by Phoef Sutton
“You think I’m nothing but a gold digger, don’t you Samantha?”
“No, I think you’re probably a number of things in addition to being a gold digger.” Her eyes fell on Crush. “And who’s this, if I may ask?”
“This is Caleb. My son.”
She couldn’t have looked more skeptical. “Your son, huh? How old is he?”
“Seventeen.”
“He looks pretty big for seventeen.”
“I drank all my milk,” Crush said.
“Emil’s waiting for you. In the swimming pool,” Samantha said, her voice heavy with resentment, and left the room.
“I like her,” Crush said. “She doesn’t put up with your shit.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“What does she do around here?” Crush asked as Toni led the way through the maze that was the inside of the house.
“She’s Emil’s private secretary. I think she was his private secretary, if you know what I mean. She’s not too happy about being replaced.”
“Do you think she wanted to marry him?”
“Sure, who wouldn’t?” Toni grinned. “But she doesn’t have my hidden assets!”
Crush didn’t know what his mother’s hidden assets were and he really didn’t want to.
The house on the inside looked about like what you’d expect from the outside. Colossal wooden banisters and balustrades. Colorful woven antique tapestries hanging from the walls. Big heavy furniture. Even a damn suit of armor in one corner. It looked like the setting for a Vincent Price movie, minus the cobwebs.
Toni led Crush down a tiled corridor. The echoes of water splashing came down the hall. Crush stopped. “Emil’s in the pool, right?”
“Yep! You should see it. It’s spectacular.”
“Mom, I really don’t want to see the new dude you’re banging in his swimming trunks.”
“He’s my husband,” Toni said, a little offended.
“But you’re banging him, right?”
“Well, of course. Come on. You have to see this natatorium!”
“I thought it was a swimming pool.”
“It is! That’s how rich he is, he can call it whatever he wants.”
Reluctantly, Crush followed his mother. And the pool was indeed amazing. Inside a glass-enclosed greenhouse, it was done up with what Crush guessed were Greek- or Roman-style sculptures and tiles. All blue and white. Images of gods holding up the world and statues of fat dolphins and fatter Cupids squirting water out of their mouths. Crush guessed it must have cost a fortune and supposed it was very nice if you liked that sort thing. He preferred the pool at the Y. It was less full of itself.
The pool smelled freshly of chlorine and was at least Olympic size. The tiles or the lighting made the water look blue, like Crush imagined the water looked in the Mediterranean or the Aegean or one of those far-off seas that Crush wasn’t sure even existed in real life.
A man was gliding through the water with expert strokes, barely leaving a ripple as he shot across the pool. He came to the edge, grabbed onto the lip, and pulled himself out in one graceful motion. He stood dripping on the deck.
If this was Emil Zerbe, he didn’t look anything like Crush had expected. If you’d asked Crush what kind of rich older man would marry Toni, he’d have picked someone with a toupee, or an artificial tan, or a serious case of erectile dysfunction—someone who was short or overweight or both. Someone who was either a nerd or a narcissistic asshole or both. Someone who wanted some thirty-five-year-old eye candy to replace his previous trophy wife who’d aged out. An insecure man with an inferiority complex who used money and sex to make up for it.
This man, on the other hand, was handsome. Movie-star handsome. His body was fit, and Crush could see a lot of it since he was wearing a Speedo. Speedos don’t look good on guys unless they have a six-pack and don’t have an ounce of body fat. The Speedo looked good on him.
Crush guessed he was in his fifties, but movie-star fifties. The mythical ageless fifties. He didn’t look so much like Liam Neeson as he looked like the way Liam Neeson wished he looked. His graying hair was cut long in the European style, and the water glistened from the hair on his chest. This man didn’t look like he ever had an insecure moment in his life.
“Emil!” Toni said.
