DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels (34 page)

"You still hate me, though, don't you?" he asked. He sipped a beer and stared right into her eyes.

She sighed and turned back to face the bar. "I don't hate you, Karl. I hate myself for fucking up, that's all."

"Have you been out to Malibu?"

She blinked, but didn't turn to him. "I live up in the hills, you know that."

"Someone got into my house, Robyn. Left me a note. Before that, someone tried to run me off the freeway."

She turned her head. Saw he wasn't kidding. Then her anger returned and her cheeks felt hot as griddles. "You think it was me?"

"You have a set of keys still, don't you?"

"You're accusing me of letting myself into the house and—what?—leaving some kind of note? You think I tried to run you off the road? Karl, how much have you had to drink? I don't give a flying fuck about going back in that house. I couldn't fucking care less about writing you any notes!"

He glanced at the dancers again. "I called Sheinberg today and he put off our meeting. He's never done that before."

Robyn looked puzzled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"And two of my newest clients called up to say they thought they wanted to think over signing with me."

"Wait." Robyn turned full around on the stool and took his arm. "You're trying to tell me something, but I think I'm missing exactly what it is. What in hell are you talking about?"

"I've got a bad feeling, Robyn. Someone's messing with my life and I . . . Well, I don't know who it is."

"It's someone who knows you," she said. "So you thought . . ."

"It's not you, is it, Robyn?" He put his beer on the bar and took her in his arms. He said against her ear, "Don't let it be you. Please. I meant what I said. I still love you."

Robyn felt her heart contract and her vision blur. Goddamnit, why wasn't it true? He thought he still loved her, but he never had, not really, not the kind of love that forgives faults and overlooks weaknesses. "It's not me," she said, weakly, her voice catching.

He pulled away abruptly. "I have to go."

"Don't. Can't you stay just a little . . ."

"I'm sorry, I really have to leave. I've got some stuff to do at the office before I can go home."

She watched him as he started down the stairs to Purgatory.

"Fuck," she whispered.

"Now?" someone asked from behind her. "Here?"

"What?" She turned to face a thin young man dressed in a loose brown jacket, sleeves rolled to the elbow. His hair was blond, his jaw shaded with a fine gold beard.

She smiled, at ease, her thoughts of Karl replaced with thoughts of her big king-size bed with this young man reclining naked on it. "Hi," she said. "I'm Robyn."

"Yes, you are," he said, moving into her sphere, an arm circling her small waist as he guided her out to the dance floor. "Robyn LaRosa. I've seen you around. You produce pictures. I know your credits."

"And you have a script you're shopping," she said, laughing at how he wasn't trying to hide his motivations. How refreshing.

"One or two," he said. "But they can wait."

She slipped into his embrace on the dance floor and closed her mind to everything but the music and the yearning building in her body. She'd always had a thing for writers, especially the brave, pretty ones.

9

"They love the scenes where people are running, screaming, naked through the halls. But they might just hate themselves for liking them. This is no new process; it's obvious that there is a vicarious thrill involved in seeing the forbidden."

David Cronenberg

There was a concerted effort to hurt him and hurt him bad. But why?

Karl stood just outside his office in Burbank with his employees. They looked like a group of shellshock victims—confused, angry, and more than a little afraid. They stared at him as if he might wave a magic wand and make the whole mess disappear. He was the boss, after all, he could fix this, couldn't he? Harry, his media man, said, "Brace yourself, Karl."

Karl pushed open the cracked and splintered door with his fingertips. He stood just over the threshold looking at the detritus left by a mind deranged.

He winced, sucked in his breath. He looked over his shoulder. "Have you called the police like I told you?"

His secretary, Lois, nodded her head in a jerky way. She had tears in her eyes. One of her best charcoal suits she favored for work had a streak of blood down the front of the skirt.

"I guess they'll be here soon. Did anyone touch anything?"

Harry said, "We just looked in. We haven't touched a thing. This is how we found it. And the security alarm wasn't on. Someone disabled it first."

