Silent Joe (12 page)

Maybe half the people wanted to see Will's body one last time. It took an
hour. I was the second one, right after Glenn. I had seen cadavers in the lab and accident fatalities still bleeding. I'd seen Luke Smith and Ming Nixon. But this was my first
viewing.
Nothing had prepared me for the shock of seeing death on the face of someone I loved. I looked at him and I realized what a great power, what a great presence, what a great
life
had ended. I kissed my fingertips and ran them over his hard cheek and walked outside.

Tears swelled from my heart, and a cold passion for revenge rose up with them. I pulled my hat down low.

What I remember about the burial was the bright green expanse of grass on the hillsides and the long black motorcade inching to a stop around the hole in the ground. The hole was covered by a black tarp, betrayed only by the mounds of orange earth around the cover.

I stood there and watched the cars arrive, and I wondered how those shooters had known where Will and I would be.

Had they followed us, or had they been told where we were going? Did the people who sent us to that address also commit the murder? Was Will sent there to save Savannah Blazak, or only to die?

I hoped those killers had been waiting for us. Because, if they'd been waiting for us, I'd simply missed them. Maybe someday I could forgive myself for being surprised. But if they'd followed us, I'd failed Will in an even more flagrant way.

Mouth shut, eyes open.

My mind wandered, but it kept coming back to those cars, those men, that night. I knew I should feel pity for the men I'd shot. And guilt for taking their lives. I tried to allow myself to feel those things but I didn't. There's a cold place inside me where I put the bad things. It's like a freezer but the door is heavier. And once I put them in there, it's hard to get them out. I told myself that they were bad men who would have murdered me next, absolutely. This justified what I'd done, and the freezer door was closed now. But I couldn't close the door on all of the ifs: if I'd seen them earlier, if I'd thought faster, if I'd listened to my unsettled nerves, if the fog hadn't rolled in.

I watched from a distance as the mourners filed past my family. I'd said all I could say to anyone. So I faded back under a dense elm alone, eyes open and mouth shut, hat brim down for privacy and shade.

I knew most of the people there. I saw Will's fellow supervisors; mayors and assemblypersons; judges; sheriff's department brass; the governor of California; two Congressional Representatives. Some were friends some were enemies, but they all came.

The developers were all there. Land is still the most valuable commodity, the biggest money-maker in Orange County. Will had had disagreements with every one of them. And in his own strange way, friends with many of them, too. I recognized the foot soldiers—the well-spoken guys and gals who make multimillions for their companies every year---The Irvine Company, Philip Morris, Rancho Santa Margarita Comp Their bosses were there, too, the CEOs and CFOs, chairmen of boards--the kinds of guys who come and go in their own jets and helicopters.

Then the entrepreneurs, the billionaires who did it on their own: technology whizzes, young darlings of the NASDAQ, inventors, marketers of all kinds. Jack Blazak, who'd made his first fortune with yellow lawn sprinklers that wouldn't clog, was there, of course. He looked even worse than the last time I'd seen him, as if every day his daughter was gone another cubic foot of life out of him.

Next on the power scale were the bureaucrats. Will's cohorts, the pit bulls of government—humble and unassuming one minute, territorial unmoving the next. They work for Districts, Agencies, Bureaus, Offices, Administrations, Commissions, Services, Sections, Departments, Boards, Authorities. They've got no money compared to developers or entrepreneurs, but they have power over them. That power can be friendly helpful and profitable for everyone at times. It can make or break. The cost is negotiable.

Will was a bureaucrat. I may be one someday, too. I have probably the best training a bureaucrat can have: my first five institutional years. Then there were his friends and family and neighbors and acquaintances; his doctor, his barber, his tennis pro. Even our old trash collector was there, a young father of three way back when I was a kid, now middle-aged man with gray hair, a stiff body and lines of sadness around his eyes. Will used to yak it up with him on Wednesdays at 6:30
a.m
., trash day on our street, before he dropped me off at the bus stop, then went on to the sheriff's department headquarters for work.

I watched them and wondered at how many lives a life is made up of. I felt proud and empty at the same time. I felt invaded and defeated.

I felt betrayed when Jennifer Avila, chokingly beautiful in black, spoke to my mother.

Betrayed by Will, and somehow, by Jennifer, too.

My heart pounded hard, then hardly at all. The things I looked at were a little blurred—my eyes weren't working right. I felt a thick hot sweat on my back. How was I going to talk to a radio host in just a few short hours? I actually shuddered, hot as I was in my black suit.

Old Carl Rupaski, head of the Orange County Transportation Authority—and an admitted political enemy of my father's—lumbered over to my tree and shook my hand. His eyes were moist. I could smell tobacco and alcohol on him. "I want to talk to you sometime, Joe. Maybe when we're both not in shock. How about lunch next week, Monday, say?"

"Yes, sir. That would be fine."

He clamped a heavy hand onto my arm. "This is really the shits, kid. Really the shits."

Jaime Medina joined me in the shade after that. He looked more forlorn and wronged than usual, more stooped and hapless. We talked about Will for a while, and Jaime told me how much Will had done for the HACF, how things were going to be tough now, with their champion in government gone, and a criminal investigation pending.

"I never told those guys they could vote before they were citizens," he said. "It's a misunderstanding. That's all. What's a few dozen votes, anyway?"

I shrugged. I couldn't get worked up about HACF problems right then.

"You want to help us?"

"How, sir?"

"I got someone I want you to talk to. It's a big scandal. You can make some waves, become famous."

"I don't want to be famous."

