by Phoef Sutton
But why would Noel have his brother abducted? It didn’t make any sense. Crush thought of calling him on his cell phone and demanding to know what the hell was going on, but then he remembered that Noel didn’t own a cell phone. According to Noel, they caused brain cancer and, more to the point, they let them track you. Who was “them?” According to Noel, “they” were everyone from the government to the Russians to aliens to the lizard people who secretly ruled the world. Noel’s paranoia was inclusive.
“Where in Irwindale?” Crush asked Donny.
“What?”
“Where were you supposed to deliver him?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Don’t make me mad.”
“Really, Jack had the address. He was the one in charge. I was just going along with it. I always go along with him. He always gets me in trouble. This is the last time, I’m telling you.”
Crush thought. Where would Noel be in Irwindale? Where would anyone be in Irwindale?
“Cool car,” Donny said.
“What?”
“This is a cool car.”
“It is,” Crush agreed, heading down the 101 to the 10.
“You fixed it up yourself?” Donny asked.
“Why are you asking that? What are you doing? Are you trying to bond with me?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? When you’re abducted?”
“You haven’t been abducted. You were the one doing the abducting.”
“Was,” Donny said. “I was abducting. Now I’m abducted.”
Crush shrugged. He could see the man’s point. You never know when you get up in the morning how the day’s going to end.
“So where are you from?” Donny went on.
“This isn’t going to work.”
“I’m from Long Beach.”
“Shut up.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
Crush turned on the radio. Tory Lanez sang “Luv.” Crush hated that song. He turned it up louder. Donny was still talking, but Crush wasn’t listening. He was thinking about where he was from, damn it.
In Brooklyn, on a bright spring morning near the end of the last century, Crush and a woman stole a car and started driving as far west as they could go. He targeted a 1990 Nissan 300ZX that he’d seen parked along Second Street Park in Brighton Beach for a few days. He picked it partly because he thought it had already been stolen and dumped there, so it would be harder to trace to them, but mainly because he had always wanted to drive cool cars. Crush was only fifteen and he didn’t have a driver’s license, but he’d already done a lot of driving and he was in kind of a hurry to get away.
Blaz Kusinko, kingpin of the Russian mob on Ocean Parkway, would be waking up soon and he would be looking for them. Toni, the woman with Crush, had been one of Kusinko’s “wives” until he grew tired of her, beat her up, and threw her out onto the street.
Crush was one of Kusinko’s many sons and in spite of his treatment of Toni, Blaz expected Crush to retain allegiance to the mob and to Kusinko himself. After all, Crush was advanced for his age, both in size and in intellect, and Kusinko already had plans for him in the Organization. Not just as a driver but as a soldier and an enforcer. Kusinko was a powerful man and Toni was just one of his whores. Crush would be smart enough to know where his better interests lay.
Unfortunately for Kusinko, Crush didn’t see it that way. Toni, the woman Kusinko had left in the gutter, was also Crush’s mother. As a teenage runaway, Toni had been adopted by various members of the Russian mob until she was finally claimed by Kusinko as his own. And, as far as Kusinko was concerned, he could do whatever he wished with those who belonged to him.
Crush didn’t agree. And when Crush found his mother discarded like so much trash in the alley behind Kusinko’s house, he decided it was time to make his feelings known. With a baseball bat.
By the time Kusinko’s bodyguard burst in and pulled Crush off him, the mobster was a bloody mess, but he was still breathing. Crush didn’t much like being interrupted, so he pounded a few line drives off the bodyguard’s head before he fled the scene.
Then Crush and his mother drove away, as far and fast as they could. They stopped in Philadelphia, where Crush stole another car, then they kept on driving. They did this, hopscotching across the country, doing odd jobs and getting enough money to keep moving, all that summer. They reached Los Angeles in the blazing hot autumn that only Angelenos know. They couldn’t go any farther west, so they got a fleabag apartment in Koreatown and settled down. Crush was still underage but he didn’t look it, so he got jobs bagging groceries, doing construction, gardening, anything that didn’t require any paperwork.
