Innocent Blood (30 page)

‘You really told Charles Lasser to stop hitting me?'

Frank nodded.

Astrid stood up, and came over to him, and draped her arms around his shoulders. ‘I can't believe it. What did he say?'

‘What do you think he said? He told me that he didn't have any idea what I was talking about.'

‘He denied it?'

‘Are you kidding? He denied that you even existed.'

‘So what did you say?'

‘I warned him to stay away from you, that's all.'

Astrid scanned his face with those washed-out eyes as if she were trying to commit every detail to memory, as if she might never see him again. ‘Do you think you scared him?'

‘What? I very much doubt it. But I warned him that if he touches you again, I'll come after him. And, by God, Astrid, I will.'

‘So what did he say to that?'

‘He said that if I ever mentioned his name again he'd sue my ass off.'

Astrid tugged at the towel around his waist. It loosened and dropped to the floor. She took hold of his penis and rubbed it up and down. ‘So long as he doesn't sue your cock off, I don't mind.'

Later, he opened his eyes and found her staring at him, very closely.

‘What?' he asked her.

She stroked his eyebrows, and then licked her fingertip and stuck them up into devilish points. ‘I think you're
incredibly
brave.'

‘I'm not brave. I never have been. But I don't believe in giving in to men like Charles Lasser.'

She started to tweak his hair into points, too. ‘I'm making you into a demon.' He caught hold of her hand to stop her, but he scratched his wrist on her ring.

‘Hey, that's sharp.'

She spread her fingers so that he could admire it. It sparkled intensely green in the lamplight. ‘Emerald,' she said. ‘My father gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday.'

‘It's real? I wondered about that when I first saw it. He must be pretty generous, your dad.'

‘Not really. He never gave a bent cent to anybody without wanting something in return.'

‘So what did you give him, in return for that?'

Astrid gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Emerald's my birthstone. It's a saint's stone, too.'

‘A saint's stone? What does that mean?'

‘Twelve saints have their own special jewels, didn't you know that? St Nevile's is sapphire, St Peter's is jasper. Emerald, that's St John the Evangelist. All twelve jewels together were called the Stones of Fire and they used to belong to Lucifer. But Lucifer misbehaved and so God took them away and buried them in the walls of Jerusalem. If you have a whole set of twelve, they say that you can call on the angels to help you.'

‘I could use an angel right now.'

She kissed his nose. ‘Has it occurred to you, Mr Bell, that you have one already?'

He didn't answer her, but looked her in the eyes. She was so close that he could hardly focus.

After more than a minute, she said, ‘What?'

‘I know I don't own you. I know that what you do when you walk out of here is entirely your own business, and that it shouldn't concern me. But you and Charles Lasser? I can't get my head round it.'

‘I thought Charles Lasser denied that I existed.'

‘Somebody hurt you. If it wasn't him, then who was it?'

Astrid said nothing. After a while, she turned over and closed her eyes, and pretended that she was sleeping. Frank watched her, and couldn't help thinking about Charles Lasser, bulky and coarse, with his Neanderthal forehead and his deep-sunken eyes. For the first time in his life, he actually felt like killing somebody. It was a frightening feeling – frightening but surprisingly exciting. He dreamed that he was driving after Charles Lasser in a subterranean parking structure, determined to run him down.

The next morning, on the seven o'clock news, Commissioner Campbell announced that Dar Tariki Tariqat had contacted the police department to express their ‘anger, dissatisfaction and sore disappointment.' They were ‘outraged' that the major networks were still showing ‘profane' television series, in spite of the fact that
The Wild and the Willing
had been replaced by reruns of
Highway to Heaven
, and that most of the daytime soaps had given way to cartoons and wildlife programs. In the media, a certain gallows humor was beginning to emerge.
Los Angeles Times
reporter Walter Makepeace remarked that ‘the only distinction between watching early episodes of
The Waltons
and being blown up by 250 lbs of TNT is that watching early episodes of
The Waltons
is a far more prolonged and agonizing way to go.'

