Hostage (4 page)

Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she turned around. No need to worry, for she was going to get her fifteen minutes of fame. They all would. Fifteen minutes and then some. Right. Mr. Johnny Clariton’s interview was going to be just ever so explosive.

She moved on, treading her way through the crowd, and just as she came around an escalator bright lights burst against her face. Several people started zooming in on her. Oh, shit! Tina tensed, ready to bolt. Was it the police? How could they know what she was really doing here?

A woman pressed forward, some instrument held in her hand, and in an altogether perky voice said, “Hi, I’m Cindy Wilson from WTCN TV, and we’re interviewing a few of Johnny Clariton’s fans at this amazingly successful book-signing.”

Tina held up her hand to shield her eyes from the bright lights, saw that the blond woman was in fact holding a microphone and that the lights were from a camera, and said, “What?”

“We’d like to know what you think of Johnny Clariton. Don’t worry, this is just being taped. We’ll run it at the midday news. Any comments for WTCN TV?”

It couldn’t hurt. Not really. So what if the connection was made later on? Sure, she had a lot to say about this guy. Why not now?

So Tina nodded. “Okay.”

“Great.” The reporter nodded at her photographer to start taping, cleared her throat, and in her best TV voice began. “This is an amazingly successful book-signing, don’t you think? There must be six or seven hundred fans here, maybe more, and—”

As the microphone was tilted toward her she bent forward and said, “Tina. My name’s Tina, but I think there are only about four hundred people here.”

“So have you bought your book yet?”

Tina hesitated, then forced herself not to be nice, but blunt and truthful, and said, “Hell, no.”

“Oh, I see,” replied Cindy Wilson, not really sure where to take the comment. “Does that mean you’re not a Johnny Clariton fan?”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh… oh, okay.”

Tina saw Cindy Wilson’s eyes as she turned to her cameraman and signaled him that this wasn’t a good one. Tina couldn’t stop herself. She used to be so timid, so polite. Everyone liked Tina. Pretty Tina from the Midwest. She never put up a fuss. She’d stay under the lights for hours until they got the perfect shot. But then in her mind’s eye Tina saw Chris—those beautiful eyes!—and she reached out and grabbed for the microphone. If nothing else, goddammit all, she was going to do it. For the sake of Chris alone, Tina was going to make sure the world knew just what they’d been through. That was why she was here, why she was involved in all this, after all. Not for herself, but for Chris. And there was no turning back. And there was no time like the present to start speaking out.

“You know what, I want to change my mind,” barked Tina. “I want Johnny Clariton to be elected the next President of these United States of America. I also want him to contract HIV, and I want him to develop full-blown AIDS. He’s been going around saying the epidemic is over, but let me tell you, if he got sick then he’d find out it really isn’t.”

Shaking, Tina turned and started off. Exactly, she thought as she stormed away. If they were even the least bit successful Clariton would get sick. Very sick.

Behind her she heard Cindy Wilson mutter, “God, Bob, I don’t think we can use that one, do you?”

Lyle had an uneasy sense about the lady and kept his eyes on her as she wove through the crowd and disappeared behind an escalator.

Behind him, Carol, the congressman’s aide, scowled as she said, “What did she want?”

Lyle rolled onto his toes and tried to see far into the crowd. “I’m not really sure.”

“She was kind of weird-looking, don’t you think?” pressed Carol, a very average-looking woman with brown hair, a wide face, and wearing a predictable blue suit. “Did you notice all that makeup? I mean, it was caked on so thick it was falling off. At first I thought it was another one of them, another one of those drag queens. It wasn’t, was it?”

A large man in the peak of condition, Lyle continued to scan the throng of people. To be sure, there was something odd about the woman, but it wasn’t her sex, of that he was confident.

“No, it was a woman.”

“God, then she looked like death warmed over.”

