Robert Ferrigno - Scavenger hunt

The phone crackled. "I'm on my way to the premiere," Danziger said, classical music in the background-that NPR station that all the moguls listened to so everyone knew they had taste.

Sugar stood in a phone booth on Malibu Drive. "Can you think of any reason our boy is parked about a mile from your house?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Our boy is staking out your place. Are you as bothered by that as I am?"

Danziger must have turned up the CD player in his Mercedes. "Maybe-maybe it has something to do with the premiere," he said, speaking softly into the receiver. "He said he might be interested in an interview."

"He's been there for an hour. I started driving over as soon as I realized where he was."

"How did you know he was there?"

"That's not important." Sugar could see the tracking device on the front seat of his car, the pulsing red light moving now, edging across the map grid. "Darn. He just started moving. He's headed toward your house."

"You said you had taken care of things."

"I thought I did."

"You assured me."

"Trouble?" It was Brooke Danziger.

"Just the usual last-minute glitches," Danziger said to her.

"I'm sorry about last night," said Brooke. "I don't know what got into me."

"We're all a little tense," said Danziger. "Opening night jitters."

"What do you think our boy is looking for in casa del Danziger? " said Sugar.

"I really wouldn't know."

"Is that right?" said Sugar. "Well, it's been my experience that when someone tells me that they really don't know something, it means that they really do."

"Is there a problem with the theater?" said Brooke. "Or is it the caterer? I didn't like him or his fake accent, and the idea of insisting on being paid in advance."

"Your instincts are impeccable as ever," said Danziger. "Marcel only prepared four dozen tiger prawns instead of eight, so he's going to double up on the sashimi." A horn blared in the distance. "Just sit back, darling, I've got everything under control."

"You may be able to convince her but not me," said Sugar. "If our boy's going into your house, it's because there's something there he wants."

"I have no idea what that could be," Danziger murmured.

I bet you don't, thought Sugar. He wasn't worried. "I'm about a half-hour out of Malibu. You keep a spare key hidden outside someplace in case you get locked out?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," said Danziger.

"It's not, but it's the only idea I have," said Sugar.

Jimmy punched in the access code that Brooke Danziger had given him, and the elevator doors opened. He rode it to the top level of the Malibu house, his stomach doing flip-flops as much from nerves as from the swiftness of the ascent. The doors opened, and he crossed the deck quickly. The hydraulic lap pool was covered now, bubbles visible under the slats of the decking, the smell of chlorine rising into the cool night air.

He hesitated at the front door, feeling the familiar nervous tingle in his fingertips. It was always like this when he was about to walk into someplace he wasn't supposed to be. He had been breaking and entering since he was a teenager; even grown up he still liked slipping past doormen and security guards like the invisible man. The front door lock was easy, a Schlage lever tumbler. Jimmy whipped the pick gun out of his black leather jacket, a spring-loaded contraption with various picks and tension settings. It took him less than eight seconds to open the front door. He didn't leave a scratch on the lock, but eight seconds-he was out of practice.

He had made his first pick gun in high school, using a locksmith's manual, a coat hanger, and two clothespins. It was big and awkward, but it had worked well enough for him to break into the Griffith Observatory and give his science class a late-night tour. The one he was using now was a model formerly used by the FBI-he had bought it legally over the Internet. He stepped inside, crossed to the alarm keypad on the wall, and entered the five-digit number. The house echoed with the easy-listening music that was supposed to make potential burglars think someone was home.

Brooke had said that the screening room was on the lower level, down the first set of stairs and to the right, but he did a quick walk-through of the house. He had time-between the premiere of My Girl Trouble and the party afterward, the Danzigers would be gone five or six hours at least.

The kitchen featured brushed-chrome industrial appliances, polished copper pots and pans, and a two-hundred-year-old French butcher block. Six different brands of mineral water lined the refrigerator door, and the produce bins overflowed with exotic fruits and baby vegetables. The guest bedrooms smelled musty, but the master suite had a king-sized canopy bed, a built-in sauna, and a pink marble Jacuzzi overlooking the ocean. Photos of Michael and Brooke with A-list stars and Hollywood power players covered the walls. Brooke looked bored.

Jimmy walked downstairs to the screening room, fumbled around, and switched on the overhead lights. It was a large room with high ceilings, a THX sound system, and thirty-six rocking-chair seats with velvet cushions and wide armrests: four rows of offset seats, nine to a row, each one offering a perfect sight line to the quartz-light screen. At the rear of the room, behind an acoustic-glass partition, a smaller room housed two 35-millimeter projectors.

He started with the film storage unit, a six-foot-high steel cabinet, probably fire resistant and earthquake proof. He pulled out a small flashlight and checked out the lock. Damn. Wafer tumbler, very high quality. He made a minute adjustment in the pick gun, gently inserted it into the lock, and rocked it. Five minutes later he was soaked with sweat and the lock was still cold. He stopped, listening. The music in the house seemed louder. He opened the door of the projection room. Nothing. He left the door wide, then went back to the cabinet and adjusted the pick gun again. The trick was to make just enough contact with the beaded wafers inside the lock to engage the mechanism without sliding off. It took him almost twenty minutes to pop it.

Danziger had a 35-millimeter print of every film he had produced or greenlighted, plus DVDs of the top hundred films of all time. Jimmy checked every DVD, opened every aluminum film can, opened every drawer and compartment; it took him almost a half-hour. Nothing. No surveillance videotapes, CDs, DVDs, or Polaroids. No microfilms, holograms, or infrared satellite images of Brooke and Walsh fucking like rabid weasels. Nothing. Jimmy closed the cabinet, locked it again, then started a search of the room, looking for something out of place.

Yesterday Brooke had told him that Danziger was up late every night now, listening to the love tapes in the screening room, while Brooke was supposedly sound asleep, overmedicated on downers. Jimmy had told her to wait until he had been in there for an hour last night, then beat on the door, hysterical, full of bad dreams and desperation. She was to cling to him and insist he take her back to bed and stay with her. A man like Danziger would have a routine, a mental checklist for putting away his stash-Brooke's interruption might make him careless.

Jimmy walked the aisles, even plucked at the carpet, searching for a hidden storage area. He paid particular attention to the seat in the middle of the first row, obviously Danziger's command center, with a CD-DVD player within easy reach. On the right armrest of his seat was a control panel, allowing him to adjust volume, start, stop, fast-forward, and reverse. On the left side was a console containing two one-liter bottles of mineral water. He lifted a bottle, checked inside, then replaced it. Too bad. He started toward the projection room, then stopped. He definitely heard something upstairs.