Crush

by Phoef Sutton

  She moved to him and kissed him. This struck Zerbe as odd. Why would a girl who had just been through some sort of traumatic experience want to kiss a relative stranger? And a relative stranger like Zerbe?

  There were a lot of red flags that should have told Zerbe to put the brakes on right then, be a gentleman, tuck her in, and make her some warm soup. But on the other hand, he hadn’t been laid for approximately two years and six months.

  So he kissed her back.

  In the long run, once he was tied to that chair with the ball gag in his mouth and the gun pressed to his head, he knew he should have regretted it. But he didn’t really.

  They were nice kisses.

  THIRTY

  A glob of drool, glistening in the dim light, dropped from the red ball in Zerbe’s mouth.

  Rush spun around on his heel but he was too late. Amelia and Stanley Trask stood behind him, blocking his way to the door, which was still ajar, offering freedom just out of reach. Trask held a Browning twenty-two in his hand. Amelia stood next to him, a petulant expression on her pretty face.

  “Why didn’t you ever call me, Tony?” she said to Guzman, who didn’t answer. He just collapsed on the sofa as if he were a Macy’s parade balloon with all the gas released.

  Rush pried the ball gag from Zerbe’s mouth, noticing as he did that Zerbe was naked from the waist up and that Amelia was wearing Zerbe’s Green Lantern shirt. What had gone on here?

  “You okay?” he asked Zerbe after the gag came out with a syrupy slurping sound.

  “Sorry. She came here. Said you sent her. Then that one showed up,” Zerbe said, glaring at Trask.

  “He tied you up?”

  “No, she did. Before he got here. It sounded like fun at the time.”

  Shaking his head, Rush started to pull the tape off Zerbe’s arms.

  “That’s all right,” Trask barked. “Leave him be.” He looked at Guzman coldly. “We have things to discuss.”

  Guzman spoke up from the sofa. “Mr. Trask, we can’t do this here.”

  “I think we can,” Trask replied, calmly.

  “Let me guess,” Rush said to Guzman. “This is another one of those thing you’re not proud of?”

  Guzman sat up as if he wanted to explain. “Crush, I—” he started, but Trask gestured to him with his gun, and he stopped short.

  “What are you going to do, Trask?” Rush asked. “Kill all of us?”

  “Well, I only really want to kill him,” Trask gestured to Guzman, “but you’ll have to go along for the ride.”

  “Daddy!” Amelia cried out, horrified.

  “Stanley,” Guzman objected, “we had a deal—”

  “Kitten, be quiet and listen to you father for once!” Trask snapped at his daughter, ignoring Guzman.

  He took a deep breath and addressed Guzman: “You’re a hard man to track down, do you know that?”

  Amelia threw herself on top of Guzman. He cried out in pain as she rubbed her body against his wound.

  “Don’t, Daddy! You said you were doing this so Tony and I could be together!”

  “He’s a blackmailer, Amelia,” Trask said. “And a child molester.”

  “Come on, Papa! It wasn’t like that!”

  “It was exactly like that.”

  Amelia was screaming now, “I won’t let you hurt him!”

  Trask waved his gun, exasperated. “Fine. Throw a tantrum. I’ll still be here when you’re done.”

  The faced each other in silence. A standoff.

  Rush took advantage of the pause to ask Amelia a question. “Why did you tell me Guzman killed your uncle?”

  She shrugged. “I thought if you were mad at him, you might tell me where he was. Or go track him down.” Amelia turned to Guzman and gave him a little snuggle. “I figured if anybody could find you, Crush could.”

  Guzman just sunk back into the sofa, like he wished he were somewhere else.

  Still taped to his chair, Zerbe spoke up. “Anybody want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Trask laughed. “The funny thing is, I’m actually tempted to tell you. To explain it all. I always thought it was idiotic in movies when the villain stopped to explain everything instead of just shooting somebody. Now I understand. It’s a delaying tactic.” He paused, his hand flexing on the gun. “This is rather hard to do.”

  Guzman pushed Amelia off of him and leaned toward Trask, pleading, “Mr. Trask, I swear I won’t—”

  Trask shot Guzman in the head.

