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 usefuclass="underline" 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.”