Toni did other kinds of jobs. She was somewhere in her thirties, but she still looked twenty-five and with her dyed-blond locks and the wild look in her eye, she was appealing to the kind of man who liked to live dangerously.
Crush never knew what her jobs were. He didn’t want to know. She was the “girlfriend” of quite a few men who gave her gifts and paid their rent. She liked to go to fancy restaurants and buy nice clothes when times were good. When times were bad, she took that in stride and did just what was necessary.
If Crush learned one lesson from his mother, it was this: never expect a run of luck to last.
During one of those bad-luck periods, Toni ended up working as a stripper in a club in the Valley called Menage. Crush was seventeen by then, a high-school dropout, and she got him a job as the doorman there. Of course, he was still too young to be legal, but with his straggly black beard and already-receding hairline, he looked at least five years older. The managers were too busy making sure their strippers weren’t jailbait to worry about whether or not their bouncer was old enough to vote.
Toni was a bit more mature than most of the other girls there, so she became the den mother, giving them advice, telling them how to make the best profits in the VIP room by giving the customers just enough to keep them coming back for more, but not so much that they felt satisfied.
Then one day Emil Zerbe walked into the club and Toni’s and Crush’s lives took another turn. That was another thing Crush’s mother taught him: there is nothing as consistent in this life as inconsistency.
“What kind of music do you like?” Zerbe asked.
Zerbe was bonding with his abductor. For instance, he had learned that his name was Jack, though he couldn’t help but think of him as “Bert.” And when Jack had taken his ski mask off, Zerbe had seen that he was a pleasant-looking young Filipino kid with a buzz cut at his temples and longish hair on the top of his head, flopping down over his eyes. A very likable young man, all things considered.
“I like all kinds,” Jack said. “Except country music. Can’t stand that shit.”
“I hear you. But have you ever listened to Johnny Cash? Or Merle Haggard? Or Hank Williams? They’ll change your mind, man. They’re the greatest.”
“I’ll have to give them a try.”
Zerbe had a shoe in his hand, his right leg was still glistening with olive oil and his foot was still raw and scraped. Getting the ankle monitor off hadn’t been easy.
Jack turned his Nissan Versa into an industrial area full of warehouses and anonymous offices. He pulled up to the elephant doors of a large warehouse and stopped, the motor still running. The big doors were open but only slightly.
“Get out,” Jack said.
Zerbe looked around. There was no one in sight. Nothing but the dark parking lot, the dark warehouse, and its darker interior. “There’s nobody here,” Zerbe said.
“Not my problem. Get out.”
“You kidnap me and then you just let me go? In Irwindale? That doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t care if it makes sense. He’ll probably be here soon.”
“Probably? Who will?”
“Whoever you’re meeting here.”
Zerbe shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“You said that. It doesn’t.” Jack
gripped the wheel. “I want to get paid.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“No. I want to get paid now. This is weird and I want to get paid.”
“Take it up with whoever hired you.”
“Cut it out.”
“I want the five hundred dollars. Now.”
“You want me to pay you? For kidnapping me?”
“That’s right.”
Zerbe stared at him. “Who hired you?”
“Stop it. You did, man. You know that.”
Zerbe blinked a few times. “Oh, fuck me.”
“Now give me the goddamned money.”
“Take me back home.”
“Fuck that. Give me the goddamned money or I’ll leave you here.”
“Isn’t that what I paid you to do?”
“Damn straight.”
“How much did I pay you?”
“You fucking know how much you paid me.”
“I don’t. ’Cause it wasn’t me. How much did the other me pay you?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yes, I’m crazy. How much?”
Jack paused, then said, “Fifteen hundred.” Jack had been paid a thousand for this job, but he figured he’d pad it. “To drop you off here and let somebody pick you up.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fine. I’ll pay you twice that to take me back home. That’s three thousand, if you can’t do the math.”
