by Phoef Sutton
Amelia walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the east wall. The non-brothers lived on the twelfth floor of the American Cement Building, a midcentury warehouse only recently converted to loft apartments. The vast windows of the building were crisscrossed with giant Xs on the outside, making it feel, Zerbe often thought, like they were on the inside of a winning tic-tac-toe game, looking out.
Amelia craned over the top V of one the Xs to see the view of MacArthur Park, a little square of black surrounded by the hideous sprawl of the not-yet-revitalized L.A. area called Westlake. It was a very convenient location. If you wanted to score crack, pick up a hooker, or buy a fake ID, all you had to do was walk out the door. Which was the one thing Zerbe couldn’t do.
“Someone left the cake out in the rain,” Zerbe said. It was his standard joke.
“What?” Amelia asked, with the puzzled look that was the standard greeting to that “MacArthur Park” line. When would Zerbe learn? The ranks of Richard Harris–Jimmy Webb fans were growing thinner with each passing day.
Zerbe’s command post was a bank of computers, all set into the wall for easy concealment. His usual position was right there in front of them. Despite his pasty complexion and doughy body, Zerbe cut a rather charming figure, he thought, with Stan Laurel hair and a rakish glint in his eye. He boasted five thousand friends on Facebook alone.
“What’s that?” She was looking at a glass panel that was hanging from the ceiling. Projected on it was a live satellite image of Earth.
“It’s off a NASA website,” Zerbe explained. “The earth in real time. I call it my ‘you are here’ sign.”
She laughed at that. It was a younger laugh than he had expected. Rush came out of Zerbe’s bedroom and tossed her a T-shirt. She eyed the design skeptically. “Green Lantern?”
“‘No evil shall escape my sight,’” Zerbe said, pleased that she recognized the design. “We could watch TV,” he said, switching on the flat screen. An old rerun of Wagon Train appeared on the screen.
“We’re stealing the feed from our next-door neighbor, so we have to watch whatever he watches,” he explained. “He’s an old guy, so he mostly watches old Westerns and infomercials. It makes for interesting viewing.”
Rush didn’t want them to start bantering. He turned off the set. “Now, call yourself an Uber.”
“Don’t you even want to know why I hired you?”
“She hired you?” Zerbe asked.
“She didn’t hire me,” Rush growled. “I only work for people I like.”
“That’s not true,” Zerbe said. “You worked for Rob Schneider. You hate Rob Schneider.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” he asked.
Amelia didn’t like being left out of the conversation. “So you aren’t even curious why someone was trying to abduct an eighteen-year-old girl?”
She was eighteen? Rush and Zerbe were silent for a moment. Then Rush told her to get the shirt on immediately.
The computer beeped, letting them know there was a match from the face-recognition program. Amelia turned to it and looked—on one half of the screen was the photo she’d taken of herself at the Nocturne that evening. On the other half was clearly a mug shot taken about six months before. She was smiling in both of them.
“What is that?”
Zerbe explained that it was LAPD’s face-recognition program.
“Are you supposed to have access to that?” she asked.
“No.”
“Cool.”
Zerbe read the information provided. Amelia Lynn Trask. Juvie record for shoplifting, driving under the influence without a license, possession of narcotics. All-around naughty girl. Surely there was something Zerbe could repeat in mixed company. Ah, here it was….
“Stanley Trask’s daughter. Isn’t he in jail yet?”
“He was never charged!” she said.
Obviously he’d struck a nerve. He was about to follow up when the door to the apartment crashed in and five men in tactical assault gear burst in.
“Hand over the girl,” the leader of the SWAT team said, though it took Zerbe a second to decipher it, given that the guy’s voice was muffled by his helmet.
Rush didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his bo staff and started swinging. By then Zerbe was up to speed and dashing to protect Amelia. He hadn’t gone two steps when the taser hit him, exactly where you don’t want a taser to hit you. It didn’t knock him unconscious, but it made him wish it had.
