Innocent Blood

Twenty-Seven

Frank took Carol and Smitty for a Zen burger at Iyashinbou at Century City, by way of a thank you for putting him up. Carol had protested that he could stay with them for as long as he wanted, and it wouldn’t cost him a bean, so long as he didn’t mind babysitting now and again. But he didn’t want to risk those phony cops turning up and shooting their way through her door, not with children around.

Iyashinbou was always preternaturally chilled out, with its raked-gravel garden and its pools full of lazily swimming carp, but this morning the atmosphere everywhere in Hollywood was palpably more relaxed. The bombing was over and the dreaded Dar Tariki Tariqat had turned out to be nothing more than a collection of vengeful geeks. People couldn’t understand Islamic fundamentalists, but they could understand geeks – and they could understand why these particular geeks had gone the way of Timothy McVeigh. They could even empathize, although they couldn’t forgive, especially those whose favorite soaps had been permanently canceled. All in all, it was a good movie-type ending. In fact, several screenwriters were busy working on bomb-outrage scripts, with Morgan Freeman already tipped for the role of Commissioner Campbell.

‘You ask me, I blame the Web,’ said Smitty. He was wearing a purple Rams sweatshirt and a baggy pair of Desert Storm combat pants. ‘Before the Web, your average loser had no way of getting in touch with any of your other losers. All of your losers, right, they were compartmentalized – each loser stewing in his own bedroom. But as soon as the Web came along, that was it, they all connected up, and all that individual stewing combined to make one hell of a dangerous casserole.’

Carol said, ‘I feel sorry for those young people. I know I don’t have any reason to, but I do. They were beaten and sexually abused and God knows what else, and the world took no notice. I know it’s been a terrible price to pay, but maybe it’ll change some attitudes.’

‘I’ll have the teppanyaki burger with eggplant fries,’ said Smitty. ‘And a cold Sapporo to chase it down the old red lane.’

Frank and Carol both ordered yakitori chicken burgers and vinegared rice balls. Frank had chosen to have lunch at Iyashinbou because it had been Mo’s favorite restaurant – apart, of course, from Shalom Pizza on West Pico. The idea of a Japanese burger restaurant had appealed to Mo’s sense of total absurdity. He had liked it even better when he had found out that ‘Iyashinbou’ meant ‘Greedy Guts.’

While they were waiting for their food, Carol took hold of Frank’s hand across the table. ‘You must feel you’ve gotten some kind of closure for Danny. Especially since you found those bombs yourself.’

‘I don’t know yet. We still need to know who organized all of this bombing, and who paid for it. I mean, how could a bunch of amateurs get themselves together to blow up half of Hollywood, Internet or not? Especially a bunch of emotionally damaged people like Dar Tariki Tariqat.’

‘You know something?’ said Smitty. ‘We live in a different world these days. When we was young, what did we care about Islam? Nothing. Islam was what you said when somebody asked you what was for lunch. We didn’t even know that Islam existed. Now we have to walk on fucking eggshells. Same with gays. Same with vegetarians. Same with pediatricians.’

‘Don’t you mean pedophiles?’

‘Whatever.’

Smitty was still grumbling about political correctness when Frank saw a figure walking across the plaza in front of the restaurant. The windows of Iyashinbou were tinted dark metallic gray, so that it looked as if it were thundery outside. The figure was wearing a baseball cap with a long peak, and drooping maroon shorts, and he was dragging a dog on a very long string. As he came close to the restaurant, he stopped, and peered intently inside, even though he couldn’t have seen anything but his own reflection.

‘Will you get a load of that old geezer?’ Smitty remarked. ‘He must have X-ray vision.’

But without a word, Frank stood up, put down his napkin, and walked out through the restaurant door. Outside it was hot and glaring, not thundery at all, although a fresh breeze made the old man’s shorts flap around his skinny, scabby knees.

‘Hello, Frank,’ the old man grinned. ‘How’s it going? I was real sorry to hear about your friends.’

‘Tell me what I’m supposed to do now,’ said Frank.

The old man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do what you damn well like, that’s my suggestion.’

‘No, no. You seem to be the expert when it comes to my destiny. You tell me.’

The old man shook his head. ‘You’ve already decided, Frank. You crossed the street and here you are on the other side. There’s no going back now, you know that. But watch your step. You never know what’s going to hit you next.’

‘Like what?’

