That was the fun part. The boring part was the aftermath. Bleeding. Waiting in your own car for the highway patrol to arrive. Then more waiting for the EMTs to take you to the nearest hospital. Malibu was stone sober, of course, and his driving record was spotless, since it was erased every time he did one of these jobs. His volunteer work with kids with leukemia (fake) would pop up, as well as his Habitat for Humanity projects (also fake). No one would give him a second glance. Maybe they’d mention his name—an alias, and he had plenty of them—in a newspaper story or two. But mostly they would focus on the actress.
Malibu wanted to take her out on Decker Canyon Road, but it turned out she knew these roads just as well as he did. Sure, he could pull some fancy surefire moves that would nudge her sweet little ass off into the canyon. But that was beyond what had been discussed, so he’d called Mann on the hands-free. The word came back quick:
No, better if she looked like another coked-up actress who was out too late and didn’t know how to handle her Lexus.
So he trailed her to the 101. Now it was show time.
Malibu liked working with members of the acting community. They were fun. You knew exactly what they were going to do, exactly how they were going to react. Like they were following a script. They had the idea that they were above it all—
—that made it all the more gratifying.
Lane was approaching the exit to Highland Avenue—the Hollywood Bowl. It was still painfully early. The sky over L.A. was a pale gray lid. Maybe from here she’d go down to Hollywood Boulevard, then take Sunset all the way back down to the PCH, and then Venice. Make herself a big strong cup of coffee—one of those Cuban espressos she used to drink all the time. Put on some Neko Case, wait for her manager to wake up. Plan her next moves. When life finally stops kicking you in the teeth, you don’t whine and count the gaps. You see the fucking dentist and move on.
She signaled to change lanes, and saw the Chevy Malibu in front of her again. Damnit, the same one from Decker Canyon Road. As the moment of realization hit her—
Lane’s body was hurled forward just as the hood was ripped from its moorings and went flying up into the windshield. Glass sprayed. The air bag exploded.
Mann watched the accident from approximately fifty yards away. Now it was time to pull over to the shoulder and be one of those friendly citizens who offers to hold your hand until the police arrive. Only
The speedball contained enough heroin and coke to take down a Belushi-size human being; it would probably stop her heart in under a minute. And if it didn’t, there was always something more exotic that could be quickly loaded into a syringe. But better if it looked like a pure speedball. That way, Lane Madden would die and go to Hell still wondering what had happened. The Devil could fill her in.
Lane was numb for a few moments. Her body was telling her she was hurt, hurt bad, but she couldn’t find exactly where. The signals in her brain were crossed. She looked around, trying to solve it visually. If she could put together the details, she’d know what happened.
She had broken glass in her lap. The air bag had smashed her in the face. She half pushed it aside. Her right ankle was throbbing. Her foot had somehow wedged itself under the brake pedal.
A few feet ahead she could see the car she’d hit, or the car that had hit her—she wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. The driver’s head was slumped over his wheel. She prayed she hadn’t killed him.
Then someone opened her driver’s-side door, pushed the air bag out of the way.
She looked down and saw the needle in a gloved hand.
Even though she was still wrapped in a cocoon of shock, she knew that the needle was the one detail that didn’t belong.
The stranger grabbed her left wrist, twisted it, jammed the needle into the crook of her arm, depressed the plunger. Lane’s heart began to race. Oh God, what was in that fucking needle? Her vision went blurry. She clawed at the passenger seat, felt the smashed beads of glass.
Lane grabbed a fistful—
—and smashed it into her attacker’s eyes.
There was a horrible scream of rage and suddenly the needle was wobbling loose, hanging off Lane’s arm. She plucked it out it, threw it to the side, then tried to crawl out of the car. Meanwhile her attacker flailed around, blind, looking for her. Cursing, raging at her.
As Lane’s palms dug into the asphalt of the 101, she realized that her right ankle wasn’t working properly. The damned chunky metal weight strapped to it didn’t make it any easier. Her heart was racing way too fast, her skin slick with sweat. The world looked like it had been wrapped in gauze. Lane crawled away on her hands and one good knee, all the way to the fence at the edge of the 101.
And then she hurled herself over it.
—Marc Reisner
WHEELS WERE supposed to be up at 5:30 a.m., but by 5:55 it became clear that wasn’t gonna happen.
The captain told everyone it was just a little trouble with a valve. Once that was fixed and the paperwork was filed, they’d be taking off and headed to LAX. Fifteen minutes, tops. Half hour later, the captain more or less said he’d been full of shit, but really, honest, folks,
No, of course not.
So after two hours of being baked alive in a narrow tube, Charlie Hardie took the advice of the flight crew and stepped off to stretch his legs. After an eternity of standing around, his belly rumbling, he decided to make a run to a bakery over at the mall between Terminals B and C. Hardie had taken exactly one bite of his dry bagel when the announcement came over the loudspeakers:
By the time Hardie returned to his seat, carry-on in hand, someone had already commandeered his space in the overhead bin. Hardie glanced forward and back to see if there were any gaps in the luggage where he could slide his bag. Nope. Everything was jammed in tight. Irritated passengers tried to squeeze by him in the aisle, but Hardie wasn’t moving until he found a place for his carry-on. He refused to check it. He’d carefully planned his seat assignments so that he’d be one of the first on the plane, guaranteeing him overhead bin space. It didn’t matter what happened to the rest of his stuff; Hardie just couldn’t lose sight of this carry-on.
“Everything okay?” a gentle voice asked.
A flight attendant—young, smiling, wearing too much makeup, trying to ease the bottleneck in the middle of the plane. Trying to avoid some kind of incident.
Hardie lifted the duffel.
“Just trying to find a place for this.”
“Well, I can check it for you.”
