Storm Runners (16 page)

“She looks hard to catch,” said Frankie.

“She let me when she was ready.”

Stromsoe set the picture back in the box. His heart was beating hard and for just a moment he doubted his location in time and space. For the first time in his life he saw no clear distinction between the past and the present and no meaningful difference between memories and what he could see right now with his one good eye. He felt as if he could stand up and walk into the next room and his wife and son would be there, sitting cross-legged on the bed over a game of Go Fish or reading a bedtime story. Over two years had passed since their deaths and somehow that terrible day seemed both closer than before and further away than it had ever been.

In looking at these pictures with Frankie, Stromsoe understood that he had crossed the great black barrier that he had tried to cross by talking to Susan Doss but couldn’t. He saw that the dead are free only when we remember them without death. Then the living are finally free too.

“Thank you,” said Frankie.

“Thank you. It’s a good thing.”

“Want to be alone?”

“No,” said Stromsoe. “Take a walk with me?”

“Sure.”

“I found a good spot the other day.”

“I got some shoes in my car.”

“I’ll get the wine and something to sit on.”

THEY SET OUT down the slope of the tangerine grove. The night was cool. A dog barked then lost interest. The moon was small but bright and it lit their way between the rows and along a dirt road and through the lemon trees. Then past an irrigation station and up a hill
of chaparral and wild buckwheat from the top of which Stromsoe looked down on the sprawl of nursery flowers stretching all the way to the dark horizon. The colors were luminous in the moonlight and in the lights on the security fence. There were wide avenues of white and yellow and pink on the left, then a central highway of orange and red, then on the right a great boulevard of mysterious blue and purple receding into the distance.

“I’ll have to do a report from here,” Frankie said. “It’s wonderful. Right in my own backyard.”

Stromsoe doubled the blanket twice and they sat and drank the wine side by side with their arms touching, which sent Stromsoe into incommensurate distraction despite the Colt nudging him for attention on the opposite flank.

He told her about learning to drum major—the many hours of solitary marching to a boom box playing marches in his small backyard in Santa Ana, his many hours being drilled by grouchy old Arnie Schiller, who had led the Santa Ana Saints marching band from 1928 to 1930—and his happy dismay at being the only contestant at the band tryouts the summer before his freshman year. He touched on the basics of cadence and beating time, on downbeats, rebounds, and patterns, as well as the more advanced mace techniques which included tosses, spins, ground jabs, and salutes. He demonstrated a few moves with his wineglass.

Frankie told him about finding Charley Hatfield’s secret lab in the Bonsall barn after following a map attached to an old trust deed she’d found in a Hatfield-family file cabinet. The barn itself was lost in a swale of bamboo and choked over by wild cucumber vines. She used a machete to find a door. When she first swung that door and stepped inside, all of Charley’s stuff was there under decomposing
sheets, covered in cobwebs and dust like a horror movie and she understood that she had been born with a purpose—to find this place and continue this work.

“They all thought I was crazy,” she said. “I was fifteen and I believed them for the longest time. Now? I figure what’s so crazy about making rain? It’s a good thing. It’s possible. Somebody’s got to take the job and it may as well be me.”

Later they walked hand in hand back to Stromsoe’s guesthouse. They leaned against the Mustang and looked up at the stars. Frankie, as a meteorologist, knew the night sky well.

Stromsoe followed the line of her finger as she pointed skyward, listened to her voice, smelled her breath as she spoke:
Lacerta, Pegasus, Delphinus
.
Capricornus, Fomalhaut, Lyra.

He wanted to tell her lesser, personal truths, but he didn’t want to damage the moment, then the moment was gone.

She drove away with one bare arm waving back at him out the window.

P
eople of your ilk usually have to deal with Security first,” said Choat. He sat recessed in the near dark of his office, big hands folded on his desktop in dim slants of morning sunlight. The hands were practically all that Stromsoe could see of him. “But I agreed to give you a few minutes because you’re a friend of Frankie’s.”

“Thanks,” said Stromsoe. “I’m an employee of Frankie’s.”

