Silent Joe

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Then I got Will's briefcase and took it into the house. I have three big floor safes—one in the bedroom, one in the second bath, one in the den. The house was built in 1945 on a raised foundation, which made them easy to install. I opened the safe in the den.

  To make room, I pulled out the Smith .357 magnum and one of my wooden treasure boxes. The boxes contain things I value from my life— rocks, shells, feathers, trinkets, notes, small gifts. The first thing Will gave me is in one of them: a book called Shag: Last of the Plains Buffalo. I'd been reading a library copy of that book when he first talked to me at Hillview. I was almost five. The next time he came, he gave me my own brand-new copy to keep.

  I stared at the briefcase for a long moment, because it reminded me so much of Will. I touched a bloodstain and it left a dark crust on my finger. Good thing Alagna hadn't seen the blood, but if he was careless enough not to impound Will's BMW, he probably wouldn't have done anything useful with the briefcase either. I opened it and considered each mundane item as if it held some grand significance in Will's life: his last paper clip, his last Board agenda, his last aspirin. Then I closed it and put it on the bottom of the floor safe and set the treasure box on top.

  I checked the handgun, wiped it with the oilcloth on which it sat, always loaded and always ready, then shut the safe door and spun the lock.

  I walked into the living room and everything looked different. Exactly the same, but totally different. I studied the buffed maple floor, the black sofa and black chair and black ottoman, the magazines neatly in their rack, the chrome reading lamp. I looked at the white walls with the framed posters of race cars, the cheap print of Michaelangelo's "God Creating Adam" and my many framed photographs of Will, Mary Ann, Will, Jr., and Glenn.

  In the kitchen I sat and looked down at the white and black checkerboard tile, the white walls and cupboards and counter and fixtures. The dinette was chrome with white padded chairs and a white vinyl tabletop. Faintly institutional. I'd painted and furnished the place myself. I kept it clean as an operating room. It all seemed so irrelevant now, so absolutely without meaning. At five-thirty that afternoon, a news conference called by Savannah’s father was carried on all four network news broadcasts.

  Her name was Savannah Blazak, she was eleven years old, and she been kidnapped three days ago, Monday afternoon.

  The girl's father was Jack Blazak of Newport Beach. I knew him on sight because he was one of the county's richest and most powerful men. And an acquaintance of Will's. His wife, Lorna, stood at his side during the conference. Along with the Jack Blazaks, FBI special agent Steve Marchant was on hand to answer questions. They had three recent pictures of Savannah, whom her father described as "very intelligent, very sensitive, very imaginative."

  She'd vanished from their home three days ago—sometime Monday morning, Jack said—and he received a ransom demand shortly thereafter. He stuttered briefly, sighed, then admitted that he and his wife had a agreed to pay the ransom demand out of fear for their daughter's life. Part of the demand was that if they went to the authorities, Savannah's would be mailed to them in "an overnight freezer-pack, UPS."

  Blazak's larynx bobbed in his throat as he confessed that "after a three days of living hell," his attempt to ransom his daughter had not been successful." But he had had reason to believe that this evening, Thursday, he could make the payment to Savannah's kidnappers and secure her safe return. When he heard this morning on the news that a girl named Savannah, matching his daughter's description, had fled a murder the night before, he contacted the FBI immediately.

  Blazak begged everyone watching to look out for his daughter. He offered a reward of five hundred thousand dollars for information leading to Savannah's safe return. Absolutely no questions asked.

  Steve took over to explain where and when Savannah was last seen and what she was wearing. He answered questions and gave out a hotline number. He wanted everyone to know that the Bureau was pursuing this with every resource it had, that the safe return of Savannah Blazak was a priority.

  Steve looked eager, a little angry. Jack Blazak looked like he'd been dragged behind a school bus for ten miles. Lorna Blazak looked lovely and fragile and almost absent from the proceedings.

  The next segment was all about Will. "Bloodbath in Anaheim. Orange County Runs Red." News footage of the Lind Street alley, UCI Medical Center, the closed door of his office in the County Building, clips of him in meetings of the Board of Supervisors. They'd gotten a few seconds of us coming down the street toward the home in the Tustin hills, and some footage from behind as we walked toward the front porch.

