Crush

by Phoef Sutton

  He stopped, out of breath, sweating through his street clothes. “How old were you when you lost it, Gail?”

  “You don’t think I’m still a virgin, Caleb? That hurts.”

  “But when you were underage, did you ever have anyone hit on you? An adult, I mean.”

  “That’s what I love about you, Crush. You’re big, you’re mean, and you’re totally naïve.”

  Rush’s cell phone beeped before he had the chance to respond. He went to the bench to pick it up.

  “It’s a text message for Amelia.”

  “On your phone?”

  “I forwarded her calls to me.”

  “That’s dirty.”

  “It’s not hard if you know how to do it. I’ll show you sometime.”

  “It’s still dirty.”

  Rush shrugged and thumbed the phone to read the message. It was short and to the point, and it was from Tony.

  I miss you

  He flipped the phone shut, opened it again, and called Zerbe’s number.

  Zerbe was having a little time to himself with the computer and didn’t relish being interrupted.

  “Zerbe,” Rush said, instead of hello.

  “Great timing, man,” Zerbe said, exasperated. “You totally cock-blocked me.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Nobody. That’s how I knew I was going to get lucky.”

  “Buy yourself some flowers later. I need a favor. I need you to zero in on a mobile number. Now.”

  “Cool.” This was interesting. Zerbe wiped the lotion off his hand and got down to business.

  “I’m forwarding you the number.”

  “Do you know his carrier?”

  “No.”

  “More of a challenge. I’ll have it for you in a sec.”

  He switched off his phone and turned to Gail. “I gotta go. You’ll be okay?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “There are people looking for her. They might be dangerous.”

  Gail gave him a look. “I can whip your ass, can’t I?”

  FOURTEEN

  Stegner couldn’t believe his luck. He’d followed up on a hunch and it had paid off. While everyone else was chasing shadows, he’d pursued a simply obvious line of inquiry to its logical conclusion—the guy who had tried to kill Trask before was trying to kill him again.

  Steinkellner was dictating his confession into the voice memo gizmo on Stegner’s iPhone while Stegner drove him back to Trask’s mansion. He was to be presented to Donleavy with a big fucking bow around his neck. Now who was the sharpest tool in the shed, you fat bastard?

  A thought struck Stegner—he really should call Donleavy and tell her where he was. The only thing was, Steinkellner was using his cell phone to tell him how he’d gotten the explosives into the house in Venice and wired them to explode on cue.

  “Could I use the phone for a minute?” Stegner asked.

  “I’m just getting to the good part. You want me to lose my flow?”

  “I’ll just be a second.”

  Steinkellner shrugged and handed him the phone, making sure his voice memo was saved. He was pretty much done anyway.

  Stegner hit Donleavy on his speed dial.

  “Where the fuck are you?” This was Donleavy’s special greeting.

  “You’ll be happy when you see me.”

  “I’ll be happy to fucking fire your ass. You were supposed to be watching Trask.”

  “No need to watch him. He’s safe now.”

  “Yeah, he’s safe. Since Kagan tracked him down.”

  “He left the compound?”

  “You’d know that if you’d been watching him.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “To his office. Downtown. Kagan found him shredding documents.”

  Stegner turned onto Beverly Glen. “It’s doesn’t matter.”

  “The fuck it doesn’t matter.”

  “You can pack up and go home. I’ve—” Stegner stopped himself on the verge of saying “I’ve solved the case.” That sounded so clichéd. But hadn’t he?

  “You’ve what? Go home, Steg. I don’t want to see you again.”

  “You’ll want to see me.”

  Steinkellner listened to Stegner on the phone and was reminded of the time he’d briefly gone out with a girl who was very much out of his league. He spent the whole time pleading and threatening and negotiating, but it was a lost cause. They both knew he’d never rise to her level.

