Fun and Games

4

I don’t make things difficult.

That’s the way they get, all by themselves.

—Mel Gibson, Lethal Weapon

THE FIRST blow dazed Hardie, made his vision go fuzzy, sent him stumbling one step to the side. The second blow struck him on the upper arm. The entire limb went numb. Some muscle memory kicked in just in time for the third blow. Hardie was able to block the hard, shiny object with a forearm.

With his other hand he snatched out and grabbed a wrist, then twisted it hard. His attacker—a young girl, he could see now—cried out. Hardie yanked her out of the bathroom doorway and spun her into the room proper. Her back hit a mixing board, and her head banged into a monitor that was hanging from the ceiling.

Hardie held up his hands. Tried to, anyway. His left arm was still numb. At least the right one still worked.

“Hey!”

His voice sounded strange to him. Hardie couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken out loud.

The girl was wearing only panties and a T-shirt, and her ankle was bandaged. Her legs were lean and muscled. Her whole body trembled.

“Get the fuck away from me or I’ll cut you, I swear to God I’ll jam this straight up your ass!”

Hardie looked at the this in her hands. He couldn’t place it. Long, silver, metal. A tube of some kind. About two feet long, with the circumference of a nickel. Uncapped on the end. Then he looked behind her, into the music studio, and saw others just like it.

A microphone stand.

She had been beating the shit out of him with a mic stand.

Hardie said, in a slow and steady and reasonable voice:

“Give me that.”

“I said, stay the fuck away! You people are making a big mistake.”

“You people? Only one of me here, honey.”

There was something vaguely familiar about the girl’s face, like he should know her from somewhere. Had Lowenbruck sent Virgil anything about her, maybe attached a photo to an e-mail? No, Hardie would have remembered that. Nobody was supposed to be here in the house. No girlfriends, no relatives, no friends—nobody. Hardie wouldn’t have taken the job otherwise. That was the whole point. Avoiding people.

Hardie steadied himself, took a step closer. The girl responded by swinging at the air with the mic stand, then inching her way back into the studio.

“Come on, now. Enough’s enough.”

“Stay the fuck away from me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

The girl’s hands fell to her sides. Her head hung low. Her entire body went limp, and she started breathing strangely. It took Hardie a second or two to realize she was launching into a full-on crying jag. He took a step toward her, said:

“Look, why don’t we start with—”

Without warning she lunged. Another hard, mean swing. Hardie was ready this time. He snatched the pole in his hand and refused to let go. She tugged. He held firm. She tugged again. He held on tighter. Uh-uh. Bitch was not getting her mic stand back. Bitch was definitely not hitting him with the mic stand again.

Then she did something Hardie did not anticipate. She lunged forward, pushing the mic stand toward Hardie. His grip was not prepared for this. The mic stand slid through his fist and went into his chest.

Both Hardie and the girl looked down at the pole for a moment before Hardie took a confused step backward. What had just happened?

“Ugh,” he said.

“Oh God,” she said.

Hardie forced himself to look down. Yep. He’d been impaled. Under his gray T-shirt he could feel blood trickling down across his right nipple, along his belly, past the waistband of his jeans. None of this seemed real. He took a breath, wondering if one of his lungs was going to collapse. Maybe pass out. Any second now.

But nothing yet. Somehow, he was still standing.

“Oh God,” the girl repeated, and immediately yanked the mic stand out.

“No, don’t do—”

Too late. The metal slid out of his flesh with a soft, wet shucking sound—like the meat of an oyster being pried from its shell. Hardie took an involuntary step backward, as if he could remove himself from the damage. The girl, too, edged backward, looked alternatively angry, shocked, and confused.

“I told you… I told you I’d hurt you!”

And make no mistake. The wound in his chest really fucking hurt, pain ramping up with every breath, it seemed. But somehow he was still standing, fully conscious. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe it had missed everything vital—the heart, the aorta, the lungs, the liver. Then again, maybe she’d nailed his heart right smack-dab in the fucking center and he was going to bleed out in a matter of seconds.

Hardie looked into the bathroom doorway for a towel, something to press against his chest. Maybe wrap around the wound. He took a step forward. Which freaked out the girl.

“Stay the fuck away from me!”

“I’m not going anywhere near you. Believe me.”

The girl tried to focus on him. Every muscle in her body was tensed, but her eyelids were strangely droopy. The combination of anxiety and lethargy suggested the girl had been playing mix and match in a medicine cabinet. Maybe Lowenbruck kept a bunch of pharmaceuticals handy and this girl knew it.

