‘Danny?’ Frank repeated, trying to sound reassuring. He was only a spirit, and he probably wasn’t Danny at all, but he looked like Danny, and there was nothing Frank could do to stop himself from feeling protective toward him.
Nevile climbed up to join him. He looked at Danny intently, moving his head from side to side to examine him from several different angles. ‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘You’d think he was real, wouldn’t you? Look at the shadows on his face. He’s not there, but he has shadows on his face.’
‘I won’t be Danny anymore,’ the boy whispered, scarcely moving his lips.
‘What?’ said Frank. ‘Why not?’
‘Danny’s better now. He’s still sleeping, but he’s better.’
‘You mean that I can talk to him? The real Danny? My Danny?’
The spirit nodded distractedly.
‘So when will that be?’
The boy looked away, as if he were thinking about something else, and didn’t answer.
‘When?’ Frank demanded, but Nevile laid a hand on his shoulder, as if to warn him to be patient.
‘Danny,’ said Nevile, ‘or whoever you are, I need to ask you some questions.’
Danny shook his head. ‘I can’t answer questions. I’m not allowed to.’
‘I want you to tell me about Dar Tariki Tariqat. I need to know who they are.’
‘Daddy hurt me. Every time he hurt me he said sorry but he always did it again. It was the same with all of the others.’
‘There were others? How many?’
‘I’m not allowed to say.’
Nevile went up very close to him, and leaned over him, so that he could talk very quietly into his ear. ‘Did you belong to Dar Tariki Tariqat? You don’t have to say it out loud. All you have to do is nod your head.’
Frank watched him and waited, but Danny didn’t say anything, and he didn’t nod his head, either.
‘You’re not Danny, are you?’ Nevile asked him. ‘You’re not even a boy. Can you tell me who you really are?’
‘No. I’m not allowed to. Daddy hurt me and he did all those things to me.’
Danny paused, and then he slowly swiveled his head toward Nevile, almost as if he were a life-size doll, and he stared at him with eyes that had absolutely no expression at all. ‘Daddy said that it was our special secret, for ever and ever.’
‘Listen,’ said Nevile, ‘I need to know if you were members of Dar Tariki Tariqat. You and all the others.’
‘They were hurt too, all of them.’
‘Is that why they want to set off those bombs? Is that why they want to kill off all of those television shows?’
‘It’s a secret.’
‘Shit, this is getting us no place,’ Frank said, exasperated.
‘No, wait a minute,’ said Nevile, and then he turned back to Danny. When he spoke, his voice was very soothing, without any inflexion, as if he wasn’t asking questions at all. ‘The place where you meet the others, that’s a good place, isn’t it, where all of you feel much better. You can talk to each other, you can tell each other all about the pain that you suffered when you were young. For the first time in your life, you feel as if somebody understands you and how much you hate the world for what it’s done to you. The way the world mocked you, when you were desperate for help.’
Danny was staring at him, unblinking. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘When you were young, you saw all those families on television, didn’t you, but you knew that it was all lies, because nobody could be that happy, could they? On television, children had fathers who didn’t hurt them and frighten them and force them to do horrible things that they didn’t want to do. Children could sit at the dinner table without feeling scared all the time, in case they said the wrong thing, and got slapped, or beaten. But you knew that life wasn’t like that, didn’t you?’
Danny didn’t reply, but lifted his right hand and covered his eyes, peering out through the cracks between his fingers.
‘But then,’ said Nevile, so quietly that Frank could hardly hear him. ‘Then, when you joined Dar Tariki Tariqat, you weren’t alone. You met people who understood exactly how much anger you had inside you – people like you who could never forget and never forgive. You didn’t want therapy, did you? You didn’t want to adjust. Who wants to adjust to a society that can treat children worse than animals?’
Danny covered his face with his left hand, too. ‘Yes,’ he said in a muffled voice.
Frank said, ‘Nevile – where are you getting this from? Is this true?’
Nevile stood up straight. ‘I’m getting it, indirectly, from him. Or her, actually. You were right. Our friend here isn’t a boy at all.’
