T. Parker - Storm Runners

“Maybe he’d do it for the money.”

Stromsoe heard the doubt in her voice and, once again, felt the old wave of helplessness and frustration that always rose in him when he thought about Mike Tavarez. It angered him that all his years in pursuit of El Jefe, all of the effort and pain and bloodshed and loss had only brought him and this woman to a place in time where more was sure to happen. There was no real solution, he thought — not even the death of Tavarez — because the strong can reach beyond the grave and the wicked delight in it. Mike was both.

“Will you move in? Stay close for a while?” she asked.

“Sure I will, Frankie.”

They bumped along quietly for a moment.

“I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want to die or because I’m in love with you,” she said.

“Hmmm.”

Another pause.

Their laughter started at the same time, soft and tentative but unsuccessfully hidden. Within a few seconds Stromsoe’s had the better of him. He felt the big swooning stomach and chest spasms he used to get as a kid. He touched the brakes because his eyes were watering.

Frankie’s head was thrown back against the window and her hand was over her mouth. Tears jumped from her eyes. She whinnied then snorted dismayingly.

“I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want to die or because I’m in love with you!” she choked out. “But either way, since I can’t decide, I’m moving you right in like a piece of rented furniture.”

“Furniture with a gun ,” Stromsoe added.

“Yeah,” she said. “So just forget Mike and his bad guys because you’re going to kill them all . Every homicidal moron he can come up with!”

“I’ll hang their bodies in your avocado trees as warning.”

“I’ll broadcast with their bodies swinging in the background!”

“They’ll ask you for autographs,” said Stromsoe. “And you’ll do it because it’s part of your job.”

“I’ll sign their foreheads. ‘Love ya, babe, but fuck off and die — from Frankie Hatfield at Fox News!’”

Ted passed them on a long straightaway, looking across at them from the cab of his own truck with a doubtful expression on his face.

Choat stepped in front of the maître d’ to guide John and Marianna Cedros into a corner booth. The Madison Club dining room on Third Street was walnut-paneled and windowless, with high ceilings and crown moldings and a stamped aluminum ceiling. The walls were hung with sconces that gave warm orange light, portraits of once-powerful men and fair-faced women, and bucolic plein air paintings of Southern California.

Cedros slid into the booth, amazed that just a few yards away from where they sat, the downtown traffic of Third Street was whizzing along both invisible and inaudible here in this century-old gentlemen’s club. He knew that Choat was occasionally entertained here by his masters on the Water Board. He never dreamed that he would see the inside of it unless he was hired here as a busboy.

Already seated was Joan Choat, the director’s wife. She was a thin woman with dramatic cheekbones, long brown hair, and a pleasant expression on her face.

She smiled meltingly as Marianna guided her growing body into the booth, and reached across Cedros to lay a hand on her belly.

“Ohhhh... I’m so happy for you. Patrick and I could never achieve this. Another Rob Roy, please.”

The maître d’ nodded and handed out the leather menu books.

Choat ordered a double martini up with a twist. Marianna got lemonade and Cedros a German beer.

When the drinks came Choat lifted his glass to John. The women joined in and Cedros held his mug toward them.

“To your service to DWP,” he said. “No general has ever had a better soldier.”

Cedros felt himself blush, less with pride than with annoyance at Choat’s pomposity. He looked at Marianna, who offered Choat a fixed smile.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

“To dropped charges, a new assignment, and a home in the Owens Gorge,” said Choat.

Earlier in the day, in the privacy of his office, Choat had told Cedros that Frankie almost getting her head blown off was actually a good thing. If that wasn’t enough to dissuade her from making rain, then she simply had no common sense. And the PI? Well, he could loiter around Frankie all he wanted now, so far as Choat was concerned. They could garden together, learn a foreign language.

Choat had also said that the San Diego Sheriff’s investigators had asked him about his connection to Cedros’s visit to Mike El Jefe Tavarez at Pelican Bay. Choat had, of course, denied knowing anything about it. Mike who? They seemed to believe him because what would a ranking DWP executive need with a prison gangster? Choat told them that a private investigator by the name of Stromsoe had come to his office last week, full of some dumb-ass theory about the DWP harassing a weather lady down in San Diego, and speculated that Stromsoe had pointed the detectives his way as reverse harassment. The detectives had shrugged off the idea.

Cedros had then reassured Choat — for what, the twentieth time? — that he and Tavarez had talked family and family only. Choat had listened closely to this story he already knew, as if to hear in it any falsehood that the police might have heard. Cedros told him that the cops had been suspicious but largely convinced. They had not asked about money passing hands. Cedros told him again that the untraceable cash had gone to Ampostela and he had not seen it since. And again, that days later Ampostela had taken him out for a drink at a restaurant in Azusa, but the big man had rudely walked out and that was the last Cedros had seen of him.

You are all that stands between DWP and catastrophe, John, Choat had said. You are the bridge between here and tomorrow.

“To a strong and healthy child,” said Joan.

“With the courage of the Mexican and the cleverness of the Italian,” said Choat. “Have you named her?”

Cedros’s scalp crawled, remembering the last time he’d heard that question.

“Cathy,” said Marianna. “We like that name.”

“It’s fabulous,” said Joan.

Cedros watched the sweat roll down the sides of his mug and imagined their cabin in the gorge.

Just a few short days ago it had seemed impossible. Now, with Frankie Hatfield asking the San Diego D.A. to drop the stalking charges, and Marcus Ampostela no longer looming over them, and Choat suddenly doing all the things he’d promised to do, Cedros was having trouble recognizing his own life. His new job assignment was approved. He’d already met the director of maintenance operations and two of his assistant directors. The paperwork for company housing, a company truck — a new Ford F-250 — a company cell phone, and the hazardous-duty pay bonus was on its way.

Success was different from failure.

The home in the gorge.

He and Marianna and Tony were set to leave the next morning and drive up to the Owens Valley and see it. And also see the Gorge Transmission Line, which Choat wanted to personally show him. Choat had spent some years tending this “baby” himself as a ditch rider, and it was more to him than just a steel pipe with a river inside it. He’d shown Cedros an impressive book of photographs documenting the project. It had taken ten years to build the entire system. Men from all over the world had come to work there. Loss of life had been minor.

They would then all go to dinner and overnight in Bishop, just a few miles from the gorge, at a nice motel with a trout-filled creek running right through it. Tony would like that. On the way home the next day Choat wanted to show them a photography gallery that would impress him and Marianna “mightily.” He’d said that he and Joan would send John and Marianna home with something special from it.