Fun and Games (13 page)

19

It was a grim, desperate struggle for existence,
and all of a sudden I was stirred by it, excited by its drama,
stirred by its stark, lethal beauty.

—James M. Cain

U
P
?

Up seemed insane. A dead end at the top of some mountain peak. Enough time to touch the
H
in the Hollywood sign before kissing your ass good-bye.

“Trust me,” she said. “I know this area. I used to go running around here all the time.”

“What’s up there?”

“Come on.”

Hardie followed her up a set of concrete stairs that ran away from the castle along the side of one steep slope. Then they were back on Durand Drive and headed up again. None of this made sense. Who the fuck designed Hollywood, anyway—M. C. Escher? Homes were stacked on either side of the road, offering a corridor of sorts. And the road kept climbing up, up, up. The ascent was hard, sweaty work—definitely not something a man who’s been skewered and poisoned and choked and nearly burned to death should be doing. Hardie was about to complain, when he saw that Lane was still limping, biting her lip with every step. She was suffering, too.

As they walked past windows, Hardie imagined one of their surprise tormentors popping out of a window, bow and arrow or some other crazy weapon in their hands
(Why didn’t they carry guns? What the hell was it about guns?)
, ready to take them both out. Halfway up, Charlie realized how hard his heart was pounding, how much his lungs were burning and heaving. Steep fucking steps. Lane, meanwhile, who didn’t have nearly as much muscle, bone, and fat to transport, darted up like a dragonfly skimming the surface of a pond.

“Hang on,” Hardie said. His chest wound was killing him, his thighs ached, and he was so incredibly light-headed that at any given moment, that hazy feeling in his skull threatened to transmogrify into a giant rock, and then his head would slam into the ground, his body following.

Lane said, “We’ll rest at the top.”

Up.

Why the hell were they headed up instead of down?

Lane had quickly explained: the killers probably
expected
them to go back down. This was a canyon; all roads funneled back to Franklin, and it was easy to have that covered. But if they continued up into the hills, they could dart around the Lake Hollywood Reservoir and sneak back down on the Burbank side—and then find someplace to hide and sort everything out.

Burbank? Charlie thought. Wasn’t that an entirely different city? Not even in Los Angeles?

But he said nothing and followed her up, up, up. This was Lane’s town. What the hell did he know, other than that he’d just fucked up royally. Sure, a house he’d watched had burned before. But back then, he had saved boxes of irreplaceable items from the soon-to-be-burned-out shell. (Like the stuff in his missing carry-on.) Hardie hadn’t saved jack shit from the Lowenbruck house.

“Why don’t we bang on somebody’s door and have them call the police?”

“You saw what they’re capable of, Charlie. Yeah, we might get a cop sent out here. But they might intercept the call and send a bunch of their own guys in uniform. And then we’re done.”

Hardie hated to admit she was right—God, it was all so
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Trust no one! Warn everyone you see! Look out for trucks full of mysterious-looking pods! But she did have a point. There was only one man he really trusted. And Hardie wanted to make sure they were somewhere safe and quiet before he made that call.

“So, what then?”

“We keep going and go somewhere I can think.”

“You mean we keep going up.”

“Yeah.”

Across the street, O’Neal watched the firefighters continue their work on the house with hoses and water, soaking the living fuck out of everything in sight. They didn’t want to be the ones to let this blaze run loose up and down the hills. Mother Nature was bad enough with her cleansing fires. There was no room on the schedule for stupid accidental house fires.

O’Neal stood on the side of the road, pretending to be a land-scaper doing a little rubbernecking. Pretty soon he would be shooed away—already he was getting the eye from the captain on site. They needed eyes inside the house, badly. It was possible that Madden and Hardie had found really, really great hiding spots, so good that even the firefighters hadn’t been able to find their bodies yet. But that seemed highly unlikely. You’re stuck in the middle of a fire, you don’t go hiding. You try to get out, at all costs.

Look at the 9/11 jumpers. O’Neal thought that pretty much said it all.

