Storm Runners

by Parker, T. Jefferson

  Still, Cedros wasn’t adding up for him.

  “John,” said Stromsoe. “I believe your details. But I think your main story—you stalking Frankie because she’s tall and pretty—is a crock. What do you think?”

  Stromsoe aimed his flashlight into Cedros’s face while he waited for the answer. Cedros glared into the light, but Stromsoe saw calm and intelligence in the man’s eyes.

  “I think I’m telling you the truth and nothing but,” he said. “When I saw her on TV, I just…man.”

  Stromsoe let the crickets and frogs do the talking for a moment. There wasn’t much left to do but the obvious.

  “I need to use your phone,” he said.

  “What for? I get to meet Frankie?”

  “You get to meet the sheriff.”

  “Homes, man, I been cooperating. You can’t do this to me.”

  “Got to. But the sheriffs are close, so no roaming charge.”

  Cedros tried to wriggle off the car. His boot heels and head both pounded the hood and it looked like he might slip off. Stromsoe spun him back to the middle of it, where Cedros flopped like a fish on a rock.

  “Oh, man, you cannot do this to me. Let me go. I’ll give you anything.”

  “John,” said Stromsoe. “When this is all over, if I catch you around Frankie again, you will be very unhappy.”

  Stromsoe dialed.

  14

  At ten-thirty the next morning Frankie Hatfield identified John Cedros in a Sheriff’s lineup at the Vista Sheriff Station.

  Stromsoe hustled her to her car and got her out of there before the crime reporters could figure out who she was and why she was there. He’d had her wear sunglasses and a ball cap.

  At the nearby San Marcos Courthouse, Cedros was assigned a public defender who suggested that unlawful arrest by the county, and assault and battery by PI Stromsoe, might be more appropriate charges than the ones against his client. Stromsoe observed. The defender talked to a young bearded man afterward and the young man took notes.

  Earlier that morning Stromsoe got a copy of Cedros’s rap sheet from Dan Birch—assault, possession of stolen property, drunk in public. A total of six months in county. He’d never been convicted of failing to pay child support, as he’d said the night before. And no record of stalking, harassment, blackmail, exposure, or burglary.

  Stromsoe was not surprised. After a night to think about him, Cedros still didn’t add up.

  For one thing, Cedros admitted right off to stalking Frankie because she was pretty and tall. He had pictures of her in his glove box—a sex rap right there, thought Stromsoe—exactly the kind of thing you try to cover up, not confess. Then Cedros didn’t know what channel Frankie was on up in Los Angeles County because Frankie wasn’t even on the air up there. L.A. County had its own Fox affiliate and its own weather people. Stromsoe had checked with the satellite and cable operators for Azusa, and neither offered San Diego’s local stations.

  There was also that cagey gleam in Cedros’s eyes, even when Stromsoe had taken him down to the hood of the gold sedan. Like he was thinking, figuring, acting. The guy just didn’t look right, in a way that Stromsoe could see but not explain.

  So he sat in the courtroom and watched as tiny, muscular John Cedros was charged with stalking, loitering near a residence, trespassing on posted agricultural property, and unlawful interference with property. Cedros’s lawyer entered a plea of not guilty. Bail was set at seventy-five thousand dollars. A temporary restraining order was issued.

  Cedros posted a bond for seventy-five hundred through a bondsman and walked into the lobby of the courthouse at five o’clock.

  Stromsoe was waiting for him.

  “You’re a nightmare, man,” said Cedros.

  “My head still hurts,” said Stromsoe.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I’ll help you past the reporter outside if you’d like.”

  “Reporter? Where?”

  “The short guy with the beard. I’m going to give you my coat in case he’s got a cell-phone camera.”

  “You helping the weather lady or me?”

  “The weather lady.”

  “Lead the way, man. Keep that reporter out of my face.”

  Stromsoe did exactly that, ushering Cedros to the parking lot and keeping himself between the accused and the young crime reporter. Cedros put the coat over his head even though the reporter never brandished a camera. Stromsoe got Cedros into his truck and started back to the Sheriff ’s substation.

