Dilsey lay on his cot with his back to the bars, humming. His feet were moving, like a dog running in a dream. Ice-Box Killer Gary Sargola looked at me mournfully as I walked by, but said nothing. His penalty phase was due to start next week, and the DA was asking for death. He was a pasty, bespectacled man and it was hard imagine him doing what he'd done. But when you thought about it, none of the guys in there looked any worse than anybody else. In fact, they looked a lot better than me.

  I sat with some of the other deputies for a while in the staff dining room. We gossiped about the inmates and the bosses and drank coffee. Some were brand-new, and had almost an entire five-year stretch to go. Others were down to their last few months, even weeks. I was getting close to the end of my jail days—four years down and one to go.

  When Sergeant Delano came in, we sat up a little straighter and quit talking.

  "Trona," he said, "you've got a hot call on four."

  I went to the guard station, punched the code for the outside line and said hello.

  It was Rick Birch. He said the surveillance team had followed John Gaylen to a public park in Irvine. Gaylen had sat on a bench by a lake for two hours. He had made three calls on his cell phone and received two others.

  "That was between noon and two this afternoon," he said. "At one-thirty, someone put a silenced bullet through Ike Cao's forehead in the ICU. We're still working it, but there was a new nurse in the unit just before it happened. Nobody's seen her since."

  "What did she look like?"

  "Fresh out of surgery—scrubs, hair net, mask, maybe a stethoscope and a clipboard. Short, wide, overweight. Dark hair and eyes. They got her on security video. The picture's terrible. Like the fog that night—hard to make out."

  "Pearlita," I said.

  "We've got six teams down on Raitt Street right now. If she shows, she's ours."

  My little trick had worked. It had worked well enough to get Ike Cao killed. My heart sank then, just a little, even though I told myself that Ike was an attempted murderer, that his own gang boss had killed him.

  Birch read my mind.

  "Don't let your heart bleed out, Trona. Ike Cao helped murder your father. He'd have murdered you, too, if he had a chance."

  "Thank you, sir," I said.

  "The bullet was still inside Cao's head. We'll recover it, run it through DrugFire and the Bureau."

  The Reverend Daniel Alter's face went bright red when I showed him the film strips from the safe deposit box. Out of respect, I looked away from him and stared out the windows of the Chapel of Light. The long summer evening was just beginning to fall. The sky was pale blue and the moon was an upended curl of white over Saddleback Mountain.

  "I'm humiliated," he said. "And absolutely outraged."

  "Yes, sir."

  "What am I supposed to say to this?"

  "I don't know."

  "In Will's safe-deposit box?”

  I nodded. "But you knew that, Reverend. He didn't keep those in the bank because he liked them. He kept them there because they were valuable. How much was he getting out of you?"

  His eyes got big, magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses. Disbelief. But even I—a great fan of Reverend Daniel's performances—could see how forced it was. He sighed and dropped the astonishment. He looked at me.

  "We agreed on ten thousand a month for one year. I paid twice, so I owed ten more installments."

  "That's not much money, is it, Reverend? For a very wealthy man like yourself?"

  "Will said if I'd have gone any further he would have pauperized me I laughed at that, because we both knew he wouldn't. You see, Will was illegally taking advantage of me, I know. But I wasn't really paying him because he was donating that ten thousand to the Hillview Home for Children every month. He had no interest in the money as money. He was interested in it for what it could do. So, he caught me in a sin, and I'm paying for it. I didn't hate Will for what he was doing. I actually thought it was . . . fair."

  I thought of the ten-thousand-dollar receipts I'd found in the safe deposit box.

  "When was that film shot?"

  He gazed out the window. "Two months ago. At the Grove. Luria was lovely and lonely and when I went upstairs to rest, she and a lady friend followed me into the room. We talked and talked. They drank a little. Actually, they drank like Packers fans. Will came in at some point, as did several others—to talk and freshen up their drinks. The bar in the hospitality suite was open. People coming and going. Everyone was a little crazy, actually. Some rather provocative things on the television. And that moment caught on the film, well, yes, I kissed her. I confess to that. I couldn't help myself, Joe. In fact, it was supposed to be a professional kiss—a peck on the cheek. But she turned her lips to mine at the very last moment, and I was . . . well, Joe, I fell And as soon as I'd done it, I knew it was very, very wrong. So I apologized and I went back down to the lounge. I had a strong drink, I must say. Then I had someone drive me home. To my Rosemary. The wife I love. Well, I mean she wasn't actually at home, at that specific point. She was on Majorca, ministering to the ah . . . ministering to herself, I think. Believe me, when I saw the film later, I cursed Will and his little briefcase camera. What trickery he was capable of."

