Fun and Games (5 page)

Within minutes of arriving at the South Rim, Factboy started having panic attacks. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, though the mile plunge to the bottom of the canyon was kind of terrifying. Instead, he found that he was completely freaked out by the lack of a fence. Not even a halfhearted little mesh-wire number. Not so much as a guardrail. Nothing. And there were kids everywhere—Factboy’s kids included—dancing, posing, goofing around, completely
oblivious of the fact that certain death was just one fucking ooopsie away.
Factboy couldn’t bring himself to look. He couldn’t bring himself to not look.

And then he received his urgent request from Mann.

One look at the screen and he told his wife—

“I’ve got to use the facilities.”

The “facilities”: marriage code for number two.

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“Everything in place?” Mann asked.

“Yep,” A.D. said. “All he has to do is step outside.”

7

Who’s they? I want you to tell me who they is.

—John Aquino,
Blow Out

H
ARDIE COULDN’T
believe what his eyes were transmitting to his brain.

“Where the fuck is my
car?
”

“Get away from the window,” the girl scream-whispered behind him. “Please, I’m begging you. You looked, you’re upset, now move the fuck away before something
really bad
happens.”

“It was
just there.
”

“Are you really this dense? Or haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

But Hardie was too focused on the stretch of asphalt in front of the garage. The sight absolutely boggled his mind. It didn’t make sense. When he finally glanced down at the psycho chick crouched next to him, mic stand in her hand, he decided he’d had enough. He darted for the door. He thought he was moving pretty fast, but she was a lot faster, even limping. The girl easily closed the distance, slid herself into the space between him and the wall, and again pointed the edge of the mic stand at the hollow of his throat.

“No,” she said.

Hardie tried to push her out of the way. “Move.”

“
They
took your car, don’t you realize that?”

“Well, I’ll just force
Them
to give it back. Move.”

“You can’t go outside. You go outside, you’re dead.”

“I can still catch them.”

Hardie was half-serious about that. The roads up here were twisty. Winding. They—
whoever
—just stole it a few seconds ago. He heard them do it. Maybe he had a chance—slim, he knew, but it was still a chance—at catching them on foot. But then what? Leave this girl here, by herself, in the house he was supposed to be guarding?

She hissed at him:

“Get down! It’s bad enough they saw you!”

Hardie sometimes marveled at how quickly things could spin out of control. He’d been in L.A. only, what?… ninety minutes total?… and he’d already lost all his possessions except for the wallet in his back pocket, the useless set of car keys in his front pocket, the cell phone with no service, and the clothes on his back. He’d jumped off a roof and landed in unidentified animal crap. Hardie half expected this crazy bird to force him to strip, then make him jump off the back deck into the wilds, just to show him—
that’s how Hollywood does ya.

Then Hardie remembered that his carry-on bag had still been in the passenger seat of the Honda Whatever, and a tiny knot of grief formed in his stomach.

Hardie believed there were two kinds of things in the world. Things that could be replaced, and things that could not. He’d spent the past three years giving away or tossing everything in his life that could be replaced. This turned out to be most things in his life. Clothes, CDs, kitchen utensils, old books. All of it junk. You could soak it in lighter fluid and it wouldn’t matter. Because somewhere, out there, was another copy. But his duffel bag, the one he never checked at airlines, the one that never left his side, was full of things that could not be replaced.

And now it was gone.

Hardie pulled the cell out of his pocket. Fuck this. At the very least, his rental car was stolen. He needed to report it.

The girl touched his arm. “They won’t let you call.”

Hardie eyeballed her. “What do you mean?”

“I tried to use my phone, too. They’ve stopped the signals.”

Hardie checked the screen. No bars. Just like earlier, when he tried to call Virgil. At the time, he thought it was just because he was up in the Hollywood Hills, where service was shitty. Maybe he’d get lucky.

Hardie said, “It’s the mountain. Nobody’s jamming anything.”

“Look, I’ve been to countless parties up here. Calls are dropped all the time, but a service blackout like this? For, like, hours? No. It’s
Them.
”

Well, it
was
Them.

Mann’s team was equipped with a suitcase-size digital portable jammer—normally reserved for police and military use—as well as handheld jammers given to each operative. These devices were easy to obtain and extremely useful for operating under a blanket of silence. Mann insisted that all of her employees have them on at all times during every production.

