Not the End of the World (44 page)

‘Oh terrific. Think I’ll stay dead.’

‘That can be arranged.’

She smiled and headed for the larger of the suite’s two bathrooms, picking up a bag of clothes retrieved from her apartment by Pedro Arguello as she went.

Kennedy got himself a bottle of still water from the minibar and sat down opposite Larry, throwing his head back against the sofa and sighing loudly. One of the ‘paramedics’, makeup effects artist Josie Orland, stepped over and patted the big photographer on the head, ruffling his hair.

‘Best director I ever worked with, man,’ she said.

Kennedy smiled and gulped back some water.

Larry gave a loud laugh, out of relief and probably a little nervous hysteria. Another day like this and he’d be turning into Herbert Lom in those Pink Panther movies.

On reflection it wasn’t really so strange that it had taken Kennedy to come up with this: maybe everyone else was too used to living in this town to have that kind of perspective. Despite the bombs, the fear and the pervading air of insanity, Kennedy hadn’t lost the first‐
time visitor’s perception that this was La‐
la land: the world capital of faking it.

Brisko had been apprehensive, pointing out that there would be no opportunity for reshoots if this went wrong. Kennedy, in return, had pointed out that they weren’t exactly tripping over alternatives, and suggested Brisko extend whatever co‐
operation he could: they were going to get ready for showtime at sun‐
up; if the cavalry got a result in the hours that remained, they’d be only too happy to cancel.

Witherson’s agent, Tony Pia, armed only with a Psion and a mobile, assembled a production team at the Vista in less than an hour. Pia’s brother Marco, a leading porn‐
movie director, was to be cameraman, with sound and lighting handled by his regular assistants. All of them seemed to be on kiss‐
hello terms with Witherson. That didn’t always mean much in this town, but Larry figured it did today. It wasn’t much of an occasion for affectation.

The Feds came up with a real doctor and some real paramedics to add authenticity to the ‘confirmation of death’ procedures. The doc had no ethical issues to wrestle with as regards complicity in this gross act of public deception. ‘It’s my job to keep people alive’, he said simply. ‘That’s what we’re doing.’

The star performer, however, was Orland, who turned up with two heavy boxes of tricks and a reassuringly tacky CV. Fangoria magazine had once called her ‘Queen of the Carotid’ in reverential appreciation of her work on dozens of slasher flicks, significantly VisionTek’s The Peeler franchise. Significantly, because VisionTek’s Alison Moore (producer of Night of the Peeler, two sequels and the forthcoming Children of the Peeler), as well as being Orland’s long‐
term girlfriend, was on the Ugly Duckling.

Orland covered Witherson’s neck with a latex layer that concealed a small reservoir of fake blood and a slim, transparent plastic syphon tube. The reservoir was to provide the first evidence of the blade cutting flesh, but the ‘fatal’ damage would be apparent from the spurting carotid. The tube led down to a number of bloodbags attached to Witherson’s body, the jet driven by a pump attached to her navel. Orland had placed the largest two bags on Witherson’s chest (‘the only place a bulge won’t be conspicuous – sorry honey, but you ain’t stacked’) and layered another latex strip over the top of her bust before covering it all with thick foundation.

Kennedy directed how he wanted the show to unfold, explaining the shot sequence carefully to Marco Pia so that Orland’s handiwork wasn’t subject to intense scrutiny: close‐
up on Madeleine’s face for the penitential bullshit, showing nothing below the chin; then pull way back for the suicide.

Orland showed Madeleine how to handle the blade, doing a test run on her wrist with another latex‐
covered reservoir. Kennedy suggested she kneel side‐
on to the camera when she did the deed, and reminded her to fall forward when she collapsed ‘so that nobody notices your boobs deflating’.

Of course, the above‐
the‐
line star of this picture was Witherson, who was a revelation. By the time she’d keeled over Larry thought she was so convincing he might now actually have to go and see Angel’s Claws. Admittedly it was something of a method performance: eighty‐
eight lives were riding on her pulling it off, so if she looked authentically terrified then that was probably because she was. Still, he’d seen Oscars given for less. Much less, if you were talking about Forrest Gump.

It was the turn of Lar’ry”s mobile to disturb the exhaustedly quiet atmosphere. He instantly recognised the voice as Bannon’s.

