by Phoef Sutton
“Is that the favor he did for you? Is that why you hate him?”
“Isn’t that enough? Oh, the Trasks, they liked me at first. I was their pet Goodfella. I got to pimp for her brother. Tell them the stories about my wicked ways...and in return they gave me tips, they gave me info that only they knew. Places to invest.” He turned to shout in Rush’s face. “What’s illegal about that?!”
“It’s called insider trading,” Rush replied, calmly. “Ask Guzman about it.”
“So what? Everybody does that! I am not going to prison for that. Not after all the things I’ve done!” He grabbed Rush by the hair and shoved the respirator back on his head, yanking it in place. He put his fingers back on the air valve. Smiling, he turned off Rush’s air.
Rush tried not to panic. “So that’s why you’re going to kill Guzman? And that’s why you killed her uncle?”
“I didn’t kill her uncle. I just killed her brother.”
Amelia looked up at him, shocked.
“Now, I’m asking you one more time,” Ivankov said, staring into Rush’s eyes. “Where is the flash drive?”
Rush couldn’t help trying to breathe. His lungs strained. The world began to blur.
Ivankov opened the valve and Rush sucked in air. Blessed air. If he lived through this, he was going to thank God every time he inhaled.
“Ne znayu,” Rush said, not because he was trying to be clever, but because he was lapsing into the tongue of his childhood. I don’t know, Momma.…
Furious, Ivankov grabbed his cattle prod from the rough wooden table and zapped Amelia with it. She screamed.
Rush yanked against his restraints.
Ivankov laughed at Rush’s reaction. “Ooh, you don’t like that! You’re not Kusinko’s boy. He loved watching girls scream. You squeamish about that, Crush?” He turned to one of his henchmen and barked. “Sergei, put her on the table.”
Sergei unlatched the crate, pulled Amelia out by the hair, and threw her onto the wooden table.
“I heard what old Blaz used to do with his whores when they stepped out of line. It was ugly.” Ivankov laughed and turned to Rush. “But I bet your mother liked that. You know, I probably screwed your mother. I screwed a lot of Kusinko’s whores. What was left of them.”
“It’s in the car!” Rush said. Ivankov looked at him. “The flash drive,” he went on, “it’s in the back seat of the GTO.”
Ivankov eyed Rush, suspiciously. “Where?”
Rush jangled the chains that held his wrists. “It’ll be easier if I show you.”
Ivankov picked up a Glock from a pile of weapons in the corner. He leveled it at Rush. “Now why should I do that?” He gestured to Sergei. “Get it.”
Sergei moved to the door of the car and reached to open it.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Rush said. “I got a little tired of people breaking into my cars. I made it so that anyone but me who opens it gets a little surprise.”
Sergei hesitated.
“Go on, Sergei,” Ivankov barked. “He’s bluffing.”
Sergei reached for door. He stopped. “Why would he be bluffing?”
Ivankov let out an exasperated sigh. “Why would he tell us?”
“All right,” Rush said. “But don’t be mad at me when he gets blown up.” Sergei’s hand stayed in place.
“Go on!” Ivankov said, annoyed.
“How do I open it safely?” Sergei asked Rush.
“Damn it! Open the goddamn door!” Ivankov cried.
“You open it!” Sergei said to Ivankov.
Ivankov considered. He turned it Rush. “How do we open it safely?”
“Reach into my pocket and pull out my cell phone. Enter ‘star 66.’ It’ll be safe to open the car then.”
“Get it, Danzig,” Ivankov directed one of his thugs. “Sergei, keep him covered.”
Sergei gratefully moved toward Rush, keeping him covered with a Springfield XD-S while Danzig reached toward Rush’s pocket.
Rush had worked his feet free from the belt about five minutes earlier, using Ivankov’s constant beatings as a distraction. When they thought he was just convulsing from the pain of the blows to his kidneys, he was actually twisting and turning the belt tied around his feet. Now, when Danzig came close enough, he kicked him with a wicked blow to the jaw, sending him sprawling back. Hoisting himself by the arms, Rush wrapped his legs around Sergei’s neck, choking him before he could react.