Whatever. Hardie took a few cautious steps into the bathroom, snatched the edges of a white terry-cloth towel and whipped it from the rack. He quickly folded it in half, held it under the entrance wound. Usually, the advice was simple: direct pressure, stop the bleeding. But what the fuck were you supposed to do when somebody impaled you?

Hardie looked at the girl.

“Why did you do that?”

“You’re one of Them… admit it!”

“I don’t know who you mean by Them, but I can assure you, I’m not.”

“Then, what the fuck are you doing in here?”

“I’m the house sitter.”

“House what?”

Her long dark hair hung down in her face, and her skin was dirty in places. Lots of scratches, too, along with a stray bruise or two. She’d bandaged up both of her hands—a sloppy, rushed job. Still, she was a pretty girl. Wide, full mouth, high cheekbones, and eyes that would be striking if she could manage to keep them open all the way—and somebody hosed her off in the backyard for a few minutes.

“House sitter. I watch houses.”

“Why would a fucking house sitter go sneaking around the house, checking every room? Don’t fucking deny it—I heard you!”

Hardie had had enough standing. He carefully eased himself down to a sitting position. If he was going to pass out, he’d rather do it closer to the floor.

“Look, honey, I just got here. Question is, what are you doing here? Because I’m pretty sure my booking agent didn’t mention anything about a crackhead with a mic stand, hiding in the bathroom.”

She rolled her eyes. “Crackhead. Don’t you know who I am?”

“Sweetie, I have no idea.”

The faintest trace of a smile appeared for a moment, then vanished. Then she started trembling.

Hardie had no idea who she was, but a story started to form in his mind. Beneath all of the patches of dirt and scratches and attitude, she appeared to be a perfectly young and healthy girl—not your average skinny L.A. junkie with buggy eyes and cheekbones that could cut tin cans. This girl had been well fed and cared for until relatively recently. Like, maybe even just a few hours ago. Maybe her parents owned a place farther down Alta Brea, or somewhere else in Beachwood Canyon. Maybe she’d stayed up past her bedtime partying hard, an asshole friend suggesting a quick coke-and-H nightcap. Mellow out and party all night long!

Yeah, maybe that was it. She shoots up, she freaks. Knows she can’t go home to Mom and Dad. Not in that condition. Sees the Lowenbruck house. Finds the keys in the mailbox. Still freaking, worried about Them—parents? cops? dealers?—coming for her. Grabs a mic stand—yeah, that still didn’t make sense to him either, but he supposed a weapon was a weapon—then hit the bathroom.

Enter Charlie Hardie, Human Pincushion.

He hoped she had parents. He’d love to send them his emergency-room bill.

With every second that passed, Hardie came to believe that maybe the pole had missed all of the important bits. His sister-in-law-nurse back in Philly had told him a bunch of crazy ER stories—thugs rolling in with twenty, thirty stab wounds, yet still smoking cigarettes and annoyed to have to wait around so long even though they don’t have proper ID, let alone health insurance.

But Hardie had also heard plenty of the opposite, too. Stupid bar fights where one sloppy stab with a greasy butter knife ends up with one man DOA and another facing a manslaughter beef.

And when it came to medical luck, Hardie was reasonably confident that he’d used it all up three years ago.

Oh God.

She’d stabbed a man.

He was probably one of Them, but still… she didn’t mean to puncture his chest. She just wanted to knock him out—though her favorite stunt coordinator, Enrico Cifelli, had once told her how ridiculous that was.

Sure, you saw it in the movies all the time. But Enrico told her that blows to the top of the head almost never render the person unconscious. What it might do, however, is cause the diaphragm muscles to freak out, making it difficult for that person to breathe. Left untreated, it would kill him.

Of course, try to keep all of that in mind when you think you’re being hunted. This was not a movie set; she hadn’t gone through endless repetition, practicing a single move so that it could be filmed. When you’re being hunted, you kind of just wing it.

And now she’d stabbed a man.

Hardie struggled up off the floor, fully expecting to pass out at any second. Before that happened, the dirty psycho chick had to go. To the hospital, to the LAPD, whatever. He supposed he should involve the LAPD because—well, she’d impaled him. And broken into the house. Those still counted as crimes, even in L.A.

“Are you okay?” she asked, hand out, as if to help him up. She took great care not to actually touch him, though. She gestured as if Hardie had an invisible force field around his body.

