Crush Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE

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

  — Lee Child, the New York Times–bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels

  “This brief novel crackles with sharp dialogue—” if you can’t lie to your wife, who can you lie to?”—and a witty narrative voice that puts the reader in mind of Elmore Leonard....This one could make it to the big screen, but don’t wait for the movie. Buy the book. It may be the first of a long series.”

  — Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW

  “I loved this book, with its myriad twists and turns. It has the pace of an action movie and the humor we’ve come to expect from Phoef Sutton.”

  — Bob Newhart, actor and author of I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This

  “Crush reads like Elmore Leonard on crack...a nonstop thrill ride of a crime novel that’s packed with action, smart-ass dialogue, colorful characters, and one harrowing plot twist after another. This novel will leave you breathless...and aching for the sequel.”

  — Lee Goldberg, author of The Heist and The Job (with Janet Evanovich), The Walk, and many other thrillers

  “Filled with snappy dialogue and sarcasm, but also mixed with a genuinely intriguing storyline.”

  — Over My Dead Body

  “Sutton is the rare storyteller who writes with amped speed, laugh-out-loud humor, and utter suspense. Crush deserves to be a smash.”

  —Bruce Feiler, New York Times–bestselling author

  “In Caleb Rush, Sutton has created an iconic L.A. character—funny, violent, smart, broke, surrounded by lowlifes and minor celebrities—and zapped new life into a classic genre. How many Crush novels do I want to read? As many as Sutton writes.”

  — Rob Long, host of NPR’s Martini Shot and award-winning television writer

  “A fast-paced, hard-hitting novel layered with mystery, muscle, and heart.”

  — Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times–bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot

  “This book never pauses, never quits, and its hero slows down only long enough to reload. Reading it is like holding a burning firecracker in your hand. Much safer to toss it away, but where’s the fun in that?”

  — Nick Griffin, screenwriter of Matchstick Man and Terriers

  “As necks snap, lies fester, and mercies scoff, the un-caged beasts in Sutton’s wildly sly debut novel Crush leave L.A. a time-shared Hades. Fluent in the wicked lowdown, the novel’s dizzying poisons mount, its characters a deadly, deranged splendor. The violence is cinematic, and Sutton’s infrared wit kills.”

  — Richard Christian Matheson, bestselling author of Dystopia and screenwriter of many horror films and television shows

  “Phoef Sutton has created a character who’s impossible not to fall in love with, in a story that moves like a bullet train through the mean streets of L.A. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be begging for a sequel the moment you turn the last page.”

  — Robert Gregory Browne, bestselling author of the Trial Junkies series

  “A witty, irreverent, and sexy thrill ride through the famous guts of Los Angeles. Sutton writes his characters in great splashes of color, stirs them into a whirlwind, and releases them into his world with glorious results.”

  — Richard Ellis Preston, Jr., author of The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin series

  “Sutton crushes it in Crush, a nonstop action thriller. If you like Jack Reacher, you’ll love Crush.”

  — Joel Goldman, author of Stone Cold and Chasing the Dead

  “Crush hits you with all the power and speed of a maniac wielding a baseball bat. If you ever need anyone to take out Jack Reacher, Caleb ‘Crush’ Rush is your guy. An action-filled, finger-snapping romp.”

  — Paul Bishop, LAPD detective and author of Lie Catchers

  “Sutton’s Crush is what would happen if The Friends of Eddie Coyle went out for a night of drinking and fighting. Snappy dialogue, sharp writing, and righteous violence.”

  — Jay Stringer, author of the Eoin Miller trilogy

  “Crush takes the reader on a dizzying carnival ride through the mean streets of L.A. Rush is an ass-kicker from the Patrick Swayze Roadhouse school of self defense.”

  — W.L. Ripley, author of the Cole Springer and Wyatt Storme mysteries

  “Like a gunshot, Crush starts with a bang, whizzes by at a breakneck pace, and hits its mark with precision. The setting feels like the real underbelly of L.A., and Sutton’s humorous touches crackle with energy. It reads like you’re watching a modern film noir. It’s a cliche to say that I couldn’t put it down, but that’s what happened. I was riveted from start to finish.”

  — Bill D’Elia, director of Boston Legal and How to Get Away With Murder

  “If you enjoy reading novels peopled by soulful characters forever taking their own psychic pulses, then Crush is not for you. If, on the other hand, you like hard-boiled crime fiction with a narrative line propelled by startling twists and turns and relentless action, then you won’t want to miss this book. That action in Crush literally defines ‘nonstop,’ and the eponymous protagonist does the same thing for the term ‘heroic.’ I couldn’t put it down till I arrived at the tangled, violent conclusion. Phoef Sutton has a winner.”

  — Tom Kakonis, author of Treasure Coast and Double Down

  “Check out Crush, a hilarious novel by Phoef Sutton. A cross between Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake, Sutton is a real find. Prepare to laugh away the night.”

