Storm Runners

by Parker, T. Jefferson

  “Try this,” said Stromsoe. “You have a nice wife back there at home, and a nice little boy, and another baby on the way. This isn’t going to be easy on them, especially your wife. You get tried as a stalker, there’s no winning it. Even if you’re acquitted, people wonder. They talk. You get passed over. You’re a stand-up guy, John. You can’t live like that. I know you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You’re a lousy liar,” said Stromsoe. “I don’t believe you’d leave that pretty woman back there at home, then drive all the way to San Diego to spy on a weather lady who isn’t even on your channels up here. That’s bullshit, John. You’re covering for Choat and you’re going to take the fall. I’m trying to help you here. Can’t you see that?”

  Cedros reached down, picked up a rock, and snapped it out over the river. His motion was compact and angry and the rock jetted far out over the water then vanished into the canyon shadows.

  “And you also lied about being a deadbeat dad,” said Stromsoe. “Just the idea disgusts you. You lied about being a janitor in a hospital because you’re DWP and you’re proud of that. You wear your uniform and you polish your shoes and you hope you’re moving up the ladder. And you lied about stalking a woman because you’re still so crazy in love with your wife it’s the last thing you’d ever do. So, why? Choat? You know I’m going to talk to him. How can I help you if you don’t tell me the deal?”

  “There’s no deal,” Cedros said with soft-spoken hostility. “There’s just me and something dumb I did. You saw my wife. She’s tall. I like the tall ones.”

  “Okay, fine. Get back in.”

  Stromsoe punched a U-turn and headed back toward Azusa.

  Cedros stared out the window almost the whole way back to his house. He seemed deflated, even smaller.

  “I Googled you,” he finally said. “I know all about you.”

  “Everybody knows all about me.”

  “You got my respect.”

  Stromsoe looked at Cedros but couldn’t think of what to say. He just shook his head and opened his hands in frustration.

  “You go get another job,” said Cedros. “Get Frankie Hatfield to hand over her formula and promise not to use it to make rain. Everybody will be better off.”

  Stromsoe jerked the wheel to the right and his truck careened to the curb and when he slammed on the brakes John Cedros’s head was pressed to the side window. Stromsoe leaned across and felt his pistol press his ribs as he jammed his face right into that of Cedros.

  “But that’s not going to happen. Choat doesn’t own the rain. You can’t scare that woman off of her work. You don’t tell me who to work for. Get it? Can I make it any more clear to you?”

  “That’s all I’m going to say.”

  “No, you’re saying good-bye to your future too, friend. You’re dumber than I thought you were. You want to drag your wife and kids down with you just to kiss somebody’s ass at work, that’s your business. Fuck it, kid, I give up.”

  Stromsoe floored the truck from a dead stop and skidded to a halt in Cedros’s driveway a minute later.

  Cedros jumped out and slammed the door. He turned back to look at Stromsoe without breaking stride. His wife opened the safety screen door and Cedros blew past her and was gone.

  Stromsoe backed out and saw the new Magnum parked under his acacia tree down the street, the pink blossoms littering the black hood, a face behind the wheel scarcely visible through the windshield and the darkly smoked side window.

  Everywhere you look, thought Stromsoe.

  He drove out to Azusa Avenue, cruised the street with the lowriders and the pretty girls for a few minutes, then circled back and came up on Cedros’s house again. The Magnum was now in the Cedros driveway. Stromsoe parked well away and not under his acacia tree, then got his binoculars from the glove box and wrote down the Magnum’s plates. He waited about twenty minutes until a guy came from the Cedros house with plastic grocery store bags swinging in each hand.

  The man was big, his skin the color of heavily creamed coffee. His hair was buzzed. Wraparound shades and a chain with one end latched to his belt loop and the other disappearing into his front pocket. He wore black work boots and chinos and a sleeveless under-shirt and his arm tats included an elaborate Celtic rendition of “13,” the letter S, and something Stromsoe couldn’t quite make out involving an Aztec warrior and a bloody heart.

