Fun and Games (16 page)

The world ended.

Lane saw the white ball spinning, slowly making its way to the opposite curb.

He cursed.

He looked around.

He cursed again.

He put the car in reverse.

Lane screaming, WHAT ARE YOU DOING

He raced around the kid and rocketed the rest of the way up the street, even though doors were opening all around them.

WE CAN’T WE CAN’T

She looked back and saw his little body and she screamed again, but they were cut off by a hairpin turn to the right, and then everything receded into the distance.

Hardie’s fingers touched his Manhattan, but he didn’t lift the drink from the table. He watched her as she spoke. Low tones, quiet and calm, as if she had been rehearsing this tale ever since it happened. But she wasn’t acting—there was a difference. She wasn’t becoming someone else. This was the real her, beneath everything else. Letting it all go.

“They never caught you,” Hardie said.

“They never caught us,” she said, “because of the Accident People.”

He called his manager.

His manager gave him shit right away—Lane could tell, even hearing just one side of the conversation. But Blond Viking God put the manager back in his place and made his wishes explicitly clear:

GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS.

See, the Blond Viking God could not be wrapped up in a manslaughter trial. The Blond Viking God had a full slate, and nothing could stop that without the risk of losing a ridiculous amount of money. Even Blond Viking God’s death wouldn’t stop the production of the next six films—two of them summer tent-poles—because, by God, the money men would find a way to reanimate his fucking corpse to finish them.

And the manager understood that.

So the manager advised his client:

HIDE

And then he called the studio’s lawyers, who got word to the top, and it was deemed important enough to bring in the Accident People.

By then Blond Viking God had taken them all the way out beyond the San Bernadinos; they were directed to a garage in Chatsworth. The car would have to be destroyed; the studio was already arranging for a duplicate to be delivered to Lane’s Venice address. They were cleaned up, given new clothes. They were told to never, ever speak of this. Because it didn’t happen. It would be erased.

The Accident People asked the Blond Viking God for his precise route. A third car was procured—same make, same model, same color. Two actors were hired. They drove around Sherman Oaks recklessly, then disappeared.

By seven p.m. they were having drinks at the Standard, having arrived there in Blond Viking God’s own car (which had been delivered from Santa Monica). Cameras flashed; the music was throbbing. Friends were there. They asked how it felt to have a day or two off, wow, what did you do? They told their friends what the Accident People had suggested: just fucking around all day at Lane’s place in Venice.

Lane was quiet but compliant. She drank and tried to will her hands to STOP SHAKING.

At the same time, the duplicate car, with stand-ins, was cruising around Studio City. The Accident People listened. The police received calls—reports of someone driving a vehicle like a maniac around their neighborhood. The hit-and-run was huge news. The victim, an eight-year-old boy, had died at the scene. The description of the car had gone out wide. Police vowed to catch these “animals.”

The Accident People took care of the loose ends with piles of cash. The car dealer: silenced. The director: silenced—and he didn’t even need the incentive. There was no upside to having your movie’s star arrested for manslaughter.

Lane’s hands didn’t stop shaking for days.

Not long after, she and the Blond Viking God split. She stopped calling him, he stopped wondering if she’d call. Still, they were considered a “hot couple” by the various celebrity mags for the next nine months.

Lane went to her manager, told him she didn’t know if she could do this. The manager said there wasn’t a choice.

The studio threw a ton of work at her. Action movies. Something different for her. Lane thought she’d hate it. Turned out she loved it. Loved the preparation, the intensity, the physicality, the mindlessness of it all.

She did that for two years.

Then, about a year ago, she caught sight of a billboard for a new reality show:

The Truth Hunters.

It was
America’s Most Wanted 2.0
—a fugitive-catching show mashed together with
Unsolved Mysteries
and forensic supercop and cold case dramas. All of it one hundred percent true. Each installment had a single sponsor. The sponsor gave a pile of cash. The producers handpicked cases. The cash was used to reopen the investigation and
get things done.
Stage new forensics tests. New lab reports. New photographs. New simulations.

Famously, the executive producer, Jonathan Hunter, did not take a dime from the show; he claimed to use every available resource to catch “people who thought they could get away with it.” He lived in the same, slightly cramped Studio City home that he and his wife, Evelyn, had purchased back in the late 1980s; the family was supported by his wife’s income. But what really touched the hearts of viewers was the fact that Jonathan Hunter knew what it was like to have an unsolved case eat away at your soul. His son Kevin had been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver one afternoon two years before.

