Colorado Boulevard

by Phoef Sutton

  He heard a crazy cacophony of chittering cries and screams coming from above them. Evan heard it, too. He looked up at the night sky. An undulating black mass hovered above. Like a cloud, or a haze of smoke, that seemed to be coming down on them. Evan looked up in terror and stumbled, falling to the ground.

  Crush saw his final chance. He ran forward and threw himself on top of Evan. The two of them struggled in the mud, Evan trying to push his fingers into Crush’s eye sockets, Crush grabbing for Evan’s throat. Crush missed and his fingers dug into the mud. They felt the hard roughness of a stone. He grasped the rock and raised it above his head….

  Crush limped back into the tunnel. He picked up the fallen lantern and looked for his cell phone. Once he found it, he called 911, praying that there were more signal towers now than there had been in 2001 and that the call would go through.

  The call went through. Crush told them where he was. He told them there were at least two injured people. Maybe three. Then he ended the call and sat down next to Donleavy.

  “How are you doing?” Crush asked.

  “I got shot,” Donleavy said. “That’s never good. But I stopped the bleeding.”

  “Help will be here soon,” Crush said. “You’ll be okay.”

  Donleavy grunted. She looked around. “Where’s that crazy girl with the gun?”

  “She took off, I guess.”

  “Good riddance. Let me see your head.”

  Crush lowered his head and let Donleavy see. “How does it look?” he asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” she said. “How are Noel and Angela?”

  Crush looked to the rear of the tunnel. They were still sitting with their hoods on. “They look fine.”

  “You oughta go check on them, you know.”

  “All right.” Crush sighed and got weakly to his feet. His head felt like it had been run over by a steamroller and then flattened by an anvil. “You know, Donleavy, when this thing is over, I think I’m going to get an MRI.”

  “You do that,” Donleavy said. “Grab my pocketknife from the table—the bitch found it in my boot when she tied me up.”

  Crush got the knife and stumbled over to Angela and Noel and pulled off their hoods. They’d been gagged with duct tape, which explained the blessed silence. He pulled the tape off Angela.

  “What the hell is happening?” she asked, terrified.

  “It’s okay,” Crush said. “We’re safe.”

  He yanked the tape off Noel. Noel got more to the point. “That was Evan, wasn’t it?”

  “Evan?” Angela said. “Why did he do all of this?”

  Crush was too tired to explain it. “Because of Renee. And because of the train.”

  Using Donleavy’s knife, Crush cut them free from their zip ties. Noel got up stiffly and walked toward the back of the tunnel. He asked, “Which way did he go?”

  “That way. Out to the watershed,” Crush said.

  Noel started walking that way.

  “Don’t, Noel,” Angela said, alarmed. “He might come back.”

  Crush put his hand on Angela’s arm. “He won’t come back,” he said.

  She looked at him. Grabbing his hand, she said. “Thank you, Caleb.”

  He leaned down and kissed her fingers. Softly. In memory of another time. The elephant in the room always remembers.

  Noel stood on the rain-swept watershed looking down at the inert body of Evan Gibbard. Crush hobbled up to join him.

  “What happened?” Noel asked.

  “He was running,” Crush said. “Something must have startled him. He stumbled. And fell.”

  “What happened to his head?”

  “He hit it on that rock.”

  “And it killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  Noel looked at Crush, the rain washing over his face. “Convenient.”

  “It was.”

  “What startled him?”

  “Oh,” Crush said, looking up at the sky. “That was the parrots. They flew right over us. Didn’t you hear them squawking?”

  Noel nodded gravely. “I heard them. But I didn’t recognize them. The psychopomps. The ones who escort the dead to the afterlife.”

  “If you say so,” Crush said. “Anyway, they were screaming bloody murder.”

  “Yes, they were,” Noel agreed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Zerbe watched Renee’s funeral from the loft on Wilshire, via live-streaming. He thought ‘live-streaming’ was a rather questionable term for the occasion, but since under the terms of his parole he couldn’t attend the service in person, he took what he could get. Frida bought him a dark suit from the local Goodwill and the two of them watched the service on his laptop, sitting on the sofa holding hands.

  The service was held in the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather at Forest Lawn, Glendale, a perfect replica of a quaint Scottish church. Ronald Reagan was married there, for the first time anyway. Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard had their funerals there. So did Walt Disney, Errol Flynn, and George Burns. More Hollywood royalty had passed through that nondenominational church than through Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

  Zerbe could see pictures of Renee as Rose Queen, displayed around the urn that contained her ashes. It was all very tasteful.

  Back in January, the police had spent a week searching through Hahamongna, looking for some trace of her body. They were about to give up when they brought in cadaver dogs, which sniffed something and started digging. That seemed appropriate. Renee had always liked dogs.

  It took about six weeks to get a positive DNA identification and another month to discover how she died and yet another month to decide that there was nothing to be done about it, so it was nearly May before Renee Zerbe was finally laid to her eternal rest.

  Zerbe could see that the funeral was well attended, despite being about seventeen years overdue. Quite a few of her high school friends had come to bid her a last farewell and, of course, all the Zerbes were there. Renee’s mother sat in the front row, weeping, finally able to achieve some closure, if only of the bitterest kind. Samantha, Angela, and Noel sat with her, offering her what comfort they could. Emil sat off to the side in his wheelchair, alone and stone-faced. Zerbe couldn’t see Crush or Gail, but he knew they were there, probably standing in the back, ready to make a quick exit. Crush didn’t like funerals.

