Fun and Games (10 page)

Hardie had to concede that one. Though he wouldn’t go so far as to call himself lucky. If he had any kind of luck, it was the get-hit-by-a-car-and-discover-you-have-cancer kind of luck.
You’re probably going to die from your injuries, but we’re also going to give you chemotherapy, just in case you make it through.

But still, Hardie thought about the magical secret closet and the stash of pot. Maybe Lowenbruck did a little dealing on the side.

And if so, just maybe he kept a piece with his stash.

Hardie helped Lane to her feet, then brought her into the bathroom. Her eye was swelling up pretty good. He hoped she didn’t go looking in the mirror, because she might decide to come after him with the mic stand again.

“Lock yourself in here,” Hardie said. “Don’t open the door for anyone but me. I’ll be right back.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Check your magical secret closet. Maybe help myself to some grass.”

Lane giggled, despite herself. She was probably still reeling from the punch to her face. But even as he spoke the words, Hardie heard the shrill voice in the back of his head.
Yeah, you’re a real clown. But that’s all you’re good for. You can’t protect her. You can’t protect anybody.

Downstairs, in the bedroom closet, was the secret room, as promised. And, yes indeedy, there was pot—three tightly packed bricks of it, as well as a box full of loose pot in tiny Ziploc bags. No guns. Not even a knife. What did this guy use to cut into the bricks of pot? His ninety-nine-cent corkscrew?

The pot was essentially useless to him—unless he could use it to barter with Topless. Maybe she could toke up, ease the pain in her eye. Hardie’s mother had been a stoner, so to rebel he became a drinker. Why couldn’t Lowenbruck have kept a wet bar or something down here? Why couldn’t this have been Prohibition, and there’d be a jug of brown lightning hidden away?

For that matter, why couldn’t this be just another gig?

Hardie wanted so badly to pop awake on a comfortable leather couch, half-empty bottle of Knob Creek resting against his crotch, and realize he was having a seriously
weird
fucking dream with celebrities in it.

14

I can still see!

—Rumored original final line of Roger Corman’s
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

T
HE TWO OF THEM
—Mann and O’Neal—briefly reconvened in the back of the van on top of the hill. O’Neal was shocked when he saw Mann. She had blood streaked down her cheeks and seemed to be wearing her bikini top upside down. Then again, O’Neal was sure he’d looked better, too. He’d self-administered the adrenaline in enough time to counter the heart-attack special, but he felt like 160 pounds of wet shit. His skin was clammy yet warm. Sweating out of every single pore of his body. Head pounding. If this was what a heart attack felt like, then O’Neal swore to eat a bullet the moment his primary doc told him his cholesterol was looking a little high. He’d fucking mainline oatmeal if it kept his arteries clean.

“What’s our plan?” O’Neal asked.

Mann sat down on a crate, ripped open a first-aid kit, started squeezing some antiseptic into a patch of gauze.

“I want to know more about who we’re dealing with. Get Fact boy on the line and tell him I want everything in ten minutes. If he gives you an excuse, tell him we’re severing our business relationship.”

O’Neal watched Mann work on her face. More blood trickled down her cheek. The eye wounds looked hideously painful. He waited for Mann to flinch. She didn’t. Her fingers moved around her eye, flicking pieces of plastic away from the corners of her eye. Which was not easy with compromised vision and no mirror.

“Can I help?” O’Neal asked.

“Yeah. By calling Factboy.”

Factboy sat on the toilet and read about the death and life of Charles Hardie.

He didn’t need to file an electronic National Security Letter this time. The story had been all over the local paper three years ago. (He didn’t think he should mention that little tidbit to Mann just yet.) Seems Hardie had worked with a detective named Nate Parish—who, in turn, was part of a joint Philly PD–FBI task force dedicated to cleaning up Philadelphia at all costs. (Factboy had visited Philly once. Good fucking luck with that.)