As if they would or could go in and touch stuff, thought Karl. The place was covered with blood. It looked like someone had slaughtered a hog in the outer office. The upholstered sofa and deep cushioned chairs were slimed and wet with blood. The walls looked as if buckets of blood had been thrown at them. Great splashes shocked the wall and dripped long red teardrops toward the carpet. Lois' desk was slick, her computer terminal covered, the telephone sitting in a puddle of coagulated scarlet.

"Why would anyone . . . ?" Lois began, letting the question trail away.

"I've been having some trouble," Karl said. "My house. Someone trailing me on the freeway. Now this."

A patrol car pulled to the curb and Karl's people moved aside to let a uniformed officer pass. Karl spent the next hour sitting in the car with one of Burbank's finest answering questions. He detailed the other strange happenings recently. It was all dutifully recorded, the officer shaking his head. "We'll get a team out here to look for fingerprints. Breaking into your house and leaving a note is one thing, but trying to run you off the road and this—" his head tipped toward the sidewalk and the office—"this is enough to get an investigation started. It looks like you have someone serious on your case, Mr. LaRosa. We'll want a list of names of women you've gone out with for the last couple of years."

Karl rubbed the flesh over the ridge of his nose. "I've been checking with some of the women I dated. I can't rule out anyone, but I just can't see anyone I ever cared about doing this to me."

"People go off their nut. I've seen enough craziness to tell you plenty of people you'd think were straight as an arrow sometimes do things you'd think only a madman would do."

Karl sent his people home. He told them he'd call when the scene was checked out and he could get a cleaning crew in. They hugged him. They shook his hand. They patted his shoulder, and Lois gave him a little chaste kiss on the cheek. She was crying when she did it and he told her, "C'mon, no one got hurt, that's what matters. It'll be all right."

But he wasn't sure he believed that. He didn't expect the cops to find any fingerprints or evidence. The person who did this was too smart for making dumb mistakes like that.

Driving home again, calling from his car phone to reschedule appointments with clients, his fury began to grow. The shock was wearing off and the more phone calls he had to make, the angrier he got. It was one thing to slip into his house, but to wreck his office and scare his people—that was just about enough. Who the hell hated him that much?

On his last phone call he had to cut it short. His voice was getting too hard and the client thought he had done something wrong and Karl was upset with him. "Gotta go," he said. "I'll have Lois call you for a new time, okay?"

He punched off the phone and used it to bang against his right thigh as he drove one-handed. The investigating detective said he'd call his home when they were through at the Burbank office. Karl had to get hold of some outfit who could rip out the carpets and put in new, clean and paint the walls, replace the sofa and chairs . . .

"I'll get you, you piece of shit!" he yelled out loud. A driver in a Volkswagen in the next lane glanced over at him, probably hearing the shout, but not the actual words, frowned and dropped back a car length.

10

"I know what it is to feel lonely and helpless and to have the whole world against me, and those are things that no men or women ought to feel."

Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps

Cam watched the dailies with a weary sense of satisfaction. Getting Olivia through the scene where she had to haul the animal blood from the trunk of her car and splash it all over the office set was hell. She balked, complaining about using real blood. He'd had to threaten to replace her if she didn't do the goddamn scene and do it now. Didn't she know he couldn't use fake blood and get anything out of the scene? The actors kept forgetting this film was going to be shown through a new process and that the audience would spot fakery right off.

Then Jackie. That fucking half-wit overrated moron! He'd had to do eighteen takes before he got the scene in the car right. His voice wouldn't work. Just wouldn't work. He sounded like a dispassionate stockbroker calling his clients, not a Hollywood personal manager trying to control his dread when he talked to them about a "little problem at the office" that meant they had to change their appointments.

Maybe Cam had made a bad decision hiring Jackie Landry for the male lead. The man had done some good films, but they were lightweight. He was extremely handsome so he'd done a few romantic comedies and some dramas where not much was asked of his acting abilities. Cam thought he saw in Landry a spark of something that he could draw out on screen. A wildness the actor had never tapped before. There had been an early film starring Landry where he played a petty criminal type and he'd almost walked right over the line of acting the part into doing something honest.