  The “13” was for the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, thought Stromsoe—the letter M. M was for Mexican Mafia. And S for sureño, the gangs of the south that made up the thousands of foot soldiers of La Eme.

  The guy swung the bags into the passenger seat of the Magnum and drove off. Stromsoe stayed in his truck, struck by the circularity of what he was doing, by the deadly comedy of it all.

  Fourteen years of chasing these guys and I’m still at it, he thought. A wife and a son murdered, an eye lost and a body blown half to bits, no Sheriff’s team around anymore to help keep me alive, but I’m still here, just like I had good sense. For what? Three-fifty a day before taxes, five vacation days your first year, a lousy HMO medical plan, no dental, per diem enough for fast food and a few gallons of gas.

  The upside?

  It was a short list: doing the right thing, fighting the war that had taken the ones he loved, and Frankie Hatfield.

  21

  It was almost eight by the time Stromsoe got down to the San Diego waterfront for Frankie’s last story of the night. She stood on the Embarcadero walkway with the yachts bobbing behind her in the marina and a firm breeze ringing the halyard swivels against their naked masts.

  She smiled at Stromsoe as he came down the boardwalk, and waved the microphone at him. In the felt fedora and brown overcoat she looked like a gumshoe with big hair.

  He stood behind the little audience that had formed, listening to tomorrow’s forecast: clear and breezy throughout the county, with temperatures in the low seventies at the coast and midseventies inland, with the deserts at eighty and the mountains in the midsixties.

  “And we’ve got some more rain to go along with that half inch from Sunday, coming along, well…I’m going to say Friday, maybe Saturday. Right now it looks like another substantial storm, and two storms this early in the season is good for our depleted lakes and reservoirs. Rain is life! I’m Frankie Hatfield, reporting live from the Embarcadero.”

  “Get ’em, Frankie!”

  “Right on, Frankie!”

  She signed a few autographs and Stromsoe walked her across the street to the county building parking lot.

  “You look nice tonight,” he said.

  “Thanks. This was one of Great-great-grandpa Charley’s hats. I’m trying to keep up with Loren Nancarrow on Channel Ten. He’s got the coolest clothes.”

  She opened the door of the Mustang.

  “I got food and wine for us,” he said. “Even though my whole house is about the size of your living room.”

  “You really did?”

  “The whole truth.”

  “For me?”

  He looked at her.

  “The shower work?” she asked.

  “Perfectly.”

  She tossed her fedora into the air, caught it, and set it on Stromsoe’s head. It was warm and smelled of her.

  STROMSOE TURNED THE radio on low and got the omelets started while Frankie used the shower. With the windows open the breeze brought in the smell of tangerines from his drive and the distant hiss of the cars on Mission. The cannons boomed out at Pendleton, muffled thuds, the sound of freedom. The landlord’s cat sat on the couch and licked a front paw. The Mastersons had left a red colander filled with homegrown avocados, tomatoes, basil, and cilantro on his doorstep sometime during the day.

  He was wiping two wineglasses when Frankie came out in jeans and a silk tank top the same deep brown color of her eyes. She was barefoot and her hair was up and she made the little house seem even smaller. Stromsoe’s heart rocketed.

  “Can I go barefoot around here? It makes me s
horter.”

  “I’ve got you by two inches either way,” he said.

  “Mom and Dad used to tape my shoulder blades together so I wouldn’t stoop.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Not really. It was kind of a joke. But it worked. It reminded me to keep my back straight. If you don’t slouch, the tape doesn’t bother you.”

  She turned her side to him and stood ramrod straight.

  He looked at her, wishing that she knew him better, that she was aware of the less-than-good things he’d done in his life. Maybe there would be time for that, he thought.

  “Can you dance?” she asked.

  “Oddly enough, I can. It came easy to me.”

