‘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
Wednesday 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.’
Before he finished, Reverend Trent said a prayer for the hundred and six victims of the bomb that had demolished Studio V at Panorama-TV, and condemned Dar Tariki Tariqat. ‘A group of people are terrorizing our community – a group who have acted without pity and without remorse. They are slaughtering our friends and our loved ones without discrimination. They took young Daniel away from us, and his schoolmates, and his teachers, and yesterday they took away over a hundred more innocent lives.
‘We pray for the souls of all of those lost, that they may find eternal peace and happiness in Heaven. In spite of our anger, we also pray for all of those misguided people who have conspired in these terrible outrages, that they may look into the mirror and see how evil they have become, and what misery and anguish they have caused, and repent.’
He hesitated, and then he said, much more quietly, ‘I hold out very little hope, however, that they will.’
There was an even longer pause, as if he were trying to make up his mind if he really ought to say any more. But eventually he lifted his head and took off his glasses, his lower lip trembling with passion. ‘If it were possible for us to ask the Lord our God to act on our behalf as a vengeful God, and to show no mercy to those who have broken his Commandments, then I have to confess that I, for one, would ask Him now.’
They stood under the overcast sky and Danny’s casket was lowered in the ground. Frank threw a handful of crumbly soil on to the lid, and then Margot did the same.
‘So that’s that, then,’ she said.
He looked at her, but the smokescreen of her veil made it impossible for him to see the subtleties of her expression. Did she mean that this was the end of their life as parents, as Danny’s dad and mom – or that this was the end of their marriage altogether? He didn’t know how to ask her, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
Without another word, Margot walked off and linked arms with Ruth. Frank was left alone by the graveside. He stared down at the casket and thought of what Francis Bacon had written: ‘Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.’ Now Danny was in the dark, forever. Frank knew that Danny hadn’t forgiven him, but he prayed that he wasn’t afraid.
Somebody came and stood close beside him. When he turned around, Frank saw that it was Nevile Strange, wearing a black shirt and a black necktie and a very long black overcoat, and carrying a black Homburg hat.
‘Very moving service,’ said Nevile.
‘Yes.’
‘I like a clergyman who can show some genuine Old Testament wrath once in a while. Nothing like an occasional smite to keep the sinners shaking in their shoes.’
Frank took a last look down at Danny’s casket, and then he turned away. ‘We’re having a few drinks back at the house. Are you going to join us?’
Nevile replaced his hat. ‘Actually, I need to talk to you, but this may not be the time for it.’
‘Why not? Things can’t get very much worse than they are already.’
‘Oh, you mean the séance. That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. It didn’t turn out to be very helpful, did it? Not as far as your marriage is concerned.’
‘Not only the séance.’ Frank told him about the graffiti that had been smeared over Margot’s paintings. ‘I even began to believe that maybe I did do it, that I drove back home from my sister’s house and ruined her paintings in my sleep.’