Innocent Blood

Five

Before he left The Cedars, Frank walked over to have a word with Lieutenant Chessman.

‘That was very interesting,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me he’s converted you already.’

‘Well, let’s put it this way. I didn’t much care for the guy when I first saw him, but there’s a whole lot more to him than meets the eye.’

‘He’s very good, no question. One of the best in the world. He came over to California about ten years ago, to help with the Santa Monica Strangler investigation, and he’s been here ever since. I wouldn’t say that I know how he does it, but he does it, and that’s good enough for me.’

Detective Booker said, ‘You should meet my grandma. She can tell your fortune out of chicken’s guts and broken mirrors.’

‘You don’t mind if I take a rain check on that?’ said Lieutenant Chessman. ‘By the way, Mr Bell, I’ve just heard from headquarters. Charles Lasser has offered a five million dollar reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of all members of Dar Tariki Tariqat. That could help us.’

‘Charles Lasser? Star-TV?’

‘The very man.’

‘And he’s offering a five million reward? What’s the catch? He hates every other TV network with a passion, and they hate him.’

‘It’s probably nothing more than a PR stunt. But who cares? If it encourages just one more witness to come forward and give evidence, then it’s worth it.’

‘I guess so,’ said Frank. ‘Talking of witnesses . . .’

‘Yes?’

It was seven minutes of twelve. Astrid was probably waiting for him already. He could picture that faded, faraway look of hers, and the sun shining in her hair.

‘If you need me to make any more statements, you know. Or look through mugshots . . .’

Lieutenant Chessman clapped him on the back. ‘Thanks for the offer, Mr Bell. I’ll let you know.’

As it turned out, Astrid wasn’t waiting for him, so he settled at his table next to the fountain, under the shade of a large green parasol, and ordered a vodka-tonic. It was a hot afternoon but there was a steady breeze flowing through the gardens, and the bougainvillea trembled all around him. He saw several people he recognized at other tables: Yvette Kane, the agent, Laszlo Wittenski, the TV director, and Gordon Thurman from People magazine. He was sure that they had seen him, too, but he guessed that they didn’t want to think about blown-apart children while they sipped their Chardonnay spritzers and toyed with their chèvre and green chili calzone. Real blown-apart children were too real. No latex involved. No stunt persons. No clever trickery with Maya digital software. The bombing at The Cedars had been met in Hollywood with an unexpected variety of emotions – anger, hysteria, bewilderment – but after the initial shock had worn off, most people had been irritated more than grief-stricken. (We control the tears and the tragedy and the big explosions around here . . . how dare these Arab terrorists upstage us?)

Frank heard laughter, but then he heard Yvette Kane say, ‘Ssh.’

After ten minutes, Astrid came down the stone steps into the garden, wearing a pale blue straw hat and a pale blue cotton dress with an off-the-shoulder top. He stood up, and they kissed, and she smelled of Flowers. Light, fragrant, tempting. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked him. ‘I haven’t kept you waiting too long, have I?’

‘No, no. You’re fine. I’ve had a strange morning, that’s all.’

‘Strange in what way?’

He told her about Nevile Strange and his ‘psychic imprints,’ and what he had said about Amy Cutter, and about him, too. Astrid listened, but for some reason she didn’t appear to be particularly interested, and she kept twiddling her fork and looking around the gardens as if she expected to see somebody she knew.

‘What do you think?’ he asked her. ‘I never believed in this stuff before – séances and spirits and getting in touch with your long-dead relatives. But he seemed to be convinced that Danny was still with me, and if Danny still wants to be with me, that must mean that he doesn’t blame me for what happened, right?’

‘Strange was sure that it was Danny?’

‘Who else could it be? I don’t know anybody else who’s died, not for years. “A spiritual companion,” that’s what he said – a spirit who’s very close to me and also depends on me. It has to be Danny.’

Astrid tugged her off-the-shoulder dress a little further off her shoulder, so that she was showing more of her cleavage. She had very full breasts, with a pattern of moles across them like a star map, and from the way they moved Frank could see that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The Mexican waiter in the tight black pants brought her a tequila sunrise and gave Frank a conspiratorial wink.

