T. Parker - Storm Runners

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-hundred-millibar 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 Frankie 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.