Fun and Games (3 page)

But Hardie knew this was just the top level. Virgil told him the place had three floors; the other two were built down along the side of the mountain. In his instructions, Lowenbruck called it his “upside-down house.”

The house was famous in a minor way. In 1949 a film noir called
Surrounded
had been set here, as well as parts of a 1972 neonoir called
The Glass Jungle.
This was no accident. The director of
Glass Jungle
was a big fan of
Surrounded
and had spent a lot of time on permissions for the location. Later still, in 2005, they remade
Surrounded
—this time calling it
Dead by Dawn
—but left out the house altogether. Hardie hadn’t seen any of the films, but Lowenbruck told Virgil there were copies at the house—the sitter should check them out, just for fun. Hardie would check out the first one, but not the others. He had a rule these days: he didn’t watch any movies made after he was born.

Seems the movies were another reason Lowenbruck wanted a house-sitter. Every few days some noir geek would just show up and start snapping photos of the house. Some would even try to sweet-talk their way in, as if the place were just a vacant movie prop and not a real place where actual people lived.

Late last night, when he had to catch his sudden plane to Moscow, Lowenbruck e-mailed Virgil to say he’d leave keys in his mailbox.

Hardie looked.

Yep.

No keys in the mailbox.

3

Nobody came, nobody cares. It’s still not about anything.

—Bill Cosby,
Hickey & Boggs

L
EAVING THE
keys to your $3.7-million-dollar home in your mailbox is never a good idea. But Lowenbruck had insisted—there was no time to FedEx them to Hardie, and he didn’t know any neighbors to leave them with. Couldn’t Hardie just let himself in? They’d be in the mailbox, what, a matter of eight hours?

Or never.

Hardie pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket, pressed the auto-dial number of Virgil’s office. He waited. Nothing happened. Upon closer examination, Hardie realized that there were no bars on the screen. Probably the damned hills, blocking everything.

Hardie decided he wanted a beer. Like, yeah, right now. It was super-early in the morning, but maybe that’s what he should do. Get back in the Honda Whatever, drive back down to level ground, and buy some beer. Perhaps by the time he got back, the keys would have magically reappeared in the mailbox. If not, drink another beer. Repeat until reality conformed.

Yeah. Sure.

Hardie realized that unless he wanted to guard this damned place from outside, he’d have to figure out some way of breaking in.

He examined the front, looking for entry points, hoping for an obvious weakness. The oak door was solid, locked. The wide-screen windows were locked as well—and wired. Hardie spied the security transmitters mounted in the corners of the frames. Lowenbruck had given Virgil the keypad code, but that was useless with Hardie locked outside now, wasn’t it?

Moving toward the right side of the property, past some eucalyptus bushes, Hardie craned his neck until he saw a wooden sundeck hanging off the back of the house. It was supported by narrow metal poles and fitted with a wrought-iron railing. If he could make it onto the deck, he could probably jimmy open the back doors. The only problem: there was no easy way up to the deck. From the edge, there was a fifty-foot drop to the ground. Not unless Hardie wanted to climb onto the roof, and then jump down onto the deck.

The latter, of course, seemed to be the only option.

Hardie sighed. Was he really going to do this? Who knows what kind of trouble he might get into up there. One slip and he could end up with a broken leg down in the ravine, bobcats circling him.

Hardie slid the phone into his pocket, climbed behind the wheel, pulled the Honda Whatever up closer to the garage door, then parked. He stepped onto the hood of the car and scrambled up the slanted tile roof. The tiles were warm from the sun. Hardie had a vision of the damned things breaking loose, sliding down the roof, and shattering on the pavement, one after the other after the other. Hardie was a large man; he didn’t know if the makers of Spanish tile took his size and weight into consideration.

