Silent Joe

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "May I have this postcard?"

  "Why?"

  "I know people who need to see it. And people who don't."

  She shook her head and stood. "Take it. Take it. Why did you come back in, anyway? Miss me?"

  "I just wanted to tell you that if those guys outside get impolite, call me immediately. I mean, even a little tiny bit impolite."

  "Okay. All right." She nodded slowly, studying me. "Do you wear Panama when the weather gets hot?"

  "I tried. I like the felt better."

  "They're so hot. Why?"

  "Better shadows."

  She considered this but didn't speak.

  Suit and Gut watched me from the bus stop as I came out and got into my car. Conferred, started laughing. They were still at it as I made my turn onto Laguna Canyon Road.

  I cranked the car at them and stood on the gas. A sixty-seven Ford Mustang with 351 cubic inches, Edelbrock carbs, a Sig Ersen cam and Glaspaks puts out about two hundred twenty-five horses geared to smoke tire any time you want. The sound is like something from Revelation.

  They jumped in different directions at the same time. Suit's face was grimace of extreme disbelief as he cart wheeled past my side window.

  I rolled it down and waved.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dr. Norman Zussman gave me a warm handshake and closed the door of his consultation room. He offered me a comfortable chair, and sat across from me on a small green couch. I set Will's briefcase on the floor beside me, and balanced my hat over one corner.

  There was a coffee table between us, nothing on it. He was medium height and lightly built. He had short straight gray hair, blue eyes and a tanned face.

  Dr. Zussman crossed his legs and set a yellow legal pad on his knee. "You succeeded in putting me off for nine days, Joe."

  "I didn't want to talk to you, Doctor."

  "I don't blame you for that. But it's better if you do. And it's required by your department. How are you doing?"

  "Well."

  He watched me. I get self-conscious when people stare and don't talk, but I knew he was just trying to get me to fill the silence. So I said nothing. I went to the quiet spot, got up in the tree and looked out. There is an eagle that sometimes shares my tree, but he wasn't there that day. I sat alone on the branch. The hillsides were tan and dry and I could smell them.

  "Sleeping all right, Joe?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Appetite good?"

  "Yes."

  "Drinking alcohol or using drugs of any kind?"

  "I had some drinks a few nights back. I don't drink much, though."

  "Why's that?"

  "It makes me slow and stupid and feel bad in the morning."

  He chuckled, wrote. "Tell me about the shooting, Joe. Take your time start at the beginning."

  I told him about it. I started with Will being shot and falling. Then heaving Savannah over the wall and sliding back into the backseat of car. I explained that I was pretty sure the two men behind me would make for the wall and walk right past that open rear car door, and I'd have good shot at them with the interior lights off. I told him the shots were easy and I could tell both men were hit hard.

  He listened and wrote. When I was finished he sighed quietly. "Were you shooting to kill?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you feel forced by the circumstances to do what you did?"

  I had to think about that. "No, sir. I could have jumped over the wall with Savannah."

  "But you didn't, because your first loyalty was to your father."

  I nodded.

  "How did you feel when you pulled the trigger?"

  "Alert but calm."

  "How did you feel when you saw the men fall, and you knew tlhey would probably die?"

  "Relieved that they were not going to use their machine guns on me, or chase after Savannah."

  Dr. Zussman was quiet for a long time. "Joe, how did you feel a, the shooting? Say, an hour later?"

  "I was looking for Savannah."

  "But did you think about the men you'd just shot?"

  "No."

  "And the next day, how did you feel about what you'd done?"

  "I didn't think about it very much. All I thought about was Will."

  Zussman wrote and sighed again. "Joe, how do you feel right now, about what you did?"

  "Just fine, doctor."

  "Have you had any bad memories, regrets, bad dreams?"

  "At my father's funeral, I tried to feel bad that two men were dead and that I had killed them. But I didn't feel anything about them. I thought it was self-defense, and that they'd gotten what they gambled for when they set out to kill a man."

  Zussman watched me for a long while, then. He shifted on the couch, like he was uncomfortable. He recrossed his legs and set the legal pad on the other knee.