  Steinkellner felt sorry for Stegner but sorrier for himself. He had accomplished so little in his brief existence on this planet. But at least, he thought, he’d go out with a bang. He could see the headlines on TMZ now. “Mastermind of the Trask Family Tragedy Dies.” There was only one thing left to do. Die.

  Ta-da!

  Stegner was done with his call, so he offered the phone back to Steinkellner, who brushed it aside. “I’m pretty much done.”

  “Really?”

  “I need a break. You’ll figure the rest out. You’re a smart guy.”

  Stegner smiled with satisfaction. “I was smart enough to catch you.”

  “Indeed you were. Hey, want to see a trick?”

  “What?”

  “A magic trick. An old standard. Hey, watch that light.” He added this last part in an offhand way, to get Stegner to look away. Steinkellner took advantage of his distracted glance at the traffic lights to slip the mouth coil between his jaws. Presto-chango. Misdirection. Steiny still had it.

  While they were stopped at the red light, Steinkellner gestured and got Stegner’s attention. He displayed his empty palms, and then he started pulling an endless stream of paper from his mouth, accompanied by the requisite expressions of astonishment. How on earth is he doing that?

  Stegner laughed. “How on earth are you doing that?”

  Then Steinkellner swallowed the mouth coil.

  He kept pulling the long strand of paper as he began to choke and turn purple.

  “Hey,” Stegner asked, “is this part of the trick?”

  The mouth coil was small enough to fit in Steinkellner’s mouth but large enough to block his windpipe. Look, Ma, no air!

  Stegner threw the handbrake on and reached over to Steinkellner to try to dislodge whatever was stuck in his throat, but all he could do was pull out more streams of paper. He tried to slug Steinkellner in the stomach, an improvised Heimlich maneuver, but all that did was make the poor guy choke more.

  Then Steinkellner stopped choking altogether, his face turning a dreadful shade of blue. Stegner got out of the Lincoln, ignoring the honking of the cars backed up behind him on Beverly Glen. He rushed around to the passenger seat and flung the door open. Steinkellner flopped out like a dead fish, only his seat belt stopping him from hitting pavement.

  He was dead. Just like that. Abracadabra?

  Stegner cursed his fate. And then he remembered that he still had the confession on the cell phone in his hand. Thank God. He called 911, while the car horns blared and traffic backed up all the way to Ventura Boulevard.

  If there was one thing Steiny the Magnificent knew how to do, it was how to make himself disappear.

  FIFTEEN

  Rush called Zerbe from the GTO, barking into the Bluetooth in his ear. “What have you got for me?”

  “Whoa, slow down. It’s not so easy to triangulate a cell phone, despite what you see on TV. You want your miracle, you’ll have to wait for it.”

  Rush hung up. Two minutes later, he called again.

  “What have you got for me?”

  “I cannae change the laws of physics, Captain.” Zerbe thought doing a little Scotty from Star Trek would relax Rush. It didn’t. Rush hung up, and two minutes later he was calling again.

  “What have you got for me?”

  “You got that playing on a loop?”

  “Come on. He’s gone to ground. Help me out here.”

  This time Zerbe had something for him. “Got it. Downtown. Figueroa and 4th Street.” In other word
s, the Bonaventure Hotel. That was going to ground in style.

  The Bonaventure’s gleaming glass towers sat in the middle of downtown L.A. like a movie set from the seventies that escaped into real life. It was big, it was brash, and it dwarfed the buildings around it, even the ones that were taller. Rush always thought it looked like a spider, lurking among the downtown skyscrapers, looking for a meal.

  Within ten minutes, he was standing in the huge atrium, looking up at the elevators as they climbed up, up out of sight. It took a big building to make Rush look small. The Bonaventure filled the bill.

  He called Zerbe. Again. He was working out with his Wii Fit. He put it on pause.

  “What’s up now?” Zerbe asked.

  “I’m gonna text Guzman a reply. I’m gonna tell him I want to see him.”

  “Why will he want to see you?”