‘Do you know who she is?’
‘She won’t tell me, I’m afraid. But it doesn’t really matter. She’s saying more or less the same thing that Richard Abbott was trying to write on my computer. I don’t think that Dar Tariki Tariqat is anything to do with Islamic fundamentalists. “The path through the darkness” isn’t about religion at all. It’s a group of men and women who were seriously abused in childhood, trying to get their revenge. Whoever founded it may have given it an Arabic name simply to confuse us.’
Frank looked at Danny, who was still hiding his face behind his hands. ‘So how are we going to locate these people? How are we going to stop them setting off any more bombs?’
‘I’m not really sure. The police and the social services must have thousands of case files on serious child abuse. They can probably cross-check victim support groups, or victims who have formed informal associations with each other through the Internet.’
‘Emeralds,’ Danny whispered.
‘Emeralds? What do you mean?’
‘Emeralds, and orange groves. Seven thousand and eleven orange groves.’ With that, he slowly lowered his hands. He wasn’t smiling, but somehow he looked as if he were more at peace with himself.
‘Danny,’ said Frank. ‘Danny – what does that mean? Emeralds and orange groves?’
But Danny began to grow fainter. His colors dimmed, and slowly he turned his head away. It was extraordinary to watch, like a fade-out in a movie. In less than fifteen seconds he had disappeared altogether.
‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again,’ Nevile remarked, when he was gone. ‘Or her, rather.’
‘What about Danny? I mean the real Danny?’
‘Well, we shouldn’t have any trouble in talking to him, once he’s fully awake.’
‘Will we be able to see him, too?’
‘I’m not sure. I doubt it. You have to remember that visual appearances like this are very rare. This spirit only managed to appear because she was very strong and very highly motivated.’
They climbed down from the locomotive and walked back to Nevile’s car. The sun was beginning to go down now, and their shadows were like stilt men, with wide flappy pants and tiny heads.
‘Emeralds and orange groves,’ Frank repeated. ‘What do you think she meant by that?’
Nevile opened his car door. ‘My guess is that she was trying to answer our question, even though she wasn’t allowed to. I told you before, didn’t I, that spirits often talk in riddles and metaphors? We’re just going to have to work out what she meant.’
Before he climbed into the passenger seat, Frank looked back at the locomotives and passenger cars of Travel Town. He would probably never come here again. The sun suddenly gleamed on the window of a Union Pacific club car, and as it did, Frank thought he saw somebody sitting inside it, a woman with a black mantilla covering her head. The car was too far away for him to be sure, but he thought he recognized her. He turned to Nevile and pointed and said, ‘See that woman?’ But by the time Nevile had realized where he was pointing, the woman had gone.
‘I could have sworn I saw a woman. She was looking straight at me.’
‘Trick of the light,’ said Nevile. ‘Anyway, I think we’ve seen enough ghosts for one day, don’t you?’
Twenty
Astrid didn’t call him that evening and didn’t come around. He made himself a cheese omelet but he wasn’t really hungry and ate only half of it before scraping the rest into the trash. He telephoned some of his friends, including Pete Brodsky, his producer, and Shanii Wallis, who had first introduced him to Margot, all those years ago, at a movie screening in Culver City.
‘Shanii, have you heard from Margot?’
‘Yes, I did. She called me yesterday afternoon.’
‘How did she sound?’
‘Very calm. Very together. Very determined, too.’
‘Did she mention me?’
‘Only a couple of times. She called you an emotional bankrupt. Oh, and a Neanderthal.’
‘Hmm. Comforting to know she still cares.’
He watched television until well past midnight – a strange horror movie called Dark Waters. It had been filmed in the Ukraine, by the ocean, under a sky the color of bruised plums. Dilapidated buses rolled past, with people staring out of the windows, and they reminded Frank of the woman in the mantilla staring out of the window of the railroad car at Travel Town. The seashore was strewn with acres of dead, silvery fish. When Frank went to bed, he dreamed that he was wading knee deep through slippery mackerel, and that a long way off, a woman with a hoarse voice was repeatedly calling his name.