  Even a picture of me, with "sources within the Sheriff Department confirming" that I'd fatally shot two of the killers while trying to protect my father. One other was reported dead, one critically wounded.

  Dead suspects not yet identified.

  No known motive at this time.

  My phone rang every few minutes. Friends from the academy, the department, old friends, relatives. I talked to my family but let the strangers talk to the machine: Bruce, a newspaper reporter in New York; Seth, a television news-magazine producer in Los Angeles; June Dauer, a local radio host; Dr. Norman Zussman, the psychiatrist who would lead me through the Deputy-Involved Shooting Program.

  I heated up three TV dinners and set them on the table with a carton of milk. I liked the institutional taste of TV dinners, and the compartmented trays—more leftovers from my days at Hillview.

  I was just ready to eat when someone rang the doorbell. It was Rick Birch, looking tired and old. I invited him in, offered him one of the hot dinners. He declined.

  "Go ahead," he said. "I just have a question or two."

  I put the dinners back in the oven and sat down across from him. He looked around the room like he was taking inventory. He wore rimless glasses with thin, tinted lenses.

  "How old are you, Joe?"

  "Twenty-four, sir."

  "How long have you lived here?"

  "Three years."

  "You keep it nice and neat."

  "Thank you. I like things neat."

  "The two guys you shot were Cobra Kings."

  "I've heard of them."

  "Ray Flatley in the gang unit can give you a rundown. But basically, they're thieves who don't mind committing murder when they feel like it.’’ He slipped a small notebook from his coat pocket, which was apparently already open to the right place. "You got Luke Smith and Ming Nixon. Ages twenty-seven and thirty-one, respectively. 'Luke' got changed from Loc. Nixon was a name the other guy got stuck with growing up a bastard in Saigon. The third deceased hasn't been identified yet. The one still aIive is Cao—nineteen and a card-carrying Cobra King."

  He watched me over the top of his glasses, head tilted down. I didn’t know how to react. I felt bad for killing them, but not that bad.

  "I guess you've got some time off from work," he said.

  "I didn't want it."

  "Take your leave. You don't go through something like this and not have it change you. Norm Zussman's a good shrink."

  "I wish I could keep working."

  "I understand the need."

  Birch blinked his pale blue eyes. He looked like a farmer: weathered face, big hands, an inner stillness that comes from watching things grow.

  "Joe, tell me about your father and Savannah Blazak."

  "I don't know much."

  "No?"

  "No, sir. Will wasn't leveling with me about the girl. I'm his son. I was his driver and his guard. Sometimes he told me what he was up to and sometimes not. I'd never heard of Savannah until last night around nine. When we went to Lind Street to pick her up. I didn't know any about a kidnapping until five-thirty tonight when I watched the news.’’

  Birch thought for a moment. "Let me get this straight: the girl's kidnapped Monday morning. The family can't seem to make the ransom payment, even though they've got the money and they're willing. By Wednesday night, Will Trona has found her. Explain that."


  "I can't."

  "You see the shooter?"

  "Not well. The fog hid him."

  "Could you ID him in a lineup?"

  "If he spoke."

  "Explain."

  I did—the quality of the voice, the strange cadence.

  "A voice ID does us no good at all. It's not enough to even hold someone on."

  I knew that. So I said nothing.

  "You know who did it, Joe?"

  "No, sir. Of course not."

  He rested his calm eyes on my face. "There's a whole bunch wrong with this."

  "I think so, too."

  "Can you give me a full statement tomorrow? I've got Alagna's tape, but I want to ask my own questions."

  "Absolutely."

  He nodded, looking around again, then back at me. "Have you talked to Marchant yet?"

  "Tomorrow."

  Birch drummed his fingertips on the table, fast. "Did he have this girl abducted?"

  "Will?"

  "I'm not the only one who's going to ask you that. She's kidnapped and she's last seen with him. You can draw a pretty straight line between those points."

  "I'm sure he didn't, sir."

  "You're not sure of much else."

