Colorado Boulevard

by Phoef Sutton

  ADVANCE PRAISE

  “Welcome to the Pasadena you won’t find in the guidebooks as Phoef Sutton puts you in the shotgun seat with the tough and terse Crush in the cold-eyed Colorado Boulevard.”

  — Gary Phillips, editor of The Obama Inheritance: 15 Stories of Conspiracy Noir

  “Caleb Rush, AKA Crush, has a history riveted with dangerous living: soldier, drifter, bodyguard, recovering alcoholic, and “friend bro” to his hapless stepbrother, K.C. Zerbe. When K.C. is kidnapped, Crush sets off on a madcap ride through Pasadena and environs to rescue him. Car crashes, concussions, nail-biting suspense, and a cast of quirky characters…Colorado Boulevard has it all. But it’s Crush’s humor and humanity that highlight the resilience of the human spirit and make this story soar.”

  — Patricia Smiley, Los Angeles Times–bestselling author of Pacific Homicide

  “Family saga meets thriller on the streets of Pasadena—Colorado Boulevard is the best Crush book yet.”

  — Naomi Hirahara, Edgar-winning author of the Mas Arai and Ellie Rush mystery series

  “Man, these Crush novels just keep getting better and better. Crush is like Jack Reacher with a hair up his ass. And the Los Angeles that Sutton writes about is the secret Los Angeles that nobody knows and everybody wants to know. Sutton answers questions about the city that I didn’t even know I had.”

  — Hart Hanson, author of The Driver and creator of Bones

  PRAISE FOR THE CRUSH NOVELS

  Kirkus 2016 & 2015 Best Mysteries/Thrillers Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 10 Best Mysteries of 2016 A Los Angeles Times “Summer Reading Page Turner”

  “As slick as a switchblade with a pearl handle.”

  — Lee Child, New York Times–bestselling

  author of the Jack Reacher novels

  “There’s magic in this book.”

  — Carole Barrowman,

  Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

  “Studios, please option this immediately. With its nonstop action, snappy dialogue, and wisecracking characters, this send-up of Hollywood is a surefire winner.”

  — Denise Hamilton, bestselling author of the Eve

  Diamond crime novels and editor of Los Angeles Noir

  “Nonstop action and variations on the man-with- a-gun distraction that go Chandler one better.... Like [Elmore] Leonard, Sutton writes great dialogue and lavishes almost as much care and attention on his villains as he does his heroes.”

  — Los Angeles Times

  “Don’t wait for the movie. Buy the book.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “A swagger of a book.”

  — Booklist

  Also by Phoef Sutton

  Heart Attack & Vine

  Crush

  15 Minutes to Live

  with Janet Evanovich

  Curious Minds

  Wicked Charms

  Copyright ©2017 by Phoef Sutton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Prospect Park Books

  2359 Lincoln Avenue

  Altadena, California 91001

  www.prospectparkbooks.com

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

  www.cbsd.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. The following is for reference only:

  Names: Sutton, Phoef, author.

  Title: Colorado boulevard: a Crush novel / by Phoef Sutton.

  Description: Altadena: Prospect Park Books, [2017]

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945551161 (e-book)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Cover design by Howard Grossman

  Book layout and design by Amy Inouye

  To my friend Mark Jordan Legan;

  remembering The Dew Drop Inn,

  endless movie nights, and hard-boiled eggs and nuts

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  JANUARY 1, 2001

  The dinosaurs were causing a traffic jam in downtown Pasadena. The Brontosaurus’s tail had stopped wagging and the Stegosaurus was blocking the progress of a giant bald eagle flying over an enormous American flag. The 112th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade was not going well.

  The White Suits (the old-money Pasadena volunteers who were supposed to keep the street clear and make the parade run on time) were milling about and starting to panic. Fortunately, this was happening far down Colorado Boulevard, near the end of the parade route. If they could get things moving soon they would be saved the embarrassment of a televised delay back by the Norton Simon Museum where Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards hosted the Tournament on KTLA Channel 5 with their usual disdain for each other.

  Ray Dorsey, in his white Armani suit and red tie, made his way to the well-hidden back cockpit of the Zerbe Enterprises float named, oddly, The Age of Fossil Fuel. He wanted to see what the holdup was. Inside the rump of the Brontosaurus was a tiny command post where the man in charge of working the tail was seated. That man was actually a seventeen-year-old boy named Caleb Rush, and he was beginning to regret volunteering for Dinosaur Tail-Wagging Duty. As a matter of fact, he was beginning to regret everything he’d done for the last six months.

  Sitting on a small plastic chair, encased in a claustrophobic little cell, surrounded by the deafening sounds of twenty-two high school marching bands, Caleb couldn’t see anything of the outside world but a tiny patch of pavement beneath the float as it traveled down the street. A line of pink paint marked the middle of the road and was supposed to show him that they were going the right way.

  The line of pink was nowhere to be seen.

