Fun and Games

24

This time it’s personal.

—Tagline from Jaws: The Revenge

HARDIE TURNED the cheap metal handle to the Off position. He used mostly cold water so the steam wouldn’t make him sweat, and the cold was nice and bracing and had the curious effect of calming him down a little. After patting himself dry, he took a stab at taping up his chest wound again. As soon as Deke made it here, he’d go have it checked out. He promised. But in the meantime, one little Vike couldn’t hurt. Hardie rooted through his toiletries bag, trying to feel for the familiar round shape of the bottle. Nothing. He looked. Everything else seemed to be here. Toothbrush, razor. No painkillers, though. Great. He probably left them behind at the last gig.

So instead, Hardie busied himself with brushing his teeth, halfway through when he realized that all his clean clothes were in the suitcase out in the other room. He wasn’t about to wrap a towel around his midsection and go parading around out there. The towels were ideal for preteen girls, not for a guy the size of Hardie. The actress might get the wrong idea. So Hardie put on his smoky, torn, blood-splattered jeans again and looked at himself in the mirror. He was a big mess. But at least it was better than the towel. His mouth still felt metallic, stale, so he squeezed out more toothpaste and started to brush again and had just opened the door when something pinched his neck and he found himself, inexplicably, on his knees.

Someone whispered:

“Shhhh, now.”

Hardie’s arms felt like rubber. The toothbrush started to slip out of his fingers. Tightening his grip didn’t work. His fingers didn’t want to do what they were told. The toothbrush slipped completely out of his fingers.

A gloved hand caught it before it hit the carpet.

More gloved hands picked him up.

The lights were off.

But he could see what they had done to Lane over on the bed.

Factboy had put a standard trace on all calls and e-mails coming to Special Agent Deacon Clark, Philadelphia office, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Home, office, and cell. Again, not hard to do with the magic of the Patriot Act, even when the subject was a federal agent. Hell, Clark’s being a fed made it easier. Still, Factboy couldn’t believe it when a hit popped up almost immediately—a call from a hotel room in Los Feliz, near Hollywood.

Not only was Mann’s new team already assembled, but they were rolling up and down the streets of old Hollywood already. The hotel was two minutes away. They were pulling up within forty-five seconds.

Mann actually thanked Factboy and told him he did good work. Factboy was too stunned to reply and stammered something about the trace being a good one (like what the fuck did that even mean?). The line disconnected and Factboy wondered if he was actually done for the day, if he could go upstairs and rejoin his family. That’s what he really should do. Try to smooth things over with the wife, look at his kids and tickle their bellies and tell them that he loved them. That he did all these awful things because he loved them.

Isn’t that what all fathers did?

Lane was there, on the bed, waiting for him. She’d been stripped naked. Only her panicked eyes seemed able to move, along with a slight up-and-down motion of her chest. They’d let her continue breathing. For the moment. Hardie tried to look away but a gloved hand pushed on his jaw, facing him forward.

“Uh-uh-uhhhh,” a soft voice said. “Look at her. You’ve wanted her from the minute you saw her. Haven’t you, Charlie? Your little celebrity.”

Hardie recognized the voice. Topless. Why was it that whenever he heard her voice, he happened to be staring at naked breasts? And why was it that, at the same time, her voice chilled his blood and made him think of death?

The gloved hands guided him over to the bed, holding his midsection, working his legs. The sensation was horrible. He was completely helpless, a pile of rubber meat hanging on plastic bones, ready to be posed and moved and positioned any way they wanted. As Hardie was moved closer to the bed, he saw that Lane’s eyes were open—glassy, but open. They’d given her something, too.

“Isn’t she beautiful, Charlie? We found all her movies and photos and torn-out magazine pages in that duffel bag you carry around with you all the time. Admit it. You love to look at her, and, wow, you finally have her here now, in the flesh, right in front of you. To do with as you please.”

The bag. Oh God, they still had his bag, not the one with the stupid T-shirt and jeans, but the real one, the important one, the one he swore to keep with him at all times. The one he’d lost anyway.

“Go ahead, Charlie. Get closer. You know she wants it. She’s practically begging for it. Look at her.”

They arranged his body so that he straddled hers. His body was at once tingly and partially numb, but he could still feel her naked form beneath him. Her skinny, tired, bandaged, cut body.

“Only maybe she doesn’t want you. Maybe you’ve read the signs wrong. You totally want to fuck her, but she’s repulsed by you. Wouldn’t want you even if you paid her. Even if you threatened to kill her.”