  “Me too. Hey, cool place. I love the big windows and the little fireplace and all the bougainvillea. And, God, the smell of tangerine blossoms is like heaven on earth. There’s a million little nooks and crannies like this in Fallbrook. I’ve lived here five years and I keep finding them. My friends all want to move here. Wouldn’t that be great, or maybe not.”

  She smiled anxiously at her own nervous chatter.

  “I’ll get you a small glass of wine.”

  Stromsoe served the omelets, dimmed the lights, and lit two candles. They sat across from each other at a small table in the dining room. The red colander filled with treasures was the centerpiece. Stromsoe had used some of everything for the meal. He thought of Hallie’s lobster extravaganzas and of Susan Doss bringing him the good deli lunch that day when he almost set his life on fire.

  He poured Frankie some cool white wine and some for himself.

  “I think Choat dispatched Cedros to scare you,” he said.

  “Then I was wrong. Ted thought the stalker was DWP all along.”

  “It doesn’t matter who was right or wrong. What matters is we blocked someone with power. We busted his man and wrecked his program, and now he’s free to find a new way to deal with you.”

  “Can’t you stop him from dealing with me at all?” she asked.

  “I think I can.”

  “I don’t want people watching me. I don’t want that man to turn my work into his business.”

  Stromsoe took a bite of omelet and had a sip of wine. “Frankie, some people don’t discourage. Some people will take things all the way.”

  She looked at him and nodded.

  “I’ll talk to Choat,” said Stromsoe.

  “He’ll just deny Cedros and say he made a generous offer for my work,” she said.

  “He did.”

  “Please.”

  “I understand. It’s your work and your formula and your rain and you aren’t going to sell it to someone who wants to profit by it—whether by using it or destroying it.”

  “Right on.”

  “You’re not going to budge, Frankie? Not for a million dollars? Ten? Or all the staff and land you need to do your experiments? I have to know if you’ve got a price, and if so, what it is.”

  Frankie shook her head. “No price to Choat or the DWP. Ever.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You don’t discourage either.”

  This brought a smile to her face, then it left and she looked down at the tabletop. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “I think if you can make rain, you’ve got bigger problems than Choat. You’ve got half the power of the Lord Himself, just for starters.”

  “I’m getting close, Matt,” she said, looking up at him. “You saw it. We got triple what the rest of the valley did.”

  “I saw it.”

  “Triple. And I’ll have a chance again by Friday or Saturday.”

  They ate for a while in the near silence while the radio played something peppy and light.

  “Cedros worries me,” said Stromsoe. “He’s got big things at stake and he’s smart. He’s covering for Choat and he has connections with La Eme.”

  She looked at him. “La Eme—I remember them from the stories about you. Your enemy, the guy who played in the marching band—”

  “Right,” said Stromsoe. “Cedros knows a guy named Marcus Ampostela. Birch ran him for me while I was driving up from Azusa just now—grand theft auto, extortion, armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon—and plenty of minor charges. He’s spent eight of his twenty-five years behind bars. Not bad, compared to some guys.”

  Stromsoe had been surprised at Birch’s speed with the records check. Back in Stromsoe’s day with the sheriffs, nobody but law enforcement could come up with a jacket that fast. But Birch was plugged into networks that barely existed two years ago and some that hadn’t existed at all back then. The private was becoming public faster than he could imagine.

  Frankie let out a small exhale. “Maybe Cedros was just buying drugs from him. Or a stolen car or something. Nothing to do with the DWP or me.”

  “True. But if Choat could get to the right people, he could hire it.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly. “Through Cedros?”

  Stromsoe nodded and took another drink of wine. “That would be one way. Cedros thinks you’ll drop the charges.”

  “Who told him that?”

  “Someone he believes,” said Stromsoe. “Look, when I lay out the cause and effect for him, he hears it. He gets it. He knows he’s risking his future, his marriage, his family. But he sticks to his original story—he was stalking you because he’s obsessed with you. That’s not the kind of story you walk into court with.”