Dar Tariki Tariqat said ‘it is obvious to us that the entertainment industries have no intention of changing their evil ways or atoning for their blasphemies. Therefore we will start our campaign of bombing as promised on the stroke of twelve noon today. This will be the first of eleven bombs to be detonated once every twenty-four hours, or until we are satisfied that the entertainment industry has seen the wrongfulness of the path which it seems so wickedly determined to follow.'

‘Did you hear that?' Frank asked Astrid. ‘I don't know where you're going today – OK, OK, and I'm not going to ask. But like they used to say on
Hill Street Blues
, let's be
careful
out there.'

‘I'm not going to Star-TV, if that's what you're worried about. Or Charles Lasser's house.'

‘Just as well. My feeling is that Star-TV is next on the list.'

He poured out two mugs of coffee and they sat at the kitchen counter together, drinking it, their eyes fixed on each other. Frank wondered what she was thinking, but her expression gave nothing away.

‘It is essential that you report any suspicious behavior by any individuals,' said Commissioner Campbell. ‘Also, please dial nine-one-one if you're concerned about any vehicles that may be parked in unusual locations, or any vehicles being driven in a manner that for any reason at all attracts your attention. Your calls will be treated with the utmost seriousness, so please, no hoaxers. In the coming hours, many hundreds of lives could depend on your vigilance.'

‘It's frightening, isn't it?' said Astrid.

‘Yes. But you still won't tell me where you're going today?'

She reached out and touched his hand. ‘Don't worry. I'll be safe.'

‘Nobody's safe.'

‘You don't think so? I'm invulnerable, Frank. Nobody can hurt me.'

At ten twenty
A.M
., feeling bored, Frank decided to drive over to Fox. Lizzie had given him fresh enthusiasm for
Pigs
when she described Dusty and Henry as ‘living, breathing people.' He had roughed out three or four new story lines and he wanted to find out what Mo and Lizzie thought about them. He had decided that the show needed more pathos, more tears. Maybe Dusty's grandma could be told by her doctor that she was suffering from a life-threatening illness. If anything was guaranteed to bring a lump to the audience's throat, it was a young boy's gradual realization that no matter how much he loved her, his grandma wasn't going to live forever.

When he tried to open the office door, he found that he could only push it six inches before it stuck.

‘Daphne?' he said, putting his head around it. Daphne was on her hands and knees, surrounded by mountains of files and dog-eared scripts and photographs. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Bell! I didn't know you were coming into the office today.'

‘I was pining for you, Daphne. I couldn't stay away a minute longer.'

She shifted a stack of folders away from the door. ‘I'm sorry about all this mess. Mr Cohen said that since I didn't have anything else to do, I should sort out the filing cabinet.'

Frank squeezed his way in. As he stepped over the heaps of papers, he caught sight of a glossy black and white publicity photograph of the three of them – him and Mo and Lizzie – taken when
Pigs
first went on air. He stooped down to pick it up.

At the same time, Mo came out of the next room, a cigar in his mouth, patting the pockets of his vest in the time-honored gesture of a man looking for a light.

‘Look at us,' said Frank. ‘I never realized that we used to be so young.'

Mo frowned at the photograph and said, ‘I never realized that I used to be so
handsome
.'

‘That's me. You're the ugly one standing on the right.'

Mo picked a book of matches from Daphne's desk and lit his cigar. ‘So that's it? You came all the way into the office today just to make me feel grotesque? You could have made me feel equally bad by email. Hey, Daphne, who wrote
Forty Years as a Lion-Tamer
?'

‘I don't know, Mo. Who wrote
Forty Years as a Lion-Tamer
?'

‘Claude Bottom.'

‘Is Lizzie in, too?' Frank interrupted.

‘Sure . . . we're both dedicated wage slaves; where else did you expect to find us? Actually, Lizzie's come up with a great scenario for Dusty and Henry's first gig. They start singing “Your Heating Chart” but the audience hate them so much they hook the entire dance hall up to a tractor and tow it into the river, so that it floats off downstream.'