Albanian gangsters had broken into Nate Parish’s suburban home and shot the detective and his family—thirty-eight-year-old wife, ten-and six-year-old daughters—to death, execution-style. Also at the scene was Hardie, who had been
almost
shot to death. He’d flatlined and everything, but EMTs were able to revive him. A couple of surgeries later at Pennsylvania Hospital, it became clear that Hardie was going to make it. Within six months he was walking around again.

But the strange thing wasn’t that Hardie survived; it was that Hardie had survived
twice.

The first time was at his own home, which the gunmen had visited before they hit the Parish house. The Albanians sprayed heavy artillery all over Hardie’s place, with him inside. One reporter compared the scene to something out of Kabul. Broken windows, chopped-up woodwork, severed plants, exploded chunks of brick.

But Hardie survived the attack, even though he took anywhere from one to three bullets. (See, the Philly PD couldn’t really tell because he received more bullets from the same guns during the
second
attack.)

Anyway, badass Charlie Hardie not only survived but was able to rouse his bleeding self, make his way to the garage, start up his car, and race to his friend and partner’s house to warn him the Albanians might be coming for him, too.

But it was the worst thing he could have done.

Oh, if only he could take that back…

The gunmen arrived not long after Hardie did, giving them a second opportunity to kill him. They even stopped to reload, according to one account, and continued the execution. This time, Hardie didn’t get up and chase after them.

But he also didn’t die.

A local columnist dubbed him “Unkillable Chuck.”

At first everyone said he was a hero. A “Philadelphia-style hero,” some columnist said. Hardie had tried his best and lost—just like Rocky. That didn’t mean he didn’t give it his all. And that was something to be commended.

Soon, though, the tide turned, as it is wont to do. Some city council members questioned Hardie’s role with the Philly PD—was he a consultant or a hired thug? What had he done to piss off the Albanians so badly? Rumors of double-dealing and corruption spread through local papers and blogs. Hardie refused to comment; so did the Philly PD.

After that… the coverage pretty much died. Hardie spent six months recuperating, then went into exile.

Factboy had to admit, the story hit home. Turns out Hardie had a wife and kid, too, and luckily they weren’t home when the gunmen paid a visit. Factboy had a hard time thinking about something like this happening to him—to
his
wife and kids. It’s the kind of thing that went through his head in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep. This chosen profession of his.

Which made what he had to do next more than a little creepy.

But hey, it was his job.

O’Neal gave Mann the highlights as she finished repatching her eyes. He knew better than to try to persuade her to visit a hospital—or even the mobile doc they kept on retainer. She’d want to stay, finish the job. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to talk a little sense into her. Maybe propose a viable alternative.

“What about the team—on the other job?”

She pressed tape to her brow. “What about them?”

“They’re not on until tonight, and I know they’re in the area. Why not bring them over and have them finish these two off?”

“No.”

O’Neal ran his tongue along his teeth, looked down at the floor, tried again.

“It could be a home-invasion scenario. Simple enough. She holes up here, at her boyfriend’s place. Only somebody’s robbing the place at the same time. Things go south, she mouths off, gets shot…”

“Way too coincidental. And the minute you involve guns is the minute everybody and their mothers start picking apart the narrative. With guns, it’s almost never an accident, unless you’ve got a ten-year-old kid, inattentive parents, and an unlocked cabinet.”

Right. The narrative. With Mann everything was about the narrative. And she was so anti-gun, you’d think you’d find her out on weekends, arms linked with Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney, singing “Kumbaya” at a rally.

“This could be over in twenty minutes,” O’Neal. “Don’t dismiss it.”

“We can’t use the first team.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re already busy.”

O’Neal knew there were two jobs this weekend, and he had to admit, he was bummed to be in a backup role for the second. For some reason, Mann had wanted two completely different primary teams. He knew little about the other job, other than that it was “on the other side of the mountain” and set for that night. Making this a kind of twilight doubleheader for Mann.

