Silent Joe (2 page)

Medina:
You've got to talk to Phil Dent, man. . . .

Will:
I know him, Jaime. I don
t own him.

Medina:
Right. . . that's not your job, my . . .friend. . . .

Jennifer walked past me, fresh with scent, and leaned into the office without knocking.

"Coffee, beer? Hi, Will."

"Coffee, please."

She whisked by me without a look, then back again a minute later with a couple of mugs in one hand and a carton of milk in the other.

She went into the office. Will muttered something and all three laughed. She came out and shut the door and looked at me like I'd just gotten there.

"Anything for you, Mr. Trona?"

"Nothing, thank you. I'm fine."

She walked past me and back to her station.

I spread the magazine across my knee but didn't look at it. My job is to watch and listen, not read.
Mouth shut, eyes open.

I heard the traffic on the boulevard. I heard the air conditioner hum. I heard a car go by with a subwoofer that you could feel in your chest. I still felt a little wrong about things, but I didn't know why. Maybe it was just Will's mood rubbing off on me. I often catch myself adopting his feelings. Maybe because he adopted me as his son. I heard Jennifer dialing a telephone.

Medina:
There's all that tobacco settlement money, man . . . like a billion plus you're—

Will:
That billion isn't mine, it's the county's, Jaime. I can't hand it over in a pillowcase. Didn 't the ninety help?

Jennifer:
Get Pearlita.

Medina:
Every bit helps. But what am I going to do when it's gone and watch this place go straight to hell? We need the money for operations, Will. We need it for job training, for lawyers, for food, man, we need for. . .

Jennifer:
Okay, okay. Yeah, he's here right now.

Medina:
...
we can't even do anything when some poor pregnant
Latina gets run over and killed a block from her apartment. We can’t do anything when a Guatemalan kid gets shot to death by fascist Newport Beach cops. We 're handcuffed, man, dead in the water.

Will:
It's awful what happened, Jaime. I know it is.

Medina:
Then help us find a way to help them, Will.

I heard Jennifer put the phone back in its cradle. She turned my way but I didn't look up from the magazine.

Will:
You helped me find Savannah, so maybe Jack will take care of you. And the Reverend will put in a good word for you and the Front. I have already.

Medina:
We need more than good words, Will.

The office door opened. Medina, face pinched, led us down the hall and shook hands with both of us at the back door. Jennifer walk outside, left the door open behind her.

Will gave me a nod. I went to the car, started the engine and hit the air conditioner. I could see them in the side mirror, Will in his dark suit and Jennifer in her jeans and boots and crisp white shirt, standing in the light of the open door. They talked for a while. Will set his briefcase on the asphalt.

Then he shook her hand like Will's shaken a million hands: an open-palmed reach and clinch, the left hand coming forward to enclose yours while he leans his head back in a posture of welcome and possession as he smiles at you.

"I love you," she said.

I couldn't hear anything over the air conditioner, but it was easy to read her apple-red lips.

Will reached into his pocket and handed her the money that I'd counted, rolled and rubber-banded for him, about the size of a half-smoked Churchill: just a couple of grand to help out some of her friends.

"I love you," he said back.

We drove out of Santa Ana and into Tustin. Will directed me to Tustin High School, had me pull up alongside the tennis courts. Not much tennis action by then, just two of the courts being used.

"Joe, fetch that tennis bag out of the trunk and take it over to the middle court. Leave it on the bench."

"Yes, sir."

When I got back we sat in silence for a minute or two. Will checked his watch.

"What's in the bag, Dad?"

"Silence."

"Is that an answer or an order, sir?"

"Reverend Daniel at the Grove," he said.

The Grove Club is never called the Grove Club by its members, just the Grove. It's hidden in the south county hills, off the 241 Toll Road, then up a winding private drive and past a gate staffed by two armed guards, usually moonlighting deputies. You can't see the Grove from any public road. A canopy of enormous palm, sycamore and eucalyptus trees obscures aerial views. It has never been pictured in a newspaper or on the TV news.

I took the first few miles of the 241 at ninety miles an hour. The electronic marquee said "Take the Toll Road—Because Life is Too Short!" The marquee was the only light out there in miles and miles of dark hills. Just a couple other cars in sight.

Politically, Will fought all four of the toll roads because—although public has to repair them, maintain them, and pay exorbitantly high tolls to drive on them—they're privately owned. The profits go into the pock the Toll Roads Agency. TRA sounds like a public outfit, but it's not----- a consortium of extremely wealthy developers who are raising buildings along the toll roads before the asphalt is even dry. In south Orange County, you can watch half a city go up overnight.

There's more to the story. The TRA guys got the State Assembly to stop maintaining certain public highways in Orange County. The highways go unrepaired and unimproved through the year 2006, which guarantees customers for the toll roads because the unrepaired highways are dangerous and clotted with traffic six hours a day.

Anyway, Will lost that battle but was half glad that he did, because you can drive seriously fast on the spanking-new toll roads. We use them all the time, due to Will's hatred of traffic and love of speed.

Once I got past the first toll plaza I opened her up past one-twenty and Will leaned over to get a good look at the speedometer, then sat back.

He chuckled. "Yeah, Joe."