  "When you think of the shooting, can you see it, or does it become unclear?"

  "It's very clear. I can see the seams in the leather seat I was lying on, the moisture on the windows."

  "Do you dwell on that scene?"

  "I dwell on how I could have saved Will."

  "So, it's more a tactical concern than a moral one?"

  "Yes."

  "Why do you think that is?"

  I thought for a moment. "My job was to protect my father. It was the most important thing I could do. I was brought up to do that. I was trained to do it. I wanted, more than anything in the world, to do it well."

  Zussman leaned forward and lay his pad on the table, wrote something on it. "How do you feel about failing to do your job?"

  It took me a while to come up with a description. I knew how I felt, but I'd never thought to describe it to anyone, especially a stranger.

  "Like sand."

  "Sand? How is that?"

  "Dry and loose and nothing holding it together."

  He looked at me again. "Do you feel like you're going to fall apart, like sand?"

  "No."

  "But why not, if you're dry and loose and nothing is holding you together?"

  "I wasn't accurate, sir. Something is holding me together. I need find the man who shot Will. That has become very important to me."

  "Ah. Of course."

  Silence, then. Zussman gathered up his pad and sat back. "What you anticipate happening, when you find that man, Joe?"

  "I'll arrest him for murder, sir."

  He looked at me for another long moment. He blinked, started to write something, then stopped.

  "Joe, how did you feel about giving up your sidearm, as part of this counseling?"

  "I didn't give it up."

  "Why not?"

  "No one asked me for it, so I have it."

  "On your person? Here?"

  I nodded and held out the left side of my sport coat.

  "I'm going to ask you to leave it with me. I'll turn it over to Sergeant Mehring for safekeeping."

  I unholstered the .45, ejected the clip and set it on the coffee tab Then I racked the action to make sure the chamber was empty, hit the safety. It was surprisingly loud in the quiet consultation room. I set the gun beside the clip.

  I looked at Dr. Zussman and he looked at me.

  "Does that worry you, Joe? Giving up your sidearm?"

  "No, sir. I've got several more."

  In fact, I had two more on me at that time. One was another .45 ACP that I keep high against my right rib cage, and that I can draw quickly with my left hand. The other is a small .32 on my ankle. No one expects three, Will told me once that nobody figures a cop will have three. One, certain Two, maybe. Three, never. Interestingly, Will never carried three sidearms during his days as a deputy. He carried one until the last few years on the department, when he didn't carry anything unless he was going into situation. He didn't like guns, and was never a good shot. I think he over compensated when he raised me to carry a small, but extremely accessible, arsenal. I practice with them, a lot.

  He stared at the automatic. I hoped his hands weren't particularly oily
, because even good bluing can rust from perspiration salts if you don't wipe a gun clean after you hold it. I took out one of my monogrammed handkerchiefs and set it next to the gun.

  He looked up at me. "Do you feel remorse over the shootings?"

  "Some."

  "Can you describe how much?"

  "That's a hard one, Doctor, to measure a feeling."

  "Go ahead and try."

  I thought about it. "About the amount you would put in a coffee cup. Not the whole cup, though. Say, about half."

  "Half a coffee cup of remorse?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He nodded. Nodded again. "I'm concerned about you, Joe."

  "Thank you."

  "I mean, I'm not seeing a normal range of reaction out of you. I'm seeing something much less . . . expected."

  "I'm not normal, sir."

  After a long pause and some heavy note taking, the doctor asked about women and love and relationships. He asked very direct questions. I told him the truth: that I'd never had any relationship that lasted more than a few "dates." I told him about some women I'd liked very much. He asked me if I'd ever had a meaningful relationship and I asked him what a meaningful relationship was. He looked flabbergasted, then suspicious that I was making fun of him. I told him about the professional models I'd paid to look at, and the sex that I had had with a prostitute. I told him about the faces I liked to look at in the movies and magazines. He wanted to know which movies and which magazines, so I told him: almost all romantic comedies, especially those of the fifties and seventies, and men's magazines such as Esquire, Men's Journal and GQ. I told him that I sometimes bought picture frames for the pictures of women that they came packaged with. I told him what scared me the most about women was that they feel sorry for me.