“What about a fire? We can light it from the bottom. It’s L.A., and it is the season. Completely plausible. We can even figure out a way to pin it on her.”

“It’s sloppy. The actress and Hardie could make it out. And too hard to control. Once a fire breaks out, it could wipe out dozens of homes before the fire department makes it up here. The arson investigators would have a field day.”

Yeah, O’Neal thought. But they’d be dead, wouldn’t they?

He held his tongue. This was why she was the director and he was the deputy. Not for lacking of trying, though. Maybe someday he’d earn a top spot on the production team. He’d put in the hours, certainly.

Mann finished up by running a wet wipe over her eyes to remove the dried blood and dirt. She pulled a black dress over her bikini, and applied lipstick as best she could without a mirror. She could pass for an aging Hollywood Hills trophy wife who’d endured a particularly rough crow’s-feet plastic surgery session.

“I’m going back down to the other vantage point. I’ll check in with A.D. Make sure he’s still functional.”

A.D. was indeed still functional.

He’d passed through shock and come through it okay, all things considered.

Now he was directly under the bottom floor, keeping watch. If they were going to bolt, they’d most likely try it from the windows closest to the ground. The drop wasn’t too crazy; you could survive. Hell, he survived being kicked in the balls and falling from the top floor. A drop off the bottom floor? No problem at all.

“You sure you’re okay?” Mann asked, crouching down next to him. “You can still see and hear?”

“Yeah. You know, I’m kind of surprised about it myself… but I’m still in this. Don’t count me out, boss.”

“I won’t.”

“How’s your eye? You can’t even tell with those glasses on.”

“I need you to focus.”

“Okay, I can focus. What do you want me to do?”

“How far do you think you can crawl?”

Mann knew O’Neal was impatient to finish this. So was she. But you don’t go this far and make a mistake at the very end. The narrative was everything. Now that she knew a little more about Hardie, she’d figured out the perfect way to eliminate him.

He wouldn’t even know it was coming.

15

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

—Movie cliché

T
HE FIRST
hour slid by Hardie and Lane on the second floor, taking up a position in the hallway between the bathroom and the stairway to the lower level. Their weapons: a corkscrew and a slightly used mic stand. Hardie wanted to make a run for it right away. The Indians were wounded; this was the time for the cowboys to make their getaway. But Lane refused—no way, no how—and reminded Hardie of what happened the last time he tried to walk out the front door. Hardie had no choice but to concede her point. Didn’t mean he had to like it.

They didn’t say too much to each other. Lane had either sobered up or had descended into a deeper level of shock. She complained about her eye hurting and stared at the soundproofed walls, breathing slowly, blinking every so often. Clearly, it hurt when she blinked.

Hardie cracked his knuckles, bending each finger and pressing it with his thumb until his joint popped. Then he continued pressing down with his thumb, even when his joints had nothing left to give.

“Will you stop that,” Lane said.

“Sorry.”

The waiting killed Hardie. He didn’t want to spend the day sitting in the hallway. He wanted
Them
to make the next move NOW. Show themselves. Reveal some weakness. At least give him a sense of how many were out there. At least three, with one possibly incapacitated. But there could easily be more. Topless could have called in reinforcements. Hardie would have.

Hardie was reminded of zombie movies. He wasn’t into them, but his son loved them. A few lone human beings vs. insurmountable odds. Wave after wave of dead people coming after you, ripping apart drywall, busting through windows, trying to snack on your brains…

But these motherfuckers weren’t zombies. They were smart. They were determined. They had gear. They had plans. They had ambitions. They had huge breasts. And they had all the time in the world.

He racked his brain for some escape route, some ruse, some way of communicating with the outside world.

“Who will report you missing?” Hardie asked.

“Huh?”

“When you don’t show up at home, who will miss you?”

“Sad to say, the only person who will notice will probably be my manager, Haley. I told her we’d talk sometime today about future projects. But I’ve flaked out before and not returned calls. Sometimes for days. She won’t think anything of this at first.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling.”

