Fun and Games

by Duane Swierczynski

  She took a final swallow of warm water, decided against having another glass, then used a soft terry-cloth towel to wipe away any finger-and lip prints before she replaced the glass in the cabinet with its mates.

  The longer she waited, the longer she just postponed the inevitable—the report to the Industry office, the request for an additional cleanup budget, over and beyond what was already ear-marked.

  She took out her cell and dialed DG&A.

  They’d probably want to take her off tonight’s job. But there was one card left to play, and that was the fact that the other production was already moving along, and it would be impossible to pull back now. Doing so would be shortsighted and unproductive. She conceived it; she had to be on the scene to follow it through.

  Would that be enough?

  She’d soon know.

  O’Neal pulled the scanner out of the dash and hooked it to his belt. No sign of any other bodies in the house, which was really starting to bother him. The rescue teams should have found something by now. Even a pair of barbecued bodies.

  Then again, he and A.D. weren’t able to find the actress when they did a full sweep of the house. They’d been interrupted by Hardie, but still—they should have found her. What were they missing? What was wrong with this picture?

  A small, paranoid part of O’Neal wondered if the actress had even been inside. He hadn’t laid eyes on her since the chase through the canyon. Mann said she’d heard her voice, using the wall-penetrating omnidirectional mics, but that sound could have been something else. Someone else.

  Was she inside?

  Or had she already escaped them hours ago?

  Oh, for this fucking day to be over. The original production should have wrapped in a matter of seconds. Now it had ballooned into this big, sprawling, opened-ended thing—the worst kind of production. He’d been on a few messy jobs before, but nothing like this.

  Well, nothing to do but listen. Maybe he could get a few questions answered once he was on top of this castle.

  O’Neal was about to step out of the van, when the front door of the castle burst open and two firefighters came stumbling outside. They seemed confused, as if they’d spent the last few minutes in a carnival funhouse, forced their way through a small door, and ended up in Poughkeepsie, New York.

  Smoke poured out behind the firefighters; the entire first floor seemed like it was engulfed.

  Was the castle on fire, too?

  No. That didn’t make sense, unless a ribbon of fire had leaped over Alta Brea Drive and crashed down on the roof of the Smiley Castle like a flaming meteor. The wheels in O’Neal’s mind spun, and after a few seconds he suddenly understood—both the presence of smoke and why they hadn’t found any bodies yet. O’Neal pulled the van door shut and, shifting gears, hauled ass down the front driveway and rocketed back up Durand Drive.

  “Mann, I think I know where they are.”

  Static popped in his ear. “How sure are you?”

  O’Neal quickly explained what he’d seen, what he thought.

  “How the fuck did we miss this?” Mann asked.

  “Don’t know, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “I’ll be right up.”

  “No time. I’m already on my way.”

  As Hardie chugged up past the intersection of Durand and Heather, he noticed someone had mounted three signs—bright yellow triangles, each with the image of a stick figure falling. He asked Lane to hang on for a minute. They paused in front of the signs to give Hardie a chance to catch his breath. He leaned forward, pressed down on the tops of his thighs, then straightened up again.

  “Is that a joke?” Hardie asked. “Do people actually fall off the road enough to warrant a goddamned traffic sign?”

  “No, it’s real,” Lane said. “I read about these. A while back a guy on a bike took a spill. Ended up paralyzed and filed a lawsuit against the homeowners in the area. So they put up these signs.”

  After a few seconds of frenzied rest, they continued their ascent, up the winding road. Dirt spilled out from the cracked and broken sides of the road, as if the hills were slowly trying to shuck themselves of the asphalt.

  Each time Hardie felt like they’d finally reached the peak, there would be another bend in the road, and he’d see more of Durand curving up into the sky. There were no other pedestrians. Just houses, with no signs of life inside them, and cars wedged in every available space.

  “We’re almost at the reservoir.”