‘Larry. Thought you should know this. We got reports coming in about a major explosion.’

‘Yeah, I know, it’s cool. Everybody got off in time. Splinters in the ass, I’ll bet, but—’

‘No, not the boat, Larry. A building. Domestic address in Glendale just went kaboom. Local dispatch got about ten calls in the last few minutes, all witnesses timing the explosion at roughly the same moment the Ugly Duckling went up. Hell of a coincidence, huh? I figured you might want to let your little FBI buddies know, if they don’t know already.’

‘Thanks boss.’

Hell of a coincidence. Sounded like they could cancel Unabomber II, and what a sweet, sweet sound that was. It was the sound of sheets being pulled back on the bed he was planning to weld himself to as soon as possible.

Steel’s phone rang before Larry could get his attention, but all he needed to hear was ‘Really? In Glendale?’ to know he had been scooped.

‘Sergeant,’ Steel said, hanging up, ‘I’ve just heard …’

‘Yeah, me too. Pureed perpetrator, I’m figuring.’

‘Well, either that or I’m about to drive across town through rush‐
hour to check out a gas explosion. What are your plans?’

‘Plans? Right now? What are you, a speed‐
freak? My plan is to go straight home this minute and have me a miniature coma. Call me in a month, I might be out of it by then. And remember I said “might”.’

Steff woke up to two surprises. The first was that he had been to sleep. The second was that Madeleine’s body was tucked behind his, her knees pressing into the backs of his thighs, her left arm slung over his side, hand resting against his chest. It had been the kind of sleep that follows long‐
haul flights: short, heavy‐
limbed, disorientating, taken at an inappropriate hour of the day, and when you woke you felt (a) that you’d been out for three times as long as you really had; and (b) that it was still nowhere near enough.

Focus returned to his confused eyes, enough to tell him he was in a room far too grand and insufficiently pink for it to be his billet at the Armada, and to read from a matchbook in a bedside ashtray that this was, in fact, the Pacific Vista. As the shampoo and perfume scents of Madeleine’s hair and body wafted freshly into his nostrils, he enjoyed a brief, wonderful, bleary moment of wrongly piecing together what he was doing here. They had met for a photo‐
shoot on the Vista’s roof. This was Madeleine’s suite. They were on a big double bed together. Everything must have gone very smoothly indeed.

Then his eyes picked out the once‐
white, red‐
spattered dress lying crumpled on the floor, like a prop from the Madonna video he’d have made.

Aww, keech.

Bombs. Blood. Dead people. Mental Christians. Polis. FBI.

He closed his eyes again, but none of it was going to go away now; his oblivion prescription had run out. He saw the messenger being washed away again, Madeleine buffeted in the swimming‐
pool. He saw panic and chaos hundreds of feet below his dangling legs.

Funny. The cops, the FBI guys, Madeleine’s agent, they had all bailed out to a room down the hall to give her some peace. No, to give them some peace. They were being treated like a married couple or something.

He wished.

Madeleine had lain down on one of the double beds to get some seriously overdue rest. Steff thought his head was buzzing far too much for him to get any sleep, but flopped down on the other bed anyway. Turned out there were more zeds in buzzing than he’d previously appreciated.

Steff got up delicately, sliding out from Madeleine’s grip so as not to disturb her. He stood by the bed and looked at her a moment, lying peacefully there, and remembered the girl he had been standing waiting for yesterday. The girl who’d made him feel like a teenager again – that’s who was lying there. Not the hurt, scared and haunted girl, but the one who’d filled his head with thoughts and words not normally acceptable in a big cynical bastard from Lanarkshire.

Thoughts and words which, he was comforted to discover, all still applied.

He walked quietly through to the bathroom and took a shower.

He’d been standing in the tub a long while, letting the water splash his face, enjoying the warmth, the comfort and the lack of threat from high explosives, when he thought he heard footsteps. With the noise of the shower in his ears he couldn’t be sure. Then he definitely heard the curtain being tugged back. He turned around. Madeleine was stepping naked into the bath beside him. They were kissing before she got her other foot over the side.

They both dropped to their knees with the spray cascading warmly about them, pulling themselves to each other and just holding that embrace, Madeleine’s face buried in his neck, her arms gripping him as tightly as on that rooftop. He felt like he never wanted to let go, never wanted that moment to end.