Lane told Hardie:

“We’re the ones who did it.”

And with that billboard on Sunset Boulevard began Lane’s final descent.

Now Lane prepared for it—the look of sheer hatred that she’d somehow managed to avoid for the past three years. The judgment, the fury, the disgust. The punishment. Boil it down and Lane realized it was just like being a kid, where the thing you fear the most is
getting in trouble.

Instead, Hardie said:

“We should go.”

22

The world is divided into three classes of people:
a very small group that makes things happen
a somewhat larger group that watches things happen
and the great multitude which never knows what happened.

—Nicholas Murray Butler

T
HE NAME
on the cell phone display screen: DGA.

Code for Doyle, Gedney and Abrams, the law firm that acted as the intermediary between Mann and her Industry employers. She knew the call was coming. That didn’t make answering the phone any easier.

“This is Mann.”

“Gedney. We see the job from earlier this morning still isn’t finished, the second job is looming. We’re worried you have too much on your plate.”

“I can finish both.”

“You can? Are you certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“Same time frame?”

“The same.”

Never mind that DG&A gave her almost no prep time on this. Zero. Just a call last Saturday giving her the basics: two jobs, and we’d like an operational plan by the end of the day. Sure, no problem, not doing anything else, anyway. A half hour later a courier delivered two thick bio packets. One containing a full rundown on Lane Madden. The other a family of four, with the father involved in television, extremely high-profile, special treatment needed.

Mann spent the next five hours sketching out an operational plan for the family. Their deaths couldn’t be something stupid like a gas explosion or a car wreck because of the nature of the father’s work. It needed to be logical, compelling, and absolute—no room for conspiracy theories. Mann believed she did her best work under pressure, and by the end of the brainstorming session, she was fairly proud of what she’d concocted. It would mean a lot of work behind the scenes, but it was well worth it.

Planning the Lane Madden job, on the other hand, took about five minutes.

After speeding through the bio materials DG&A had sent, Mann decided on a Sleeping Beauty. Actors were usually easy, and Lane Madden’s recent career highlights made it even easier.

Three years ago she’d been involved in a hit-and-run accident. Doyle, Gedney and Abrams had hired a director to wipe it from existence. Madden was sworn to secrecy.

After two years of roles in back-to-back action blockbusters—some that performed okay, the rest abysmal bombs—Madden cracked. An arrest on drug-related charges. A failed stint in a drug-treatment program was followed by another arrest, this time for drunk-and-disorderly behavior. While on bail, Madden was arrested on still another drug charge when her room at the Fairmont Miramar was searched following an anonymous 911 tip. Thanks to California Prop 36, she was given probation instead of jail time. She was also forced to wear an alcohol-and-drug-monitoring bracelet.

(Mann couldn’t help but smile at that one. It made her even easier to track.)

After that final indignity, reported pretty much everywhere—and with much gusto—Lane appeared to find Jesus. She cleaned up. The press hounded her, but the new Lane appeared to be the real thing. Rumor had it she was seeing someone, but nobody could pin down a name or a face. For the past three months, no lapses, no arrests. And then, just last week, there was a job offer, her first in a year, and not a stupid action movie. A serious role, portraying a single mother in an adaptation of the bestselling novel
Blood Will Out.
Things looked up for Lane Madden.

And now she had to die.

Because while she may have found Jesus, she’d also discovered a penchant for confession. The past three years had been a living hell for her, she told her new boyfriend, composer Andrew Lowenbruck. She’d thrown herself into work for nearly two years straight, appearing in pretty much everything her manager could dig up for her. As long as she was working, she didn’t care what it was. But then she saw that
Truth Hunters
billboard; something in her snapped. The drinking started shortly thereafter in a hotel room, first with two mini-bottles of vodka, followed by two mini-bottles of rum, followed by a small bottle of white wine, followed by a room-service order of a salad with lite Caesar dressing and two bottles of Grey Goose. And then finally a phone call to an old connection, and down she went, right into the scandal sites and entertainment mags.

Was anybody really going to question her overdosing after a party late one California night?

Not even her manager would blink. (That is, if her manager weren’t already beholden to Doyle, Gedney—client loyalty was one thing, but agency loyalty was another.)

“Restore some confidence in me,” Gedney said now. “Because from where I’m sitting, we have an actress who’s gone public, and who right now might be going to the media. We also have a van packed with your toys in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard.”

“Taking care of the van already,” Mann said. “A friend in the LAPD is keeping it tucked away and off the books.”