  “He won’t. But he’ll want to see Amelia.”

  “Okay. Not hard,” Zerbe said. “You got your number blocked, right?”

  “Yep.” Rush thumbed the keypad on his cell phone, typing a message.

  “Wait,” Zerbe said. “If you want him to think it’s from Amelia, don’t spell out words. Use numbers, letters. ‘I want 2 C U.’ Like that. The number 2, the letter C. You know?”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, just pretend you’re an eighteen-year-old girl.”

  “I don’t have a lot of experience with that.”

  “That’s right, you were never in prison.”

  Rush sent the message. Then he settled down with a coffee to wait for the reply. He had his pick of five coffeehouses in the sprawling atrium—he picked the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. Quality first.

  With a box of a dozen hot glazed in front of him, he was prepared for a long wait. Then his phone rang. It was Donleavy. He sighed and answered.

  “What’s up?” he said, sipping the hot coffee.

  “We’re out of a job.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Trask is letting us go.”

  “He’s developed a death wish?”

  “Apparently we got the guy.”

  “Who?”

  “Bob Steinkellner. You remember him.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “He confessed. Then he offed himself. By choking on a magic trick.”

  “Says who?”

  “Stegner.”

  “Jesus. You buy this?”

  “No. The police aren’t sure either. But Trask is. We’re packing up and moving out.”

  “Okay.”

  “But you don’t work for Trask. You work for the girl.”

  “That I do.”

  “There’s something going on, and I don’t like it. Don’t let that girl out of your sight.”

  Donleavy hung up before Rush had a chance to respond. He thought it over long and hard while he ate six doughnuts, and he hadn’t made any sense of it when his phone buzzed. He flipped it open and read the message.

  2 dangerous.

  He called Zerbe. “He says it’s too dangerous. With a ‘2.’”

  “Say please,” Zerbe said while drinking a Fanta. “With two Es and a Z. And a smiley face.”

  “I don’t do emoticons.”

  “You’ll do it for me.”

  He did it.

  And the reply came in short order.

  Where/when?

  And Rush texted back, Grand Central Market. Now.

  A little bit longer for this reply, but it came.

  OK

  The elevators of the Bonaventure Hotel were its most famous features. Running outside of the building, on parallel tracks, they provided a spectacular view of the city, as well as a spectacular view of each other. Ask any exhibitionist.

  Rush checked the number display on the elevators—they were both coming down. He positioned himself between the two, ready to move to either one. The elevator to his right arrived first. The doors opened, disgorging a full load of passengers. Rush scanned the faces of the strangers as they came into view, looking for Guzman’s familiar smile.

  Instead he saw Franklin Trask, Amelia’s pornographer brother. Franklin was the last one out of the elevator, and he looked like he hadn’t slept since Rush had seen him leaving the house in Venice.

  Franklin did a sort of stumbling double take when he saw Rush, as if it took a second to recognize him, and then when he did, he wasn’t happy. Rush gave him a smile. “Good 2 C U,” he said. It wasn’t the kind of smile to set Franklin at ease.

  Franklin looked as if he were about to speak, then he thought better of it and took a dive back for the elevator. Rush would have caught him, but just as he moved, a family of four passed in front of him, luggage piled high on a carrier. He darted around them and got to the elevator just as its doors closed.

  He pivoted on the balls of his feet and dashed for the other elevator. It had just emptied itself of its passengers and he was able to get in, throw a single, startled businessman out, and press UP.

  The sparkling nighttime skyline of the city was spread out all around him, but Rush only had eyes for that other elevator, half a floor above him. Through the glass walls, he could see its lone passenger. He pulled out his phone and made a call.

  Franklin gave a little helpless shrug in his elevator and answered his phone. “Hello,” he said warily.

  “Hey, Franklin, what’s up?”

  “Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

  “How’d you get hold of Guzman’s phone?”

  “Damn it!”

  “And using it to set up your sister? That’s not nice.”

