T. Parker - Storm Runners

Cedros thought he saw some kind of uncertainty in the tan eyes. Ricky still hadn’t touched his gun, hadn’t even gotten a hand close to it.

Just then the cop car drove up and parked along the curb. His heart sped up — he’d never been so happy to see the cops in his life. When he saw who was inside he couldn’t believe his astonishing good fortune. It wasn’t even the local cops. It was a detective’s plainwrap and Cedros recognized the San Diego Sheriff’s investigators. He heard them shut the doors and start toward him but he never took his eyes off of Ricky’s gun because he figured it was now or never.

“Your lucky day,” said Ricky. “I’ll be back for this.”

He slipped the gun from his waistband and tossed it to Cedros, who caught and dropped it into the dryer with the clean clothes.

“I don’t know anything about Ampostela,” said Cedros. “I swear it to you and El Jefe.”

“Be cool for these guys. You and me are just road dogs.”

“You got it.”

The investigators were Hodge and Morales, the same two who had questioned him about his visit to Mike Tavarez and his knowledge of a gunman named Ariel Lejas.

They came into the garage and their cops’ antennae alerted them to Ricky. They eyed him and both seemed to solve the same equation: 1 gangbanger + 1 relative of El Jefe = 2 gangbangers.

“We have some more questions for you,” said Hodge.

“Me and Mike talked family up in Pelican Bay. That was it. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”

Marianna appeared again in the doorway with a big smile and two cups of coffee. She walked right up to the detectives and delivered the cups, ignoring Ricky. Then she marched over to the dryer, grabbed a load, and went back inside.

“Later, homes,” said Ricky.

“Okay, man,” said Cedros.

The red Honda roared to life, backed up, and low-rode down the street toward Azusa Avenue, the stinger exhaust bragging more horsepower than the car really had.

“La Eme?” asked Morales.

“Just a friend.”

“You being related to El Jefe, that puts you right in the middle of things, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know nothing about no La Eme. I’m not so sure it’s even real. I think maybe you guys make up gang stuff to keep people afraid and make your budgets fat.”

“Let’s talk about Ariel Lejas,” said Morales.

“Fine. Let’s talk. I’ve never seen him or heard of him until you guys came along.”

Marianna appeared in the doorway with a falsely pleasant look on her face, looking for Ricky. When she saw his car was gone her smile became genuine and she got another load of clothes from the dryer.

“You guys might as well come in,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Hodge.

“More coffee in the pot if you want it. Excuse the mess. We’re moving. We’re getting out of this gang-infested rat hole and we’re never coming back.”

“What do you know about La Eme, ma’am?” asked Hodge.

“Not much,” said Marianna, the load of clothes clutched loosely over bulging belly. “I know they murder and steal. But we can’t help it if we have a distant relative who’s mixed up with them.”

“Well, at least one of you has a grip on reality,” said Hodge. “You might need it, because Mike Tavarez escaped from Pelican Bay last night. He sawed a guard’s head half off with a one-sided razor blade. Some friends cut a hole in the fence and off he went.”

Cedros looked to his wife, then out at the street. It was the same information that Stromsoe had given him two hours ago by phone but it wasn’t hard to look unpleasantly surprised.

“Haven’t seen him, have you?” asked Morales.

“Why would he come here?” asked Cedros.

“You’re blood. You saw him just a few weeks ago up in Pelican Bay.”

“We talked family. Nothing else.”

The cops shrugged. Cedros followed Marianna back inside, the two detectives close behind.

At first light Stromsoe was sitting in Frankie Hatfield’s living room, the sun splintering through the avocado trees and the coffeemaker gurgling in the kitchen. Frankie and Ace had slept through the ringing cell phone that woke him half an hour ago. Stromsoe had rolled out of bed and talked to Ken McCann from the dark breakfast nook. Lunce had had a wife and two young children.

Sadie now sat at his feet as Stromsoe loaded Frankie’s double-barreled twenty-gauge. It was a heavy Savage Arms side-by with a blond stock and two triggers that could be simultaneously pulled for a double discharge that at close range would blow a hole the size of a softball in a man. Sadie followed him to the foyer, where he stood the gun upright in the right-hand corner, then set four extra shells behind the butt. He looked out the window. She followed him to the kitchen, where he poured a cup of coffee.

“Don’t worry,” he said to the dog, but the dog looked worried anyway.

Stromsoe walked quietly back to the living room with the coffee, sat on the couch that gave him an easy view of both the front door and the back of Frankie’s sprawling farm.

He thought that if he’d been this ready on behalf of Hallie and Billy, he might have prevented what happened, though he wasn’t sure exactly how. He could have requested a bomb-sniffing dog and the department would have given him one. He could have requested a wheeled mirror with a long handle to slide under his vehicles each morning and the department would have given him one of those too. But the fact was that La Eme didn’t use explosives. It would have been as logical to hire food tasters. The compelling fact was that Stromsoe hadn’t believed Mike would try to kill him at all. He’d believed that Mike would see the accident of Ofelia for what it was and that their bond, forged in the friendship of adolescence and finished by the enmity of manhood, would prevent such blunt, mortal action. It seemed almost silly now, because he understood their differences in a way that he hadn’t when he was young. Mike’s blood was heavier than his own. Mike was Spaniard and Aztec, the conquistador and the warrior. He was the serpent and the eagle. He was Montezuma, who had ruled Tenochtitlán, who offered gold to Cortés and was murdered for his generosity. Mike was the pyramids where thousands of human hearts were cut out and held up beating to the sun; he was the young women thrown into sacrificial cenotes loaded with gold and jewels that took them straight to the green depths, where they were reduced to bones and soon to not even that.

Stromsoe remembered something that Mike had told him years ago, just after Hallie had brought her bruised and broken body back to him.

Keep her. You’re the romantic, not me.

Frankie came out in her blue terry robe and sat next to Stromsoe on the couch. He told her about McCann’s call.

“How fast could he get here?” she asked quietly.

“Late morning, if he flies.”

“But he wouldn’t fly, would he? They’ll watch the airports up there.”

“He probably won’t fly. I put your shotgun in the foyer, Frankie. It’s loaded and on safe. Either trigger and it fires.”

“What if he drives?”

“Early afternoon.”

“Is he going to come after me, Matt?”

“He will.”

“He won’t just hire it out like before?”

“I doubt it.”

She nodded and bit her lip, dark hair dangling down.

“Can you take a week off?” he asked.

She shook her hair back behind her shoulder and looked at him. “I will not take a week off. I don’t budge.”

“He could come today, Frankie. Or it could be a year from today.”

“Which is more likely?”

Stromsoe thought about it. “A year. He’d want us to be afraid.”