‘I think I was very polite. I could have said “rug.”’
When they left the restaurant, he looked up and down Sunset and said, ‘Where did you leave your car?’
‘I didn’t. A friend of mine gave me a ride.’
‘In that case I’d better drive you home.’
She thought about that for a while, cupping her hand over the crown of her hat to keep it from blowing away in the breeze. Then she said, ‘All right. Do you know Venice at all? Palms Boulevard, off Lincoln.’
Frank checked his watch. Ten after two. He took out his cellphone and called Margot.
‘Margot? Gerald was caught up in a partners’ meeting so I’m running maybe thirty minutes late. I’ll be back around four.’
‘All right,’ she said. Her voice had no expression at all.
‘Margot . . .’ There were so many things he wanted to say to her. That he was sorry. That Nevile Strange could show her that Danny forgave him. That he wished it were still Tuesday morning, and that he and Danny were still stuck in traffic on the Hollywood Freeway. Instead he ended the call.
‘I’m not finding this easy,’ he told Astrid as they drove westward on Santa Monica.
‘Of course it isn’t easy. You’ve lost your son.’
‘No, I don’t mean Margot. I mean you and me.’
‘Is there any special reason it has to be easy?’
‘I guess not. But I’m finding it very hard to get to know you. I’m beginning to ask myself why you wanted to meet me at all.’
‘I wanted to meet you because we both went through that experience together, that bomb.’
‘And why else?’
‘I wanted to meet you because . . . well, we’re kind of kindred spirits.’
‘Kindred spirits, huh?’
She said nothing, but leaned her head back against the head rest and half closed her eyes, as if she were focusing on something in the very far distance.
He turned off Lincoln Boulevard into Palms, and she directed him to draw up in front of a peeling pink apartment building with dark green wooden shutters and a red-tiled veranda. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come up for a drink?’
He checked his watch again. ‘OK. So long as I’m out of here by three thirty.’ He locked his car and followed her up the steps and wondered why he didn’t feel guilty. He felt, instead, an unexpected sense of freedom, as if a load had been taken off his mind.
Astrid unlocked the front door and they stepped into a Mexican-tiled hallway with an oak side table that was scattered with junk mail, and a large gilt mirror with business cards tucked into the frame. She led him up the stairs to the second floor and opened the door on the left-hand side – apartment number three. It was sunny and bright, with a shiny wood floor and plain calico couches with Navajo rugs draped over them. On the wall hung a lithograph of a naked young man, completely green, with the most supercilious look on his face that Frank had ever seen.
‘You live here alone?’ Frank asked her.
‘No.’
He peeked into one of the bedrooms. There was a queen-sized bed with a carved oak bedhead, loosely strewn with a red and yellow throw. Astrid walked through to the second bedroom, where the bed was immaculately tidy with a brown and white cover and three white pillows on it.
‘Who do you share with?’
‘Carla, she’s a flight attendant. She’s in Europe this weekend. Frankfurt, Rome, Madrid. Do you want a cup of coffee? Or another glass of wine?’
She was standing in the middle of the room and he walked up behind her and laced his arms around her waist. Her perfume, and the warmth of her shoulder, and the criss-cross elasticized smocking of her dress engulfed his senses.
‘Who did you lose?’ he asked her. ‘Are you ever going to tell me?’
She twisted around and kissed him directly on the lips. ‘I might. But not yet.’
‘You said it was somebody closer than a child. I’m . . . intrigued. I didn’t know anybody who was closer to me than Danny, except for Margot. Who could be closer?’
‘You can’t think?’
‘No,’ he said. She kissed him again, and touched his cheek with her fingertips, in the same way that she had touched him when she first met him, as if she wanted to make sure that he was real.
Six
Danny’s hair was shiny with hair tonic and combed with a center parting, like a child movie star from the 1940s. His cheeks were florid and his eyebrows were unnaturally dark brown. He wore a white shirt and a bow tie, and his hands were demurely clasped in front of his well-pressed black shorts.
John Lester Junior was a small man with rimless glasses and small polished shoes and a dyed chestnut pompadour. He stood next to the non-denominational stained-glass window so that one side of his face was yellow and the other green.
‘I’m sure you’ll want some moments alone,’ he said.
Frank nodded, and John Lester Junior stepped neatly backward out of the chapel of rest, closing the double doors behind him without a sound. He’d make a good butler, thought Frank.
Margot stayed where she was, about eight feet away from the casket, her hands hanging by her sides, as if all the strength had drained out of them.
Frank cleared his throat. ‘He doesn’t look too much like Danny, does he?’ Margot didn’t answer. Frank stepped closer to the casket and looked down at the small, utterly still figure that used to be their son. After a while he said, ‘Look, he has scratches on his knees.’
What he actually meant was, he isn’t a waxwork after all; he’s the real Danny. For some reason, he had to be sure.
After a long, long silence, Margot approached the casket, too. She reached out and touched Danny’s lips with her fingertips. Then she bent forward and kissed him. Her tears dropped on to his sugar-pink cheeks, so that it looked as if he had been crying, too.