Lyle, not a man of many words, nodded. That was what had caught his attention in the first place, her frail demeanor as well as the strange tone of her skin. And after the trouble that Clariton had had on the West coast—some AIDS activists had doused the congressman with a bucket of blood, which fortunately turned out to have been sterilized—Lyle was being especially alert. That, after all, was why Clariton’s publisher had decided to bring in someone like Lyle, just in case something like that happened again. As far as Lyle knew, though, there hadn’t been any threats here in Minneapolis.

“Well, be alert.” Carol laughed, then kept her voice low as she said, “But you know, a lot of our people—the congressman’s strategists and so on—are hoping something else will happen. After those guys threw that crap on Congressman Clariton in San Francisco, his popularity soared. Do you realize he gained fifteen points in the polls overnight? Fifteen points! Christ, the publicity we got out of it was utterly phenomenal! You can’t buy coverage like that, believe me.”

“No,” said Lyle, his eyes once again searching the crowd and hoping that nothing happened while he was in charge, “I suppose you can’t.”

“It just goes to show,” continued Carol, glancing over at her hero as he signed book after book, “that Congressman Clariton is right: Good Americans are fed up with gays and their agenda, and the more shenanigans they pull, the more they prove him right. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Spying two well-dressed men with short hair move oddly through the crowd—men he assumed were queer—Lyle said, “Excuse me.”

As he stepped into the swarm of people he put his hand inside his sport coat, resting his fingers gently on the pistol that sat snugly in his shoulder holster. Did he agree with Clariton’s position on gays?

If the congressman and his aide only knew.

With all that had
happened in the last year, Todd had wondered every now and then if he had lost it, his thirst for broadcast journalism. It used to be that he’d be up and going any time of day to scoop a story, particularly as the lead investigative reporter on WTCN’s CrimeEye report. Hoping to catch a crime of any kind on videotape, he and a photographer had chased around the city, following lead after lead, more often than not finding nothing, but sometimes hitting a bull’s-eye. He recalled the rush of capturing that guy as he broke into the jewelry store—his jaded girlfriend had called to tip off Todd—and the charge of filming the suspects in a cop killing as they got together to brag about their murderous caper. Oh, yes, and there’d been almost a dozen cats in trees, a few of which had proved to be interesting adventures.

Then after Michael’s death there’d been the long, empty spell where nothing seemed to make a difference.

No, what he’d lost professionally, Todd realized as he steered his dark-green Jeep Grand Cherokee to the studios of WLAK TV, wasn’t his thirst for broadcast journalism, but something else: his arrogance. Or at least more than he could afford. To be in this business you had to be controlled, you had to be supremely confident even if you sensed you were doomed for failure. You had to boast that you were going to get a shot of a judge buying cocaine when everyone thought it was sheer stupidity, then sit there in a van for three, four, five days, until you got that very judge on tape, doing just that, buying drugs. Ever since Michael’s death, however, Todd was more emotional than he could afford to be. He gave away too much. He got angry too easily. Exactly, he thought. If you’re going to keep your job at Channel 10, if you’re ever going to win another Emmy, you’re going to have to revert to your old egotistical, arrogant self. But was that possible?

Okay, so he was nervous today. That was understandable, but he couldn’t show it, not by any means. He was nervous, but as he drove along Highway 394 he realized, too, that he did feel confident, even strong. He wouldn’t have been able to do this story a year ago, at least not in the way it should be done. To do a great interview you needed to be honest and blunt—and, yes, arrogant—and any earlier than this Todd would have been too afraid to ask Johnny Clariton certain questions for fear of what they might elicit. But now… now Todd was no longer afraid of having the spotlight turned on himself. Which meant that it no longer mattered to Todd whether viewers liked him or not depending on his sexuality or even the ties he wore. Deep inside he was no longer terrified of what people would think if they knew the real Todd Mills. No, first things first, and what mattered most to Todd now was the quality of his work. Odd, he thought as he pulled off the Louisiana Avenue exit and neared the station, but he’d lost sight of that over the years. Instead, he’d sought success. Accolades. Awards. Any and all external praise to bolster his own sense of self-worth.

