Storm Runners

by Parker, T. Jefferson

  AN HOUR LATER they set off in Ted’s pickup truck, Ace and Sadie whining with excitement and a sprinkle of rain hatching the scents of sagebrush and wild buckwheat from the hillsides around them. Stromsoe noted that they now carried twelve five-gallon canisters rather than the usual eight. Ted had installed a gun rack against the rear cab window which now cradled the shotgun and its cobbled strap. Frankie gripped Stromsoe’s knee with a strong hand.

  “It’s going to take,” she said. “It’s going to take this time.”

  “Did you tighten up the suspension ratios?” asked Ted.

  “Yes,” said Frankie. “But that’s all I can say.”

  “That’s all I need to know,” said Ted.

  At tower one Stromsoe helped Ted get the three heavy canisters onto the platform so that Frankie could activate the solutions. The copper-chlorine smell was clear but not overly strong. This time, it was Stromsoe who climbed the towers and hauled up the containers. Ted wanted both feet on the ground, he said, and Stromsoe noted with respect that Ted never stopped looking around, scanning the bushes and the dirt roads and the hillsides for any sign of Mike Tavarez’s hired killers. Stromsoe’s .380 was on his waist, secured by the Clipdraw, exactly where it had been nearly every waking moment for the last three weeks.

  Then Stromsoe climbed down and Frankie climbed up. He handed her the heavy red toolbox, which clunked to the platform with a rattle of steel.

  “I think the world of you, you big lug,” said Frankie. “But you know the drill.”

  Stromsoe walked nearly to the truck and turned his back while Frankie tended her formula. He heard the clicking sound of a lighter, then the soft ignition of propane. Ted stood guard on the road, the shotgun sling resting over his shoulder.

  As before, Stromsoe heard the sound of liquid hitting liquid then the banging of a hard object side to side inside the canisters as she stirred the brew. The copper-chlorine smell weakened.

  But unlike before, Stromsoe not quite accidentally wandered to a position that framed Frankie perfectly in the side mirror of Ted’s truck. The second time in a week, he thought, that a side mirror had come in more than handy.

  So he watched her stir and add small amounts of something from a shiny chrome can that she kept in the red toolbox. She measured the liquid in a standard kitchen measuring cup, and made some kind of entry with a stylus on a small silver keypad. Then she stirred again. After working on a thick, black rubber glove, she then lowered a small object into the canister and brought it back out. The object looked like the chlorine tester that his neighbor used on his swimming pool back in Santa Ana when he was a kid. He watched Frankie add something from a dropper, then shake the tester, then bring it up to her face for a reading.

  She poured more liquid from the chrome can into the measuring cup, poured a little bit back out, held the cup at eye level, then emptied it into the canister.

  The blue light almost instantly appeared above the top of the big can. It cast a blue tint on her face as she put on the glove again and stirred. Wisps of pale blue gas began to rise and the altered smell, ethereal and indescribable, came to Stromsoe’s nose in a moment. He watched Frankie watch the smoke, the blue light playing off her throat, her head back and her face to the sky as if to measure its rate of climb.

  “Three canisters per tower now?” Stromsoe called back over his shoulder.

  “Lucky number,” said Frankie. “We’re going to build another tower starting next week. If we want consistent results we need to cover some sky.”

  “I can’t ID that smell,” he said.

  “No one can. This stuff hasn’t been named yet.”

  BY FOUR O’CLOCK they’d finished up at tower four and by five-thirty the rain was falling harder. They sat in the back of the pickup and passed around Ted’s mostly gone bottle of Scoresby. Frankie wore the old fedora, which Stromsoe had seen her spraying with a waterproofer before setting out, and now the water ran in undeterred streams off the brim of it and bounced off her legs in silver comets.

  Stromsoe heard and felt the rain accelerate, something like the sound of a jet revving, followed by an ambient heaviness as the volume of water increased until it was roaring against the truck and churning up the ground around them in multitudes of small explosions.

