Silent Joe

by T. Jefferson Parker

  I paced the emergency waiting room and the walkways outside, making the calls that needed to be made—first to my mother, Mary Ann, then to brothers Junior and Glenn.

  Those were the hardest calls I'd made in my life, no contest. I couldn’t tell them that Will was going to die. I couldn't tell them he was going live. I blubbered only that he'd been shot, choking out the words.

  I drove the car off the emergency ramp and parked it in the lot. The interior was urgent with the smells of blood and leather and the ugly stink of human panic.

  Twenty minutes later, an emergency room doctor told me that we had lost Will.

  Lost.

  That word was a bullet through my heart. It told me that Will was gone now, and gone forever. It told me that I'd let down the person I loved MOST ON this earth, that I'd failed my primary mission. And on its spiraling, smoking way through my heart and into the night, it told me I would find the people who did this to Will and I would deal with them.

  I managed to call my mother and brothers again. To give them the bullet.

  Too late, of course. They were already on their way to the hospital.

  Against the protests of a doctor and two sheriff deputies, I got into Will's car and drove back to the Lind Street apartment.

  Red lights, yellow tape, neighbors everywhere and three blankets with bodies under them. Anaheim PD was on scene. A patrolman marched at my car with a flashlight, waving me away.

  I backed out and drove the dark streets and wide empty boulevards looking for the girl. I crawled along at ten miles an hour, honking twice, lightly, over and over. Up and down, going slow, brights on and all four windows down. Come out, come out, wherever you are. The fog was still thick and sometimes I couldn't even see a block ahead. Every few minutes I'd pull over, stop, honk again and listen. Watch.

  I finally got Mom on my cell phone and she sounded close to panic. She was at the hospital. They wouldn't let her see him. I did my best to keep her talking and settle her down, told her to call Reverend Alter, then turned my car around for UCI Medical Center just as an Anaheim PD cruiser pulled me over. Both officers were tight, fingering their sidearm as I badged them.

  "What in hell are you doing here, Deputy?"

  "Looking for a girl."

  "Is that blood in the car?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "Step out, please, slowly. Hands away from your body, Mr. Trona."

  CHAPTER TWO

  I spent next three hours at the Anaheim PD with two homicide detectives--- the tall pale one was Guy Alagna and the stocky dark one Lucia Fuentes.

  As soon as I told them about Savannah, Fuentes left the interview room and stayed away for half an hour. Alagna, whose nose hooked from his face like a sharp white beak—asked me for the third time if I could describe the tall gunman to him.

  "Too dark," I said for the third time. "Too much fog. They were wearing long coats."

  I was getting weary. I was beginning to note all the things that changed. Would change. The rest of my life without him alive. Ever. Theworld was brand-new to me, and I hated it.

  "And those coats again, Joe. What did they look like?"

  I described the long overcoats for the third time. I looked down at hat, balanced on my knee.

  "Color?"

  "Night, Detective Alagna. Fog. No colors."

  "Okay, all right."

  Then he was silent for a long beat. I could feel his stare on my face. Sooner or later, most people have to gawk.

  I drank bad coffee from a foam cup and looked at the two-way mirror, picturing the men in the June fog, Will approaching. June Gloom with the blade of murder hidden in it. I strained to catch a glimpse of the Tall One's face—just one feature, just one thing to go on. Nothing. Fog. Motion. Exhaust rising, voices. The insulting little pop of that handgun. And again.

  Every few minutes a roar would start building in my ears, beginning low, like waves on a distant beach, then getting louder and louder until my head was two inches from a jet turbine. But it wasn't a jet, it was a voice, and the voice said only three words over and over, louder and louder: you killed him you killed him you killed him you killed him you killed him you killed him you killed him . . .

  Please stop. Remember. Eyes open, mouth shut.

  I'll get rid of this dingleberry.

  How did Will know he was a dingleberry?

  Will! Ah, Will Trona! Let's talk

  The deep and resonant voice replayed in my mind with a haunting clarity. I heard the odd lilt of the words, almost cheerful.

  Did the shooter know him, or just pretend to?

