Storm Runners (21 page)

“I believe you. I don’t need proof. I don’t want it.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I want to save the life of a woman he’s trying to kill.”

McCann looked at him. “The old Eme didn’t pull that friends-and-family shit. You and Mike go way back, don’t you?”

“Way back.”

“I think he’s got some COs on the payroll. Two young guys—
Post and Lunce—I’m sure they got their family problems and need the extra money. I don’t know what they do for him, if it’s just kites, or maybe a phone or some Internet time. Mike isn’t interested in getting high. Doesn’t smoke or drink. There’s also a situations man, Cartwright, and I think he’s dirty too, but I’m not sure who he’s down with. I think Gyle could rock Mike’s world just by reassigning the guards. Mikey’s little treats would go away.”

Stromsoe considered. With this information, he could blow some whistles, shut down Mike’s contact with the crooked guards, maybe piss him off some.

“It’s not enough,” he said. “But I had the thought, and this is why Warden Gyle wanted me to talk to you, that Mike didn’t do too well in the SHU.”

McCann smiled and peered at him, eyes twinkling in their nests of wrinkles. “Who would? Mike came out of SHU looking like a half-drowned rat. The inmates, they don’t call it the SHU. To them it’s the X. They hate the X. The X was hard on Mike. The smarter the guy, the harder it is on him. But that’s not my area. I can’t get Tavarez reassigned.”

“You can tell the Prison Board what you told me—Mike is communicating with the outside through coded letters.”

McCann colored slightly, but he held Stromsoe’s gaze. “That’s my watch. I’d be cutting my own throat.”

“You read two hundred letters a week just to and from Mike. You’re understaffed. You’re the kid with his finger in the dike. I know that.”

“And I know it.”

“Well, Gyle knows it too,” said Stromsoe. “He says he’ll recommend SHU for Tavarez if you’ll establish that he’s in touch with criminal associates.”

“That’s the trouble,” said McCann. “I can’t really actually one
hundred percent establish it. Which, when you flip it over, is why I got a raise this year for doing my job so well.”

“Gyle wants you for lead investigator when Davenport retires,” said Stromsoe.

“Oh?”

Gyle had volunteered the promotion to his friend State Senator Bob Billiter, as a way of enlisting McCann, and Billiter had offered it back up the pipeline to the assemblyman, who passed it along to Birch. Stromsoe had been impressed that politics could be played so fast. And that three men who had never so much as met Frankie Hatfield would stick out their necks a little for her.

McCann stared hard at him now, set his fork on the pie plate in the last suds of ice cream.

“Why?”

“Because you’re good.”

“No, why did Gyle tell you that?”

“Senator Billiter made a good case to him for the woman that Mike is trying to kill. It shouldn’t have been hard. She’s innocent, good-hearted, bright. One of Mike’s pistoleros was bringing his gun to her head last night when luck intervened.”

McCann looked at him doubtfully. “How?”

“I ran over him with my pickup truck.”

McCann smiled. “I like that.”

“I was too rattled to enjoy it at the time.”

McCann smiled again. “So, you want me to speak to the Prison Board if Tavarez won’t stand down.”

“Only if he won’t stand down. Either way, Gyle wants you in for Davenport.”

“When does the PB meet ne—”

“A week from Thursday,” said Stromsoe.

“When are you seeing Tavarez?”

“Tomorrow morning. Gyle arranged it.”

“You got this timed out.”

“I got lucky. I hope it works.”

McCann shook his head. “Don’t worry. He’ll change his mind about the lady. He won’t go back to the SHU. It drives most people completely crazy. It ruins them. Then we hospitalize them and they scream all day and night in the ding wing. It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard. Even the state doctors know what the SHU does to people. They tried to close it but the courts let it stay open. It’s hell.”

J
ohn Cedros looked through the peephole of his Azusa home. Marcus Ampostela’s tremendous head filled up the narrowed field of view. He looked listless and tired.

Cedros opened the door before he could ring the bell again.

“Homes,” said the big man. “What are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing?”

Marianna came from Tony’s room and Ampostela smiled. “Hey,
coneja
. Looking right, aren’t you?”

“Keep your voice down,” she said. “Tony’s sleeping.”

“Anybody got a beer?”

“I’ll get it,” said Marianna.

Ampostela watched her cross the small living room and go through the rounded doorway into the kitchen. Cedros wished she weren’t wearing the cutoff jeans that made her legs look so good, even with the sixth-month stomach building over her waist like a thunderhead.

“What the fuck do you want?” whispered Cedros. “The cops are all over me at work because of you guys and the weather lady. That was not the deal, Marcus. Now you show up at my house. I can’t believe you people.”