So it was Emil. He walked over to Toni and kissed her comfortably but with great passion, as if they had spent the past week kissing and that’s how they would spend the next and the next. She was wearing a Versace outfit that Emil must have bought for her and it was getting all mussed and wet and ruined, but she didn’t care.
Crush took this as his cue to leave but Toni came up for air and Emil looked over and noticed him. “Hello. And you are?”
“Emil, I want you to meet my son, Caleb,” Toni said, beaming with pride.
Emil eyed him skeptically.
“I know,” Crush said. “I’m big for my age.”
“Pleased to meet you, Caleb. Your mother’s told me a lot about you. She’s so proud of you.” Emil spoke with a barely noticeable foreign accent. Crush guessed that it was French, or maybe Austrian.
“Well, I’m proud of her.”
Toni dropped the bomb as casually as she could. “Could you have Samantha show Caleb to his room?”
After an eloquent pause, Emil asked, “His room?”
“Yes,” Toni said, still calm as ever. “Where he’s going to live.”
“Hmmm. It’s odd,” Emil said, “but I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“Why not? You knew I had a son.”
“Yes, of course. Tell you what, I could get him an apartment. One of those nice ones on Orange Grove. That’s only five minutes away.”
Toni tried a different tack. She pouted a little and got just the tiniest crack in her voice. “But he has to live with his mother. He’s just a boy. Only seventeen.”
Emil cast his eye on Crush. “He doesn’t look seventeen.”
“I had a growth spurt.” He could tell he was going to enjoy needling this man.
Shaking his head, Emil said, “I’d like to accommodate you, but I have my own children to think about. They live here two weeks out of every month.”
“Where are they the rest of the time?” Crush asked.
Emil looked askance at Crush. “With their mother, of course.”
“I see,” Crush said. “How long have you been divorced?”
His steel-gray eyes locked with Crush’s. “Three years. Why do you ask?”
“I just wanted to make sure my mother isn’t a homewrecker,” Crush said, smiling a little half-moon smile.
Emil’s lips smiled back at Crush, but his eyes held him in a steady gaze, like a python eyeing its prey. “No. No, the home was well wrecked before I ever met your mother.”
“That’s a relief,” Crush said. The two men kept sizing each other up, two gunfighters in the Old West.
Toni jumped in to cut the tension. “Oh, your kids will love Caleb. He gets along with everybody!”
“Do you?” Emil asked.
“I kind of do,” Crush said, dryly.
“Actually, I’m more worried about how they’ll treat you,” Emil said. “My children are…difficult to get along with.”
“I’ve had worse,” Crush said.
“You don’t know them.”
“Trust me, I’ve had worse.”
“I really don’t know….”
“He’ll keep to himself,” Toni said. “They won’t even know he’s here.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard, in this house,” Crush added.
Emil frowned. “I suppose he could use the guest room in the East Wing.”
Toni smiled. She’d won a victory. Now she had to take care of the details. “Oh, that would be perfect! Thank you so much. Of course, we’ll have to enroll him in school. It’s very important to us that he finish high school. It’s a promise we made to his father just before he…died.”
Emil looked too smart to fall for such an obvious scam
. Maybe he didn’t know yet what a liar Toni was. Or maybe he just didn’t care. “They have very nice public schools in Pasadena. So I understand.”
“But couldn’t he get into that private school that your kids go to? Pasadena Prep? I want him to have every advantage. His life has been so hard up till now. So has mine.”
Emil took her in his arms. “That’s all over now.”
“I know, baby.” They were at it again. But was this kiss partially for Crush’s benefit? Emil’s way of claiming his mother in front of him?
When the kiss ended, Emil whispered, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh, thank you, darling. You won’t regret it.”
Crush wasn’t sure the same could be said of himself.
Emil extended a hand to him. “I think we’ll get along fine. I won’t call you ‘son.’ You’re too old for that.”
“Just call him Caleb,” Toni volunteered.
