Storm Runners

by Parker, T. Jefferson

  Cedros felt the looseness in his bowels, the tightness in his chest, and the sharp discomfort of his stomach, right at the belt line.

  He looked in the sideview mirror again and saw nothing but darkness behind them.

  “The cops said Lejas tried to shoot her,” he said.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that,” said Ampostela. “This is just this. What we’re doing is just this.”

  “Yeah,” Cedros said quietly. “This is just this.”

  “What’s the baby’s name gonna be?”

  Cedros couldn’t believe that Ampostela would ask that question on the way to killing the baby’s father. But Cedros understood that his disbelief meant nothing so he answered. Instinctively, he lied.

  “Maria.”

  “Cool.”

  “We got her some little outfits already. Jammies and stuff.”

  “I got two boys and a girl with their mother up in Fresno. I hate that fuckin’ place.”

  “Never been.”

  “Don’t bother. Where’s Marianna work?”

  “Dos Amigos.”

  “Which one?”

  “Monrovia.”

  “We’re not stopping at the restaurant I told you about. We’re meeting these people up a little further.”

  “Okay. Whatever you say.”

  They wound up into the mountains. Ampostela’s Magnum was a big bad-looking station wagon that hauled ass and held the corners well. He told Cedros it was the most powerful production car in the world for under $30K. It had looked to Cedros like a fat gangster’s ride but he had to confess, he’d love to have one himself. Let Marianna drive it, actually, with the soon-to-be two children in tow.

  Ampostela checked the rearview again, then slowed, pulled into a turnout, and stopped. There was no other car in sight. He killed the lights and engine. He leaned across Cedros and pulled something from the glove compartment.

  “What’s the gun for?”

  “Peace of mind, homeboy. They’re coming. Get out. I’ll talk and you do what I say. Only way it works.”

  Cedros got out and stood on shaky legs. He watched the big man come around the front of the car. Ampostela had stuffed the handgun into his pants between the shirttails, not even bothering to cover it.

  They stood looking down at the black canyon and the whitecapped river barely lit by the moon.

  “The river,” Ampostela said.

  Cedros heard the roar of the water and he tried to back up imperceptibly in order to keep Ampostela in his vision without looking directly at him.

  In the very bottom of his field of focus Cedros registered the protrusion of belly and one shirttail barely covering the dully luminous handle of the automatic.

  He wouldn’t take his eye off the gun.

  He couldn’t.

  To see the gun was to live.

  “They’ll be here,” said Ampostela. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I won’t worry.”

  “Everything’s gonna be good. This is just this. I’m gonna take care of everything.”

  “Sure you are.”

  They stood awhile. The river sounded against its banks of rock. Not a single car came up the road or down it.

  Far off in his mind Cedros was aware of Ampostela wanting to say something else but not being able to find the right words. Cedros said nothing. It was a matter of self-respect. Ampostela could struggle all he wanted. Cedros pulled his attention away from the big man and directed all of it to the gun.

  In his lower vision Cedros saw Ampostela’s hand drift upward. It came up slowly and in its wake the gun had vanished from the waistband.

  Cedros fired four shots from the pocket of the windbreaker, angling the barrel of the .22 up into the big man’s chest. Then he brought out the semi and shot Ampostela three more times in the head. The big face shifted and collapsed oddly. Cedros felt the hot mist hit his skin.

  The big man dropped to his knees then fell on his face in the gravel.

  Cedros staggered into the bushes, where he vomited and barely got his pants down before he lost control of his bowels. Then, talking to himself in a voice that he hardly recognized, he staggered back to the car and braced his feet against a front tire and managed to roll Ampostela’s great body to the edge of the canyon and over. He suddenly remembered the $25K and didn’t care one bit about it. He heard rocks sliding, then the body huffing against something very hard, then silence. Cedros stood and watched as Ampostela rolled off the last outcropping and was swallowed by the roaring darkness.

  He threw Ampostela’s gun into the canyon. He had to backtrack to where he’d gotten sick to find Marianna’s .22 then come back and throw it into the river too.

  He was shivering in the dirt with his back against the car when Marianna drove up minutes later, her headlights out of alignment and the dust rising into her almost crossed beams, which suddenly died.

  He heard her get out and crunch toward him and he felt her arms spread over him and her sweet soft face press against the reek and blood and trembling of his own.

  “Oh, baby,” she said. “Oh, baby, my baby.”

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. It worked.”

  “You’ve got to get up, baby.”

  “Mom? Dad?”

  Through the rising curtain of his wife’s hair Cedros saw Anthony’s skinny little legs appear on the ground beside the open door of the family car.

  “Anthony Mark Cedros, get back into that car right now.”

  “Yes, Mom. Hey, Daddy, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing, Tony. I’ll be right there.”

  “Stand, John. Hurry. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  29

  In the cold northern silence of the Crescent City Travelodge, Stromsoe dreamed that he was back in Newport Beach with Hallie and Billy.

  It was a cool March Thursday, a school day. Hallie made them a light breakfast and all three sat at the dining-room table.

  “Dad had a dream about driving a car last night,” said Billy.