‘You want some coffee, Mr Bell?' asked Daphne.

In their main office, Lizzie was sitting at her PC with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, typing wildly. Today she was wearing a bright-green satin pants suit with a frilly scarlet blouse. ‘Hi, Frank. How's things? How's the anonymous Astrid?'

‘“Nameless here for evermore,”' said Mo, quoting Edgar Allan Poe.

‘You told Mo about Astrid?' Frank asked Lizzie.

‘Of course she told me,' said Mo. ‘Lizzie and me, we're like brother and sister, except that we can't be, because my parents had excellent taste and they would have drowned her at birth. I mean, look at her. Green suit, red blouse. Kermit the Frog cuts his carotid artery.'

Frank sat down at his desk. ‘Not that it's any of your business, but Astrid still refuses to tell me what her second name is, and when she leaves me in the morning she still won't tell me where she's going or how she's going to be spending her time.'

‘You should thank the Lord,' said Mo. ‘Every morning Naomi gives me a detailed breakdown of every store she's going to hit, and just how much she's going to hammer my credit cards.'

Frank sorted through his mail, but there was nothing particularly interesting, only promotional leaflets and bills. ‘Lizzie . . . Mo tells me you've sketched out something for Dusty and Henry's first concert. Want to run it by me?'

Mo relit his cigar. ‘Great idea. But when it comes to the singing bits, sweetheart, don't actually sing. Remember the last time you tried? The super thought we were gelding a warthog and called for the ASPCA.'

‘Shut up, Mo.' Lizzie scrolled back on her PC screen, one eye closed against the smoke from her dangling cigarette. ‘By the way, Frank, I did your cards last night, like I promised.'

‘Oh, yes? When do I get my first Emmy?'

‘Actually, your cards were very strange. I tried the Tarot, but they refused to tell me anything. The Tarot can behave like that – not often, but now and then. They're very huffy, as cards go. If they can't work out what your future's going to be, they come out all muddled and contradictory.'

Mo coughed and waved away a dense cloud of smoke. ‘Did it occur to you that they might have come out muddled and contradictory because Frank has a muddled and contradictory life in store for him?'

‘I know what
you
have in store for you, if you don't put a sock in it.'

‘No,' said Frank, ‘maybe Mo's right. Maybe I
am
muddled. Maybe it's time I made some clear decisions.'

‘You're still grieving, Frank. Don't forget that. This isn't the right time to be making decisions. This is the time to be taking stock.'

‘That's right,' said Mo. ‘Go to Kansas and rustle some steers.'

Lizzie said, ‘I used the Garga cards in the end. They're much more philosophical, not so grand guignol.'

‘The Garga cards, what are they?'

‘A deck of sixty-three cards devised by Garga, who was the father of Indian astrology. Each card is based on a different aspect of your star sign, so they can tell your fortune like a horoscope.'

‘I never heard of them.'

‘Well, they're quite rare. But you must have heard of the Eighteen Fates. The Garga deck has eighteen destiny cards; nine that tell you the
best
that you can expect, and nine that tell you the
worst
.'

‘All right then, how did I make out? I know, I get a huge demand for unpaid tax and I win a date with Madonna.'

Mo shook his head. ‘Nobody deserves a date with Madonna.'

‘Actually,' said Lizzie, ‘I brought your destiny cards into the office. I thought you might be interested to see them.' She bent down and rummaged in her large red woven bag. Eventually she produced two oversized playing cards and laid them face-down on her desk. On the reverse side they were decorated with purple lotus flowers entwined with serpents and stars.

‘I didn't bring the whole deck, but the minor cards said that you would be happy in your life and prosperous in your work, although you would have to go through many months of argument with somebody close to you – somebody you once loved but love no longer.'

‘That sounds like Margot.'

‘Well, it could be. But it could also mean the end of a business relationship.'