“How is she?”

“Worried. She’s been stalked at work, stalked at home. I had the guy arrested and he’s going to stand trial but his story doesn’t wash.”

“Stalked?”

Stromsoe leaned toward Choat, still trying for a good look at the
man. “Intimidated. Photographed. Trespassed upon. Watched.” He sat back. “You know what stalking is, Mr. Choat. It’s section sixty-forty-six point nine of the California Penal Code.”

Choat rolled forward from the shadows, giving Stromsoe his first good look at the pugnacious, broken-nosed, battle-scarred face. He was one of those men with a neck as thick as his head. “If he’s been arrested, then her troubles are over, right?”

Stromsoe paused a beat. “There’s a temporary restraining order against him too. But there are plenty of other people besides him who could intimidate a young woman.”

“I don’t understand why you’re here.”

“Look, Mr. Choat,” Stromsoe said calmly. “You don’t fool me. You don’t impress me. Frankie said no to DWP money, so you sent John Cedros to frighten her. You know Cedros—he’s in custodial here. But Frankie hired me and I caught your man. He said he was stalking her because she was tall and pretty. He said that to cover your butt. It’s a lousy story. He’s a family guy. He doesn’t even get Frankie Hatfield on his home TV.”

Choat nodded, leaned back, and crossed his thick arms across his chest. Stromsoe noted the suit vest, the cuff links, the tie pin, the round-collared shirt, and the blunt barbershop haircut.

“I confess,” said Choat. “We offered Frances Hatfield money for research and development of a moisture acceleration system. We are skeptical fans of the work her great-great-grandfather did back in the early 1900s. We are aware that he contracted to make rain for the city of San Diego and it rained so hard the reservoirs flooded, the Morena Dam burst, and people were rowing boats on the streets downtown. That interests DWP. And it was not his only success story—there were several. People have spent R-and-D money on climate manipula
tion schemes much more outlandish than his, I can tell you—defrocking hurricanes, melting ice caps—schemes that never worked half as well as Hatfield’s secret formula. So when we heard what Ms. Hatfield was doing, well, we were damned curious. She had some promising numbers. But in the end she refused our best and final offer and that was that. Mr. Stromsoe, I’ve got no reason in the world to intimidate that lovely young woman. On the contrary, I’m pulling for her.”

“That’s good of you,” said Stromsoe. He stood and went to the blinds and let some light in. “How come you keep it so dark in here?”

“I have very strong eyes.”

“You’re a lucky man.”

“I was born with them.”

“That’s what luck is.”

“I grew up with the son of a multimillionaire. The boy put a gun to his head when he was thirteen years old.”

Stromsoe left the blinds open and sat back down again. “Maybe I had this wrong. Maybe the fact that Frankie turned you down and a guy who works for you was arrested for stalking her aren’t connected.”

Choat nodded. “It’s a free country. I believe this Cedros fellow if that’s what he told you. You can think what you want.”

“I think Frankie scares the hell out of you and your bosses. Who are probably the people I should be talking to right now anyway.”

“You’re threatening me?”

“With what? You’re Water and Power. I’m a one-eyed, by-theday PI.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I want you to know that my bosses and I know who you are and
what you did. And we want your guarantee that Frankie Hatfield won’t be bothered anymore. We don’t want another Cedros—or somebody worse—down in San Diego, pestering her. That’s all.”

“That’s not within my power to grant or deny.”

“Then maybe I should talk to somebody who gets things done around here.”

Choat tapped some numbers on his telephone console. “I just called Security. They get things done.”

Stromsoe stood and buttoned his coat. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be watching.”

Choat stood and came around the desk in a kind of swagger. He had an odd smile on his face, something bemused and occult. He was bigger than Stromsoe had thought, and his gray eyes were hard and calm.

“You can do whatever you want, Mr. Stromsoe,” Choat said. “My only regret is that we had to have this conversation here in my office.”

Stromsoe saw the movement on the low left edge of his vision but understood it not quite fast enough.

