Fun and Games

(which had been delivered from Santa Monica). Cameras flashed; the music was throbbing. Friends were there. They asked how it felt to have a day or two off, wow, what did you do? They told their friends what the Accident People had suggested: just fucking around all day at Lane’s place in Venice.

Lane was quiet but compliant. She drank and tried to will her hands to STOP SHAKING.

At the same time, the duplicate car, with stand-ins, was cruising around Studio City. The Accident People listened. The police received calls—reports of someone driving a vehicle like a maniac around their neighborhood. The hit-and-run was huge news. The victim, an eight-year-old boy, had died at the scene. The description of the car had gone out wide. Police vowed to catch these “animals.”

The Accident People took care of the loose ends with piles of cash. The car dealer: silenced. The director: silenced—and he didn’t even need the incentive. There was no upside to having your movie’s star arrested for manslaughter.

Lane’s hands didn’t stop shaking for days.

Not long after, she and the Blond Viking God split. She stopped calling him, he stopped wondering if she’d call. Still, they were considered a “hot couple” by the various celebrity mags for the next nine months.

Lane went to her manager, told him she didn’t know if she could do this. The manager said there wasn’t a choice.

The studio threw a ton of work at her. Action movies. Something different for her. Lane thought she’d hate it. Turned out she loved it. Loved the preparation, the intensity, the physicality, the mindlessness of it all.

She did that for two years.

Then, about a year ago, she caught sight of a billboard for a new reality show:

The Truth Hunters.

It was America’s Most Wanted 2.0—a fugitive-catching show mashed together with Unsolved Mysteries and forensic supercop and cold case dramas. All of it one hundred percent true. Each installment had a single sponsor. The sponsor gave a pile of cash. The producers handpicked cases. The cash was used to reopen the investigation and get things done. Stage new forensics tests. New lab reports. New photographs. New simulations.

Famously, the executive producer, Jonathan Hunter, did not take a dime from the show; he claimed to use every available resource to catch “people who thought they could get away with it.” He lived in the same, slightly cramped Studio City home that he and his wife, Evelyn, had purchased back in the late 1980s; the family was supported by his wife’s income. But what really touched the hearts of viewers was the fact that Jonathan Hunter knew what it was like to have an unsolved case eat away at your soul. His son Kevin had been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver one afternoon two years before.

Lane told Hardie:

“We’re the ones who did it.”

And with that billboard on Sunset Boulevard began Lane’s final descent.

Now Lane prepared for it—the look of sheer hatred that she’d somehow managed to avoid for the past three years. The judgment, the fury, the disgust. The punishment. Boil it down and Lane realized it was just like being a kid, where the thing you fear the most is getting in trouble.

Instead, Hardie said:

“We should go.”

22

The world is divided into three classes of people:

a very small group that makes things happen

a somewhat larger group that watches things happen

and the great multitude which never knows what happened.

—Nicholas Murray Butler

THE NAME on the cell phone display screen: DGA.

Code for Doyle, Gedney and Abrams, the law firm that acted as the intermediary between Mann and her Industry employers. She knew the call was coming. That didn’t make answering the phone any easier.

“This is Mann.”

“Gedney. We see the job from earlier this morning still isn’t finished, the second job is looming. We’re worried you have too much on your plate.”

“I can finish both.”

“You can? Are you certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“Same time frame?”

“The same.”

Never mind that DG&A gave her almost no prep time on this. Zero. Just a call last Saturday giving her the basics: two jobs, and we’d like an operational plan by the end of the day. Sure, no problem, not doing anything else, anyway. A half hour later a courier delivered two thick bio packets. One containing a full rundown on Lane Madden. The other a family of four, with the father involved in television, extremely high-profile, special treatment needed.

Mann spent the next five hours sketching out an operational plan for the family. Their deaths couldn’t be something stupid like a gas explosion or a car wreck because of the nature of the father’s work. It needed to be logical, compelling, and absolute—no room for conspiracy theories. Mann believed she did her best work under pressure, and by the end of the brainstorming session, she was fairly proud of what she’d concocted. It would mean a lot of work behind the scenes, but it was well worth it.

Planning the Lane Madden job, on the other hand, took about five minutes.

After speeding through the bio materials DG&A had sent, Mann decided on a Sleeping Beauty. Actors were usually easy, and Lane Madden’s recent career highlights made it even easier.

Three years ago she’d been involved in a hit-and-run accident. Doyle, Gedney and Abrams had hired a director to wipe it from existence. Madden was sworn to secrecy.

After two years of roles in back-to-back action blockbusters—some that performed okay, the rest abysmal bombs—Madden cracked. An arrest on drug-related charges. A failed stint in a drug-treatment program was followed by another arrest, this time for drunk-and-disorderly behavior. While on bail, Madden was arrested on still another drug charge when her room at the Fairmont Miramar was searched following an anonymous 911 tip. Thanks to California Prop 36, she was given probation instead of jail time. She was also forced to wear an alcohol-and- drug-monitoring bracelet.

(Mann couldn’t help but smile at that one. It made her even easier to track.)

After that final indignity, reported pretty much everywhere—and with much gusto—Lane appeared to find Jesus. She cleaned up. The press hounded her, but the new Lane appeared to be the real thing. Rumor had it she was seeing someone, but nobody could pin down a name or a face. For the past three months, no lapses, no arrests. And then, just last week, there was a job offer, her first in a year, and not a stupid action movie. A serious role, portraying a single mother in an adaptation of the bestselling novel Blood Will Out. Things looked up for Lane Madden.

And now she had to die.

Because while she may have found Jesus, she’d also discovered a penchant for confession. The past three years had been a living hell for her, she told her new boyfriend, composer Andrew Lowenbruck. She’d thrown herself into work for nearly two years straight, appearing in pretty much everything her manager could dig up for her. As