Heart attack and vine, p.1
Heart Attack and Vine, page 1
ADVANCE PRAISE
“Sly, knowing, and hilarious, Heart Attack and Vine is a perfect caper book set inside Hollywood’s Dream Factory that just screams ‘movie!’ 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 crime novelist and editor of the Edgar-winning anthology Los Angeles Noir
“Like Kurt Vonnegut and T. Jefferson Parker teamed up to write a mystery.”
— W.L. Ripley, author of the Wyatt Storme mysteries
“Crush is back in town, and the Hollywood sign is in wicked, Technicolor flames. Phoef Sutton’s rabid charmers break hearts and redden all carpets, and his pages fly by on winds of wit. This sly writing has Chandler cross-hairs and is pure, CGI-free magic.”
— Richard Christian Matheson, Amazon #1 bestselling author of Dystopia and Hell Comes to Hollywood
“Insanely fun and readable. Sutton writes like a great raconteur tells a story.”
— Hart Hanson, writer/creator of Bones
PRAISE FOR CRUSH
A Kirkus 2015 Best Mystery/Thriller
“As slick as a switchblade with a pearl handle.”
— Lee Child, New York Times–bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels
“With nonstop action and variations on the man-with-a-gun distraction that go Chandler one better, Crush is also an homage of sorts to Chandler’s pulp fiction and, moreover, Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction. Like Leonard, Sutton writes great dialogue and lavishes almost as much care and attention on his villains as he does his heroes.”
— Los Angeles Times
“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
“Tailor-made for the big screen.”
— Publishers Weekly
“A swagger of a book whose ironic tone reveals the author’s past… Literate dialogue among the karate kicks and snapped forearms makes this an easy sell to anyone seeking a sassy diversion.”
— Booklist
Copyright © 2016 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
Names: Sutton, Phoef, author.
Title: Heart attack and vine: a Crush novel / by Phoef Sutton.
Description: Altadena: Prospect Park Books, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016020626 | ISBN 9781938849695 (e-book)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3569.U896 H43 2016 | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020626
HEARTATTACK AND VINE, written by Tom Waits © 1980 JALMA MUSIC (ASCAP) for USA and Fifth Floor Music Inc.
(ASCAP) for Canada. Lines from song used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Howard Grossman
Book layout and design by Amy Inouye
ALSO BY PHOEF SUTTON
Crush
Curious Minds (with Janet Evanovich)
Wicked Charms (with Janet Evanovich)
Reborn: A Dead Man Adventure (with Kate Danley and Lisa Klink)
15 Minutes to Live
The Dead Man: The Midnight Special
To my daughters, Skylar and Celia,
the brightest stars in my sky
“Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, there’s just God when he’s drunk”
—“Heartattack and Vine,” Tom Waits
CONTENTS
BROADWAY
CHAPTER ONE
BLUE JAY WAY
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROYAL STREET
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HOLLYWOOD AND VINE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BROADWAY
CHAPTER ONE
April, Three Years Ago
I hate LA,” Rachel said as she traced a thin black line with her paintbrush onto the white tile that lined the face of the Feingold’s Deli stall in bustling Grand Central Market. “What I love is Los Angeles.”
She pronounced it with a hard “g,” the way people did in the 1930s. “Los Ang-a-lees.” With her short-cropped hair, bleached a platinum blond, and her white blouse, Rachel looked like she could have been an extra in an old gangster movie herself. Only the Bluetooth headset clipped to her ear and the snake tattoo on her arm spoiled the illusion.
“I hate the new Hollywood Boulevard. And I hate what they’re doing to Los Feliz and West Hollywood and all the faux-hip shops in Silver Lake,” she said as she continued to paint graffiti on the front of Feingold’s. “What I love is downtown Los Angeles, in all its messy glory. That’s the real City of Angels, Crush.”
Crush was the street name of Caleb Rush. Crush was sitting at a table in front of the Sticky Rice stall, munching on a mess of smelly fried smelt with dipping sauce, Bluetooth nestled in his ear, chatting with Rachel over the airwaves, watching her from the corner of his eye so as not to make it too apparent that they were talking to each other. Rachel was paying good coin for Crush to keep an eye on her, and that’s what Crush was doing.
“God, I hate hipsters,” Rachel said with a sigh. “They’re ruining this town.” Crush grunted an agreement while he half-watched her trace retro-style sketches of deli sandwiches on Feingold’s façade—graffiti made to order.
Rachel Fury was in her early twenties. With her black eyeliner and blue nail polish, she looked like a poster child for the hipster generation. No one hates hipsters more than hipsters, Crush thought. Rachel was a part-time artist, part-time actress, and full-time grifter.
“We’re the last of a dying breed, Crush,” she said, using his nickname. Crush was ambivalent about the name, but he still answered to it.
“What breed is that?” he asked.
“Hired guns.”
“I don’t use a gun.”
