Innocent Blood

Afterward he used to cry and say that he was sorry and that he was never going to hurt me again.’

Frank eased himself up into a sitting position. Beside him, Astrid stayed deeply asleep, breathing softly and evenly as if she were crossing the universe in the cargo ship Nostromo. He was frightened, because his dead son had appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night, but his fear was equaled by his urgent need to know why. If he didn’t find out why, he felt that something catastrophic was going to happen to him, and everybody around him.

‘Danny . . . I didn’t beat you, did I? And I never hurt you in any other way?’

‘Daddy hurt me.’

Frank reached out into the darkness. ‘Here . . . take my hand.’

‘Daddy hurt me. He beat me and he made me do all those bad things.’

‘Take my hand,’ Frank insisted. Hesitantly, the figure held out its right hand. ‘Come on, there’s nothing to be scared of.’

Frank leaned forward and took hold of the child’s hand, but the instant he touched it he recoiled in horror. It wasn’t a child’s hand at all. It was soft, but it was a woman’s hand, with long fingernails, and a ring.

He sat there staring at the figure, wide eyed, breathing as quickly as if he had been running. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘You have to tell me who you are.’

‘I’m not allowed to.’

‘You can tell me. I won’t let anybody know that it was you.’

The figure said nothing, but stayed where it was. The first light of dawn was beginning to appear through the drapes, and the figure was slowly becoming clearer. There was no question that it looked like Danny, but it was wearing soiled yellow pajamas with pictures of marching teddy bears all over them. Danny had never worn pajamas like that.

‘You’re not Danny, are you?’ asked Frank.

Astrid stirred. ‘Don’t. Not tonight,’ she said. Frank looked across at her, and when he looked back, the figure had vanished.

He sat up for over twenty minutes, waiting to see if it would reappear, but the drapes grew lighter and lighter, and it was obvious that the figure had gone for good.

In a strange way, Frank was reassured that it wasn’t Danny. He didn’t like to think of Danny wandering around the spirit world, lost and confused and dressed in dirty clothes. But at the same time, he needed to know why it had chosen to appear as Danny, and where the real Danny was, and if he was at peace.

He eased himself out of bed and went into the kitchen for a drink of orange juice, straight out of the carton, so cold that it made his palate ache. It was only then, though, that it occurred to him that Danny had appeared to him without Nevile’s assistance. No seance, no deep concentration, nothing. The figure had just materialized of its own accord.

He went back to bed and found Astrid waiting for him with her eyes open. ‘What time is it?’ she asked him.

‘Five after five.’

‘Couldn’t you sleep?’

He slapped the pillows and settled back under the sheets. ‘Bad dream, that’s all.’

They lay in silence for a while and then Astrid propped herself up on one elbow and kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘I might lie to you, Frank, but I’ll never hurt you.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Sometimes the truth is much too painful to bear. Sometimes lying is a kindness.’

‘So wherever you went yesterday . . . you think it’s better if I don’t know?’

‘Do you still love your Margot?’

‘What does that have to do with the price of pork bellies?’

‘I just want to know if you’re lying to yourself. You can’t give me a hard time for lying to you, if you lie to yourself, too.’

Eighteen

When Astrid left the hotel that morning, Frank followed her again. This time her taxi took her along Sunset Boulevard to Beverly Glen, and up into the winding lanes of Bel Air, among the fragrant flowers and the gilded security gates of Hollywood’s wealthiest homes. The sky was streaked with mares’ tails, as if a change in the weather was coming.

Astrid’s taxi stopped outside the gates of a large white Gone with the Wind-style house. It was mostly hidden from the road, but Frank could see a lofty pillared portico and a green copper dome with a weather vane on top of it, pointing to the west. The steeply sloping gardens were laid out with flowering rose bushes and fountains made of grinning stone dolphins and bosomy mermaids. The taxi driver spoke into the intercom beside the gates and after a few seconds they swung open electronically and the taxi drove in. Frank cruised slowly past, and then turned his car around and cruised slowly back again. He parked about fifty yards down the road, and waited.

The taxi reappeared only two or three minutes later. Frank climbed out of his car and flagged it down. The taxi driver put down his window. He was pockmarked, with a droopy moustache, and a rosary wrapped around his fist like a knuckle duster.

‘Want to do me a favor?’ asked Frank. He produced his Fox-TV business card and handed it over. ‘Did you ever hear of The Beverly Hillbillies?’

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Well, we’re planning to remake it, with Steve Martin playing Jed and Pamela Anderson as Elly May. I’m looking for locations, see, and this particular house looks like it could just about fill the bill. You don’t happen to know who owns it, do you?’

The taxi driver shook his head. ‘I can’t give you that information, man. That’s privileged.’

‘You’re a taxi driver, for Christ’s sake, not a gynaecologist. Look, how about a finder’s fee?’

He opened his billfold and held up twenty dollars. It was snatched so fast that he didn’t even see where it went.

‘Charles Lasser,’ said the taxi driver. He started off, but immediately jammed his brakes on. ‘You know, Charles Lasser?’ Then he sped away.

Frank stood outside the gates looking up at the house. So Astrid had gone to visit Charles Lasser, the owner of Star-TV. That really confused him. Why would a girl like her visit a man like him? Could they be lovers? Worse, could Astrid be a prostitute? That would certainly account for her reluctance to tell him anything about herself.

Yet, if she was a prostitute, why did she keep on coming back to his bed, every night? Maybe Charles Lasser was the man who was beating her, and she needed somebody to turn to, somebody who was sympathetic and gentle and wouldn’t judge her.

Whether she was a prostitute or not, Frank didn’t have to ask himself what Astrid might find attractive about an ugly, domineering bully like Charles Lasser. A private Boeing 767, for a start, and a 250-foot yacht, and houses in five different countries. Frank knew the wives and mistresses of too many famous actors and too many heavyweight studio bosses, and he knew how much humiliation they were prepared to take to stay within the glittering circle. As Mo had once put it, ‘They would rather eat shit, these ladies, than lose that lifestyle, and I know one who actually has, and dressed herself up in pink silk and pearls to do it.’

Frank drove to the cemetery to visit Danny’s grave. He stood beside it for almost fifteen minutes, his hair flapping in the breeze.

‘Danny?’ he whispered. No answer, of course, only the distant drone of a plane circling around Burbank airport.

‘I wish you’d talk to me, Danny. I just want to know that you’re not too unhappy; and that you’ve found yourself some friends. I can’t bear to think of you being lonely.’

He was about to leave when he became aware of a young man standing not far away, wearing dark glasses and a worn-out leather jacket. The young man had black spiky hair and he was standing with his arms folded as if he were waiting for somebody. As Frank walked past him, he said, ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’