Innocent Blood (17 page)

‘You should try acupuncture,' she suggested. ‘My friend Lena lost seventeen pounds with acupuncture. Mind you, she lost her husband as well. He said that if he had wanted a human skeleton he would have married Calista Flockhart. Now there's the inflated male ego for you. He looked like an orangutan in a plaid sport coat.'

‘Acupuncture, that's when they stick needles in you? I can't stand needles. Brrr.'

‘Well, maybe you should try hypnotism. Or aversion therapy.'

‘What's aversion therapy?'

‘What they would do is, they would make you eat triple cheeseburgers all day, every day, so that you never want to
look
at another triple cheeseburger, ever again.'

Bill shook his head. ‘Sounds great. Wouldn't work on me. But I sure wouldn't mind trying it.'

As they talked, a dark blue Mack truck came around the corner of Studio IV, and drove slowly toward them.

In the studio, the audience were screaming with laughter. Sara Velman had said that women were sexually excited by hurting their lovers, and so Garry had invited her to prove it by hurting him. She had strutted over to his seat and climbed on to his lap. Now she was twisting his ears and pulling his hair.

‘Hey, be careful with the hair, all right? This cost me nearly fourteen hundred dollars!'

One tall ginger-freckled woman put up her hand and said, ‘I love to bite my husband. I give him love bites all over, especially on his tush.'

‘Well, biting your partner is an indication of possessiveness, rather than domination,' said Dr Fortensky. ‘You want your husband physically marked so that any other woman will know that he belongs to you. It's like branding a steer.'

Garry said, ‘No, I think it's simpler than that. I think it's an indication that she's not getting nearly enough to eat.'

‘Hurting your lover isn't necessarily an act of sexual domination,' put in Jean Lassiter. ‘In my experience, many men are highly aroused by being bitten or scratched or whipped. They
want
to be hurt. So you have to ask yourself, who is really doing the dominating here? The biter or the bitten?'

‘The scratcher or the scratchee?' Garry added. ‘The whipper or the whipped?'

Sara Velman suddenly lunged her head forward and nipped at Garry's neck.

‘Ow! No!' he protested, kicking his feet. ‘Get off! Honest injun! Honest injun!'

The dark blue truck turned right and parked very close to the studio wall. Its side panels were painted with reels of film, and in each frame of film there was chicken or salad or pasta or lobsters. Underneath, in white lettering, it read:
A MOVIEBLE FEAST
,
CATERING SPECIALISTS FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY.

Joan picked up her clipboard and ran her finger down it. ‘Here it is. Sixteen hundred hours, catering supplies.'

‘I'll check it out,' said Bill, rousing himself off the mock-stone bench. ‘Maybe they can spare us a couple of subs.'

He straightened his cap and walked around the corner. The truck was stationary and its doors were still closed but its engine was running. Bill walked up to the cab and gave the driver a wave. The driver waved back. He was a swarthy-looking guy with dark glasses and a black beard. Sitting next to him was a suntanned girl, around eighteen or nineteen years old, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and a red head scarf. She waved, too.

‘You delivering to
The Garry Sherman Show
?' Bill shouted.

The driver cupped his hand to his ear to show that he couldn't hear.

Bill made a twisting gesture with his right hand to tell the driver that he should cut his engine. ‘Switch your engine off! I have to check your ID!'

But the driver kept the engine running, and both he and the girl went on staring at Bill through the windshield and smiling that same vacant smile. Bill did the twisting gesture again but the driver simply shrugged.

‘Sir! Will you please switch your engine off and get out of the vehicle?'

Still no response. Although he was always easy-going, Bill was beginning to get irritated.

‘Joan!' he called. ‘Come around here! I think I got me a couple of zombies!'

Joan came around the corner and said, ‘What?'

‘These two are just sitting there. Won't kill the engine, won't get out.'

Joan climbed on to the step below the passenger door and tapped on the window with her wedding ring. ‘Excuse me, sir, miss – security. Will you switch off your engine, please, and climb down out of the cab?'