As they drove home, Frank said, ‘I have to ask you something. If you don’t want to do it, you only have to say so. I know that it was all my fault that Danny died, but I think that he forgives me, and I want you to hear it directly from him.’
Margot very slowly turned her head and stared at him. ‘Excuse me? What are you talking about, “directly from him”?’
‘This morning I went to The Cedars before I met George. Lieutenant Chessman introduced me to this . . . psychic detective. He’s supposed to be famous. He helps the police to look for children who go missing. He has this . . . talent, I guess you’d call it. He can see things happening after they’ve happened, even when there were no witnesses, and he can sense things that are going to happen, before they actually do.’
‘What has this to do with Danny forgiving you?’
Frank took a right turn toward their house. ‘This psychic, he can contact the dead.’
‘What?’
‘He can communicate with people who have . . . what do they call it? . . . passed over. He seems pretty sure that he can communicate with Danny.’
‘And that’s what you want us to do? Communicate with Danny, disturb him even when he’s dead, so that you can feel better about killing him?’
Frank swung into the driveway and stopped the car an inch short of the garage doors. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I want us to do.’
Frank spent the evening in his study, trying to finish the next episode of Pigs. Fourteen-year-old Dusty and twelve-year-old Henry were lying in bunk beds in their grandpa’s house, where their parents had been forced to move after their own house had been blown away by a tornado.
HENRY: You know what Randy Bennett said today about Ellie-Jane Kuhne?
DUSTY: What, that she’ll let you take a look at her hooters?
HENRY (sniffing loudly): That’s right. (beat) How much does she charge?
DUSTY: Fifty cents, that’s what I heard.
HENRY (sorting through a handful of sticky pennies): I have twenty-six cents. Do you think she’ll let me take a look at just one?
DUSTY: What’s the point of looking at a s
ingle hooter?
HENRY (after a moment’s thought): I don’t know. It’s better than no hooter at all.
DUSTY (kind of admits that Henry has a point): Well, I have eleven cents. Maybe if we club together she’ll let us take a look at a hooter and a half.
Frank sat back and stared at the screen. He couldn’t decide if any of this was remotely funny or not. He had intended to show it to Mo and Liz at Wednesday morning’s script meeting, but Wednesday morning seemed so long ago that maybe people’s sense of humor had changed. Maybe they would think this was tragedy now, instead of comedy. He was still staring at it when Margot came in.
‘Lynn called me.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I told her that we went to see Danny today at the funeral home, but of course Lynn can’t even do that. Kathy was standing right next to the van when it blew up and there was almost nothing left of her.
Frank waited for what she was going to say next.
‘The thing is . . . I mentioned this psychic detective of yours, and that you’d asked me if we could arrange a séance . . .’ Another pause. ‘Lynn said that if we did . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘If we did, she would very, very much like to come. She badly needs to talk to Kathy. She doesn’t even have a body to bury.’
Frank said nothing for a moment, but then he leaned forward and pressed the delete button on his keyboard. ‘OK. I’ll arrange it.’
Police Commissioner Marvin Campbell appeared on the news at six o’clock that evening.
‘About an hour ago we received a further coded telephone call from Dar Tariki Tariqat – the terrorist group who claim to be responsible for Wednesday’s bombing at The Cedars elementary school in Hollywood.
‘They warned us that they are planning further explosions aimed at the motion picture and television industries. Specifically, they state that “the corruption of religious and political thought throughout the world by the godless moguls of American entertainment amounts to cultural imperialism of the most oppressive nature. We are committed to smashing them and all their Satanic works.”’
Commissioner Campbell was asked what he took this threat to mean.
‘I think the meaning is pretty clear. These fanatics believe that American movies and television are an evil influence in countries where women have to cover their faces and risk being stoned to death for adultery. They think that Sex and the City is an insult to Allah and that freedom of expression is a blasphemy.’
How serious did he estimate the threat to be?
‘One hundred and ten percent serious. Anybody who has no qualms about murdering innocent children will certainly be capable of committing atrocities that are similar or even worse.’
So what was he going to do to protect the entertainment industry?
‘We’re going to be vigilant. We’re not closing anything down. No studios, no theme parks, no guided tours. Entertainment is this city’s lifeblood and we’re not going to allow a bunch of psychopaths to cut off our blood supply. Security at all major studios will be intensified, both by police presence and by private security officers. There will be some delays and some inconveniences, especially at public attractions such as Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and all the various studio tours. But we are absolutely determined that a whole city’s way of life will not be undermined by a rabid minority.’
Were they any closer to finding out who Dar Tariki Tariqat actually were, and making any arrests?
‘We have a number of promising leads that we’re working on right now, so I can’t say too much about this. But I’ll have to admit that we’re still no nearer to discovering exactly who these people are, or if they’re affiliated to any known terror organization such as Al Qaeda.’
You’ve already brought in Nevile Strange, the well-known psychic detective. Is this an early admission that you don’t think you’re going to be able to solve this case by conventional police procedure?
