“You can call me Lane, you know.”
“Okay, Lane. I’ve saved the million-dollar question for last. Why do you think these people want to kill you?”
She hesitated. “I have no idea. All I know is, they’re serious.”
“You have no idea at all?”
“Isn’t that what I said? I was out late last night driving, just to clear my head—and I hadn’t been drinking, thank you very much, you can ask my manager, Haley. And then,
Hardie considered this.
“Let me see your arm.”
“Why?”
“Just let me see where they injected you.”
She obediently made a tight little fist and extended her arm, showing him the crook of her elbow. Hardie looked. There was a needle mark, as well as some bruising around it. She’d been injected hard, and some veins had collapsed around the site. Still, she could have done it herself. Like shooting up before/during/after a Hollywood party.
“Mind if I touch you?”
Lane smirked. “You’ve already put me in a bear-hug death grip and sat on me. Now you’re asking if I mind if you touch me?”
“Just thinking of the lawsuit. Don’t want you and your lawyers tacking on extra items.”
Lane raised a right hand.
“I give you permission to touch me, Mr. Hardie.”
“Call me Charlie.”
Hardie gently took her by the wrist and rotated her arm inward. So strange to touch her. So strange to touch another female human being, actually. When was the last time he’d done that? He examined her arm quickly. No finger-shaped bruises. No other marks at all, except for random scrapes and cuts.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Just wondering why a speedball.”
“Because they probably wanted my death to look like an accident. Like I was some dumb two-bit cokehead actress who went out cruising late and ended up rear-ending some poor father of three or something.”
“Why go through all that trouble?”
Lane looked at him. “I told you, I don’t know. Why did that deranged idiot shoot John Lennon?”
Hardie tried to keep an open mind, swear to God he did. But even the slow, lazy lizard part of his brain was screaming BULLSHIT at every turn.
The kind of killers Hardie encountered back in Philly were idiot scumbag husbands who beat their wives with baseball bats and tried to dump their bodies in storage lockers registered to their real names. Gangbangers looking to make a name for themselves, undercutting one another with cheaper and cheaper hits to the point where you could take out a witness in a major drug case for about the price of a fucking iPod. Drug-gang hitmen, Russian-mob enforcers. The killers he knew didn’t work in coordinated packs, and they certainly didn’t try to make their work look like an accident. That was the whole point. A death was not supposed to be an Act of God—it was meant as an Act of Vladmir, To Teach You Not to Steal From His Stash.
“Let me take a look outside and see if I can’t put your mind at ease, huh? And then we can get to a hospital.”
“No. No fucking way. That’s what they want. God knows what they’ll do to you the moment you set foot outside. Don’t you understand? These people operate on a completely different level.”
Hardie muttered:
“They.”
Factboy gathered more intel on Charles D. Hardie. Slowly, it painted an interesting, if kind of sad and deadbeatish, kind of picture.
Hardie had been filing tax returns as a “house sitter” for the past twenty-three months.
He didn’t make much.
The address on the rental agency turned out to be for a house that had been on the market for twenty-seven months.
The house was crap.
Debit-card statements revealed that he lived in hotels or the places he watched.
He didn’t spend much. Movie rentals.
(Who the hell went to an actual store and rented movies anymore?)
All bills went to a PO Box in Philadelphia.
The person who paid for that box lived at 255 Dana Street, Abington, Pennsylvania.
So far, no connection between Madden and Hardie, outside of a few DVD rentals on Hardie’s debit card. Nothing from the past three years. But previously he’d rented some romantic comedies where Madden was featured in a supporting role:
(Factboy’s wife had made him sit through that last one. He wanted to use a fork on his eyeballs, just to escape the theater.)
Anyway, it was safe to assume that Hardie recognized her. Also safe to assume Madden had shared the events of the past few hours with him.
Factboy told all of this to Mann, who disconnected without a word of thanks or good job or anything. Good thing he wasn’t in this business for the ego-boosting. Factboy pretend-flushed, then rejoined his family, who were hot and cranky, and tired of waiting around for him.
Mann needed this production concluded immediately. Another, much bigger and more complex job on the other side of the mountain was pending. This silly little bitch was taking far too much time and money.
Somewhere in all of this, there would have to be a visit to an ophthalmologist. The mobile doc who’d patched it stressed he wasn’t an expert but thought it could be a severe corneal abrasion—definitely something that needed proper attention, not a quick fix. The wound burned and itched like crazy; it was all Mann could do not to scratch or rub around the edges.
Another reason to move things along.
The bright, warm sun helped distract Mann from the pain. She rubbed more sunscreen on her breasts, dried her hands with a white terry-cloth towel she’d found in the house.
Then a voice spoke into her ear. O’Neal.
“Heads up, y’all. We’ve got another guest.”
The driver of the Dodge Sprinter kept the engine idling as he engaged the parking brake. For a precarious moment, the van seemed like it would roll back down Alta Brea and crash into something that cost millions of dollars. But the brake held. The driver, in shorts and a company polo shirt, stood up and stepped into the back, wiping his face with a sleeve. He looked like he’d been up all night.
O’Neal spoke quietly: “Uh, anybody expecting a package?”
Mann, down below, said, “Keep watching.”
After a few seconds the driver emerged with a piece of luggage. He hopped out of the back, checked his computerized clipboard, typed in a few things, then popped out the long handle and started rolling the bag up to the house. The wheels bumped on the uneven paving blocks.
“Courier’s got a bag,” O’Neal said, “and he’s headed to the house. Repeat; headed right to the house.”
“Hang on a minute,” Mann said.
“We don’t have a minute. I need to know what you want.”
Mann said nothing.
Which pissed O’Neal off. Not that it mattered, killing the delivery guy. But it was one more detail, one more annoying errand extending this job into super-bugfuck-crazy overtime. If that was the case, then Mann should let