  Finally, across a valley and through the haze, he could see the ghostly letters of the Hollywood sign. Durand’s name changed at some point. Hardie missed the sign, if there even was one. But now he felt like he was at the top of all of creation. Behind him, Mt. Lee and the sign. In front of him, shimmering in the woozy afternoon, was downtown Los Angeles, so faint as to almost seem like a matte painting or a special effect. And in front of it was the promised reservoir—big and blue and looking like the only refreshing thing for miles.

  Hardie followed Lane to a strip of honest-to-god sidewalk, which ran along the rim of an overgrown canyon. That said, it barely qualified as a place for pedestrians to walk. The paving was so narrow and so close to the road, Hardie found himself turning his head every ten seconds, to avoid being sideswiped by the cars that would appear out of nowhere. Where the fuck were they coming from? A parking garage behind the H in the Hollywood sign?

  You had to be careful, too. One good slip and down you would go, all the way to… Hardie glanced down and saw a little park where people walked dogs, and little blobs that must be children raced around. So random. Just like the rest of this city.

  “All we have to do is make our way down there,” Lane said. “There’s gotta be someone with a phone. We find a phone, we call my manager, and we’ll be okay.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m serious. This is almost over.”

  Yeah, Hardie thought, just like my house-sitting career. This is the second house I’ve let burn. Got a free pass on the first one. This one—with all the fancy studio equipment inside? He doubted that Andrew Lowenbruck would be all that understanding.

  Of course, it was kind of absurd to be worried about a career when you were being hunted by a group of secret killers.

  Hardie must have been slowing down, because Lane prodded him:

  “Come on, keep moving.”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  Hardie threw a glance over his shoulder, then took another step, and then…

  Wait, what?

  There was a white van rushing down the road. Fast. Right at them.

  “Fuck!”

  “What?”

  In that instant there was nothing Hardie could do but push Lane and send her over the edge and then send himself right after her.

  O’Neal hit the tiny curb and bounced and cut the wheel hard to the left. He had to fight to keep the van from bouncing right over the edge of the road into the canyon. What had seemed like a flash of brilliance—gunning it and spooking the actress and Hardie right over the edge—now seemed like the stupidest damn thing he’d ever done, because it would do his career no good to end up dead and upside down in the middle of a fucking park.

  The van clung to the road, though. O’Neal stomped down on the brakes and brought it to a shuddering halt and immediately, without much thought, jumped into the back to grab a wasp pistol. Same principle as the wasp’s nest, only in portable form, with a spray range of about fifteen feet. He pulled a box of vials from a cubby, then loaded the pistol with four shots. Then he stepped out of the van. Time to end this.

  And then something slammed into his face.

  Which would be Hardie’s fist.

  Which happened to be studded with cacti spines, and Hardie hoped it hurt like fuck. Because it had hurt like fuck to reach out and grab hold of something, anything… and realize that it was full of sharp needles. It hurt even more to scramble up through a field of fucking cacti to make it back to the pavement.

&nb
sp; So this tall guy had nothing to complain about.

  Hardie threw another punch, which made his chest, and fist, throb with agony all over again, but he really didn’t care. Something dropped out of Tallboy’s hands and shattered on the ground. Hardie grabbed two fistfuls of Tallboy’s fake landscaping uniform and slammed him into the side of the van, and again, and again, watching the guy’s neck seem to loosen with every blow.

  Hardie knew he should put him in some kind of hold now, or cut off his air, something. Slap him around to revive him, then start in with the questions. Who are you. How many of you. Why do you want to kill Lane Madden. Who’s in charge. But Hardie’s blood was up. It didn’t feel right to stop and ask questions. Fuck questions. This guy tried to run them off a road, make them fall to their deaths.

  So Hardie adjusted his grip, ran Tallboy over the edge of the canyon, then launched him outward. Tallboy yelled and waved his arms and legs, and that was the last thing Hardie saw before he disappeared.

  Hardie took a step back, breathed out, put his palms on his knees. Thought about the events of the day.