  Though outfitted in their tailored raincoats, the dogs looked woefully at Frankie and tried to bend their heads away from the direction of the onslaught but it was coming down almost straight.

  Ted pulled at his slicker, trying to get it to stay in place over his holster and revolver. He wore a waxed canvas cowboy hat with a tightly rolled brim that funneled the runoff wherever he was looking, in this case at the gun. He gave up on the slicker and squinted up the road in the direction they had come.

  “Take a walk with me, Stromsoe,” said Frankie. “Pardon us just a minute, Ted. We’re okay.”

  Frankie splashed out of the truck bed. The dogs followed without enthusiasm. Frankie led the way down the road then up a hillock from the top of which they could see all the way back down the valley to the barn. The air was gray around them and gray above, no difference in shade whatsoever. We are the rain cloud, she said. Then she took off her hat and faced the pouring sky. Stromsoe did too. He closed his eyes and thought a prayer for Hallie and Billy and Frankie as he listened to the rain pounding his face and shoulders and he also heard the higher-pitched slapping sound it made on the dogs’ modified plastic ponchos. He opened his eyes to see Ted in the distance not quite looking on, shotgun in hand and the rain jetting off his hat.

  “We should get back,” he said, watching her eyes open and come back into focus.

  “I know.”

  They trudged back with Ted and decided to sit in the truck a little longer but they only had time to pass the bottle once when the rain shifted into an even higher gear and the water seemed to be solid around them.

  “Jeezy peezy,” said Frankie.

  They climbed into the cab and set out. The truck tires sank in the mud, so Ted put it in four-wheel and still had to rock it out. It jumped free and the back end came around and the dogs slid across the bed, paws out, through the lake of water and the red toolbox slammed the bed wall. The wipers hacked rapidly back and forth, providing snippets of visibility.

  “Eee-haw,” said Ted.

  “Take ’er easy, cowboy,” said Frankie.

  Ted tried to straighten the truck but the angle was too sharp and the tires dug in again. Stromsoe could feel the vehicle lower. He jumped back with the dogs to improve the weight distribution but the tires sank deeper. He got Frankie to help him push on the tailgate, the two of them working side by side and away from the spinning tires, but the mud still blasted into them while they grunted and heaved and the truck finally climbed out. They clambered back into the cab looking like minstrels in blackface. Halfway to the barn they watched a section of earth detach from an adjacent slope and, sagebrush and lemonade-berry bush and boulders still in place, slide to a stop on the road in front of them. It was four feet high.

  “Shit, guys,” said Ted.

  “Use the brush off to the right,” said Stromsoe.

  But from the dead stop the tires dug into the mud again, and again Stromsoe and Frankie got out and pushed while the truck threw mud back at them. Then, without warning, Ted put the truck into reverse and Stromsoe pulled Frankie out of the way just a second before the truck leaped backward out of the rut and landed left tire then right tire, hard, which launched the dogs in a poncho-wrapped blur. They hit with yipes. Ted emerged from the cab cussing and apologizing.

  Stromsoe drove from there, using the roadside brush for lift and keeping the truck way down in first gear. He ground up a rise, made the crest, then looked down at a low spot in the road that was nothing but a red muddy river now, frothing with gravel and plants and sticks.

  He could make out the barn by then, a quarter mile out, blurred to a basic barnlike shape by the downpour.

  “Let’s just walk it,” said Ted. “Leave the truck here
on high ground.”

  “The flash flood is too strong,” said Stromsoe.

  “I agree,” said Frankie.

  “We got to get somewhere,” said Ted.

  “This is it,” said Stromsoe.

  “No guts, no sausage,” said Ted. “That barn is warm and dry.”

  “Don’t you even think of wading that river,” said Frankie. “When the rain lets up we can cross. These things end as fast as they start.”

  “I lived in Tucson for five years,” said Ted, seemingly to himself.

  Stromsoe put the truck in park, set the brake, and turned the key so the engine went off but the wipers and defroster were still on. The barn blipped into his vision twice per second. Despite the defroster the windshield fogged up, so he wiped it with his hand. They managed to get the dogs into the cab.