‘So what are you going to do?’ Astrid asked him, sipping her drink and looking up at him with those bleached-out eyes. ‘You’re not really going to hold a séance, are you?’

‘I don’t see why not. If I can prove to Margot that Danny forgives me . . .’

‘Do you really think that will make any difference?’

‘What do you mean? Of course it will.’

‘I mean that if Margot really loved you she would have forgiven you, without any need for Danny’s ghost to tell her.’

‘So you’re saying that she doesn’t really love me? You don’t even know her.’

‘Why would I want to?’

‘Because she’s pretty and she’s intelligent and unlike most women she has a mind of her own.’

‘And how would you know what most women are like? You’re thirty-four, you had a child of eight.’

Frank sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table. ‘What is this? You’re, like, what? You’re questioning my marriage?’

Astrid laughed, and took hold of his hand. ‘I know what you need, Frank, and it’s not forgiveness. You killed Danny, but you didn’t do it because you wanted to. You want to be able to talk to somebody and tell them how bad you feel, and you want to be able to scream at God, and tell Him how unfair everything is. Well, you and me both. Life’s a shit, Frank, and the trouble is that most of the time, it’s mostly our own fault.’

Frank ordered matata, spinach and clams in peanut butter sauce, while Astrid asked for a tuna and vegetable salad. They shared a very cold bottle of Arniston Bay Sauvignon between them.

Frank wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘So, you know, tell me something about yourself.’

‘Do you think I need to?’

‘You don’t need to, but I’m interested. I just want to get some idea of who you are.’

‘I was born and raised in Oxnard. My father was a TV producer and my mother was a dancer. I always wanted to be a doctor, taking care of sick children in Africa.’

‘But you never were a doctor, and you never went to Africa?’

‘No. Not exactly.’

‘Are your parents still alive?’

‘Are yours?’

‘Well, OK, they spend most of their days playing bridge, but they’re not physically dead yet, if that’s what you mean.’

They said almost nothing for the rest of their lunch, but looked at each other as they ate, guardedly. Now and then Astrid gave him a small, secretive smile, as if she knew something that he didn’t. Frank didn’t know what to make of her. She seemed interested in him but he couldn’t really work out why.

Most of the people that Frank knew left the Garden early. For them, it was back-to-the-office or back-to-the-studio time. One or two of them came over and shook his hand and gave him their condolences. Yvette Kane gave Frank a kiss on both cheeks and there were genuine tears in her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Frank. It was such a shock.’

‘Thanks, Yvette.’

‘How’s Margot taking it?’

‘Not very well, I’m afraid.’

‘Give her my love, won’t you?’ said Yvette. She was just about to leave when she stopped and looked at Astrid again. ‘I’m sorry – do I know you?’

Astrid put on her sunglasses and turned around. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’m sure we’ve met before. Didn’t I see you at Hugo Mason’s birthday party?’

Frank said, ‘Astrid and I didn’t meet till Wednesday. She was there when the bomb went off.’

‘Astrid,’ Yvette repeated. ‘It’s so weird, could have sworn that I’ve met you before.’

‘No,’ said Astrid emphatically, and turned her back. Yvette looked at Frank and gave him a mystified shrug.

Matt Fielding came over next and clasped Frank’s hand between both of his, like a meaty sandwich, but all the same he couldn’t keep his eyes away from Astrid’s cleavage. ‘What can I say?’ he kept saying. ‘What can I say?’

‘Appreciate it, Matt,’ said Frank. ‘Really appreciate it.’

‘This is . . .?’ asked Matt, nodding at Astrid.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Astrid, this is Matt Fielding. Matt, this is Astrid.’

Matt abandoned Frank’s hand and took hold of Astrid’s, and gave her knuckles a rubbery kiss. ‘I’m charmed.’

With her other hand, Astrid pointed to her hairline.

‘Excuse me?’ Matt frowned at her.

She jabbed at her hairline even more emphatically.

‘Sorry, I don’t know what . . .?’

‘Hairpiece. Your hairpiece. It’s slipping a little to the left.’