To cover the immediate Alta Brea area, Mann had O’Neal power up the larger, more powerful jammer in the van—the same kind police use during hostage situations and drug raids so that the bad guys won’t be able to connect to the outside world.

With the handhelds, Mann opted for simplicity. Every time you talk on your cell, you use two frequencies—talk through one, listen through another. The simplest way to block your cell is to jam one of those frequencies. This makes your phone believe there is no service at all, and it tells you so. You can curse at the phone and shake it, but it will do no good. Cell phones are stupid that way.

To stay in touch with her operatives, Mann issued multiband intrateam tactical radio units with encryption designed to look like ordinary phones, including hands-free Bluetooth devices so they could look like pretty much every other asshole in L.A.

No bars—no service.

No car.

Get ahold of yourself there, Chuck.

Breathe.

Let’s think this through.

All of this talk about
Them
and
ooh, watch out, THEY might see you?

Bullshit.

What Hardie had interrupted was probably a home invasion. Two addicts who knew that Lowenbruck had left on a long trip; maybe even one of them glommed his security code from some party. Hell, maybe the security company even sold them the code—it wouldn’t be the first time.

So we have this girl and probably some crackhead boyfriend. Lots of expensive AV gear on the top floor, even more expensive recording equipment on floor two. They hear Charlie on the roof, then on the deck, and then he’s in—and they’re freaking out, scrambling, not thinking straight. Chick goes downstairs; boyfriend slips out the front. Takes the opportunity and steals the Honda Whatever. Now this chick would be all about getting away while she could.

“I’m telling you, get away from the window!”

Hardie reached out, grabbed her wrist, and squeezed.

She cried out. The metal mic stand fell out of her hand, clattered on the hardwood floor.

“Please stop sticking that thing in my face.”

As he continued squeezing, the girl’s eyes widened, her mouth opening in a silent scream. Then she looked down at Hardie’s chest, and her expression changed completely. From pain to revulsion.

“Oh God, your chest…,” she said.

Hardie was halfway through the motion of looking down at his chest when he realized he was being an idiot.

But by then it was too late, because she had already shoved the palm of her free hand up into his jaw.

Lane always thought it was funny that she became known for the action movies. It had all started with that stupid remake
Dead by Dawn.
A woman-on-the-run story, and that summer, she’d been the face du jour.
EW
and
Vanity Fair
and everybody else had made a big deal about her first shoot-’em-up, having previously dismissed her as the sweet-but-dippy friend of the hero’s girlfriend in a trilogy of vapid preteen comedies. But after
Dead,
the only scripts she saw were actioners, and she found herself in what seemed like an endless succession of grueling mixed-martial-arts sessions. It felt like she spent more time being thrown around onto vinyl mats than on a stage actually
acting.
She used to run lines in her sleep; now boyfriends complained about being kicked and rabbit-punched in their sleep. Enrico used to work her
hard.

The move she pulled on this asshole now came from a heist thriller called
Your Kiss Might Kill Me,
where she’d had to (believably) overpower a former Navy SEAL/bank guard who had at least two hundred pounds on her.

Funny how it came back to her so easily.

Hardie’s head snapped back, his teeth smashing together so hard it sent jagged bolts of pain through his skull. She’d gotten him
good.
He staggered back on his heels, instantly aware of the mic stand she’d dropped on the floor. If she stooped down, picked it up, and rammed it through his guts, well, then he’d die a ridiculously stupid death.

Fortunately she opted for kicking the living shit out of him instead, throwing a rapid succession of punches, chops, and kicks at his face, torso, balls. She clearly had training, but the coke and whatever else buzzing around in her bloodstream made her hits sloppy and unfocused.

Hardie absorbed the blows, waited for his moment, and then lunged, wrapped his thick arms around her, and squeezed. The girl struggled and opened her mouth to scream—which was the moment Hardie flipped her to the floor, blasting the air out of her lungs. While she was still stunned, he straddled her, pinning her arms under his thighs.

“You finished?” Hardie asked.

“G-Get
off
me!”

“Shhhh. I’m two hundred forty pounds. You’re not going anywhere.”