“Neither do I,” Rachel said. “I meant it metaphorically. My guns are my brushes. My guns are my way with words. Oh, and my dark, mysterious eyes. Those are my guns, too.”
“Okay,” Crush said, just to pass the time. “What are my guns?”
“Your guns are you, Crush. You’re your own guns.”
Crush dipped some more fish in the spicy sauce and took in his surroundings. Grand Central Market was the innards of Los Angeles. The stomach and lower intestines of the town. A city block, sandwiched between the faded glory of the Million Dollar Theatre and Mexican shops that sold votive candles and statues of saints. Recently renovated, the market housed under one roof dozens of stalls featuring everything anyone would want to eat, drink, or ingest. There were delis frequented by thirty-year-old Jews and taco stands where Mexican immigrants actually ate. There were stalls that sold traditional Chinese medicine, kept in dusty vials that looked like they had been there since the turn of the last century. There were trendy hot spots for trendy hipsters, like kombucha bars and artisanal-chocolate shops.
On one side was Broadway, but not the bustling Broadway of New York—the run-down, seedy Broadway of LA. On the other side, the market opened onto the hillside that was once Bunker Hill but was now just the funicular railway called Angel’s Flight, whose slanted cars took the trip up the steep route to California Plaza and the swooping walls of Disney Hall—that is, when they weren’t closed for safety reasons, which they usually were.
“Mark my words, Crush,” Rachel said. “In two years all the old, dirty, sleazy storefronts in this place are going to be closed, and there’ll be nothing but latte shops, organic cheeses, and pressed-juice stands. It’s the way of the world.”
Someone walking through the crowded aisles between the market stands caught Crush’s eye and made the hair on his arms stand up. It wasn’t that the man was particularly threatening. He was tall and slender, with neatly groomed hair, a gray sportcoat, and an attaché case, like a time traveler from the sixties. The way he looked around with hooded eyes, as if he were a predator seeking prey, sent a warning signal to Crush.
“Principal is approaching,” Crush said into his headset with practiced calmness.
Rachel got excited. “Groovy,” she said, putting her brush in a jar of water on the counter and waiting for the man to come up to her. “Meet you back at my apartment.” She pulled the Bluetooth headset from her ear.
Crush reached in the pocket of his black hoodie and checked the envelope Rachel ha d given him. He didn’t know what was in it. He wasn’t being paid to know. He was just being paid to make the transfer. Getting up and throwing the leavings of the fried fish away, he walked over to the deli stand and made as if he were looking at the little blackboard with the daily specials, pointedly ignoring Rachel, who stood next to him, washing out her brushes and singing “California Dreaming” softly to herself.
Sportcoat sidled up to Rachel and backed her into the counter in a way that was both casual and threatening. “Hello, Bridget.”
So Rachel was “Bridget” to Sportcoat. Interesting. She’d been Rachel Fury to Crush for as long as he could remember, but at the Nocturne, the nightclub where Crush was a bouncer on the weekends, she was “Layla Lowenstein.” A girl like Rachel made up a new identity to fit every occasion.
“Do you have it?” Sportcoat said, letting his briefcase thud like a pendulum against the deli counter.
Crush came up to Sportcoat and tapped him on the shoulder. Not in a particularly aggressive way. Caleb Rush was six-foot-five, two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, in a tight black T-shirt and hoodie. His clean-shaven head had a nasty scar running from above his left eye across his skull. He didn’t have to act aggressively. His physical presence was threat enough.
“You’re not dealing with her,” Crush said. “You’re dealing with me. I have what you want.”
Sportcoat looked at Crush and tried very hard not to look intimidated. “That wasn’t part of the deal,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and putting his hand on an object that Crush thought might be a gun.
“It’s part of the deal now,” Crush said, in an even tone. “Come on.” If Sportcoat had a gun, that meant he was expecting trouble, but he’d have been expecting trouble from Rachel, not from a mean piece of a work like Crush.
As he often did, Crush wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. He was a part-timer himself, and one of his trades was doing odd jobs for friends and family. Rachel was one of those. She’d asked him to handle the transfer of an unnamed object to an unnamed buyer. Rachel was infamous for her transactions, usually of stolen or illegally obtained merchandise. Crush had no moral objections to Rachel’s deals, legitimate or otherwise. She was family, sort of, and her money was good. End of story.
But the first thing he had to do was get Sportcoat away from Rachel and out of this crowd of people. If Sportcoat was going to use his gun, Crush wanted him alone, with no bystanders, innocent or otherwise. Crush turned and walked through the crowd, not looking back to see if Sportcoat was following. Crush was willing him away.
Walking to a side exit tucked away between a cheese store and a coffee shop, Crush pushed through a door and into a small hallway lit by flickering fluorescent light. The hallway felt small and dingy after the roomy cacophony of the market. He heard footsteps clicking behind him. A man’s step. Crossing to another door, Crush swung it open and entered a dark corridor. Its walls were covered with red floral wallpaper, faded and peeling, a relic of a gaudier, flashier past. They had entered the neighboring building, the illustrious Million Dollar Theatre.