‘You ever see those cartoons, Frank? Like you’re strutting along the street in your natty suit with a flower in your lapel, doing the double shuffle, when a safe drops off of the top of a building and flattens you? Or you’re sitting at home with a six pack, watching the old TV, and there’s a knock at the door, and when you open it, it’s a Union Pacific locomotive, complete with cow catcher, coming toward you at full pelt?’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘All’s I’m saying is, take good care. Look up, as well as ahead, and look behind you, too. And always say “who is it?” before you open that door. Well, I think you learned that particular lesson already.’

‘Is this a warning?’

‘Let’s just put it this way: somebody once told me that you can drop a toaster in the bath and that, contrary to expectations, it won’t electrocute you. But I never took the chance by trying it.’

Frank was about to tell the old man that this was self-evident, since he smelled as if he hadn’t taken a bath since he was born, but at that moment there was a loud, dull explosion from the east, probably no more than three miles away. Everybody who was crossing the plaza stood stock still, their heads raised, their mouths open in shock. There were five seconds of utter silence, and then the explosion echoed from the mountains.

‘At a guess, that sounds like CBS Television City,’ said the old man, and sniffed.

Smitty came out of the restaurant, closely followed by Carol, and six or seven other diners, and three Japanese waiters.

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Smitty. ‘That was another bomb, wasn’t it? I thought you said this was over.’

Frank checked his watch. It was one minute after twelve. It looked as if Dar Tariki Tariqat were going to go on blowing themselves up until the last of them were dead.

Behind him a woman started to wail, as if she were a mourner at a Middle-Eastern funeral. There was nothing else that anybody could do. Frank looked around for the old man, but he had gone. All he could see was his dog, trotting off around the corner, and then it, too, disappeared from sight.

Frank dumped all his suitcases on to the bed at the Franklin Plaza and closed the door behind him. A message was already waiting for him on his answering machine. He pressed the on button then rummaged in the brown paper sack he had brought back from the supermarket, trying to find a beer.

‘Mr Bell, this is Lieutenant Chessman. I tried your cellphone but you were busy. I thought you’d like to know that I talked to Charles Lasser this morning. I have to tell you that he was very co-operative, but he totally denied any knowledge of any woman called Astrid. In fact he denied mistreating any woman of any name.’ (Cough, shuffle of paper.) ‘He’s . . . ah . . . he’s prepared to accept that he might have called you “vermin,” but he says that he is constantly pestered by the media and by people attempting to extort money or favors from him, and that he was . . . er . . . under the impression that you were one of these. After all, you did push your way into his office uninvited, true?

‘Mr Lasser has been unfailingly helpful in our efforts to put an end to this bombing. I told him of the valuable part you played in finding Dar Tariki Tariqat’s cache of explosives and he seemed to be very gratified. If we succeed in getting convictions for the people we’ve arrested, you could be looking at a very substantial reward.

‘I’ll call you later, Mr Bell. But in the meantime, I wouldn’t concern yourself with Mr Lasser any further. Believe me, he’s one of the good guys.’

The call was timed at eleven forty-eight A.M., only thirteen minutes before the last bomb had exploded. The old man had been right: they had targeted CBS Television City. The death toll was seventeen adults and five children. Over thirty more had been critically injured.

Frank unlocked the sliding door and took his beer out on to the balcony. In the distance he could hear dozens of sirens warbling, and there was still a genie-like smudge of smoke hanging over Beverly Boulevard. Apart from the sirens, however, Hollywood was unnaturally quiet, as if people were afraid to go out, or even to speak. But then the phone rang.

‘Mr Bell? It’s Marcia, from reception. There’s a woman down here, asking for you. She’s in pretty bad shape.’

Frank hurried down to the lobby. A woman was sitting on one of the chairs by the front door, her head in her hands. The receptionist was bending over her, dabbing at her forehead with a bloodied tissue. A Mexican cab driver with a droopy moustache was standing close by, looking fretful.

‘What’s happened?’ Frank asked.

The woman looked up. It was Astrid. Her hair was spiky with blood and it looked as if her nose had been broken. She was wearing a pale-green blouse that was drenched in blood, and her cream-colored Dockers were spattered, too.

‘I picked her up outside Star-TV,’ said the cabbie. ‘I wanted to take her straight to a hospital but she said she had to come here to see you.’

Frank said, ‘That’s OK. That’s fine. You did the right thing. Astrid, tell me what happened? For Christ’s sake, Astrid, did Lasser do this?’

‘I wanted to take her to the hospital,’ the cabbie repeated. ‘She just wouldn’t let me. She said, “Franklin Plaza, take me to the Franklin Plaza.”’

‘That’s OK,’ Frank told him, and gave him two twenties and a ten.

