Innocent Blood

Dar Tariki Tariqat’s next attack on the entertainment industry, and when it blew up, he was going to be inside it, dressed like a martyr. If there was enough left of him for the crime scene team to identify, it was probably going to be assumed that he was a member of Dar Tariki Tariqat, too.

Why the hell hadn’t he pulled the trigger when he’d had the chance? He had thought that he had been angry enough to kill Charles Lasser, after the way that he had beaten Astrid, but maybe the truth was that he would never be angry enough to kill anybody. He was a comedy writer. The worse things got, the funnier they were. He couldn’t even stop himself from thinking what his friends would say, when he was blown to smithereens. ‘That was Frank all over.’

He waited and waited and gradually the throbbing in his head began to subside, although his wrists and ankles were tied too tightly and they began to feel cold and numb. He wondered if Astrid had seen a doctor at the Sisters of Jerusalem. He wondered if she was wondering where he was. He wondered if anybody was wondering where he was.

He thought about Dusty and Henry, in Pigs, about writing a story in which Dusty thought that Henry was kidnapped, except that he wasn’t really kidnapped, he was hiding because Dusty had called him ‘the stupidest thing since a single sock-suspender.’

He thought about The Process, and the susurration of the desert sand. You may never pass this way again in a lifetime. You have crossed the street, my friend, and you can never go back.

Maybe an hour later, he heard voices outside. He thought about shouting out but then decided against it. The voices went away.

He might have slept for another half-hour, although he wasn’t sure. Suddenly he felt somebody shaking his shoulder.

‘Wake up!’

He opened his eyes. It was Danny. He looked pale and worried and his hair was sticking up at the back, like it used to do when he first woke up in the morning. He was still wearing his funeral suit.

‘Danny?’

‘Wake up, we haven’t got much time!’

‘Am I dreaming this?’ Frank asked him.

‘No . . . turn over.’

‘What?’

‘Turn over, on to your front.’

Frank hesitated. He couldn’t decide if he was dreaming this or not. But Danny had saved him back at the Sunset Marquis, hadn’t he? And what had Nevile said, that spirits always stay close to the family they love? He rolled over, grunting with pain.

‘Keep very, very still,’ said Danny. ‘I’m going to untie your knots, but it’s very difficult.’

Frank’s face was pressed against one of the corrugations in the floor, and he had an agonizing pain in the small of his back. He was trembling, but he managed to keep still while Danny tried to untie him.

Danny said, ‘It’s trying to move things, that’s what I’m not very good at. I can touch things, but I can’t really feel them.’

Over twenty minutes went past. Frank couldn’t feel Danny’s fingers at all, only coldness, like a soft icy draft blowing through the crack in a window, in winter. But he could feel the cords that tied his wrists, and millimeter by millimeter they were working loose.

‘Danny, even if you can’t do this, I want to thank you for trying.’

‘I can do it, Daddy. Just keep still.’

‘You know how much I love you, don’t you? You know that I never meant to hurt you?’

‘I know.’

The cord jerked looser, and then suddenly the knot unraveled and Frank’s hands were free. He rolled around again, on to his back, and managed to sit up. Danny was kneeling next to him, smiling.

‘You’re something, you know that? You’re really something.’

‘I’m always close by, Daddy. I can’t let anybody hurt you.’

Frank shook his head. ‘I was the one who was always supposed to look after you.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Danny. ‘In proper families, everybody looks after everybody else.’

‘Danny,’ said Frank, and his eyes filled up with tears. He reached out to hold him close but Danny folded up and disappeared, as if he were as insubstantial as a silk scarf. Frank sat still for a few minutes, rubbing the circulation back into his wrists. Then he leaned forward and started untying his ankles.

Another two hours passed in silence. Then suddenly there was a loud bang and the back doors of the panel van were unlocked. Somebody said, ‘Here you go, sir. Step up on this.’ The van was shaken from side to side, and then the door was closed.

Frank looked up. Charles Lasser was standing amongst the boxes, looking down at him. He was wearing a baggy suit of natural-colored linen, with a large green handkerchief crammed into the breast pocket.

‘You’re awake, then, Mr Bell?’ he said in a voice as rich as fruitcake.

Frank didn’t answer.

‘I guess you’re interested to know how long you’ve been here. Well, I can tell you. Almost fifteen hours. The time is twenty minutes before noon.’

‘The cops know that I came looking for you,’ said Frank.

‘No, they don’t. Nobody knows that you came looking for me.’

‘Astrid knows.’

‘How many times? There is no Astrid.’

‘Oh, really? So what was it that upset you so much when I described her?’

Charles Lasser smoothed his hand through his hair, again and again, as if to reassure himself that his head was still there. ‘I wanted to ask you about that, Mr Bell. Where did you see this girl, and when?’

‘I met her after you bombed The Cedars. My son was killed that day. She helped me to get through it.’

‘You met her after The Cedars was bombed?’

‘That’s right. We’ve been meeting each other, on and off, ever since.’

‘You never met her before?’

Frank gritted his teeth in exasperation. ‘What do you care?’

‘I care a great deal, Mr Bell. But I think you’re telling me lies. Either that, or you’re totally mad. Who told you I hurt her?’

‘Nobody told me. I saw the bruises for myself, the cigarette burns. I followed her and she went to Star-TV and then she went to your house.’

Charles Lasser pressed his hands together as if he were praying. ‘I don’t understand this at all.’

‘What’s to understand?’

Charles Lasser was thoughtful for a moment. Then he looked around at all of the khaki boxes and said, ‘I suppose you’ve guessed what’s going to happen to you now. In fifteen minutes’ time, this van will be driven through the gates of Culver Studios. Once it’s well inside the studio complex, I’m going to take this out.’

He reached into his inside pocket and produced a black plastic box with a red button on it. ‘A remote control, which is tuned to the detonator inside that very fashionable vest you’re wearing. Yes, Mr Bell – you are going to set off this particular bomb, or at least everybody will think that you did.

‘There probably won’t be very much left of you, but what there is will identify you as a suicide bomber from Dar Tariki Tariqat, which will make sure that yours is a name that Hollywood will speak of from this day forward with hatred and disgust. Oh – and more than likely, your father’s name, too, because everybody will assume that you were abused when you were younger, like every other member of Dar Tariki Tariqat.’

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ said Frank.

‘Nothing at all. It’s just that when I take my revenge, I like it to be very comprehensive, and wide ranging, and complete.’

‘Revenge? Revenge for what?’

Charles Lasser looked at his Rolex. ‘I have to be going, Mr Bell. I have a meeting at Spago’s and you have a