The man who fired the taser was the first one Rush took out. Rush swung the bo staff and struck him just below the helmet, cracking his neck. Pivoting, he threw the whole of his weight against the staff, driving it into the Kevlar vest of another assault team member, pinning him against the wall.
“What the hell are you doing?” barked the leader, more shocked than angry.
“I’m her bodyguard!” Rush yelled.
“What are you talking about?” The assault team leader took off her helmet. “I’m her goddamned bodyguard!” Victoria Donleavy said.
SEVEN
The assault team spent a lot of time tending to Stegner, the one who’d gotten the bo staff in the neck. A severe case of whiplash was the diagnosis. “Wah-wah,” said Zerbe. “I got a taser in the nuts and I get bupkis.”
“These boys of yours need some training, Donleavy,” Rush said, leaning on the bo staff for emphasis.
“They’re fired,” Donleavy growled. “Hear that? You’re all fired!”
The assault team kept quiet. They were used to Donleavy’s rages and knew all would be forgotten in the morning.
Zerbe kept his head between his knees and prayed for time to pass. He had a headache and a stomachache and a ballsache. He felt someone rubbing his back and thanked God for the kind touch. Turning, he saw that it was Amelia. That was even better. Now he had a headache, a stomachache, a ballsache, and an erection.
Donleavy made a call on her cell phone and reported that Miss Trask had been located, safe and sound. She passed the phone to Amelia. “Your father wants to talk to you.”
Amelia rolled her eyes, took the phone, and said “Hi, Dad,” every inch the petulant teenager. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”
Rush shook his head at Donleavy. “I can’t believe you’re still tea-bagging Stanley Trask.”
“It’s called business,” Donleavy said. “You should try it sometime.”
“I’m eighteen!” Amelia cried into the phone. “What if I don’t want to live under your roof?”
“What’s her story?” Rush asked Donleavy.
“She ran off tonight. We used the LoJack in her Porsche to trace her to that nightclub where you work. We found it abandoned.”
“So you thought I snatched her?”
“Let’s just say it was an unlikely coincidence. We heard you’d been involved in an altercation there tonight. We posted Stegner outside your place here, just to be sure. He saw you pull in with the girl in the back seat. Naked.”
“Half-naked. You got that, Stegner?”
Stegner rubbed his neck and glared at Rush.
Donleavy took the time to notice Zerbe, bent over, still clutching his chest and feeling bereft now that Amelia had stopped the back rub. “Hey, Zerbe. Do you miss prison?”
He looked up. “I miss the regular routine, but the sodomy-free showers make up for it.”
Rush moved in front of Donleavy, challenging her. “Tell me to my face you thought I abducted her.”
“You’re unstable,” Donleavy snapped back. “You’re violent! You have a grudge against the father! You fit the profile!”
“According to the threat assessment team?”
“Yes, according to the threat assessment team. And according to me!”
“She’s got a gun in her pants, did you notice that?”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me she abducted you?”
Amelia screamed into the phone, “I’m not coming home!” She threw the phone across the room, smashing it against the burnished steel wall. I
t fell in pieces on the concrete floor.
“That’s my phone!” Donleavy cried.
“She has trouble with the concept of other people’s stuff,” Rush said.
Donleavy grabbed her by the arm. “Come on, Miss.”
She pulled her arm away. “No!”
Rush stepped between Donleavy and Amelia. “I’m taking her home.” Amelia looked at him in surprise. “She hired me,” Rush said.
Zerbe shook his head. This was how his non-brother always got into trouble. The combination of a soft heart and a stubborn head would be his undoing one day.
Stegner and a few members of the assault team stayed behind to fix the door. They never apologized to Zerbe for the taser to his privates.
Rush and Amelia drove to the Trask house in Bel Air, flanked by two black Bonnevilles, courtesy of Tigon Security. Donleavy wasn’t taking any chances that Rush might try to make a slip.
“Why aren’t we in that other car?” Amelia asked, sulking. “This one’s ass.”