  "How often do you masturbate?"

  "I don't, sir."

  "Why not?"

  "My father told me not to."

  "I see. What do you do about your sexual desires?"

  "Nothing."

  "What about nocturnal emissions, so-called wet dreams?"

  "Yes, sir," I said. I looked down at my hat, wishing he wouldn't ASK about things like that.

  "How often?"

  "Once a night, Doctor. Sometimes more."

  "Every night?"

  "I don't keep track. Since Will, a lot."

  He swallowed, raised his eyebrows, and wrote something down. "Joe, we've got a lot to talk about. Next time, I would like to talk more about your mother and your father. Let's meet again next week."

  We agreed on a day and time.

  "Please treat that weapon with respect and care, Doctor."

  "I shall."

  I put on my hat and walked out.

  My coffee date with June Dauer was for four o'clock, one hour before she did her show. I was supposed to meet her at a cafe near the studio. I there early and sat at a corner table and thought about what Chrissa Sands had told me about Alex and Savannah Blazak.

  When June walked into the cafe my heart started thumping like washer with a bad leg. Black pants and sleeveless blouse, both tight with big shiny zippers on them, a silver belt looped around her waist, pointy black boots. Red lipstick. Rubies in her ears. Her skin is what got me most, though: brown and damp and extremely smooth looking.

  The Unknown Thing seemed to just run off her, like rain off a roof

  I stood up and pulled out her stool.

  "You look extremely nice today," I said.

  She smiled. "Thank you very much."

  The whole thing was a blur. A one hour blur. She talked about growing up in Laguna Beach the same time I was growing up in Tustin. We graduated from different schools in the same years. She was twenty-four, like me. Her parents had told her about me when we were eight, and she had seen a picture of my face in a newspaper. She went to UC Irvine and got a double degree in history and English Lit, but spent a lot of her time at KUCI, learning radio. She won a broadcast award for a show she'd developed at KUCI called Real Live. She was pleasantly shocked to be offered a broadcast job at KFOC starting one week after her graduation from college. She did her show, plus dee-jaying four hours of music, plus news, traffic and weather. She'd been at the station for about six months.

  "I love it," she said. "But I feel trapped. Twenty-four years old and I'm stuck in a dark studio six hours a day. I'm successful and some people are jealous of that. I picture myself in a cottage on the beach with two dogs, but I guess everybody pictures that."

  I caught myself staring at her and made a point of looking away, looking at her coffee cup, her fingernails, the zipper down the middle of her blouse, anything to save her face from my eyes.

  "Joe," she whispered. She curled a finger and I leaned in close. "You can look at my face."

  "I'm sorry, I—"

  "I'm telling you not to be!"

  "Yes. All right."

  She talked about herself some more and I appreciated it. It struck me that her talk was a gift for letting her question me on the air. I listened and asked questions and tried to look but not stare.

  Look but not stare.

  And then it was over. I walked her over to the studio and held open the door.

  "I really enjoyed this time," I said. "I'd like there to be more of it. Can I take you out to dinner on Monday?"

  She studied me for a moment. Mouth relaxed, no smile. Deep brown eyes shifting back and forth between mine, like they were examining them one at a time, really digging in. Her slender, rectangular face was expressionless. There was nothing in that face that I could read, except intensity and I knew that some deep and close judgment was being made.

  "All right," she said. "Call me and I'll tell you how to find me."

  "I'm extremely happy about this."

  "See you then."

  She walked past the reception desk and the door buzzed open. J turned and waved, then disappeared.

  The receptionist smiled at me.

