“If you don’t let me through so I can get to a hospital, then I might be dead, and you might be going to jail. Is that any better?”
This was wonderful. Already this gig had earned its place in the House Sitter Hall of Fame.
Hardie took a step forward. The girl raised her weapon—the bloodied mic stand—and pointed it at him.
“Want me to go now?”
“No. Wait to see if he comes out on his own. He might think the whole area is out and step outside to check.”
“How about I get into position, anyway, and wait for your signal?”
“Go ahead.”
Hardie didn’t know if he should swat the mic stand to the side, try to snatch it out of her hands, or give up.
“Are you really threatening to stab me with that thing?”
“I won’t let you open this door.”
“Look. I believe you. There is some kind of They out there. They are most definitely fucking with us. But I don’t want to sit here and wait for them to make a move. I used to be with the police. I think I can handle myself.”
Even Hardie knew that last line sounded full of shit. Yes, he sort of used to be something like a cop. But that had been three long years ago. A lot of drinking and poor eating and general sloth had atrophied his muscles. He was slower, larger. His liver wasn’t talking to him anymore, and his heart gave him little friendly reminders every so often that he might want to get his ass up and move around a little. The mornings he felt good simply meant that he’d passed out before he could have any more to drink.
So… I can handle myself ?
Sure, Unkillable Chuck. Whatever you say.
The fact remained—he wanted to look outside and see what the hell was going on. Maybe it wasn’t just this house but the whole block. Maybe World War III had kicked off, and he’d be able to see downtown L.A. go up in a flash of blinding light.
But the girl was still stubbornly blocking his way.
“You can’t handle these people. Believe me.”
“Still nothing.”
“Playing it safe, I guess. Okay, go head. Take it.”
“On it.”
Hardie heard a car engine rev, though at first he thought it was the power kicking back on. Then came the screech of tires, which quickly receded into the distance. Wait a second now…
He went for the door handle. The girl held up the edge of the mic stand so that it pointed at his throat.
“Don’t. I’m warning you.”
Hardie said, “Let me look.”
“Use a window.”
Hardie didn’t want to get into another wrestling match with this psycho chick. She might end up stabbing that damned mic stand in another part of his body. His luck, his goddamned eye. So, fine, he’d open the front door later. Hardie sidestepped away from the girl and made his way to the wide-screen windows in the living room. He pulled aside the dusty curtains, then looked outside, and then immediately muttered,
“Fuck me.”
Hardie had pulled up what… thirty minutes ago?
His Honda Whatever was gone.
6
A far-fetched story must be plausibly told,
so your nonsense isn’t showing.
—Alfred Hitchcock
THE LANE Madden production was supposed to be the easy one.
After Mann received the green light, O’Neal observed the actress for a few days. He reported back, which only confirmed that Mann’s original idea was best: a “Sleeping Beauty”—late-night OD after a party. The narrative in Mann’s head went something like:
After a career slump and well-publicized descent into booze and drugs, and eventually a court-ordered alcohol-monitoring anklet, a B-list starlet is given a second chance with a part in a new indie prestige film. Feeling good, she decides to celebrate. She can’t handle it; she relapses hard. She ODs in her Venice Beach apartment.
If all went well, Mann thought, the actress wouldn’t even wake up for her own death. She might feel a slight pinch somewhere in her dreams, and then she’d feel wonderful, and then she’d feel nothing at all.
Mann had a three-man support team (O’Neal, A.D., Malibu) all set to move when SURPRISE—the actress got her ass up and went for a late-night drive up the PCH. They reported it to Mann, who told Malibu to follow her, see if any opportunities presented themselves. Malibu pushed for a Decker Canyon Road crash, but the thought made Mann uneasy. Too many wildcard factors—including the idea that the actress might survive a plunge into the canyon, or live long enough to place a 911 call describing the car that had run her off the road. When it seemed that Lane was headed down the 101 toward Hollywood, Mann put a new plan into play—an old reliable. Drug overdose followed by a crash. Easy, simple.
Only not so simple. A.D. and O’Neal had tracked her up into the Hollywood Hills while Mann staggered off to have an eye patched and Malibu stayed at the scene to give a report to the police.
The court-ordered ankle bracelet made it easy to trace Madden’s movements through the Hollywood Hills. They’d hacked into it the day before and had been following her movements on their phones ever since. Toward the end of the chase, however, she got smart and used something—probably a rock—to break the bracelet and tossed it into a clump of eucalyptus bushes down at the bottom of a steep hill. All seemed lost until they picked up some blood splatters near Alta Brea Drive.
There was only one house on this flat steep slope. A quick phone call revealed the owner’s name, and that settled it. The actress was obviously there, slipping inside like some fucked-up Goldilocks who knew the bears were about to devour her ass.
They weren’t bears, though.
They were highly trained professionals, part of something they loosely (and semijokingly) referred to as the Guild.
The Guild was a small brotherhood that specialized in invisible acts. They considered themselves the unseen architects of modern history. No footprints, no forensic evidence, no hint of the hand behind the act. Mann and her kind didn’t provide something as crude as a “hit”; rather, she strived for an airtight death narrative. You could look, but you would not find anything. You could question, but there would be no answers—other than the obvious.
Few people knew they existed.
Those who did called them by their nickname:
“The Accident People.”
O’Neal and A.D. were ordered to watch the house until Mann could make it up to Alta Brea. Once Mann arrived, O’Neal and A.D. reported that no one had entered or exited in the past hour. With one good eye—and oh, the cut eye almost made it personal, it truly did—Mann noticed a small white house down the hill below Alta Brea Drive. A quick call to Factboy confirmed that the occupant, an actress, was away on a horror-movie shoot in Atlanta. The house would be a perfect staging area. Mann broke in, secured it, then set up a surveillance post.
So now Mann watched from below and started to craft a new narrative:
Drugged-out B-list starlet crashes her car on the 101, staggers away in a haze, thinks she can just leave her mess behind for someone else to clean up. Wanders into some poor bastard’s home (celebrities were known to do that, too) only to die in a guest bathroom… or no, wait, she wanders the hills for a while, which explains the scrapes from tree branches, and the grass stains on the bottoms of her feet.