Crush (14 page)

“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

R
ush 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 words, 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

C
olonel 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.”