“All right, Caleb. And you call me Emil.” His hand was still extended. Crush took it and they shook. Emil had a firm grip and wanted Crush to know it. Crush could have squeezed his hand to a pulp, but he decided now was not the time to show off. That time would come later.
Turning to no one in particular, Emil said, “Samantha, show Caleb to the East Wing guest room.”
A disembodied voice answered, sounding rather bored with the whole thing. “Yes, Emil.”
Crush looked around. “Does she listen to everything?”
Emil smiled at Toni. “Not everything.”
Crush was pulled back into the twenty-first century when he hit a speed bump on the road and Angela said, “It’s here on the right.”
“I know,” Crush snapped, although in reality he’d have driven right past that hedge with the hidden voice box. It had been too long.
Angela stuck her hand out the window and pressed the button. Now the box had a camera in it so it could see who was approaching. A voice spoke up. “Hello?”
“Hi. Let me in.”
“Who’s with you?”
“I’ll explain when I get in.”
The hedge slowly started to move. “Who was that?” Crush asked.
“My stepmother. Samantha.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The van’s engine started. Zerbe braced himself, still strapped in the chair, as he felt the van begin to move.
So he was being taken somewhere. From a place he didn’t know to a destination he didn’t know. Was this good or bad? Maybe he was being taken to a spot where he’d be released? Maybe his father had given them what they wanted and they were going to let him go?
Or maybe they weren’t? Maybe they were taking him somewhere to kill him and dispose of his body? But why wouldn’t they kill him first? Wouldn’t that be easier?
Or maybe they were just moving him for the sake of moving him? It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that, for the moment, he was alive and he wasn’t being beaten. So he could be happy for now.
The pond in front of Emil Zerbe’s mansion had been filled in and replaced with a rocky lawn of succulents and cactuses, which didn’t exactly suit the European-castle theme but was in keeping with the water-conservation movement that was sweeping Southern California. This drought had lasted for so many years that, when rain did come, the local news affiliates pushed their daily reports of murders and hit-and-run accidents aside and opened their broadcasts with correspondents standing under umbrellas at various points in the city and reporting that, yes, it was indeed raining.
Emil didn’t seem to be the xeriscape type, so this must have been Samantha’s influence. Well, good for her, Crush thought as he parked the car and got out. At least she’s using her hard-won position to do some good. Even if it was only one lawn in front of one mansion. What does Gail always say? ‘Think globally, act locally.’
Crush looked up at the house. Maybe the ivy had been cut back a bit but other than that, it hadn’t changed since Crush had last seen it some fifteen years before. It was as if Emil saw this house as an ancestral home, one that the Zerbes would pass down from generation to generation in perpetuity. In reality, and knowing Emil’s children, Crush doubted that the house would last a month after the old man’s death. It would be sold, razed, and replaced by somebody else’s idea of an ostentatious display of wealth.
Angela and Crush walked up the familiar steps. Crush felt a chill go down his spine. Angela must have noticed his shiver, because she asked, “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
“No,” he said as a preppy-looking young man in his mid-twenties opened the door. Angela told him they wanted to see her father and walked past him to the living room.
“A male secretary?” Crush asked Angela.
“Sure. Samantha’s no fool.”
“She does the hiring?”
“Yeah. Things have changed a bit.” Angela threw open the big double doors and walked into the parlor.
Samantha Adamski, now Samantha Zerbe, turned from a big flat-screen television. She looked at Angela, then at Crush. Then harder at Crush. Her face blossomed into a broad smile. “Caleb! My God, how are you?” She opened her arms and hurried to Crush, giving him a fond hug. He hugged her back. She pulled away and beamed, “Look at you! You’ve grown up to be such a man!”
“It’s been fifteen years,” he said.
“What have you been doing?”
“A little of this, a little of that.”
“Mostly that,” Angela added.
“Of course Angela and K.C. have kept us informed about you. Your war record. Your work with that security agency. Are you still with them?”
“He just started back this morning,” Angela said.