‘I’m not asking for no money,’ said the cabbie. ‘I was trying to act like the good Samaritan, that’s all. None of the other cabs wanted to pick her up. She look like Friday the Thirteenth, you know what I mean?’

‘Do you want me to call for an ambulance?’ asked the receptionist.

‘No, not yet,’ Frank told her. ‘Let me take her up to my room and get her cleaned up. Thanks for helping her out.’

‘Looks like she picked a fight with Godzilla, and lost.’

‘Something like that, yes.’

Astrid blinked up at him. ‘Frank?’ she said, thickly. ‘Is that you?’

‘Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you upstairs. Do you think you can walk?’

Frank put his arm around her and helped her to her feet. She lost her balance, and almost fell, but the receptionist grabbed her sleeve. Frank coaxed her to walk two or three steps, but her knees gave way, and in the end he had to pick her up. She was surprisingly light, not much heavier than a child, and he had no trouble in carrying her into the elevator.

‘Please call me if you need anything, sir,’ said the receptionist.

‘You bet. And thanks again.’

Astrid snuffled against his shirt. ‘Never thought I’d find you,’ she mumbled.

‘Well, you’ve found me now. Everything’s going to be fine.’

‘He’s such a bastard,’ she said, and coughed, and couldn’t stop coughing.

He carried her into his apartment and laid her down on the tree-patterned couch, propping her head up with cushions. Then he went into the bathroom and came back with a cold, wet facecloth. He cleaned the blood from her face, dabbing the facecloth very gently around her nostrils. Then he rinsed it out, folded it up, and laid it across the bridge of her nose.

She stared at him with those washed-out eyes, not blinking.

‘Give me one good reason why you keep on going back to him,’ he demanded. ‘One.’

‘I don’t have to explain myself to anybody, Frank. Even you.’

‘He’s broken your fucking nose, Astrid.’

‘I know. I think he’s broken my ribs, too.’

‘Why the hell did you go to see him? I just can’t get my head around it. You’re beautiful, you’re intelligent, you’ve got everything in the whole world going for you. And yet you allow a middle-aged scumbag like Charles Lasser to beat you to a pulp. I mean, what are you, some kind of masochist?’

Astrid kept on staring at him. ‘If I am, that’s my own business, don’t you think?’

‘No, it isn’t. You came back here because you needed my help. That makes it my business, too. I promised Charles Lasser that if he ever laid hands on you again, I’d make him pay for it, and I’m going to.’

She took the facecloth away from her nose. ‘Frank . . . you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.’

‘Then tell me. Come on, tell me! What am I getting myself into? It seems like ever since we met you’ve been trying to get me involved in something or other, but I’m damned if I can work out what it is.’

Astrid said nothing, but he thought he detected something in her expression that could have been regret, or sorrow. For some reason he remembered a phrase he had read in The Process: ‘One lifetime isn’t enough. Give me more.’

‘I’m taking you to the emergency room,’ he said. ‘You have to have your nose looked at. It just looks swollen at the moment, but it could need setting.’

‘Frank, I’m OK. I just need to rest.’

‘No way. I’m taking you to hospital and then I’m going to Star-TV and I’m personally going to rip Charles Lasser’s head off.’

‘Frank . . .’

‘No arguments, OK? For once we’re going to do things my way.’

He helped her into his car and then he drove her to the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital. He guessed that Mount Sinai would probably be overwhelmed with casualties from the CBS bombing. Even at the Sisters of Jerusalem, the parking lot was chaotic and the ER waiting room was crowded with people suffering from minor injuries and shock. There were twenty or thirty dazed and blood-spattered people waiting to register and everybody was shouting at once.

Frank sat Astrid down in the corner and said, ‘Listen, I’m going to leave you here. I won’t be long.’

‘Frank, I’m begging you. Don’t go looking for Charles Lasser. This wasn’t his fault.’

‘Don’t tell me. You tripped and fell. You broke your nose on a kitchen door.’

‘I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.’

‘Believe me, there’s only one person who’s going to be hurting.’ He squeezed her hand to reassure her that everything was going to be all right. ‘Give me twenty minutes, OK? I have to do this, Astrid, otherwise he’s going to go on beating up on you until he kills you.’

‘Frank, please . . .’

Frank went up to the nurse at the reception desk and said, ‘Do me a favor, would you? Keep an eye on my friend. She’s still in shock. I won’t be longer than a half-hour . . . Here’s my cellphone number in case you need me.’