Choat’s heavy fist clubbed the side of his jaw up high, by the ear, and Stromsoe spun away. Choat caught him by his lapels and drove Stromsoe back against the wall. Stromsoe had just found his vision and balance when Choat dragged him forward and pushed his battering ram of a face into Stromsoe’s.

“Just a little something between men.”

“Don’t touch Frankie.”

“Seize him.”

Choat shoved him back hard and let go and Stromsoe felt the arms clamp around him from behind.

“Son of a bitch threw a punch at me,” said Choat. “Get him out of my sight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Happy to, sir. Come on, dirtbag. Back outside where dirt belongs.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER John Cedros was sitting where Stromsoe had sat. Choat held him with an unhappy stare.

“We need to accelerate the timetable,” said Choat.

“I told them we wanted action fast.”

“The PI knows. A million things can go wrong. You might be called to trial if we don’t get moving here.”

“I told you he knew,” said Cedros.

“Do what you need to do. Tell them we need results quickly. Tell them we can add fifty thousand dollars to the budget, for results on or before Sunday. If they can’t get the formula, they can burn down the barn instead. And I want the PI off the case and the woman
fully discouraged.
”

Cedros’s heart fell. One week ago he was a DWP custodial-staff flunky trying to raise a family, doing some low-life harassment on the side to please the Director of Resources. Now he was an accused sexual predator contracting for violence and intimidation with the most feared prison gang on Earth.

He thought of big Marcus Ampostela lumbering into his home the day before, leering at Marianna, kneeling to tickle little Tony under the chin, looking over at Cedros as if he owned his family and his life. And Ampostela was just the go-between, not the fearsome ambassador that Tavarez would dispatch for the job on the PI and the weather lady
and the barn. Ampostela had actually smelled the cash, pushing his snout into the sacks to sniff the stacks of bills that Marianna had conscientiously double-bagged as if they had been her own. Ampostela had sat staring at her while Cedros painstakingly wrote out everything he knew about Frankie Hatfield and Matt Stromsoe—her address, her work numbers, the plates on her Mustang, the location of her barn in Bonsall, her hours of work and play, even the name of the gym she went to in Fallbrook on Saturdays and Sundays…

A cabin in Owens Gorge, he thought.

Two hundred and fifty miles from here. Marianna and him in the big bed with the curtains moving in the crisp mountain breeze and never once would they have to roll under that bed when the bullets flew, or hear the stupid
corridos
pounding all night or the scream of sirens or the deafening thunder of the police choppers rattling the walls and blasting their searchlights through the windows.

But just when his heart began to fall, Cedros picked it back up and put it in place again. There were times when a man could not afford to be hesitant or self-pitying. There were times when he had to take care of the ones he loved.

“Yes, sir. We need to move things along. I’ll get the job done.”

“You’re a tough little man. I appreciate that.”

“Does it bother you that Tavarez killed this PI’s wife and son, and now we’re making this happen?”

“Heaven puts people where they need to be.”

“Man, I hope so.”

“We’re just hustling the little PI off to his next case,” said Choat. “It’s not like we’re out to shoot his dog.”

CEDROS MET MARCUS Ampostela at El Matador Mexican restaurant, where the big man had centered himself in a corner booth of the back room. The room was partitioned off with a light chain and a sign that said
CERRADO/CLOSED
. Ampostela’s table was filled with plates of food.

A skinny gangster in a gray flannel shirt sat at the adjacent booth with two weary-looking women and a heavily muscled pit bull with a blue bandanna around its neck. The dog sat beside the man, snorting down the last scraps off a plate. The women looked bored but the man and the dog stared at Cedros as he walked toward Ampostela.

Ampostela, mouth full, waved him over like an old buddy, made a small show of sitting up a little straighter. He was wearing sunglasses. There was an empty beer pitcher on the table and a half-full one.

Ampostela flicked the empty pitcher with a big finger and said, “And a glass for Mr. Cedros.” One of the women climbed out of the booth.