Ampostela’s anger flashed through his slow bigness and into his eyes. His bulk seemed to tighten. “You owe me twenty-five.”

“For that?”

“For that. And you and I have some work tonight. I heard from El Jefe this morning. He has a job for us.”

“What?”

“You’ll come home with some money, is all you need to know.”

Marianna came back with the beers. Ampostela took his with both hands and a smile. He swayed a little and Cedros saw that he was drunk or high or both.

“I’m takin’ your husband out for a drink,” he said.

“Not tonight,” she said.

“Yeah, tonight. Tonight is what it is. I’ll bring him home before it’s too late. That’s the deal.”

Cedros’s heart beat wildly, as if it were veering off course, then straightened out and beat evenly again.

Marianna looked at her husband, shook her head, and walked past both men, down the hallway and into Tony’s room.

“Let’s go,” said Ampostela.

“I’m finishing my beer.” His hand was shaking so badly he could
hardly get the can to his face, so he turned away from Ampostela and drank it as fast as he could.

“Drink it on the road. We’ll take my car. We don’t have all night.”

“I have to get the money, take a piss, say good night to my boy.”

“Hurry up.”

Cedros didn’t hurry at all. He used the bathroom then put on a light windbreaker, arranged things, and said good-bye to Marianna. He took the envelope of DWP cash from a bowl of fruit on top of the refrigerator.

When they finally got in the car Ampostela drove them around the corner to El Matador restaurant, where the dog had eaten from the table.

Cedros used the bathroom again, then he was led by Ampostela to the same back room where the women and the drowsy gunman had been. They were there tonight too. The dog was up where he’d sat last time, a clean white plate before him.

“Money,” said Ampostela.

Cedros gave him the envelope and stood there while Ampostela counted it.

“Sit,” said Ampostela. “Wait here. Come back outside to the car in twenty minutes.”

Then he left.

Twenty wordless minutes later Cedros rose from the big empty booth, went to the bathroom once again, then walked outside. It took him a minute to spot the big shiny station wagon because it wasn’t in the parking lot but across the street in the faint light of a purple streetlamp.

He got in and it roared onto the avenue.

Ampostela drove them up Highway 39 into the San Gabriel
Mountains. Rain had puddled on the roadside from last night’s storm and the stars were bright flickers over the tall mountains. Ampostela studied his rearview mirror. Cedros looked in the passenger sideview but saw nothing behind them.

The last time he had been up this road was with the PI Stromsoe, Cedros thought. When he came
that
close to just telling him what he knew already—that scar-faced Choat had drafted him into harassing the weather lady in a completely useless attempt to chase her out of the rainmaking business.

“Where are we going?” asked Cedros. “There’s nothing up here.”

“We’re meeting some people at that restaurant over the river.”

“It’s been closed for years.”

“That’s why. Be cool, man. So the cops asked you some questions. Don’t tell them nothing except you didn’t do it. You got a good lawyer?”

“For which charge? I can’t keep track of my own crimes anymore.”

“That’s what lawyers are for.”

They passed the last housing tract, one that was built over the riverbed. You had to use a bridge to get home. Which is why Cedros had looked into buying a place there. The houses were nice and it wasn’t the barrio but they were too expensive.

Now he caught a glimpse of the San Gabriel River, swollen with rain, surging down from the mountains. Some of the guys at DWP talked about a place up there that got five, eight, sometimes ten times the rain that fell down here in the city. He’d heard stories of fifty inches falling in a night, streams swelling, trees falling, Forest Service roads buried by tons of running water—and most of it ending up in the San Gabriel, which would then cascade downhill, race toward
Azusa, widen and slow by the time it hit civilization, then be forcibly escorted to the ocean in a concrete chute.

Cedros looked down at the river. It was scarcely visible until it passed the houses, then the neighborhood streetlights revealed its speed and volume. It ran at the bottom of a steep gorge.

How many cubic feet per second were barreling their way to the ocean right now—twelve hundred, two thousand? Why didn’t they capture it? Why were the reservoirs chronically low? Why was Southern California in perpetual drought when even the humble San Gabriel lost so much good wild water after even a small fall rainstorm like the one last night? For that matter, why try to stop a lady who thinks she can make more rain?

Whatever, thought Cedros. He knew the answer and was tired of it by now. The whole thing was crazy.

Because, John, only abundance can ruin us.

It was all really hard to care about right now, sitting next to a giant who was taking him out to kill him. He finally figured out why they’d gone to El Matador first. It was Ampostela’s alibi: he had dropped off Cedros and driven away and they hadn’t seen him again that night. Cedros had wandered off twenty minutes later. Ampostela had three witnesses for all of that. And not one who’d seen Cedros get into Ampostela’s car, tucked back in the darkness as it was.