  When the funeral ended, the screen went blank. Zerbe shut his laptop, put Jackie Wilson on the stereo, and made a couple of fried-egg sandwiches for himself and Frida. Then they talked about life. About Zerbe’s new parole officer and what a dick he was. About how Zerbe was going to be finished with his sentence by the end of the year and how the first thing he was going to do when he was free was get a chili dog at Pink’s on La Brea, then go to Disneyland and go on the Haunted Mansion and the Pirates of the Caribbean rides. They talked about Frida’s new job as a teacher at an inner-city grade school and how much she loved it. When they were done talking, they went into Crush’s bedroom and shut the door. Crush’s bed was more comfortable than Zerbe’s.

  Two hours later Crush and Gail walked in. “Where’s Zerbe?” Gail asked.

  Crush pointed to his bedroom door.

  “Again?” Gail asked, rolling her eyes.

  “Give ’em a break,” he said. “It’s been a while. For both of them.”

  Gail wanted to say it had been a while for her, too, but she thought better of it. Instead she asked. “How’s your head?”

  Crush looked out the window over MacArthur Park. “May Gray” was settling in, and the city looked like it was in perpetual twilight. “My head’s fine. It’s tired of you asking about it.”

  “It’s just that you didn’t talk all the way home.”

  “All the way home from a funeral,” he said. “Don’t forget the funeral part.”

  Gail pressed her lips together. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Crush pressed his forehead against the windowpane. “I really don’t.”

  He set the urn down on the poo
l table. “Why the hell did she give it to me?”

  “I don’t know, Crush,” she said. “Maybe she trusts you.” In the parking lot at Forest Lawn, Valerie Zerbe had stopped and handed Crush the urn. All she said was, “You take care of her, Caleb,” before she walked off.

  “What does she want me to do with it?” Crush asked.

  “She wants you to take care of her.”

  “Stop calling it ‘her,’” Crush snapped. “I don’t even think it’s legal for me to have this. Don’t I have to file some kind of papers?”

  “You’re not adopting her. You’re just making room for her on your bookshelf.”

  Crush looked at the smooth metal urn. “I didn’t take care of her. Not when it mattered.”

  Gail put her hand on his shoulder. “You tried. You saved her on the bridge. You chased after her. And in the end, you found her.”

  “I didn’t find her. A dog found her.”

  “You told them where to look.”

  “I wasn’t her guardian angel.”

  “No,” Gail said. “You were just the best friend she had.”

  Crush shut his eyes. “A pretty lousy best.”

  “Sometimes that’s all you can hope for.”

  She bent down and kissed Crush on his scarred bald head. “You want me to stay?” She had moved into a new apartment in Boyle Heights, and she was teaching at a dojo near Hazard Park. Things were looking up for her.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said. “You go along home.”

  When she’d left, Crush got up and went over to the bookshelf. He grabbed some of Zerbe’s polyhedral dice from his old Dungeons & Dragons set, rattled them in their cup, and tossed them across the pool table in front of Renee’s urn.

  He looked at the scattered numbers and weird symbols on the dice. “I have no idea how to play this damn game.” He sighed. “But I guess I’m going to have to learn, huh?”

  The urn sat on the pool table and did not respond.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Robert Petersen, whose “The Hidden History of Los Angeles” podcast is a constant delight and who kindly helped me trace the histories of the Devil’s Gate Dam and the Irwindale craters.

  Beverly Stansbury and Fiesta Parade Floats, who assisted me with the details of the Tournament of Roses Parade and the building of parade floats.

  Roseschel Sinio of Li’l Book Bug Bookstore in Lancaster, California, who helped me with the Musical Road.

  Colleen Dunn Bates, my beloved publisher and editor, who gave me more time than she should have and whose fine eye made this a better book. Assistant editor Dorie Bailey’s fine eye helped, too.

  Ronnie Wise, who helped me understand Dungeons & Dragons.

  Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer, whose “H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast” provided inspiration and psychopomps.

  Mark Jordan Legan, who contributed friendship, movie nights, and help with Targeted Individuals.

  W.L. Ripley, who read this book and offered much needed advice.

  My writing group: Naomi Hirahara, Gar Anthony Haywood, Miriam Trogdon, Gracie Charters, and Sharon Calkin.

  Lee Goldberg, for inspiring me constantly.

  Pat Lentz, for her help and guidance.

  And finally, my dear wife, Dawn Bodnar-Sutton, who read this book more often than is humanly possible and who helped me shape it. I couldn’t have done it without her.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Phoef Sutton is a novelist, television writer, and playwright whose work has won two Emmys, a Peabody, a Writers Guild Award, a GLAAD Award, and a Television Academy Honors Award. The first novel in his Crush mystery series, Crush, was a Kirkus Best Mystery of 2015 and a Los Angeles Times “Summer Reading Page-Turner.” The second in the series, Heart Attack and Vine, was named one of Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s “Best Books of 2016” and a Kirkus Best Mystery of 2016.

  Sutton has been an executive producer of Cheers, a writer/producer for such shows as Boston Legal and NewsRadio, a writer for Terriers, and the creator of several TV shows, including the cult hit Thanks. He is also the co-author, with Janet Evanovich, of Curious Minds and Wicked Charms, both New York Times bestsellers. His other novels include the romantic thriller 15 Minutes to Live; coming in 2018 is the novel From Away. Sutton lives with his family in South Pasadena, California.