But he made it to the peak of the roof without incident. There he paused. The lush bowl of the hills was laid out beneath him, and off in the distance were the hazy glass-and-metal skyscrapers of downtown L.A. Hardie instantly understood the appeal of living here. Even though the sides of the mountain were littered with homes, there was the illusion that yours was the only one that mattered, that the rest of these properties had been assembled here for
your
benefit. No one else had a view like yours, not the homes above nor the ones below. You had a front-row seat to the big show. You could enjoy it anytime you liked… when you weren’t slaving away on a sound track, that is. Hardie wondered how much Lowenbruck enjoyed his view. He doubted the man ever climbed up onto his own roof to catch this particular vista.

Okay, enough. Sooner or later somebody was going to look up and see Hardie standing here, looking like an idiot.

Hardie spied the deck and began to make his way over to it, arms out for balance. Still, he couldn’t help but glance down at the houses below. The different-colored roofs, the pools, the terracotta patios.

And through a clearing in the trees, on the back deck of the house closest to Lowenbruck’s, a nude woman sunbathing.

It almost looked like a mirage. The branches and trees made a perfect frame around her body, blocking out everything but her astounding and abundant nakedness. She was full-chested, with pink nipples that looked too delicate to be out in the bright California sun. Her body was muscled, perfectly shaved, and oiled—as far as Hardie could tell—from her nose down. Her skin practically glistened. Hardie wondered why Lowenbruck hadn’t left the keys with
her.

The woman’s eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. She held a cell phone to her ear. And while her mouth moved, the words didn’t travel the distance uphill.

Hardie froze in place, pitched precariously on the downward slope of the roof. He stared for a few moments before he realized that, fuck, she could probably see him, too.

Probably telling a friend on the phone:
You’re never going to believe this, but some idiot is standing up on the roof of my neighbor’s place, staring at my tits.

Hardie continued his descent, placed a hand on the hot tile for balance, then jumped down onto the back deck. Something squished underfoot. Hardie was almost afraid to look… then did. Some kind of animal had been up here recently and had left a large deposit on Lowenbruck’s sundeck. Not a bird; this beast appeared to enjoy a heartier diet than seeds and grass.

Shit.

Fortunately, Hardie had packed another pair of shoes.

Unfortunately, they were in his missing suitcase.

Hardie tiptoed over and tried the sliding glass doors. Miraculously, they were unlocked. Either Lowenbruck forgot or he wasn’t in the habit of locking it.

The moment the contacts separated, however, the alarm was triggered—a shrill repeating
bee-BEEP bee-BEEP.
Thirty seconds and counting. Hardie knew there was a keypad by the front door. He needed to reach it fast or he’d have company soon, and that would no doubt push back his drinking by a few hours more.

bee-BEEP

bee-BEEP

bee-BEEP

Just as he was about to step inside he remembered the unidentified animal crap on his shoes. Hardie worked off one shoe hurriedly with the back of the other, reached down, yanked off its companion, then darted through the open doors looking for anything, anything at all, resembling a security keypad.

bee-BEEP

bee-BEEP

bee-BEEP

There were too many things hanging on the walls near the front door, too much clutter. Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck…

Hardie found it and jabbed the code in with two seconds to spare.

The key situation would have to be figured out sooner rather than later—Hardie didn’t want to leave the premises unlocked for any period of time, nor did he want to climb the tiled roof again to make a grocery run. Maybe he could have some booze delivered? No. Because that would require a working cell phone, and Virgil had told him that Lowenbruck didn’t have a landline.

Anyway, first things first: house check.

The sliding doors from the back deck opened up into a media room—and immediately Hardie knew he’d lucked out. Wall-mounted plasma TV, stereo components whose brand name Hardie only recognized from other houses he’d watched. Over-stuffed black leather couch, which Hardie immediately decided would be his home base for most of the next month. The wall shelves contained row upon row of DVDs, many of them classics—which was fantastic. Old movies gave him something to fill the long days. He remembered the special Hell of a Myrtle Beach condo that lacked not just cable or satellite TV but a TV as well. Longest two weeks of his life.

