by Phoef Sutton
Lambert swore under his breath. “Do I at least get a kiss before you screw me?”
“Assholes,” said Amelia, who was apparently familiar with Messrs. Hendricks and Ross.
“Miss Trask,” said one, “is this where your father kept the files?”
“Is that why you blew up the place?” asked the other one.
“What files?” asked Amelia, not entirely convincingly. “You’re stupid.”
“The real GlobalInterLink books,” said the other one.
“The ones that’ll put your father away,” said the first one. “Could be on a computer or a flash drive. Could be on an MP3 player. Could be anywhere.”
Rush spoke up. “I don’t think this has anything to do with GlobalInterLink.”
The two of them looked at him, only now acknowledging his presence. “And who are you?” asked Hendricks or Ross.
“My security man,” Amelia said, proudly.
The agents looked at the exploded house, then back at Rush. “Doing a good job so far,” one of them said.
Rush ignored the dig. “You ever heard of Tarzan Ivankov?”
“Tarzan?”
“Yeah, everybody asks that,” Rush said. “Except your brother,” he said to Amelia. “He already knew the name.”
Amelia shrugged. Hendricks/Ross said, “So?”
“Ivankov runs prostitution for the Russian mob in L.A.,” Rush explained.
Hendricks/Ross quickly lost interest.
“We don’t do organized crime,” said one.
“Not our wheelhouse,” said the other.
“Franklin Trask makes porn,” Rush went on, trying to engage them. “I think Tarzan was providing the talent pool.”
“Yeah, her brother’s a sleaze. So what?”
“A dumb kid richer than God and the Russian Mafiya,” Rush said. “Doesn’t that combination strike you as a little…explosive?”
They looked over at the burned-out house. Wiseass.
“All we want is Trask,” said Hendricks.
“He’s a different kind of criminal altogether,” said the other one.
Rush shook his head. “Thieves are all alike under the skin. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
Zerbe got up early. He shaved. He showered. He even ironed his shirt. He had a very special guest coming. Raul Malo blasted from his iPod speakers.
“Walking down the boulevard, I don’t need no lucky charms today!”
The doorbell rang and a vision of loveliness in beige gabardine hove into view. Frida Morales. Zerbe’s parole officer.
He offered her a can of soda with, he hoped, all the cool demeanor of a Matt Helm or a Derek Flint.
“Mountain Dew?” he asked.
“Damn it, Zerbe, I’m not your date.”
“Aren’t you? It’s funny how fate arranges things,” he said, suavely holding up a container of his urine. “My sample?”
When people asked Zerbe why he got sent to prison, he was usually too embarrassed to say corporate malfeasance. He liked to tell them he was the guy Leonardo DiCaprio played in Catch Me If You Can. It just sounded better.
One of the conditions of his parole was that he was allowed no access to computers or the internet. Zerbe believed that rules were meant to be, if not broken, at least strongly negotiated with. So while Frida examined the electronic tether attached to his ankle, all of his computers were safely stowed behind sliding steel walls. A place for everything and everything in its place.
“A little higher,” he said, as Frida explored the burn marks on the device that would keep him tied to these four walls for three more years.
“I’m going to have to send a tech to look at this thing. Was there some sort of power surge?”
“I got hit by a taser.”
She looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“Things happened,” he said.
“You haven’t been tampering with this, have you? This is a state-of-the-art GPS. It’ll tell me the second you leave this place.”
“It sees me when I’m sleeping. It knows when I’m awake.”
“Don’t complain. There’s a new model that’ll tell me whether you’ve been drinking. It samples the skin pores on your ankle for traces of alcohol.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep the tequila away from my ankle, then.”
“Zerbe, you’ve been clean for six months,” she said, patiently. “No violations, no drugs, no alcohol. Don’t blow it now.”
“That’s right, I’ve been a good boy. Can’t you tell them to take this thing off of me? Let me leave here?”