“And the target?”

“We know where they are, and we will pin them down shortly,” Mann said. “Once we have them isolated, I already have a new narrative that will explain today’s events.”

“You do.”

“Yes.”

“And this Charles Hardie? What do you know about him?”

Mann didn’t want to tell them the truth: that she had Factboy digging up everything on Hardie, hoping to find some kind of L.A. connection aside from his house-sitting gigs, maybe a retired cop he knew and trusted, or a family member somewhere in Southern California. Hardie of all people knew you couldn’t just disappear.

“I’m not worried about Hardie. He’s wounded and has few friends out here. Or anywhere, for that matter.”

Gedney said nothing. Mann hated that worst of all.

“This will work,” Mann said, hating the sound of pleading that was creeping into her voice.

“Don’t fuck it up. You know what’s on the line.”

“Of course.”

The trip was over; Mrs. Factboy was tired of Factboy’s stomach issues and decided to call it quits. Back home in Flagstaff, the kids ran around outside like maniacs while he finally was able to dig deeper into the Charles Hardie mythos. Nice to use a desktop instead of a phone. After hours of that, his finger muscles felt like they were going to permanently seize up.

What Factboy was able to crack open in fifteen minutes was disturbing.

What was even more disturbing: the stuff he couldn’t crack open.

“Listen to this,” he told Mann. He spoke quickly, but concisely:

“Charlie Hardie was never a cop. Never wore a badge, never did so much as a single push-up at the academy. The ‘consultant’ thing isn’t exactly accurate either. According to sealed grand jury testimony, Hardie acted as the Philadelphia PD’s secret gunslinger, tacitly approved by high department brass. When a door needed kicking in, they called for Hardie. When a witness needed to be kept safe until trial, they asked Hardie to step in. And sometimes, when the law considered itself impotent in the face of some greater threat, and a force of evil needed to be eliminated, they handed the gun to Hardie.”

This was not explicitly stated in the grand jury testimony, Factboy said, but you could easily read between the lines.

“Hardie’s handler and ‘rabbi’—the man who brought him in—was a legendary detective named Nathaniel Parish. The two had grown up together in a rough neighborhood on the fringes of North Philadelphia. Each had taken his separate career path until they met up one night nine years ago when Hardie came back to the old neighborhood and found himself at war with a drug gang on a witness-intimidation kick. By the time Parish arrived at the scene, Hardie was in a rowhome, surrounded by bodies, drenched in blood that was not his own, having tea with the owner of that rowhome—an eighty-four-year-old witness to an arson/torture/murder. They were talking about the old days, Hardie even chuckling, despite the carnage around him. Parish arrested him, but all records of the arrest were destroyed. In exchange, Hardie agreed to work with Parish. And in Philadelphia, there was much work to be done.

“I’ve got most of their secret case files,” Factboy said. “You could write a series of novels based on these damned things.”

This highly illegal strange partnership, born of a massacre in the heart of the city, came to an end in another massacre—almost three years ago to the day. “I told you all about that thing,” Factboy said. “His origin story, if you will.”

“Uh-huh.”

“In the aftermath, it was left to a fed named Deacon Clark to pick up the pieces. He helped Hardie’s family go ghost and acted as a conduit between husband and wife. Whatever money Hardie made as a house sitter, he sent the bulk of it to his family.”

“We can get to the family,” Mann said. “We have their address.”

“Uh,” Factboy said, “that address turned out to be Clark’s home. I haven’t been able to dig up the real address yet.”

“You will. And if not you, somebody else.”

Factboy didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. He deided to change the subject slightly.

“There’s something else.”

“Right,” Mann said. “The thing I won’t believe.”

“Well, before he hooked up with Parish and became this unofficial gunslinger guy for the cops? Charles Hardie didn’t exist. Not for, oh, ten years. We have birth records, vaccinations, grade school, high school… and then nothing. No military, no taxes, nothing. They’ve made it look like these records were destroyed in a flood, but it’s impossible to have nothing for a ten-year period.”

“You’re right. It is impossible.”

“Not for lack of trying, I’m telling you.”

“Forget that for now. I don’t care about what he did ten years ago. I want to know what he’s going to do now. Who he’ll call when he’s in trouble. This Deacon Clark sounds like the man.”

“Agreed,” said Factboy. “Which is why I’m already tapping his phones, e-mail, both at home and at the office.”

Outside, one of his kids—Factboy really couldn’t tell which one when they were being this loud—shrieked and slammed something heavy into the side of the house.