  I wondered how I could suggest that Birch get a phone company printout without also suggesting that I was holding out on him. I believed that there would be a time to come clean with Rick Birch. But I didn't be it was then.

  He waited for me to add something, but I didn't. He gave the impression of being able to wait forever.

  "How were Will's finances?"

  "Good, sir. Will's salary wasn't bad and my mother is wealthy. He never liked spending money."

  He waited again, but I said nothing.

  "Blazak didn't say what the ransom demand was."

  My turn to wait. I can wait forever, too.

  "Okay, Joe. We'll get to the fine print tomorrow. Do me a favor write down what happened last night. Everything you can remember. It’ll help both of us."

  "Okay."

  He stood. "I'm sorry. I really am sorry for you."

  "Thank you."

  We set a time and Rick Birch took one more look around my kitchen, shook my hand. I showed him to the door.

  After dinner Jack Blazak called. He wanted me to be at his home in Newport the next morning, early. He didn't ask me anything about daughter. He put on his wife, Lorna, to give me directions to "the Newport house."

  She did. Then, "Don't hang up, Mr. Trona. I just have to ask you---how was she? Did she look okay? Was she upset or hurt or anything? I haven’t seen my child in three days."

  "She looked fine, Mrs. Blazak. She looked fine when I saw her."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Six A.M. and the sun was just rising over the hills of south Newport Beach. My car idled beneath the towering marble archway that marked the entry to the Pelican Point development. A gate guard took my name, plates, badge and driver's license numbers. He stared at my face like he could handle it any time. The gate swung open and I drove in.

  Ten days ago, Newport PD had shot a sixteen-year-old boy dead just outside this gate. Twelve shots, nine hits, dead-on-scene. The guy was armed with a machete and a sharpened screwdriver, screaming in Spanish. His name was Miguel Domingo. Jaime Medina's HACF was up in arms about the incident, demanding an investigation. He'd talked about it with Will that night, in fact. The shooting was the second violent death of an undocumented Guatemalan worker in a month. A week before the shooting, a young domestic worker, Luria Bias, was struck and killed by a car as she "wandered" onto a street close to her Fullerton apartment. It was ruled an accident. The woman in the Suburban that killed her got out and tried to help.

  Driving into a place like Pelican Point, you saw the beauty and the wealth and had to admit the dizzying unfairness of things, the way some people lived in mansions by the beach and others got shot at the gates or run over by sport utility vehicles. Some guy trying to take his share, using a screwdriver and a machete. A lady trying to make it by cleaning people's houses.

  New asphalt on the old hills. Mansions, palaces, estates—some finished, some not. Georgian, Tudor, Tuscan, Roman, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish, postmodern glass and concrete. Gray sky with a seagull in it hillsides and a battalion of yellow Cat D-9s ready to scrape new pads off the horizon. Never too early to take out a hilltop.

  The next gate had its own little gatehouse beside it, but no guard. A security camera followed my face to a stop. The intercom was easy to reach. I pushed the ringer and waited. Two gates per household, SOP the Newport hills now.

  "Yes."

  "Joe Trona for the Blazaks."

  "Come on in, Joe."

  The Blazaks had gone Greco-Roman: a reflecting pool out front lined with olive trees, then an expanse of white marble steps leading to a columned portico and two immense, windowless front doors. The house was white marble, rectangular and flat-roofed. Bougainvillea and ocotillo spread upward along one side, casting shadows and bright purple bracts against the pale marble walls. Statuary, a nice little plot of grape vines with their arms out on wires and reaching for sun, a small stand of orange with dark waxy leaves and bright fruit.

  I parked beside a polished red-and-white '63 split-window Corvette with plates that said "BoWar." The garage behind it was open, and stocked with a Silver Cloud, a Lexus SUV and a Jaguar with the dealer's ad still in the license-plate frame.

  Jack Blazak came down the front steps to meet me. He shook my hand with conviction. Wavy dark hair, light brown eyes, thick and compact.

  "Thanks for coming."

  "My pleasure, sir."

  "Lorna and Bo are inside."

  His voice was gruff and he delivered his words in a fast bark, like he was saving time.

