For relief he looked at his house. It was an older home on the Newport peninsula, on Fifty-second Street, two blocks in from the ocean. It was white. There was a fence around it and you could hear the waves. It was a nice little place, yet in the month that Stromsoe had been home from the hospital, he had come to hate it because it seemed complicit in what had happened.
But he loved it too—it had been their often-happy home—and the power of the two emotions made him feel paralyzed.
He thought about selling the place, fully furnished and as is, and moving away. He thought of selling the place but renting storage space for Hallie’s and Billy’s things, so he could visit them when he wanted to. He thought of just staying here and living in it as it was. He thought of burning it down and never coming back, and of burning it down with himself in it. The idea of never seeing his son’s stuffed bears again broke his heart a little more, and the idea of seeing them every day broke it again in a different place.
He took off his sunglasses and noted again the odd sensation of breeze cooling his good eye while his prosthetic eye felt nothing at all.
“How long did your friendship with Mike last?” asked Susan.
“Four years. It was a good friendship. We disagreed about a lot of things and argued about everything. But always the big stuff—does God care or does God laugh at us? Is there heaven and hell, do we determine our lives or is there a divine or a satanic plan?”
“I had a friend like that too,” said Susan. “Funny how we talk about those things when we’re young, then stop talking about them when we get older.”
Stromsoe thought back to the endless games of eight ball on the slouching table in Mike’s garage. The talk, the competition. Two boys looking for a way to face the world.
“We both went nuts for Hallie Jaynes when she transferred in but we were good friends by then. We figured she was out of our reach. That was our sophomore year. She was pretty and smart. Stayed above things, had an edge. Unafraid. Unfazable. Always said what she thought—called Mike and me the marching gland. Sarcastic twinkle in her eyes. Nice face, curly blond hair, pretty legs. Our senior year, I finally got her to go steady. I knew her heart wasn’t in it, but I was flattered that she’d do it for me. We didn’t want to leave Mike out, so the three of us did a lot of things together. The summer after we graduated, Hallie took up with him.”
Sometimes, as he remembered something good about his wife, terrible visions rushed in and destroyed his pleasant memories. How could he keep Hallie in his heart with these hideous pictures attached?
He cleared his throat and focused his attention on a hummingbird.
Talk on, he thought. Tell the story, shed the skin.
“That must have hurt,” said Susan.
“Sure. But I was busy. I was getting ready to go to Cal State Fullerton. I was set to study prelaw because I wanted to be a cop. He was on his way to Harvard on scholarship because his grades were high and he was a great musician. He made the news—barrio kid bound for Harvard, all that.”
“Did you see it coming, Hallie and Mike?”
Stromsoe nodded. “I wasn’t totally surprised. Hallie always liked the hidden side of things and he had secrets. One of them was that at the same time he took up with Hallie, he was taking up with the Delhi F Troop. He hinted what he was doing. She dug it at first—the secrecy, the whiff of violence.”
“Unafraid and unfazable.”
“The minute that game started, she was out of her league.”
Susan finished writing and looked at him. “You don’t like to say his name, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Does it bother you when I say it?”
“That’s okay.”
“I’ll get you another beer if you’d like.”
A minute later she was back with a cold bottle, then she set out the cheese, meat, and crackers on a plate that she had found in his kitchen. Stromsoe was annoyed that this reporter would commandeer a dish last touched by Hallie.
“When did Mike join Delhi F Troop?”
“They jumped him in that summer.”
“Jumped him in?”
“They’d beat the shit out of you to see if you fight back. If you fight back, they give you a heavy job to do—an armed robbery, a retribution, maybe a killing. Once you do it, you’re in. Usually, the kid is thirteen or fourteen. He was old. But they wanted him because he was smart. His parents tried to keep him away from the gangsters. They had him attend Santa Ana High instead of Valley, because Valley had the gangs. But Flora Street was Delhi turf, so he was surrounded by them anyway.”
“What did he do to get in?”
