Tavarez sighed, opened another e-mail, and learned that in Dallas the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha had killed two more La Eme soldiers. He did not know them. But he did know that Mara Salvatrucha had the most and the best guns, because of the long United States involvement that had left El Salvador awash in weaponry. He also knew that they loved the rustic pleasures of torture, sodomy, and machetes. And there were ten thousand of them in the United States alone, with dozens more flooding up through the borders and recycling through deportation every month. Mara Salvatrucha was smart, thought Tavarez, because they opened their ranks to the thousands of Central and South American criminals that La Eme refused to allow into their own Mexican-American ranks. MS was a pestilence in southern Mexico, of all places. The La Eme soldiers in Dallas were gunned down by a vast mongrel army using weapons they could never afford themselves.
Vermin, thought Tavarez. He bit his lip and closed his eyes in a moment of silence for Jaime and the dead men in Dallas. And he promised to wipe La Nuestra Familia and Mara Salvatrucha off the face of the earth.
Tavarez’s next message told him that Ernest in Arizona State Prison had died Monday in his sleep of apparently natural causes. This was doubly disastrous, because not only was Ernest a good man but his ruthless power along the Arizona-Mexico border had been creating tremendous business for La Eme. Now, who would step into Ernest’s place? How was he, El Jefe, going to replace a man who had been building his strength along that border for ten long, bloody, profit-crazy years?
He said a prayer for Ernest too.
Then he learned that the Los Angeles green-light gangs—those refusing to pay taxes on drug distribution in the barrios—had come together and formally broken all ties with La Eme. In doing so, they had turned themselves from a scattered legion of fearless adolescents into an organization that Tavarez knew would, in the long run, do more damage to La Eme than LNS, Mara Salvatrucha, and all the death rows of the American prison system combined. They were the future. They were undoing everything he had done. They were loyal to nothing but profit. Someday they would piss on his grave, then hop into their BMWs and speed away. They would hear the corridos and explode with laughter.
He learned from one of his Riverside compadres that Ariel Lejas was in stable condition with a broken jaw and an ankle crushed by the rear tire of the PI’s new yellow pickup truck. Six of his teeth had been knocked out. He was reported to be in very good spirits and was offering to kill the woman and the PI for free, though he would have to get out of jail first.
Then, more bad news from Los Angeles: Marcus Ampostela had been found in the San Gabriel River, shot seven times. And no word that he had done his job on John Cedros. Were those two facts connected? Tavarez smiled to himself: facts are always connected.
Tavarez looked over at Lunce, who was staring at him drowsily. It never ceased to amaze him that fools like Lunce managed to advance in the system, and what that revealed about the system.
Tavarez sat back and closed his eyes again for a moment. A great silence spread throughout his body. He listened to the blood surging in his eardrums and to the quiet tap where the heartbeat in his chest met his orange prison suit. He listened to the voices of Ruben and Jaime and Ernest and even Miriam. He heard the voices of his children. He pictured Ofelia, her young fingers underscoring the Nahuatl text, her young eyes on his face. He saw Hallie, so free and careless and willing. And Matt, so strong and righteous and preferred.
The silence became a murmur and the murmur became a buzz and the buzz became a roar and the roar became louder and louder. He felt his blood surging faster and his heart beating harder against his prison suit and he understood that the time had come.
Finally.
It had really come. He knew it. From heart to toe, he was sure.
And, as if it were a sign from God, even his last bit of necessary hardware had arrived just days ago, pushed deep into the tight pages of a thick new paperback, delivered by one of his lawyers, undetected by eye and X-ray.
As a miracle, it would do.
He opened his eyes.