  Cedros threw the coat into the backseat and stared out the window.

  “John, I’ll tell you. I got to thinking and I talked to Frankie. I thought I could help you both out—you tell me why you’ve been watching her and I can get her to drop the charges.”

  Cedros looked at Stromsoe with a scowl, but his eyes were cool and analytical.

  “I told you why I followed her, man.”

  “It was a good story but it wasn’t the truth.”

  “It’s my truth and I’m not changing it.”

  Stromsoe pulled into the substation and walked Cedros inside. He waited while Cedros submitted his bail papers to a large deputy, who handed them to an even larger deputy, who read them slowly and disappeared. A few minutes later he came back with Cedros’s car keys.

  Stromsoe followed Cedros out to the impound yard to get his car. Cedros plunked himself into the front seat, reached down for the lever, and slid the seat way up. He checked the glove box.

  Stromsoe stayed back by the trunk.

  “Oh, man,” said Cedros. “They took my pictures.”

  “They took them for evidence, John. Pop this trunk and see what else they took.”

  When the trunk lock popped Stromsoe lifted the lid to shield himself, quickly reached down beneath the bumper, and felt the GPU locator jump from his fingers to the car frame. The locator was held in place by strong magnets and could broadcast to a receiver up to a hundred miles away. Birch had agreed that Cedros was worth a closer look, and the locator was one of Birch’s favorite new toys.

  Stromsoe was staring hopefully into the trunk.

  “Just get away from me, man,” said Cedros. “Let the whore hit me with trespassing—it’s a fine is all it is. Let her hit me with harassment because I didn’t harass her or nobody else, man. I never said one thing to her. I didn’t stalk her either. I just…looked. I don’t have any priors like that. The judge will throw it out. They got all my pictures, but that’s okay with me because it’s proof of what I did—I snapped some shots of a pretty lady I saw on TV. The Enquirer does it all the time and those guys get paid for it.”

  “Who paid you for it?”

  “Man, you’re stubborn as a goat. I told you and told you again.”

  For the first time since last night Stromsoe thought John Cedros might be on the level—a short, garden-variety stalker who got off spying on and taking pictures of a tall, celebrity woman.

  USING THE LOCATOR receiver, Stromsoe tailed the gold sedan north toward Los Angeles in the dismal evening traffic. It was interesting to follow a blipping light on a map rather than an actual car.

  Inching through Santa Ana, he saw a city that hadn’t changed a lot in twenty years. His old home was just half a mile from this freeway. The high school wasn’t far. Mike’s house wasn’t either. He passed a cemetery hidden behind towering cypress trees where as a twelve-year-old he had attended the funeral of Uncle Joseph, his mother’s charming and humorous brother. At that service Stromsoe had had the revelation that people were constantly entering and exiting the world, so that the departing always left the gift of one more available space, and we should thank them.

  Glancing into the rearview, he saw a man who had changed drastically. Where was the chubby-cheeked freshman with a passion for leading the marching band? He felt unrecognizable. He hadn’t kept up with a single person from his high school, except for Hallie, who was dead, and Mike Tavarez, who had killed her. He couldn’t think of one person from his past who would
surely recognize him.

  To his surprise, John Cedros didn’t drive home to Azusa, but directly to the downtown headquarters of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

  Stromsoe had to pull over and watch as Cedros stopped at Gate 6, inserted a card, then drove in when the arm lifted.

  Stromsoe looked up at the DWP headquarters. It rose fifteen stories high above Hope Street, a horizontally layered steel-and-stone fortress that looked down on the city it powered. One parking lot was shaded by solar panels. There were flowers in the planters of the walkway leading to the entrance.

  Stromsoe swung his truck around and parked out front behind a LADWP van. He dialed Cedros’s cell phone number and was surprised when he answered.

  “John, this is Matt Stromsoe, Frankie’s friend. Make it home okay?”