  Tournament rules forbade anything as high-tech as a video feed of the parade inside the float itself, so Caleb had no idea of the ruckus the stalled dinosaurs were causing. He had a radio monitor in his ear, but since they’d made the turn from Orange Grove to Colorado it had been blasting nothing but static, so he’d plucked it out. The instructions he’d been given were pretty simple anyway. Wag the damn Brontosaurus’s tail at regular intervals until the float stopped moving.

  Caleb had a big, muscular frame and looked much older than his seventeen years, which was why he had been selected for this job. It took strength to keep pulling the lever that operated the huge tail. It was reasoned that he could handle a prehistoric monster’s rear end. There were other considerations, of course. Family considerations.

  Caleb’s mother had recently married the head of the Zerbe family, Emil Zerbe. Caleb thought that Emil giving his new stepson the job of piloting the hind part of the Brontosaurus was either an honor or a humiliation, depending on how one chose to look at it.

  Caleb knew how he chose to look at it. Especially since the tail had stopped working halfway down Colorado Boulevard and he knew who would be blamed for this malfunctio
n. Not the designers or the builders of this monstrosity. No, it would go down as pilot error, and Caleb was the pilot.

  As it was, he was almost relieved when the bigger fuckup occurred and the float drifted off the pink line and came to a stop far from the parade’s finish line. He sat calmly in the cockpit and waited for someone to tell him what had gone wrong.

  Instead he heard a hammering on the hatch and someone on the street asking him what the hell was going on, as if he knew anything about it. He raised the hatch (a definite breach of parade protocol) partly to talk with the White Suit who was bothering him and partly because the claustrophobia was beginning to get to him. He had been trapped inside that dinosaur for the better part of an hour and a half.

  “What’s going on?” the White Suit asked him. Caleb recognized him as Mr. Dorsey, the vice principal of his school. This New Year’s Day was getting more nightmarish by the minute.

  “How should I know?” Caleb asked. “I just run the tail.”

  “Well, where’s the goddamned driver?” Dorsey asked.

  “At the base of the volcano.” To show him, Caleb climbed out of the dinosaur’s ass, which was an absolute violation of all that the Rose Parade held holy. No one was allowed to emerge from the floats except in a dire emergency. Caleb didn’t know if this was dire, but as he looked back at all the floats bottling up behind them (the spaceships and Tom Sawyers and cute enormous panda bears), he guessed this at least qualified as an emergency.

  Looking at The Age of Fossil Fuel float, Caleb saw that it had driven partway onto the curb, forcing the onlookers to the sides and driving the head of the Brontosaurus inappropriately close to the window of the last remaining adult bookstore in Old Town Pasadena. It seemed to leer at a mannequin dressed in a lacy bra and panties.

  Caleb led Dorsey up around to the front of the daisy-and-marigold-covered volcano, which spewed smoke out of the crater on top. He hesitated before tapping on the well-camouflaged hatchway, and speaking to the driver, Victor Zerbe. Victor was Emil Zerbe’s brother and his partner in industry and, in general, tearing this city down and building it back up again.

  “Mr. Zerbe? Is something wrong?” Caleb asked. He couldn’t quite bring himself to call the man Uncle Victor, not after four short months of being his stepnephew. There was no answer from the volcano, so Caleb rapped harder and called louder. Finally, he lifted the hatch and looked inside. Victor sat there, head tilted back, staring blankly. And not blinking. Or breathing. With a little red hole in the middle of his forehead.

  Dorsey crowded against Caleb, trying to see in. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked.

  “I think he’s dead,” Caleb said.

  Dorsey was silent for a moment. Then his true White Suit-ness came to the fore. “Well, can you get in there and drive the float?”

  The parade must go on, after all.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DECEMBER 30, 2017

  K.C. Zerbe opened his eyes and saw the barrel of a gun pointed at his face. “Move and I’ll kill you,” whispered a hoarse voice.

  In a skittering heartbeat Zerbe was awake, alert and terrified.

  “Do you understand?” the man with the gun said.

  Zerbe nodded mechanically. He understood. The years he spent in prison had taught him to be agreeable to men who woke him up holding weapons.

  Over the gunman’s shoulder Zerbe could see through the picture windows. It was dark and Christmas lights were flickering through the glass. He must have fallen asleep on the sofa. It must be somewhere between one and three o’clock in the morning but he didn’t have the nerve to shift his eyes to the clock and make sure. He just kept looking down, submissively. He knew not to look his assailant in the eyes. Not to challenge him. Better to do exactly as he was told.

  Then another voice commanded, “Get up.” Zerbe turned his head and saw another man in a ski mask holding another gun.

  Zerbe hesitated, his heart pounding in his chest. “Okay,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound like a smart-ass, “I need you to clarify something for me. If I get up I’ll have to move, but if I move he says he’ll kill me. Which do you want me to do?” No doubt about it, he sounded like a smart-ass. His smart-ass-ness always got him into trouble.

  The first gunman kicked Zerbe in the stomach. The impact of the blow to his gut, the rush of air out of his lungs, and the taste of bile in his mouth were all familiar to him, and he felt something like nostalgia flow over him. The nights of prison beatings came back to him and he felt that the two years of relative freedom he’d enjoyed had been just a dream. This was reality. Being beaten and pissed on in a prison cot. This was real life.