  Women punched in the face: 2.

  Men thrown off something high: 2.

  Hardie was nothing if not consistent.

  For an instant O’Neal felt his stomach go all giddy. The air blasted across the back of his neck, and it reminded him of a million dreams he used to have about falling to his death. He didn’t want to die. Not when there was still work to be done. O’Neal threw out his hands to grab whatever he could to break his fall.

  His body made impact and he instantly felt hundreds of spines stab his palms, his arms, his back, crushing the plant that held him before he started sliding backward down the hill. O’Neal pounded his heels into the ground and he clawed at the earth, fingers bent like the teeth of a rake, his brain screaming, stop STOP STOP!!!

  For the third—fourth?—time in the past twelve hours, Lane Madden had saved her own life thanks to something she learned appearing in stupid action movies.

  She was stunned by how many of these moves had become reflex. For instance: falling.

  When you fall, you should go loose and push the air out of your lungs. Basic stunt lesson, straight from Enrico. A tense body is a hurt body.

  So, when Hardie shoved her onto her back, she instinctively went loose and pushed the air out of her lungs. She also kept her head up—that is key because, of all the body parts you don’t want to damage, your head is at the top of the list. As you go down, you fold yourself like an accordion, collapsing every bendable part of your body one at a time:

  ankles

  sknees

  hips

  elbows

  Finally—if you can remember to do this—Enrico taught her to slap the ground with her palms to help break the fall. Lane ran through these steps countless times while training for Your Kiss Might Kill Me—hours of nothing but falls on an exercise mat. Then Enrico took away the mat. If Lane could do anything, it was fall.

  There was no mat here. No flat surface either. And her bendable parts were already sore beyond reason. But the technique still worked, and after Lane slapped the ground, she reached out for the fat stubby trunk of a bush. She rolled over onto her back just in time to see Charlie sliding past. Lane reached out and grabbed a handful of his T-shirt. Which ripped six inches and then… held, preventing him from sliding the rest of the way down into the canyon.

  At the end of her arm, Charlie wriggled like an insect caught until he found some handholds, some footing. One he’d stabilized himself, she heard him hiss:

  “I’m going to fuck up that motherfucker.”

  And then up Charlie went, scrambling through the brush and cacti. He’d just cleared the top when Lane heard a door creaking open.

  Lane made it up just in time to see Hardie launching their tormentor over the edge.

  The craziest thing was the absolute exhilaration Hardie felt watching Tallboy’s body disappear. It was a sensation he thought had been lost to him. Strange that the one thing that made him feel alive for the first time in three years was killing somebody.

  20

  Listen, Charlie, before we go in,

  there’s something I have to tell you. It’s been on my conscience,

  and you can punch me if you want to.

  —Oliver Platt, The Ice Harvest

  THE KEYS were still in the van, hanging from the steering column. They climbed inside. Lane eased back into the passenger seat, not offering to drive, not saying a word. Hardie was about to give her shit about being Miss Daisy but then remembered the accident. She’d probably done enough driving for one day.

  He craned his neck around to make sure there were no hidden surprises in the back of the van.

  Now he saw that the back was loaded.

  Lane heard him move and cracked open an eye.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Hang on.”

  The cargo area was packed neatly, efficiently. Row upon row of plastic containers assembled on metal racks. Some of the stuff he recognized. Hardie popped open the top of one container. Syringes, sterile and sealed in plastic. Hardie checked another. Rubber tubing, the kind nurses use when they draw blood. Another container: gauze and tape. Hardie knew he should grab as much of this crap as possible. He was in shock and in too much pain to be slapping on bandages at the moment, but they would come in handy later. If there was a later.

  Another container was full of small plastic bags of coke, heroin, and other goodies Hardie recognized from his days battling Philly drug gangs with Nate. The street value, based on his best guestimate, was enough to buy a house in the suburbs. And probably a sweet piece of automotive eye candy to park in the front drive.