‘Not at all. The Los Angeles Police Department has the most experienced detectives and forensic specialists working round the clock and I have every confidence that they are going to hunt these terrorists down and bring them to justice. Mr Strange is a respected investigator with unusual but internationally acknowledged abilities, and I simply think I would have been failing in my duty if I hadn’t availed myself of every possible assistance, no matter how unconventional it might be.’
Frank stayed up until well past two A.M., listening to all of their favorite songs on his headphones so that he wouldn’t keep Margot awake. ‘We Have All the Time in the World’ by Louis Armstrong; ‘Easy’ by The Commodores; ‘Days Like These’ by Van Morrison. He had poured himself a large Stolichnaya but he didn’t even sip it. He didn’t feel like drinking anymore.
Eventually he took off the headphones, unbuttoned his shirt, and went through to his study so that he could sleep on the couch. Margot hadn’t told him that he wasn’t welcome back in the bedroom, but he couldn’t face the thought of lying next to her all night when she felt so bitter toward him.
He was pulling off his socks when the phone rang.
‘Frank?’
‘Who is this?’
‘Who do you think it is?’
‘Astrid? Do you have any idea what time it is?’
‘Of course I do. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve been thinking about you.’
‘I’ve been thinking about you, too.’
There was a long pause. It was so quiet in the house that he could hear Astrid breathing on the other end of the phone.
Eventually, she said, ‘I wanted to know when I could see you again.’
‘Tomorrow, if you like. I mean today. Maybe sometime in the afternoon. How does three o’clock sound?’
‘Three o’clock sounds perfect. You can come round to my apartment if you like.’
‘OK.’ He didn’t know what else to say.
Astrid hesitated, and then she said, ‘You’re worried, aren’t you, because you can’t work out who I am. Well, you needn’t worry, because it doesn’t matter.’
‘How can you say that? Of course it matters. Finding out who you are – that’s part of the whole process of getting to know you, sharing things. All I know about you so far is that your father was a television producer and your mother was a dancer and that you wanted to be a doctor in Africa.’
‘You don’t even know that. I lied.’
‘You lied? What did you do that for?’
‘Because you wanted to know all about me and I didn’t want to disappoint you. But I want you to like what you see, not what you know. You do like what you see, don’t you, Frank?’
‘Of course I do. I’m not entirely sure where I stand, that’s all.’
‘I’ll see you at three o’clock. Sleep well.’
Saturday, September 25, 10:09 A.M.
Matty was already beginning to think that bringing the North Hollywood cub scout pack on a weekend outing to Universal Studios had been a very reckless idea. It was little more than an hour since the turnstiles had opened and yet the lines of hot and impatient sightseers were winding all the way back to the parking lot. Three police cars were parked close to the entrance, and everybody who passed through the turnstiles was being frisked by police and security guards and having their bags looked into. One or two were being taken aside and questioned more closely.
The Silber brothers had already gone missing twice, and so Matty had been forced to send Irene Wallach to find them, which meant that he had been left in sole charge of eighteen overexcited small boys, most of whom seemed to be desperate to go to the bathroom every three minutes.
Even more trying, with Irene Wallach rounding up the strays, Kevin Millfield had decided to attach himself to Matty and engage him in one of his long, lugubrious conversations. Matty was sure that Kevin was going to grow up to be a professional prophet of doom, or at the very least a loss adjuster.
Kevin had tufty brown hair and very large ears that shone red in the sunlight. Matty didn�
��t think that he had ever seen him smile. As a cub scout, he was conscientious and thoughtful but completely incompetent at everything from tying knots to making an impromptu spit-roaster. His father owned Millfield’s Sensible Shoe Stores on Magnolia.
‘I can understand why all the major studios have tours,’ he was saying, in his mournful monotone. ‘They can make a profit out of all of their old movie sets – which are only a lot of junk, after all – and at the same time they can advertise their up-and-coming movies. But I do think that it spoils the illusion, finding out what goes on behind the scenes. Don’t you, Mr Doggett?’
‘Don’t I what, Kevin?’
‘Don’t you think that these tours make it hard to believe in movies anymore?’
‘Well, no, Kevin, not really. I think they’re very interesting, and very educational. Did you see where Joey Mendez disappeared to?’
‘I wouldn’t go to see a magic act if the magician explained how he managed to saw a lady in half and put her back together again. I mean, what would be the point? Don’t you think so, Mr Doggett?’
Matty caught sight of Joey Mendez and blew his whistle and furiously beckoned him to get back into line. ‘Where have you been? You’re supposed to stay with the group. What did I tell you? Stay with the group!’
‘I saw the Terminator over there, sir. Like, the real-life Terminator. I had to go say hasta la vista, baby.’
‘You stay with the group, OK, or else the only person who’s going to get terminated is you.’
‘He wasn’t the real Terminator,’ Kevin told Joey pedantically. ‘He was only an actor.’
‘Oh, he was only an actor?’ said Matty. ‘So what do you think Arnold Schwarzenegger used to do for a living?’
After more than twenty minutes they finally reached the pay booths and Matty bought their group ticket. He had to squeeze, gasping, to get through the turnstile, because of the size of his belly.
A security officer immediately approached him and said, ‘Have to search you, sir. Sorry.’
Innocent Blood Page 7