The rest of the top floor seemed to be little more than a life-support system for the media room. The locked front door led to the vestibule and beyond that a winding staircase with wrought-iron rail, leading down to the lower floors.

The stairwell was lined with cardboard standees of 1980s white tough-guy actors, arranged
Sgt. Pepper
–style. Clint. McQueen. Bruce. Sly. Arnie. Van Damme. Segal. And, strangely, Gene Hackman. This was seventies Hackman. Crazy-man Hackman.
Night Moves
and
Conversation
and
French Connection
Hackman. The collage of 2-D tough guys looked like it had been stuck up there for a while. The edges of the cardboard were frayed, cracked, and torn in places, and the material itself was yellowing. The surfaces featured a film of dust, and various body parts—an elbow, a foot—had come unstuck from the wall. Either Lowenbruck really loved his action heroes, or some previous owner had, and Lowenbruck thought it easier to leave the whole thing up.

The next room was a smallish dining area, though clearly nobody ever ate in here. The table was covered in scripts, DVDs, CDs, old newspapers, staff paper, pencils. A peek inside a cupboard door revealed more battered scripts, yellowing newspapers, and about forty copies of a sound track called
Two-Way Split
on CD.

The galley kitchen was clean but spare. Seemed like not much cooking happened in here. No booze in the cabinets, no food in the fridge, except for a box of baking soda and a glass jar of martini olives shoved in the back.

Half bathroom off to one side. Handy. Probably thirty paces between the leather couches and the porcelain throne here. That would make life easy.

On the other side of the kitchen, a door led to a tiny two-person deck with a hard-plastic Adirondack chair and a Weber Baby grill, overlooking another part of the hills. Hardie looked through the window and thought he could make out part of the Griffith Observatory. No other nude sunbathers in sight, however. Which was a little disappointing. Would have been nice to have the ladies in stereo.

Okay.

So, three entrances so far:

Front door;

Back patio doors (if you felt like walking on the roof );

Side patio door (if you were to somehow climb up the side of the house and vault over the railing).

All locks in working order as far as Hardie could tell.

Hardie retraced his steps, passed the gang of action heroes, gave Hackman a respectful nod—

Gene

—then continued down the wide stairs as they spun him around to face… a closed set of double doors. Which seemed weird, until Hardie opened them up and walked into a large music studio, soundproofing everywhere.

Ah, so this was the padded treasure in the heart of the Lowenbruck castle: the recording studio. The space was tricked out with enough gear to make the upstairs media room look like a kids’ Fisher-Price set. Huge, wide-screen plasma TV, a mixing console the size of a back porch, multiple keyboards, amplifiers, heaps of spaghetti cable.

Virgil had told him:

“Lowenbruck’s insanely anal about his studio. Don’t even go in there if you can avoid it. Just make sure nothing happens to it.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ve got explicit instructions here. Like, don’t even turn a knob.”

“What am I, in high school?”

“Just telling you what’s here on the form.”

“Okay, Virge. It won’t be easy, but somehow I’ll resist the urge to record my
Pet Sounds
tribute.”

Nothing else down here—was there room for anything else?—except two other padded doors. One was open a few inches, and obviously led to a bathroom. Hardie could see a white-tile floor and the edge of a silver mirror. He supposed that when Lowenbruck was in full-on work mode, this was all he needed. His keyboards and a place to take a leak or splash water on his face from time to time. The other door probably led downstairs to the third-floor bedroom.

Hardie was about to head down when the bathroom door flew open all the way and someone screamed and rushed at him and hit him on the head with something really, really hard.

4

I don’t make things difficult.

That’s the way they get, all by themselves.

—Mel Gibson,
Lethal Weapon

T
HE FIRST
blow dazed Hardie, made his vision go fuzzy, sent him stumbling one step to the side. The second blow struck him on the upper arm. The entire limb went numb. Some muscle memory kicked in just in time for the third blow. Hardie was able to block the hard, shiny object with a forearm.

