The next call came ten minutes later, from Astrid. ‘Do you want to meet me this afternoon?’ she asked him.
‘Why don’t I buy you lunch? I’ve been staying with my sister but I’m moving into the Franklin Plaza, and the room won’t be ready till three.’
‘I’m sorry, Frank. I promised to have lunch with my friend.’
‘Can’t you put her off?’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll see you about three thirty, OK?’
‘Astrid – before you hang up, I wanted to ask you something about your ring. You know, the one that your father gave you – the emerald. St John the Evangelist’s birthstone. I mean, it was such a coincidence—’
Before he could say any more, she cut the connection. Frank stared at the receiver for a long time, almost as if he expected it to speak to him, and tell him the answer to everything he wanted to know. But then Carol called up the stairs that breakfast was ready, so he hung up and went to take a shower.
I may miss Margot, but it’s Astrid that I really want, he thought as he soaped himself. The smell of her skin, the curve of her hip. The slight seductive droop of her eyelids, as if she’s dreaming. So Nevile thinks she’s dangerous. That only makes her all the more exciting.
Twenty-Seven
Frank took Carol and Smitty for a Zen burger at Iyashinbou at Century City, by way of a thank you for putting him up. Carol had protested that he could stay with them for as long as he wanted, and it wouldn’t cost him a bean, so long as he didn’t mind babysitting now and again. But he didn’t want to risk those phony cops turning up and shooting their way through her door, not with children around.
Iyashinbou was always preternaturally chilled out, with its raked-gravel garden and its pools full of lazily swimming carp, but this morning the atmosphere everywhere in Hollywood was palpably more relaxed. The bombing was over and the dreaded Dar Tariki Tariqat had turned out to be nothing more than a collection of vengeful geeks. People couldn’t understand Islamic fundamentalists, but they could understand geeks – and they could understand why these particular geeks had gone the way of Timothy McVeigh. They could even empathize, although they couldn’t forgive, especially those whose favorite soaps had been permanently canceled. All in all, it was a good movie-type ending. In fact, several screenwriters were busy working on bomb-outrage scripts, with Morgan Freeman already tipped for the role of Commissioner Campbell.
‘You ask me, I blame the Web,’ said Smitty. He was wearing a purple Rams sweatshirt and a baggy pair of Desert Storm combat pants. ‘Before the Web, your average loser had no way of getting in touch with any of your other losers. All of your losers, right, they were compartmentalized – each loser stewing in his own bedroom. But as soon as the Web came along, that was it, they all connected up, and all that individual stewing combined to make one hell of a dangerous casserole.’
Carol said, ‘I feel sorry for those young people. I know I don’t have any reason to, but I do. They were beaten and sexually abused and God knows what else, and the world took no notice. I know it’s been a terrible price to pay, but maybe it’ll change some attitudes.’
‘I’ll have the teppanyaki burger with eggplant fries,’ said Smitty. ‘And a cold Sapporo to chase it down the old red lane.’
Frank and Carol both ordered yakitori chicken burgers and vinegared rice balls. Frank had chosen to have lunch at Iyashinbou because it had been Mo’s favorite restaurant – apart, of course, from Shalom Pizza on West Pico. The idea of a Japanese burger restaurant had appealed to Mo’s sense of total absurdity. He had liked it even better when he had found out that ‘Iyashinbou’ meant ‘Greedy Guts.’
While they were waiting for their food, Carol took hold of Frank’s hand across the table. ‘You must feel you’ve gotten some kind of closure for Danny. Especially since you found those bombs yourself.’
‘I don’t know yet. We still need to know who organized all of this bombing, and who paid for it. I mean, how could a bunch of amateurs get themselves together to blow up half of Hollywood, Internet or not? Especially a bunch of emotionally damaged people like Dar Tariki Tariqat.’
‘You know something?’ said Smitty. ‘We live in a different world these days. When we was young, what did we care about Islam? Nothing. Islam was what you said when somebody asked you what was for lunch. We didn’t even know that Islam existed. Now we have to walk on fucking eggshells. Same with gays. Same with vegetarians. Same with pediatricians.’
‘Don’t you mean pedophiles?’
‘Whatever.’
Smitty was still grumbling about political correctness when Frank saw a figure walking across the plaza in front of the restaurant. The windows of Iyashinbou were tinted dark metallic gray, so that it looked as if it were thundery outside. The figure was wearing a baseball cap with a long peak, and drooping maroon shorts, and he was dragging a dog on a very long string. As he came close to the restaurant, he stopped, and peered intently inside, even though he couldn’t have seen anything but his own reflection.
‘Will you get a load of that old geezer?’ Smitty remarked. ‘He must have X-ray vision.’
But without a word, Frank stood up, put down his napkin, and walked out through the restaurant door. Outside it was hot and glaring, not thundery at all, although a fresh breeze made the old man’s shorts flap around his skinny, scabby knees.
‘Hello, Frank,’ the old man grinned. ‘How’s it going? I was real sorry to hear about your friends.’
‘Tell me what I’m supposed to do now,’ said Frank.
The old man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do what you damn well like, that’s my suggestion.’
‘No, no. You seem to be the expert when it comes to my destiny. You tell me.’
The old man shook his head. ‘You’ve already decided, Frank. You crossed the street and here you are on the other side. There’s no going back now, you know that. But watch your step. You never know what’s going to hit you next.’
‘Like what?’
‘You ever see those cartoons, Frank? Like you’re strutting along the street in your natty suit with a flower in your lapel, doing the double shuffle, when a safe drops off of the top of a building and flattens you? Or you’re sitting at home with a six pack, watching the old TV, and there’s a knock at the door, and when you open it, it’s a Union Pacific locomotive, complete with cow catcher, coming toward you at full pelt?’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘All’s I’m saying is, take good care. Look up, as well as ahead, and look behind you, too. And always say “who is it?” before you open that door. Well, I think you learned that particular lesson already.’
‘Is this a warning?’
‘Let’s just put it this way: somebody once told me that you can drop a toaster in the bath and that, contrary to expectations, it won’t electrocute you. But I never took the chance by trying it.’
Frank was about to tell the old man that this was self-evident, since he smelled as if he hadn’t taken a bath since he was born, but at that moment there was a loud, dull explosion from the east, probably no more than three miles away. Everybody who was crossing the plaza stood stock still, their heads raised, their mouths open in shock. There were five seconds of utter silence, and then the explosion echoed from the mountains.
‘At a guess, that sounds like CBS Television City,’ said the old man, and sniffed.
Smitty came out of the restaurant, closely followed by Carol, and six or seven other diners, and three Japanese waiters.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Smitty. ‘That was another bomb, wasn’t it? I thought you said this was over.’
Frank checked his watch. It was one minute after twelve. It looked as if Dar Tariki Tariqat were going to go on blowing themselves up until the last of them were dead.