Fun and Games - Duane Swierczynski [62]
“So… Musso and Frank?”
“Back that way a block or two,” Lane said. “You were kidding about lunch, right?”
Right in front of Grauman’s, Hardie stopped, put the van in park, pressed down on the emergency brake, flipped on the four-ways. The car ahead of him inched forward a few feet. The car behind Hardie noticed, and gave a tap of his horn.
“Okay, this is good. This will work,” Hardie said.
“Right, Charlie?”
“Follow me.”
And there, right in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, Hardie turned off the ignition, pulled out the keys, and stepped outside.
Lane stared at him as if he were an astronaut who’d announced he was going for a stroll and just opened the air lock without his helmet on.
“Charlie?”
But what else could she do except follow him? Lane opened the passenger door, unsnapped her belt, slid off the seat, and started limping toward the back of the van. Charlie had already opened up the back doors. He grabbed the suitcase. The guy in the car behind them, just two feet away, moaned what the fuck so loudly she could hear it through the glass of his windshield. He blasted them with his horn again. Hardie looked up, smiled, and gave him a tiny Queen of England wave.
Lane touched his shoulder.
“Uh, you know we can’t stop here. The cops are going to be up our asses in about two seconds.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing we won’t be here.”
“Please explain that.”
Charlie pulled the retractable handle out from the suitcase, then extended his left arm formally.
“Shall we?”
Now other car horns were screaming at them. Charlie didn’t seem to care. He looked over at a crowd gathered on the sidewalk—hustlers, moms, dads, punks, homeless guys, toddlers, costumed superheroes, models—and shouted:
“Hey, Hollywood types! Free drugs! Help yourself, right inside the van.”
Hardie launched the van keys up in the air toward Grauman’s. People jumped out of the way and cursed as the keys made their descent back to earth. Then Hardie linked arms with Lane and pulled his rolling suitcase down the coral-and-charcoal paving block of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
21
I found out something I never knew.
I found out my world was not the real world.
—Robert F. Kennedy
“A MANHATTAN on the rocks,” Hardie said, adding, “lots of ice.”
“Yes, sir.”
The tuxedoed waiter moved away from the table and headed toward the oak bar.
Musso & Frank was a Hollywood legend. Even Hardie was familiar with the place. Countless directors, actors, screenwriters had sat in these same chairs, knocking back tumblers of booze and sawing into chops and making big Hollywood deals. Hardie knew this because one night—bored out of his mind and with no new movies to watch—he had watched a DVD extra that gave a quickie history of the place. As Hardie understood it, Musso & Frank was where you came to create dreams, and others could just gawk.
Which was the whole idea.
From the moment they stepped inside, everybody was staring at them.
Granted, Hardie would have stared at them, too. Their clothes were dirty and torn and blood-encrusted. Hardie was pretty sure he had blood caked all around his head and neck. The gore that had seeped through his gray T-shirt had left it stiff and dark. He was also dragging along his stupid luggage, headless Spider-Man and all, which was probably a faux pas unto itself.
But he was here with World Famous Actress Lane Madden, and that made all the difference.
The maître’d, an older gray-haired man in a natty suit, blanched at first but then recognized her face. If Lane Madden wanted a table, then she would receive a table, no matter her physical appearance. He didn’t flinch. Maybe he was used to actors showing up in their makeup, looking like they crawled away from a plane crash site.
But everyone else…
It was clear no one had ever seen anything like this. Not even this midafternoon crowd of lingering lunch-hour boozers and people hoping to get Saturday night started early.
Oh, the stares.
Hardie looked at her. “Aren’t you going to order something?”
“I feel like I