T. Parker - Storm Runners

“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.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“There is no hurry.”

“You sound like there’s a schedule.”

Tavarez looked up and shrugged. “All I have in this hellhole is a schedule.”

Post eyed him with his usual latent hostility. “I don’t control this place. Things come up. I’ll do what I can.”

“You will.”

“Hey, they transferred Packtor out of the SHU this morning.”

Post never missed a chance to bring up the X because he knew Tavarez hated the place beyond words. He looked at Tavarez with contempt, and with an uplifting of the chin that hinted at knowledge.

“Why?”

“How would I know? Maybe because he went insane. Or maybe to make room for someone else. But I thought you’d want to know — so you can make your reservations.”

Tavarez looked up from his mystery meat.

“Just kiddin’ you, Heffie.”

Stromsoe touched down in San Diego four hours after leaving Pelican Bay, made Frankie’s five o’clock broadcast from outside the Wild Animal Park. The day was cooling and the eucalyptus trees drooped fragrantly and he could hear the cries of monkeys and birds from inside the park as he walked up to the Fox News van.

Ted was wearing a black leather cowboy hat and a black canvas duster. From within the right side pocket he let go of something to shake Stromsoe’s hand.

“You really strapped, Ted?”

“I’m really strapped, Matt.”

“That’s illegal, you know.”

“So’s murder.”

“Frankie okay?”

Ted jammed his hand back in the pocket. “She’s coming out now.”

Stromsoe watched her step out of the van, mike in hand. She saw him immediately and waved. Her smile made his heart beat harder but in a way that told him all his good fortune with her was borrowed and due back soon.

They were shooting up by the ticket booths at the main entrance and the crowd gathered quickly as they recognized her. She tried her best to autograph a stuffed condor chick and a rubber spear. She knelt to talk to a little girl. She posed for a picture with two blushing soldiers.

Stromsoe saw again how open and good and beautiful she was. And as long as she did her job, how essentially unprotectable she was from Mike Tavarez. It could happen any minute, any day, anywhere.

A moment, then forever.

That night, after her sign-off eight o’clock story, he drove her home to Fallbrook, Ted trailing them in his truck.

“Do you believe Tavarez, Matt? Do you believe I’m safe?”

“I can’t believe him.”

“I’m going to live my life. I’m not hiding. I’m going to keep on forecasting and broadcasting, and making rain.”

“That’s the way it has to be. I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, Frankie.”

“Until our thirty days are up?”

“For as long as it takes.”

She took his hand and they were quiet for a while as Stromsoe’s pickup truck curved through the dark back roads of the north county.

“I’m sorry for all this, Frankie. If it wasn’t for me, he’d have no reason to hurt you.”