Rather than attract more attention, O’Neal climbed into the driver’s seat, adjusted his mirrors, then started the van. He drove up Durand until he reached the point where the road met the downward-sloping hill, then made a hard right, gunning it up the hill until he reached the giant wrought-iron gates that stood in front of the road leading to the Smiley Castle.

O’Neal had been to a party at the castle a bunch of years ago—before he was part of the Industry and still had his mind on movie dreams. He remembered the crazy drive up to the main house and thinking he’d landed on Mars, not in the Hollywood Hills. He’d spent much of the party buzzed by the history of the place.

Pulling a pair of bolt cutters from the back, O’Neal quickly snipped the chains locking the gates, pulled the loose strands free, curled them up into a heavy ball, then tucked them behind a bush. Construction crews toiled on this place nonstop during the week, but it was Saturday. Day off.

Then he gunned the van up the long hill to the castle at the top. At least up here nobody would be able to see him, and maybe he could set up some surveillance from a turret or something. Give this whole operation a little class.

While waiting for word from O’Neal, Mann allowed herself a glass of water from the kitchen tap. Her stomach rumbled, but she didn’t dare open a cabinet to scavenge for food. There was already so much to clean up, to reinvent, to explain, to fix. This production should have been over last night. There was no excuse for why it had taken so long, other than dumb, rotten luck. Until today, Mann had always believed that you make your own luck, you create your own fate. Now she wasn’t too sure.

She took a final swallow of warm water, decided against having another glass, then used a soft terry-cloth towel to wipe away any finger-and lip prints before she replaced the glass in the cabinet with its mates.

The longer she waited, the longer she just postponed the inevitable—the report to the Industry office, the request for an additional cleanup budget, over and beyond what was already ear-marked.

She took out her cell and dialed DG&A.

They’d probably want to take her off tonight’s job. But there was one card left to play, and that was the fact that the other production was already moving along, and it would be impossible to pull back now. Doing so would be shortsighted and unproductive. She conceived it; she had to be on the scene to follow it through.

Would that be enough?

She’d soon know.

O’Neal pulled the scanner out of the dash and hooked it to his belt. No sign of any other bodies in the house, which was really starting to bother him. The rescue teams should have found something by now. Even a pair of barbecued bodies.

Then again, he and A.D. weren’t able to find the actress when they did a full sweep of the house. They’d been interrupted by Hardie, but still—they
should
have found her. What were they missing? What was wrong with this picture?

A small, paranoid part of O’Neal wondered if the actress had even been inside. He hadn’t laid eyes on her since the chase through the canyon. Mann said she’d heard her voice, using the wall-penetrating omnidirectional mics, but that sound could have been something else. Someone else.

Was she inside?

Or had she already escaped them hours ago?

Oh, for this fucking day to be over. The original production should have wrapped in a matter of seconds. Now it had ballooned into this big, sprawling, opened-ended thing—the worst kind of production. He’d been on a few messy jobs before, but nothing like this.

Well, nothing to do but listen. Maybe he could get a few questions answered once he was on top of this castle.

O’Neal was about to step out of the van, when the front door of the castle burst open and two firefighters came stumbling outside. They seemed confused, as if they’d spent the last few minutes in a carnival funhouse, forced their way through a small door, and ended up in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Smoke poured out behind the firefighters; the entire first floor seemed like it was engulfed.

Was the castle on fire, too?

No. That didn’t make sense, unless a ribbon of fire had leaped over Alta Brea Drive and crashed down on the roof of the Smiley Castle like a flaming meteor. The wheels in O’Neal’s mind spun, and after a few seconds he suddenly understood—both the presence of smoke and why they hadn’t found any bodies yet. O’Neal pulled the van door shut and, shifting gears, hauled ass down the front driveway and rocketed back up Durand Drive.

“Mann, I think I know where they are.”

Static popped in his ear. “How sure are you?”

O’Neal quickly explained what he’d seen, what he thought.

“How the fuck did we miss this?” Mann asked.

“Don’t know, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“I’ll be right up.”