“He held up three stores at gunpoint down in San Diego, where the Ten Logan 30s would get the blame. He did a good job, got some old plates for his car, cased the stores, waited until the end of the night. He hit the mom-and-pop places that didn’t have fancy safes. He dressed preppie for the jobs, never banger, so it was a big surprise when the gun came out from under his sport coat. He got eleven hundred bucks, something like that. Turned half of it over to his homies, and he was in.”
“They let him keep half?”
Stromsoe nodded. “He was supposed to give them all of it but he learned early to pay himself first.”
Susan wrote quickly. “Did Hallie go east with him when school started?”
“No. But he came back to Santa Ana often while he was a Harvard student.”
“To run with the Delhi F Troop and rob liquor stores,” said Susan.
“And to be with Hallie.”
Stromsoe sipped the beer. He allowed himself a memory, one that seemed useful: after Hallie had taken up with Tavarez, Stromsoe understood that she would come back to him someday. He didn’t know when or why, only that she would.
Susan frowned, tapped her pen on her notepad. “How did Mike Tavarez go from being a clarinet player to an armed robber? And so quickly? Why?”
Stromsoe had given these questions more than a little thought over the last fourteen years, since he’d learned that Mike Tavarez had pulled off a string of nine armed robberies in Southern California while posting a 3.0 GPA as a Harvard undergrad.
“The robberies were a rush for him,” said Stromsoe. “He told me that in jail. He said they were better than coke or meth or Hallie, or any combination thereof.”
Susan nodded. “But he was giving up his future.”
“He thought he was making his future. He hated Harvard. He felt dissed and out of place. He told me he just wanted to be a homie. Not a poster boy for Equal Opportunity. Not a newspaper feature about the poor kid in the Ivy League. He felt like a traitor to la raza, being singled out for all that praise and promise.”
He didn’t tell her that Hallie liked it when Mike came back from those robberies, jacked on adrenaline. She didn’t know exactly what he was doing out there, but the mystery turned her on. Hallie told him so. And Mike had told him how much he enjoyed fooling her. A binding secret.
“What did he do with the money?”
“He told the court that he’d robbed to help his mother and father. But he didn’t—he bought stocks and did well for himself. Most of that money he lost under asset forfeiture laws. His attorney got the rest. That was the last time he did anything traceable with cash. Anyway, the judge hit him pretty hard. Mike got ten, did a nickel, and walked in ’93. By the time he left prison, Mike Tavarez wasn’t a Delhi street hood anymore. He was La Eme.”
“The Mexican Mafia. The most powerful prison gang in the country.”
“They made the Delhi F Troop look like Campfire Girls.”
“And by the time he got out, you were married to Hallie.”
“Yes,” Stromsoe heard himself say. “Billy was one and a half. It took us a long time to have him. Hallie had a hard time getting pregnant after what he did to her.”
“Tell me about that,” said Susan Doss.
“I can’t,” said Stromsoe. Exhaustion closed over him like a drawn blind. “I’m sorry. Maybe later.�
��
“Tomorrow? Same time. I’ll bring lunch, how’s that?”
4
That evening, Dan Birch, Stromsoe’s good friend and former narco partner, arrived unannounced. It was the third time he’d come to the house on Fifty-second Street since Stromsoe had been released from UCI Medical Center. Birch and his wife and children had been guests here for the better part of twelve years. Birch now stood in the kitchen and surveyed Stromsoe with his usual heavy-browed glower.
“You look bad,” he said.
“I feel bad sometimes,” said Stromsoe.
“What can I do?”
“There’s nothing, Dan.”
“I can put you to work when you’re ready.”
Stromsoe nodded and tried to smile. “A one-eyed security guard?”
Four years ago Birch had quit the Sheriff ’s Department and started his own security company. Thanks to an engaging personality and some family connections to Irvine high-tech companies, his Birch Security Solutions had billed $1.15 million in its first year, and tripled that number since. They did some of everything: residential and industrial security, patent and copyright protection, patrol, installations, and private investigations.
Birch chuckled. “I can do better than that, Matt.”
“Divorce work?”
