Hostage (26 page)

“My head feels like shit.”

“I bet it does.”

“You… you okay? They… they didn’t hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine. So is everyone else,” replied Todd, referring to the others who’d been tied up. “Everyone, of course, except Clariton. And who knows what’s happened to him.”

“Oh.” She closed her eyes. “The FBI was here.”

“I know.”

“They’re such nerds.”

Todd smiled. “They can be.”

Her eyes slowly went over him. “No flowers, no candy. What is it?” She knew Todd had never cared for her, particularly after what Channel 7 had done to him, and she leveled her eyes on him. “What do you want?”

“Okay, I’m sorry, this isn’t a candy-striper visit. I’m wondering if you can help me.”

“Great. I’m tied up in the hospital with a fractured skull,” she said, her voice faint. “You’re out there with the hottest story of the decade, and—let me guess—you want me to help you look brilliant. Well, some things never change, do they?” Her head moved slightly from side to side. “Sorry, Todd, you can take a flying leap. Visiting hours were over a long time ago. Good night. I’ve got to get some rest—Roger wants me to do a report tomorrow.”

“Cindy, this isn’t for WLAK.”

“Right, and my name’s Barbara Walters.”

“Listen, this is strictly personal. I promise it’s not for work.” He leaned slightly closer and added, “After the way you came after me at Channel Seven last fall, you owe me.”

“I was just doing… doing my job.”

“With a vengeance?”

“What, am I supposed to feel bad because you deceived all of us at the station?”

“Come on, you and Roger worked pretty damn hard at screwing me over, and you know it.”

She sighed. “What do you want?”

He reached into his coat pocket and took out the photo he’d found at Rawlins’s place. “I want you to look at this and tell me if one of these guys looks familiar.”

“I’m a fool to help you.” She took a deep breath. “Turn on that light over there.”

Rather than illuminating the surgically bright overhead light, Todd turned on a standing lamp. He then leaned over the bed, holding the picture of Curt and the other man seated on the log. Cindy reached up with her right hand, took the photo, and held it close to her eyes.

“You promise me this isn’t for Channel Ten, that it’s not going to be broadcast all over the world?” she asked.

“I swear.”

“Swear harder.”

“I promise, Cindy, that I won’t use this for a report. It really is strictly for personal use.”

“Have I ever told you you were a pain in the ass to work for?”

“Sorry.”

“You hogged all the stories.”

“I’ve changed.”

“Yeah, right, and
Sixty Minutes
just offered me a job.” She moved her thumb so that it rested right on one guy in the picture. “That one. That’s the guy, their leader. His head isn’t shaved in the picture, but it was today.” She shuddered. “That’s him, the one that hit me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Todd, taking back the photo. “Do you know his name?”

“Like I told the police this evening, the woman screamed at him right before he clubbed me. She shouted out his name.”

“Which was?”

“Matthew.”

Exactly, thought Todd, now remembering.

Cindy asked, “Do you know him from somewhere?”

“Not really. He’s a friend of a friend.”

Todd stared at the picture that Rawlins had taken, zeroing in on the image of that one guy, who stood there with one arm thrown over Curt’s shoulders. But who was he really? Or more important, how well did Rawlins know him?

Oh, Christ, thought Todd. Was Rawlins involved in more of this… or all of it?

“Todd, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” He reached down, touched her on the arm. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Bullshit. You’re glad I’m stuck here in the hospital so that you can have the entire story to yourself.”

“I’m beginning to wish I didn’t.”

“Roger was in here earlier, and he told me you were on the evening news with Dan Rather. And let me tell you, Roger just about had a coronary.”

“Great.” Todd smiled and said, “Now, get some rest.”

“Right.”

He crossed the room, turned off the standing light, and Cindy and her world sank back into the bluish night-light. He started toward the door, then stopped.

“Cindy, there’s just one other thing.”

Or didn’t it matter? At this point in his life did it really make a difference who had talked to Clariton about Todd’s sexuality?