‘Frank! Frank!’
The next morning he drove to Star-TV. Although it was almost midday, it was still humid and smoggy, and the air made his eyes water.
John Berenger had left Frank’s name at reception, so he was given an identity tag and allowed to go up to the sixteenth floor. The two security guards frisked him thoroughly and continued to watch him beady-eyed as he waited by the elevator bank. The elevator was crowded at first, and Frank was pressed up against a pretty Chinese secretary. She smiled at him nervously, and he gave her a quick smile back, as if they were sharing a private joke.
When the elevator reached the sixteenth floor, the last two Star-TV employees got out, but Frank stayed where he was. He waited until there was nobody in sight and then he pressed the button marked PENTHOUSE. A young man came running along the corridor calling, ‘Hey, wait up!’ but Frank quickly jabbed the button again and the doors slid shut. He heard the young man call out, ‘Thanks for nothing, asshole!’
The elevator rose to the top floor and when the doors opened again, the corridor was carpeted in deep blue and there was a scented, expensive hush. Frank hesitated for a moment and then he stepped out. There were side tables in the corridor, with vases of white lilies on them, and there were oil paintings on the walls. Ahead of him was a pair of white oak doors with gold handles, and a gold Star-TV logo.
He opened the doors and found himself in a wide reception area, with white leather seating and coffee tables arranged with magazines. A blonde receptionist in a tight red sweater was sitting behind a triangular glass desk, painting her nails the same color as her sweater. Behind her was another pair of doors, bearing another Star-TV logo, and the name Charles T. Lasser.
‘Mr Lasser in?’ Frank asked her.
‘And you are?’
‘Frank Bell. I don’t have an appointment.’
‘In that case, sir, I’m really very sorry. Mr Lasser can’t see anybody without an appointment.’
‘He can today.’ Frank walked around her desk and took hold of the door handles. The receptionist immediately jumped up and tried to stop him, flapping her hands because her nails were still wet.
‘Sir, you can’t go in there! I’ll have to call security!’
Frank said, ‘OK, fine. Call security. I only need a minute of Mr Lasser’s time.’
He was just about to open the doors when they were opened for him, from the inside. He found himself face to face with a bald black man in a tight gray double-breasted suit. ‘What’s going on here?’ the man demanded. ‘Who are you?’
Frank pushed the door open wider and he could see Charles Lasser standing at the far end of a very large office. Lasser was so huge that it looked as if there was something wrong with the perspective in the room. Three men in suits were talking to him, and even though they were standing much nearer to Frank, they appeared to be very much smaller.
The black man pushed Frank firmly back. ‘Excuse me, sir, you can’t come in here.’
‘I have to talk to Mr Lasser.’
‘He doesn’t have an appointment,’ said the receptionist. ‘I tried to stop him, but he walked right past me.’
‘Call security,’ the man told her.
‘You don’t need to,’ said Frank. ‘I need one word with Mr Lasser, that’s all. Mr Lasser! I need to have a quick word!’
The man took hold of Frank’s security badge. ‘This says you have an appointment with Mr John Berenger on the sixteenth floor. You’ve made a mistake here, sir. This is the penthouse.’
‘Mr Lasser!’ Frank shouted. ‘I need to talk to you about Astrid!’
Charles Lasser stopped talking to three men in his office, and peered toward the doors. ‘Stanley!’ he called, his voice was a thick, volcanic rumble. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘This gentleman’s lost, Mr Lasser, sir, that’s all.’
‘Get rid of him, will you?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Lasser, sir!’
But then Frank wrestled his way past him, and said, ‘You beat her, didn’t you? You stubbed your cigarettes out on her back! What else did you do to her, you goddamned sadist?’
The black man twisted Frank’s arms behind his back and manhandled him back through the doors, but Charles Lasser shouted, ‘Wait!’ He came striding across the office and stood over Frank, looking down at him in disbelief.
