Fun and Games (18 page)

“No, you’re missing my point. They can trace credit cards. They ask for ID. This isn’t the nineteen fifties, where you can scribble I. P. Freely in the dusty ledger on the desk.”

“Who said anything about checking in?”

After getting out of the hospital, Hardie spent over half a year living in hotels. When you boiled it down, there were two kinds of hotels: ones with ice machines and ones where you had to call room service. Hardie stayed in the hotels with ice machines. After a while they began to blur together. Same plastic ice bucket, same flimsy plastic liner that took you a while to pry apart. Same thin bars of soap, same sample-size bottles of allegedly luxury shampoo that refused to rinse out of your hair. Same rug. Same phone. Same flat-screen TV. Same shows on the TV. Same A/C. Same smell. Same theft-proof hangers. Same No Smoking signs. Same key-card door locks.

Absolutely the same in almost every hotel.

Hardie had mastered those key-card door locks late one night after walking back from an Applebee’s across the street and realizing that, at some point, he’d lost his plastic key card. The sensible thing would have been to approach the front desk, produce identification, and ask for a replacement card. Hardie had not been in a sensible frame of mind. He’d been downright contrary, in fact. That night, he’d downed three double bourbons, seven (maybe eight) pints of Yuengling, and then somebody down at the other end of the bar started buying shots of Jäger for somebody’s promotion at some firm somewhere, and Hardie joined in, then realized that he should probably hold that all down with another double bourbon, or two, just to settle his stomach. So by the end, Hardie reasoned, he couldn’t form the words to ask for a replacement key card. His tongue had begun refusing commands from his own brain.

But his hands still worked.

And he could fish a wire hanger out of the trash, run it under his own door, and open the handle with a quick jerk.

Hardie didn’t want to burglarize an occupied room; they needed an empty room. The easiest way to do that would be to check the maid’s pencil charts. There was usually some kind of floor diagram, printed each morning, to tell the maids which rooms to bother cleaning and which had gone unsold for the night. It was late afternoon, but the cleaning staff was still out working the floors. After only a few minutes of roaming the halls, he found a cart, helped himself to the floor list. A lot of empty rooms on the floor, which was great. Room 426 was open, and near a staircase. Even better.

Once inside, Lane announced:

“I’m going to take a shower.”

“Okay. I’m going to make that call. And hey, help yourself to whatever’s in my bag. There’s nothing fancy in there, but at least they won’t have blood and smoke all over them.”

She gave him a deadpan look.

“You think you have something in my size? Maybe a bra, too?” Hardie looked at her and smiled.

“Now we’re
really
delving into personal territory.”

Finally Lane cracked a smile. A big, unabashed, toothy smile. And God, did it make her look stunning.

When Lane rooted through Charlie’s luggage, she saw a tiny leather bag. She unzipped it. There was a plastic deodorant stick—Momentum. A metal razor with replaceable blades. Worn toothbrush. A small hard-plastic prescription bottle made out to Charles D. Hardie. Vicodin. Lane glanced over at Hardie. He wasn’t paying attention. She grabbed a T-shirt and tucked the bottle inside, then stepped into the bathroom.

She was tired of being hunted, of having the guilt gnaw away at her heart. If it came down to it, Lane would go out on her own terms. She wasn’t going to hurt any more people.

And she wasn’t going to let Them win.

Hardie sat on the edge of the king-size bed, listening to the springs groan under his weight, trying hard not to think about Lane undressing on the other side of the flimsy door.

He wanted a beer—just a little bracer—before calling Deke. Maybe he should go out and get one. There had to be a tavern or bodega somewhere nearby that would sell him a single or a six. He’d earned it. God, how he’d earned it. Maybe there was even a liquor store that would sell him a bottle of Jack.

But he stayed put. A sliver of sun blasted through the dirty gold blinds. Dust motes floated in the air, suspended by some unseen forces. On the other side of the door, she turned on the shower.

Time to call.

Hardie really wanted a beer.