Well, screw all that. He was back, and back for all the right reasons. Thank God for WLAK, the upstart station that had lured Todd back into the business with a generous offer. At first Todd had balked, but then they’d given him everything he’d wanted and then some. Pleading for him to accept their offer, Channel 10 management had said, we just want Todd Mills because who else around here has won a couple of Emmys?

“That’s polite bullshit, doll,” countered his agent, Stella, from her California office when he’d first told her about the offer. “They want you because your name was smeared everywhere up there and all over the country. You’ve probably got more name recognition out there in Minne-whatchamacallit than anyone else, between you getting the Emmys and poor Michael getting himself killed. Just be aware of that, and if you decide you want the job let me know. I’ll make them pay through the nose. But don’t forget, I’m sure I can—”

“Thanks, Stella, but I don’t want to relocate right now.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, doll, but you did make a lot of the national papers, so for another six months or so I can get big bucks for a guy like you. After that—and no offense meant—the free ride is over, expired, kaput. You know, I still got some feelers out at CBS, like maybe they could use you to cover some of the gay issues. It could be great, ya know. Oh, and Todd, there’s something I been meaning to ask you—what do people eat out there?”

Okay, okay, he thought, pulling into the lot in front of the low white building. Don’t deceive yourself. WLAK hired you because of the sensationalism around your career. And they gave you the Clariton interview because you’re gay and, given the good congressman’s remarks, they’re betting sparks will fly. It was like sending a black reporter to interview someone from the KKK. Sizzle. In these conniving times he also assumed Clariton’s handlers were equally savvy, that they knew Todd was queer and perhaps had even sought him out for that very reason. Clariton’s complicity in agreeing to an interview with a gay reporter, therefore, could only mean one thing: He hoped to turn it into political gain of some sort. Todd’s challenge, on the other hand, was to trounce on Clariton and expose his true motivations and thoughts. Christ, realized Todd, this wouldn’t be an interview so much as a duel. And he had to come into it as confident as an enraged bull.

He parked behind an entire row of dark-blue Ford Explorers emblazoned with the Channel 10 logo, then walked past a half dozen satellite dishes, twenty- and thirty-foot things aimed toward the sky. As he approached the employee entrance he pulled a passcard from the outer pocket of his briefcase, then swiped it in the door and buzzed himself in. The corridor he walked down was broad and softly lit, with awards and celebrity photos lining the walls.

A guy darted from a side hall and dashed toward the door.

“If it isn’t Bradley, WLAK’s top photographer,” said Todd of the man who would be shooting his interview with Clariton.

“Please,” joked the black man, who had short hair and one gold earring. “I’m a photojournalist.”

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“Nope, don’t worry. I’m just going to get something out of my car.”

“Great.” Todd glanced at his watch. “Listen, I think we ought to leave about noon and give ourselves plenty of time.”

“Sure. I’ll meet you in your office.”

Todd turned into the newsroom, a huge space with exterior windows on one side, twenty cubicles grouped in the middle, the raised assignment desk looming over all, and various private offices and technical rooms on the other sides. Always fluttering with the hyperactivity of reporters, editors, and producers, the thirty-five people who toiled away in this one room were responsible for broadcasting almost six hours of news a day, beginning at five-thirty in the morning. To back up the anchors with news footage it took roughly twenty minutes of tape for each minute on air, and it amazed Todd how the creative anarchy back here emerged so cleanly and professionally on screen. They pulled it off in part because Channel 10 had been completely and thoroughly computerized, from the keyboards and monitors on each and every desk to the robotic cameras in Studio A that danced like angels with the touch of a computer screen.

Grabbing himself a cup of coffee from an industrial-size metal coffeepot that sat back in this corner, Todd ignored the newspapers from around the country that were stacked to one side. If there was any Clariton news this morning, which was the main reason Todd had come in, it would be found on the wire service.