“What I mean is, this is me. This is what I look like and this is what I am. And I think you’re wonderful and brave and loyal and I’d be proud to be your friend. Maybe more. I’m sorry to be clumsy and insensitive. I think my moment is right now and if it passes I’ll never see you again.”
He looked at her, not knowing what to say.
“Plus, I get four weeks’ paid vacation, great medical, and good retirement. I’ve got good teeth, strong legs, and an iron stomach. I’m relatively low maintenance.”
He smiled.
“And I only look clean-cut.”
“I can’t.”
They came to the street and headed toward Stromsoe’s house.
“I talk too much at the wrong time,” she said. “It’s a problem.”
“Hallie was the same way.”
“You’re a beautiful man.”
“You’re a beautiful woman but I can’t.”
“I understand, Matt.”
Susan lightly held his arm until they came to the house. She waited in the living room while Stromsoe chose a framed picture from the spare bedroom walclass="underline" Hallie, Billy, and him on the beach, not far from where he had just watched the sun go down, smiling back at the stranger they’d asked to take the shot.
She looked at the picture then at Stromsoe. “You’ll find all this again. Somewhere, someday.”
He wanted to tell her it was impossible, but saw no reason to belittle her opinion.
One thing Stromsoe knew for certain about life was that things only happen once.
Later that night he packed and loaded the car. It didn’t hold much, but he got his bare necessities, the bag with Hallie’s jewelry, and the one with Billy’s things.
He cooked canned stew and drank and limped through the house again as the memories collided with one another and the waves roared then hissed against the beach.
He signed a power-of-attorney form downloaded from the Web and left it on the kitchen table with a check for five thousand dollars, made out to Dan Birch.
He’d call Dan from wherever he was tomorrow, explain the situation.
He slept in his bed for the last time.
Early the next morning he gassed up and headed east toward Arizona. By two that afternoon he was in Tucson, where he called Birch and talked about the selling of his house. Dan was unhappy about Stromsoe’s plans but said he’d handle the sale and have the money deposited in the proper account.
“I want you to call me,” said Birch. “I’m not going to let you vanish.”
“I’ll call, Dan. I don’t want to vanish.”
“What do you want?”
“Forward motion.”
By midnight Stromsoe was outside of Abilene, Texas. He parked in a rest stop, unloaded boxes from the backseat, and slept. At sunrise he was on the road again.
He began drinking in Jackson, Mississippi, ten hours later. In the morning he took a city tour by bus for no reason he could fathom. He threw his cell phone into a trash can on Gallatin Street, then gassed up the Ford and stepped on it.
Mississippi became Alabama, then, troublingly, Indiana. He aimed south again, got a motel for the night, but by then it was morning. Georgia was humid and Florida was flat, then suddenly Miami was wavering before him like the Emerald City itself. He rented an upstairs apartment on Second Avenue, not far from the Miami-Dade College campus. Once he had the boxes upstairs he sold the Ford for five thousand and opened a checking account with fake ID from his undercover days with the Sheriff’s Department. He got a new cell phone but never told Dan the number. The restaurant below his apartment was Cuban-Chilean and the food was extremely hot. Lucia the waitress called him Dead Eye. He ate and drank, drank and ate. Months later he flew back to California to testify against Tavarez. Other than that one week, he didn’t get farther than walking distance from his Second Avenue apartment. Downtown Miami swirled around him, a heated closed-loop hallucination featuring Brickell Avenue, Biscayne Bay, and the ceiling fan of his small, box-choked room.
Two years later Stromsoe woke up to find Dan Birch hovering over him. A potful of cool water hit him in the face.
“It stinks in here,” said Birch. He dropped the pot with a clang. “There’s cockroaches all over your floor. Get up, Matt. No more of this.”
“Of this?”
“Get the fuck up. Then we can talk about it.”
Part II
The Heart of the X
7
Stromsoe sat in Dan Birch’s Irvine office and looked out at the clear October morning.
It was thirty-two days since Miami and the pot of water in his face. He had come back to California with Birch, completed a monthlong detox program in Palm Springs, then taken a furnished rental in downtown Santa Ana, not far from where he had grown up. He’d started jogging and lifting weights during his detox, with arguable results. Everything hurt.
Today, Monday, he sat in his friend’s office with a cup of coffee, like any other guy hoping for a job. He could hardly believe that over two years had passed since he last talked with Birch in his haunted, long-sold home in Newport.
“How are you feeling, Matt?”
“Good.”
“Drinking?”
“Lightly.”
“You idiot.”
“It’s under control.”
Birch tapped his desktop with a pen. The office was on the twelfth floor and had great views southwest to Laguna.
“We got a call last week from a woman down in San Diego County,” he said. “She’s a weather lady for Fox down in San Diego — Frankie Hatfield is her name. Nice gal. Seen her on TV?”
“No.”
“I hadn’t either, until last night. She’s good. A year ago I did some work for one of the producers there at her channel. Frankie — Frances Leigh is her full name — told him she had a problem. The producer recommended me. I recommended you.”
Stromsoe nodded as Birch stared at him.
“Up for this?” asked Birch.
“Yes, I am.”
“You would be an employee and representative of Birch Security Solutions,” said Birch. “I use the best.”
“I understand, Dan.”
“The best control themselves.”
“I can do that. I told you.”
Birch continued to look at his friend. “So, Frankie Hatfield is being stalked. Doesn’t know by whom. Never married, no children, no ugly boyfriends in the closet, no threats. The last time she saw the guy, she was doing one of her live weather broadcasts. They shoot live on location, various places around San Diego. He might be an infatuated fan — some guy who follows the Fox News van out of the yard and around the city. I’ve got some letters and e-mails she’s received at work but I don’t see anything to take seriously. She’s caught glimpses of this guy — dark hair and dark complexion, medium height and weight — three times. Twice on her private property. She filed a complaint with SDPD but you know that drill.”
“They can’t help her until he assaults her.”
“More or less.”
Birch tapped his keyboard, adjusted the monitor his way, and leaned back. “Yeah, here. She’s seen this guy outside her studio in downtown San Diego, on her residential property in Fallbrook, on her investment property in Bonsall, and possibly following her on I-5 in a gold four-door car. She hasn’t gotten plate numbers because he stays too far back. He takes pictures of her. He has not spoken to her. He has not called. He has not acknowledged her in any way except by running away from her.”
“She’s tried to confront him?”
“Confront him? Hell, she photographed him. Check these.”
Birch flicked four snapshots across the desk to Stromsoe. Stromsoe noted that they were high-pixel digital images printed on good picture paper.