Usually he didn’t mess around with beer. He went right for the bourbon. Beer sloshed around in your gut and only numbed the brain in the faintest of ways. Good old American bourbon knew how the brain worked, knew which wires to pull, which to leave on. But Hardie didn’t want his wires pulled. Not yet. He wanted a beer.

Yet he couldn’t leave the edge of the bed.

If he stood up and walked out the door, maybe all of this would disappear and he’d wake up on a leather couch with a bottle resting in his crotch and he’d realize this was all a dream. And as awful as things had been, he wasn’t ready to accept all of this as a dream. Not yet. Not until he figured it out.

Behind the door, a door slid open, then slid shut. She was inside the shower now.

It was as if he were a corpse slowly coming back to life. Blood surging through veins that he’d long thought withered away. Brain cells in the animal part of his mind suddenly shocking themselves back to life. Charlie Hardie Frankenstein.
It’s alive!

Hardie stood up suddenly and walked to the bathroom door. Listened to the water hiss from the shower fixture. He should have gone for that beer. Instead, he picked up the room phone and dialed a number collect.

It was three hours later in Philadelphia—Eastern Time Zone. Deacon “Deke” Clark was turning over some carne asada on his backyard grill, nursing his second Dogfish Head Pale Ale, when his cell phone buzzed. Never failed. He didn’t recognize the area code either.

“Deke, it’s me. Charlie.”

“Hey. How ya doing, Hardie.”

Deke knew how terse he sounded. He just wasn’t a phone person.

“I’m kind of fucked, Deke, to tell you the truth. You don’t think you could get out here sometime tonight, do you?”

“Where’s here?”

“Los Angeles.”

Deke paused, tongs in hand, smoke rising, coals burning deep hot. “What’s going on, Hardie?”

Hardie started speaking quickly, about a house-sitting gig and finding a squatter inside—then realizing there were people outside the house trying to kill the squatter, and how they barely escaped with their lives. We shouldn’t have escaped, Hardie said. It was a ridiculous miracle that we did. And somehow, it seemed to be related to a three-year-old hit-and-run case in Studio City. A kid named Kevin Hunter was the victim.

“You’re not putting me on, are you?”

“Would I really make this up?”

“You seriously telling me this is about
The Truth Hunters
people?”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, right. You’ve unplugged yourself from the modern world. So you have no idea that there’s this true-crime reality show called
The Truth Hunters,
created and produced by the father of Kevin Hunter, who was killed in a hit-and-run three years ago.”

Sure, he’d heard about it. Just this afternoon, from Lane herself.

“She told me about it.”

“And you’re saying this is part of it? The actress was involved?”

“Yeah.”

“Got any evidence?”

“Not a shred. But then, that’s what these Accident People do. Cover up all traces.”

Deke knew how much Hardie drank. What he did with his life. How he’d removed himself from everybody and everything. This was all a lot to swallow in one phone conversation.

“So, let’s make sure I have this right: these shadowy agents or whatever want the actress gone before she tells the truth, right? Hell, if they’re already going through all this trouble, why not just bump off the Hunters, too? They’re the ones pushing for the answers. They could even do it on live TV.”

“I know how this sounds, Deke. About ten hours ago, I wouldn’t have believed me either. But this is real.”

There was a painfully long pause as Deke looked at his sizzling meat and tried to figure out the best move.

“Look, Hardie, how about I send somebody? A good man I know lives in West Hollywood, works at Wilshire. He can help you sort this out. And if the actress is in some kind of real trouble, and not drugged out of her mind, he’ll give her protection and get an investigation started. His name’s Steve—”

“No. Only you, Deke. You’re the only person in this world I trust, and right now that means everything. They’re smart, they’re connected, and it’s only a matter of time before they find us again.”

“You sound a little paranoid, Hardie.”

“You can call me whatever you want. And I’m guilty of a lot of things. But have you ever known me to exaggerate?”

Not while sober, no. Deke had to admit that. Not even while drunk, come to think of it.

“And one more thing.”

“You means besides dropping everything and traveling to Los Angeles?” Deke asked.