He left the hospital without looking back. He had never felt like this before. He had lost his temper now and again, but he had never experienced this slow, burning rage. Normally, he would have stayed with Astrid and made sure that she was treated, but this was more important. This was more important than life itself.

He walked to the parking lot, unlocked his car, and leaned across the driver’s seat so that he could take Smitty’s gun out of the glovebox. Then he walked back to the front of the hospital and flagged down a taxi. He didn’t want to drive because parking outside Star-TV was restricted, and he didn’t want to start any trouble before he had even got into the building.

The taxi driver was Korean. He said, ‘You know what I would do with those suicide bombers? I would find all of their bits and put them back together again and then I would give them lethal injection. Just to show people, you know? You can kill yourself, my friend, but you can’t escape justice.’

Frank thought about Charles Lasser. You can’t escape justice. He didn’t exactly know what he was going to do to him, but for the first time in his life he understood what it was like to be capable of killing a man.

Security was tight at Star-TV. He was stopped by two brown-uniformed guards as soon as he walked in through the revolving doors.

‘You have an appointment, sir?’

‘That’s right. Four o’clock, with Mr Berenger.’

‘And your name is?’

‘Bell. Frank Bell.’

One of the guards checked his clipboard. ‘No record of it here, sir.’

‘What? He specifically told me four P.M., and don’t be late.’

‘OK, sir. Just wait a moment and I’ll call his office.’

Frank waited while the guard punched out John Berenger’s extension number. At the rear of the lobby, the elevator doors were opening. He wondered if by dodging around the guards and making a run for it, he could get inside the elevator before they could stop him. But he didn’t know how long it would take the elevator doors to close, and in any case the lobby was crowded and he would probably be tackled by somebody else before he could escape.

At that moment, however, Rufus Newton walked past him. Rufus had been working in production at Fox when Pigs was first being developed, and they had immediately become friends. Rufus was hugely creative, but also wildly rebellious. Eighteen months ago he had been sacked by Kenneth Fassbinder for sending out a spoof promotion that mocked Fassbinder’s passion for ‘uplifting dramas involving man’s best friend.’ It had been titled Raiders of the Lost Bark.

‘Rufus! Hey, it’s Frank!’

‘Frank, my man!’ Rufus came up and shook his hand. He was looking thinner than before, and his hair was grayer. He used to look like Eddie Murphy but now he looked like Eddie Murphy’s uncle. ‘What are you doing at Star, Frank? Don’t tell me you’ve given up all of your principles and sold out to Charles Lasser?’

‘You did.’

‘No, I didn’t, because I never had any principles to start with. Besides, I needed to pay my mortgage. Who are you here to see?’

‘John Berenger . . . He and I were thrashing out this new comedy concept.’

Rufus shook his head. ‘John’s out of town right now, didn’t you know that? They’ve sent him off on one of those reality TV shows. Get this: we book six celebrities into a fleabag motel in Mexico, and we take away all of their clothes and all of their money. The first one to make it back here to the studio wins fifty thousand dollars. It’s called Have Cojones, Will Travel.’

‘John’s doing shit like that?’

‘John’s doing just what the rest of us are doing, compadre. He’s doing like he’s told. Especially now that all of the other networks are going down the toilet. This bombing – believe me, it’s changed the face of TV forever.’

The security guard came over and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bell. It appears that Mr Berenger is out of town. Maybe he forgot to cancel your appointment.’

‘Hey, why don’t you come up and have a cup of coffee?’ Rufus suggested. ‘It’s OK, officer. I’ll vouch for this character. Come on over to the desk, Frank, you’re going to need a security badge. You don’t know how upset I was about your Danny. And then Mo and Lizzie. I cried all afternoon, man. I mean, Mo and Lizzie – they were the genuine article, you know? The last of the genuine articles.’

Rufus asked the receptionist for a security tag, and clipped it on to Frank’s lapel.

‘What are you working on now?’ Frank asked him as they stepped into the elevator.

‘Where the Cheats Meet to Eat. It’s still in development. We interview couples in restaurants. We ask them what they think of the food, then we ask them if they’re married to somebody else. The pilot was great. Fighting, screaming, pasta flying around. Like Jerry Springer with spaghetti sauce.’

‘What’s it all come to, Rufus?’

The elevator chimed its arrival at the seventh floor. ‘The lowest common denominator,’ said Rufus. ‘You want art, go to the Getty.’