He tapped out his e-mails in the Nahuatl code—condolences regarding Jaime and Ernest—but also brief declarations that he would be handling the various other matters personally and very soon. Until then, he asked for patience from Dallas and Los Angeles and along the Arizona border. He named interim replacements for Jaime and Ernest and ordered allegiance to them and respect for their commands. He ordered one of Ampostela’s men, Ricky “Dogs,” to find out what he could from John Cedros, then put him down. He made sure that Ariel Lejas’s family in Riverside received his share of recently earned money to help pay for his defense. He ordered Lejas to leave the PI alone for now, even though Lejas was in the med wing of San Diego County jail. He asked that his salutations and thanks also be passed along to Lejas. As Tavarez typed the code he had the thought that Stromsoe was not only responsible for Lejas but had possibly helped Cedros with Ampostela. What kind of deal might Stromsoe offer a man like Cedros—a small fish, unconnected and caught in the middle of things—in return for talking about his prison visit? Stromsoe, he thought: the curse of a lifetime, but soon to be lifted.
Then Tavarez ordered his Redding and Crescent City people to make the arrangements for his Sunday family visit. Sundays were slightly relaxed. Sundays were slightly festive. Sundays were chapel privileges and a slightly upgraded menu. Sundays, Tavarez knew, were nights that Cartwright always worked. He made a few additional requests regarding that visit, but nothing that couldn’t be easily accomplished. It shouldn’t be hard to bring bolt cutters instead of a woman.
33
The next evening Stromsoe sat outside Frankie’s office at Fox News while she collected weather data and worked up her charts and tables for the night’s forecasts. Through the window he watched her download the National Weather Service five-hundredmillibar surface maps and consult the Doppler radar, giving them her usual careful scrutiny.
She looked up at him and mouthed one word: rain.
He liked the hustle bustle of the news studio, the good-humored hurry of the people, the smokers’ conclaves in the parking lot, the pronounced facial changes of the newscasters when they went on and off camera.
It was Friday, and the fourth day in a row that he had driven Frankie to work, sat outside her office, loitered about the various locations as she broadcast her stories, then driven her home and slept with her. Since Tavarez’s promise of safety, Stromsoe had watched her even more closely than before. He watched her at work and at home, during errands, at the barn. At times it felt intrusive. But he knew Mike and he knew that Frankie was many miles from safe. At least that was what he had to believe. He enjoyed being around her, couldn’t hide it and didn’t try.
The pretty young receptionist called him “Mr. Stormso” and he could feel her eyes inquiringly upon him as he signed the visitors’ log each day. The misnomer made him think of the corrido in which he played the villain, the evil swine Matt Storm. Three different people had taken him aside to let him know how “happy,” “carefree,” and “together” Frankie had been lately, plainly implying it had something to do with him. Her producer, Darren, had asked to see his gun. The production staff fetched him coffee for a day, then offered him lunchroom privileges. They told him to always make a new pot if he poured the last cup, and to make it strong. They told him that Janice in makeup was the best coffeemaker, so if he wasn’t confident, get her to do it. Stromsoe felt large and out of place but accepted for what he was.
Frankie filed her first weather story of the day—just a more-to-come-later “teaser”—from outside the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. The afternoon was chilly with a curt breeze off the Pacific and a pale gray sky above. She wore a tweedy trouser-sweater-and-jacket ensemble, vaguely English, which she had purchased by catalog and received two days ago in the mail. Stromsoe thought that all she needed was a bird gun and a dog to be ready for the hunt.
“Rain Sunday, or will it be Monday? I’m Fr
ankie Hatfield in Balboa Park and I’ll have the storm schedule just a little later, right here on Fox.”
A few minutes later she delivered her first forecast story of the evening, which was aired live. She predicted rain by late Sunday night, with showers continuing into late Monday morning, followed by a clear, cool, blustery afternoon and evening.
“The National Weather Service is calling for up to one inch of rain for the city of San Diego, coast and valleys, but up to two inches in the local mountains. So it looks like our wet October is about to continue. Stay tuned and stay dry. Or go out and get wet. Either way works for me. I’m Frankie Hatfield, Fox News, and I’ll be back from the Gaslamp in less than half an hour.”
