Graham Masterton - Innocent Blood

The young man ignored him. ‘See this beer gut of mine?’ he asked Matty, even more softly. ‘What do you think it’s really made of? Fat? Wrong ! It’s C4 – plasticized RDX.’

Matty turned to Irene Wallach. ‘Irene, get all the kids off the tram, now.’

‘What?’ she frowned.

‘Get all the kids off the tram and do it now. Please.’

‘Unh-unh,’ said the young man in the mirror sunglasses, shaking his head. ‘Nobody’s getting off. You’re all coming with me.’

Matty shouted, ‘No!’ and made a lunge for the wire that ran down the young man’s arm, trying to wrench it free. At the same time, Jaws reared out of the lake in a blast of compressed air, its eyes staring and its teeth bared. With the exception of Kevin, all the children screamed.

Saturday, September 25, 10:34 A.M.

The blast was heard five miles away in every direction – a dull, emphatic thud. The front car of the tram was blown apart so violently that there was nothing left of it but a blackened chassis and a surreal arrangement of twisted seats. Most of the second car was burned out, and hundreds of windows were broken, all over the lot.

Jaws, the great white shark, was wrecked even more comprehensively than it had been in the movie. All of the latex was blasted away from its frame, leaving a smoking, grinning skeleton.

But the human litter was so terrible that when the first police and security officers arrived at the scene, they couldn’t understand what they were looking at. As a Times reporter was later to write, ‘They looked not like cubs, but like cherubs, shot down by anti-aircraft fire.’

Seven

Frank rang the doorbell. Through the intercom, Astrid said, ‘Hold on,’ and then she pressed the buzzer so that he could let himself in. He walked across the Mexican-tiled hallway and climbed the stairs. She was waiting for him outside apartment three, wearing a very short white muslin dress and bare feet, with silver rings on her toes. She was looking pale and fretful, as if she had taken too many pills.

‘There’s been another bomb,’ she told him.

‘I know. I actually heard it. I was out in the yard, putting out the trash. Then bamm! like somebody slamming a door.’

‘They said on the news that nineteen people were killed. Eleven cub scouts. They showed pictures. God, it’s so terrible.’

‘Hey, you’re shaking.’

‘I’m upset , Frank. I’m so upset. All those little boys.’

Frank closed the door behind them and laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I know. As soon as I heard about it, I thought about all of their parents. Nobody should have to suffer like this. Not for the sake of some crazy idea about religion or politics or whatever.’

‘Do you think the same people could have done it?’

‘Those Arabs? Who knows. But who else could it be? The cops are pretty sure that it was a suicide bombing and Western terrorists don’t go in for blowing themselves up, do they? And you heard what they said yesterday about wrecking the entertainment industry.’

‘Do you want a drink?’ Astrid asked him.

He nodded. She went to the white wicker table on the opposite side of the room and poured out two long-stemmed glasses of Shiraz Cabernet. He could see her face in the mirror on the wall, and he was surprised how different she looked, in reflection. Perhaps it was the lack of symmetry that made her face so striking.

She brought him his wine. ‘They said that all of the studios are going to suspend their tours. And they’re closing down Disneyland.’

‘A little too late for that, don’t you think?’ said Frank. ‘The next time they’ll probably hit someplace totally different, like a TV studio, right in the middle of a game show or something.’

‘Eleven children killed,’ said Astrid. ‘And what’s it all for?’

The French windows were open. Astrid stepped outside on to the narrow tiled balcony and Frank followed her. Below them was a small shadowy yard with a stone fountain, overgrown with orange blossom. A warm ocean breeze blew across the rooftops and stirred her muslin dress, so that now and again Frank could see the curve of her bare bottom and her hip. ‘That’s the way to kill people,’ she said, almost as if she were quoting somebody. ‘Kill their children.’

‘They’ll catch them, especially after this.’

‘You really think so?’

‘Half of the LAPD is out looking for them, as well as the FBI.’

‘Yes, but who are they looking for?’

Frank shook his head, as if an insect had tried to fly into his ear. She spoke in riddles sometimes. ‘Did you really lie to me about your father and mother?’ he asked her.

‘Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.’

‘You’re teasing me.’

‘No, I’m not. I’m simply asking you to use your eyes.’ She leaned on the railing for a while, sipping her wine. Then she suggested, ‘Let’s go inside.’

He took off his shoes and they sat on the couch together, cross-legged, facing each other. He lifted his glass to her and said, ‘ Salut , whoever you are.’ A curved reflection from her red wine danced on her lips, making it look as if she was smiling when she wasn’t.

‘How’s your wife?’ she asked.

‘No different. We went to the funeral home yesterday and saw Danny. That didn’t improve matters.’

‘What did he look like – Danny?’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I’m sorry . . . I was just curious. I never saw anybody dead before.’

Frank thought about it and then shrugged. ‘He looked like Danny but he wasn’t Danny, if you know what I mean. I saw my grandfather when he was laid out and I can remember thinking, why am I here , why am I saying goodbye to this . . . storefront dummy ? My grandfather’s body was there but I knew my grandfather wasn’t. He was long gone.’

‘You’re right. A body without a spirit, it’s like an hourglass with no sand in it. It’s meaningless.’

He finished his wine and put down his glass. ‘Talking of spirits, I’ve arranged for Nevile Strange to come around to our house tomorrow and hold a séance.’

‘You’re kidding me.’ She peered at him more closely and then she said, ‘You’re not kidding me.’

‘He thinks he can get in touch with Danny – and one of Danny’s school friends, too.’

‘Whoo! Doesn’t your wife object?’

‘She did at first, but then her friend called her and they got to talking about it, and I guess her friend won her round. Lynn Ashbee, poor woman. There was nothing left of her daughter but her feet, still in their shoes. What kind of a world are we living in when we have nothing left to bury but our children’s feet?’

‘A very heartless world, Frank. Even more heartless than you know.’

They watched the television news. The latest casualty figures from Universal Studios were fifteen children killed, and seven adults. Over a hundred people of all ages had been seriously injured, and the damage to property had already run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not to mention the indefinite closure of Universal City to the public, and almost every other major attraction in Los Angeles.

An FBI press officer said, ‘Early tests have led us to speculate that the suicide bomber fashioned himself a corset or a false abdomen out of malleable plastic explosive to avoid detection at the gates. Yes, there was a dog there trained to sniff out explosives but in this case the bomber somehow managed to elude it. The explosive bears strong similarities to C4 – cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine – which has a less pungent odor than many other explosives.’

Frank switched off the television. ‘Shit. This is serious. It’s coming to the point where we’re not going to feel safe anywhere.’