They didn't even turn to look at her. She tried the door handle but it was locked.

‘What the hell do they think they're playing at?' Bill demanded.

Joan climbed down from the step and unhooked her r/t. ‘Gate? Hi, Kevin, this is Joan. We have a catering truck down here at Studio V. A Movieble Feast. That's right. They checked out OK, did they? That's fine, but they've parked their vehicle around the back of the studio building and they're not making any attempt to get out of it and make their delivery.' She nodded, and nodded again, and then said, ‘Repeat that, please.'

‘What is it?' asked Bill.

Joan clipped her radio back in her pocket. ‘We have to get the hell out of here,' she said.

‘What?'

‘We have to go into the studio and evacuate it right now, and move everybody as far away as possible.'

Bill stared up at the truck driver and his passenger. The driver gave him another wave, and although there was a diagonal reflection of clouds across the windshield, he thought he could see the girl laughing. ‘You start the evacuation,' he said. ‘I'll deal with these two clowns.'

‘Bill, they specifically said to get the hell out.'

‘Do like I told you, Joan. I was a cop for twenty-eight years and I never let nobody get away with nothing.'

Bill unfastened his holster and pulled out his .38. Joan hesitated, but he pushed her shoulder and said, ‘Go! OK? Get those people out of there!'

Joan ran off around the corner. Bill lifted up his revolver in both hands and cocked it. ‘OK! Do you understand this?
Comprende
? I'm asking you to switch off the engine and get out of the truck. I'm asking you nicely.'

Joan pushed her way through the swing doors and into the carpet-tiled reception area, which was lined with blown-up photographs of Garry Sherman and Lauren Baker and Whitney De Lano. The receptionist was painting her fingernails and chatting to a friend on the phone.

Joan went up to the counter and snapped, ‘Put me through to the producer! Now!'

‘Say what? I can't do that, we're right in the middle of a show.'

‘It's an emergency; do it now.'

‘Emergency? What kind of emergency? Mr Kasabian will
kill
me!'

‘Just do it, will you? Or else
everybody's
going to get killed!'

Flapping one nail-polished hand, the receptionist did as she was told and handed over the phone.

‘Mr Kasabian?' said Joan. ‘This is Joan Napela from Studio Security. Yes, Studio Security. I'm sorry, Mr Kasabian, but we have a security situation directly outside the studio and we have to evacuate everybody immediately. Yes, sir, everybody. No, sir, I can't tell you the exact nature of the situation but we have been advised to clear the building as quickly as we can.'

She listened for a moment, and then she said, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I'll come into the studio right now and help to usher people out. If you can try to reassure them that there isn't any cause for alarm.'

As she handed the phone back, the receptionist stared at her wide-eyed. ‘What is it? What's happening?'

‘Possible bomb,' Joan told her. ‘Just get out of here.'

‘Oh my God!' cried the receptionist, and started to gather up her nail polish and her combs and her magazines.

‘I said
bomb
,' said Joan in disbelief.

She crossed the reception area and pushed open the double doors to the studio. The main lights had just been switched on, and Milo Kasabian was halfway through making his announcement.

‘If you would all please make your way to the exit doors on either side of the podium, as quickly and as quietly as you can. Once you're outside, follow the directions given to you by our security staff. Don't be alarmed, this is only a precautionary measure.'

Garry Sherman was standing up and waving to his audience to come down out of their seats. ‘I knew it! I knew they'd interrupt us once we started talking dirty! That's right, everybody, head for the doors! No need to panic, they're only doing it because we're steaming up their monitors!'

The audience started to file down to the floor of the studio, jostling and laughing. Joan stood by the doors and beckoned them to hurry.

‘What's up?' asked an elderly man in a bright-pink polo shirt.

‘Probably a false alarm,' said Joan. ‘But once you're out of the studio, turn right, OK, and keep on walking as fast as you can.'