  “How do you know that?” asked Hallie.

  “Because I was in the backseat.”

  They laughed and Stromsoe felt limitless love for his son.

  But even while dreaming this conversation, he had recognized the terrible portent of it. He awakened and made the in-room coffee and sat at the unsteady table by the window with the curtain drawn and the rain tapping against the glass.

  Partly as a way to keep alive people he loved, and partly as a way of getting ready to see Mike Tavarez in a few short hours, Stromsoe now let himself remember that morning a little at a time, sipping the memories.

  Because I was in the backseat.

  Later he had walked Hallie and Billy outside. The van was parked in the drive because the garage of the old Newport house was too small for anything but Stromsoe’s Taurus and a smattering of tools, beach gear, bikes, and boxes of outgrown children’s toys.

  Stromsoe closed the door behind him and followed them down the short walkway to the drive. Billy led the march, leaning forward against the weight of his backpack. Hallie followed him in jeans and a flannel shirt and a pair of shearling boots sized for a moonwalk. Stromsoe watched the shape of her and thought it was good. As if knowing this, she turned and smiled at him just as they got to the driveway.

  Hallie pressed the key fob and the door locks popped up with a single clunk. Billy slid open the side door. He slung his pack in ahead of him and climbed into the seat. Stromsoe helped pull the seat belt around his son and Billy snapped it shut.

  “Have a great day, Billy.”

  “Okay.”

  “Be nice to Mrs. Winston.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “Okay. I mean, I love you too.”

  Stromsoe kissed the top of his son’s head, slid the door shut, and stepped back.

  Hallie tried to start the van but the battery was so weak it couldn’t turn the starter.

  She threw open the door. “I hate this van.”


  “Let me try.”

  Stromsoe got in and tried but even the small charge was gone and his turning of the key made nothing but a mortal clicking sound.

  He opened the hood and looked but the battery terminals were clean and the clamps were tight and little else in the compartment made sense to him. He got back in the cab and tried the radio, which was dead.

  “Just take my car,” he said. “I’ll call Auto Club, get a jump, and take this thing down to Pete’s.”

  “Ah, can’t you come with us?” she asked.

  “I’ll just be that much later to work.”

  “Dad! Can’t you just come with us?”

  Stromsoe sighed, then reached up to the van’s sun visor and clicked on the automatic garage door opener. The motor groaned and the door lifted open. The tightly packed contents of the garage came into view.

  “All right, Dad!” hollered Billy.

  “All right, Dad!” hollered Hallie.

  As Stromsoe followed them into the garage he had one of those epiphanies common to the family man—that he was blessed to have Hallie and Billy, that he should be more thankful for them and kinder to them, that he should slow down and enjoy the little things like taking your boy to school when the van battery goes dead. And if you’re an hour late to work, who cares?

  This happiness hooked another happiness from many years ago when he had led the marching band in “When the Saints Go Marching In” for probably the ten millionth time. It had hit him in an instant back then—just how wonderful and singular this moment was, and now Stromsoe remembered the green grass of the football field in the stadium lights, the thunder of the bass drums and the trills of the piccolos, the heft and rhythm of the mace in his right hand, the weight of the shako hat with its strap snug around his chin.

  For a moment the joyful, many-footed song played again in his head.

  He was whistling along with it to himself as he stood in his garage and dug the key fob from his pocket.

  Billy was just about to veer to the right side of the Taurus because he liked to sit behind his mom. However, there was a bug of some kind on the trunk lid and he had to stop to inspect it. Behind him Hallie went up on her toes in the way that faster adults stuck behind slower children will do. Stromsoe had slowed too, ready to head for the driver’s seat when they got out of his way.

  Lord, how I want to be in that number…

  He pressed the unlock button and the locks came up. One second later he and his family were blown to rags.

  30

  Tavarez was waiting in the visitation room when Stromsoe was escorted in. He looked pale but fit, freshly shaved. He stared as Stromsoe sat in the immovable chair and picked up the telephone. Stromsoe stared back.

  Mike was not handcuffed but his ankle irons were in place and a guard stood outside the inmate entrance looking in through the perforated steel door. The visitation room was empty now because only weekends were for visits unless Warden Gyle himself made other arrangements.

  Tavarez picked up his black telephone, wiped the mouthpiece on the sleeve of his orange jumpsuit, then put the phone to his head.

  “You look the same as always, Matt,” he said.

  “You’ve gained weight.”

  “Workouts. Good food.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You don’t limp. There are scars on your neck and face and a missing finger. I heard that you have steel pins in your legs.”

  “Plenty of them, Mike. They tighten up in cold weather. I carry a document for boarding airplanes. I run even slower than I ran before. The list of my improvements goes on and on.”

  “The eye is realistic.”

  Stromsoe looked at Mike and for just a moment he appreciated the humor of mad-dogging with only one good eye, figured it was to his advantage to have the glass one staring along blindly like some fearless German sidekick.

  He nodded.

  Tavarez smiled. “A cold glass eye. Not fair.”

  Stromsoe listened to the hum of the great “supermax” prison around him. For the worst of the worst, he thought. The most expensive, efficient, and punishing incarceration yet devised by man. A model for prisons for years to come.