“You’re forgetting about the six months before that.”
“So I had a few slips. You could put in a good word for me. They’ll listen to you. In return, I’ll be happy to satisfy you like no man ever has.”
Frida ignored the last part of his request, but Zerbe liked to think that she filed it away for future reference. “It would be easier if you changed the location of your custody. If you were staying with your family.”
“I don’t want to stay with my family. The court approved Caleb Rush as my legal whatsit.”
“I think the court made a mistake.”
“Hold me.”
Zerbe wondered if that might have come off as needy.
When Frida left, he broke out the computers again. It was time for his online AA meeting. In Zerbe’s opinion, online AA meetings were much better than real-life AA meetings, because you could half-pay attention while playing World of Warcraft on another monitor. The only downside was, when he was asked to identify himself in the AA meeting, he had to be careful not to type “I’m Prince Darkside, and I’m an alcoholic.”
He was reading Alcoholic Alan’s endless dissertation on whether he missed beer more than wine, while keeping an eye out for the Corrupted Blood Plague, when Rush came in with Amelia, both of them soaking wet. Rush asked for another phone, since his was waterlogged. Zerbe grabbed one off the rack (they kept a lot of spares) and tossed it to him. He started punching in a number while Zerbe asked what happened.
“My house blew up,” Amelia said, like she was reporting a bad case of termites.
“Donleavy,” Rush said into the phone, “we have to talk.”
“So you can never leave here?” Amelia asked Zerbe, wide eyed.
Zerbe sunk the eight ball into the corner pocket, which he didn’t think you were supposed to do, and said, “I’m like John Travolta in that plastic bubble.”
“What’s that?”
He sighed. It was just like MacArthur Park all over again. “It’s a TV movie he made. Back when he was Vinnie Barbarino.”
“Who?”
Kids today, he thought. They had no respect for the crap their elders used to watch.
Rush was across the room, engrossed in conversation with Donleavy, who’d rushed over to assess any damage to Amelia.
“I’m thinking you should keep her away from the Trask house,” Donleavy said. “Whoever it is, he knows her routine too well.”
“You think it’s Guzman, don’t you?” Rush asked.
Donleavy rubbed a hand over her face. She looked tired. “He knows the layout. His relationship with the family was…complex. And he’s disappeared.”
“Since when exactly?”
“Walter Trask killed himself two weeks ago. Guzman stuck around long enough to talk to police. Then he vanished. Even his wife doesn’t know where he is.”
“Or she isn’t telling.”
“Or she isn’t telling.”
Rush took a long look at the city through the window. Light was just starting to break. It looked like it was going to be a shitty day.
“What does the threat assessment team say?” he asked.
“He doesn’t fit the profile.”
“Chalk one up for the threat assessment team.” Rush turned his back to the window. “Guzman was there on the night?”
“Yeah. When the girl spotted the body she started screaming. Guzman ran out from the house and found her.”
&
nbsp; “Guzman did? Stanley Trask said he himself was the first one on the scene.”
“Did he?” Donleavy asked.
“He implied it.”
“A man like Trask is used to putting himself at the center of the story.”
“And they were the only ones there?” Rush asked. “Guzman, Amelia, and Trask?”
“If you don’t count Walter Trask.”
“Something tells me he was used to getting left out.”
Donleavy cocked an eye at Rush. “Crush, do you know why I fired you?”
“I don’t play well with others? Miss Holiday said the same thing in my fifth-grade evaluation.”
“Miss Holiday knew her shit. I mean, you’ve done all right on your own. I’ve kept track; I know. The way you handled the Gillespie stalker? Brilliant. I’d recommend you to anybody who was looking for one man. But you’re part of a team now, whether you like it or not. So I have to ask—do you know where Guzman is?”
Rush shook his head. “No. But I gotta say, if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Donleavy heaved a sigh. She glanced back at Amelia. “Just find a safe house for her.”