  …. you with Alex?

  "And you're sure they didn't take anything off him?" Alagna asked again.

  "They took his life, sir."

  In the corner of my eye I saw him studying me. Then I turned on him and he looked away. People are ashamed of themselves when I catch them staring, but not before I catch them.

  "You know what I mean, Joe."

  "Nothing that I saw, Detective."

  "Back to the car again. They take anything from the car?"

  "They never touched the car."

  "Okay, all right. So, let me get this straight—the shooter called Will by name. And Will asked if the shooter was with Alex. And Will said a deal's a deal, or something like that, and the guy shot him in the gut?"

  "The shooter said, 'Now the deal is this.' "And then he asked again about the two men I'd shot, both dead on scene when the cops got there. I told him again, exactly what had happened. He wouldn't give me their names or anything else about them.

  "So, you couldn't see well enough to describe the man who shot your father, but you could see well enough to drop two guys, moving, with two shots."

  "Like I said, sir, they were close—twenty feet maybe."

  "I guess you're a good shot."

  "I'm a good shot."

  Everything I told Alagna and Fuentes was correct, though I forgot few things.

  For example, I forgot to mention Will's briefcase. He rarely went anywhere without it, so it contained the outlines of his life. More than the outlines. It held his calendar and appointment books, his notes and letters, his drafts and reports, his to-do list, his doodles. Everything he might use in a day—from a tiny tape recorder to a toothbrush and paste—Will carried with him in that old leather case. I carried it with me into the interview room and set it beside me as if it were my own. No one questioned it.

  And I didn't consider the tennis bag we'd picked up from the HACF be Alagna's business, either.

  I wasn't about to offer too much to a cop I didn't know, some paleface who had to ask three times what an overcoat looked like.

  I also forgot to mention Will's gift to Jennifer Avila that evening, the two thousand dollars I'd counted and rolled. Likewise, their private words.

  I forgot that I heard anything but hello and good-bye between Will, Jaime Medina and the Reverend Daniel Alter.

  I forgot to recount Will's quick conversations on his cell phone, just minutes before he died. And I wondered how I could get a phone company log of those calls. A homicide investigator sure could, but a fourth-year deputy? It would take a while.

  And I forgot to mention that Mary Ann, my adoptive mother, had be blue lately, and that Will was trying hard to get home by ten.

  All of that was Will's business; none of it was Alagna's.

  Lucia Fuentes barreled back into the room. "One of the shooters hanging on. No ID on him, but he's alive." Alagna looked at me. "Maybe he can fill in some of Mr. Trona's sizable gaps."

  I nodded but said nothing. Instead I stared down at Will's briefcase, noting the drop of dried blood near the handle. I hoped Alagna wouldn't notice it. I didn't think he would.

  "But I struck out on the girl," Fuentes continued. "Nothing at all on a missing twelve-year-old named Savannah. The National Center, the FBI, Sacramento—not even Joe's sheriffs here—nobody's looking for her. Maybe it's an alias."

  Alagna stared at me. "I doubt her daddy lets he
r run around with fifty-year-old guys after dark."

  "Maybe that's exactly what her daddy does," snapped Fuentes.

  "Joe, you know if the supervisor was bent that way?"

  I stared back at Alagna then, and a flush came to his waxy skin.

  "Detective Alagna, he was a good man," I said. "And I'll pretend you didn't ask that stupid question."

  "Big words from a fourth-year jailer."

  "We can settle differences anyway you'd like, sir."

  "I don't settle."

  "Come on, you assholes," said Fuentes. "What's wrong with you, Guy?"

  Alagna looked away, his ears turning red. It was quite a contrast with his white beak of a nose.

  What was wrong with Guy was that he was afraid of me, and angry about it. Nothing in the world seems to make healthy, tough cops madder than a twenty-four-year-old monster who can't be intimidated.

  I not only have a face that looks like something made in hell, but I'm tall and strong. I'm conversant with most weapons, and I've spent nearly my whole life learning how to defend myself—every method and school, every technique you can imagine—so that what happened when I was nine months old never happens again. I've promised myself that it will never happen again.