“No time. I’m already on my way.”

As Hardie chugged up past the intersection of Durand and Heather, he noticed someone had mounted three signs—bright yellow triangles, each with the image of a stick figure falling. He asked Lane to hang on for a minute. They paused in front of the signs to give Hardie a chance to catch his breath. He leaned forward, pressed down on the tops of his thighs, then straightened up again.

“Is that a joke?” Hardie asked. “Do people actually fall off the road enough to warrant a goddamned traffic sign?”

“No, it’s real,” Lane said. “I read about these. A while back a guy on a bike took a spill. Ended up paralyzed and filed a lawsuit against the homeowners in the area. So they put up these signs.”

After a few seconds of frenzied rest, they continued their ascent, up the winding road. Dirt spilled out from the cracked and broken sides of the road, as if the hills were slowly trying to shuck themselves of the asphalt.

Each time Hardie felt like they’d finally reached the peak, there would be another bend in the road, and he’d see more of Durand curving up into the sky. There were no other pedestrians. Just houses, with no signs of life inside them, and cars wedged in every available space.

“We’re almost at the reservoir.”

Finally, across a valley and through the haze, he could see the ghostly letters of the Hollywood sign. Durand’s name changed at some point. Hardie missed the sign, if there even was one. But now he felt like he was at the top of all of creation. Behind him, Mt. Lee and the sign. In front of him, shimmering in the woozy afternoon, was downtown Los Angeles, so faint as to almost seem like a matte painting or a special effect. And in front of it was the promised reservoir—big and blue and looking like the only refreshing thing for miles.

Hardie followed Lane to a strip of honest-to-god sidewalk, which ran along the rim of an overgrown canyon. That said, it barely qualified as a place for pedestrians to walk. The paving was so narrow and so close to the road, Hardie found himself turning his head every ten seconds, to avoid being sideswiped by the cars that would appear out of nowhere. Where the fuck were they coming from? A parking garage behind the
H
in the Hollywood sign?

You had to be careful, too. One good slip and down you would go, all the way to… Hardie glanced down and saw a little park where people walked dogs, and little blobs that must be children raced around. So random. Just like the rest of this city.

“All we have to do is make our way down there,” Lane said. “There’s gotta be someone with a phone. We find a phone, we call my manager, and we’ll be okay.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. This is almost over.”

Yeah, Hardie thought, just like my house-sitting career. This is the second house I’ve let burn. Got a free pass on the first one. This one—with all the fancy studio equipment inside? He doubted that Andrew Lowenbruck would be all that understanding.

Of course, it was kind of absurd to be worried about a career when you were being hunted by a group of secret killers.

Hardie must have been slowing down, because Lane prodded him:

“Come on, keep moving.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Hardie threw a glance over his shoulder, then took another step, and then…

Wait, what?

There was a white van rushing down the road. Fast. Right at them.

“Fuck!”

“What?”

In that instant there was nothing Hardie could do but push Lane and send her over the edge and then send himself right after her.

O’Neal hit the tiny curb and bounced and cut the wheel hard to the left. He had to fight to keep the van from bouncing right over the edge of the road into the canyon. What had seemed like a flash of brilliance—gunning it and spooking the actress and Hardie right over the edge—now seemed like the stupidest damn thing he’d ever done, because it would do his career no good to end up dead and upside down in the middle of a fucking park.

The van clung to the road, though. O’Neal stomped down on the brakes and brought it to a shuddering halt and immediately, without much thought, jumped into the back to grab a wasp pistol. Same principle as the wasp’s nest, only in portable form, with a spray range of about fifteen feet. He pulled a box of vials from a cubby, then loaded the pistol with four shots. Then he stepped out of the van. Time to end this.

And then something slammed into his face.

Which would be Hardie’s fist.

Which happened to be studded with cacti spines, and Hardie hoped it hurt like fuck. Because it had hurt like fuck to reach out and grab hold of something,
anything
… and realize that it was full of sharp needles. It hurt even more to scramble up through a field of fucking cacti to make it back to the pavement.