Ivankov raised his Glock. “Get out of the way, Sergei. Don’t make me shoot through you.”
Taking advantage of the distraction, Amelia grabbed the cattle prod off the table and shoved it into Ivankov’s back. He screamed. She scrambled over him like a cat and grabbed his gun. Clutching it in her hands, she skittered across the table and fired it at Ivankov. She missed him, but it didn’t look like a warning shot. She looked like she meant to kill him but didn’t know how a gun worked. Ivankov froze.
“Get down on your knees!” she said.
Ivankov got down on his knees.
Recovering from the kick to his head, Danzig grabbed a Ruger from the pile of guns and raised it. Amelia saw him and turned to him. She fired, striking him in the chest and bringing him down in a heap. Surprised, she blinked a couple of times, like a child who had knocked over a tower of blocks by accident.
Ivankov took advantage of her shock by diving over the table and reaching for the Glock. Amelia jerked back and fired. Two fingers of Ivankov’s right hand blew off in a mist of red. He stopped and stared at his maimed hand.
Rush released the limp Sergei from between his legs. He fell to the ground, dead or unconscious. Swinging his legs up and kicking against the ceiling, Rush tried to break the pipe his arms were chained to, the chains digging into his wrists, tearing the skin, causing blood to run down into his eyes.
Ivankov lay on the table, clutching his maimed hand, howling for all the world like Tarzan. Amelia could have used that distraction as an opportunity to come to Rush’s aid. Instead, she ran to the car.
“How do I open the car?” she asked.
Rush took a breath. “Just open it.”
She swung the door open. Nothing happened. She looked back at Rush. “Remind me not to play poker with you.”
Hanging from the pipe, he gave the ceiling another kick. “A little help here,” he said, his voice still muffled by the goddamned respirator. Amelia just crawled in the car and rummaged through the back seat.
Ivankov stopped howling, rolled off the table, and headed for the pile of weapons in the corner. He grabbed a Gewehr assault with his non-bloody hand.
Rush kicked the ceiling once more and the pipe finally burst loose from the concrete above it. Brownish water spilled from it as he fell to the ground, and the released, unconscious Guzman toppled on top of him.
Ivankov fumbled with the rifle, cursing because his damned trigger finger was missing.
Pushing Guzman off him, Rush struggled loose from the pipe. His hands were still chained together, but he drove himself toward Ivankov, using the chains as a weapon, wrapping them around the rifle and yanking it out of Ivankov’s grasp. He twisted it to the side and brought his knee crashing into Ivankov’s jaw.
Ivankov’s head rocked back into the concrete wall with a sickening thud. His eyes clouded over and he collapsed like a rag doll. Rush took the Gewehr and considered emptying the clip into him. At times like this, he always thought the same thing: What would Batman do?
Rush looked back to the GTO. Amelia was still tearing at the back seat searching, presumably, for the flash drive. She turned to him.
“It’s not here!”
“Not anymore,” Rush said.
“You lied to him?!” she said, affronted. “Why?”
“I don’t know. To protect you?”
“Stupid reason. I can take care of myself.”
“What’s on that flash drive, anyway?”
“Things.”
“Why did you tell Ivankov I had it?”
“To stay al
ive. As long as he didn’t have it, he had a reason not to kill me, right?”
Rush could see her point, but he was a little surprised that an eighteen-year-old girl could keep that thought in her head while going through what she was going through. But then this was no ordinary eighteen-year-old girl.
“I didn’t think you’d drive it right up here!” she said. “That was wild.” Then she paused, thoughtfully. “Did he really kill my brother?”
Rush nodded.
Amelia went to the corner and pulled a Sig Sauer Mosquito twenty-two caliber out of the seemingly inexhaustible pile of weapons. She went up to Ivankov, his back against the wall, the red stain from his smashed skull staining the concrete.
She put the gun to his head.
“You don’t want to do that,” Rush said.
“Why not?”