“Do you have it?”
“Sure.”
“I mean do you have it on you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then get out. Leave. This whole thing is more trouble than it’s worth. I should never have let Donny talk me into this. He’s always talking me into crazy things.”
“I don’t want to get between you and Donny.…”
Jack pointed his gun at Zerbe. “Get out.”
“I don’t think that gun is even loaded,” Zerbe said.
“Are you sure?”
Swearing under his breath, Zerbe opened the door and got out of the Nissan just before it screeched out of the parking lot, leaving rubber on the asphalt.
Zerbe stood alone under the night sky of Irwindale, thinking this was partly good and partly bad. He was free. He was outdoors. He was at large. That was the good thing. But he was at large in violation of his probation. If they caught him he’d get sent back to prison. That was the bad thing. And the story he’d have to tell his probation officer (that he’d been kidnapped by people who thought he paid them to do it) was suspect, at best.
But his ankle monitor was back at the loft, still registering his presence. If he could get back to it, without anyone knowing any of this, all would be well.
Now, how to cross the twenty-five miles to home without being seen? If he had his cell phone he could call Crush. But his cell phone was sitting back on the coffee table in the loft. So he had to get to a landline to call Crush. That was the only option. Other than walking home.
He sat down to put his shoe on and a car’s headlights washed over him. It drove on by, but it made him feel vulnerable. What if it was a cop or a night watchman? What excuse could he give for being here? He looked over to the elephant doors in front of him. Darkness seemed to flow out from the opening, like dirty water from a hose. Inside, there might be a phone. And inside he wouldn’t be so visible to passing watchmen.
Getting up to his feet, Zerbe crossed to the dark void. He stepped over the threshold and stood still, waiting for his pupils to dilate so that he could see. It took a long time, and when they did he thought he was going mad.
The warehouse was filled with dragons. And spaceships. And dinosaurs.
They stared down at him from platforms, atop giant wheeled vehicles. He blinked. He could just make out a sign, high up on the wall, and he knew where he was. Carnivàle Parade Floats. Jesus. His fucking brother.
“Noel!” he called out. “Where are you?”
His voice echoed through the black emptiness of the warehouse. No answer.
His brother Noel had been designing floats and driving for the Rose Parade in Pasadena since he got out of college. It wasn’t his most lucrative job, but it was the one in which he took the most pride. Sitting in the living room of their mansion on the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena every New Year’s, his father beamed with happiness as Noel piloted one of his great flowered creations down Colorado Boulevard, broadcast to the whole world in that mad orgy of Middle American floral celebration that was the Tournament of Roses Parade. It was rather unusual for a designer to also be the driver of a float, but Noel was a most unusual man. He felt that, as the designer, he knew how the float should roll down the parade route. Besides, it was a tradition for a member of the Zerbe family to drive their company’s floral monstrosity and had been for many years. Tragedy and bloodshed notwithstanding.
So when Noel’s float took home the Grand Marshal’s Trophy, as it inevitably did every year, his father reacted with more delight than when he had won that Tony Award. Certainly with more delight than for anything that K.C. Zerbe had ever done. For longtime residents of Pasadena, first prize in the parade was more important than the Oscars or Emmys or the Nobel Prize. It was the ultimate accolade.
The parade was fast approaching. One more day and it would wind its way triumphantly down Colorado Boulevard. The workers must have just quit for the day even though it was the middle of the night. Zerbe recalled that this year’s theme was Transportation: Past and Future. Hence the spaceships and the dragons with children riding them, and the dinosaurs pulling wagons full of cavemen. The Rose Parade was nothing if not historically accurate.
In a few hours this place would again be teeming with volunteers, gluing flowers and seeds and bark onto the biplanes and steam locomotives and Conestoga wagons, to give them color and life. The warehouse was empty and silent now except for his footsteps echoing off the walls.