  “Damn it! He just wants to talk to her.”

  “Who?”

  Franklin didn’t answer—he just stomped his foot on the elevator floor like a kid having a tantrum. Which was what he was, after all.

  “You know the difference between the Italian mob and the Russian mob, don’t you?” Rush said into the phone. “Piss off an Italian, he’ll kill you. Piss off a Russian, he’ll kill you and your family.”

  “It’s not like that,” Franklin pleaded. “Ivankov just figured it would be easier to talk to her if she was away from there.”

  Rush felt a chill wash down his spine. Did Ivankov know where she was? “Away from where?”

  “He just wants to talk to her.”

  “Those people don’t talk. Do they know where she is?”

  Franklin didn’t answer.

  “How do they know where she is?”

  “She texted me. So I wouldn’t worry about her. We’re close that way.”

  “Did you tell Ivankov where she is?”

  “I might have mentioned it.”

  Franklin’s elevator came to stop before Rush could answer. The door slid open, and Franklin moved to the side to make way for the new passengers. Two Russians came in. Rush recognized one as the guy with tattooed rings on his fingers from the encounter outside the Nocturne. Rings grabbed Franklin and took his cell phone. The second guy held up a gun and blasted through the glass wall of the elevator. Rings shoved the startled Franklin through the shattered glass and dropped him.

  Rush could just see Franklin’s face as he passed him on the way down. He looked surprised. Rush supposed that would pass and there would be time for surprise to be replaced by a lot of other feelings between now and when he hit the pavement. Can you believe that? he seemed to be thinking. I didn’t see that coming.

  “Crush,” a voice spoke in Rush’s ear. It took Rush a second to realize that it was coming from his Bluetooth.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “Good, it is you,” the voice said in heavily accented English. “My friends will meet you on the next floor.”

  SIXTEEN

  Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the lead pipe.”

  Gail looked at Amelia, as if considering speaking, and then she showed her the card with the lead pipe on it. It was Gail’s turn. She rolled. Damn. Only four. She still had to get to the hallway. She moved her red piece four spaces, and then she handed
the dice to Amelia.

  Amelia put them down without rolling and said, “Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the lead pipe.”

  This time Gail spoke. “You already guessed that.”

  “I know,” Amelia said, flatly.

  “You already guessed that twice.”

  She shrugged and said, “Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the lead pipe.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “’Cause I think Colonel Mustard did it. With the lead pipe. In the Conservatory.”

  “I showed you the lead pipe.”

  “I know.”

  “Before that I showed you the Conservatory.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why—”

  “How do I know you’re not an accomplice? How do I know you two aren’t in cahoots?”

  “Look, if you don’t want to play.…”

  “I want to play. I want to solve this crime. I want to find out who killed Mr. Body. You’re the one who’s crapping out on this. What exactly do you have to hide?”

  “Amelia.…”

  “Once again I ask: Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the—”

  There was a crash from downstairs. Gail was almost relieved to hear it—it meant a distraction from dealing with this angry, young, and extremely annoying girl. She gestured for Amelia to be silent and moved to the door.

  As she slipped silently down the hall, Gail reflected on the probable causes of the noise down in the dojo. It might be the neighborhood kids trying to kick in the window and rob the place, for instance. They did that a couple of times when Gail first moved in, but she’d caught them at it and given them a few lessons in street fighting. They pretty much left the dojo alone after that.

  On the other hand, it might be a panicked raccoon trying to find a safe haven from the city streets. That had happened once, too, and Gail had trapped it, fed it a can of tuna, and sent it on its way. Strays had to stick together.

  Or it might be a gang of Russian goons trying to take Amelia. You just never knew.

  When she saw the big men rushing up the stairs toward her, Gail had her answer. She took a split second to acknowledge that before knocking the lead one out with a leaping sidekick to the head and sending him tumbling back onto the others. How many others there were, she couldn’t say. She stopped counting at seven.