Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
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.
A
t 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.”
I
n the late-night twilight of Pelican Bay Prison, 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.
“Yes, you do. You control everything.”
“If I was powerful, I wouldn’t be walking around in this freezing prison in nothing but peels and slip-ons.”
“With reservations for the SHU.”
“Right.”
“You should have worn a Halloween mask. Scared the shit out of her. Or maybe turned her on.”
“Right.”
“My kid went as a werewolf, got sick on the candy, and wouldn’t eat his dinner.”
Tavarez led the familiar way through the back side of the east wing. The walkway was off-limits to anyone but COs, administrative prison personnel, and escorted suppliers, who could bring their vehicles in only through the double sally ports of the main supply entrance.
When Tavarez stepped outside, the chill hit him like a bucket of ice water down the back. It was a typical poststorm October night in Del Norte County—low forties and damp enough to find your bones. The only good thing was the smell of the great Northern California forest that surrounded them, the aroma of millions of conifers and the square miles of mulch and moss and ferns that made up the forest floor.
They stayed tight to the buildings, stopping midway for Lunce to get the signal from the east perimeter tower—just a flicker of the searchlight—which meant that the electricity to the fence was now turned off and the searchlight would not intrude on Lunce or Tavarez for thirty minutes.
The light winked in conspiracy. Lunce grunted and they struck off as usual across the broad no-man’s-land parched by herbicides, headed for the twenty feet of electrified chain-link fence topped by twin rolls of razor ribbon still shiny through the years of rain and sun and dust. The tower searchlights had found their usual points of focus about fifty yards to his left and right, which put Tavarez and Lunce in an uncertain light augmented only slightly by the glow of the waning moon.
Plenty of light, thought Tavarez.
He saw Jimmy’s flashlight flick on and off twice in the forest, and approached the fence as usual.
As usual, Lunce came up and stood beside him. As usual, he took his spare handcuffs from his duty belt and tossed them against the fence to make sure the electricity was off.
The cuffs clinked to the ground and Lunce bent to get them without taking his eyes off of Tavarez.
Tavarez stared into the forest. Help me, Mother of Jesus.
Lunce took his usual two small steps backward then turned to walk to his place in the near dark from which he always watched Tavarez and the women.
Tavarez listened to Lunce’s footsteps while he worked his tongue against the inside of his cheek. He dislodged the new utility razor blade from its hiding place and clamped it between his teeth, off to the right side, blade out.
Strong and light, Tavarez covered the ground quickly. He gathered himself and leaped high.
Lunce had just begun to turn when Tavarez landed on his back and locked his legs around the big man’s waist. Tavarez squeezed hard and pressed his face into the back of Lunce’s neck. Lunce staggered forward but stayed up, turning his head back to see his attacker, exposing his throat and its pulsing network of life. Tavarez slashed up and fast and deep, then flung his head back the other direction to cut down and across.
The blood blinded him, so he went by feel: up and away again, down and across again, up and away again as Lunce groped back blindly, so he slashed the hands, felt the blade hiss through the flat meat of the palm then ride up when it hit bone.
Lunce went to his knees with a terrified whimper. Tavarez let go
with his legs and rolled off, then sprang from in front of the man, burrowing his face in Lunce’s throat, his stainless-steel fang cutting deep and across and again and again. Lunce sprawled backward on the grassless earth, head wobbling loosely, a great wet flapping sound coming faster and faster from the ruins of his neck. Tavarez stood up, eyes wide and bright in a mask of blood, blade still clenched, his breath whistling in and out of his teeth. He threw out his feet and landed butt-first on the guard’s stomach. With the fingers of his cuffed hands he searched patiently for the handcuff keys on Lunce’s belt.
Tavarez saw little but blood, smelled nothing but blood, felt nothing but blood everywhere he touched. Blood was life. He surrendered to it.
He looked over to see Jimmy and a friend, each working at the chain link with a long-handled bolt cutter. The pop of the steel was better than music. Lunce’s breathing was slower now. Tavarez could feel the man’s body under his own, laboring for oxygen through the extra weight and the cut supply lines.