Cindy, her blond hair and pale skin blending into the white pillow, rolled her head toward him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, catching himself, for it was time once and for all to leave that baggage behind. “Take care of yourself.” “I will, but, Todd, be forewarned that I’m down but not out.” “Good. I’m glad.”

The same silver Chrysler
that had followed Todd Mills and the limousine earlier this evening was once again parked in front of Todd’s condominium building. It was 3:14 AM. The parkway was quiet, the night chilly, and the two men in the vehicle had been waiting for over an hour. Almost anyone else would have found this kind of work—sitting there waiting for someone, anyone, to return home—excruciatingly boring, but the guys in the Chrysler were professionals. They’d sit there until sunrise if need be.

Finally spotting a car with its turn signal blinking, the large man in the passenger seat perked up and said, “Here we are, the last person home.”

“Right,” replied the bald man behind the steering wheel. “It won’t get any better than this.”

“I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

The large man grabbed the device—a small thing about the size of a matchbox—from the seat, opened the passenger door, then quickly made his way down the sidewalk. He was a nice-enough looking man, gray suit, white shirt, unremarkable tie, and had anyone noticed him hurrying along they wouldn’t have suspected a thing. Even in the middle of the night he didn’t look like a thug, and he turned up the drive and walked briskly past the building’s entry. Inside, behind a glass window, he caught a glimpse of the guard, a young man with his head tilted against the wall and his eyes closed in dreamy sleep.

The driveway to the second-floor garage arched up a hill and curved to the left, and the man burst into a run when he saw the car’s taillights disappear into the building. The garage door was halfway down by the time he reached the rear of the structure, yet there was still enough room for him to duck inside. Bending over, he slipped in, then positioned himself behind a concrete column. Somewhere up ahead he heard a car engine turn off, a door open, the sounds of two people gabbing and giggling as they shuffled along. Then a door opening and closing. And silence.

Emerging from the shadows, the man started walking up the center of the garage, a cold gray space that stretched around and up several floors. It wasn’t hard at all, of course, to find the vehicle Todd Mills had borrowed, for the blue Ford Explorer was clearly and boldly emblazoned with the words WLAK TV, YOUR EYE ON THE WORLD! It was parked about fifteen cars up on the right side, and he went directly toward it. He tried the driver’s door, but it was locked, just as he’d expected, which actually didn’t make a bit of difference. He returned to the rear of the Explorer, glanced up and down the garage, then bent over. Checking the device one last time, the man reached behind the bumper and slapped the small electronic item into position. It took all of about five seconds.

Standing up, the man wiped his hands, straightened his suit and unremarkable tie. No sense in sneaking out the way he’d come. Nope, he thought, looking to his right and spotting the exit. And so he proceeded through the garage, down a flight of stairs, and right into the nicely appointed lobby with its soft sofas and professionally maintained palms, not to mention the large wall sculpture, the one that was supposed to look like sailboats on one of the city lakes.

Approaching the front door, he passed the glass-enclosed guard’s room, where the young man in the red uniform continued to snooze.

“Hey, hey, buddy!” called the man, laughing as he rapped on the window. “No sleeping on the job!”

“Wh-what?” replied the young guard, nearly jumping to his feet. “No, I’m awake!”

“Got to keep an eye out for all the criminals!”

“Yes, sir. Oh, yes!”

Grinning, the well-dressed man proceeded through the glass doors into the night. A huge yawn swelled inside him and he put a hand to his mouth. Today had had its difficult moments, no doubt there, but the little surprise he’d left behind for Todd Mills should make things substantially easier tomorrow.