“What about you? Who will miss you?”

“Absolutely nobody. Not for at least a month.”

“We won’t be able to survive here for a month.”

“So I guess it’s up to you. You’re the famous one. Somebody will eventually come looking for you. Maybe they’ll retrace your steps.”

But Hardie knew that was bullshit the moment he spoke the words. If these guys wanted the death to look like an accident, they would have already scooped the car and all traces of Lane Madden.

Sometime during the second hour Hardie went to splash some water on his face. He was feeling sick to his stomach. Probably because the last thing he ate was that stupid dry bagel in the airport. Hardie turned the cold-water knob. The faucet ran for a few seconds before the pipes rumbled. The faucet spat at his fingers, then went dry. Fuck, come on! Not the water, too.

No food. No power. No way to call for help. No nothing.

It drove him mad.

In the hallway, Lane was throwing up.

Hardie gathered up the remaining towels from the bathroom and helped her clean up her face, then wiped the floor. But the odor of gastric bile was making him sick, too. He had to choke it back, swallow, keep his head clear. Try to, anyway. His head was really starting to pound.

Of course, this was to be expected—they had both been through an absurd number of shocks and traumas this morning. Lane had been in a car crash and hunted up and down the Hollywood Hills in the dark. Hardie had been beaten, impaled, poisoned, suffocated, and Tasered. Adrenaline kicks in during these kinds of situations, but adrenaline doesn’t last forever. Human bodies need time to recover. They need water and food and rest and sleep—all things they didn’t have or couldn’t afford.

So of course, they were feeling like shit, throwing up, and ready to lose their minds.

But…

Some ultraparanoid part of Hardie’s mind thought it could be something else.

These fuckers didn’t use conventional weapons. They went in for poisons. Cars. Electricity. What if they had managed to pump some kind of toxic fumes into the house? And after making them puke like a freshman at a kegger, it would kill them.

Hardie tried to discern if anything smelled strange or left a weird taste in his mouth. Nothing, of course… and why would it? Only gas companies helpfully laced their natural gas supply with a delightful rotten-egg odor so you’d know when your pilot light had blown out. If you wanted to kill someone with some powerful, exotic, untraceable poison, you wouldn’t go advertising it. You’d just pump it in.

Should he try to go around the house, sealing off all the vents?

Hardie rubbed his eyes. Lane had rested her head against his shoulder and shut her eyes. It would have been a tender moment, quite possibly even a mildly erotic one, had she not been trembling and smelling faintly of vomit.

Hardie thought more about
Them.
Tried to climb inside their minds and guess what they’d be doing next.

Then he remembered what one of them had said.

“Lane.”

“Uhhhh.”

“Lane, you still with me?”

“Just want to sleep.”

“I need you to tell me who we’re really up against.”

Lane’s eyelids slowly lifted.

“I told you. I don’t know.”

“I told you I met the lady with the one eye, right? Topless Cyclops?”

“Yeah.”

“She told me that you deserved this. That I should ask you why.”

Lane blinked as if she’d been slapped. She made a show of recovering. Huffing, shaking her head.

“Of course she’d say that.”

“Yeah, I understand that. But I still don’t think you’re telling me everything. And while I’m sure you have your reasons, we might die in here. Because of something you didn’t tell me. You tell me that you have no idea why they’re trying to kill you, yet you seem to know an awful lot about them.”

Lane stared at the wall.

“What, is it that you still think I’m one of them?” Hardie asked. “If that’s the case, then—”

“No, it’s not that…. It’s…”

“What?”

Lane started to rub her eyes to wake up a little and remembered that it really hurt. She tasted the inside of her mouth and found that it was absolutely foul. She stretched and then looked at Hardie.

