Crush (8 page)

Stegner and a few members of the assault team stayed behind to fix the door. They never apologized to Zerbe for the taser to his privates.

Rush and Amelia drove to the Trask house in Bel Air, flanked by two black Bonnevilles, courtesy of Tigon Security. Donleavy wasn't taking any chances that Rush might try to make a slip.

“Why aren't we in that other car?” Amelia asked, sulking. “This one's ass.”

Rush had taken a 1969 red ragtop Firebird. He didn't like to take the same car out twice in row. It smacked of routine. “This baby has 440 cubic inches with Quadrajet injection. Don't you know power when you see it?”

“I know ass when I see it.”

“Why did the Russian Mafiya try to snatch you?”

“They liked my butt?”

Rush shot her annoyed look. “Why are they after you?”

“I don't know.”

“You want me to protect you, I gotta know who from.”

Amelia was getting annoyed. “I don't
know
. All this crazy shit is going on. Ever since my uncle died.”

“Your uncle died. Walter Trask?”

“Yeah, don't you read the paper?”

“Nobody reads the paper.”

“He drowned himself in our swimming pool. So they say. I found him—the body, I mean. The police
interviewed me and everything.”

“Why'd he do it?”

“Don't you even go online?”

“Nope.”

“How do you find out what's going on the world?”

“I don't.”

She sighed. “All right. Our company went bust. Their company. My father and my uncle's. Biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.”

“I heard about it.”

“I thought so. We're still rich and everything, but all the stockholders lost their life savings. Uncle Walter blamed himself. Got all, ‘what have we done?' Then—splash.”

“That's tough,” Rush said. “But why would that put someone after you?”

“Oh, nobody thinks he really did it himself. Dad won't say it but—somebody whacked him.”

“Whacked?”

“Killed. What do you call it when somebody kills somebody?”

“Murder.”

She dismissed this with a roll of her eyes. “Anyway, that's why all the security. We used to just have one nice bodyguard at home, but he blamed himself for the Uncle Walter thing and he quit. Why do people blame themselves for stuff? I don't get it.” She sighed. “Poor Tony.”

“Tony?”

“Our bodyguard. Tony Guzman. It's really too bad.”

Rush didn't give any visible reaction to this mention of his old friend. He just turned right into Bel Air and asked, “Why is that?”

“Tony was hot,” Amelia said.

Entering the Trask compound was like entering a military camp. Highly visible guards with highly visible firearms. Video cameras. Check your ID at the gate. You got your money's worth from Tigon Security.

Rush's ID didn't clear, but he had Amelia. She got him right past the guards at the front gate. The house looked like Tara from
Gone with the Wind
but bigger and more impressive. And probably with more slaves, Rush thought.

They made their way through the faux-antebellum-manor front hall and into the stage-set library, full of stage-set books, where Stanley Trask was waiting for them, in elegant silk pajamas. He hadn't changed a bit. Rush chalked that up to more plastic surgery. Surgery or no, with his thick lips, pale complexion, and snub nose, he still reminded Rush of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

“Where the hell did you go?” Trask didn't bother with preliminaries.

Amelia answered him like any petulant teen. “Out.”

Trask had to look away and swallow his anger, and
since there was nothing else to look at, he looked at Rush. “Who's this?”

“My new bodyguard,” she said, defiantly.

Trask kept looking at Rush, as if there was something familiar that he couldn't quite place. Finally, to break the silence, Rush had to say something. “Caleb Rush. You remember.”

A smile flickered across Trask's face. It wasn't a nice smile. “Didn't I have you blackballed?” After the incident with the hundred-dollar bills, Rush was persona non grata at every security company on the west coast.

“Yeah. Thank you for that.”

That was enough attention to spend on Rush. “I'm afraid we won't be needing Mr. Rush's services, Kitten,” he said to Amelia.

“Yes, we will.” She was putting her foot down. “I've got Mom's trust fund. I can hire whoever I want. You should have seen him, he took out Trask's whole team like they were nothing.”

“Kitten—”

“I'll sneak out of the house again! I'll go to Mom's house.
My
house,” she corrected herself. “Do you want me to go alone?!”

Trask sighed. He walked out the ornate French doors onto the patio, gesturing for Rush to follow. Rush walked through darkness until he found Trask standing near the pool, his face lit by ripples of light coming from the water. He waited for Rush to him join before he began.

“I heard her screaming that night,” Trask said. “I was in the pool house and I ran out and found her.”

Rush could see it all. Amelia screaming. The body floating in the water. It was a lot for an eighteen-year-old to handle, even one as experienced as Amelia Trask. “Must have been tough on her.”