“We’ve got some interesting industrial espionage going down in Irvine. And some jerk-off at the med school selling cadaver parts, but the university can’t afford the scandal of busting him. We’re going to…dissuade him from further business.”
“No cadaver parts, Dan.”
“I understand. I shouldn’t have said that. What can I do to help? I’m trying here.”
“Let me make you a drink. It’s only the Von’s brand. I’m trying to reduce my dependence on foreign vodka.”
They drank late into the night, Stromsoe outpacing his friend roughly two to one. He laid off the painkiller as long as he could but by midnight the pins in his legs were killing him so he took more pills.
“One for the road?” he asked Birch.
“No.”
Birch came over and knelt next to Stromsoe. “I didn’t know it was this bad.”
“It’s temporary. Don’t worry.”
“I’m so fucking sorry, Matt.”
“I’ll get there,” he said, wherever there was.
“Tavarez is an animal,” said Birch. “And Ofelia’s death wasn’t our fault.”
“No,” said Stromsoe. “Not our fault at all.”
A long silence lowered over them during which Stromsoe did not hear the waves breaking nearby. “Is there any way to get to him?” he asked.
Birch’s eyes tracked behind his heavy brows. “Mike? In Orange County Jail? You might be able to bring some annoyance his way—get his privileges and exercise time cut back. You’d need to get a deputy or two on your side.”
“I had something more substantial in mind.”
“Such as what?”
“Five minutes alone with him.”
Birch stood, shaking his head. “The visitation setup is all wrong for that. Besides, the only one who can grant you a visit is Tavarez.”
Stromsoe thought about five minutes with El Jefe.
“Forget it, Matt. You kill him, you may as well just move right into his cell, put on his jumpsuit.”
WHEN BIRCH HAD gone Stromsoe limped through the house with a big vodka in hand. He walked with his head down, focusing on the ice in his drink, and when he came into a room he lifted his head and looked around but then would have to close his eyes against the memories. Every cubic inch of space. Every object. Every molecule of every object, tied to Hallie and Billy. Their things. Their lives. Their life. It was impossible to endure.
He stood swaying in the courtyard for a moment, watching the sliver of moon slip down then rise back into place over and over.
His cell phone pulsed against his hip and Stromsoe slid it off, dropped it, and then knelt and picked it up.
“The bomb was for you,” said Tavarez. “God put them there for reasons we don’t understand.”
“You blew up a woman and a little boy.”
“But you made it possible.”
“You’ll burn in hell for what you did.”
“Hell would be better than this,” said Tavarez. “Now you understand how bad it is, don’t you? Living without the ones you love?”
“If they ever let you out, I’ll find and kill you,” said Stromsoe.
“Life can be worse than death,” said Tavarez. “So I’m going to let you live. Live first in the smell of their blood. Then live without them, month after month and year after year. Until you begin to forget them, until your memory is weak and uncertain. Because you know, Matt, wives and lovers and even children can be forgotten. They must be forgotten. But an enemy can live in your heart forever. The more spectacular his crime against you, the more durable your enemy becomes in your heart. Hate is stronger than love. I tried to kill you but I’m much happier that I didn’t. Tell me, are you blinded by fury?”
“Inspired by it.”
“Pray to your God for vengeance, to the one who ignores you. And welcome to prison. The bars here keep me from freedom. The bars around your heart will do the same to you.”
With a dry little chuckle, Tavarez clicked off.
Stromsoe hurled his drink against the side of his house. He turned and lurched toward the garage. He pushed through the construction site tape, got tangled and kicked his way out as his legs burned with pain. He pulled open the garage door and flipped on the light.
Here it was, his personal ground zero, the heart of his loss.
He forced himself to stand where they had been standing. The concrete floor was thick with drywall dust and he swept aside some of it with his foot. The floor had been bleached. He looked at the wall in front of him—new drywall. And the wall to his left—new drywall too. He looked up at the new framing that was being roofed with new plywood and new paper and new mastic and new tiles. He didn’t see a drop of what he was dreading to find. Not one tiny trace. New was good.