Until she reached over the side to where she’d left a condom.

He could live with it ending after that.

Larry got bored staring at the ceiling after a valiant three hours of trying to get to sleep. The Land of Nod’s borders remained closed, due to breaking off diplomatic relations with the neighbouring republic of La‐
la Land. He should have known better. There are times when you’re so physically tired that you can’t sleep, often because your brain is still processing shit left over from whatever exertion had you bushed in the first place. But that was only part of the story. Something else wouldn’t let him rest, and it wasn’t any cop’s sixth‐
sense mumbo‐
jumbo – just the simple nagging in his head that this wasn’t over, at least until he got confirmation of what they had scraped off the sidewalk in Glendale.

The Vista thing had all gone family‐
sized, with the Feds muscling in and the media beaming the whole show to a worldwide audience of ghouls, remotes in one hand, dicks in the other. But at the very core it was still homicide on his turf – a section of turf he was specifically looking after these two weeks – and he didn’t have a perp.

He had come in the door as Sophie was going out. They had time for one hug in the hallway.

‘Call in sick, baby,’ he’d pleaded half‐
heartedly.

‘I’m not going to the school just now, I’m going to the clinic.’

‘Oh shit, I forgot. Hey, let me come with you.’

‘Go to bed, Larry. I’ve seen some sick notes in my job, and the day you just had definitely gets you out of this morning’s classes.’

It told him how tired he was that he agreed. Accompanying Sophie to the doc’s had become the closest thing in his life to religious observance, and like religious observance it had all the trappings of irrational superstition. He felt like if he didn’t go with her, if he wasn’t present, there would be bad news; if he couldn’t be there to protect her, that would be the time she had to face something awful. Maybe he was just scared of hearing anything second‐
hand, like there was anything he could change if he was there when the news was broken.

A male thing, he knew. It was an ugly hangover from what had happened to David: the paralysing feeling of impotence, of uselessness, sitting on those plastic seats waiting for updates from exhausted‐
looking doctors. Having nothing to offer Sophie but arms to hold her and a pocketful of quarters for the coffee machine.

There had been nothing he could do for his own son. Knowing that was like being disembowelled. He hadn’t failed David. Maybe it would have seemed different if he had; if he could see what rule he’d broken. But there was nothing he had done wrong, and nothing he could do to put it right, neither. It was as though he wasn’t there at all.

That was when people were supposed to turn to God, wasn’t it?

Larry had gone to church with his mom every Sunday morning until he was old enough to be allowed to go alone, to a different service if he liked. He chose the service two blocks away: there was an altar at each end, recognisable by a wooden board with a hoop in front of it. Since then, if someone had asked him he’d have said he believed in God, but the truth was he hadn’t ever much thought about it.

He was damn well forced to think about it in that waiting room, and realised not only that he didn’t believe, but also that he never really had. It wasn’t a case of abandoning God because he felt God had abandoned him: that was no better than the rock singers and movie stars who were always thanking God and Jesus and babbling on about their ‘faith’. Pretty easy to believe there’s a Divine Plan when the Divine Plan has such a sweet role in it for you, and the flipside is denying the same DP just because it deals you a shitty hand. That isn’t atheism, that’s egotism. Plain old spite.

When Larry found himself helpless, impotent and alone, the option of begging divine intercession seemed no option at all, because, quite simply, he realised he had no faith. When it was playing‐
for‐
keeps time, when life was drawing a line in the sand, he suddenly knew which side he stood. It was cold, dark and scary that side of the line, and there was nobody there to help you, but once you’re there you can’t return. Once you’ve seen behind the backdrop, you can’t walk out front again and believe that what’s painted on it is real.

The world this side of the line is indeed a more foreboding place, but even though you have to tread with more caution, you walk with more dignity.

The telephone was ringing as Larry stepped into the kitchen, a towel round his waist, heading for the bubbling coffee pot. He wasn’t quite dry and had left damp footmarks on the tiles, but his need for espresso superseded all concerns, including answering the phone until he had filled a cup and taken a mouthful. The answering machine kicked in after a few more rings. That always made him wince a little: you could hear David shouting something in the background on the outgoing message, but neither he nor Sophie had been able to bring themselves to wipe over it.