Silent Joe (44 page)

"I didn't know."

I stared at him but said nothing.

He looked away. "Am I off the hook?"

"You're finished." His mouth opened and his eyes wavered back i mine.

"Finished?"

"For now."

"Oh, yeah. Finished for now."

I drove long and hard that night, out the 241 and onto the 91, then the 55 and the 5 and the 133 to the 241 again, then off on the 261 and back up to 5, then down to the 405 to Jamboree to Pacific Coast Highway then up the 55 to the 91 toward home. During that windows-down, one-hundred-and-forty-mile-an-hour run I thought about Will's life sold for what you'd find in a rich man's pockets. And I thought about what he'd said that last night,
Everyone,
and I realized he was telling me right then who had done it, everyone had done it. Will knew that much. And I also thought about what Millie had said about history lining up to take out Will, the way a dozen things had to quietly conspire in order to get those bullets into him: the Blazaks and Bo Warren, the Reverend Daniel Alter and Luria Bias, Gaylen and Alex, Jaime and Miguel Domingo, Pearlita and Jennifer, Rupaski and Millbrae. Even Joe Trona. Joe, who should have seen it coming, should have smelled the betrayal in the fog that night, should have questioned the sweat on his palms and the tingle of his scar, should have listened to the voice of warning deep in the clamor of his heart.

Everyone
.

I got some fast food and parked outside June Dauer's apartment for a while. I didn't go in. I ate. I looked at her windows and her door and didn't know why I was there, except that The Unknown Thing had brought me back again, just like Will had told me it would. I wanted to be baptized but it wasn't practical unless I rousted Reverend Daniel Alter from sleep and forced him into the Chapel of Light. I imagined the Reverend Daniel at the Grove, talking to a beautiful astrologer while the bureaucrats and captains of industry plotted the death of Will. If I was an old master I would have painted the scene. I didn't think a baptism from him would do the job.

I eased down, set my hat on the seat and leaned my head back, looking out at the apartment and the power lines and the stars.

I closed my eyes and pictured June. And imagined that first day I'd walked into my new home in the Tustin hills, the sunlight hitting the red hibiscus and the white roses in the Trona garden.

I imagined Shag and the last of his herd retreating from the plains and into the chill of Yellowstone, to be safe from the men who had tried to exterminate them. There was snow dusting their big drooping manes and their eyes were small, bright and full of soul.

My cell phone rang at two-thirty.

"This is your old friend Bo."

I didn't say anything.

"Things are in the wind, Joe."

"What wind?"

"I talked to Millbrae. Then I talked with the guys, you know who, and we came up with a solution. It involves quite a lot of money."

"I'm not interested."

"Don't be in a hurry. Think about what that tape is worth."

I hung up and thought about it for five minutes. I shut my eyes again.

The next thing I knew it was hours later and the first rays of the sun were shooting off the rearview mirror and into my eyes.

E
arly that morning I played Millbrae's statement to Birch, Ouderkirk and Phil Dent. There was silence when it ended.

Birch muttered,
"Wow."

Dent started pacing, looking down at the floor.

Ouderkirk laughed. "Worthless shits," he said. "Let's arrest them all on murder one and conspiracy. That's a special circumstance. That's the death penalty."

"Slow down," said Dent. "We have to do this right. Joe, you want to tell us how you got him to talk like that for you?"

I did. I was vague about the "Gaylen" tape and never mentioned Ray Flatley, but I suggested that I could have "improvised" some evidence to get Millbrae's statement. I also told him that I had "collapsed the timeline as to how recently we had talked to Gaylen." And I said that I never told Millbrae that the evidence was genuine.

"You improvised, then collapsed a timeline? You're talking like a lawyer," said Ouderkirk. He turned to our district attorney. "I mean that as a compliment, Phil."

"Thank you, Harmon," said Dent. "With a conspiracy, you just have to pry one away from the group. If you can do that, you're golden. Then you can peel the rest of them off like sections of an orange, try them separately, eat every last one of them."

"I implied to Mr. Millbrae that he might be rewarded if he continue to he helpful," I said. "I didn't promise him anything."

"Look," said Birch. "We've got plenty here to interview Rupaski, Blazak and Bo Warren. Even Alter, if we want to. Blazak's going to be getting it both ways, with the beating of Bias. And as soon as one of them thinks another guy's rolling over, they'll roll over, too. I've seen it a thousand times."

"Gaylen's the key," said Dent. "Gaylen can finger any or all of the as hiring him. That's one thing they'll never admit. They'll all do what Millbrae did—say it was a big misunderstanding, and Gaylen got carried away and Joe here surprised them and we're looking at a jury being ask to believe that public servants and the forty-first richest guy in America are murderers. Tough sell for us, at that point. We start with Gaylen. I think we've got enough for a probable-cause arrest. Take him down. I'll put together a package for an arrest warrant. Joe, what I need from you is couple of pages summarizing what you've got on Gaylen, and a transcript of Millbrae's statement."

"I'll have them in one hour."

"We closed out our surveillance on Gaylen two days ago," said Bin "But we'll pick him up fast." He reached for the phone.

Dent kept pacing. Ouderkirk cleaned a fingernail with his pocketknife.

"You did some good work, Joe," he said. "You're going to make good cop someday."

"Yeah," said Birch, looking at me over the telephone mouthpiece.

"We'll see," said Dent. "Not to spoil the party, but it's a long swim between a confession made under questionable circumstances and a murder conviction."