  “The barn sits near the riverbed,” said Frankie. “It’s a low spot, and flat.”

  “Naw,” said Ted. “You can’t fill the San Luis Rey that fast.”

  “Look,” she said. “There’s already standing water.”

  Impossibly the rain came harder. The water jumped a foot into the air when it hit the truck hood in front of them but Stromsoe couldn’t make out a single drop—it was a solid body of water, like something poured from a gigantic bucket. It was deafening.

  “Whoa,” said Ted.

  “Man,” said Frankie.

  “Maybe should have stayed with two buckets per tower,” said Stromsoe.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  In brief flashes of visibility Stromsoe saw the water rising around the barn. One minute it looked four inches deep at the door. A minute later it was a third of the way up to the lock.

  Ace shook off and the cab filled with wet dog mist. Sadie shook off next. Stromsoe used his fist to clear the windshield again.

  Then he saw the barn quiver, as if hit by a bullet. Then the roof buckled and some of the side boards splintered outward. The old building looked as if it were trying to shrug something off. Suddenly it lit up inside as if a single large orange bulb had been turned on.

  “No,” said Frankie.

  Stromsoe saw what happened next in staggered images separated by the wiper: a dull whuuumph, a burst of black lumber, the roof gone, the flaming guts inside, an orange inferno, a shower of black rubble and books and paper and furniture and a TV falling back to earth, the fire pausing as the rain cascaded down, the fire struggling, the fire low, the fire out except from the chemical containers littered about like wounded dragons belching flames and smoke against the rain.

  The dogs looked out the window matter-of-factly.

  “My things,” said Frankie in a soft voice. She sounded far away. “Charley’s things.”

  They watched in silence for a while as the chemicals burned and the rain pounded out the last of the embers in the roofless barn. The explosion had brought waves to the standing water, chopping the surface into little peaks that gradually wobbled back to raindrop-riddled flatness. It seemed to be boiling around the blackened sofa and the facedown TV.

  HALF AN HOUR later the rain stopped. Sunlight powered through big cracks in the clouds and they could see the torrents of runoff coming down the gulleys and washes to join up with the swollen San Luis Rey on its way to the ocean.

  “That had to be five inches,” said Frankie. “I wonder what everybody else got.”

  “I hope there is an everybody else,” said Ted.

  “We can sit or walk,” said Stromsoe. “But we won’t be driving this thing for a while.”

  They couldn’t get close enough to the barn to go through the remains. The water was two feet deep and fast, and gave no sign of abating soon. Frankie stood knee-deep in it, shooting pictures, feet spread for balance as the current shoved against her. She fished a book from the flood, and what looked to Stromsoe like an old album of weather maps. She shook her head and waded unsteadily back to him.

  They hiked across the hills, staying to the brushy sides and stable tops, to a dirt road that was just barely passable on foot. Freed from the slickers to keep them dry, the dogs cavorted and rolled in the mud. They made Gopher Canyon Road. A ranch hand in an old red-and-white Chevy pickup truck gave them a ride to Frankie’s house. He spoke no English but gave them a hearty smile and wave as he drove away.

  Stromsoe saw the tears running down Frankie’s cheeks as she dug the keys from her bag.

  “It’s gone,” she said. “Everything he did. Everything I improved on.”

  “You’re not.”

  She nodded without looking at him, then walked to her front door.

  35

  At seven that evening Stromsoe waited in the hushed immensity of the Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles. An ocean of pews stretched out before him toward the distant altar and the small red crucifix.

  Choat sat down behind him. He wore a black raincoat over a gray suit, a white shirt with a round collar and pin, a wine-colored necktie.

  “Feel safer with God nearby?” he asked.

  “Less chance you’ll punch me,” said Stromsoe. “Let’s walk.”

  “Why the hugger-mugger?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Stromsoe led the way down the ambulatory and back out the monumental bronze doors. Outside the air was cold and the wind was steady from the west. They entered the cloister garden, where the storm had pounded the flowers flat and raindrops still clung to the tree leaves.