“You don’t want to spend the rest of your life in prison.”
“You don’t think I might get off for extenuating circumstances? I mean, look at me.”
“Maybe,” Rush said.
She moved the gun around and pointed it at Rush. “So where is it now?” she asked.
“What?”
“The flash drive, don’t be stupid.”
“The North Pole,” Rush said. He’d found the flash drive the morning after he’d taken her home from the Nocturne. He hadn’t known what it was, but he’d put it in a safe place. Just in case.
Rush sat down on the wooden table, suddenly feeling very weary. “Are you going to shoot me for it?”
She lowered the gun. “It’s in your apartment, isn’t it?”
Rush’s phone started ringing in his pocket. Holding up one finger to gesture for her to wait a goddamn minute, he pulled it out and checked the caller ID.
“Hey, Donleavy,” Rush said.
“Crush. They got Trask.”
“Who did?” he replied, puzzled.
“Whoever’s doing this! They snatched him. Is the girl safe?”
“Yeah, I.…” He looked around toward Amelia. She was gone. There was no one in the room but him and a lot of unconscious, bleeding men.
“You take care of her,” Donleavy said.
“I will,” he said. He turned his head back toward where Amelia had been, but he didn’t make it all the way. A gun butt smacked him on the forehead, and he was distracted by a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning.
TWENTY-EIGHT
When he opened his eyes, Rush found that Amelia was gone. So either she’d hit him or she’d been taken by the one who did. He sat up, intending to run downstairs and try to catch up with her, but he threw up instead. Checking his phone, he saw he’d had eighteen calls from Zerbe.
“There you are!” Zerbe said when Rush called him back. “I was starting to get worried.”
“Is Doc Adams in?” Doc Adams was their next-door neighbor, a retired brain surgeon who spent his time doing pharm drugs, eating chocolate cake, and watching infomercials while encroaching Alzheimer’s took him further and further away from reality. He had patched up Rush and his friends on numerous occasions without reporting it to the police, either out of tact or forgetfulness.
“I’ll see. Is it bad?”
“You tell me.”
“How long will you be?”
“How long will it take me to crawl there?”
Rush hung up and went to collect Guzman.
Once Rush and Guzman had made it out onto Almadero Street, Rush realized this wasn’t the best part of L.A. to hail a cab. He’d call Uber, but his account had been discontinued after he’d had a disagreement with one of the drivers. The disagreement involved Rush pulling the driver out through the front window, like a breech birth.
He decided it would be easier to steal a car. He opted for a late-model BMW, because he figured whoever could afford that car could afford another one. Instead of going through the trouble of popping the lock, he just chucked a piece of asphalt through the window and let the car alarm blare. Car alarms blended in with the scenery downtown. It took him about five minutes to hotwire the thing, because he had to stop every few seconds and try to refocus his eyes. He wondered if he had a concussion; wondered if he had something worse. Finally getting the engine started, he loaded Guzman, unconscious again, into the passenger seat and drove off.
He even remembered to call 911 for Ivankov and Sergei. Would Batman have done that?
Rush and Guzman rode in the elevator up to Rush’s apartment, both of them sitting on the floor, watching the floors tick by.
“Are you still alive?” Rush asked Guzman, after he had been silent for too long.
“A little bit,” Guzman replied, his eyes still shut. “Where are we going again?”
“The North Pole.”
“Oh, good.”
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Rush made it to his door and slipped the key in the lock. It was good to be home, he thought as he breached the threshold and Guzman came stumbling after him, clutching his wounded arm.
“Zerbe! Is Adams here yet?”
Zerbe didn’t answer. He couldn’t really, seeing as he was duct-taped to a chair, naked from the waist up, with a red ball gag in his mouth.
TWENTY-NINE
Fifteen minutes before that, Zerbe was out in the hall, knocking on Doc Adams’s door and trying to make him understand that he wasn’t Adams’s son, who, Zerbe believed, had died in a car accident in 2010.
“Jack? Is that you?”
“No, it’s Zerbe, your next-door neighbor.”