"That's why we got you," said Ouderkirk. " 'Cause you're so good at the breaststroke."

Ouderkirk rubbed his chest.

Birch asked for the patrol commander.

"Rick, tell 'em all to be careful with Gaylen," said Ouderkirk. "Creeps can feel when the shovel's over their necks. Dangerous as rattlesnakes then."

"Approach him with caution," Birch told the patrol commander. "Consider him armed and dangerous. Harmon, let's go see if he's someplace obvious, like at home in bed. Get on that report, Joe. Make sure it's something a judge would like to read."

I was more careful with that report than with anything I'd ever written in my life. I documented my suspicion of Gaylen, the long trail that led from Savannah Blazak to Dana Millbrae, the admission from Del Pritchard that he'd placed a transmitter on Will's car. One of Dent's legal secretaries typed a transcript of Millbrae's confession, then I excerpted the most effective parts.
No one had to say anything, but in about five seconds roughing up Will turned into something else.

Phil Dent asked me to rewrite some parts. He told me to describe my recognition of John Gaylen's voice during his interview with Birch and Ouderkirk, but to play down the fact that I didn't positively identify him as the gunman. He ordered me to delete a reference to staking out Gaylen's home. He asked me to delete the phrase "over drinks," in describing my talk with Millbrae.

When he had read it through a second time, he looked up at me and nodded. "Get ready for a shitstorm," he said. "And be careful with the press. If you look too much like a revenge-hungry son, it could backfire on us in court. Millbrae's confession is going to be hard enough to get into evidence. Without it, we've got our work cut out."

I spent the afternoon at my old home in the Tustin hills, cleaning some things out of Will's closet. Mary Ann came and went, clearly upset, unable to spend more than a few minutes in the big master bedroom while I took down suits and arranged them on the bed. Some I was planning to keep for myself. With a little altering I could wear them. The others I'd decided to donate to the Salvation Army on Fourth Street, which is where Will had always taken his older clothes.

"Please leave some of the light linen ones, Joe. I always liked him the lighter colors. And the tuxedo that's in the back, in the clear plastic bag—that was for our wedding."

Her eyes welled with tears and she walked briskly out of the room, shoulders back and head up.

Reverend Daniel dropped by in the early afternoon. I'd missed his sermon that morning, because I was busy trying to put friends of his in jail. Dan looked haggard and worn. He wore his usual chinos and golf shirt and seemed so eager to help, but so helpless. He hovered behind me as I brought shoes out of the depths of Will's big walk-in.

"I worry about you, Joe."

"I'm doing better."

"Do you enjoy travel?"

"I liked the family vacations when I was a boy. My favorite was all us in the white van, going to Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest Arizona."

"That sounds splendid."

"You see everything when you drive."

Daniel then invited me to visit the Holy Land with a special group from the Chapel of Light. It was a twenty-day "spiritual junket," with time in Egypt, some Greek islands, Paris, Rome and London.

"They're leaving this evening," he said. "But all you need is a passport. Everything else would be complimentary, Joe. A gift to you from the Chapel of Light. First class all the way, the best accommodations we could find."

I looked at him and set a pair of loafers into a box.

"I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Business, Reverend."

"I thought you were still on administrative leave, because of the shooting."

"I am. There are other things."

He smiled shyly at me, his eyes slightly magnified by his thick glass

"You know, you'd be welcome to bring a friend to the Holy Land. Anyone you want, Joe. Perhaps the radio woman."

I turned and looked at him. He was holding one of Will's two-tone golf shoes, running his fingers over the spikes.

"Who told you?"

"No one told me anything, Joe. I listened to her show! You told her more in one hour of radio than you've told me in fifteen years as your minister. And I was happy that you did tell her about yourself. I felt, just listening, that you were very open to her. And that she was very open to you. That's all. Maybe she could accompany you, do some interviews, and make a working holiday out of it."

"No."

"Just an offer, Joe."

"Thank you, sir. I appreciate it."

Daniel stayed on while I finished packing the shoes and belts. He sat on the side of Will and Mary Ann's bed, legs crossed and hands folded over his thigh.

I started going through Will's neckties. They were hooked to a small wooden carousel with brass spokes. I set aside the ones I wanted to keep. The others I laid out on the bed by Reverend Daniel.

"Do you remember that conversation we had, about your father doing things for a larger good?"

"Yes, sir."

"How he always thought he was, even when his actions were damaging or venal? How he thought right and wrong were defined by circumstance?"

"He raised me to believe that."

"Do you understand it?"

"It's not hard to understand. It's hard to live."

"All my faith and all my learning tell me that Will's way is not enough."

"You have God."

"I prayed long and hard to that God, just a few hours ago. Because earlier this morning I heard some things, Joe. Terrible things about good men. And I realized I had to do something. I didn't know what. Thus, prayers to God. Long prayers, Joe. Long and full of question marks."

"Did you get any answers?"

"Yes. He said, Reverend Daniel, do the right thing. And He said, Reverend Daniel, tell Joe Trona to do the right thing."

"We're going to take them all down, sir."

His face was gray, his expression flat. "I understand. I would appreciate you leaving my name out of it for as long as possible."

"You were there, talking to the astrologer."

He colored then, and looked away. "Yes. And other than the astrologer, there isn't much I can say about that night."

"You might be called, Reverend. That's the DA's decision."