  Stromsoe handed Choat four pictures he’d printed from Frankie’s little digital camera, all of the incinerated barn.

  Choat’s face went bright red.

  “What’s this to me?” Choat asked. “It’s nothing.”

  “That’s not what your face says. You know what it is. It’s Frankie’s barn.”

  “I don’t care about her barn.”

  “You used to. Listen to this.”

  He pulled the player out of his pocket and turned the volume up plenty high.

  I want you to burn down Frankie Hatfield’s barn with all her rainmaking stuff in it…

  Stromsoe watched the doubt, the acceptance, then the anger register on Choat’s big scarred face.

  “Cedros,” muttered Choat. “I don’t get it. He tapes me like the little f—pardon me—fellow he is, then does the deed anyway?”

  “He got tired of being your bad guy, so he wore the wire. He never touched the barn. Mother Nature did the job. But your solicitation stands. Your bosses might like to hear it. The D.A. might. There are some media people who’d love to hear you. I’ve got ten discs like that one, just waiting to go to loving homes.”

  They descended the grand staircase toward the lower plaza. Above them the stars blinked deep in the black sky.

  “What do you want?” asked Choat.

  “No more contact with Frankie. You so much as think her name and I’ll ruin you. And no more contact with Cedros either.”

  They stood on the vast lower plaza, the cathedral towering over them, the palms hissing in the wind.

  “What guarantee do—”

  “You don’t get any goddamned guarantee.”

  Choat stepped forward and stabbed a finger into Stromsoe’s chest.

  “Watch your language, security guard. You’re on the holy site of the world’s third largest cathedral and—”

  Stromsoe absorbed Choat’s stout finger, and the shift of weight that accompanied it.

  Then in one purposeful motion he locked his hands around the big man’s forearm, pivoted, squatted, hauled Choat over his back, and slammed him onto the cement. He really got his shoulders into it.

  “I was raised Lutheran.”

  Choat lay there gasping, eyes and mouth wide. His looked up at Stromsoe, his face going pale.

  “Do we have a deal, Pat?”

  Choat glared up at him, mouth open, but all he could do was swallow great lungfuls of air.

  “Sure, fine, think about it. You’ll see the light.”

  36

  In the late-night twilight of Pelican Bay Pris
on, Lunce gave Mike Tavarez his usual perfunctory weapons check. In all of Tavarez’s years as an inmate he’d never seen an exit-cell search yield a hidden weapon, as if wagging your tongue or spreading your cheeks and taking five deep breaths would magically send a blade clanging to the floor. The inmates always knew when the exit-cell check was coming. Even the dullest and most furious men found ways to have weapons waiting for them when and where they were needed.

  Tavarez put his shoes and clothes back on and backed up to the bean chute for the cuffs.

  He followed Lunce down the cell-block walkway, heard the whispers of the men, not his men but the others with which La Eme had détente—the Aryan Brotherhood and the Black Guerillas and the Crips of the Rollin’ 60s and the Eight Trays and Hoover Street—and the scores of lesser gangs that ruled the prisons like the tribes they were.

  “X.”

  “X.”

  “Who do the SHU? You do the SHU.”

  He saw a plastic kite bag on a string lilting down from tier three to tier two, graceful as its handler navigated the internal air currents of the great prison to land it at the proper cell below him.

  Tavarez said nothing. He padded along in his canvas slip-ons, handcuffed as always, but his senses keen and his heart beating hard. Lunce stood at the door leading to the back side of the east-wing blocks and nodded up at the security camera. A moment later the door groaned open and Tavarez led the way through.

  “You’re walking fast tonight,” said Lunce.

  “I enjoy family visits.”

  “I’ll bet you do. Wonder if it’ll be the little blonde again.”

  “I never know what they’ll come up with,” said Tavarez. He didn’t want to talk to Lunce tonight. It was uncomfortable and he didn’t want a quirk of speech to arouse Lunce’s suspicion. He swallowed a little bit of his own blood.