“Oh, I’m so glad. It’s nice to know you have a career.” Then her face grew sadder. “We were so sorry about what happened to your mother.”
Crush nodded. “Thank you, Sam.”
Samantha struggled to find words. “I thought of reaching out to you when I heard but…too much had happened by then, hadn’t it?”
“A lot happened,” Crush said.
Angela ended the awkward moment by saying, “We need to see Daddy. Where is he?”
Samantha hesitated. “He’s not doing very well. Why do you need to see him?”
Angela began. “I don’t know quite how to say this….”
Crush cut her off. “It’s a security matter. About the parade.”
“I don’t know,” Samantha said. “All his energy is going into the HSR. I don’t think….”
“The HSR?” Crush asked.
“The high-speed rail. LA to San Francisco. He sees it as his legacy. It’s all he can think about. We’re going to start construction next month, God willing. It means the world to him. He wants it to be a monument to Zerbe Enterprises. A tribute to his brother Victor. You can understand that.”
“Well, Uncle Victor always did like to go to San Francisco,” Angela said.
Samantha ignored Angela’s quip. “The float in the Rose Parade this year is a tribute to it. Noel even wants us to ride in it. Me and Emil. Waving to the crowd. Emil says he doesn’t want to do it, of course, but I know he does. It will be his victory lap.”
“We have to speak with him,” Crush said.
“Why don’t you give me the message?” Samantha asked. “I can tell him when he’s rested.”
“There’s no time,” Crush said.
“It really is urgent,” Angela added. “It’ll just take a second.”
“All right. He’s in the gym. But don’t upset him.”
“I’ll try not to,” Crush said.
As soon as they reached the hall, Angela whispered to him, “Why didn’t you want me to tell her about the kidnapping?”
“The fewer people who know, the better. Besides, I didn’t want to worry her.”
“You always had a soft spot for Sam.”
Crush grunted. “You didn’t tell me your father was sick.”
“He had a stroke. Two months ago.”
They entered the gym. Emil
was hanging onto a metal walker, moving with slow determination across the mat-covered floor. He pulled his right leg behind him slowly, and his right arm looked shrunken and weak under his white T-shirt. He was concentrating so much on the effort of crossing the room that he didn’t notice they’d entered until Angela cleared her throat. He looked up. Crush could see that the left side of his face was sunken and expressionless. His bright right eye stared at Crush for a moment. Then he started to cry.
Crush didn’t know what to do. Emil approached him slowly, dragging his right foot behind him and weeping silently. When he had made it almost all the way to Crush, his right foot collapsed from the effort. He tried to hold himself up with his left arm but it wasn’t strong enough and he started to topple to the floor. Instinctively, Crush reached out to grab him. Emil clutched onto Crush’s arms, buried his head in the big man’s chest, and sobbed.
Angela brought a wheelchair over from the corner of the room and Crush settled Emil into it. Seeing the great man transformed into a weeping wreck almost brought Crush to tears himself.
“I’m sorry for the display,” Emil gasped when he finally stopped crying. “My emotions have become a bit unstable since the stroke.” His speech was slightly slurred but perfectly understandable.
“That’s okay,” Crush said, because he couldn’t think of anything else.
“I don’t have many regrets in my long life,” Emil said. “You are one.”
Crush’s heart almost went out to him. Then he remembered. “How ’bout my mother?”
Emil hesitated. “Of course, I was sorry when I...”
“Yes,” Crush cut him off, “when you heard what happened to her. But you weren’t sorry enough to come to her funeral.”
“No,” Emil said. “Nor was I sorry enough to check to see how you were. That is my regret.”
Crush shook his head. “I didn’t come here for that. I came here for K.C.”
Some of the old disdain came back into Emil’s voice. “Kendrick? What has he done now?”
“He hasn’t done anything,” Angela said.
“He’s been kidnapped,” Crush said.
Emil didn’t sound surprised. “Did you call the police?”