Charles Lasser had a forehead like an overhanging rock formation, under which his eyes glittered as if they were hiding in caves. His nose was enormous and complicated, with a bony bridge and wide, fleshy nostrils, and his chin was deeply cleft. His thinning hair was dyed intensely black, and combed straight back over his ears.
He was wearing a billowing white shirt with bright green suspenders and a garish green necktie with purple patterns on it. He smelled very strongly of lavender.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demanded.
‘Frank Bell. You know that comedy show If Pigs Could Sing? That’s mine. Creator, writer, associate producer.’
‘What are you doing here? What’s all this crap about cigarette burns?’
‘You’re asking me? I should be asking you, for Christ’s sake. Five cigarette burns, all over her back, not to mention multiple bruises and contusions and black eyes! Gives you a thrill, does it, beating up on defenseless girls?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stanley, throw him out of here!’
‘I’m talking about Astrid, Mr Lasser. Don’t tell me your memory’s that short.’
‘I don’t know any Astrid, my friend, and if I were you I wouldn’t say one single word more about beatings or bruises or cigarette burns, because if you do I will sue you into total poverty.’
Stanley tried to frogmarch Frank away, but Frank jabbed his elbow into his stomach and pushed him back against the door jamb. ‘You don’t know any Astrid?’ he challenged. ‘Who are you trying to kid? Brunette, short hair, twenty-four years old, came to see you at your house yesterday morning? Ring any bells?’
Charles Lasser stared at him with those tiny, deeply hidden eyes. He breathed steadily through his mouth but for nearly ten seconds he didn’t say anything at all. It seemed to Frank as if he were trying to work something out in his head, something that didn’t fit his known perception of the world around him.
‘If Pigs Could Sing?’ he said at last. ‘That’s Fox, isn’t it?’
Frank said, ‘I’m warning you, leave her alone. I can’t tell her what to do. I can’t tell her not to see you again. But if you hurt her once more, just once, then I swear to God I will personally beat the shit out of you, and I will make sure that the cops and the media know why I did it.’
Charles Lasser pointed a finger at hi
m – a big, thick finger with a squared-off nail. ‘You listen to me, little man. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, or where you got all of your lunatic ideas from, but you’re treading on very dangerous ground here. My advice to you is to leave this building right now. If you ever repeat this slander to anybody, ever again, I’ll have you hunted down like the vermin you are, and exterminated.’
‘OK,’ said Frank. ‘I’m going. But you be warned, Mr Lasser. One more bruise, one more bite, one more cigarette burn, and I’ll be coming after you.’
Charles Lasser had already turned his back. The three men in his office took two or three nervous steps away from him, like gazelles when a lion unexpectedly changes direction.
‘Now what about this fucking offer?’ he growled. ‘Where do we stand on the anti-trust laws?’
Frank tried to phone John Berenger from his car to tell him that he couldn’t make their appointment, but his personal assistant told him, ‘Mr Berenger is in a meeting with Mr Lasser right now.’ Jesus, already? He hoped that Sloop wasn’t about to lose his job. Charles Lasser had been known to fire people simply because they smiled at him in a way that he found disrespectful. ‘Did I say something funny? Here’s something really hilarious: you’re sacked.’
He called Lizzie and at her suggestion they met for lunch at Injera, an Ethiopian restaurant on La Brea. Frank’s car was parked by the tallest, spindliest black man he had ever encountered, and it seemed that all of the waiters in the restaurant were equally tall and spindly, with knowing smiles that seemed to suggest that they knew something Frank didn’t. The walls were covered in red and brown batik and there were copper lamps and carved birds hanging from the ceiling. Lizzie was sitting in a dark corner hidden by a frondy plant. She was wearing a lime-green suit with extravagantly flared pants and a necklace that looked like a string of cherry tomatoes.
‘I don’t think I ever ate Ethiopian before,’ said Frank, settling into his carved wooden chair and picking up the menu.
‘It’s an acquired taste,’ Lizzie told him. ‘I have to confess that I haven’t acquired it yet, but they let me smoke.’
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