  But my best weapon is that people sense I'm not afraid of anything. Maybe it's the scar tissue. My eyes. My voice. I really don't know. In fact, there are two things I'm afraid of. One is my father, my real father, the one who did this to me when I was nine months old. His name is Thor Svendson and he's out there somewhere. If he ever appears again, I'll be ready. I have five black belts, two regional Golden Gloves titles. I have a Sheriff Department Distinguished Marksman pin to prove I'm ready.

  The other thing that terrified me—although I didn't know it until then—was living without Will. And of the two, life without Will was far the worst.

  So, with my ruined face and apparent fearlessness, most people afraid of me. It's been true since I was very young. As I grew used people fearing me, I tried to develop good manners, to strike some balance. I came to believe that they were mandatory for a man with a face like mine. I've worked almost as hard at having good manners as I have mastering Ken-po, or the recoil nuances of the Colt .45 ACP.

  "So Joe," said Lucia Fuentes. "Explain the girl to us. If your father wasn't that way, then what was he doing with her?"

  "I'm not sure. He said he was trying to do a good deed."

  They looked at each other.

  Then the voice started building again inside me: you killed him y killed him you killed him . . .

  I felt like I was in that fog again, the fog that rolled in the night before Secret fog. Killer fog. I wished I could blow it all away, step from it into something clear and sunny and true. I couldn't do that, but I had a quiet spot I could go to. I can go there any time I want. So I went.

  "I've told you what I know," I said, standing, hat in hand. "Call me anytime if I can help more. I'd like to know who the girl was, Detectives. I'd like to help her if I can. Pardon me, but I have to go to work now, or I'll be late."

  Alagna looked at Fuentes like she should stop me. Fuentes looked me like someone missing her bus. When I walked out the sun was just starting to come up. The reporters converged and I was happy to see them. I just gave them the basics, but I made sure they knew that a girl named Savannah was loose in the night. I described her exactly, right down to her clothing, a backpack and good manners and fine straight hair. I even sketched her face on my notepad as best I could. It came out slightly better than nothing.

  The reporters liked this: here was a chance to help find her, maybe do something good. They're the second most cynical people, after cops.

  Sunrise in the county, and me alone in Will's car, the freeways jammed already, everybody acting like Will was still alive. What was wrong with these fools? And what was wrong with Alagna and Fuentes, letting me drive off in a car that was part of a homicide scene, instead of impounding it?

  I got through to Mom on my cell phone again. Reverend Daniel Alter had met her at the hospital and she was now in the Chapel of Light sanctuary. She had taken a mild sedative. Her voice sounded light and insubstantial. One of the assistant ministers was going to take her home because she felt too woozy to drive. I told her I'd drive her home myself, but she insisted that I work, stay focused, stay useful. I told her I'd be over as soon as my shift was over.

  In the sheriff's gym I showered, shaved and put on my uniform, then walked across the compound to my job.

  Orange County Jail. Sixth largest in the nation. Three thousand inmates, three thousand orange jumpsuits. Seventy percent of them are felons. And a hundred jailers like me, mostly young guys, armed only with pepper spray, trying to keep order. Hundreds of new inmates come through the Intake-Release Center every day, a total of seventy thousand every year. Hundreds are released back into society, every day. In and out. In and out. We call it The Loop. The jail is an enormous rotating swirl, a storm system of defeat, fury, violence and boredom. During the day, Men's Central is my world. It's a world of strict order and, usually, quiet compliance. Power and submission. Good guys green, bad guys orange. Hands in your pockets, eyes forward, shut-up. Pull your pockets, show your socks. Them and us. It's also a world of shanks whittled from bed frames, clubs made of knotted Tshirts filled with bars of soap, of rotgut liquor made from leftover bits of fruit and bread smuggled in from the mess hall, of drugs and black tattoos and kites—note smuggled down from the shot-callers in Tank 29 of Module F, or from protective custody in Module J, to the low-security guys who can pass them along to friends and allies on the outside. It's a world of silence, a world of dimly lit guard stations, so the inmates can't watch us watch them. A world of racial gangs, of respect and vengeance, of endless and infinite bullshit.