  Other items weren’t so familiar. Hardie popped the top of a plastic container that held a bright orange suit that was heavy and reeked of rubber. Another contained little pouches labeled RSDL—“reactive skin decontamination lotion”—and next to it, a box of injectable ampoules of hydroxocobalamin.

  Then there was a box in the middle of the floor, half full of little spring-loaded vials. Just like the ones Hardie saw in that box they’d mounted on the front door of the Lowenbruck house. He fished one out, held it up to the light. Inside, clear liquid. Didn’t look like anything, really. Hardie slid it into his back pocket. You never know.

  There were no guns. With every container top he opened, Hardie kept hoping, wishing, praying. But there was not so much as a slingshot.

  “Charlie, come on. What are you doing?”

  “One minute.”

  There it was. Tucked into the corner, sealed in thick, opaque plastic.

  His luggage.

  Hardie reached out and touched it, just to make sure it wasn’t a mirage. He pressed his fingertips against it, saw the headless Spider-Man, and yeah. Definitely his bag. Hardie wondered what they had planned on doing with it. Burn it? Bury it? Divvy it up with a dice game? Which made Hardie think about the poor courier who’d had the unlucky assignment of delivering this bag. His body wasn’t in the van, and his delivery truck was nowhere in sight. Which was further proof that the world was random and mean and didn’t really give a shit about anybody. The world would run you down and slam a tire over your exploding skull and not even wonder what it had just hit.

  Hardie was about to go back to the front of the van, when he remembered his carry-on. It should be back here somewhere. Maybe tucked away in some secret compartment?

  Hardie began opening more tiny doors, kicking others. Had to be here. Where else would they have put it?

  “Charlie! Get up here now or I’m getting behind the wheel.”

  “Hang on.”

  “Seriously? You’re really going to do this to me?”

  “Coming, coming…”

  The carry-on bag contained the only thing that couldn’t be replaced, the one link to his old life, the one reminder that he used to be a decent person…

  Had to be here.

  Somewhere.

  While Lane waite
d, literally on the edge of her seat, trying not to scream at Charlie for taking, like, fucking forever back there… her eyes fell on the GPS unit mounted in the dashboard. Huh. Maybe this would show where these creepy bastards lived. She tapped the touch screen and cycled backward through the searches until a familiar address popped up.

  Her own.

  572 Westminster Avenue, Venice, CA.

  Goddamn it, did they come to the house last night? How long had they been watching her?

  She tapped the screen again and another address appeared. One that made her body turn ice cold.

  No…

  They couldn’t.

  The carry-on wasn’t back here. Clearly the fuckers had stashed it somewhere else.

  Hardie knew he was wasting time. They had to move. Now.

  He gathered up a bunch of first aid–type supplies, unzipped the side of his bag, and shoved everything inside. He climbed back into the front and noticed Lane tapping the screen of a fancy-ass GPS unit on the dashboard. Hardie caught a glimpse of an address in bright white letters—11804 Bloomfield St.—before Lane tapped the screen again and it went dark.

  “What was that?” Hardie asked.

  “No idea,” Lane said.

  “Hang on. Pull that address back up. Maybe that thing can tell us where these bastards live.”

  “Already thought of it, already looked. There’s nothing. Just a lot of random places. Can we drive already, please?”

  Just drive, Charlie.

  Please don’t ask me to explain.

  Thankfully, Charlie let the thing rest… for the moment. He slid the van gearshift into drive and tapped the gas and they lurched forward. All at once a horn blasted and a black Audi swerved around them, missing them by inches. As the Audi zoomed forward, a slender feminine hand appeared out of the open passenger window and extended a dainty middle finger. A beat later, a male hand popped out of the driver’s side, the thick middle finger lifted high and proud, the driver making sure they could see it over the top of the roof. Both held their salutes until the Audi was a good tenth of a mile away. Just to make sure they didn’t miss the message.