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: You’re never going to believe this, but some idiot is standing up on the roof of my neighbor’s place, staring at my tits.
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 bee-BEEP bee-BEEP. Thirty seconds and counting. Hardie knew there was a keypad by the front door. He needed to reach it fast or he’d have company soon, and that would no doubt push back his drinking by a few hours more.
bee-BEEP
bee-BEEP
bee-BEEP
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.
bee-BEEP
bee-BEEP
bee-BEEP
There were too many things hanging on the walls near the front door, too much clutter. Fuck. 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 Sgt. Pepper–style. Clint. McQueen. Bruce. Sly. Arnie. Van Damme. Segal. And, strangely, Gene Hackman. This was seventies Hackman. Crazy-man Hackman. Night Moves and Conversation and French Connection Hackman. The collage of 2-D tough guys looked like it had been stuck up there for a while. The edges of the cardboard were frayed, cracked, and torn in places, and the material itself was yellowing. The surfaces featured a film of dust, and various body parts—an elbow, a foot—had come unstuck from the wall. Either Lowenbruck really loved his action heroes, or some previous owner had, and Lowenbruck thought it easier to leave the whole thing up.
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 Two-Way Split on CD.
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—
Gene
—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 nothing happens to it.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ve got explicit instructions here. Like, don’t even turn a knob.”
“What am I, in high school?”
“Just telling you what’s here on the form.”
“Okay, Virge. It won’t be easy, but somehow I’ll resist the urge to record my Pet Sounds tribute.”
Nothing else down here—was there room for anything else?—except two other padded doors. One was open a few inches, and obviously led to a bathroom. Hardie could see a white-tile floor and the edge of a silver mirror. He supposed that when Lowenbruck was in full-on work mode, this was all he needed. His keyboards and a place to take a leak or splash water on his face from time to time. The other door probably led downstairs to the third-floor bedroom.
Hardie was about to head down when the bathroom door flew open all the way and someone screamed and rushed at him and hit him on the head with something really, really hard.
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.