Cedros sat on the edge of the booth bench but he still felt too close. The big man’s head was shaved but the hairline was a shadow on the prison-paled skin. Being this close to La Eme made Cedros feel even smaller than he was, but even worse, doomed.

Cabin. Owens Gorge.

The woman came back with a pitcher and a glass, set them in front of Ampostela. He slid the glass to Cedros and set the pitcher in front of him.

Cedros immediately got down to business. He explained the hurry in vague terms and quickly offered the fifty-thousand bonus to have everything taken care of by Sunday. There would be a change for the better, however. Instead of obtaining the information that he had talked about with Tavarez, now they would like the barn—it
was described in the notes he’d written for Ampostela to pass along—to be simply burned to the ground. Ampostela offered no discernible reaction to the money or change of plan, just a shaved-head glower that could have meant anything.

Cedros thought some actual cash might make the deal. He moved to get an envelope from his breast pocket and the skinny gangster leveled a big automatic at Cedros’s face and the pit bull growled and knocked a plate to the floor.

Cedros slowly pulled out the envelope with just his fingertips and dropped it between himself and Ampostela.

“You people make me nervous,” he said.

“That’s good,” said the gangster. He looked like one of the Olmec heads in the Mexico Anthropology Museum that Cedros had once seen in
National Geographic
. Except for the shades, thought Cedros.

“This is half,” said Cedros. He removed the other envelope and set it by the first. “This is the other half.”

“Okay, Sunday,” said Ampostela. “I’m taking all of this now. If it doesn’t happen, we’ll make it right. It’s not an easy thing, you know?”

“I’ve got no assurance?”

Ampostela smiled. His teeth were white and straight. “That’s right. No insurance.”

Cedros tried to puff himself up a little but it felt pointless. Still, his respect was in question now and he knew he was expected to secure it.

He reached out and claimed one of the envelopes, slid it back into his coat pocket. His fingertips brushed the acetate lining of his jacket, which was soaked through with sweat.

“Half now,” he said.

The Olmec head traced the movement of his hand, then aimed its sunglasses at Cedros’s face.

“This comes back to you the second I know it’s done,” said Cedros. He was surprised at the relaxed strength of his own voice because every muscle in his body felt tight. “And done right.”

Ampostela drummed his blunt fingers on the envelope. He brought it to his nose and drew in the scent of the money. His tattooed arm rippled and swayed, half muscle and half blubber. The Aztec warrior prepared to bite into the human heart he held in one hand like a peach.

“Ricky,” said Ampostela. “You trust this guy?”

The man with the dog shrugged.

Ampostela reached over and poured Cedros some beer. “Good,” he said. “Drink.”

AMPOSTELA WAITED FOR Cedros’s gold sedan to roll down Azusa Avenue then he called Jimmy up in Crescent City. He told Jimmy to get a pen and paper and copy down a message word for word.

Jimmy took the very brief dictation and said El Jefe would have it by eight the next morning.

Then Jimmy called Shawnelle down in Redding and she took the message word for word too, along with a warning from Jimmy about getting it to El Jefe with speed and accuracy.

Shawnelle called her sister, Tonya Post, back up in Crescent City even though it was past dinnertime and the chemo made her very tired, but Tonya was actually happy to hear from her big sister and they yapped awhile before Tonya took down the message for her husband, Jason. It was a hassle for him, sure, and it could cost him his job, but it was easy money.

A message to El Jefe? Two hundred bucks from Shawnelle after Shawnelle took her fifty, and it always came one week later, right on time.

Tonya wrote slowly and asked Shawnelle to repeat herself several times to make sure it was right.

Ced wants all done by Sun night. Fifty extra, half here now, smells good. MA.

A few minutes later she walked in on Jason in the garage, where he was playing “Halo,” blasting alien soldiers into pools of blood hour after hour while the half gallons of supermarket vodka and the cream sodas he mixed them with disappeared at a breakneck rate. She held her robe up snug at the chin but she felt the Northern California cold come instantly through her socks and into her feet then up her legs and into her feminine parts, where the remains of the tumor lay hopefully dead forever.