Innocent Blood

Frank said, ‘Thing is, Sloop, I could use some work right now. I don’t need the money, but I’m hopeless at golf and I can’t sit here all day with my thumb up my ass.’

‘Go write the Great American Novel. Everybody else is.’

‘I wish I could, but comedy is all I know.’

‘I’m sorry, Frank. I have all the writers I need right now. And there’s no telling when those Dar Tariki Tariqat lunatics are going to bomb us off the air, too. I mean, Charlie Lasser may be talking tough, but it’s only going to take a couple of hundred pounds of TNT and everybody at Star-TV is going to be heading for the hills, leaving a long trail of diarrhoea.’

‘Well, I realize that. But I have this great idea for a new comedy series. It’s controversial, it’s funny, but Islamically speaking, it’s politically correct, so it won’t upset any would-be terrorists.’

‘What’s the concept?’

‘I’d rather not discuss it over the phone, if that’s OK. Maybe we can meet.’

‘OK. What’s today? How about tomorrow morning, around eleven thirty? If we carry on talking long enough, we may even be able to drag it on through lunch. How do you like salmon with chermoula?’

‘Mmm-mmmh, I love it! What the hell is chermoula?’

Nineteen

Frank was just about to leave his room when the phone rang.

‘Mr Bell? It’s reception. There’s a Mr Strange here to see you.’

He went downstairs and found Nevile waiting for him in the lobby, dressed in a loose black linen suit and very dark glasses. ‘Frank! I’m glad I caught you. Something really important has come up.’

‘Oh, yes? Concerning what?’

‘Listen, this is a hard thing to ask you, but I think we should try to talk to Danny again.’

‘I thought we were leaving the Danny thing alone. Don’t you remember? Madness and death.’

‘Yes, I know, but I received more automatic writing last night, and I’m sure that it’s Richard Abbott trying to get through. The things he says . . . well, to my mind it’s further evidence that this terror campaign could somehow be connected with child abuse.’

‘Have you told the police?’

‘Not yet, no. To be quite honest, I think that Lieutenant Chessman is losing faith in me. His superiors want to find Arabs, and if I can’t confirm that it’s Arabs, they’re not really interested. They don’t want to believe that this could be a home-grown protest, like the Murrah Building, only a hundred times worse. But there’s a crisis coming, Frank. They’re going to set off a whole lot more bombs, and if there’s any way that we can stop them, we have to try it.’

‘Let’s have a drink.’

They sat on the shady veranda of the New World Bar on Sunset, opposite a huge billboard with a grinning 30 -foot cutout of George Clooney on it. Frank ordered a beer but Nevile stuck to mineral water.

Frank raised his glass to George Clooney. ‘That’s some piece of sign-painting,’ he said. ‘You can even see the hairs up his nose.’

Nevile reached into his inside pocket and handed Frank a print-out. ‘I was trying to write a letter to my publishers yesterday afternoon but this is what came up. I just couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it.’

DaY is cumin soon yore goin to Be sorre weer goin 2 give you baCk what you give out to Us. Alwiz hurtin us & mistretin us but now its yore turn. Dar Tariki TariQuat is goin to bring you tHe dark lik you alwiz made our livs so dark. You made us feel lik 0 so thTs what weer goin 2 do to you Make you feel like 0. WE WAS goin thru HELl an all you ever dID was say that lif was happe but lif was NEVER happe lif was hell.’

‘You see?’ said Nevile. ‘I’m ninety-nine percent certain this is coming through from the spirit of Richard Abbott. He says that Dar Tariki Tariqat is going to bring us darkness and a life of hell. But the interesting thing is, he doesn’t say a word about blasphemy. He says the reason that Dar Tariki Tariqat want to punish the entertainment industry is because it mocked them with images of happy families while they were being hurt and mistreated. “We was going through hell and all you ever did was say that life was happy.” Richard Abbott doesn’t sound to me like a Palestinian suicide bomber, or anybody with any connections with Al Qaeda, or Hezbollah.’

Frank reread the print-out and handed it back. ‘OK, I agree, he doesn’t. What does he sound like?’

‘He sounds to me like a victim of long-term child abuse.’

‘What?’

‘He sounds bitter, and crushed, and utterly hopeless – all of his humanity beaten out of him. He was happy to die so long as he could get his revenge on the society that destroyed his life. And he wasn’t just looking to punish the people who actually beat him and abused him, but all of us, especially Hollywood. Everybody who tries to pretend that the world is sunny and bright while so many children are living in darkness.’

‘Danny – or whoever it is that’s pretending to be Danny – said he was abused, too.’

‘That’s right. The trouble is, this isn’t really enough evidence to take to the police. I don’t want to send them off on the wrong track. All I have so far is the uncorroborated ravings of Richard Abbott and Danny’s complaints that “Daddy hurt me.” I need badly to talk to Danny again, or whoever it is that’s pretending to be Danny.’

Frank hesitated for a moment and then he said, ‘Danny paid me a visit, the night before last.’

‘Really? Just like that? You weren’t trying to make contact?’

‘It was just after three in the morning. He touched my cheek and woke me up. He looked exactly like Danny, just like he looked before, except that he was wearing some pajamas that I didn’t recognize. He told me that his daddy had beaten him and done things to him. Sexual things, I guess. He said that his daddy cried and said he was sorry but still kept on doing it.’

Nevile sipped his water. ‘This spirit is trying very, very hard to elicit your sympathy, isn’t he?’

‘You say “he,” but that’s the strange part about it. I took hold of his hand and it felt like a woman’s hand.’

‘You actually felt it?’

Frank nodded. ‘It was definitely a woman’s hand, with rings on.’

Nevile took off his dark glasses and his expression was very grave. ‘He didn’t ask you to do anything? For instance, he didn’t ask you to find his daddy and punish him for what he’d done?’

‘No. He wouldn’t even tell me who he was. I asked him, but he said that he wasn’t allowed to tell me.’

‘Well . . . that’s not as silly as it sounds. Even when people die, they often go on doing what they were told to do, when they were still alive. Most of the time they don’t realize that they’re beyond being punished.’

Frank finished his beer. ‘I’ll tell you something, Nevile. The more I hear what it’s like to be dead, the less I feel like dying.’

They drove to the Travel Town railroad museum in Griffith Park. This had always been one of Danny’s favorite places, because he could climb on the old locomotives and pretend that he was an engineer, whooping to make the whistle noises. Frank had liked it, too, because he could sit in one of the passenger cars and work on his scripts, while ostensibly spending quality time with his son. This afternoon there were only four or five other visitors, only half visible in the dusty sunlight, but somehow the air seemed to be crowded with memories.

Nevile looked around and said, ‘This is good. I can feel some very strong spiritual resonance here.’

Frank said, ‘I don’t get it. Why did we have to come here? I know Danny loved this place, but this spirit isn’t really Danny, is he? Or she?’

Nevile smiled. ‘No, she isn’t. But it’s easier for you to picture him here, and she relies on your remembered images of him to make him appear.’ They sat down on a bench. ‘Take your time, Frank. Think about Danny, when you used to bring him here to play. Try to see him, as he was, standing on the footplate, waving to you.’

‘Where are you headed, Danny?’ Frank asked, under his breath.

‘Salt Lake City, Chicago, and beyond. Whooo! Whooo!’