Silent Joe (37 page)

June called and I told her I couldn't talk because I was expecting very important call. I tried to be polite but maybe I could have said it better. She wasn't happy when she hung up and my heart felt much heavier than it should have. I wondered if love was always irrational, or only in my own retarded history.

I felt cut loose. Adrift. I had needed Thor more than I'd known. He was my Lucifer, and always my blame for the darkness inside me. I’d needed Will, too—my light. Now, with both of them gone in his own way, I felt like the past life I'd lived had become false. It's a terrible emptiness to see your own history dissolve. To feel the foundations that you labored so hard to construct slipping, sliding, turning to liquid. With my heart thumping fast, I called June back and explained what I could explain. Thor and Charlotte. Drunk and high. To hurt Charlotte. Nothing personal. A thousand a month for twenty-plus years to keep world thinking that I was his son. Postmark: San Diego. A lot of time passed before June spoke.

"You're new now," she said very quietly. "You're free. And by the way, I love you. I knew it the minute our interview was over."

"I love you, too. I knew it the minute you jumped into the bay with me.

An hour later the phone rang. My cell, not the house line.

"Get the money. Keep this phone ready. If one tiny thing doesn't smell right from a thousand miles out, I'll kill her. If I get a whiff of the FBI I'll kill her. If I don't like your tone of voice I'll kill her."

"Don't kill her. Get rich instead." He hung up. I punched off, set the cell phone back on the table and called his father on the hard line.

I
waited for Jack Blazak at the entrance to Diver's Cove in Laguna Beach. It was half past midnight. The sky was clear and I could stars twinkling beyond the trees. The night smelled of ocean spray and eucalyptus and jasmine.

Blazak got there five minutes late. He showed me the suitcase trunk of his new Jaguar. The bills were bundled in stacks of what looked like a hundred each. I hefted the suitcase into the trunk of my Mustang.

"That's a lot of money, Joe."

"Two million dollars, I hope."

"A man could buy himself a nice house near the beach with half of it. Live pretty well for a while on the other half."

"Maybe that's what Alex is going to do."

"He'll piss it away. Like everything else."

"Why do you hate each other?"

He looked at me and shook his head. "I don't hate him. I'm disappointed in him. Every advantage, but no performance. He's undermined everything we've ever done for him. Run off with your own sister and a ransom for her? What the hell kind of young man does that?" I didn't have an answer. All I knew was what I'd seen of Savannah---a sweet young girl in very bad trouble. That was enough. It meant more than Jack and Alex put together.

Blazak stepped up close to me. "Don't bring Savannah to the house. Bring her here. Call Lorna, like you did before. Ask her if she's heard from Savannah.
If she's heard from Savannah.
Lorna will be able to get me without Marchant or anybody else knowing. I'll pick her up right here."

I agreed.

"And the tape we talked about—I'm trusting you to return it to me along with my daughter."

"That's the deal, sir."

"You
think
that's the deal, Trona. But you don't know Alex. It's almost guaranteed, he'll try to rob us somehow."

"I'll make sure he doesn't."

He looked at me doubtfully. "You're alone on this—no Bureau or sheriffs?"

"That's right."

"No friends along to help?"

"I'll handle it."

Blazak stared at me, then stepped back. "What do you want? Why are you doing this?"

"For Will. And your daughter."

"There's a hundred grand in it for you, if everything goes like it's supposed to."

"Thank you, sir."

"That doesn't impress you?"

"No."

"Do you even want it?"

I had to think about that, even though I had no intention of returning his daughter to him. "I'd like a hundred thousand dollars."

He smiled. Like I'd seen the light, or agreed with him on some crucial point. The thing about people who love money is they think everybody loves money. It makes a big blind spot.

"No tape, no deal," he said. "Savannah
and
the tape. Remember that."

Driving out Laguna Canyon with two million dollars in my trunk, I did

remember it. I kept the cell phone on the seat beside me, waiting for call that would let me finish what Will had failed to.

The War Room was buzzing: Marchant and twelve other agents, Birch Ouderkirk and Sheriff Dwight Vale, and the captain of the sheriff's team.

Marchant put the two million into a beat-up black duffel bag that was fitted with an electronic tracking system in the handles. He put another small transmitter between the bills in one stack.

"You can't even see our ace," he said. "It's hidden in the lining, infrared emitter. It makes a heat signature we can see from the air—either fixed wing or helo. Wherever this duffel goes, we can track it. It'll show up like a firefly."

Sheriff Vale is a tall, heavy man, and his nickname in the department is the Bull. He made the calls for our end, but everybody in the room knew that the Bureau's word was going to be final.

Marchant and Vale had already arranged for two "CPS social worker’’ to accompany me. They would be sheriff's homicide detective Irene Collier, and a Santa Ana PD detective named Cheryl Redd. Collier was fortyish and stout; Redd was slightly built, mid-fifties with long gray-black hair. When she put on her reading glasses and held her hair back behind head, she looked harmless enough.

"Call me Church Lady," she said with a wicked little smile. "But watch out for the Sig."

Marchant nodded. "Joe, when Alex calls to set the drop, tell him you want to bring along two female social workers. Tell him you need them there to get Savannah into protective custody—otherwise, she goes back to her father and mother."

They fixed me up with a second cell phone to communicate with War Room, and a van that would hold anything you wanted it to, just case Alex Blazak was trusting enough to let me drive the vehicle of choice. I even got a new set of body armor, the expensive Spectral Point Blank model designed for heavy hits and lots of them.