As Stromsoe drove her to the Gaslamp Quarter downtown, Frankie confessed that she wrote and broadcast only “about three hundred words a night.” Looking out the window, she told him that this number equaled approximately thirty Chinese cookie fortunes or “ten long-winded occasional cards.” She got a calculator from her purse, tapped away. A moment later she announced that she was paid “about three dollars and fifty cents a word—even for ‘a’ and ‘the.’ Am I overpaid?”
“You sign autographs and endorse the paychecks too. That’s two more words, per.”
“I make a lot of dough for writing fifteen hundred words a week. But I tithe very generously to my Fallbrook church though I almost never attend.”
“That’s called covering your bets.”
“No, no. I believe in Him. I believe in all that. Truly. I just hate standing up in a church and saying, hi, I’m Frankie, then shaking hands with strangers. I didn’t go to church to see them, did I? Girls need privacy. Tall ones need extra. I wish there were still drive-in churches. I’d gas up the Mustang and go, never roll down the window except to get the speaker box in and out. Am I antisocial?”
“Overpaid and antisocial.”
“I knew it.”
She seemed to dwell on this. “I need two of me. One can broadcast and go to church, the other can stay in bed with you until noon every day, then collect the rivers of the world and work on the rainmaking formula.”
“I wouldn’t get much done,” he said. “If you didn’t let me out of bed until noon.”
“I know. You’ve got bad men to catch and people to protect.”
Stromsoe guided his truck down Fourth, following the Fox News van into a small parking lot.
“Matt, when you don’t work for me anymore, could you live with me anyway? You could take San Diego jobs. There’s plenty of bad guys for you to fight. I’ve got way too many acres for one person and the dogs like you.”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“I’ve felt your heart beating next to mine, so I know damned well you’ve thought about it.”
Stromsoe hated this conversation as any man would, even one uncomplicatedly in love. “You’re right. I don’t know, Frankie. That’s too far ahead.”
“Bah, humbug, dude. I just asked you to move in with me.”
“Let’s get through this first.”
“I was checking my status with you too.”
“Your status with me is off the charts, Frankie.”
“Time will tell if that’s true.”
Stromsoe turned off the engine and looked at her. “You recently lapsed virgins can be difficult.”
“I could get pissed off at that.”
“I figured you might laugh instead.”
She smiled and blushed magnificently.
STROMSOE FLEW THEM to San Francisco later that night, a surprise for which he had only somewhat prepared her.
He thought that a day in a city beyond the immediate reach of Mike Tavarez would be good for Frankie and good for himself. He was tired of guarding and thought she must be tired of being guarded.
Frankie played along with the surprise, pretending to relish the small mysteries of a one-day escape—what city? Warm or cool? Is there a river? When did you think of this? You’re a crafty little Mr. Man, aren’t you?—until he realized she wasn’t pretending. She was happy and playful and in his eyes unconditionally beautiful.
They stayed at the Monaco and ate expansively at the Washington Square Bar and Grill, which was recommended by the concierge. Their room was small and furnished with brightly striped wallpaper, a canopied and lushly pillowed bed, and brass accents and knickknacks. It was dizzyingly erotic and Frankie didn’t pull the “Shhhh…” sign off the outside of their door until noon.
While she showered Stromsoe downloaded to his laptop the audio of Choat and Cedros’s conversation up on the Owens River, forwarded by Dan Birch. He took it down to the lobby and sat by the fire and listened to it twice. Good stuff. I want you to burn down Frankie Hatfield’s barn with all her rainmaking stuff in it. He called Choat’s home number—another trophy ferreted out by Birch Security Solutions—and had a brief conversation with the man.
Then he and Frankie took a taxi to Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch. Stromsoe was impressed by how much a tall, well-loved woman could eat. They drank Mendocino Zinfandel with the meal and Stromsoe gradually felt at one with the padding of the booth. He felt the desire to drink more but not to oblivion—nothing at all like he’d felt in Miami. His pinned bones hurt slightly in the San Francisco chill, and he was aware of places where nails had been removed, and his legs, in spite of the running he’d done since Miami, ached mightily in unusual places.
Thirty-eight years old and counting, he thought.