‘Do we still get pizza?'

‘Sure, you still get pizza. Now get going.'

Joan unhooked her radio and said, ‘Bill? We've made a good start on clearing the studio. How's it going with our friends out there?'

‘They're still not responding. Schaefer's on his way down here, and he's called the bomb squad, too.'

‘Bill, why don't you back off and let the police deal with this?'

‘I
am
the police.'

‘You were, Bill. Not anymore. This isn't worth the risk. Come and help me get these people out of here.'

‘Don't you worry; I can handle a couple of pointy-headed specimens like these two.'

‘Bill? Bill, are you listening to me? Back off – you don't know what the hell they're planning to do!'

There was no reply. Joan kept on tugging at people's sleeves as they shuffled past her, trying to hustle them out of the studio. But Garry had told them that there was no need to panic, and panicking they weren't. Some of them said, ‘Hey, relax,' when she caught hold of them, and others were even waiting by the doorway so that their friends could catch up with them.

‘They'll still serve us pizza?' asked a large black woman in a spotted turquoise dress. ‘I only come here for the pizza.'

Joan was about to say, ‘Yes, you'll still get your pizza, but for God's sake get moving.' But then the world split open with the most devastating bang that she had ever heard. She was hurled backward through the open doors, colliding with ten or eleven other people, hitting the reception desk at a sharp angle and breaking her neck. More people were thrown out of the studio on top of her, heaps of them –
thud
,
thud
,
thud
,
thud
– most of them legless or armless or headless.

The explosion blew away the entire back wall of the studio, bringing down the roof. Dozens of people were buried as masonry fell like thunder and scaffolding jangled like the bells of hell. Garry Sherman half-turned away from the blast with his left arm lifted. His arm was ripped out of its socket and the flesh on the left side of his face was blasted off, right to the cheekbone. One middle-aged woman was jammed between the side of Garry Sherman's podium and the low wall that led to the exit, so that she was shielded from the bouncing lumps of cinder block. But as she tried to climb to her feet, a DeSisti studio light fell from its rigging and dropped on top of her – over fifty pounds of metal at sixty degrees. She lay on her back with this monster in her arms, crushed and burning, and she screamed for nearly five minutes without stopping.

Her screams were joined by scores of others, as well as sobbing and moaning and coughing. Studio V was open to the sky now, but it seemed like twilight because of the dust and the thick black smoke. It was almost unrecognizable as a television studio. There were mountains of rubble everywhere, as well as tiers of collapsed seats and twisted scaffolding. Bodies lay everywhere – bodies and pieces of bodies, some of them barbecue black and others red raw. And everything twinkled and glittered, because all of this carnage was strewn with shattered glass.

Eleven

W
ednesday was gray and chilly. The wind had a nasty saw-toothed edge to it and rain was forecast for later in the day. More than sixty guests came to St Luke's for Danny's funeral service, including Frank's father and mother; Margot's mother; Carol and Smitty; Mo and Sherma; Lizzie Fries and her partner, Walford; Joe Peruggio, their executive producer, and his wife, Sharleen; Rick and Lynn Ashbee, as well as Frank's agent Nero Tabori and most of the cast of
Pigs
. Frank and Margot sat together but they didn't touch each other or exchange more than two or three words, even though Frank could feel the pew shaking as Margot sobbed. She wore a black hat with a black veil. Frank couldn't help thinking that she looked like a grieving widow in a Charles Addams cartoon.

Reverend Trent climbed into the pulpit, thirtyish but pinkly bald, with circular glasses, so that he looked like the boy at school who always went home in tears.

‘We have all shed tears for young Daniel today, but none grieves as sorely as Christ, our Lord, who always weeps when one of his little ones falls asleep and never re-awakens.

‘We saw only the early morning of Daniel's life, and we shall never know what he could have become if he had reached his noonday hour. But I can tell you this: he would have shined as brightly as the sun high above, and the world will be a dimmer place without him.'