  Guzman fell back on the sofa, dead. He didn’t have time to look surprised.

  Amelia screamed.

  Trask sighed, looking very tired. “It is very hard,” he said. Then he pointed the gun at Rush. “And I don’t think it’s going to get any easier.”

  Amelia clutched Guzman’s body to her breast, crying like a baby. Rush prepared for the impact of the bullet.

  Then the front door swung open and a dark figure appeared, backlit by the hallway light.

  Trask glanced toward the door for a second, and that was all Rush needed. He grabbed Trask’s gun hand and swung it aside, driving his body, elbow first, into Trask’s breastbone. Pivoting his elbow up, he cracked Trask’s jaw, wrenching the gun out of his hand and pushing him, driving him hard against the wall.

  Grabbing the samurai sword from its display rack on the wall, Rush whipped around and pressed the point against Trask’s throat.

  At the apartment door, Frida Morales stood looking at the scene, stunned.

  “Frida, darling!” Zerbe said, from his chair. “What took you so long?”

  Rush shot a curious look at Zerbe from the corner of his eye, and Zerbe lifted his leg, exposing his ankle—the electronic tether on it was busted, wires exposed.

  “It broke after Amelia tied me up. It was like sending my Frida the Bat Signal.”

  Zerbe laughed, like a giddy child, then shut up when he realized that Amelia was still holding onto Guzman, weeping. Not the time for levity. Frida stepped into the room and peered at the dead man.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Trask answered quickly, his eyes still locked with Rush’s. “I killed my brother. Drowned him in my pool.” He looked down at Guzman. “That man found the body. He tried to blackmail me. So I shot him.”

  Rush met his stare.

  “Call the police, Frida.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Rush stood next to Trask by the big window, looking down at the night and the city. A police car, siren flashing, slowly made its way down Wilshire, inching through the gridlocked traffic.

  “I can’t believe how long it’s taking them to get here,” Trask said, breaking the long silence.

  “It just feels that way,” Rush replied.

  “Yeah. My last moments of freedom. I should be having a steak at the Palm. Not standing here with you.”

  Rush shifted his weight on his tired feet. “It doesn’t add up,” he said. “Guzman wouldn’t dive into that pool. He couldn’t swim.”

  “It was the shallow end.”

  “And he never had that flash drive. Amelia had it.”

  Trask didn’t say anything. Just kept staring at the city.

  “She killed your brother,” Rush said. “To protect Guzman. She knew if Walter went to the feds, he’d go down with everyone else.”

  Trask stared ahead in silence.

  “That’s what Guzman saw, isn’t it? That’s how he was blackmailing you.”

  Trask shut his eyes. “She’s just a little girl. She thought she loved him.” He looked over at the sofa. Amelia was asleep, looking younger than Rush had ever seen her. Guzman’s sheet-covered body was next to her. She looked like a child sleeping with her teddy bear.

  “So you admit it?” Rush asked.

  Trask looked back at the city with no expression on his Gill-Man face. “I killed my brother.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Do you listen to country music, Mr. Rush?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “That
’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  Trask stared out at the skyline, a thin smile playing over his face. “Oh and Mr. Rush?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where is that damned flash drive?”

  “The North Pole,” Rush replied, pointing to the glass panel on the ceiling where Zerbe had projected the satellite image of the Earth. The flash drive was taped to the back of the glass, right above the North Pole.

  “Ah,” said Trask, “so you weren’t lying after all.”

  “I never lie about important things,” Rush said.

  Eleven months later, Rush walked across his apartment to Zerbe’s computer console, eating a bowl of Sugar Smacks, his usual late-evening snack. There was an email from Donleavy saying that Trask had been sentenced to twenty years for his brother Walter’s murder. Rush sighed. Justice.

  Gail and Zerbe were nearby, shooting pool. Rush figured he’d wait for them to finish the game before he told them. Gail still limped a little, but other than that, her recovery was amazing. She’d beat Rush in a sparring match last week, and he hadn’t even let her win. Gail was a real superhero, he decided. So was Zerbe, for that matter. He deserved to wear his Green Lantern shirt. They should start a Justice League for broken-down heroes.