You are what you are.
Hi, Billy. Hi, Hal. I love you. I will always love you.
“You look relaxed,” she said.
“I could sit here for a week. Like a half-crocked Zen Buddhist.”
“Let’s. I’m not afraid to be lazy.”
She signaled the waiter for another bottle.
That night they had dinner at the restaurant attached to the hotel. Frankie wore a dress that she bought after lunch, a backless black velvet number with a criminally modest neckline above which a string of pearls moved in the candlelight. Stromsoe wore the same new suit he’d worn to Dan Birch’s office three weeks ago to be interviewed for a job involving a weather lady, remarking to himself on the great good fortune it had brought him.
After dinner they walked the busy streets around the Monaco. Stromsoe, a product of ordered suburbs, and Frankie, who grew up in languid Fallbrook, liked the way that contradictory things in downtown San Francisco were packed in together—the theaters right there with the massage parlors, the antiquarian bookstore next to the adult arcade, the high-end restaurants and the hole-in-the-wall tobacco and newsstands. They watched as a tide of released theater patrons flooded the bums on the sidewalk, overcoats and scarves overwhelming the knit caps and cardboard signs. The war on poverty, Frankie remarked. The traffic lurched past them in a frantic parade and the woofers pounded from the youngsters’ cars and the shrieks of the bellmen’s whistles echoed up and down the streets. The city seemed hell-bent, self-important, and wonderful.
They stopped at the Redwood Room for dessert and liqueur. The menu said that the entire room—the bar, floor, walls, ceiling, and columns—had been constructed from the wood of a single redwood tree. Frankie was muttering something against loggers when she read that the tree was actually found in a river, toppled by a ferocious Northern California storm.
“See?” she said. “Behind every good thing there’s a river.”
“Next time we’ll go to a river you haven’t captured,” said Stromsoe.
“I’ve never seen the San Joaquin up by Mammoth.”
“Neither have I.”
“I love you, Stromsoe.”
“I love you, Frankie.”
“I can’t ever be Hallie and Billy.”
“I know.”
“But maybe…who knows?”
He brushed a dark curl from her forehead. “Yeah. Who really does know?”
34
The sky was bowed with clouds when their jet touched down in San Diego on Sunday, Halloween morning
. Frankie had spent most of the hour flight craning her neck at the starboard window to watch the storm front lumbering in from the northwest.
“It’s big,” she said. “It’s awesome.”
Stromsoe saw the excitement in her face. She photographed the clouds with the same tiny camera she’d used to shoot John Cedros while he shot her.
When she was finished with the camera Stromsoe scrolled back through the images of Cedros. He was pleased that the young man had shown the courage to wear the wire on Choat. Stromsoe hadn’t thought that Choat would be foolish enough to burn down someone’s property, but he’d also seen the disregard for consequences in his eyes just before Choat had slugged him in the face. This kind of self-granted privilege was a quality shared by nearly every psychopath and violent felon that Stromsoe had ever met, and by several men he knew who were very powerful and had never done one hour in a jail.
They met Ted at the barn. He wore a twelve-gauge shotgun over his shoulder in a sling improvised from leather belts and plastic ties. At his side was a western holster with a prodigious revolver in it. The holster tip was tied to his thigh like a gunfighter’s.
“You kinda scare me,” said Frankie.
“I know what I’m doing.”
She hugged him, the shotgun protruding crosswise between them. “Ted, you’re a true sweetheart,” Frankie said.
“They can’t fool me twice.”
Stromsoe said nothing but in all his years of law enforcement he had never seen anything good happen to a civilian carrying two guns.
He heated cans of stew while Frankie and Ted—shotgun unslung and propped by the door—huddled over surface maps and the real-time weather-station feed coming in from the San Margarita Reserve. NOAA radio babbled on in a stream of static out of San Diego, the meteorologist calling Lindbergh Field Linebergh Field while the Weather Channel played silently from a TV atop one of the refrigerators in which Frankie stored her secret potions.
Storm Runners Page 24