  “Yeah, I made it home,” said Cedros. “Gonna get a cold beer out of the fridge right now.”

  “Not coming back down to Fallbrook, are you?”

  “It’s a free country, pendejo. I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You working today? Going to tell Ordell about your adventure in jail?”

  “Keep my boss out of it. And keep my work out of it. It’s the only damned thing I got left.”

  AN HOUR LATER the gold sedan pulled out of the lot and headed toward the freeways. It was nine o’clock by now and Los Angeles was a sprawling jewel against the black October sky.

  Stromsoe fell back and followed the locator again. Traffic was light now and Cedros got himself onto the 210 going east for Azusa. A few minutes later the GPU indicator stopped moving. Stromsoe pulled over and waited twenty minutes to make sure. Then he got within eyeshot of 300 North Walton and saw the gold sedan in the driveway.

  He parked under a huge, drooping jacaranda tree that had soon littered the hood of his truck with pale purple-blue blossoms but made him feel invisible. Scrunched down in the seat, he could see through the upper arc of the steering wheel.

  He could hear the traffic out on Azusa Avenue and the peppy rhythm of corridos coming from one of the houses across the street.

  Stromsoe remembered a corrido written about Mike “El Jefe” Tavarez. In the song, Tavarez is a new Robin Hood, while his boyhood rival—who kidnaps and rapes Tavarez’s young wife—is the “big swine” of the American DEA, a man called Matt Storm. Stromsoe had first heard it back in 1995. It was based on a story by a Tijuana newspaper reporter who had come up with a few scant facts that inspired the corrido writer. Back then Stromsoe thought the song was deranged and amusing but now, almost ten years later, he was angered by the way it reversed the truth for entertainment.

  Mike had been the subject of at least a half dozen corridos. In all but one of them he was a handsome leader forced by gringo racism into a life of armed robbery, but who also found time to play guitar, sing beautifully, and write stirring love songs. He killed without remorse but was loyal to the woman who was taken from him. In one corrido, which was commissioned by a leader of his rival La Nuestra Familia, Tavarez was portrayed as a musically gifted coward.

  Stromsoe had been mentioned only in the one—Matt Storm, the big swine of the DEA. He remembered playing it for Hallie one evening. It made them smile uneasily, and speculate whether Stromsoe’s interagency team of crimebusters would catch Tavarez before someone murdered him, and which would be preferable.

  HE LISTENED TO the news, dozed fitfully, his legs threatening to cramp. He straightened them across the bench seat of the F-150, rubbing the backs of his thighs. He hit the wipers and cut a cloudy swath through the jacaranda blossoms on his windshield.

  Just after sunrise he saw John Cedros come from his house and open a rear door of the gold sedan. A pretty, pregnant young woman in a white robe and matching slippers walked behind him. His hair was gelled back. His shirt was short-sleeve, blue, and had an emblem on the left breast. The collar of a white T-shirt showed at the open neck. His trousers were blue too, his work shoes were black and looked heavy.

  Cedros kissed the woman, who hugged him once before letting him go. She was taller than him by two inches. He checked his watch as he got in and started up the car.

  The woman waved as the gold sedan pulled away, then walked back into the house.

  Stromsoe followed the car at a comfortable distance, all the way back to the Department of Water and Power, where it stopped again at Gate 6.

  As he watched Cedros’s car pull forward into the lot, Stromsoe used the DWP phone directory to get his number.

  “This is the Department of Water and Power custodial…” The recording gave an emergency number and said to leave a message.

  Stromsoe didn’t.

  Instead, he called Centinela Valley Hospital and was given the number of Empire Janitorial, which did not employ a John Cedros at Centinela Valley or any other of its contract sites. There was no Ray Ordell in their employ either.

  Heading back down the freeway, Stromsoe called Frankie.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “Sure, but about what?”

  “Making rain,” he said.

  She was silent for a moment. “Sunday night we might really have something to talk about.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I think the answer is yes. Meet me at the barn at six Sunday evening.”