They forced his arms up, then placed his thick, scarred hands around her throat. Carefully, they arranged his fingers around her pretty throat. He could see a vein throbbing there, and her throat working hard to swallow. There was a fleeting terror in her eyes, like she’d realized what they were going to do before Hardie did.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’re the kind of guy who can’t get it up, no matter how badly you want it. You try to get yourself all worked up, but in the end it’s an exercise in futility, you’re just too out of shape to make it happen.”

The men in the gloves paused for a moment to change positions; Hardie could feel them adjusting around him, like puppeteers struggling behind a black felt curtain. Pay no attention. Keep your eye on the maniac on top of the beautiful naked actress.

“She got you so mad, you thought to yourself—well, then, yeah. Fuck it. I will kill her. Squeeze the life out of her stuck-up obnoxious face.”

Gloved fingers pressed down on Hardie’s numb, useless fingers. Gloved thumbs guided his naked thumbs to the middle of her soft throat and then pressed down hard, joined by the rest of his fingers, tightening around her neck like a vise. Hardie tried to push back, but there was nothing for his mind to seize control of; his hands weren’t talking to him right now. They were busy acting. Choking Lane Madden to death in this crazy psychotic fucked-up fantasy version of real life.

“Feels good, doesn’t it, Charlie? Choke that bitch out. Go on. Break her little scrawny neck.”

As they pushed Hardie’s hands down, something shot out from under the pillow and ping-ponged across the carpet.

“Ooh, what was that, Charlie? A secret weapon, maybe?”

Hardie felt one of his puppet masters leave to retrieve the mystery object. He must have handed it to his boss, because she said:

“Now, this is interesting….Vicodin, prescribed to… oh, to you, Charlie. I suppose it’s painful being a hero. But what was this doing under the pillow? Did you put it there, or did the actress? I think it was her, wasn’t it, Charlie?”

Hardie looked down at Lane. Her eyes were filled with still tears. After a moment, his puppet master rejoined the group on the bed and pressed Hardie’s hands down again, squeezing Lane’s throat. She blinked. Tried to look away. She couldn’t do anything.

“Wait, I get it now. Your girl took your pills and hid them under the pillow. Now, why would she do that? Maybe because she’d rather swallow a fistful of pills than spend another second with you?”

Lane’s legs twitched. Her stomach heaved, and her head started to move slightly, from the left to the right, from the left to the right, just a few millimeters. Hardie felt her hips jolt beneath him. She was trying, God, she was trying.

“But we can’t have that. No no no. We don’t want a suicidal actress. We want an actress who was cut down in her prime. Choked to death by a man who lusted after her. Murdered by you, Charlie.”

Hardie wanted to open his useless mouth and tell Lane he was trying, too, that everything was going to be okay, he wasn’t going to let them do this. But he was. Strangling her. Murdering her. And there was nothing he could do about it, because his body was no longer his own.

Percentage of murder victims killed by someone they know: fifty-eight.

Only now, in these desperate moments as the capillaries burst in her face and in her eyes, did Lane Madden realize that punishment had come for her after all. Over the past three years she’d ping-ponged between despair and hope, damnation and redemption, wondering where she’d land.

She wanted to tell Charlie: It’s not your fault. You couldn’t help this. This was my war. You just wandered into it. It’s not your fault.

She wanted to tell the Hunters: I’m sorry I didn’t tell the truth. I prolonged your suffering because of my own self-interest and greed and narcissism.

She wanted to tell the world: I’m not this person you thought I became. I’m really not, it’s not me, it’s not me…

And then, at the last possible moment, it came to her.

This wasn’t about her.

This was about the family at that address.

She had to let Charlie know, she had to tell him, because there was no one else who could do anything about it but Charlie…

Save them, she tried to will her mouth to say, struggling to make her jaw move and her lips form the words, one last line to run, her final performance, God, please let Charlie understand what I’m trying to tell him…

Save them.

They continued pressing down on his hands until her body was still. One of the gloved hands freed itself to feel her wrist for a pulse, then slid over her eyelids, forcing them shut. They guided Hardie back to a corner of the room, then eased him down into a sitting position. Something sharp poked at one of his ass cheeks, but he figured that was the least of his worries. The taller of the two men slid a syringe out of a zippered case. Hardie recognized him now. He was the second intruder, the one who had Tasered him, then crawled backward out of the Lowenbruck house. The tall, vicious one, he thought he’d sent flying off the top of a mountain. Now he caught Hardie eyeing the syringe.