  — Robert Ward, author of Red Baker and Four Kinds of Rain

  ALSO BY PHOEF SUTTON

  Wicked Charms (with Janet Evanovich)

  15 Minutes to Live

  Reborn: A Dead Man Adventure (with Kate Danley and Lisa Klink)

  The Dead Man: Midnight Special

  Copyright ©2015 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

  Sutton, Phoef.

  Crush / Phoef Sutton. -- First edition.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-1-938849-37-4

  I. Title.

  PS3569.U896C78 2015

  813'.54--dc23

  2014041275

  Cover design by Howard Grossman

  Book layout and design by Amy Inouye

  To Lee Goldberg; he knows why

  CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

>   ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  The first time Amelia saw him, she didn’t think of him as a person so much as an obstacle. Cold eyes and muscles, he was standing in a corner of the club, like a piece of the furniture. Only larger.

  The bouncer. The immovable object. No need to wonder why they called him Crush—his hands looked like they could squeeze the air out of her windpipe in a second.

  The club was called the Nocturne. On the intersection of Melrose and Clinton. It was one of those nightspots with no sign out front, so you had to be cool enough to know about it to even know about it. Inside, all was darkness and colored lights and blaring music. Gorgeous young girls and buff young boys trying to convince themselves they were having the time of their lives. The décor was blood red and velvet—Queen Victoria meets Sacher-Masoch—with walls upholstered in brass-studded scarlet leather. The bar itself was a mahogany monstrosity that the owner lifted from some Gold Rush ghost town. It dwarfed the pretty bartender behind it, but Crush, stationed at the east end, was big enough to make even that huge bar look pint-size. In his black T-shirt, fit tightly over his bulging muscles, he faded into the décor, not blending in with the wall but looking like he was the wall. His clean-shaven head had a nasty scar running from above his left eye, across his skull, to the back of his neck, like a racing stripe. Only his startling blue eyes made Amelia think that there was a human being behind the barrier. Crush made no extraneous sounds or movements. Like a good bouncer, he made sure you didn’t notice him unless he wanted you to.

  The bouncer’s eyes took in everything that was going on around him. The gangbangers at the back booth, pounding Cristal. The blonde with the hungry eyes sitting by the bookshelf filled with prop books. The underage boy hitting on the underage girl under the chandelier. The bone-thin network exec and her wing woman at the banquet, trolling for love. The hooker by the men’s room, also trolling for love, though she didn’t know it. The sad drunk at one end of the bar, lost in the world of his shot glass. The confident loser at the other end of the bar, chatting up the bartender as she topped off his mojito. The Latina girl with the God-given ass, attracting too much attention on the dance floor for her boyfriend’s comfort. Crush’s eyes saw them all and gauged their potential for trouble, like a gamer watching the life-bars over characters in a video game.

  The guy hitting on the bartender did a drumroll on the bar and said he’d be right back after he drained the snake.

  The bartender sighed, watching him go. “Five years ago, I was so pretty that guys like that were afraid to talk to me,” she said to Crush. “Now I’m just pretty enough that guys like that want to talk to me. I hate that.”

  Crush nodded but didn’t answer. He and the bartender had the kind of friendship that meant they didn’t have to talk. That’s the kind of friendship he liked.

  Crush had a real name (it was Caleb Rush), but not many people used it. The bartender had a name, too, Catherine Gail. It was Gail who got Rush the job at the club. She was in her mid-thirties, with long black hair shot with a streak of gray, sharp features that got better with age, and a magnificent scar on her lower lip that made men want to take her home and marry her.

  Gail was a taekwondo master “slash” bartender. Everybody was a “slash” something these days, Rush reflected. Who could get by on just one job? He himself had several. It was a “slash” kind of world out there.

  Rush had gone through quite a few martial-arts teachers in his day. He picked things up quickly, so the instructors loved him at first. Then they’d get threatened and try to kick his ass. That wasn’t a good idea. Rush had hurt a lot of martial-arts teachers.

  But with Gail it was different. She was calm, wise, centered, and very Zen. Sort of like a hot version of Master Splinter from the Ninja Turtles. And Rush worshipped her. To most people, he seemed a tough man, but he was humble and obedient when he found someone he truly respected. That had happened once or twice in his thirty years. Those thirty years had been spent in odd ways, doing odd things. Many of them were things that Rush would rather forget.

  On the dance floor, the girl with the God-given ass was displaying her gift a little too aggressively, and one of the other dancers was staring at it—he’d have taken a bite out of it if it had stopped moving long enough for him to get his teeth on it.

  All at once, God-given Ass’s boyfriend was in front of the other guy, claiming his turf. “Are you looking at my girl’s butt?!”

  “It’s looking at me! That butt’s calling my name!”