Todd couldn’t sleep even
though exhaustion had bowled him over. Lying on his bed, a down comforter pulled over him, he stared at the tape on his bedside table—he’d given the original to the FBI and brought home the copy just to make sure WLAK didn’t bump him from the story—and one thought kept crashing over and over again in his mind: What the hell was Rawlins doing? With the exception of the puzzling words Rawlins had written on the envelope, Todd hadn’t heard a thing. And it was like torture. This was the first night in months that he wasn’t either with Rawlins or aware of his exact whereabouts, and Todd’s thoughts ricocheted against every possibility, including of course that this was all a setup, that Rawlins had in fact been involved in Clariton’s kidnapping, and that Todd and his interview with Clariton were a mere convenience for a devious plan. It was a horrible thought that didn’t make much sense, he realized. But then what did? Certainly not Rawlins’s fury and his assertion that he had AIDS. Shit, cursed Todd, flipping over as he recalled the sight of Rawlins ready to jump from the balcony. If the worst was really true, if Rawlins was sick, then Rawlins was absolutely right. There was every chance that Todd himself could be HIV positive, and Rawlins’s words—“I’d get myself tested”—echoed like a horrible threat in Todd’s mind. Could he himself be sick? He felt perfectly healthy, had displayed no troublesome sign such as Rawlins’s chronic sinus infection. Nor could he remember any strong bout of the flu or coming down with an extremely high temperature, as many people reported after their initial infection.

But, shit, he could be HIV positive.

Okay, there was a chance that it no longer meant a death sentence, and so maybe he was lucky in that regard, that if he
had
contracted the HIV virus he was fortunate not only that he had done so this late in the epidemic, but that he was in the United States, where the new drugs were more or less available. Maybe, too, medical science had actually corralled AIDS into a category of chronic but manageable diseases. But who really knew how the disease would mutate over the next few years in reaction to the new drugs? And who wanted to live a life taking ten, twenty, thirty pills a day anyway?

Oh, shit. He was sick of this. Sick of being gay. Sick of having his life defined by a sexual act, when to him being gay meant every bit as much who he wanted to have breakfast with in the morning. It was just too big, all of this crap. So many issues, one after the other. He was so exhausted by the process of coming out, which seemed to go on and on, over and over, every day of his life. He’d thought coming out would be just one enormous moment when you crossed some line, something that you did and took care of once and for all. But no, instead, coming out kept happening in little but significant ways every day of his life, every time he read an article about someone like Johnny Clariton and told someone he was incensed, every time he touched Rawlins in a public place and some straight couple cast a judgmental eye, every time some salesperson called for Mrs. Mills asking if she wanted her carpet cleaned and Todd, who used to just hang up, now said, no, there was no Mrs. Mills, only his boyfriend, Steve, would they like to talk to him? Shit. He wished he’d just stayed in the closet so he wouldn’t have to deal with all this crap. But could he have? No, actually, that hadn’t been an option. Notwithstanding how it had actually come to pass, if he had managed to remain closeted he probably would have self-imploded out of sheer stress.

Yet the idea, the very suggestion, that he might have to deal with another often-called “gay issue,” that of being sero-positive, made him want to jump out of his skin. As he tossed, Todd saw images of Curt. Oh, Christ, was that the fate of every gay man, to be eaten alive by some virus?

Stop it!

He rolled over, punched his pillow. At the very least, you jerk, you have to deal with Rawlins. You love him and you have to be there for him. And you have to be there for him in all the right ways. There’s no choice.

Just take a deep breath. Relax.

What is it, he asked himself, that you like about being gay? Not simply the company and touch of men, not the conversation and camaraderie. No, something more profound. What he liked about gay people was exactly what he pitied so many straight people for missing. The honesty, thought Todd. Everything in this world was set up for heterosexuals—all the ceremonies, all the major events of life—which meant that if you were, indeed, straight you didn’t even have to think about who you were, where you were going, what you really wanted. But if you were gay you were forced by your very nature to see that there were many layers of many truths beyond the surface of what was presented. And as difficult as the self-search might be, that realization and the personal accounting it always entailed brought a wisdom well beyond one’s years. It was something straight people—straight white people in particular—didn’t automatically experience and learn, not unless there was a tragic death in the family, a struggle over substance abuse, divorce, or some kind of crisis that split open the crust of the earth. As a matter of fact, thought Todd, it was those straight people—those who could see beyond the superficial markers—who were not only Todd’s friends, but the people he truly admired and respected.