  I like it. I like my friends and coworkers, and the delicate predatory balance between us and the inmates. I like some of the inmates at times. Their scams are clever and they manage to get away with things that surprise me. But what I like most is the orderliness of things: the buzzers and bells and schedules and rules, the heavy keys, the food we eat in the staff dining room. These are institutional things, and as an institutional boy I came to rely on them. My four years at Hillview Home for Child brought those things into my blood in a way I can't get rid of.

  That morning I was scheduled to work in Module J, which is set up for protective custody of the particularly dangerous, the notorious, the well-known, for child molesters and sexual deviants who would upset the general population, sometimes even for law enforcement personnel doing time on the wrong side of the bars.

  Mod J is set up in four sectors, with a total of one hundred seventy inmates. It's one big circle, with our guard station in the center. Between the cells and the guard station are the day rooms, which have picnic-style benches and tables, and a TV. From the dimly lit confines of the station, we can look through the glass and see into every cell. In-cell cameras make every inmate visible on the station video console, and each cell is wired for sound.

  It's very quiet in Module J, and the inmates are slightly more respect of us than they are in the other mods. Maybe it's because of the seriousness of their crimes, or because many of them are on trial and facing very long or perhaps capital, sentences. Whatever the reasons, the men in Mod J are little less likely to amuse themselves with chatter about my face.

  My first two years I rotated between the Men's Central modules and got my fill of "shitface," "acidhead," "Frankenstein," whatever. The names didn't get to me, though the repetition almost did. I never cracked, showed my anger or lost my manners. I just learned to withdraw into the quiet spot and view the inmates with the detached interest of a birdwatcher.

  Happened to you?

  Nothing, why?

  'Cause you got shit all over your face, shitface!

  You get the picture.

  Of course, people behind bars are braver than most. You're protected from them, but they're protected from you, too. Even my most sincerely
murderous stare often brings nothing but added volume: OH, look at SHITface starin' at me NOW! As a keeper, once you step through the heavy doors of the jail, you're not just working there, you're in it. Sometimes, you forget. Sometimes, it feels like you've been there forever and you're going to be there another forever. It's hard on a guy who tries to have good manners.

  Then you take a deep breath and remember that you've got a shift and they've got a sentence. It's like coming out of a nightmare.

  In the briefing room I signed in and sat down for roll call. After that, Sergeant Delano gave us the morning book:; yesterday ten blacks and ten Latinos got into it in the mess hall. It was over quickly, didn't escalate, no time for us to get out the bats and hats—our batons and riot helmets. A few bruises, a few cuts. No weapons. As a result, we were 9-13—cleared and ready—to conduct a Module F cell search at 1300. We call a surprise search a shake. Deputy Smith had discovered a shank hidden in the sole of a shower sandal—sharpened and slid directly through the rubber. There were rumors of trouble upstate. They say that inmate violence trickles down from the max pens to the jails, and at first I thought it was myth. But after three years here, I can tell you that it's true, so rumors of trouble at Pelican Bay or Folsom or Cochran or San Quentin are always taken seriously. We took up a collection for a barbecue to celebrate our captain getting a promotion, then broke.

  I checked out my radio and keys, then walked the tunnel down to Mod J. When I got to the guard station I glanced at the video monitors to check my prisoners. Everybody looked fine. Gary Sargola, the Ice-Box K was asleep with one leg raised because he suffers phlebitis.

  Dave Hauser, assistant district attorney turned drug dealer, was watching Good Morning America.

  Dr. Chapin Fortnell, child psychiatrist awaiting trial on thirty-counts of molestation of six boys over the last ten years, sat upright and alert on his cot, writing something in crayon, the sharpest instrument allow him since he tried to open a vein with a felt-tipped marker months ago.

  Serial rapist Frankie Dilsey, convicted of three forcible and was sentencing for three more, was making faces in the steel mirror over basin, drumming his long fingers on the rim, swaying his hips to a song playing only in his head.