Cedros felt the looseness in his bowels, the tightness in his chest, and the sharp discomfort of his stomach, right at the belt line.

He looked in the sideview mirror again and saw nothing but darkness behind them.

“The cops said Lejas tried to shoot her,” he said.

“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” said Ampostela. “This is just this. What we’re doing is just this.”

“Yeah,” Cedros said quietly. “This is just this.”

“What’s the baby’s name gonna be?”

Cedros couldn’t believe that Ampostela would ask that question on the way to killing the baby’s father. But Cedros understood that his disbelief meant nothing so he answered. Instinctively, he lied.

“Maria.”

“Cool.”

“We got her some little outfits already. Jammies and stuff.”

“I got two boys and a girl with their mother up in Fresno. I hate that fuckin’ place.”

“Never been.”

“Don’t bother. Where’s Marianna work?”

“Dos Amigos.”

“Which one?”

“Monrovia.”

“We’re not stopping at the restaurant I told you about. We’re meeting these people up a little further.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

They wound up into the mountains. Ampostela’s Magnum was a big bad-looking station wagon that hauled ass and held the corners well. He told Cedros it was the most powerful production car in the world for under $30K. It had looked to Cedros like a fat gangster’s ride but he had to confess, he’d love to have one himself. Let Marianna drive it, actually, with the soon-to-be two children in tow.

Ampostela checked the rearview again, then slowed, pulled into a turnout, and stopped. There was no other car in sight. He killed the lights and engine. He leaned across Cedros and pulled something from the glove compartment.

“What’s the gun for?”

“Peace of mind, homeboy. They’re coming. Get out. I’ll talk and you do what I say. Only way it works.”

Cedros got out and stood on shaky legs. He watched the big man come around the front of the car. Ampostela had stuffed the handgun into his pants between the shirttails, not even bothering to cover it.

They stood looking down at the black canyon and the whitecapped river barely lit by the moon.

“The river,” Ampostela said.

Cedros heard the roar of the water and he tried to back up imperceptibly in order to keep Ampostela in his vision without looking directly at him.

In the very bottom of his field of focus Cedros registered the protrusion of belly and one shirttail barely covering the dully luminous handle of the automatic.

He wouldn’t take his eye off the gun.

He couldn’t.

To see the gun was to live.

“They’ll be here,” said Ampostela. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I won’t worry.”

“Everything’s gonna be good. This is just this. I’m gonna take care of everything.”

“Sure you are.”

They stood awhile. The river sounded against its banks of rock. Not a single car came up the road or down it.

Far off in his mind Cedros was aware of Ampostela wanting to say something else but not being able to find the right words. Cedros said nothing. It was a matter of self-respect. Ampostela could struggle all
he wanted. Cedros pulled his attention away from the big man and directed all of it to the gun.

In his lower vision Cedros saw Ampostela’s hand drift upward. It came up slowly and in its wake the gun had vanished from the waistband.

Cedros fired four shots from the pocket of the windbreaker, angling the barrel of the .22 up into the big man’s chest. Then he brought out the semi and shot Ampostela three more times in the head. The big face shifted and collapsed oddly. Cedros felt the hot mist hit his skin.

The big man dropped to his knees then fell on his face in the gravel.

Cedros staggered into the bushes, where he vomited and barely got his pants down before he lost control of his bowels. Then, talking to himself in a voice that he hardly recognized, he staggered back to the car and braced his feet against a front tire and managed to roll Ampostela’s great body to the edge of the canyon and over. He suddenly remembered the $25K and didn’t care one bit about it. He heard rocks sliding, then the body huffing against something very hard, then silence. Cedros stood and watched as Ampostela rolled off the last outcropping and was swallowed by the roaring darkness.

He threw Ampostela’s gun into the canyon. He had to backtrack to where he’d gotten sick to find Marianna’s .22 then come back and throw it into the river too.

He was shivering in the dirt with his back against the car when Marianna drove up minutes later, her headlights out of alignment and the dust rising into her almost crossed beams, which suddenly died.

He heard her get out and crunch toward him and he felt her arms
spread over him and her sweet soft face press against the reek and blood and trembling of his own.

“Oh, baby,” she said. “Oh, baby, my baby.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay. It worked.”

“You’ve got to get up, baby.”

“Mom? Dad?”

Through the rising curtain of his wife’s hair Cedros saw Anthony’s skinny little legs appear on the ground beside the open door of the family car.

“Anthony Mark Cedros,
get back into that car right now.”

“Yes, Mom. Hey, Daddy, what are you doing?”

“Nothing, Tony. I’ll be right there.”

“Stand, John. Hurry. We’ve got to get out of here.”