“Your prosthetic is a beautiful match, really,” she said. “A friend of mine in school had one. She was a poet.”
Stromsoe nodded. He reflexively balled his left fingers into a loose fist to obscure the missing one. “I suppose you’ve got a gun.”
“It’s a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight revolver, two-inch barrel. I’ve got a valid CCP and I’ve done ten hours of range training. To be honest I’m shaky outside of twelve feet. Fifty feet, I can’t even hit the silhouette. It kicks like a mule.”
“Those short barrels make it tough,” he said.
“It makes lots of noise though. I feel better with it.”
“You possibly are.”
“It’s a very unpleasant feeling, being watched.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No matter how ready I am, it always comes as a surprise when I see him. And I almost always feel watched before I realize I’m being watched. But then, I feel watched and a lot of the time I’m not. That’s what it does to you. You begin to doubt your senses. And that makes a person feel weak and afraid.”
Frankie’s hands were large and slender and she used them generously while she talked. Since losing the finger, Stromsoe had paid special attention to people’s hands. He considered the way that weather forecasters like to swirl theirs over the projection maps to show the path of coming fronts and storms.
“Don’t feel weak and afraid,” he said. “My job is to make your job easier. Forget about this guy. He can’t hurt you. Leave him to me.”
She looked at him straight on, no smile, the dark eyes in forthright evaluation.
“I can’t tell you how good that sounds,” she said. “I’ve lost more than a little sleep over this.”
“No more.”
Her intense scrutiny dissolved into a smile. “We should go. It takes an hour to get to San Diego this time of day. We’re going to the Fox building off of Clairemont Mesa. I drive fast.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep up. After you’re past the parking-lot booth, don’t drive to your space. Wait for me while I explain myself to the attendant.”
“He’s a tough old guy,” said Frankie. “Suspicious and not friendly. You drive up for the five hundredth time and he looks at you like he’s never seen you before. Then he takes an hour to check your number.”
“He’ll see the light,” said Stromsoe. “Your job is to pretend I’m not there. Things will work best that way.”
She half smiled, said nothing. Ace continued to hoard his ball and the artillery went off again in the west.
8
By 4 P.M. Frankie’s video team had set up on a sidewalk overlooking Seal Rock Reserve in La Jolla. The big elephant seals lolled and roared in the cooling afternoon. The painted-lady butterflies filled the sky by the fluttering thousands. The ocean reminded Stromsoe of Newport, and Newport reminded him of Hallie and Billy, and for a moment Stromsoe was back in an earlier time when he and his wife and son could walk on a beach together. Now, two plus years after their deaths, his memories of them were less frequent but more distinct, and, somehow, more valuable.
Frankie — with a black windbreaker and her hair whipping in the breeze — held up her microphone and explained that the ridge of high pressure would continue through the week, gradually giving way to cooling and low clouds as the marine layer fought its way back onshore. However, a “substantial” trough of low pressure was waiting out over the Pacific. She smiled enthusiastically and said that rain was possible by Sunday, something in the one-inch range, if the current jet-stream pattern held.
“Now I remember what the farmers used to say about the rain when I was just a girl,” she told the cameras. “Early in, late out. So if we do pick up some serious rain this early in October, we could be in for a long, wet season. Okay with me — we need it! Just be sure to keep your umbrellas handy and your firewood dry. I’m Frankie Hatfield, reporting from Seal Rock Reserve in La Jolla.”
Stromsoe watched almost everything except Frances Hatfield: the families and tourists out enjoying the fall day, the cars parked along Coast Boulevard, especially the single men who perked up when they spotted Frankie and the unmistakable Fox News van. A semicircle of onlookers formed as Frankie finished her report and Stromsoe spotted a dark-haired, dark-complected young man who stood and calmly stared at her. In that moment Stromsoe got a glimpse of what being a public figure was like, the way people assumed they had a right to stare at you. No wonder celebrities wore sunglasses. The young man backed away and continued his walk along the shore.
When Frankie was finished she took a few minutes to talk with the crowd and sign some autographs. She was half a head taller than most everyone. She knelt down to talk to a little girl. After the last fan walked off, she looked at Stromsoe, took a deep breath, then exhaled.
And that was when her secret admirer stepped out from behind the gnarled trunk of a big torrey pine, saw Stromsoe break toward him, then wheeled and sprinted for Coast Boulevard. Stromsoe saw that he looked a lot like his picture — young, dark-haired, and dark-skinned. He was square-shouldered and small, and he ran with rapid, short-legged strokes. He had what looked like a camera in his right hand.
Stromsoe was a big man and not fast. The pins in his legs caused a tightness that hadn’t gone away. A month of jogging and weights and rehab didn’t erase his poor condition after two years of boozing in Florida, and by the time he hit the sidewalk he saw, far down on Coast Boulevard, Frankie’s stalker slam the door on a gold sedan and a moment later steer into the southbound flow of traffic. But the traffic was dense and his truck was parked way up by the Fox van, so Stromsoe powered down the sidewalk as fast as his pinned legs would carry him and almost took out a mom and a stroller but he detoured onto the grass as the gold car stopped behind a blue van about to pass through a stop sign. Stromsoe saw that it would be close. He cut back to the sidewalk then into the street. He ran through a cloud of orange butterflies. The blue van started across the intersection with the gold car glued to its bumper and honking. Stromsoe raised his knees and clenched his fists and charged up near the car just as it screeched around the van in a blast of white smoke that left him blinded and lumbering out of the way of a monstrous black SUV driven by a young man looking down on him assessingly. Stromsoe hailed the young man in hopes of following the stalker but the driver flipped him off and stomped on it right through the stop sign.
Stromsoe stood on the grass, hands on his knees, panting as he watched the gold sedan sweep around a corner. He’d gotten the first four of the seven plate symbols: 4NIZ or 4NTZ. It was hard to get a fix on that license plate with his feet jarring on the asphalt and his one good eye trying for a decent look at the driver.
So, 4NIZ or 4NTZ. Fuck, there were a thousand combinations to check. He kicked a trash can and looked back toward the Fox van. Thirty-nine years old, he thought, and I can barely run two hundred yards.
Furthering his humiliation, Frankie Hatfield was already halfway toward him, loping across the grass while her video man shot away.
He squared his shoulders and tried not to limp as he walked to meet her.
Frankie was rattled but went on to do live reports from downtown La Jolla, Torrey Pines State Park, and UCSD. Stromsoe didn’t see the stalker or the gold sedan again.
Five lousy yards away, he thought. That close.
By nine that night he was following her brilliant red Mustang up the long driveway through the darkened avocado orchard in Fallbrook. Only a sliver of moonlight showed in the black sky.
She pulled into her garage, locked up her car, and came to his truck. He rolled down the window. He heard her dogs barking inside the house.