‘My what is what?’ He stared at her as if she had blasphemed in seven languages.

After Matt had left, Frank smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Do you have any idea who that is?’

‘I don’t care who it is. He was trying to see all the way down to my navel.’

‘Matt Fielding is the head of development at Universal. If there’s one word that nobody in the greater Los Angeles area ever says to Matt Fielding, it’s “hairpiece.”’

‘I think I was very polite. I could have said “rug.”’

When they left the restaurant, he looked up and down Sunset and said, ‘Where did you leave your car?’

‘I didn’t. A friend of mine gave me a ride.’

‘In that case I’d better drive you home.’

She thought about that for a while, cupping her hand over the crown of her hat to keep it from blowing away in the breeze. Then she said, ‘All right. Do you know Venice at all? Palms Boulevard, off Lincoln.’

Frank checked his watch. Ten after two. He took out his cellphone and called Margot.

‘Margot? Gerald was caught up in a partners’ meeting so I’m running maybe thirty minutes late. I’ll be back around four.’

‘All right,’ she said. Her voice had no expression at all.

‘Margot . . .’ There were so many things he wanted to say to her. That he was sorry. That Nevile Strange could show her that Danny forgave him. That he wished it were still Tuesday morning, and that he and Danny were still stuck in traffic on the Hollywood Freeway. Instead he ended the call.

‘I’m not finding this easy,’ he told Astrid as they drove westward on Santa Monica.

‘Of course it isn’t easy. You’ve lost your son.’

‘No, I don’t mean Margot. I mean you and me.’

‘Is there any special reason it has to be easy?’

‘I guess not. But I’m finding it very hard to get to know you. I’m beginning to ask myself why you wanted to meet me at all.’

‘I wanted to meet you because we both went through that experience together, that bomb.’

‘And why else?’

‘I wanted to meet you because . . . well, we’re kind of kindred spirits.’

‘Kindred spirits, huh?’

She said nothing, but leaned her head back against the head rest and half closed her eyes, as if she were focusing on something in the very far distance.

He turned off Lincoln Boulevard into Palms, and she directed him to draw up in front of a peeling pink apartment building with dark green wooden shutters and a red-tiled veranda. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come up for a drink?’

He checked his watch again. ‘OK. So long as I’m out of here by three thirty.’ He locked his car and followed her up the steps and wondered why he didn’t feel guilty. He felt, instead, an unexpected sense of freedom, as if a load had been taken off his mind.

Astrid unlocked the front door and they stepped into a Mexican-tiled hallway with an oak side table that was scattered with junk mail, and a large gilt mirror with business cards tucked into the frame. She led him up the stairs to the second floor and opened the door on the left-hand side – apartment number three. It was sunny and bright, with a shiny wood floor and plain calico couches with Navajo rugs draped over them. On the wall hung a lithograph of a naked young man, completely green, with the most supercilious look on his face that Frank had ever seen.

‘You live here alone?’ Frank asked her.

‘No.’

He peeked into one of the bedrooms. There was a queen-sized bed with a carved oak bedhead, loosely strewn with a red and yellow throw. Astrid walked through to the second bedroom, where the bed was immaculately tidy with a brown and white cover and three white pillows on it.

‘Who do you share with?’

‘Carla, she’s a flight attendant. She’s in Europe this weekend. Frankfurt, Rome, Madrid. Do you want a cup of coffee? Or another glass of wine?’

She was standing in the middle of the room and he walked up behind her and laced his arms around her waist. Her perfume, and the warmth of her shoulder, and the criss-cross elasticized smocking of her dress engulfed his senses.

‘Who did you lose?’ he asked her. ‘Are you ever going to tell me?’

She twisted around and kissed him directly on the lips. ‘I might. But not yet.’

‘You said it was somebody closer than a child. I’m . . . intrigued. I didn’t know anybody who was closer to me than Danny, except for Margot. Who could be closer?’

‘You can’t think?’

‘No,’ he said. She kissed him again, and touched his cheek with her fingertips, in the same way that she had touched him when she first met him, as if she wanted to make sure that he was real.