He led Frank into his office. At Fox, Rufus had been notorious for his untidiness, and his ‘den’ had been littered with scripts, photographs, unanswered letters, magazines, TV awards and half-eaten sandwiches. Here at Star, he had a large desk covered with gray leather on which stood nothing more than a telephone, a laptop, a digital clock, and a silver-framed photograph of his wife, Natasha. Outside the window there was a view of Century City, with the traffic crawling along the Avenue of the Stars.

Rufus picked up his phone and asked his secretary for two espresso. ‘You still drink that horseshoe stuff, yes?’ The clock on his desk showed it was four eleven. Frank could feel the gun weighing down the left side of his linen coat, and hoped that it wasn’t too noticeable.

‘You’re really happy, then, working here?’ he asked Rufus.

‘You mean do I like Charles Lasser? What can I say? Charles Lasser gives people what they want, even if it isn’t good for them. To be honest, I hardly ever see him, and I don’t think he even knows who I am.’

‘Do you think that he could have been behind this bombing campaign?’

Rufus stared at him, taken by surprise. ‘What?’

‘Think about it. They bombed almost every TV network except HBO and Star.’

Rufus looked dubious. ‘I don’t know, man. The way I heard it, it’s a group of psychos – child-abuse victims, trying to get their own back on society.’

‘Somebody has to be financing them. Somebody has to be pulling the levers.’

‘And you think that could be Charles Lasser?’

‘I don’t know. I’m asking you.’

Rufus stood up, went over to the door, looked up and down the corridor, and then closed it. ‘It’s a hell of a thought, isn’t it? I mean, I see where you’re coming from. Ever since the other networks canceled their soaps, our daytime Nielsen ratings have shot through the roof. Advertising revenues . . . I don’t know . . . they’ve just about tripled. And we’re picking up the talent, too. We’ve already had approaches from Bill Katzman and Gerry Santosky – people who swore that they wouldn’t work for Charles Lasser even if you threatened to cut their dicks off.’

He sat down. ‘Do you remember the TV Drama Awards, the year before last? When Lance Seelbach made that speech about Rats-TV? “Like Star-TV, only not so backward.” Charles Lasser never forgave him for that, and he never forgave anybody at that ceremony who laughed at him – not Fox or Disney or NBC or CBS or UPN or anybody.’

Frank said nothing. After a while, Rufus leaned back in his swivel chair and there was a look on his face which Frank had never seen before. He looked troubled, but he looked beaten, too. ‘I reckon you could say that Charles Lasser is a very vengeful man. But as for blowing up innocent people . . . I don’t think so.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘I sure hope not, anyhow.’

There was a knock at the door and Rufus’s secretary came in with two cups of espresso and some chocolate-chip cookies. Rufus said, ‘You can leave the door open, Thelma.’ When she had gone, he turned to Frank and added, ‘Company rule, leaving the doors open. John calls it the Anti-Plotting Policy.’

The clock now said four seventeen. Frank sipped a little coffee and then said, ‘Sorry – do you mind if I use the restroom?’

He walked quickly along the corridor until he reached the elevators. He jabbed the call button and waited, glancing back toward Rufus’s office in case Rufus came out and wondered why he had taken the wrong turning. But at last an elevator car arrived. He stepped inside and pressed the button for the penthouse.

The elevator stopped at the next floor and a man with Clark Kent glasses and an armful of folders stepped in. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked, as if he had known Frank for years. ‘Good,’ said Frank. Three floors later the man stepped out again, and said, ‘Take care of yourself.’ Frank said, ‘You, too.’

At last he reached the penthouse. The thickly carpeted corridor was silent. He waited until the elevator doors had closed behind him, and then walked quickly along to the receptionist’s office and pushed his way through the double doors. There was a different girl sitting there today – a pretty Vietnamese girl in a shiny turquoise blouse.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ she protested, as Frank came in. ‘Mr Lasser isn’t seeing any more visitors today.’

‘Oh, he’s going to see me.’

‘No, no. He give strict instruction.’ The girl rose from her seat but Frank walked around her triangular glass desk and pushed her gently but firmly back down.

‘Stay there. Don’t say a word and don’t call anybody, you got me?’

‘You can’t go into Mr Lasser’s office! Mr Lasser will be so angry!’

‘Look at me,’ said Frank. ‘You don’t think I’m angry? I’m very angry. Compared to me, Mr Lasser is Mr Sunny Personality of the Year.’

‘Please – if I let you in, I will lose my job here.’

‘In that case, I’ll be doing you a great favor, believe me.’

He reached across her desk and ripped the cord out of her phone. ‘You don’t call anybody and you stay right here, OK?’

Then he went to the doors of Charles Lasser’s office and threw them wide open.