  At the sheriff's range I drew and shot fifty right-handed practice rounds then drew and shot fifty with my left. Then I alternated another twenty-five from each side. I borrowed a .45 ACP from the firearms instructor, but it didn't have the butter-smooth action I'd tooled into the personal weapon that Dr. Zussman had confiscated. That lowered the group two inches the silhouette. I drew and shot the little .32 twenty times. It's interest how quickly you can drop to one knee, shuck up your cuff with your hand, then pop the snap and draw with your right. The magic is that you're already kneeling, already stable for fire. But it's still tough to shoot a good group at fifty feet with a gun that small.

  I cleaned the sidearms thoroughly when I was finished. Shot well, though the left hand got tired and shivered a little. Then I drove back to headquarters to lift some weights and collect the mail from my cubby.

  There were three messages that Jaime Medina had called. Each one said IMPORTANT! PLEASE RETURN CALL SOON. There was also a letter from someone whose crowded handwriting I'd never seen, so I didn't bother to open it.

  Last was a note from my friend Melissa in the crime lab.

  It said, Scored on your behalf, see me ASAP.

  Yes, she did score on my behalf: the sucker stick I'd bagged in Alex Blazak's weapons emporium held saliva with DNA almost certainly longing to Savannah. Melissa was able to match it up with a water-glass saliva sample supplied by Jack and Lorna to Steve Marchant of the FBI. The FBI had turned the water glass over to our lab to get the DNA workup and Melissa had filched the results.

  The Macanudo cigar was smoked by Alex, whose DNA patterns were on file with the California Department of Corrections. The Davidoff smoker, she said, was anybody's guess.

  "I haven't run the fingerprints you lifted yet," she said. "Give me another day or two."

  "I owe you, Melissa."

  "How about a cup of coffee sometime?"

  "Uh ... it would be my pleasure."

  I left headquarters with a strange feeling. I stopped for take-out and still had it. Driving home, I pictured them again, brother
and sister sitting in the upstairs room in Alex's warehouse, watching cartoons. Savannah working on a grape sucker. Alex puffing a Macanudo. She wasn't tied up or knocked out or locked in a room. I remembered Savannah on the one night I'd seen her: calm and polite. She didn't look kidnapped. She looked like a girl with a Pocahontas backpack, about to take a short trip.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The letter with the cramped handwriting was from my father, Thor Svendson. It was the first one he'd ever written me.

  I read his signature first. Just that glance was enough to make my heart beat faster and bring a choking thickness in my throat. My hands shook comet. A comet of pure white pain streaked across my face.

  I set down the letter. I could smell the fear on myself—metal and ammonia. I took three deep breaths, got up and walked outside. The neighborhood looked like it always did, but everything was wavering and outlined in a faint haze of red. It was hard to get air, so I concentrated on breathing.

  All I could think to do was climb to the quiet spot, up into those trees where no one can see me but I can see everything. I found the tree. I climbed. I backed into the leafy branches, disappeared, stared out. My focus was back. The neighborhood was clear and specific.

  I stayed there for a long time before going back into the house.

  This is what the letter said:

  Dear Joe,

  Hi. I'm writing because I need you to forgive me. I believe in God now and don't think I can get into heaven unless you do it. That's what this book I got says. You need to do it in person "but that court thing you got against me lasts my whole life unless you get rid of it. I'm in Seattle. I'm coming into Santa Ana by train on Saturday, the 23rd. Don't have me arrested. Maybe we can have a drink and catch up a little. I'll pay. Maybe it would be good for you to get to know your old man, since your other one got shot. The least you'd get is a free drink. And like I said I can't get into heaven without you.

  Sincerely, Thor Svendson

  I sat in the backyard patio and ate the take-out food. The evening was cool and damp, like the night Will died. Not long after sundown the fog rolled in and I could see the swirling droplets of moisture, then the misty cloud of it around my patio lights.

  I got a jacket and went back outside. I pictured Thor Svendson from the newspaper and magazine photographs I'd seen of him—plenty were published after he was arrested, more when he was sentenced to thirteen years in Corcoran State Prison, more when he was released after seven. I had quite a collection of them at one time, and sometimes I'd read about him and myself, just like any other subscriber would. I looked at the pictures. In almost all of them he looked friendly enough, with no obvious malice. But then, true malice isn't obvious.