  Rush looked back at the computer. He clicked on the picture menu and brought up the photo of Amelia in the club, the one she’d taken of herself the night they met.

  Call him crazy, but even after all she’d done, Rush still liked her. Hell, he liked Trask, too. Trask may have been a slimy crook and a killer, but when it came to it, he took a murder rap for his daughter because he loved her. And Amelia killed her uncle because she loved Guzman. Everything they did, they did for love.

  Rush moved the mouse, rolling the cursor over the picture, wondering if maybe that was why he kept looking at her. Because he couldn’t imagine loving someone that much. He guessed that ought to make him feel superior to them. Smarter. But he hardly ever felt smart anymore.

  He rolled the cursor to the task bar.

  Well, there’s one thing computers have over the human brain, Rush thought as he dragged the picture to the trash and hit “delete.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that.

  Get ready for more Crush action!

  A preview of the next book by Phoef Sutton

  HEART ATTACK & VINE

  A Crush Novel

  April 2013

  I hate L.A.,” Layla said as she traced a thin black line with her paintbrush onto the cool, white tile that lined the face of the Feingold’s Deli stall in the bustling Grand Central Market. “What I love is Los Angeles.”

  She pronounced it with a hard “g,” the way people did in the 1930s. “Los Ang-a-lees.” With her short-cropped hair, bleached a platinum blond, and her white blouse, Layla looked like she could have been an extra in an old gangster movie herself. Only the Bluetooth headset clipped to her ear spoiled the illusion.

  “I hate the new Hollywood Boulevard. It’s almost as bad as Times Square in New York. And I hate what they’re doing to Los Feliz and West Hollywood and all the faux-hip shops in Silver Lake,” she said as she painted graffiti on the front of Feingold’s. “What I love is Downtown Los Angeles, in all its messy glory.”

  Caleb Rush was sitting at a table in front of the Sticky Rice stall, munching on a mess of smelly fried smelt with dipping sauce, Bluetooth nestled in his ear, chatting with Layla over the airwaves, watching her from the corner of his eye so as not to make it too apparent that they were talking to each other. Layla was paying good coin for Rush to keep an eye on her, and that’s what Rush was doing.

  “God, I hate hipsters,” Layla said with a sigh. “They’re ruining this town.”

  Rush grunted an agreement while he half-watched her trace retro-style sketches of deli sandwiches on Feingold’s façade—graffiti art, only made to order.

  Layla Lowenstein was in her early thirties. With her black eyeliner, blue nail polish, and the tattoo of Felix the Cat that peeked from the sleeve of her vintage blouse, she was a poster child for the hipster generation. No one hates hipsters more than hipsters, Rush thought.

  Layla was a part-time artist, part-time actress, and part-time grifter. There was nothing full-time about her.

  “We’re the last of a dying breed, Crush,” she said, using the nickname by which he was best known.

  “What breed is that?” he asked.

  “Hired guns.”

  “I don’t use a gun.”

  “Neither do I,” Layla said. “I meant it metaphorically. My guns are my brushes. My guns are my way with words. Oh, and my dark, mysterious eyes. Those are my guns, too.”

  “Okay,” Rush said, just to pass the time. “What are my guns?”

  “Your guns are you, Crush. You’re your own guns.”

  Rush dipped some more fish into the spicy sauce and took in his surroundings. Grand Central Market was the innards of Los Angeles. The stomach and lower intestines of the town. A city block sandwiched between the faded glory of the Million Dollar Theatre and Mexican shops that sell votive candles and statues of saints. Recently renovated, the market had, housed under one roof, dozens of stalls featuring everything anyone would want to eat, drink, or ingest. There were delis frequented by thirty-year-old Jews in fedoras and taco stands where Mexican immigrants actually ate. There were stalls that sold traditional Chinese medicine, kept in dusty vials that looked like they had been there since the turn of the last century. There were trendy hot spots for trendy hipsters, like kombucha bars and artisanal chocolate shops.

  On one side was Broadway, not the bustling Broadway of New York but the run-down, seedy Broadway of L.A. On the other side, the market opened onto Bunker Hill and the funicular railway called Angel’s Flight, whose slanted cars took the trip up the steep route to California Plaza and the swooping walls of Disney Hall—that is, when they weren’t closed for safety reasons, which they usually were.