With his other hand he snatched out and grabbed a wrist, then twisted it hard. His attacker—a young girl, he could see now—cried out. Hardie yanked her out of the bathroom doorway and spun her into the room proper. Her back hit a mixing board, and her head banged into a monitor that was hanging from the ceiling.

Hardie held up his hands. Tried to, anyway. His left arm was still numb. At least the right one still worked.

“Hey!”

His voice sounded strange to him. Hardie couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken out loud.

The girl was wearing only panties and a T-shirt, and her ankle was bandaged. Her legs were lean and muscled. Her whole body trembled.

“Get the fuck away from me or I’ll cut you, I swear to God I’ll jam this straight up your ass!”

Hardie looked at the
this
in her hands. He couldn’t place it. Long, silver, metal. A tube of some kind. About two feet long, with the circumference of a nickel. Uncapped on the end. Then he looked behind her, into the music studio, and saw others just like it.

A microphone stand.

She had been beating the shit out of him with a mic stand.

Hardie said, in a slow and steady and reasonable voice:

“Give me that.”

“I said, stay the fuck away! You people are making a big mistake.”

“You
people?
Only one of me here, honey.”

There was something vaguely familiar about the girl’s face, like he
should
know her from somewhere. Had Lowenbruck sent Virgil anything about her, maybe attached a photo to an e-mail? No, Hardie would have remembered that. Nobody was supposed to be here in the house. No girlfriends, no relatives, no friends—nobody. Hardie wouldn’t have taken the job otherwise. That was the whole point. Avoiding people.

Hardie steadied himself, took a step closer. The girl responded by swinging at the air with the mic stand, then inching her way back into the studio.

“Come on, now. Enough’s enough.”

“Stay the fuck
away
from me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

The girl’s hands fell to her sides. Her head hung low. Her entire body went limp, and she started breathing strangely. It took Hardie a second or two to realize she was launching into a full-on crying jag. He took a step toward her, said:

“Look, why don’t we start with—”

Without warning she lunged. Another hard, mean swing. Hardie was ready this time. He snatched the pole in his hand and refused to let go. She tugged. He held firm. She tugged again. He held on tighter. Uh-uh. Bitch was not getting her mic stand back. Bitch was definitely not hitting him with the mic stand again.

Then she did something Hardie did not anticipate. She lunged forward, pushing the mic stand toward Hardie. His grip was not prepared for this. The mic stand slid through his fist and went into his chest.

Both Hardie and the girl looked down at the pole for a moment before Hardie took a confused step backward. What had just happened?

“Ugh,” he said.

“Oh God,” she said.

Hardie forced himself to look down. Yep. He’d been impaled. Under his gray T-shirt he could feel blood trickling down across his right nipple, along his belly, past the waistband of his jeans. None of this seemed real. He took a breath, wondering if one of his lungs was going to collapse. Maybe pass out. Any second now.

But nothing yet. Somehow, he was still standing.

“Oh God,” the girl repeated, and immediately yanked the mic stand out.

“No, don’t do—”

Too late. The metal slid out of his flesh with a soft, wet
shucking
sound—like the meat of an oyster being pried from its shell. Hardie took an involuntary step backward, as if he could remove himself from the damage. The girl, too, edged backward, looked alternatively angry, shocked, and confused.

“I told you… I told you I’d hurt you!”

And make no mistake. The wound in his chest really fucking hurt, pain ramping up with every breath, it seemed. But somehow he was still standing, fully conscious. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe it had missed everything vital—the heart, the aorta, the lungs, the liver. Then again, maybe she’d nailed his heart right smack-dab in the fucking center and he was going to bleed out in a matter of seconds.

Hardie looked into the bathroom doorway for a towel, something to press against his chest. Maybe wrap around the wound. He took a step forward. Which freaked out the girl.

“Stay the fuck away from me!”

“I’m not going anywhere near you. Believe me.”