  Frankie sat back and looked at him. In the candlelight the hollows of her face were both deepened and softened and her eyes shone the brown of polished walnut.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Wait. If Choat has a new idea, we’ll know soon enough.”

  “He could just let the brake fluid out of my Mustang the way I drive. Or have me run over some night walking to my car.”

  “He wants the formula. Is it written down?”

  “No. Charley never wrote it down either.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  “That I can do.” She set down her fork, sighed very quietly, and shook her head.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you, Frankie.”

  She looked at him and Stromsoe had no idea what she was thinking. His own mind was a swirl of hope, fear, and contradiction. How many times had he told Hallie and Billy that, in his heart if not with words?

  “Dance?” he asked.

  “By all means.”

  The song was an old Dire Straits piece, “So Far Away,” and Stromsoe led Frankie in a happy little fox-trot that dismissed the melancholy of the lyrics. At first he was self-conscious about his three-fingered lead, trying to use mostly palm, to keep his touch light but informative. He felt her little finger resting comfortably where his had been. He wished again that she saw him for what he was and was not and wondered if this was a sign that she would be able to. They danced around the table and into the living room, where the floor was cut small by the boxes he’d yet to unpack.

  “I think I just bumped into your past,” she whispered.

  “I believe you did.”

  “Can I see some pictures?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Now. After the song, I mean.”

  THEY SAT ON the couch and he showed her his Santa Ana High School yearbook for his senior year, replete with pictures of himself and Hallie and Mike.

  He hadn’t looked at these things in years and to see himself posed before the marching band, mace held high and shako hat worn low, was to see a child living his desires free of self-consciousness and history.

  “I recognize you,” said Frankie. “Look what chubby cheeks you had. And so serious!”

  “Hey, drum majoring was an important job.”

  He showed her the pictures of Hallie—her senior shot, her picture as “Most Sarcastic Senior,” and a candid image of her standing at a pep rally with a doubtful look on her pretty face.

  “She was an outsider,” said Frankie.

  When Stromsoe turned to the first of the T seniors, he just t
apped the page on Mike. Tavarez looked up at them, his expression wholly remote but the half smile in place like a casual piece of armor.

  Frankie looked down at the picture and said nothing.

  Caught between his desire to reveal and his need to protect, Stromsoe took out a favorite picture—Billy at age four standing on a dock with a yellow child’s fishing rod in his hand.

  Stromsoe’s whole world immediately tilted and the questions of what could have been slid down on him with all their awesome weight.

  “Billy,” he said. “Four years old.”

  “He’s beautiful,” Frankie said quietly.

  “He was very beautiful.”

  She bowed her head.

  Stromsoe continued to look at the picture—it hadn’t been all that long because he had visited these images in their boxes regularly over the last two years—but now, exposed to someone else, Billy seemed to flourish like a plant exposed to fresh air and sunlight and for the first time since Billy’s death Stromsoe was able to see his son’s particular traits instead of his tremendous absence. He saw Billy’s intelligence and shyness. He saw his grave respect for the tiny perch he’d brought out of the pond and now dangled from the rod—the same gravity that his father had brought to drum majoring, of all things, and later to his work. Stromsoe saw too, in the firm set of Billy’s jaw, a conviction that the moment and the fish were important. An attribute, thought Stromsoe, that might have later become valuable to Billy in this world of distraction and diluted faith.

  Might have.

  Might have later.

  Might have later become.

  “Not fair,” said Frankie.

  Stromsoe saw a tear hit the back of one of her big hands, which were folded on her lap.

  “Oops,” she whispered. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  He selected another picture, Billy dressed in a pirate’s costume for Halloween, brandishing a rubber sword. He was trying his best to look menacing but it was easy to see the self-mockery in him. There was also something seductive in his expression, as if he was inviting you and only you to team up and play along.