“Oh, don’t worry, big guy. We’re not going to kill you.”

“Oh, no,” Topless said. “After all, you’re Unkillable Chuck. I guess we finally learned our lesson about you. No, we’ve got something else in mind.”

Hardie struggled to make his mouth work. He thought he managed to sputter out a couple of syllables—

“I… I’ll…”

—but he wasn’t sure until Topless responded.

“You’ll what? You’ll talk—is that it? About what? What proof do you have? You have nothing, Charlie. Absolutely nothing.”

She gave a curt nod. The tall one slid the needle into his arm, but Hardie didn’t feel it. He could hardly feel anything, except maybe the burning ingot of rage in his brain.

“This is just to keep you comfortable,” Tallboy said.

“And before you do open your mouth,” Topless continued, “I’d keep Kendra and Charlie Jr. in mind.”

As he passed into total paralysis, Hardie couldn’t stop staring at Lane’s lifeless body. Her eyes, still slightly open. One eye staring at him. The one he’d punched. Accusing him, blankly. Why couldn’t you save me? What have you been doing for the past three years except taking up space, breathing other people’s air, consuming natural resources? You not only failed to save your partner’s family—you got them all killed. It was even worse with me. You actually killed me. With your own hands.

You happy, Charlie?

You happy you let all of this happen?

O’Neal made one last visual sweep of the hotel room. No fibers had been left behind, no trace of them whatsoever. This was familiar turf—he’d worked dozens of hotel jobs before. He felt like he knew how to hit the Reset button on a hotel room better than career maids did. No trace of them was left. The only evidence left behind told the sad tale of…

Charles D. Hardie, a police consultant turned house sitter turned raging alcoholic, finally breaks with reality once he crosses paths with his favorite movie star, Lane Madden.

Hardie has been to Hollywood before and spies on Madden whenever possible. He takes another house-sitting assignment because he knows she’ll be in town—he’s been reading about her in the entertainment rags. Friday night Hardie follows her back to her Venice apartment after a party in Brentwood, then all the way through the mountains, past Mulholland Drive, and down the 101.

But he’s too eager. He brakes his rental vehicle too fast, causing an accident. Panicked, he loads Madden into his car, then flees the scene. His unbalanced mind creates a “hero” fantasy where he’s saving her from unknown attackers—just like in the action movies featuring Ms. Madden.

Hardie brings her to the house he’s been hired to watch, up in the Hollywood Hills. Madden tries to escape, at one point even stabbing Hardie. Enraged, Hardie beats her savagely and sets the house ablaze and then forces Madden into a landscaping-company van just up the hill, then drives down to Hollywood proper to continue his psychotic fantasy.

Believing this a date, Hardie forces Madden into the famous Musso & Frank, much to the shock of the staff—but no one summons the police, because Madden is well known for exhibiting strange behavior in public. Madden, to her credit, tries to play along, hoping to defuse the ticking time bomb that is Charles Daniel Hardie.

But the ruse breaks down. Hardie brings her back to a hotel in Los Feliz, breaking into a room, where he proceeds to beat and eventually strangle Madden to death. The police find him on the floor of the hotel room, paralyzed with shock, still rambling about these “Accident People” who were trying to kill her.

Mann wasn’t exactly proud of the narrative. It was far from her best work, and there were holes galore to plug (the flight times, accident reports, rental-car damages to duplicate). But there were no easy narratives once Hardie had injected himself into the narrative so audaciously and publicly. So the narrative was rewritten to give him a supporting role. Hell, Mann was giving Hardie immortality. From now on, Charles Daniel Hardie would be mentioned in the same breath as Mark David Chapman and Robert John Bardo and Anthony Gary Silvestri. Names that would be uttered in celebrity circles for years to come; Hardie would become a spook story, a cautionary tale.

And considering the dirty laundry Hardie had left behind in Philadelphia, it was doubtful people would fall over themselves to clear his name. Trying to prove otherwise would dredge up a lot of shit that the city would prefer stay buried.

Now it was time to summon the police and make their way to the real job—the one that, until this morning, she’d thought would be the tricky one. Not the case. Compared with the miracles her small team had had to perform during the past fifteen hours, this would be relatively simple. They didn’t even have to do anything. Just sit in the van with O’Neal and let things happen.

“We good?”

“All clear,” O’Neal said.

Mann knew she couldn’t touch Hardie, even though she longed to smash his eyes back into his skull with her fists. Instead she contented herself with stooping down, lifting his chin with gloved fingers, and saying:

“See ya in Hell, tough guy.”