“Jack, I haven’t got time for you and your faggot friends.”
“It’s Zerbe, Doc. Jack’s…not here.”
“Have you stopped hanging around with those fairies?”
“Yes. Yes, I have.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re gonna catch the AIDS, you know that, don’t you?”
“I’ll be careful. Listen, a friend of mine is here. He needs help.”
“I bet he’s a fairy.”
“No, no, he’s not. He’s K. C. Zerbe.”
“Casey? Sounds like a queer.”
“Well, he’s not. He has a couple of friends coming over who need tending to.”
The locks began to turn. The door opened. Doc Adams stood there, stark naked. Not in bad shape for a man in his seventies, but still, naked.
“Zerbe?” he asked.
“Yeah. Your son just left.”
“My son died in a car accident on the Pacific Coast Highway.”
“That’s right.”
“Him and his lover.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m for gay marriage now.”
“Do you want to put some pants on, Doc?”
He looked down at his waist.
“Son of a gun. I put ’em on yesterday.”
“You gotta put them on every day. That’s one of those things you got to do.”
“Your friends, are they here now?”
“No, they’re on their way.”
“Bullet wounds?”
“I think so.”
“How long till they get here?”
“Ten minutes?”
“That should give me enough time to find my pants.”
The door closed. Zerbe could hear Doc calling out, “Hey, Jack, where are my pants?”
Zerbe sighed. Old age was for shit. He hoped he died young. But not too young.
He had just made it to his own door when the elevator opened and a young woman stepped out into the dimly lit hall. As the doors slid shut, he saw another figure hanging back, going to another floor. It was an unusual amount of traffic for this building after midnight.
The young woman came up to him.
“Amelia?” he asked.
It wasn’t quite the face he’d seen before. It was battered and bruised, but more than that, it had changed internally. It had aged a few years.
“Is Crush here?” she asked.
“No. How did you get away?”
She started to answer…then she fainted. D
ead away. She actually collapsed in his arms. Zerbe thought women only did that in the movies.
He jostled her a few times to see if she was kidding, then he dragged her inside the apartment like an awkward piece of furniture. How did the guys in the movies always do this so gracefully? Zerbe wondered this as he hauled her across the threshold and dumped her, half on the sofa, half on the floor.
He hoisted her legs up onto the cushions and got an old Lakers fleece blanket to cover her. Then he sat down on the sofa himself, winded. He really had to get in better shape. He made a note to himself to put that on his list of things to do. After he learned to fly a hang glider and write that screenplay for Quentin Tarantino.
Looking over at her, he wondered how the hell she got here. And where was Caleb? And why did she think he would be here before her? And what the hell had happened to her?
“Zerbe?” she said, her eyes still closed. “That’s a silly name. It sounds like a villain in a sci-fi movie. ‘Zerbe, tell the Alliance that resistance is futile.’ That’s funny.”
“Where’s Rush?”
“He got held up. He sent me ahead. Said you’d take care of me.”
Zerbe was glad Rush said that. “Should I call somebody?” he asked. “Your father?” Zerbe wanted to take the words back as soon as they came out of his mouth. Amelia’s father had been grabbed, he remembered. And this didn’t seem the best time to tell her about it. “Let me get you some water first.”
Crossing to the kitchenette, he pulled out his cell phone and filled a Bullwinkle jam-jar glass with water from the tap. He started to call Donleavy, but then thought maybe he should call Rush first. He hesitated.
Then he looked up at Amelia. She was standing in the middle of the room.
“Give me the phone,” she said. Her hand was outstretched toward him, but Zerbe wasn’t looking at that. She had pulled her shirt off and was naked from the waist up. She had the kind of breasts Zerbe hadn’t seen for a long while. The kind that weren’t on a computer screen. He was entranced. He gave her the phone. She tossed it onto the sofa.
“What did you do that for?”
“I don’t want you to call my father. Not yet.”
“No, I don’t mean that.” Zerbe gestured toward her shirt, which was balled up on the sofa. “That.”