  PART III

  Water and Power

  15

  John Cedros stood with his shoulders stooped and his head down, not quite looking at the director of resources.

  Instead he glanced sideways through the blinds and saw Los Angeles below him, sprawling all the way to the ocean under a soft, white, cloudless sky.

  Director Patrick Choat sat caged behind the bars of pale sunlight falling on his cherrywood desk and cabinetry. The light was low. He had a corner office at DWP headquarters, fourteenth floor—Water Operations.

  “How long did he question you?”

  “Half an hour.”

  “And the police?”

  “An hour. They ask everything twice.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “What we agreed I would tell them,” said Cedros. “It wasn’t until I started talking that I saw how bad it sounded. Like I was some guy pulling my pud in the bushes. I wish you and I had worked out a better cover story.”

  “You weren’t supposed to need the cover story.”

  “They took the pictures,” said Cedros. “Just like we thought they would.”

  Director Choat nodded slightly, a barely perceptible disturbance within the slats of light and shadow.

  “Were they convinced you were a common stalker?” he asked.

  “The sheriffs were. The bodyguard thought I was lying.”

  “Then he’ll come to us.”

  “I think that’s possible, sir,” said Cedros. “I think it’s also possible that, if I stay away from her, he’ll just leave us alone.”

  “You don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

  Overhead lights came on and Patrick Choat’s great creased face emerged from the shadows.

  Cedros looked at him—the trimmed gray hair, the oft-broken nose, the thick brush of a mustache, the pin-collared dress shirt snug against his thick neck, and the gray, seldom-blinking eyes.

  Choat cupped the photographs in one big stubby hand, dropped them to the desk, then fanned them out in front of Cedros.

  Cedros saw that they were from the batch he’d shot two days ago in La Jolla, just before the bodyguard had chased him.

  “I ran your picture of the bodyguard through our risk assessment program in Security,” said Choat. “His name is Matt Stromsoe. He’s the cop who got blown up by the bomb a couple of years ago. A drug thing that got personal. His wife and son were killed.”

  “I don’t know about any bomb, sir.”

  “You wouldn’t. He’s a PI now. She hired him because she’d caught you looking.”

  “I tried my best. I’m custodial, not a spy.”

  “Indeed. Though now you’ve been c
harged as such.”

  “I’m charged with worse than that. And my only way to protect you is to stick to my story and pretend I was stalking her for personal reasons. It’s a sex crime, sir.”

  Choat looked at Cedros. “I can promise that this won’t go to trial.”

  “I have a wife and we’re expecting our second child.”

  “Everybody has a wife and kids. But you also have my word—this will not go to trial.”

  Cedros nodded and looked down at the polished marble floor. He could feel his briefly promising life caving in around him. It was the same feeling as a cell door clanging shut behind you. He had come so far in his twenty-four short years. Only to run smack into this.

  “How can we guarantee that?” he asked. “Frankie Hatfield has pressed charges and I’ve been arraigned.”

  Choat leaned back. He lay his big leonine head against his chair. “Can you get me Ms. Hatfield’s formula or can’t you?”

  “I don’t even know if it’s written down. I’ve been inside the barn, but it’s stuffed with all kinds of things.”

  “Well, then, we’re right back where we started.”

  “Which is where?”

  “She can either accelerate moisture or she can’t.”

  “It’s going to be pretty hard to watch her any more, with this bodyguard around,” said Cedros.

  Choat nodded. “Prophylaxis.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Think of a way to make those charges go away.”

  “I already have.”

  Choat stood. He was a very big man with a barrel chest made even more pronounced by the suit vests he wore.

  “Sit,” he said.

  Cedros sat and felt the anger spike inside him.

  Choat slowly circled the desk and stopped in front of the window facing west.

  Cedros looked out at the whitening sky. The news had said that there were three storm fronts forming out over the Pacific and that one might hit L.A. this weekend. Today was much cooler than yesterday, down in cheerful San Diego County, where he’d made his bail, collected his car, and finally gotten away from the PI.