The girl tried to focus on him. Every muscle in her body was tensed, but her eyelids were strangely droopy. The combination of anxiety and lethargy suggested the girl had been playing mix and match in a medicine cabinet. Maybe Lowenbruck kept a bunch of pharmaceuticals handy and this girl knew it.

Whatever. Hardie took a few cautious steps into the bathroom, snatched the edges of a white terry-cloth towel and whipped it from the rack. He quickly folded it in half, held it under the entrance wound. Usually, the advice was simple: direct pressure, stop the bleeding. But what the fuck were you supposed to do when somebody impaled you?

Hardie looked at the girl.

“Why did you do that?”

“You’re one of
Them
… admit it!”

“I don’t know who you mean by
Them,
but I can assure you, I’m not.”

“Then, what the fuck are you doing in here?”

“I’m the house sitter.”

“House what?”

Her long dark hair hung down in her face, and her skin was dirty in places. Lots of scratches, too, along with a stray bruise or two. She’d bandaged up both of her hands—a sloppy, rushed job. Still, she was a pretty girl. Wide, full mouth, high cheekbones, and eyes that would be striking if she could manage to keep them open all the way—and somebody hosed her off in the backyard for a few minutes.

“House sitter. I watch houses.”

“Why would a fucking house sitter go sneaking around the house, checking every room? Don’t fucking deny it—I heard you!”

Hardie had had enough standing. He carefully eased himself down to a sitting position. If he was going to pass out, he’d rather do it closer to the floor.

“Look, honey, I just got here. Question is, what are you doing here? Because I’m pretty sure my booking agent didn’t mention anything about a crackhead with a mic stand, hiding in the bathroom.”

She rolled her eyes. “Crackhead. Don’t you know who I am?”

“Sweetie, I have no idea.”

The faintest trace of a smile appeared for a moment, then vanished. Then she started trembling.

Hardie had no idea who she was, but a story started to form in his mind. Beneath all of the patches of dirt and scratches and attitude, she appeared to be a perfectly young and healthy girl—not your average skinny L.A. junkie with buggy eyes and cheekbones that could cut tin cans. This girl had been well fed and cared for until relatively recently. Like, maybe even just a few hours ago. Maybe her parents owned a place farther down Alta Brea, or somewhere else in Beachwood Canyon. Maybe she’d stayed up past her bedtime partying hard, an asshole friend suggesting a quick coke-and-H nightcap.
Mellow out and party all night long!

Yeah, maybe that was it. She shoots up, she freaks. Knows she can’t go home to Mom and Dad. Not in that condition. Sees the Lowenbruck house. Finds the keys in the mailbox. Still freaking, worried about
Them
—parents? cops? dealers?—coming for her. Grabs a mic stand—yeah, that still didn’t make sense to him either, but he supposed a weapon was a weapon—then hit the bathroom.

Enter Charlie Hardie, Human Pincushion.

He hoped she had parents. He’d love to send them his emergency-room bill.

With every second that passed, Hardie came to believe that maybe the pole
had
missed all of the important bits. His sister-in-law-nurse back in Philly had told him a bunch of crazy ER stories—thugs rolling in with twenty, thirty stab wounds, yet still smoking cigarettes and annoyed to have to wait around so long even though they don’t have proper ID, let alone health insurance.

But Hardie had also heard plenty of the opposite, too. Stupid bar fights where one sloppy stab with a greasy butter knife ends up with one man DOA and another facing a manslaughter beef.

And when it came to medical luck, Hardie was reasonably confident that he’d used it all up three years ago.

Oh God.

She’d stabbed a man.

He was probably one of Them, but still… she didn’t mean to puncture his chest. She just wanted to knock him out—though her favorite stunt coordinator, Enrico Cifelli, had once told her how ridiculous that was.

Sure, you saw it in the movies all the time. But Enrico told her that blows to the top of the head almost never render the person unconscious. What it might do, however, is cause the diaphragm muscles to freak out, making it difficult for that person to breathe. Left untreated, it would kill him.