Amelia didn’t notice. She was bending over the table to make a bank shot. It was truly glorious, Rush thought. The shot wasn’t bad either.
“Where’d you learn to play pool like that?” Zerbe asked.
She prowled around the table and took another shot. “My dad has a table in the game room. Tony Guzman and I used to play.”
Zerbe let that one go by.
“You live here, right?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“And Crush…is he your brother or isn’t he?” she asked as she moved to take another shot.
Zerbe glanced over to Rush and decided he was too far away to hear them. “Well, his mom was married to my dad for a while.”
She nodded, understanding. “My mom and dad married a lot of people too.”
“My brothers hated her,” said Zerbe. “His mom. Thought she married Dad for his money. Called her terrible names. The Trophy Wife. Stripperella. The Whore.”
“How come?”
“Cause she was a trophy wife and a stripper. The whore part? I don’t think so. I liked her. And I like Caleb.”
She looked questioningly at Zerbe.
“That’s his name. Caleb Rush. He looked out for me. I was kind of a geek in high school. And this was before geeks were cool. I used to get beat up a lot. Something about me seemed to attract bullies. But once Caleb was there…well, like I said, he looked out for me.”
“So now you look out for him?”
Zerbe was surprised. Few people saw that. “You noticed.”
“When you love somebody, you look out for them. That’s the only law that counts.”
She was all right, Zerbe thought. Bending over the pool table or not.
TEN
Catherine Gail’s dojo was not much to look at, a downtown storefront with a few mats and a punching bag. Just a place to keep kids off the streets and teach them about respect and tradition. If nine out of ten kids ended up falling in love with her, that wasn’t her fault. She just shrugged and taught them to redirect their energy.
She was working a class full of green belts through the katas—Rush always thought of it as that routine the Japanese Secret Service did in You Only Live Twice when they were showing off to James Bond—when Rush came in, a reluctant Amelia in tow. Gail bowed to her students and dismissed them. Then she headed over to Rush. The sweat on her face only made her look more bright and glowing.
“Is this the girl?” she asked.
Amelia crinkled her nose. “It smells all locker-roomy in here.”
“You get used to it,” Gail said with a smile.
Amelia eyed her with distrust. “This is your teacher, huh,” she said to Rush. “What does she teach you?”
“Martial arts,” Rush said. “Taekwondo. Kung fu. Kallaripayattu. Savate. Judo. Muay Thai. Karate.”
“So she can whip your ass.”
“It’s not really about—”
“Yeah, I can whip his ass,” Gail said.
Rush challenged her to a sparring match. Amelia watched, bored, as Gail pulled the scarf off her head and Rush changed into some white pajamas and they went at it. Trading blows, jabbing, punching, and kicking, bouncing around on the balls of their feet, having a total blast as they sent sweeping kicks at each other’s heads, spinning, twirling, blocking each other’s moves with grace and style.
“You could learn this, Amelia,” Gail said, panting but not winded. “There’s nothing more empowering to a woman than knowing she can do this.” She gave a roundhouse kick to Rush’s head, just to fake him out, then spun around and let loose with a flying drop kick that would have nailed him if he hadn’t moved his head just in time. As it was, the heel of her foot struck his shoulder with a blow that made him lose his footing for an instant.
“I saw that coming,” Rush said with a smile.
“Just setting you up for next time,” she said, grinning from ear to ear.
Amelia couldn’t take it any longer. “Oh, why don’t you two just get a room?!” she said, jumping to her feet and running out the door. She tried to slam it, but it was too heavy.
Stomping down the street, she didn’t turn when Rush and Gail caught up with her.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“This is stupid,” Amelia said. “I don’t want to be here!” Then, all at once, she was crying like a little girl. “I want to be with Tony!”
She wrapped her arms around Rush and sobbed. He looked helplessly at Gail, who pried the weeping girl off of him and led her back to the dojo.