He walked slowly around the Ford to the far corner of the garage. Here were some cabinets he had built many years ago. The bottom cabinet was long and deep and fitted with duckboards. The slats were now stained from years of two-cycle oil spills and gas-can seepages, leaking weed eaters and blowers and chain saws.
Stromsoe bent over and rocked the red plastic gas can. It sloshed, heavy with fuel. He hefted it out, twisted open the cap, and pulled out the retractable spigot. The fumes found his nose.
The smell of escape, he thought.
He backed the Taurus into the driveway, set the brake, and killed the engine. Back in the garage he poured gasoline where Hallie and Billy had last breathed, then across the cement floor, out the door and across the bricks of the little courtyard to the back porch, then through the slider and into the dining room, kitchen, living room, the bedrooms.
He set the can down by the front door, got a plastic bag from under the sink, and slid most of Hallie’s jewelry into it. He found a pack of matches in the coins-and-keys drawer of his dresser. Then, in Billy’s room, he added three of his son’s favorite stuffed bears to the bag.
He went back to the front door, opened it, and continued his gas trail outside to the porch. The door he left ajar. Dropping the gas can and the plastic bag to the porch boards, Stromsoe then fished the matches out of his pocket. The moths and mosquito hawks flapped against the porch lights and the waves swooshed to shore in the dark.
He sat down to think it over.
With his back to the door frame he brought up his knees and rested his face on his forearms. The nail wounds in his body flared like struck matches. His ears rang. He could feel his glass eye moving against the skin of his arm, but the eye itself felt nothing. The matchbook fell from his hand. He asked God what to do and got no answer. He asked Hallie and Billy what to do and they told him not this—it was dangerous and stupid and wouldn’t help. Hallie’s argument that he co
uldn’t let his son be without a home made sense to him.
Stromsoe got up and went back inside and fell asleep on the living-room couch with the gas fumes strong around him and the waves breaking in the black middle distance.
He opened some windows before he crashed, a precaution that brought to him both cool night air and a sense of cowardice and shame.
THE NEXT MORNING he woke up with a tremendous hangover, for which he used hair of the dog and more Vicodin. After a shower and shave he dressed in pressed trousers and a crisp plaid shirt and called the neighborhood office of a national realty company.
Twenty minutes later a Realtor showed up, and by 11 A.M. Stromsoe had listed his home for sale. He offered the place furnished and as is. The Realtor’s suggested asking price was so high he could hardly believe it. The Realtor smiled fearfully as they shook hands out by his car. He said he’d sell the place within the week, though an escrow period would follow.
“I’m sorry for what happened,” he said. “Maybe a new home can be a new life.”
5
By noon Stromsoe and Susan were back in his courtyard, sitting on the picnic benches again. She’d brought a new cassette for the tape recorder and a handful of fresh wildflowers for the vase.
“When I saw Hallie again it was ’86,” said Stromsoe. “We were twenty years old.”
Mike’s phone call the night before had convinced Stromsoe that he had to tell what Tavarez had done to Hallie, and how she had survived it. Tavarez could take her life but he couldn’t take her story. Or Billy’s. And El Jefe could not make Stromsoe kill himself, or diminish his memories, or make him burn down his house. Tavarez could not break his spirit.
“I was at Cal State Fullerton. I was taking extra units, and judo at night, and lifting weights—anything to not think about her. Them.”
His words came fast now, Stromsoe feeling the momentum of doing the right thing.
“Every once in a while I’d read about Tavarez in the papers—they loved the barrio-kid-conquers-Harvard story—and I’d think about her more. Then one night I just ran into them in a Laguna nightclub, the old Star. She was wearing a gold lamé dress with white and black beads worked into the brocade. Tight, cut low and backless, slit up the side. It was very beautiful. And her hair was done up kind of wild, and dyed lighter than it used to be. She came running over and wrapped her arms around me. I remember that she was wearing Opium perfume. I looked past her at Mike, who was watching us from a booth. He looked pleased. She pulled me over there and he invited me to sit with them but I didn’t.”
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