“This is serious. Triple the protection around Kendra and Charlie. They know your address. If they can find you, they can find them. Do you understand?”

“What do you mean they know my address?”

“Swear to God, Deke, I’d only been around these fuckers for maybe a half hour, and it was like they had a complete dossier on me. They know I have a family. They know where I send checks. They’ve either got sponsors who are connected or have enough money to buy connections.”

“Hardie, what have you gotten me into?”

By the time Deke thumbed the Off button on his phone, he’d agreed to drop everything and fly to Los Angeles. He had a go-bag in the closet; he could probably book a flight on the way to the airport—they tended to cut FBI agents slack when it came to last-minute travel. But what the hell was he going to tell his wife? Here, enjoy this plate of carne asada all by your lonesome while I go off and help a guy I’ve bitched about nonstop for three years now?

Hardie placed the receiver back on the base and stared at it for a few moments. There was no man he trusted more than Deke Clark. The agent was essential to his family’s survival. But he knew that Deke didn’t like him much. And never had. Some things, though, transcended the personal.

After a while Lane came limping out in nothing but a towel and started picking through Hardie’s suitcase. She asked if he minded. Hardie said no, of course not, and tried hard not to look. None of his jeans would fit her, of course, but one of the T-shirts worked. Black, advertising a Northeast Philly bar called the Grey Lodge, coming down to midthigh.

Hardie said, “You look a lot better.”

“Ugh. I’m banged up and cut and scraped to hell. I’m finding bruises I didn’t even realize I had this morning. Guess I won’t be on any magazine covers for a while.”

“But you’re alive.”

“I am alive.”

Hardie saw her differently now. Not just because the grime was gone, or because she was wearing his T-shirt. All day he’d more or less dismissed her as a snotty bitch who’d gotten herself into trouble. But for the past three years, their lives had been more similar than Hardie ever would have guessed.

“It’s going to be okay,” Hardie said.

“I know.”

There was an awkward moment of silence before Hardie excused himself and walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. The off-white tile walls were still damp with condensation from her shower. Hardie put his palms on the enamel sink and looked at himself in the mirror. Hey, tough guy. How handsome are you?

He stripped off his dirty, bloody clothes—ripping the rest of his T-shirt, actually, because that seemed easier than pulling it over his head. He stepped into the shower, cranked up the water. The pressure sucked. The water spat out in a weird pattern that hurt his skin but didn’t actually get him very wet. But it didn’t matter. As long as he could wash off most of this day. The crusted blood, the smoke, the dirt, the film of sweat. His wounds still bled but at least he could replace the old blood with some new.

After tucking the bottle of Vicodin under the pillow, Lane lay back on the bed and allowed herself the luxury of closing her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that without worrying about something—her choices, her career, the incident. Usually when she closed her eyes, the demons would pounce. The middle of the night was the worst. That’s when she’d pop awake and think about all the things that could go wrong in the world. Everything from never working again to drinking too much to a global pandemic to catastrophic financial meltdown to an asteroid smashing into the ocean and obliterating every living thing. She hated the night. The morning sucked, too, because most days the pounding behind her eyes was relentless. But at least it wasn’t night.

Now, though, she felt a little more at ease.

Because after three years, God had finally called her on it.

Her worst sin.

And she was still breathing.

He hadn’t reached down from Heaven to smite her in a flash of blinding white. Maybe he’d tried with the Accident People, but if so, it wasn’t a full-on, full-court-press try, because she was still alive.

Still breathing.

Until she chose not to.

The air conditioner hummed in the corner, and the water beat against the shower tile steadily, incessantly. She wondered if she could fall asleep. Just for a few minutes. Her protector was in the next room. They were hidden away, at random in the middle of nowhere L.A. Maybe she could indulge herself, just a little.

The total blackness and icy numbness came faster than she thought.

But it wasn’t the kind she’d been hoping for.

24

This time it’s personal.