Of course, try to keep all of that in mind when you think you’re being hunted. This was not a movie set; she hadn’t gone through endless repetition, practicing a single move so that it could be filmed. When you’re being hunted, you kind of just
wing it.

And now she’d stabbed a man.

Hardie struggled up off the floor, fully expecting to pass out at any second. Before that happened, the dirty psycho chick had to go. To the hospital, to the LAPD, whatever. He supposed he should involve the LAPD because—well, she’d impaled him. And broken into the house. Those still counted as crimes, even in L.A.

“Are you okay?” she asked, hand out, as if to help him up. She took great care not to actually touch him, though. She gestured as if Hardie had an invisible force field around his body.

Hardie shot her a look.

“Hey,” she said. “I said I was sorry.”

Hardie said, “Pretty sure I missed that.”

“Well, I’m saying it now.”

“Whatever. Does your cell phone work?”

“Why?”

“Well, I’d like to call nine one one, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble. Maybe we can call someone for you, too. Like your mom or dad, maybe?”

The girl’s jaw dropped. “My
mom?
”

“You look pretty banged up. Maybe you should go to the hospital, too. Maybe they can give us adjoining rooms, just in case you feel like ramming something sharp through my body again.”

“You just want me to go outside.”

“Unless there’s an emergency room in the basement, yeah.”

This was getting them nowhere. What was he doing, anyway? Why did he give a shit about this girl, or even this house? Hello, Earth to Charlie: You have been impaled by a steel tube. You belong in a hospital.

She was looking at him. “You say you’re the house sitter.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“Charlie. And yours?”

“Last name.” This was a command, not a question.

“Hardie.”

“I’m supposed to just, what?…
Believe you?
”

Hardie thought about taking a better look at his wound but then changed his mind when his chest started throbbing. He took a semideep breath, wondering if he’d feel his lung collapse suddenly. It made him angry. She did this to him, and now she was giving him shit?

“You want to go upstairs and trade driver’s licenses? Because that’s all I’ve got. I seem to have left my birth certificate and Social Security card at home. Sorry.”

“That’s just what you’d want, isn’t it? Me to follow you upstairs.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

The girl’s eyes darted around wildly as she processed his words. Then her brain seemed to slip back into gear.

“Okay, let’s say you’re not one of Them.”

“Let’s do more than say it. Let’s believe it, because I’m fucking
not.
”

“If you’re not one of Them, how did you get into the house? I have the keys.”

“Ah, from the mailbox, right?”

So Andrew Lowenbruck
had
left the keys after all. Sorry, good sir, that I ever doubted you. Seems like this skinny, spoiled party girl went helping herself. Hardie smiled, but that just seemed to piss her off.

“I asked you,” she repeated, making sure he understood every syllable, even though her voice was trembling. “How. Did. You. Get.
In?
”

“Yeah. I heard. And thanks to you, I had to walk across the roof and use the sliding doors on the deck.”

“Shit—did anybody see you?”

“See me what?”

“When you walked into the house, did anybody see you? Was anybody watching?”

Hardie thought about his walk across the tile roof and almost said,
Well, yeah, there was this woman with amazing tits who caught me breaking into the house,
but that didn’t seem like a good way to put this girl at ease.

Before Hardie had a chance to answer, the girl pushed herself back a few inches, creeping away from him, shaking her head back and forth, pure panic on her face.

“No… oh God, what if they saw you? Shit, if they saw you…”

Back to
them
again.

“Nobody’s outside. It’s just you and me, honey.”

Well, and the sunbathing babe.

This was getting old fast. Hardie was wondering what he was going to say to Lowenbruck about all of this. Because after he got this girl calmed and into his rental car, he would have to call the police—and then Virgil. But there wasn’t any way around that. Lowenbruck would need a report for his insurance. Especially if she broke anything. God knows what she did to this place since helping herself to the keys. Goldilocks only ate porridge and smashed chairs and fell asleep in beds. And Goldilocks wasn’t a teenaged junkie.