Gail’s apartment was upstairs—just a bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Nothing big, but what can you expect on a bartender/taekwondo instructor’s income? Gail took Amelia up to her bedroom and let her lie down and cry it out.
Rush was pacing the kitchen when Gail came out and said she was asleep.
“You don’t think Guzman would have…” Rush asked, awkwardly. “I mean, she’s only a kid.”
“Pretty big kid,” Gail said.
He turned to look out the window. All he saw was another window across the way, with the blinds drawn. Some people were less open than others.
“I was thinking about my mother this morning,” Rush said. “She did a lot of bad things.”
“She did them to take care of you.”
“And herself.”
Gail smiled. “That girl in there, she kind of reminds me of you. Right around the cold, black heart.”
Rush chuckled. That was the reaction she’d been trying for. “Wanna fight? Best of five?” Gail asked.
Rush shook his head. “There are a couple of things I have to do first.”
Stegner was standing post outside Trask’s front door. It was a shit detail, and Stegner was well aware of that. There was very little likelihood, after all, that Trask’s assassin would come to the front door, knock, and ask to be let in. Stegner knew Donleavy was punishing him for letting Amelia Trask slip out the night before.
That was all right, he told himself. Being given this, the most boring of assignments, was actually a blessing in disguise. It gave him time to think without the distraction of having to do anything. Stegner knew himself well enough to know he was not good at multitasking.
So he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and reasoned his way through the case before him. What puzzled him wasn’t who had drowned Walter Trask and attempted to blow up Amelia Trask. Who’d done that seemed painfully obvious to Stegner. No, what puzzled him was this—why didn’t anyone else see it?
Years of being with Donleavy had taught Stegner one thing—that he, Stegner, was not, in Donleavy’s own words, “the sharpest tool in the shed.” So why was he the only one who could see who was trying to kill Stanley Trask and his family? Could it be that Stegner was having a “hunch”? A flash of real insight? Or could it be that he was totally, completely, emba
rrassingly, wrong?
“Stegner?”
He was whipped from his reverie by the sight of Rush standing in front of him.
“If I was a ninja, you’d be dead by now,” Rush said, smiling. Stegner really hated Rush’s smile.
“Where did you come from?”
“The driveway,” Rush replied.
Rush’s big GTO was parked in front of the house. Stegner sighed—he must have been thinking pretty hard.
“I need to see Stanley Trask,” Rush said.
“We’ll see about that,” Stegner said, calling in on his radio. He listened to the reply and sighed again.
“Go on. He’s out back,” he said as he let Rush pass. He watched Rush’s big shoulders barely clear the doorway and reflected on the injustice of the world. No matter how many times Rush was slapped down, he always seemed to come back, bigger than ever. Meanwhile, Stegner always seemed to be relegated to the role of Donleavy’s pet stooge.
It was time to do something about that, Stegner reflected. It was time to prove that he was a sharp tool.
Stanley Trask stood on the bottom of his pool, crouched over as if scanning the cement for lost change. Somehow, pools always looked bigger when they’d been emptied of water, and to Rush, standing by the diving board, Stanley Trask seemed smaller and older as he wandered about the deep end, looking for God knows what. He reminded Rush of the Gill-Man in The Creature Walks among Us, separated from the water, out of his element.
“Did you lose something?” Rush asked.
Trask looked up in mild surprise. “I’m going to have it filled in. Too many memories.”
Wearily, Trask walked up to the shallow end and climbed the ladder. Rush offered him a hand but Trask brushed it aside. “Where’s my daughter?”
“Safe.”
“No more explosions, I trust.”
“Not around her.”
“Then to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I had a couple of questions I wanted answered.”
Trask sat in wooden deck chair and waited. “All right.”
“When Amelia found your brother, after she screamed, who came out first?”
“Tony Guzman. He jumped in and tried to save him. Too late.”
“One more thing,” Rush said. “Guzman. What did he drink?”