Hardie shot her a look.

“Hey,” she said. “I said I was sorry.”

Hardie said, “Pretty sure I missed that.”

“Well, I’m saying it now.”

“Whatever. Does your cell phone work?”

“Why?”

“Well, I’d like to call nine one one, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble. Maybe we can call someone for you, too. Like your mom or dad, maybe?”

The girl’s jaw dropped. “My mom?”

“You look pretty banged up. Maybe you should go to the hospital, too. Maybe they can give us adjoining rooms, just in case you feel like ramming something sharp through my body again.”

“You just want me to go outside.”

“Unless there’s an emergency room in the basement, yeah.”

This was getting them nowhere. What was he doing, anyway? Why did he give a shit about this girl, or even this house? Hello, Earth to Charlie: You have been impaled by a steel tube. You belong in a hospital.

She was looking at him. “You say you’re the house sitter.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“Charlie. And yours?”

“Last name.” This was a command, not a question.

“Hardie.”

“I’m supposed to just, what?… Believe you?”

Hardie thought about taking a better look at his wound but then changed his mind when his chest started throbbing. He took a semideep breath, wondering if he’d feel his lung collapse suddenly. It made him angry. She did this to him, and now she was giving him shit?

“You want to go upstairs and trade driver’s licenses? Because that’s all I’ve got. I seem to have left my birth certificate and Social Security card at home. Sorry.”

“That’s just what you’d want, isn’t it? Me to follow you upstairs.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

The girl’s eyes darted around wildly as she processed his words. Then her brain seemed to slip back into gear.

“Okay, let’s say you’re not one of Them.”

“Let’s do more than say it. Let’s believe it, because I’m fucking not.”

“If you’re not one of Them, how did you get into the house? I have the keys.”

“Ah, from the mailbox, right?”

So Andrew Lowenbruck had left the keys after all. Sorry, good sir, that I ever doubted you. Seems like this skinny, spoiled party girl went helping herself. Hardie smiled, but that just seemed to piss her off.

“I asked you,” she repeated, making sure he understood every syllable, even though her voice was trembling. “How. Did. You. Get. In?”

“Yeah. I heard. And thanks to you, I had to walk across the roof and use the sliding doors on the deck.”

“Shit—did anybody see you?”

“See me what?”

“When you walked into the house, did anybody see you? Was anybody watching?”

Hardie thought about his walk across the tile roof and almost said, Well, yeah, there was this woman with amazing tits who caught me breaking into the house, but that didn’t seem like a good way to put this girl at ease.

Before Hardie had a chance to answer, the girl pushed herself back a few inches, creeping away from him, shaking her head back and forth, pure panic on her face.

“No… oh God, what if they saw you? Shit, if they saw you…”

Back to them again.

“Nobody’s outside. It’s just you and me, honey.”

Well, and the sunbathing babe.

This was getting old fast. Hardie was wondering what he was going to say to Lowenbruck about all of this. Because after he got this girl calmed and into his rental car, he would have to call the police—and then Virgil. But there wasn’t any way around that. Lowenbruck would need a report for his insurance. Especially if she broke anything. God knows what she did to this place since helping herself to the keys. Goldilocks only ate porridge and smashed chairs and fell asleep in beds. And Goldilocks wasn’t a teenaged junkie.

Wait.

The girl had obviously helped herself to the keys, but how did she manage to deactivate the alarm? It had been set when Hardie had opened the sliding doors.

The story in his head changed.

Maybe this wasn’t a college girl. Maybe this was one of Lowenbruck’s barely legal exes. She didn’t have keys, but she knew the security code because he never bothered to change it. She runs into trouble, goes to the first place that comes to mind.

Either way, Hardie had to get her out of here and the police thing over with. He was exhausted. Being stabbed in the chest didn’t help his mood either. He hoped it was a few stitches and a couple of Vikes kind of situation… not a go-to-a-hospital-for-major-surgery-because,-oh,-your-lung-is-collapsing kind of situation. He still didn’t want to look down at the wound.

Hardie took a step forward, held out his hand. “C’mon.”

The girl seemed outraged by the suggestion.

“Don’t you come anywhere near me.”

“We both need a trip to the hospital. We can sort this all out in the waiting room.”

“You don’t understand. I’m not leaving this house. I don’t care what you say or what you do, but I’m not leaving.”

No, Hardie didn’t understand, but add it to the long, long list of things he didn’t understand.

And then the world around them fell silent.