long as she was working, she didn’t care what it was. But then she saw that
Was anybody really going to question her overdosing after a party late one California night?
Not even her manager would blink. (That is, if her manager weren’t already beholden to Doyle, Gedney— client loyalty was one thing, but agency loyalty was another.)
“Restore some confidence in me,” Gedney said now. “Because from where I’m sitting, we have an actress who’s gone public, and who right now might be going to the media. We also have a van packed with your toys in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard.”
“Taking care of the van already,” Mann said. “A friend in the LAPD is keeping it tucked away and off the books.”
“And the target?”
“We know where they are, and we will pin them down shortly,” Mann said. “Once we have them isolated, I already have a new narrative that will explain today’s events.”
“You do.”
“Yes.”
“And this Charles Hardie? What do you know about him?”
Mann didn’t want to tell them the truth: that she had Factboy digging up everything on Hardie, hoping to find some kind of L.A. connection aside from his house-sitting gigs, maybe a retired cop he knew and trusted, or a family member somewhere in Southern California. Hardie of all people knew you couldn’t just disappear.
“I’m not worried about Hardie. He’s wounded and has few friends out here. Or anywhere, for that matter.”
Gedney said nothing. Mann hated that worst of all.
“This will work,” Mann said, hating the sound of pleading that was creeping into her voice.
“Don’t fuck it up. You know what’s on the line.”
“Of course.”
The trip was over; Mrs. Factboy was tired of Factboy’s stomach issues and decided to call it quits. Back home in Flagstaff, the kids ran around outside like maniacs while he finally was able to dig deeper into the Charles Hardie mythos. Nice to use a desktop instead of a phone. After hours of that, his finger muscles felt like they were going to permanently seize up.
What Factboy was able to crack open in fifteen minutes was disturbing.
What was even more disturbing: the stuff he couldn’t crack open.
“Listen to this,” he told Mann. He spoke quickly, but concisely:
“Charlie Hardie was never a cop. Never wore a badge, never did so much as a single push-up at the academy. The ‘consultant’ thing isn’t exactly accurate either. According to sealed grand jury testimony, Hardie acted as the Philadelphia PD’s secret gunslinger, tacitly approved by high department brass. When a door needed kicking in, they called for Hardie. When a witness needed to be kept safe until trial, they asked Hardie to step in. And sometimes, when the law considered itself impotent in the face of some greater threat, and a force of evil needed to be eliminated, they handed the gun to Hardie.”
This was not explicitly stated in the grand jury testimony, Factboy said, but you could easily read between the lines.
“Hardie’s handler and ‘rabbi’—the man who brought him in—was a legendary detective named Nathaniel Parish. The two had grown up together in a rough neighborhood on the fringes of North Philadelphia. Each had taken his separate career path until they met up one night nine years ago when Hardie came back to the old neighborhood and found himself at war with a drug gang on a witness-intimidation kick. By the time Parish arrived at the scene, Hardie was in a rowhome, surrounded by bodies, drenched in blood that was not his own, having tea with the owner of that rowhome—an eighty-four-year-old witness to an arson/torture/murder. They were talking about the old days, Hardie even chuckling, despite the carnage around him. Parish arrested him, but all records of the arrest were destroyed. In exchange, Hardie agreed to work with Parish. And in Philadelphia, there was much work to be done.
“I’ve got most of their secret case files,” Factboy said. “You could write a series of novels based on these damned things.”
This highly illegal strange partnership, born of a massacre in the heart of the city, came to an end in another massacre—almost three years ago to the day. “I told you all about that thing,” Factboy said. “His origin story, if you will.”
“Uh-huh.”
“In the aftermath, it was left to a fed named Deacon Clark to pick up the pieces. He helped Hardie’s family go ghost and acted as a conduit between husband and wife. Whatever money Hardie made as a house sitter, he sent the bulk of it to his family.”
“We can get to the family,” Mann said. “We have their address.”
“Uh,” Factboy said, “that address turned out to be Clark’s home. I haven’t been able to dig up the real address yet.”
“You will. And if not you, somebody else.”
Factboy didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. He deided to change the subject slightly.
“There’s something else.”
“Right,” Mann said. “The thing I won’t believe.”
“Well, before he hooked up with Parish and became this unofficial gunslinger guy for the cops? Charles Hardie didn’t exist. Not for, oh, ten years. We have birth records, vaccinations, grade school, high school… and then nothing. No military, no taxes, nothing. They’ve made it look like these records were destroyed in a flood, but it’s impossible to have nothing for a ten-year period.”
“You’re right. It is impossible.”
“Not for lack of trying, I’m telling you.”
“Forget that for now. I don’t care about what he did ten years ago. I want to know what he’s going to do now. Who he’ll call when he’s in trouble. This Deacon Clark sounds like the man.”
“Agreed,” said Factboy. “Which is why I’m already tapping his phones, e-mail, both at home and at the office.”
Outside, one of his kids—Factboy really couldn’t tell which one when they were being this loud—shrieked and slammed something heavy into the side of the house.
—Rudy Bond,
THEY SAT there for a few more minutes, Hardie staring down into his drink, Lane chewing on a roll, unable to bring herself to swallow it. The bread tasted synthetic. She spit the small chunk out into a napkin and sipped some water instead.
More people were staring now. Cell phones coming out, total strangers snapping more pics. Coming here to Musso & Frank was simultaneously going to save her life and ruin her career. But there was such a thing as going too far.
“You’re right,” Lane said. “We should go.”