  “I dreamed about them last night,” he said. “They were whole and perfect and alive. That’s how they’ll always be for me, Mike.”

  “They should be. The bomb was for you.”

  Tavarez had not acknowledged this since that very first phone call to Stromsoe on the night he almost burned his house down. In court, Tavarez’s attorneys had fought hard to lay the blame on La Nuestra Familia. In fact, they’d made the beginnings of a good case because Stromsoe and the task force had had as many dealings with LNF as they’d had with La Eme. Stromsoe’s name had appeared in numerous Familia communications. But in the end they couldn’t produce a witness to contradict the low-level La Eme soldier who had turned state’s witness after his life was threatened. The soldier had heard El Jefe discussing the bomb. He had heard the name Stromsoe. He had purchased the nails at Home Depot. He had succumbed to a task force offer to drop murder charges and relocate him and his family after the trial.

  “And Frankie Hatfield? Was she going to be for me too?”

  “Frankie who?”

  “More punishment for Ofelia? Because Hallie and Billy weren’t enough?”

  Mike studied him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “We got the visitation logs. We’ve talked to a lot of people, including Lejas and Ampostela. They were all helpful. Here’s the story line: Cedros wanted to keep Frankie from her experiments. He harassed her. He photographed her. When that didn’t work he came to you—a distant relative, a man who can get things done. You saw the pictures of her. I was in some of them. A little miracle for you, some more of the good luck you always thought you had. You figured you’d kill her and let me live with her on my conscience, along with my wife and son. Lejas got close. I got lucky. But there are more out there like him. Which is why I’m here.”

  Tavarez said nothing.

  Stromsoe turned his attention from Mike to the pale yellow walls of the visitation room, then to the guard behind the steel door, then to the video cameras in each corner of the long, rectangular room.

  “They’re going to send you back to the X for the rest of your life,” said Stromsoe.

  Tavarez smiled lazily. “You can’t do that. You don’t have the power.”

  “I had a lot of help,” said Stromsoe. “A senator, an assemblyman. Judges, lawyers, doctors. Others. One week from Thursday is the Prison Board meeting. By the time it’s over you’ll be reassigned to the X. It’s a done deal. Only you can undo it, Mike. Only you.”

  Tavarez tried to bring a stony disbelief to his face but Stromsoe could see the anger in his eyes.

  “How?”

  “It’s Frankie for the X, Mike. Her safety for your life in the general population. You promise me she’ll be left alone and you can stay right where you are. You can keep getting your little favors from Post and Lunce. But if she’s touched, you go to the X for the rest of your life. If she’s harassed on the phone, you go to the X for the rest of your life. If she gets a cold or trips on a sidewalk or sprains her ankle working out at the gym, you go to the X. And the only way you’ll get out of the X will be on a stretcher or on a pass to the psych ward. I heard them screaming on the way here. Hard to picture you in a straitjacket, Mike. The madman El Jefe, bellowing his life away in the ding wing.”

  Tavarez sat back and gave Stromsoe a skeptical look. He furrowed his brow and shook his head as if in amazement.

  “You thought of this?”

  “After I saw Lejas up close I knew the score.”

  “You must like this woman with the man’s name.”

  “I hardly know her.”

  “Dig her as much as Hallie?”

  “She’s young and innocent.”

  “Hallie was young but not innocent.”

  “No. She was guilty of trusting you.”

 
; Tavarez shrugged.

  “This isn’t Frankie Hatfield’s world, Mike. You’re wrong to throw her into it. Cut her loose. You can’t bring Ofelia back. Keep yourself here in the pop where you belong. You don’t need the X.”

  Stromsoe watched the bemused expression drop from Tavarez’s face to reveal his murder-one stare. It was a flat look that somehow diffused the light in his eyes and made him look both feral and focused, and ready to act. It was the look that Tavarez had given Stromsoe in court, the look he used on the street, in his business, in prison. It was a look that promised pounds of violence and not an ounce of mercy.

  “Your woman is absolutely safe,” said Tavarez. “That’s a promise. And here’s another promise, old friend—the day I see the inside of the X again is the day you both die.”

  Tavarez stood, then turned and short-stepped toward the door, chain dragging between his legs.

  HE ARRANGED TO have his lunch served in his cell that afternoon.

  When Jason Post had slid the food tray through the bean chute, Tavarez approached the door to collect it.

  “Mystery meat,” said Tavarez.

  “You eat better than a lot of poor people,” said Post.

  “I need to use the library Thursday night. And I want my family visit on Sunday because I wasn’t able to have it yesterday.”

  “Why didn’t you? You’re the one who called it off.”

  “I was busy.”

  “That’s funny. Those two favors are gonna cost you.”

  “I’ll have the usual transfer made.”

  “Double it, or no deal.”

  “Eight hundred dollars for one hour of library time, and a family visit?”

  “Lunce told me she was a real cutie last week. So it’s double or nothing.”

  “It has to happen just like I told you, Jason. There’s no room for a mistake on this one. Library Thursday night, and my family visit on Sunday.”