  Daniel looked suddenly smaller to me, as if he'd shrunk a size in the last five minutes. He wouldn't look at me.

  "Two weeks later, Luria was killed on Coast Highway."

  "I was crushed. I recognized her picture in the papers. I prayed for her. And I prayed for me, that your father would never show people what I'd done to her."

  "Did you know that the kid who was killed outside the Pelican Point guardhouse was her brother? Luria was pregnant. She was severely beaten before that truck hit her. Miguel Domingo knew all that. His answer was a machete and a screwdriver."

  "Jaime told me."

  He bowed his head.

  "Who brought her to the Grub, Reverend?"

  "I have no idea, Joe."

  "You don't get in without a sponsor, party girl or not."

  "Yes, yes."

  He pursed his lips and frowned. He closed his eyes. "I believe, Joe, that the party was thrown by the Committee to Reelect Dana Millbrae. In conjunction with the Research and Action Committee of the Grove Foundation."

  It figured. I remembered the night. It was back in April and I'd been there, down in the bar, drinking sodas while the party went on upstairs. The players came out for that event. I remembered Daniel, in fact, a little tipsy. Will was all over the place—downstairs in the restaurant, then in bar, then upstairs into the hospitality suite and back down again. Lots attractive, single women, though I didn't see Luria Bias.

  "Reverend, your security man, Bo Warren, met with the man killed Will. This was the night before it happened. Why?"

  This time, Daniel's astonishment was real. "I ... I can't imagine that, Joe, let alone explain it. I can't believe that."

  "I've got a witness. Somebody was in the car with Warren. I need know who it was."

  "I'll talk to him. I will absolutely talk to him."

  "Tell me, please, sir, as soon as you know."

  I stood and gathered up my hat and briefcase. I went to the wind and looked out at the old day and the young night.

  "Joe, I'm . . . willing to pay you the remaining hundred thousand dollars. The Hillview Children's Home would be glad to have the money. If you take away that incriminating film strip on my desk here, all you're left with is a legitimate charitable donation to a very worthy cause."

 
"Will could fake ten grand a month from the family fortune. I can't that, sir."

  "Then I'll make the donation myself and save you both the headache.’’

  I wondered why Daniel hadn't been making his payments to Hillview directly, all along. It took me just a second to see it from Will's angle, and I had my answer: Will didn't trust him enough. I turned and looked at Daniel. I wanted him to be holy but he wasn't. I wanted him to be strong, but he seemed to me to be weak when it matter and strong when it didn't. I wanted him to be honest and forthright, but he wasn't really those things, either.

  "You look so disappointed, Joe."

  "I spilled a lot of blood, sir. But Will died anyway. I thought you were close to God, but with all respect, Reverend, you strike me as kind of dishonest. You know what it seems like to me? It seems to me that if just one man would have stood up and done the right thing, this whole chain of things wouldn't have happened. Lies on lies, then more lies. Greed on greed on more greed. Nobody stopped. Nobody tried to stop."

  "That's where you're wrong. We all try. We try every day. But we're imperfect and we're flawed. So we fail. Don't let perfection become the enemy of right."

  "Those words are true. But they leave an awfully big hole, sir."

  "Yes. I know. Please sit down another minute, Joe. Sit down, please."

  I went back over to the chair, put down the briefcase and hat, and sat again.

  "Joe, Will was not a saint. I see you're learning that about him. During the course of a man's life, Joe, he'll be faced with many difficult decisions. Men in power, like your father, they have to make more of them than others. It's difficult. That's why we need God to guide us. We cannot captain our own vessels alone."

  "Reverend, I always thought Will was right. Even when I saw him doing something that wasn't right, I figured he was working toward a larger good. I thought when I got older and wiser, I'd see behind the actions to the larger things behind them. I thought his wrongs were . . . necessary detours."

  "As well they may have been."

  I collected my things and stood. "What if they weren't?"

  "Here," he said. He handed me back the envelope with the film strips in them. "These are yours."