“I wish I knew,” Trask said, reflectively. Then he shook it off. “If you have a fight with me, Rush, don't come after my daughter.”

“She came to me.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Guzman.”

The mention of the name seemed to diffuse some of Trask's anger. “Tony. When he was in his cups, which was quite often, he used to tell tales about the glory days. They often featured you. You can be quite charming in the third person.”

Rush was surprised. “He drank?”

“Expertly. I demand that from my employees.”

Rush was quiet for a moment, staring at the dark blue bowl of the pool. “How long did he work for you?” he asked.

“Three years. He was almost a member of the family.” Trask tried to disguise it, but there was no masking the vulnerability in his voice when he asked, “Do you have any idea where he's gone?”

Rush shook his head. “But suppose Amelia thought I did. Could she have come to me to find him?”

“It's possible. She had some sort of schoolgirl crush
on him.”

“Hard to think of your daughter as a schoolgirl.”

Trask drew himself up. “But she is. She may act like an adult, but I assure you, actually she's a good deal younger than her years. She lost her mother a few years ago. She acts out to compensate.”

Rush nodded. The man knew his daughter. It was the first thing Rush had ever found to like about him.

“Amelia's the only thing I care about,” Trask said. “I intend to protect her.”

“She already hired me to do that.”

He looked at Rush, as though trying to figure him out. “Truthfully, did someone try to hurt her tonight?”

“The Russian mob.”

“Please Mr. Rush, at least make your lies plausible. The Feds may be after me. And the IRS. But the Russian Mafiya are not among my enemies.”

“Like you said, she acts like an adult. Maybe she's got a few enemies of her own.”

“All right,” Trask said. “If someone's going to protect my daughter, it might as well be someone vicious.”

That was all the time Trask had allotted for this minor matter. He walked back to the house and through the French doors, where Donleavy was waiting. “Ah, Ms. Donleavy, would you show Mr. Rush to his station?”

Donleavy looked at Trask in surprise.

“He disabled your team, Donleavy,” Trask said. “I'd rather have him on my side than on the outside. Besides, once Kitten has her heart set on something.…”

When she heard that her daddy was letting her keep this stray, Amelia's squeals of joy convinced Rush that she was, indeed, eighteen.

“How's Tony?” Rush asked as Donleavy led him on a tour of premises.

“He's taking some time off. The Walter Trask thing, it hit him pretty hard.”

“Maybe I should give him a call?”

“Maybe you should.”

“Got his number?”

“His cell phone is disconnected. I thought maybe you'd have another way to get in touch with him.”

“LinkedIn?”

Donleavy frowned. “If you do get in touch with him, tell him hello for me. Tell him…tell him I don't blame him.”

“You don't blame him for Walter Trask killing himself?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll tell him.”

“And Crush—” Donleavy paused, awkwardly. “About this whole thing. This is a team effort. I think we both agree, you work best solo. You'll toe the line, right?”

“He never said I worked for you, Donleavy,” Rush said. “You handle Trask, I'll handle Amelia.”

“I'll show you to your post,” she said. “If that's all right with you, that is.”

Rush indicated that it was all right with him.

The Donleavy team was off at eight o'clock the next morning, most of them, traipsing around after Stanley Trask as he did whatever bankrupt-and-under-investigation business tycoons do to keep busy during the day. Rush stayed in the house with the residential team. This included Stegner, who was still nursing his neck injury, and Kagan, a new recruit to the Tigon team. Kagan was a young, bullnecked ex-Marine, and Rush took a liking to him almost at once. All he had to hear was Kagan's sarcastic response to Stegner's order that he patrol the perimeter for the second time that morning.

“That's high-speed, Lieutenant,” Kagan said, with admiration in his voice.

Stegner preened. He'd never served in the military, but he loved the trappings. He didn't know that “high-speed” was in fact a put-down, as was “Lieutenant.” The term “high-speed” meant something that looked good but was, in reality, bullshit. And Lieutenant meant, well, Lieutenant.

“Turn to,” Stegner said, using his best army lingo.

It was a little after eleven and Amelia was still sleeping the sleep of the teenage wastrel, so Rush offered to accompany Kagan on his rounds.

“You a gyrene?” Kagan asked Rush as they policed the vines around the back wall of the estate, finding a rat but no assassins.

“What gave me away?”

Kagan shrugged. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

“And the tat?” Rush asked. “Fi” was peeking out
from under the sleeve of Kagan's shirt. The missing “Semper” was assumed.

“That cinched it.”

“You should be a detective.”

They were examining an abandoned aviary, which had a lot of places for ninjas to hide, but no ninjas.