assembled here for
Okay, enough. Sooner or later somebody was going to look up and see Hardie standing here, looking like an idiot.
Hardie spied the deck and began to make his way over to it, arms out for balance. Still, he couldn’t help but glance down at the houses below. The different-colored roofs, the pools, the terracotta patios.
And through a clearing in the trees, on the back deck of the house closest to Lowenbruck’s, a nude woman sunbathing.
It almost looked like a mirage. The branches and trees made a perfect frame around her body, blocking out everything but her astounding and abundant nakedness. She was full-chested, with pink nipples that looked too delicate to be out in the bright California sun. Her body was muscled, perfectly shaved, and oiled—as far as Hardie could tell—from her nose down. Her skin practically glistened. Hardie wondered why Lowenbruck hadn’t left the keys with
The woman’s eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. She held a cell phone to her ear. And while her mouth moved, the words didn’t travel the distance uphill.
Hardie froze in place, pitched precariously on the downward slope of the roof. He stared for a few moments before he realized that, fuck, she could probably see him, too.
Probably telling a friend on the phone:
Hardie continued his descent, placed a hand on the hot tile for balance, then jumped down onto the back deck. Something squished underfoot. Hardie was almost afraid to look… then did. Some kind of animal had been up here recently and had left a large deposit on Lowenbruck’s sundeck. Not a bird; this beast appeared to enjoy a heartier diet than seeds and grass.
Shit.
Fortunately, Hardie had packed another pair of shoes.
Unfortunately, they were in his missing suitcase.
Hardie tiptoed over and tried the sliding glass doors. Miraculously, they were unlocked. Either Lowenbruck forgot or he wasn’t in the habit of locking it.
The moment the contacts separated, however, the alarm was triggered—a shrill repeating
Just as he was about to step inside he remembered the unidentified animal crap on his shoes. Hardie worked off one shoe hurriedly with the back of the other, reached down, yanked off its companion, then darted through the open doors looking for anything, anything at all, resembling a security keypad.
There were too many things hanging on the walls near the front door, too much clutter. Fuck. Fuck.
Hardie found it and jabbed the code in with two seconds to spare.
The key situation would have to be figured out sooner rather than later—Hardie didn’t want to leave the premises unlocked for any period of time, nor did he want to climb the tiled roof again to make a grocery run. Maybe he could have some booze delivered? No. Because that would require a working cell phone, and Virgil had told him that Lowenbruck didn’t have a landline.
Anyway, first things first: house check.
The sliding doors from the back deck opened up into a media room—and immediately Hardie knew he’d lucked out. Wall-mounted plasma TV, stereo components whose brand name Hardie only recognized from other houses he’d watched. Over-stuffed black leather couch, which Hardie immediately decided would be his home base for most of the next month. The wall shelves contained row upon row of DVDs, many of them classics—which was fantastic. Old movies gave him something to fill the long days. He remembered the special Hell of a Myrtle Beach condo that lacked not just cable or satellite TV but a TV as well. Longest two weeks of his life.
The rest of the top floor seemed to be little more than a life-support system for the media room. The locked front door led to the vestibule and beyond that a winding staircase with wrought-iron rail, leading down to the lower floors.
The stairwell was lined with cardboard standees of 1980s white tough-guy actors, arranged
The next room was a smallish dining area, though clearly nobody ever ate in here. The table was covered in scripts, DVDs, CDs, old newspapers, staff paper, pencils. A peek inside a cupboard door revealed more battered scripts, yellowing newspapers, and about forty copies of a sound track called
The galley kitchen was clean but spare. Seemed like not much cooking happened in here. No booze in the cabinets, no food in the fridge, except for a box of baking soda and a glass jar of martini olives shoved in the back.
Half bathroom off to one side. Handy. Probably thirty paces between the leather couches and the porcelain throne here. That would make life easy.
On the other side of the kitchen, a door led to a tiny two-person deck with a hard-plastic Adirondack chair and a Weber Baby grill, overlooking another part of the hills. Hardie looked through the window and thought he could make out part of the Griffith Observatory. No other nude sunbathers in sight, however. Which was a little disappointing. Would have been nice to have the ladies in stereo.
Okay.
So, three entrances so far:
Front door;
Back patio doors (if you felt like walking on the roof );
Side patio door (if you were to somehow climb up the side of the house and vault over the railing).
All locks in working order as far as Hardie could tell.
Hardie retraced his steps, passed the gang of action heroes, gave Hackman a respectful nod—
—then continued down the wide stairs as they spun him around to face… a closed set of double doors. Which seemed weird, until Hardie opened them up and walked into a large music studio, soundproofing everywhere.
Ah, so this was the padded treasure in the heart of the Lowenbruck castle: the recording studio. The space was tricked out with enough gear to make the upstairs media room look like a kids’ Fisher-Price set. Huge, wide- screen plasma TV, a mixing console the size of a back porch, multiple keyboards, amplifiers, heaps of spaghetti cable.
Virgil had told him:
“Lowenbruck’s insanely anal about his studio. Don’t even go in there if you can avoid it. Just make sure