Built in 1918 by Sid Grauman and designed by Albert Martin, it was LA’s first grand movie palace. A mad mix of Spanish Colonial and Churrigueresque fantasy, it had stood for nearly a hundred years, doing service as a movie theater, a jazz club, a Mexican vaudeville house, and a Spanish-language church. Now it stood empty, waiting for a savior or a wrecking ball.
Walking through the dark wings of the theater, Crush headed onto the stage in front of the tattered movie screen. His way was lit by a ghost light—a single bulb in a small wire cage set on a pole in the middle of the stage. The ghost light was a theatrical tradition, an offering to the twin show business deities of superstition and safety.
The theater was inky dark and silent, a cathedral to the business of motion picture exhibition. The vast expanse of seats lay before Crush like an unexplored cavern, and the proscenium rose high above him. Longhorn skulls and Aztec gods stared down from the ornate arch. Crush walked several steps past the ghost light and turned around.
Sportcoat was standing about ten feet behind him. The ghost light stood between them like a referee at a prizefight. “Are we there yet?” Sportcoat asked.
“Yes,” Crush said. “Do you have the money?”
“Not so fast. Let’s get acquainted first. What do they call you?”
“Busy,” Crush said. “Let’s get this done.”
“Okay, Busy,” Sportcoat said. “Mr. Emmerich just calls me ‘Bub.’”
Mr. Emmerich? He said the name as if Crush should be familiar with it. He didn’t know Crush was just a hired intermediary, and Crush wasn’t about to clue him in.
“All right, Bub.” Unzipping his hoodie, Crush pulled the package out. It was a plain manila envelope, flat and unimpressive. “Do you have the money or not?”
“I have it.” Bub set the briefcase down on the wooden stage. “Shall we count three and push?”
“Do we really have to?”
“Mr. Emmerich is fond of ceremony.”
“All right,” Crush said, crouching down and placing the envelope on the stage. “One, two, three.”
Crush slid the envelope across to Bub, and Bub slid the briefcase to Crush. Grabbing the briefcase, Crush opened it and saw that it was filled with bundles of twenty-dollar bills. A lot of bundles. There must have been a hundred thousand dollars in there. Rachel was only paying Crush five hundred to make this exchange. His roommate was right—he really had to start being a better businessman.
He looked up to see Bub examining the contents of the envelope Crush had given him. “Doesn’t seem worth it,” he said. “But like Grandma used to say, it takes all kinds of crazy people to make a crazy world.”
“Your grandma was a smart woman,” Crush said.
“You wouldn’t say that if you met my grandpa.”
Crush shut the briefcase and stood up. The transaction was complete. No gunplay had been necessary. He considered that a success.
“Now,” Crush said, “I leave first. You follow.”
“Whatever you say.”
It didn’t really make any difference who led and who followed, but Crush knew that it did matter that he stayed in charge. He walked, covering the distance between them in firm, steady strides. A thought occurred to him when he was opposite the ghost light. He stopped, set the briefcase down on the stage, and opened it.
The bundles of cash looked impressive. He picked one up and flipped through it, like a magician rifling through a deck of cards. The top two bills were real American money. The rest of the bundle was made of cut-up newspaper.
He glanced up at Bub. And at the gun in his hand.
“You had to look, didn’t you?” Bub asked.
“I really did. Was this your idea or Mr. Emmerich’s?” Crush gestured to the newspaper money.
“Mr. Emmerich thought it would be funny. I’m going to walk away now,” Bub said. “You’re not going to follow me. Is that understood?”
“Of course. There’s no need anyway.”
Bub turned to walk off. Then he turned back. “What do you mean?”
“You know Bridget,” Crush said. “If Mr. Emmerich cheated her, don’t you think she planned on cheating him?”
Bub eyed Crush. “Go on.”
“Do you really think that’s the genuine article you have in your hand?” Crush had no idea what the genuine article was, of course, but he was pretty sure that whatever Rachel was selling was fake. It was just her way.
Bub maneuvered the manila envelope open again and looked at the contents. Crush could see that they looked like old government documents, marked with a rubber stamp in red ink. Bub licked his thumb and rubbed the red marking. His thumb left a bloody red smear.
“It’s a fake!” he said, affronted.
“That’s fake. These are fake,” Crush said, pointing to the bundles in the attaché case. “We’re even.”
“I don’t think Mr. Emmerich will see it that way,” Bub said. “You picked the wrong man to fuck with.”
“I didn’t pick anybody. I’m just a delivery man.”
“We both know better than that.” Bub walked closer and kicked the attaché case closed. “Pick it up for me.”
“There’s a couple of hundred real dollars in there,” Crush said. “Don’t I get to keep that?”