  The boyfriend threw a punch at the dancer. His fist stopped mid-swing, blocked by a huge hand, Rush’s hand. He had covered the span of the room in the time it took the boyfriend to wind up his punch. Rush twisted the wrist back with the kind of pressure that made the kid think his thumb was about to snap. With his other hand, Crush grabbed the ass-staring-dancer by the throat, hitting a particularly painful Kallaripayattu pressure point, and hauled the two kids out the side exit before most of the people on the dance floor even knew there was trouble. It was because of moments like this that the club owner paid Rush in cash and never bothered about things like withholding taxes or checking his past employment history.

  Rush shoved them out into the night air. Ass Girl joined her boyfriend without missing a beat, asking him where they were going now. When Rush came back into the club, Gail was staring at him, like she was about to give him notes on his technique.

  “Well?” Rush asked.

  “Took too much effort.”

  “I’m not in the dojo.”

  “You’re always in the dojo, Crush. When are you going to learn that?”

  Amelia had watched all this from the safety of a corner in the club with breathless amazement. The bouncer was everything she’d heard he was. He would do fine.

  TWO

  Back in the club, the underage girl was sipping her drink and wondering why there were chunks in it. The pretty studio exec was happily explaining to her wing girl the difference between a starter marriage and a bad first marriage. (“You know it’s a failure going in!”) The drunk at the east end of the bar was asking his shot glass what was wrong with his brain. And Amelia was watching Rush as he took his station again, standing by the bookshelf right next to her.

  Amelia’s clothes were casual, but stylish and clearly expensive. She’d found that balance between looking perfect and looking like she wasn’t trying at all. This was what everybody aimed for and few people achieved. She was cool and easy, and that hungry look in her gray-green eyes only made her more desirable. Her hair was blond (this week) and hung carelessly upon her shoulders.

  What those eyes did was scan the room. They looked the club over in much the same way Rush’s eyes did, looking for something, just like he looked for trouble. But when they scanned to the left, her gaze kept landing on Rush’s belt buckle, right there at eye level. Well, maybe not his belt buckle. But in that general vicinity. She’d look away and look back again, and every time her eyes would land on the bouncer’s crotch, she’d smile a little broader, like she found the situation just plain funny. Pretty soon she was going to have to start laughing. He had a cell phone on his belt buckle, the old-fashioned flip kind. The phone on his belt buckle started blinking. She pretended to be laughing at that.

  “Your crotch is blinking,” she said.

  “It happens,” he said, not even looking down at her. His eyes were on the crowd. Three grab-ass jerks were trash-talking girls as they went into the ladies’ room. Were they going to be trouble? Rush felt the scar on his head itch—his “Spidey sense” was trying to tell him something.

  “Could be family,” the girl said, still watching the blinking phone.

  “Don’t have a family.”

  “Poor orphan boy.”

  She snatched the phone from Rush’s belt holster. He let her take it. She pressed “answer” and held it to her ear. A pretty ear.

  “Hello.”

  “You’re a girl!” said a young man on the other end of
the line.

  The young man was named Zerbe, and he was Rush’s brother. Sort of. Zerbe always called Rush just before midnight. That’s when the walls started closing in on him. Usually Rush didn’t answer, and Zerbe would leave him a rambling message. Sometimes Rush would pick up and tell his brother to leave him alone. But to have a girl answer? That made Zerbe’s week. Hell, that made Zerbe’s month.

  “I know I’m female,” she agreed. “What’s the bouncer’s name?”

  “You don’t want to know him,” Zerbe said. “You want to know me. What’s your name? What are you wearing? What’s your favorite movie?”

  “Don’t get out much, do you?”

  “I never get out. Lemme talk to my brother.”

  Rush was listening to Amelia’s side of the conversation, but his eyes were on the underage girl with the underage boy. The girl was looking sleepy—her head kept lolling back, then jerking awake. The boy was talking a mile a minute.

  “Here,” Amelia said.

  “I didn’t answer it,” Crush said.

  “I did. He says he’s your brother.”

  “That’s his opinion,” Rush said, grabbing the phone. “What’s up?”

  Zerbe didn’t want to tell Rush about the walls closing in—that was old territory—so he just asked him what was going on there.

  Rush read him the room, starting with the gangbangers. “C-Los and his tank are in back. Some assgrabbers by the ladies’. Maybe a rope master in the lounge.” He looked down at Amelia and said, “a pickpocket at the bar.”

  “Not the work shit, the fun shit. Remember fun, Caleb?” Zerbe was the only one who called Rush by his first name—he’d earned the right—and even he only did so on rare occasions. “Tell me about the girl. Her voice sounds blond—is she blond?”

  Rush looked around for the underage girl and her pursuer. They were gone. He tossed the phone back to Amelia.

  “You talk to him,” he told her, then moved off to where the young couple had been sitting. A busgirl was clearing their spot. He stopped her and checked out the girl’s glass. A swirl of bluish backwash remained in the bottom. He hurried out the door, vaulting over the red-velvet rope that kept the hopefuls at bay, and ran into the parking lot.