Rush had taken a 1969 red ragtop Firebird. He didn’t like to take the same car out twice in row. It smacked of routine. “This baby has 440 cubic inches with Quadrajet injection. Don’t you know power when you see it?”
“I know ass when I see it.”
“Why did the Russian Mafiya try to snatch you?”
“They liked my butt?”
Rush shot her annoyed look. “Why are they after you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to protect you, I gotta know who from.”
Amelia was getting annoyed. “I don’t know. All this crazy shit is going on. Ever since my uncle died.”
“Your uncle died. Walter Trask?”
“Yeah, don’t you read the paper?”
“Nobody reads the paper.”
“He drowned himself in our swimming pool. So they say. I found him—the body, I mean. The police interviewed me and everything.”
“Why’d he do it?”
“Don’t you even go online?”
“Nope.”
“How do you find out what’s going on the world?”
“I don’t.”
She sighed. “All right. Our company went bust. Their company. My father and my uncle’s. Biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.”
“I heard about it.”
“I thought so. We’re still rich and everything, but all the stockholders lost their life savings. Uncle Walter blamed himself. Got all, ‘what have we done?’ Then—splash.”
“That’s tough,” Rush said. “But why would that put someone after you?”
“Oh, nobody thinks he really did it himself. Dad won’t say it but—somebody whacked him.”
“Whacked?”
“Killed. What do you call it when somebody kills somebody?”
“Murder.”
She dismissed this with a roll of her eyes. “Anyway, that’s why all the security. We used to just have one nice bodyguard at home, but he blamed himself for the Uncle Walter thing and he quit. Why do people blame themselves for stuff? I don’t get it.” She sighed. “Poor Tony.”
“Tony?”
“Our bodyguard. Tony Guzman. It’s really too bad.”
Rush didn’t give any visible reaction to this mention of his old friend. He just turned right into Bel Air and asked, “Why is that?”
“Tony was hot,” Amelia said.
Entering the Trask compound was like entering a military camp. Highly visible guards with highly visible firearms. Video cameras. Check your ID at the gate. You got your money’s worth from Tigon Security.
Rush’s ID didn’t clear, but he had Amelia. She got him right past the guards at the front gate. The house looked like Tara from Gone with the Wind but bigger and more impressive. And probably with more slaves, Rush thought.
They made their way through the faux-antebellum-manor front hall and into the stage-set library, full of stage-set books, where Stanley Trask was waiting for them, in elegant silk pajamas. He hadn’t changed a bit. Rush chalked that up to more plastic surgery. Surgery or no, with his thick lips, pale complexion, and snub nose, he still reminded Rush of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
“Where the hell did you go?” Trask didn’t bother with preliminaries.
Amelia answered him like any petulant teen. “Out.”
Trask had to look away and swallow his anger, and since there was nothing else to look at, he looked at Rush. “Who’s this?”
“My new bodyguard,” she said, defiantly.
Trask kept looking at Rush, as if there was something familiar that he couldn’t quite place. Finally, to break the silence, Rush had to say something. “Caleb Rush. You remember.”
A smile flickered across Trask’s face. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Didn’t I have you blackballed?” After the incident with the hundred-dollar bills, Rush was persona non grata at every security company on the west coast.
“Yeah. Thank you for that.”
That was enough attention to spend on Rush. “I’m afraid we won’t be needing Mr. Rush’s services, Kitten,” he said to Amelia.
“Yes, we will.” She was putting her foot down. “I’ve got Mom’s trust fund. I can hire whoever I want. You should have seen him, he took out Trask’s whole team like they were nothing.”
“Kitten—”
“I’ll sneak out of the house again! I’ll go to Mom’s house. My house,” she corrected herself. “Do you want me to go alone?!”
Trask sighed. He walked out the ornate French doors onto the patio, gesturing for Rush to follow. Rush walked through darkness until he found Trask standing near the pool, his face lit by ripples of light coming from the water. He waited for Rush to him join before he began.