—Tagline from
Jaws: The Revenge

H
ARDIE TURNED
the cheap metal handle to the Off position. He used mostly cold water so the steam wouldn’t make him sweat, and the cold was nice and bracing and had the curious effect of calming him down a little. After patting himself dry, he took a stab at taping up his chest wound again. As soon as Deke made it here, he’d go have it checked out. He promised. But in the meantime, one little Vike couldn’t hurt. Hardie rooted through his toiletries bag, trying to feel for the familiar round shape of the bottle. Nothing. He looked. Everything else seemed to be here. Toothbrush, razor. No painkillers, though. Great. He probably left them behind at the last gig.

So instead, Hardie busied himself with brushing his teeth, halfway through when he realized that all his clean clothes were in the suitcase out in the other room. He wasn’t about to wrap a towel around his midsection and go parading around out there. The towels were ideal for preteen girls, not for a guy the size of Hardie. The actress might get the wrong idea. So Hardie put on his smoky, torn, blood-splattered jeans again and looked at himself in the mirror. He was a big mess. But at least it was better than the towel. His mouth still felt metallic, stale, so he squeezed out more toothpaste and started to brush again and had just opened the door when something pinched his neck and he found himself, inexplicably, on his knees.

Someone whispered:

“Shhhh, now.”

Hardie’s arms felt like rubber. The toothbrush started to slip out of his fingers. Tightening his grip didn’t work. His fingers didn’t want to do what they were told. The toothbrush slipped completely out of his fingers.

A gloved hand caught it before it hit the carpet.

More gloved hands picked him up.

The lights were off.

But he could see what they had done to Lane over on the bed.

Factboy had put a standard trace on all calls and e-mails coming to Special Agent Deacon Clark, Philadelphia office, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Home, office, and cell. Again, not hard to do with the magic of the Patriot Act, even when the subject was a federal agent. Hell, Clark’s being a fed made it easier. Still, Factboy couldn’t believe it when a hit popped up almost immediately—a call from a hotel room in Los Feliz, near Hollywood.

Not only was Mann’s new team already assembled, but they were rolling up and down the streets of old Hollywood already. The hotel was two minutes away. They were pulling up within forty-five seconds.

Mann actually thanked Factboy and told him he did good work. Factboy was too stunned to reply and stammered something about the trace being a good one (like what the fuck did that even mean?). The line disconnected and Factboy wondered if he was actually done for the day, if he could go upstairs and rejoin his family. That’s what he really should do. Try to smooth things over with the wife, look at his kids and tickle their bellies and tell them that he loved them. That he did all these awful things because he loved them.

Isn’t that what all fathers did?

Lane was there, on the bed, waiting for him. She’d been stripped naked. Only her panicked eyes seemed able to move, along with a slight up-and-down motion of her chest. They’d let her continue breathing. For the moment. Hardie tried to look away but a gloved hand pushed on his jaw, facing him forward.

“Uh-uh-uhhhh,” a soft voice said. “Look at her. You’ve wanted her from the minute you saw her. Haven’t you, Charlie? Your little celebrity.”

Hardie recognized the voice. Topless. Why was it that whenever he heard her voice, he happened to be staring at naked breasts? And why was it that, at the same time, her voice chilled his blood and made him think of death?

The gloved hands guided him over to the bed, holding his midsection, working his legs. The sensation was horrible. He was completely helpless, a pile of rubber meat hanging on plastic bones, ready to be posed and moved and positioned any way they wanted. As Hardie was moved closer to the bed, he saw that Lane’s eyes were open—glassy, but open. They’d given her something, too.

“Isn’t she beautiful, Charlie? We found all her movies and photos and torn-out magazine pages in that duffel bag you carry around with you all the time. Admit it. You love to look at her, and, wow, you finally have her here now, in the flesh, right in front of you. To do with as you please.”

The bag. Oh God, they still had his bag, not the one with the stupid T-shirt and jeans, but the real one,
the important one,
the one he swore to keep with him at all times. The one he’d lost anyway.

“Go ahead, Charlie. Get closer. You know she wants it. She’s practically begging for it. Look at her.”