Six months ago Will and his fellow supervisors voted themselves allowance increase of two hundred percent, which allowed him to lease a BMW 750IL. The stock engine gets 330 horsepower out of 12 cylinders. It's a good car, fast but not quick, wakes up at sixty, stable at 160 corners beautifully for a big sedan. Off the line it's not going to blow your hair back—a Saleen Cobra clobbered me at a traffic light last week.

"Ah," he said quietly. "This feels good."

I pushed the throttle through the kick-down switch and the car hesitated for a fraction of a second, then barreled up to one-thirty-five, then one-forty. This model was built with a kill switch at 155 mph, but Will had me install a Dinan chip to override the governor. The chip also brought horsepower up to 370. Will likes to listen to the muffled shriek of that engine under full acceleration, and so do I. When the German horses running hard, nothing beats them for an honest ride.

"Son, sometimes I wish this road was ten thousand miles Iong. We could just drive for hours. Away from the Grub. I loathe the Grub."

Grub, for Grove Club—Will's contraction. He checked the time again.

"I know," I said.

Even though he loathes the Grub, the boss is a member because he needs to be a member. As a man who isn't afraid to piss on the flames of free enterprise for the occasional good of the county, Will Trona is not Grove material.

But as a politician who votes himself a stupidly expensive car to be driven at criminal speeds on semi-work-related business, he becomes Grove material.

Obviously, as the supervisor of the powerful first district, he helps run the government, and the government can influence the business interests that dominate the Grove, so the Grove needs Will, too.

Will told me he pays two grand a month membership dues, all of which is covered by patrons. Dues for public servants are "nominal" because no honest one can afford the usual costs of membership. Most of the money goes into the Grove Trust, then into its Research & Action Committee, a nonprofit 527 Organization that operates free of both the FEC and the IRS.

Every year the trust coughs up several undisclosed millions for the causes and lobbies it thinks are vital to its interests. Its interests are profit and power. But they're interested in more than those things, too. Last year, for instance, the Grove Trust donated $60,000 to the Hillview Home for Children. That's enough for two mid-level salaried positions, for one year. I think highly of Hillview, and the struggle they go through for money. Hillview was where I spent most of the first five years of my life.

Two off-duty deputies logged us in and raised the gate. The Grove sat one mile in, tucked in a valley between the hills. It's an enclosed hacienda-style building, built around a large courtyard. The rounded archways of the colonnades are brick and adobe, wrapped by purple bougainvillea. The courtyard gardens and fountain are illuminated by recessed lights, and they glow from a distance like an emerald wrapped in tissue. The building itself is kept mostly dark on the outside.

I parked the car and followed Will to the entrance, where another off-duty cop wrote our names onto his sheet. He was about to ask me my namewhen I tipped back my hat to let him see who I was. I have notoriety because of this face. It's unmistakable. What happened to it was a big when I was a baby.

Will led the way into the dining room, shook a few hands. I stood back, folding mine in front of me. An average night at the Grub: half the tables were couples, mostly older, lots of gray hair and diamonds set off by dinner jackets and dresses. Three major developers—one commercial and residential. A building industry lobbyist who had formerly served as supervisor. Two assemblymen, a state senator, the lieutenant governor' aide. A four-top of venture capitalists. A table of thirty-something made billionaires by the NASDAQ back in ninety-nine.

We went up the stairs to the lounge, which is a large room with an island bar, billiards tables and booths around the perimeter.

Will took his usual booth. I chose a cue and racked the table m the booth, where I could entertain myself and eavesdrop without making Will's guests nervous.

I glanced up at the third floor. I could see the wide burnished staircase and the closed door to one of the hospitality suites. A waiter knocked. Hush-hush stuff, up in those suites. Rich men and their dull secrets spent time in all of them.

I got a good break, watched three balls clunk into their pockets.

The Reverend Daniel Alter, dapper and gray-haired, arrived exact time. He touched my arm on his way by, but didn't say anything. I watched him shake hands with Will, then slide into the booth across from him, then draw the privacy curtain.

The Reverend Daniel runs an enormous "television ministry." broadcasts originate in his multimillion-dollar "Chapel of Light" here in Orange County, and they go worldwide. You've probably seen him TV. Daniel's sermons are upbeat and optimistic. On his show he sells ChrIstian products—from compact discs and inspirational videos to Chapel of Light keychains that really light up. The money that floods in is tax-free and one knows where it goes, not even Will Trona. That's what he tell; anyway.

Reverend Daniel:
Here's this.

Will:
Good-good.

Reverend Daniel:
The bullpen is killing us.

Will:
Then score more runs. I got the bag from Jaime.

Reverend Daniel:
Do you have her?

Will:
I know where she is. But I'm not so sure I trust those people with

her.

Reverend Daniel:
What could you mean by that?
Will:
Well see what.

Reverend Daniel:
You've done a wonderful thing, Will. And Jack's done his part. It's all going to work out.

A long pause then, while I banked the two balls across the felt and into a corner pocket.

Reverend Daniel:
I'm counting on you. Let God work this miracle for me through you.

Will:
I don't think your God wants to do any miracles for you, Daniel. You've gotten about a thousand too many as it is.

Reverend Daniel:
Don't be pissy, Will. I thought this was your kind of thing. Is everything set?

Will:
It's been arranged, Dan. Don't worry.

Reverend Daniel:
You know, Will, the Lord really does work in mysterious ways.