“I heard her screaming that night,” Trask said. “I was in the pool house and I ran out and found her.”
Rush could see it all. Amelia screaming. The body floating in the water. It was a lot for an eighteen-year-old to handle, even one as experienced as Amelia Trask. “Must have been tough on her.”
“I wish I knew,” Trask said, reflectively. Then he shook it off. “If you have a fight with me, Rush, don’t come after my daughter.”
“She came to me.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Guzman.”
The mention of the name seemed to diffuse some of Trask’s anger. “Tony. When he was in his cups, which was quite often, he used to tell tales about the glory days. They often featured you. You can be quite charming in the third person.”
Rush was surprised. “He drank?”
“Expertly. I demand that from my employees.”
Rush was quiet for a moment, staring at the dark blue bowl of the pool. “How long did he work for you?” he asked.
“Three years. He was almost a member of the family.” Trask tried to disguise it, but there was no masking the vulnerability in his voice when he asked, “Do you have any idea where he’s gone?”
Rush shook his head. “But suppose Amelia thought I did. Could she have come to me to find him?”
“It’s possible. She had some sort of schoolgirl crush on him.”
“Hard to think of your daughter as a schoolgirl.”
Trask drew himself up. “But she is. She may act like an adult, but I assure you, actually she’s a good deal younger than her years. She lost her mother a few years ago. She acts out to compensate.”
Rush nodded. The man knew his daughter. It was the first thing Rush had ever found to like about him.
“Amelia’s the only thing I care about,” Trask said. “I intend to protect her.”
“She already hired me to do that.”
He looked at Rush, as though trying to figure him out. “Truthfully, did someone try to hurt her tonight?”
“The Russian mob.”
“Please Mr. Rush, at least make your lies plausible. The Feds may be after me. And the IRS. But the Russian Mafiya are not among my enemies.”
“Like you said, she acts like an adult. Maybe she’s
got a few enemies of her own.”
“All right,” Trask said. “If someone’s going to protect my daughter, it might as well be someone vicious.”
That was all the time Trask had allotted for this minor matter. He walked back to the house and through the French doors, where Donleavy was waiting. “Ah, Ms. Donleavy, would you show Mr. Rush to his station?”
Donleavy looked at Trask in surprise.
“He disabled your team, Donleavy,” Trask said. “I’d rather have him on my side than on the outside. Besides, once Kitten has her heart set on something.…”
When she heard that her daddy was letting her keep this stray, Amelia’s squeals of joy convinced Rush that she was, indeed, eighteen.
“How’s Tony?” Rush asked as Donleavy led him on a tour of premises.
“He’s taking some time off. The Walter Trask thing, it hit him pretty hard.”
“Maybe I should give him a call?”
“Maybe you should.”
“Got his number?”
“His cell phone is disconnected. I thought maybe you’d have another way to get in touch with him.”
“LinkedIn?”
Donleavy frowned. “If you do get in touch with him, tell him hello for me. Tell him…tell him I don’t blame him.”
“You don’t blame him for Walter Trask killing himself?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And Crush—” Donleavy paused, awkwardly. “About this whole thing. This is a team effort. I think we both agree, you work best solo. You’ll toe the line, right?”
“He never said I worked for you, Donleavy,” Rush said. “You handle Trask, I’ll handle Amelia.”
“I’ll show you to your post,” she said. “If that’s all right with you, that is.”
Rush indicated that it was all right with him.
The Donleavy team was off at eight o’clock the next morning, most of them, traipsing around after Stanley Trask as he did whatever bankrupt-and-under-investigation business tycoons do to keep busy during the day. Rush stayed in the house with the residential team. This included Stegner, who was still nursing his neck injury, and Kagan, a new recruit to the Tigon team. Kagan was a young, bullnecked ex-Marine, and Rush took a liking to him almost at once. All he had to hear was Kagan’s sarcastic response to Stegner’s order that he patrol the perimeter for the second time that morning.