Innocent Blood

‘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.’