The girl struggled a bit more, as if she could summon the adrenaline to prove him wrong. But then she stopped and looked up at Hardie defiantly.

“So, what now?” she said.

“What now? Well, for starters, how about you tell me where your boyfriend took my rental car? It’s not that I give a damn about the car. But I’ve got a bag inside that means a lot to me, and if I don’t get it back, I’m going to track him down and beat the living fuck out of him.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Beat who?”

“Your boyfriend.”

She huffed.

“Boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend, husband, accomplice, whatever… whoever took my fucking car.”

“Don’t you get it?
They
took your car…
your own people
… so whatever this is, what are you waiting for? Just do it already. Do it!”

Hardie could feel her body start to shiver. Her lips trembled, too, and her eyes slid to the corners.

“Hey.”

Hardie gently touched her chin and moved it slightly. Her eyes found his again. He’d seen plenty of overdoses back in the job. She wasn’t quite there, but whatever she’d shot herself up with, she’d flirted with the edge.

“Let’s cut the bullshit, okay? I’m not
Them,
there is no
Them.
” Now she focused on him again. Narrowed her eyes.

“You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

“I have no idea. You kind of look like this actress, what the hell’s her name…?”

“Lane Madden.”

That was it. Now Hardie understood why she’d looked familiar. Over the past decades he’d studied faces, coaxing unwilling witnesses through countless descriptions, running his eyes over an endless stream of black-and-white photos in mugshot binders. He’d come to the conclusion that God was a shameless self-plagiarist, because he had no problem using the same molds over and over again. A lot of people resembled a lot of other people.

“That’s her. I guess you’ve been told that before.”

“All of my life.”

“So what’s your name?”

“Lane Madden.”

Hardie started to laugh, but the sound died in his throat, because now that he looked at her and saw the stone sincerity in her eyes, he knew she was telling the truth. Holy shit. He’d been stabbed and beaten by Lane Madden. In any other circumstance, it’d be an amusing little story to share with the world.
Hey, guess who rear-ended me on Beverly Boulevard! Winona Ryder!
Now, though… not so much.

Lane—
Lane Madden?
—looked up at him.

“Can you please get off me?”

Hardie was already shifting his weight off her body, embarrassed. Confused, but embarrassed. He’d been straddling a celebrity, not subduing a drugged-out teenager. Every cell in his body wanted to apologize. He felt her tense up beneath his thighs. Hardie tried to lighten things up.

“You’re not going to try to stab me or punch me in the jaw again, are you?”

“I’m going to assume for the moment,” Lane Madden said, “that you’re
not
one of Them. But let me say for the record, that if you
are
one of Them, and this is you playing dumb just so you can kill me later, then you’re a big fucking asshole.”

“I promise I’m not going to kill you.”

Hardie lifted one knee off the floor and eased himself off her body. Lane rolled over, coughed, then worked herself up into a sitting position, resting her back against a wall. They were near the media room—the oversize plasma screen, the DVDs, and leather couches. Hardie had this theory, two years running, that he was living in a kind of purgatory. This was further proof. All he wanted to do was watch a movie, crash on the couch, get his booze on.

Now he was sitting on the floor of a house in the Hollywood Hills with a coked-up actress who thought people were trying to kill her.

Hardie rubbed his head.

“Did I walk into a movie set or something? Because that’s what it feels like all of a sudden.”

“I wish. Believe me. Just promise me you won’t open that door, okay?”

“There are no hidden cameras anywhere, right? This isn’t some reality show, is it? Because if it is, I’d really like to leave the set now.”

“No. It’s not. This is all totally real.”

“So, I’m guessing you know Lowenbruck?” Hardie asked.

Lane took a moment to think about it. “Who?”

“The composer. Guy who owns this house. You know him, right?”

She looked around now, as if she just tuned in to the fact that, oh yeah, she was squatting in someone else’s home.

“No. I found the keys in the mailbox, just like I said.”

“How did you turn off the security system?”

“I didn’t. I wasn’t on when I got here.”

Nice one, Lowenbruck. Why not just prop the front door open a few inches, tape a note to it saying,
NOBODY HERE. BURGLARS, HELP YOURSELVES.

“Then why did you set it?” Hardie asked.