They arranged his body so that he straddled hers. His body was at once tingly and partially numb, but he could still feel her naked form beneath him. Her skinny, tired, bandaged, cut body.

“Only maybe she doesn’t want you. Maybe you’ve read the signs wrong. You totally want to fuck her, but she’s repulsed by you. Wouldn’t want you even if you paid her. Even if you threatened to kill her.”

They forced his arms up, then placed his thick, scarred hands around her throat. Carefully, they arranged his fingers around her pretty throat. He could see a vein throbbing there, and her throat working hard to swallow. There was a fleeting terror in her eyes, like she’d realized what they were going to do before Hardie did.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’re the kind of guy who can’t get it up, no matter how badly you want it. You try to get yourself all worked up, but in the end it’s an exercise in futility, you’re just too out of shape to make it happen.”

The men in the gloves paused for a moment to change positions; Hardie could feel them adjusting around him, like puppeteers struggling behind a black felt curtain. Pay no attention. Keep your eye on the maniac on top of the beautiful naked actress.

“She got you so mad, you thought to yourself—well, then, yeah. Fuck it. I
will
kill her. Squeeze the life out of her stuck-up obnoxious face.”

Gloved fingers pressed down on Hardie’s numb, useless fingers. Gloved thumbs guided his naked thumbs to the middle of her soft throat and then pressed down hard, joined by the rest of his fingers, tightening around her neck like a vise. Hardie tried to push back, but there was nothing for his mind to seize control of; his hands weren’t talking to him right now. They were busy acting. Choking Lane Madden to death in this crazy psychotic fucked-up fantasy version of real life.

“Feels good, doesn’t it, Charlie? Choke that bitch out. Go on. Break her little scrawny neck.”

As they pushed Hardie’s hands down, something shot out from under the pillow and ping-ponged across the carpet.

“Ooh, what was that, Charlie? A secret weapon, maybe?”

Hardie felt one of his puppet masters leave to retrieve the mystery object. He must have handed it to his boss, because she said:

“Now, this is interesting….Vicodin, prescribed to… oh, to you, Charlie. I suppose it’s painful being a hero. But what was this doing under the pillow? Did you put it there, or did the actress? I think it was her, wasn’t it, Charlie?”

Hardie looked down at Lane. Her eyes were filled with still tears. After a moment, his puppet master rejoined the group on the bed and pressed Hardie’s hands down again, squeezing Lane’s throat. She blinked. Tried to look away. She couldn’t do anything.

“Wait, I get it now. Your girl took your pills and hid them under the pillow. Now, why would she do that? Maybe because she’d rather swallow a fistful of pills than spend another second with you?”

Lane’s legs twitched. Her stomach heaved, and her head started to move slightly, from the left to the right, from the left to the right, just a few millimeters. Hardie felt her hips jolt beneath him. She was trying, God, she was trying.

“But we can’t have that. No no no. We don’t want a suicidal actress. We want an actress who was cut down in her prime. Choked to death by a man who lusted after her. Murdered by
you,
Charlie.”

Hardie wanted to open his useless mouth and tell Lane he was trying, too, that everything was going to be okay, he wasn’t going to let them do this. But he was. Strangling her. Murdering her. And there was nothing he could do about it, because his body was no longer his own.

Percentage of murder victims killed by someone they know: fifty-eight.

Only now, in these desperate moments as the capillaries burst in her face and in her eyes, did Lane Madden realize that punishment had come for her after all. Over the past three years she’d ping-ponged between despair and hope, damnation and redemption, wondering where she’d land.

She wanted to tell Charlie:
It’s not your fault. You couldn’t help this. This was my war. You just wandered into it. It’s not your fault.

She wanted to tell the Hunters:
I’m sorry I didn’t tell the truth. I prolonged your suffering because of my own self-interest and greed and narcissism.

She wanted to tell the world:
I’m not this person you thought I became. I’m really not, it’s not me, it’s not me…

And then, at the last possible moment, it came to her.

This wasn’t about her.

This was about the family at that address.