  “Mark my words, Crush,” Layla said. “In three years all the old, dirty, sleazy storefronts in this place are going to be gone, and there’ll be nothing but latte shops, organic cheeses, and pressed-juice stands. It’s the way of the world.”

  Someone walking through the crowded aisles between the stalls caught Rush’s eye and made the hair on his arms stand up. It wasn’t that the man was particularly threatening. He was tall and slender, with neatly groomed hair, a gray sportcoat, and an attaché case, like a time traveler from the sixties. The way he looked around with hooded eyes, as if he was a predator seeking prey, sent a warning signal to Rush.

  “Principal is approaching,” Rush said into his headset with practiced calmness.

  Layla got excited. “Groovy,” she said, putting her brush in a jar of water on the counter and waiting for the man to come up to her. “Meet you back at my apartment.” She pulled the Bluetooth from her ear.

  Rush reached in the pocket of his black hoodie and checked the envelope Layla had given him. He didn’t know what was in it. He wasn’t being paid to know; he was just being paid to make the transfer. Getting up and throwing the leavings of the fried fish away, he walked over to the deli stand and made as if he was looking at the little blackboard with the daily specials, pointedly ignoring Layla, who stood next to him, washing out her brushes and singing “California Dreaming” softly to herself.

  Sportcoat sidled up to Layla and backed her into the counter in a way that was both casual and threatening. “Hello, Bridget.”

  So Layla was “Bridget” to Sportcoat. Interesting. She was Layla Lowenstein, but he’d always doubted that was her real name. A girl like Layla made up a new identity to fit every occasion.

  “Do you have it?” Sportcoat said, letting his briefcase thud like a pendulum against the deli counter.

  Rush came up to Sportcoat and tapped him on the shoulder. Not in a particularly aggressive way. Caleb Rush was six-foot-five, two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle in a tight black T-shirt and hoodie. His clean-shaven head had a nasty scar running from abo
ve his left eye across his skull. He didn’t have to act aggressively. His physical presence was threat enough.

  “You’re not dealing with her,” Rush said. “You’re dealing with me. I have what you want.”

  Sportcoat looked at Rush and tried very hard not to look intimidated. “That wasn’t part of the deal,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and putting his hand on an object that Rush thought might be a gun.

  “It’s part of the deal now,” Rush said in an even tone. “Come on.” If Sportcoat had a gun, that meant he was expecting trouble, but he’d have been expecting trouble from Layla, not from a mean piece of a work like Rush.

  As he often did, Rush wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. He was a part-timer himself, and one of his trades was doing odd jobs for friends. Layla was one of those friends. She’d asked him to handle the transfer of an unnamed object to an unnamed buyer. Layla was infamous for her transactions, usually of stolen or illegally obtained merchandise. Rush had no moral objections to Layla’s deals, legitimate or otherwise. She was a friend, and her money was good. End of story.

  But the first thing he had to do was get Sportcoat away from Layla and out of this crowd of people. If Sportcoat was going to use his gun, Rush wanted him alone, with no bystanders, innocent or otherwise. He turned and walked through the crowd, not looking back to see if Sportcoat was following. Rush was willing him away.

  Walking to a little side exit tucked between a cheese store and a coffee shop, Rush pushed through a door and into a small hallway lit by a flickering fluorescent fixture. The hallway felt small and dingy after the roomy cacophony of the market. He heard footsteps clicking behind him. A man’s steps. Crossing to another door, Rush swung it open and entered a dark corridor. Its walls were covered with red floral wallpaper, faded and peeling, a relic of a gaudier, flashier past. They had entered the neighboring building, the illustrious Million Dollar Theatre.

  Built in 1918 by Sid Grauman and designed by Albert Martin, it was L.A.’s first grand movie palace. A mad mix of Spanish Colonial and Churrigueresque fantasy, it had stood for nearly a hundred years, doing service as a movie theater, a jazz club, a Mexican vaudeville house, and a Spanish-language church. Now it stood empty, waiting for a savior or a wrecking ball.