"You already are. This would make you the new champion of justice. Look, talk to this boy. He's the brother of Miguel Domingo, the one cops murdered. He's got a story to tell. You see, Miguel Domingo had
reason
for trying to get into that gated place in Newport Beach. It's got to do with the woman."

"What woman?"

"Luria Bias, killed outside her apartment. Interested?"

"No, thank you. I have a lot to do right now."

"Such as what, Joe?"

"Look around you, sir."

Jaime did. He sighed. "I'm going to call you. We'll talk at a better time."

A few minutes later, Rick Birch ambled up. He stood beside me, nather than in front of me, which I thought was interesting. He looked out a crowd with me. I liked the fact that he didn't say anything for a while. When he did talk, it wasn't about anything I could have anticipated.

"My brother was murdered when I was ten," he said. "He was eight years older than me—tough kid, tough neighborhood up in Oakland. Found him in a gutter behind a bar. No arrests. Made me want to become a cop, catch creeps, put them in jail."

"That's a good reason, sir."

"You holding up?"

"Yes, sir."

"Look, I've got John Gaylen coming in for a little informal talk tomorrow. I'd like you there, on the other side of the glass."

"Absolutely."

Later, at the wake, we three brothers found ourselves in a corner together. We were up sixteen stories in the Newport Marriott Hotel, in a restaurant provided for free by the manager, another friend of Will's. You could see the ocean from there, a smoke-gray plate under the June sky.

Will, Jr. and Glenn were drunk. I drank a lot too, for me anyway. I usually don't drink much, because it makes me feel less ready. My brothers were both flying out the next day, back to their family lives and their jobs, and they felt bad about leaving Mary Ann and me.

Will, Jr. hugged me. "Anything I can do to help, Joe. All you have to do is call."

Then Glenn: "Take care of Mom. I wish I lived closer, to help with that. And take care of yourself, too."

Their children rushed past us, Will, Jr.'s waving cocktail swords and umbrellas, chasing the twins.

I felt abandoned by them. Why couldn't they just stop their lives, move back to Southern California for a while, help me find out who and why?

Because it wasn't practical. Life had to go on. What Will would have wanted, and all that.

We stood there a moment and watched the children play, and I understood one beautiful, heartbreaking truth: life was going on already.

I was the last person to leave the wake. I had a little time before my interview with June Dauer on KFOC, so I spent it with another martini and a window seat there on the sixteenth story. The restaurant workers took away the chafing dishes and the tables, rolling the circular ones, folding the rectangles. I listened to the clank of chairs and the grunts of labor but those sounds seemed to be happening a million miles away from me. Everything did. I was dreading the interview but I had another drink and went anyway.

I was drunk when I got there. More than I thought I was when I left the hotel. I regretted it. All I'd wanted to do was forget, and here I was, expected to remember. In front of a thousand bored listeners.

I remember sitting in a cool reception room with purple carpet and orange chairs with chrome legs. I chewed two pieces of cinnamon gum and drank black coffee. I watched the wadded-up gum foil roll around inside my hat.

Then the producer of
Real Live
came in, a smiling young man with long hair and a goatee. He introduced himself as Sean.

"June's about ready," he said. "Water, soft drink?"

"More coffee, please."

"Here's the green room. Have a seat and I'll get you some coffee. How 'bout a shot of Kahlua in that, take off the edge?"

"Better not."

I sat and looked out at the broadcast booths. Three dark, one dimly lit. In the lit one, a young woman with curly black hair was standing by of the boom mikes, head down, apparently reading something on the table. The glass caught her reflection and reproduced her at an odd angle. I watched the reflection.

Sean came back with a foam cup and set it on the table in front of me. "Hot," he said. "We're on at the top of the hour. Just a few minutes, by the way, man, I'm sorry about what happened to your father."

"Thank you."

He hesitated, then walked out.

Five minutes later he escorted me into the lit booth. The sounds in it were flat and the light was soft and silver. The curly haired woman came around the table and offered her hand.

"June Dauer."

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Dauer."

She smiled. Her eyes were dark and her face was very pretty. The lines of her jaw were straight and strong. Small nose, small mouth. She had on a sleeveless denim blouse tucked into wrinkled shorts, socks rolled do blue canvas sneakers. Her legs were well shaped. She shook my hand.

"Joe, I'm so sorry this interview timed out with your father's funeral. I would never have scheduled it this way if I'd known."

"We didn't make the arrangements until after, Ms. Dauer. It's no trouble at all."

She shook her head, looking at me with her eyes narrowed just a little.

"I asked you to leave those good manners at home, now, didn't I?"

"Sorry, I—"

"Relax, Joe. Have a seat here and put those headphones on. We'll do voice check and then get it on."

I sat on the swivel chair, watched her round the table to the other side then set my hat on the table in front of me. She sat down and rolled her chair forward. The studio was mostly dark, with a gentle overhead spotlight that set her off from the quiet shadows. I looked up and saw a light spotting me, too. My face felt hot and my collar felt tight and my heart was pounding like I was running a race. I put on the headphones and took three deep breaths and felt worse. I was about to go up to the Quiet Spot but June Dauer's clear, light voice suddenly entered my skull.

"Count to ten, Joe, normal voice. Get your mouth about three inches from the mike. Speak off to the side just a little, not straight on."

I did all that.

"Good, good. Had a little to drink, Joe?"

"More than usual."

"What's usual?"

"Hardly anything."

"You a good drunk?"

"Guess we'll find out."

She looked through the glass into the next room, where Sean nodded.

"And three, and two and one," he said. "And you are
on. "