“Okay, listen, this might sound a little insane. Like I’m telling you about the boogeyman. But an ex-boyfriend was the one who told me about these people. I thought he was full of shit and he was just teasing me. I didn’t believe they were real until this morning…. God, this is going to sound
stupid.
”

“Highly doubtful.”

She hesitated again.

“In L.A. you hear stories. Rumors about killers who go after famous people and make it look like accidents. You joke about these killers like kids joke around about the boogeyman—but inside, you’re scared to death the rumors are true. Some drunk guy at a party will tell you he knows how Marilyn Monroe really died, or how John Belushi’s OD wasn’t really an OD. And then everybody will get quiet, because everyone else will have heard the same things.”

Hardie felt himself easing back into cop mode. Commenting as little as possible, listening to everything. Evaluating.

“Anyway, my ex once told me—
swore to me
—these people were real. Said they had protection at the highest levels, that they were bankrolled by the richest people on earth. They clean up the messes. That’s how he put it. After a while he’d start joking around with me.
Don’t make me call the Accident People.
”

“So you think he called them for real.”

Lane was stunned.

“No! Not my ex. Point is, I believe what he said. He’d be in a position to know.”

“So, he’s what—an actor?”

Lane nodded, said his name.

It was the BLOND VIKING GOD.

Everybody knew the BLOND VIKING GOD.

The entertainment press gave this particular actor the sobriquet after his first gig—a supporting role in an Oscar-nominated war flick. From there, it was indie thrillers, then a big-budget superhero role, and then finally his own producing arm. Everything he touched turned into golden celluloid. He was as famous as famous could get. A $40 million–dollar man in a downsized Hollywood where nobody—nobody—could command those kinds of numbers. He could open a flick. Open it big. Guaranteed.

His name was uttered at least once every few minutes all across America, usually in the form of a punch line like, “Well I’m no BLOND VIKING GOD, but…”

And for a brief while, he used to date a cute actress from a bunch of romantic comedies named Lane Madden.

Lane put her fingers to her temples and lowered her head.

“It’s not like I have proof to show you. But he swore to me they were real, because he met them once.”

“What happened?”

“He didn’t tell me much.”

“What happened?”

Lane sighed. “Four years ago—before we even met—he was at this party out in Malibu. Things got out of hand. Too much booze, too much coke. There was a stupid fight. Someone ended up dead. Another actor. Somebody who was kind of over, you know? But the party had a bunch of people who weren’t over, who were worth a lot of money to a certain studio. If word got out about what had happened at this party, it could ruin their careers, ruin the studio. So the studio called them in—the Accident People. They rolled into Malibu and cleaned everything up. Made it look like the guy fell while out for a run. Told everyone at the party what to say. The whole thing was scripted, like it was a movie. Nobody questioned it; the police never linked him to the party. Everyone was told that if they even breathed a word about what had happened, it wasn’t just their career on the line. It was their life. Because the
Accident People
will be back to you.”

“Did Blond Viking God kill the has-been?”

“No!
God,
no. He was just there and watched these people work. Totally freaked him out. Said it was like someone pried off the lid and showed him how Hollywood really works. From then on, he told me, he was always a little more respectful when it came to writers and directors and special-effects people because some of them—when their commercial careers were over—graduated to the ranks of the
Accident People.
”

“You make it sound like a promotion.”

“Ordinary directors only get to work with stuff that appears on a screen. When you work with the Accident People, you’re playing around with real life. You’re writing secret history. They take their work seriously. At least that’s what my ex told me.”

Secret history.

Secret closets, secret kills. Accidents.

The implications of this finally hit Hardie.

This explained their weird behavior, their methods, their tactics. Hardie realized now that barricading themselves in was exactly what
They
wanted. To keep them both contained until they could be “dealt” with according to script. They didn’t behave like other killers, because they wanted something besides death. They were trying to make the world conform to their little twisted vision, and they’d keep working at it until they got everything right. The longer they hid inside, the longer they’d have to nail down their big secret plans.

Well fuck that, Hardie thought.