  The entry room was spacious, with a high ceiling dome capped skylight. I took off my hat. White walls, the day's early sunlight rushing down, more white marble underfoot. Blazak's face looked pale as the walls.

  He led me into a living room that was all glass on the western side, with a view of the hills and the ocean below.

  Lorna Blazak sat at one end of a big leather couch, a guy I'd never seen before at the other end.

  "Oh, Mr. Trona," she said. "I'm so glad you're here."

  She offered her hand, which was bony and cold. Her eyes were dull and an air of exhaustion came off her.

  "And meet Bo Warren—he's new head of security for the Chapel of Light."

  Warren was already standing. He was a short, wiry man with a buzzed scalp and blue eyes under sharp, dubious brows. Camel blazer, black golf shirt buttoned up, duty boots polished into the fifth dimension. His handshake was brief and punishing and his eyes stayed right on mine.

  BoWar, I thought.

  "Nice to meet you, sir. I'm Joe Trona."

  He didn't say anything, so Lorna took up the pause.

  "Joe, anything to drink?"

  "Nothing, thank you."

  Jack sat down on the couch and motioned me into a chair across from them. There was a glass coffee table between us. It was shaped like a coastline, and the craftsman had etched waves along curved edges of the glass. I sat and put my hat on the waves.

  "First things first, Joe," Blazak said. "We're grateful that you located our daughter. We thank you. We're beyond grateful that she's alive. We called you here to tell you a few things, get you straightened out and up to speed."

  Again, his words were fast and his tone aggressive, a man used to being listened to.

  I nodded. "I don't want to be crooked and slow, sir."

  Warren snickered. Jack looked at me blankly, then turned to his wife.

  "Jack's blunt these days, Mr. Trona," said Lorna. "He hasn't slept more than two hours a night since Savannah was taken. Neither have I. Forgive us both if we're kind of. . . short."

  "I understand."

  "Help," said Jack. "A little help is all we're after." Silence then until, Jack looked across at Warren. "You take it from here, Bo."

  Warren moved to the edge
of the sofa like he was ready to spring.

  "Glad to," he said. "Joe, sometime between nine and eleven hundred hours on Monday, June eleven, Savannah Blazak was kidnapped."

  Semper fi, I thought. 'Nam. His voice was much deeper and louder than you expected, like he had a speaker inside him.

  "Jack was at work. Lorna was out. Marcie, that's the head maid was doing some light cleaning and keeping an eye on Savannah. Savannah was allegedly playing in her bedroom. When Marcie went to check on her at ten fifty-five, Savannah wasn't in her room. Marcie called and walked the house—no girl. Called and walked the grounds—no girl. She called neighbors, who have a girl about Savannah's age, nobody home. At eleven ten she called Jack at work, then—on Jack's orders—nine one one. After that, she called Mrs. Blazak on her cell phone. Jack made it home in seventeen minutes. Newport PD was already on scene."

  Warren stared at me, eyes blue and hard. "With me?"

  I nodded.

  "Then, in brief: the cops get here making a lot of noise, glance a girl's room—"

  "Call her Savannah, Bo. Not the girl"

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Blazak. Savannah. They look in Savannah's room Question Marcie. Question Jack. Take the report, say they think Savannah will show up unharmed. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they say, a missing juvenile shows up unharmed. They probably wanted to chew out Marcie for using nine one one for a non-emergency, but Jack Blazak’s daughter was the subject of the call."

  "Stick to the facts, Bo," said Blazak. "You're a gopher, not a prophet.’’

  Warren's smile appeared and vanished, on then off, like a turn signal.

  He cleared his throat.

  "Yes, sir. Okay. Now, Joe, about three hours after the maid called cops, the Blazaks got a call here at home. The caller muffled his voice somehow—a cloth or towel or something. He said he had Savannah. He let her say 'Hello, Mom and Dad' to prove it. Affirmative, it was Savannah. Then he demanded half a million cash dollars for her safe release. He gave Jack and Lorna forty-six hours to pay the ransom. If they didn't pay it he'd kill Savannah. If they contacted the authorities about this, he'd kill Savannah. He said he would contact them before noon Wednesday. This was Monday, two o'clock, remember."