"Not bad for a Deputy-One," said Birch. "I didn't get this kind of opportunity until I was thirty."

"All right," said Marchant. "Nervous time. Start waiting and stay ready."

He walked me to the secure lot, where we locked the duffel bag in the trunk of my Mustang.

We ate lunch as a group in the courthouse cafeteria—Marchant, Birch and Ouderkirk, Irene Collier and Cheryl Redd. The special agent and the four detectives seemed loose and comfortable with each other and nobody asked me anything about my life or my face or Will or Thor. It was just us, doing a job. It was similar to sitting in the staff dining room, eating lunch with the other deputies in Men's Central. A team. People on your side. Family. But it meant more to me now. It was like sitting in my future. I thought of Will and the terrible beauty of the world he'd guided me into.

Twenty years of that, then get yourself into politics or business, Joe. You already got more name recognition than I ever had. Acid Baby. Jesus—play the cards they give you. Acid Baby for President. That's got a nice ring, doesn't it?

When lunch was over, Birch took me aside. "I hit Pearlita pretty hard this morning. The tape, the DrugFire match with the twenty-two she had. I threw in some witnesses who were sure it was her behind that nurse's mask. Anyway, she's willing to deal. She says she can finger Gaylen for Will's murder if we can let her walk. I told her we didn't do things like that in the real world. I told her we could start with a little light trading— like who was with Bo Warren the night he talked to Gaylen at Bamboo 33. She says she knows, and she'll trade the name for a reduced charge. I talked to Phil Dent, who's usually willing to play ball. We'll see."

It was 1:35
p.m. No
call from Alex.

I loitered in the homicide pen. I loitered at Men's Central. I fell asleep, briefly, with my head leaning against the table in the call room. I worked out in the jail gym, which is "green only," no civilians, and nicely air conditioned. The gym is partially a memorial to one of our fallen deputies—Brad Riches—a young guy who was gunned down by a robber with an automatic weapon when he parked at a convenience store. One wall is a painting of Brad's prowl car, with some brass littered on the floor in front of it. On the opposite wall is another painting of four deputies drawing down. The barrels of their arms open big at you. You can see the bad guys reflected in their glasses. A banner painted over the entry door says:

The power of the wolf is in the pack; the power of the pack is in wolf.

I worked out extra hard, thinking of Riches and the pack and John Gaylen. What were the chances that he'd appear again at the drop? What were the chances that whoever wanted Will dead would like to have me dead, too, and try again what had worked so well once? Little chance, I knew, but I couldn't help but be afraid of the symmetry, the repetition, opportunity.

Already
3:43 p.m. No
call.

I walked over to the courthouse and watched some of Dr. Chapin Fortnell's trial. When I went into the courtroom he was staring down, apparently at the defense table. He turned around and looked at me sleepily as
I
sat. An assistant DA was examining one of Fortnell's victims—a man twenty-one now, but a boy of twelve when Fortnell had first fondled him.

And where were you, specifically, when this first fondling took place?

In his office. In Newport Beach.

His consultation room? Where he practiced his family psychotherapy on young boys and girls?

Objection, Your Honor! Compound, for one thing. And this witness isn't versed in the specifics of the ages of Dr. Fortnell's—

Sustained. Proceed, Mr. Evans.

It made me think of an incident that happened when I was eleven. I joined the Boy's Club in Tustin and used to ride to the beach with two of the Boy's Club employees and a bunch of other kids. One day in the public restrooms at 15th Street, I had just completed my business when a short, stocky older man with sunglasses and long red hair blocked my way from the stainless steel toilet and asked me if I knew what sex was. I said, no, sir, I don't. I looked away and tried to get past him. I can still remember the damp stink of that restroom, the wet grit underfoot, the filthy latrine and puddles of who-knew-what on the concrete floor. Trying to walk past that man, with my face down, I saw his bare feet moving into my path and felt his big hard hand on my arm. I was five years into my martial arts training by then, a green belt in three different styles. I chopped his outstretched arm with my free hand, then raked his eye. That made him let go, so I raked his other eye. As he stood there covering his eyes in the gritty stink of the restroom I caught his left kneecap with a snap kick and he collapsed with a scream. I ran to the lifeguard stand, but when I got there I couldn't bring myself to tell him what happened. I just couldn't get the words to come. There was shame even in that, even in just being touched and propositioned. The lifeguard was talking to some girls, so he wasn't hugely interested in me anyhow. I remember getting my Duck Feet on and swimming out into the cold, powerful waves. I was learning to bodysurf and I caught wave after wave until I was exhausted and purified. I never went into that bathroom again without my skin tightening across my back, and my face burning hot with fear.

When I left, Dr. Fortnell was still looking down at the table.

At five o'clock I went to my car and listened to June's show. Her guests were a construction worker and an eighty-two-year-old woman. The worker had pulled the woman from a car that was underwater. The woman had pushed the accelerator rather than the brake, rammed her car through a carport and a wrought-iron fence and landed in the community swimming pool. Nobody hurt, not even the woman. She said she felt the hand of God on her arm just as she was about to drown.

Talk about a baptism.

I went home at seven. Still no call. I ate my TV dinners with the two million dollars under the table. I talked to June on my house line, briefly. I told her that things were fine and that something would happen soon, sweet whisper of a voice was so beautiful to me I wanted to reach into mouthpiece with two fingers and draw it out. Wave it through the air. Listen to it laugh. Drop it into my mouth and swallow it. I could taste and her: salt, flowers, milk.