Zerbe felt like he was inside a dark cavern, deep in the bowels of the earth, where otherworldly creatures dwelled. His high school years, spent engrossed in reading H.P. Lovecraft and J.R.R. Tolkien, came back to him in a rush. Then he heard wailing on the wind and thought he was going mad.
The wailing grew nearer and he recognized it. Police sirens. Approaching. He began to panic. They’d find him in here. He’d be sent back to that awful place. He couldn’t go back there.
He stifled a scream and looked around for a place to hide. If only this really were a cavern, he could crawl deeper into the darkness and disappear. Into the eldritch, hoary depths of the earth, Zerbe thought, his mind going full-on-Lovecraft. If only one of the ancient legendary monsters that surrounded him was real and could reach down with its long neck and swallow him whole.
He heard cars pull up outside. Heard their tires squealing on the asphalt. They were coming for him. He headed deeper into the darkness. He took a left at a giant Santa’s sleigh. Then he stopped as a light fell across his face and he saw something that made his blood run cold.
CHAPTER THREE
Crush saw the huge, rugged, empty industrial pits just off the freeway, looking like ancient volcanic craters, and knew he was approaching Irwindale. To most people, Irwindale was just an underpopulated suburb of Los Angeles, far out in the San Gabriel Valley, notable mostly as the site of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire once a year. To Crush it was more personal than that. To Crush it was the place he had been chosen to run the rear end of a dinosaur.
When Crush spotted the flashing lights to his right, he had to look twice before he was sure they weren’t a Christmas decoration. Then he recognized it as a cop car. He took a turn toward it, into an industrial complex. He pulled the Camaro up across from a warehouse, watching the patrol car as it idled next to a bright red Porsche. The patrol car siren was off but its visibar lights were flashing like a strobe light on a dance floor. He cursed under his breath. Strobe lights always gave Crush a headache, even in the nightclub.
In the flashing light, Crush could see a policeman sta
nding beside the Porsche, talking to someone through the window. The driver got out and walked with the patrolman toward the warehouse, and Crush thought he recognized her as she walked through the big doors. This was getting all too familiar.
He turned to Donny and said, “You can go.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here.”
“How do I get home?”
“Hitchhike. Walk. I don’t care.”
“Where the fuck is Irwindale?”
“It’s where you are.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Hey, I’m letting you go. You should thank me.”
“I did thank you.”
“You were being sarcastic. Next time, try meaning what you say. It makes a nice change.”
“Fuck you. And Merry Christmas.”
“That’s sarcasm again. Don’t you even know when you’re using it?”
Donny threw open the door, got out of the car, and walked off toward the freeway.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon in front of him but Crush didn’t give it a glance. He kept his eyes on the warehouse and when he saw lights come on inside, he got out of the Camaro.
Walking toward the elephant doors, Crush felt a sense of nostalgia flowing over him. He had come here once, years ago, with Zerbe and the rest of his high school class, to help pin flowers on the Rose Parade floats. It was fun at first, being out of class and all, but after a while it got pretty tedious. In fact, he had volunteered for tail-duty just because he thought it would be more exciting. That’s how naïve he had been at seventeen.
Crush entered the warehouse and tried to cast aside thoughts of the past. As if bidden by his attempt to deny them, images of Angela, Noel, and Renee Zerbe and the Devil’s Gate itself all crowded around in his mind. He tried to brush them aside. He was mostly successful. Inside the warehouse, Crush saw what he had expected to see. A bunch of goddamned floats with a bunch of goddamned freaky animals and monsters and rocket ships. The Rose Parade Floats. Happy New Year.
Over the years, Crush had developed a love/hate relationship with the Rose Parade, and not just because of his own bad experience with it. On the one hand, he loved that for one day everyone in the wintery, snowbound US got to envy warm, sunny Southern California and resent it even more than they did the rest of the year. On the other hand, he hated that most of the floats were sponsored by corporate monoliths and government agencies. It was basically a two-hour commercial for the powers that be.