  “Get up!” the second gunman said. Zerbe tried to suppress his panic, but that only made the adrenaline rush stronger. He was a thirty-two-year-old ex-convict who’d never harmed anyone. What could these men want from him?

  “Where are you taking me?” Zerbe asked.

  “Out.”

  “You can’t.”

  The second gunman slapped Zerbe in the face. He was short and round. The first gunman was tall and thin. They were like a brutal Bert and Ernie, Zerbe thought. Why did he always think things like that at times like this? he wondered.

  “Really, I can’t,” Zerbe said. “Look.” He pulled the right leg of his sweatpants up to reveal the plastic electronic device strapped to his ankle. “That’s an ankle monitor. I’m on probation. House arrest, you know? If I leave, they’ll know.”

  The shorter man, whom Zerbe named “Ernie” in his mind, hauled him roughly to his feet and said, “Let’s go.”

  “No, really,” Zerbe protested. “If I leave I’ll be violating probation. They’ll send me back to prison.”

  “Do we sound like we care?”

  “What do you want with me?” Zerbe knew he should shut up. He knew it, but he couldn’t. That was his curse. “Do you want a ransom? You won’t get anything. My folks have cut me off.”

  Ernie slapped Zerbe again, harder this time. “Move!” He shoved Zerbe, who took a stumbling step toward the door. They were on the twelfth floor of the American Cement Building on Wilshire Boulevard, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking MacArthur Park and the Los Angeles skyline. How the hell did these thugs get in here?

  “I need to put on some shoes,” Zerbe said, knowing that he was stalling, just trying to put some time between now and the great unknown outside world. He’d dreamed of walking out of here many times over the past two years, but in his dreams he’d always walked into the elevator and onto the street of his own volition. His own volition. The phrase struck him as odd and he almost laughed. Could he leave by someone else’s volition? Wasn’t that the definition of kidnapping?

  “What are you laughing at?” It was “Bert” who asked this, and Zerbe detected some fear in the man’s voice. A lack of confidence. That worried Zerbe. He wanted his kidnappers to have the assurance of professionals. Better to be in the hands of competent, experienced hoodlums than bumbling amateurs.

  “Get your shoes,” Ernie said, as if to cover his friend’s mistake.

  Zerbe slipped into his Merrell Chameleons. He took his time tying the laces and stood up, adjusting his T-shirt with the Captain America shield on it, sneaking a glance at the clock. It was 4:11 in the morning. His stepbrother should be home by now. Or had these gunmen taken care of him down in the garage? Zerbe doubted that. His brother could take care of himself. They didn’t call him Crush for nothing.

  Ernie pulled him up again. “Come on, are we gonna do this or not?” Zerbe thought it was odd that the hoodlum was asking him, but the time for delaying the inevitable was past.

  “Where are you taking me?” Zerbe asked.

  “Move or I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”

  That remark was a little melodramatic, but it got Zerbe’s attention. He moved past the shiny silver Christmas tree, stepped over the discarded, crinkled wrapping paper, and made his way to the loft’s big metal front door. It stood open. Bert and Ernie had let themselves in. T
hey must have had a key to the place, Zerbe realized. How in the hell had they gotten a key? Was this an inside job? It had taken real planning on someone’s part. Zerbe’s panic grew.

  He walked to the door and out into the hall. Zerbe hadn’t been out in the hall for over a year. When his probation began, when they attached the monitor to his ankle and left him here at his brother’s place, he was overjoyed. As Zerbe often said, not being in prison is something you really don’t appreciate until you’ve been in prison. Even on your worst day, when you have a disgusting stomach virus, when your best friends are annoying the hell out of you, and your future seems bleaker than bleak, you can think to yourself, At least I’m not still in prison, and things don’t seem so bad.

  In those first heady months he had often tried to see what the limits of his freedom were, how far he could go until his ankle monitor told him to stop. And it did speak to him, in an electronic voice, like a computer-taking-over-the-world from a sixties’ sci-fi movie. The voice told him when he was moving outside his “home zone.” It told him when he needed to plug it in and charge it up. It told him when he had to call in and check with his probation officer. Even with its limited vocabulary, the voice had become one of his closest friends.

  With the ankle monitor as his guide, he had discovered how far he could go in his house arrest. And the limit of the electronic leash wasn’t the door to his brother’s loft. No, it was in the hallway, just by the elevator. So he could stand next to the gateway to the outer world and watch people come and go. He was like Moses, he sometimes thought. He could see the Promised Elevator, but he could not enter it.

  After about six months, he stopped going out into the hall. His brother’s loft, which at first had felt so spacious, had shrunk down from its actual size of two thousand square feet, which was a hell of a lot larger than his cell in Lancaster State Prison but a hell of a lot smaller than the whole wide world. The world he could see through the big windows of his brother’s loft. The world he could not enter for almost another year.