He located the universal handcuff key with his fingertips and pulled it out. He stood and tried to look down into Lunce’s eyes but couldn’t find them through the blood and poor light. He spit the blade to the ground. It took him seconds to get the cuffs off. He dropped them to Lunce’s slowing chest, kept the key for a rainy day, then trotted over to the fence and ducked through the hole.
M
onday morning John and Marianna Cedros were packing for the movers. The little house smelled like coffee and pasteboard boxes and Cedros had to remind himself several times that this was not a dream.
Marianna worked with determined speed. Tony sat in his nearly empty bedroom watching a
Power Rangers
video for probably the thirtieth time.
Cedros, carrying a special box of personal things to his car, angled through the propped-open kitchen door that led to the small garage. The garage smelled of clean laundry and the door was open to let in the good morning light.
Ampostela’s gunman from the restaurant, Ricky, was leaning against Marianna’s aging sedan.
“What happened to Marcus?” he asked.
“I remember you.”
“You ought to.”
“Ampostela? Somebody shot him is what the paper said.”
Cedros set the box on the dryer. The load was done, so he swung out the front door. His instincts told him to act unworried, maybe even offended.
He got a better look at the gunman now than in the darkened back room of El Matador. The man was pale-skinned and slender, bald, with a big drooping mustache and tan eyes. He hadn’t brought his dog, which Cedros found important.
“Who did it?” asked Ricky.
“How would I know?”
“You went outside and got in his car at El Matador. Nobody saw him again.”
“I sure as hell did not get into his car. I stood out there like an idiot for half an hour, then I walked home. I didn’t see
you
anywhere out there, you stayed in with the girls. So don’t tell me I got in his car.”
Ricky looked at him but said nothing. His expression was placid but the tan eyes bored into Cedros. He was wearing a baggy black T-shirt over a pair of sharply creased blue trousers but the shirt wasn’t baggy enough to hide the bulge at his belt line.
“Sounds like you practiced all that,” he said.
Cedros put on a disgusted expression, shook his head slowly, and looked out at Ricky’s lowered red Accord parked across the mouth of his driveway as if to keep anyone from getting away.
“Moving?”
“Just a vacation.”
“Where to?”
“Vegas.”
“With the kid?”
Ricky was looking past Cedros now, through the open door that led to the kitchen.
Cedros turned to see Tony standing in the doorway, brandishing a bright green VHS cassette with yards of tape billowing out.
“Got a problem, Daddy.”
“Go back inside. I’ll be there in a minute.
Now.
”
Tony turned and walked back in just as Marianna appeared in the same doorway, her face darkly curious.
Cedros held her eye, trying to let his alarm show. Then he looked at Ricky and his fear doubled because he saw not lust in Ricky like he’d seen in Ampostela, but anger. Ricky looked like he wanted to hurt her. He stared at her then smiled, skin wrinkling at the sides of his tan eyes.
“Lena saw you get in Marcus’s car,” said Ricky. “The Magnum.”
“Lena needs glasses.”
“El Jefe needs answers,” said Ricky.
“El Jefe made two hundred and twenty-five grand without doing what he said he’d do.”
“Maybe,” said Ricky. “The word is Marcus had twenty-five grand on him.”
“I
gave
Marcus twenty-five grand that night. You think I’d go to all the trouble to kill him but not take the money back? How dumb do you think I am?”
For one second Cedros assured himself that Marianna was about to reappear in the doorway with a sawed-off twelve-gauge and either
blow or terrify Ricky away. But they had no shotgun and the idea was ridiculous anyway. It was possible she had called 911. All he could think to do was to prolong this conversation, keep Ricky guessing.
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s right. You don’t. Look, man, I’m going on a family vacation. I don’t know what happened to Marcus. I thought he was actually kind of a cool guy until he left me sitting there. What was that supposed to be—a joke?”
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.