Cam thought for sure he could push and prod Landry into giving that one superlative performance he'd detected lurking in the man in that early film.

But so far it was a washout. The man was stiff as starched Navy whites. The more Cam yelled at him, the more he bottled up and froze.

Still, the scene today hadn't gone so badly. It had taken them fourteen hours, but by God, they'd delivered what he wanted.

Maybe he could have a private talk with Landry before a scene where he would have to do anything really outstanding. Or he could pull that trick he'd done with Newman. Just walk off the set and leave him on his own. See if he'd perform when he wasn't under Cam's watchful eye. Knowing if he didn't, he'd not only disappoint his director, but the whole damn cast.

Cam shut off the machine and left the editing room. It was almost one in the morning, but he could still find a joint open where he could get a beer and a willing ear. How anyone shot a film without blowing steam was beyond him.

Maybe he'd go to the Universe and see if Robyn was there. She liked the fucking place, hanging with the Hollywood crowd, being seen, picking up dates. He'd ask her about Landry. Cam could force Olivia to do what he wanted. Or so he hoped. There were some tough scenes upcoming . . .

But where was the key to Landry? Robyn might know. She knew all about how to handle difficult men.

11

"Like the gladiator games in ancient Rome, spectacle reduces empathy. Callousness sets in, indifference to suffering. More excitement is required. Dangerous to humanity."

Oliver Stone, Wired Auditorium,

America Online, August 16, 1994

The Body had made sure the sophisticated alarm system connected to the office was left destroyed, in tatters. The wiring had been disemboweled from where it snaked through the building walls, the connection box busted to plastic bits, wires torn.

The Body had done the job in the early morning. Wristwatch hands stood at three AM. Not a soul on the street at this hour, few passing cars. It was a business district, upscale, not far from the studio where the Tonight Show was taped.

The Body returned to the car parked at the curb, right on the street, and lifted the trunk lid. Getting the blood was a difficult affair. Had to break into a stockyard way the hell out at the edge of L.A. and sacrifice a steer. What a mess. Took hours.

The blood had been kept in plastic containers with screw caps overnight in the refrigerator at The Body's house. The blood warmed from riding in the trunk. Warm and liquid.

The front office door was already open, yawning darkly along the brick front wall. A crowbar was sufficient to jimmy the deadbolt, though it had torn up the wood doorframe.

The Body lifted the first five-gallon plastic container and carried it across the sidewalk and into the black gulf beyond the broken door. Carpet, thick and expensive, cushioned The Body's footsteps. One strip of pale light filtered in from a front window overlooking the street. With vision adjusted to the dim interior, The Body stepped quickly to the desk in the office and set down the container to screw off the cap. Turned. Threw the blood at the walls. Almost giggled at the splash it made and the destruction it caused.

Returning to the car, The Body removed another container. This blood was used on the desk and computer, with enough left over to soak one of the waiting chairs.

Again. A third container. Used for soaking the remaining chair and sofa.

And again, for the last retrieval, and the blood was used on two more walls.

It stunk, the air redolent with fresh blood. The Body gagged and backed away, pouring the remainder of the blood from the container in the footprint impressions left on the wet, red carpet.

Driving away, a sigh of relief, fulsome and noisy as wind in trees, filled the car. This kind of thing was so risky. A passing motorist or a patrol car might have stopped to see what was going on. Someone might have walked past the office and noticed the door wide open and the smell of blood.

Yet it had gone without a hitch as if the cosmos was working in concert with The Body to bring down Karl LaRosa.

It was all correct and good. It was meant to be.

If blood did not unnerve Karl, nothing would.

If blood did not put a crimp in his lifestyle and business routine, there was little chance of ever putting Karl on edge.

Back at the house, The Body had to shower and dispose of the old clothes worn to dispense the blood. The containers were brought into the house and washed clean. The plastic sheet covering the driver's seat in the car was disposed of in the trash. If the murderer of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman could do away with a murder weapon, bloody clothing, and ruined shoes so that nothing was ever found by the police, then so could The Body. It was not as much trouble as one would suppose. Just about anyone could do it.