This was unusual for Factboy, who spent most of his waking hours in his attic office “programming.” A total lie. He was busy retrieving information, then selling it to people who would pay him a lot of money for that information. This took anywhere from ten seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the type of information. Nothing—nothing—took more than a few minutes. The rest of the time Factboy watched 1980s-era horror movies, prowled message boards, and jacked off. Which was pretty much his life twenty years ago, too, come to think of it, down to the same movies. A wife and kids hadn’t changed things all that much.
The problem was, Factboy had to be available to Mann more or less all the time. While the info retrieval might take ten seconds, the request might come in at 3:13 a.m., and Factboy was expected to respond within seconds.
Factboy excused himself to go to the bathroom quite often.
So much so that Factboy’s wife thought he had irritable bowel syndrome. Instead, he was usually sitting on top of the toilet, thumbs flying over the tiny keypad on his phone, fielding a request, hoping he wasn’t too late.
Then he’d flush.
Lately, though, the wife had started in on him about spending more time with his family. Usually this was something that politicians or executives said after being caught with a dead ladyboy in their secret apartments, but the wife meant it for real. More time. Quality time. She thought they should travel. They should go see the Grand Canyon, she said.
Factboy and his family lived in a modest three-bedroom in Flagstaff, AZ—just an hour away from the Canyon. They’d never seen it.
Sensing that refusal might lead to separation, possibly divorce, and a smart enough lawyer might start taking a close look at Factboy’s revenue streams, jeopardizing pretty much everything, Factboy caved.
They went to the Grand Canyon. Stayed at the El Tovar, the oldest resort hotel, which looked like a huge pile of smoky timber perched within yards of a big gaping hole in the earth.
Within minutes of arriving at the South Rim, Factboy started having panic attacks. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, though the mile plunge to the bottom of the canyon was kind of terrifying. Instead, he found that he was completely freaked out by the lack of a fence. Not even a halfhearted little mesh-wire number. Not so much as a guardrail. Nothing. And there were kids everywhere—Factboy’s kids included—dancing, posing, goofing around, completely oblivious of the fact that certain death was just one fucking ooopsie away. Factboy couldn’t bring himself to look. He couldn’t bring himself to not look.
And then he received his urgent request from Mann.
One look at the screen and he told his wife—
“I’ve got to use the facilities.”
The “facilities”: marriage code for number two.
“Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
“Everything in place?” Mann asked.
“Yep,” A.D. said. “All he has to do is step outside.”
7
Who’s they? I want you to tell me who they is.
—John Aquino, Blow Out
HARDIE COULDN’T believe what his eyes were transmitting to his brain.
“Where the fuck is my car?”
“Get away from the window,” the girl scream-whispered behind him. “Please, I’m begging you. You looked, you’re upset, now move the fuck away before something really bad happens.”
“It was just there.”
“Are you really this dense? Or haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”
But Hardie was too focused on the stretch of asphalt in front of the garage. The sight absolutely boggled his mind. It didn’t make sense. When he finally glanced down at the psycho chick crouched next to him, mic stand in her hand, he decided he’d had enough. He darted for the door. He thought he was moving pretty fast, but she was a lot faster, even limping. The girl easily closed the distance, slid herself into the space between him and the wall, and again pointed the edge of the mic stand at the hollow of his throat.
“No,” she said.
Hardie tried to push her out of the way. “Move.”
“They took your car, don’t you realize that?”
“Well, I’ll just force Them to give it back. Move.”
“You can’t go outside. You go outside, you’re dead.”
“I can still catch them.”
Hardie was half-serious about that. The roads up here were twisty. Winding. They—whoever—just stole it a few seconds ago. He heard them do it. Maybe he had a chance—slim, he knew, but it was still a chance—at catching them on foot. But then what? Leave this girl here, by herself, in the house he was supposed to be guarding?
She hissed at him:
“Get down! It’s bad enough they saw you!”
Hardie sometimes marveled at how quickly things could spin out of control. He’d been in L.A. only, what?… ninety minutes total?… and he’d already lost all his possessions except for the wallet in his back pocket, the useless set of car keys in his front pocket, the cell phone with no service, and the clothes on his back. He’d jumped off a roof and landed in unidentified animal crap. Hardie half expected this crazy bird to force him to strip, then make him jump off the back deck into the wilds, just to show him—that’s how Hollywood does ya.
Then Hardie remembered that his carry-on bag had still been in the passenger seat of the Honda Whatever, and a tiny knot of grief formed in his stomach.
Hardie believed there were two kinds of things in the world. Things that could be replaced, and things that could not. He’d spent the past three years giving away or tossing everything in his life that could be replaced. This turned out to be most things in his life. Clothes, CDs, kitchen utensils, old books. All of it junk. You could soak it in lighter fluid and it wouldn’t matter. Because somewhere, out there, was another copy. But his duffel bag, the one he never checked at airlines, the one that never left his side, was full of things that could not be replaced.
And now it was gone.
Hardie pulled the cell out of his pocket. Fuck this. At the very least, his rental car was stolen. He needed to report it.
The girl touched his arm. “They won’t let you call.”
Hardie eyeballed her. “What do you mean?”
“I tried to use my phone, too. They’ve stopped the signals.”
Hardie checked the screen. No bars. Just like earlier, when he tried to call Virgil. At the time, he thought it was just because he was up in the Hollywood Hills, where service was shitty. Maybe he’d get lucky.
Hardie said, “It’s the mountain. Nobody’s jamming anything.”
“Look, I’ve been to countless parties up here. Calls are dropped all the time, but a service blackout like this? For, like, hours? No. It’s Them.”
Well, it was Them.
Mann’s team was equipped with a suitcase-size digital portable jammer—normally reserved for police and military use—as well as handheld jammers given to each operative. These devices were easy to obtain and extremely useful for operating under a blanket of silence. Mann insisted that all of her employees have them on at all times during every production.
To cover the immediate Alta Brea area, Mann had O’Neal power up the larger, more powerful jammer in the van—the same kind police use during hostage situations and drug raids so that the bad guys won’t be able to connect to the outside world.