She had to let Charlie know, she had to tell him, because there was no one else who could do anything about it but Charlie…

Save them,
she tried to will her mouth to say, struggling to make her jaw move and her lips form the words, one last line to run, her final performance, God, please let Charlie understand what I’m trying to tell him…

Save them.

They continued pressing down on his hands until her body was still. One of the gloved hands freed itself to feel her wrist for a pulse, then slid over her eyelids, forcing them shut. They guided Hardie back to a corner of the room, then eased him down into a sitting position. Something sharp poked at one of his ass cheeks, but he figured that was the least of his worries. The taller of the two men slid a syringe out of a zippered case. Hardie recognized him now. He was the second intruder, the one who had Tasered him, then crawled backward out of the Lowenbruck house. The tall, vicious one, he thought he’d sent flying off the top of a mountain. Now he caught Hardie eyeing the syringe.

“Oh, don’t worry, big guy. We’re not going to kill you.”

“Oh, no,” Topless said. “After all, you’re Unkillable Chuck. I guess we finally learned our lesson about you. No, we’ve got something else in mind.”

Hardie struggled to make his mouth work. He thought he managed to sputter out a couple of syllables—

“I… I’ll…”

—but he wasn’t sure until Topless responded.

“You’ll what? You’ll talk—is that it? About what? What proof do you have? You have nothing, Charlie. Absolutely nothing.”

She gave a curt nod. The tall one slid the needle into his arm, but Hardie didn’t feel it. He could hardly feel anything, except maybe the burning ingot of rage in his brain.

“This is just to keep you comfortable,” Tallboy said.

“And before you do open your mouth,” Topless continued, “I’d keep Kendra and Charlie Jr. in mind.”

As he passed into total paralysis, Hardie couldn’t stop staring at Lane’s lifeless body. Her eyes, still slightly open. One eye staring at him. The one he’d punched. Accusing him, blankly. Why couldn’t you save me? What have you been doing for the past three years except taking up space, breathing other people’s air, consuming natural resources? You not only failed to save your partner’s family—you got them all killed. It was even worse with me. You actually killed me. With your own hands.

You happy, Charlie?

You happy you let all of this happen?

O’Neal made one last visual sweep of the hotel room. No fibers had been left behind, no trace of them whatsoever. This was familiar turf—he’d worked dozens of hotel jobs before. He felt like he knew how to hit the Reset button on a hotel room better than career maids did. No trace of them was left. The only evidence left behind told the sad tale of…

Charles D. Hardie, a police consultant turned house sitter turned raging alcoholic, finally breaks with reality once he crosses paths with his favorite movie star, Lane Madden.

Hardie has been to Hollywood before and spies on Madden whenever possible. He takes another house-sitting assignment because he knows she’ll be in town—he’s been reading about her in the entertainment rags. Friday night Hardie follows her back to her Venice apartment after a party in Brentwood, then all the way through the mountains, past Mulholland Drive, and down the 101.

But he’s too eager. He brakes his rental vehicle too fast, causing an accident. Panicked, he loads Madden into his car, then flees the scene. His unbalanced mind creates a “hero” fantasy where he’s saving her from unknown attackers—just like in the action movies featuring Ms. Madden.

Hardie brings her to the house he’s been hired to watch, up in the Hollywood Hills. Madden tries to escape, at one point even stabbing Hardie. Enraged, Hardie beats her savagely and sets the house ablaze and then forces Madden into a landscaping-company van just up the hill, then drives down to Hollywood proper to continue his psychotic fantasy.

Believing this a date, Hardie forces Madden into the famous Musso & Frank, much to the shock of the staff—but no one summons the police, because Madden is well known for exhibiting strange behavior in public. Madden, to her credit, tries to play along, hoping to defuse the ticking time bomb that is Charles Daniel Hardie.

But the ruse breaks down. Hardie brings her back to a hotel in Los Feliz, breaking into a room, where he proceeds to beat and eventually strangle Madden to death. The police find him on the floor of the hotel room, paralyzed with shock, still rambling about these “Accident People” who were trying to kill her.