Hostage (6 page)

As he neared the top, he switched his black nylon pack to his left shoulder and prepared to disembark. Stepping off the mechanical steps, however, he failed to see the figure to his right and, blam, he ran directly into an older woman, nearly knocking her off her feet.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Elliot exclaimed, squinting at her. “I’m so, so sorry, ma’am. Did I hurt you?”

“No, no.”

“You sure?”

The lady, short with gray hair, wasn’t the least bit fazed, and without even bothering to reply she scurried on to some store. Elliot, however, just stood there. Oh, brother. His peripheral vision was the pits and getting worse not by the week but by the day. You just gotta remember to turn your head side to side, he told himself. Scan. You gotta scan, man. Scan from left to right, right to left.

Jerome’s was one of the fanciest restaurants downtown, a smart place known for its elegant atmosphere, its Paris-trained chef, and the wine. A great list. Fabulous reds, the best in town. No sandwich joint, this was where top execs came to linger over pheasant consomme, medallions of lamb, and corporate strategies. In the evening the place filled with first the pretheater crowd and later the wealthy romantics and still later the sopranos, baritones, actors, and rock stars who sought out anything but flyover food. Elliot himself had waited on Joni Mitchell, Julie Andrews, and, with trembling hands, the hot, hot Keanu Reeves, his fave.

“Hey, Leo,” said Elliot as he cruised in the entrance.

“Elliot, how great to see you!” replied the owner, a paunchy red-haired guy, from behind a podium. “You’re looking good.”

“Feeling good.”

“Well, that’s wonderful.”

“But you know what,” said Elliot, stopping and leaning an elbow on a corner of the podium and studying the other. “You look tired. Man, are you still putting in eighty- and ninety-hour weeks?”

Leo smoothed the lapels of his crisp tuxedo, tightened his bow tie. “Something like that anyway.”

“Shame on you, Leo. You gotta get out of here. You gotta get out and take a bite of life before life eats you.”

“Ah, so says the wise man who’s here for the free lunch. Go on, get outta here,” said Leo. “We’ve got a really busy lunch hour, but why don’t you go into the kitchen and nab something to eat. Everyone will be thrilled to see you.”

“Will do.”

A waitress whooshed by. “E1, you look great!”

“Hey, Kate, feeling great.”

“Hi, Elliot, long time no see!” shouted one of the busboys.

“Hey, Rob.” And then, “Hey, Tim. Hey, Pete. Hey, Liz.”

And on and on. Elliot knew all of them, even these folks on the lunch shift. All of them except one new waitress who’d been hired after Elliot had left five months ago. He cruised into the kitchen, a cramped space packed with stainless-steel counters, huge refrigerators, and gas stoves with blazing flames. The lunch dance was just cranking up to disco speed, and lest he smash into something Elliot made a concerted effort to turn his head from side to side. You are, he told himself, the Scanman.

“Hey, Paul!” Elliot called to the chef, who was darting around.

The head chef, a stout fellow whose energy level was permanently stuck on full tilt, waved his chopping knife and managed what was almost a smile. “Have you come back to work, you lazy bum?”

“No way! I like my Rag? from a jar.”

He snarled.

Looking around, Elliot saw that the chef de cuisine and chef garde-manger were busy slicing and dicing a cornucopia of definitely non-Midwestern veggies, from huge mushrooms to furry green stalks. Everything here was made from scratch, and back in the corner the pastry chef, a young woman with a flushed red face, was furiously blowtorching ramekins of cr?me br?l?e, one by one, to a sinful crunchy brown.

“Wow, busy,” said Elliot. “And what is it, not even eleven-thirty. What do you got, a banquet or something today? This joint’s hoppin’.”

“No shit,” said Kate, a trim woman with short brown hair, coming in from behind. “Haven’t you heard?”

“No,” replied Elliot, feigning ignorance.

“Big, big V.I.P. day,” called someone else.

“Yeah,” shouted one of the waiters. “Featuring one Very Ignorant Prick in particular.”

“Cool,” said Elliot. “Who is it? Movie star?”

“If only.” Kate shook her head. “Johnny Clariton—you know, the congressman—is having a roundtable lunch here.”

“Ew, icky, the devil himself,” replied Elliot, wrinkling his nose. “Glad I don’t work here anymore.”

“And don’t I wish I had the day off. Instead, we’re going to be waiting on him and about twenty-five bigwig execs whom Clariton is coddling for donations. Five thousand bucks a plate, can you believe it?”

“Paul,” called Elliot from across the room, “be sure and cook up something yummy! Oh, and stir in a little bit of that salmonella that you, ah, hit a few patrons with every now and then.”

Paul flung a paper-thin tomato slice at him.

Kate charged off, grabbing some salt and peppers and then scurrying back into the main dining room. Elliot stood there. Not a good time to help himself to a free lunch, which the owner, Leo, always made available to Elliot—Elliot, who was getting more sympathy from more frightened people than he would ever have imagined, particularly since Curt had croaked. If they hadn’t understood before, they did now: Elliot was going to die too.

Oh, big deal, he thought with a roll of his eyes.

There was no time for such thoughts, not today. And there was no time to grab a meal. Much too chaotic. Everyone looked so uptight, so busy. He drifted over to the stainless-steel bread drawers, slid one of them open, and pulled out a hot roll. This would do, he thought, munching down on it and glancing around. He really couldn’t stay anyway. Just get in, do your business, and get out, those were his instructions.

Elliot backed away, turned his head from side to side, and took it all in: the madhouse kitchen with the stereotypical uptight chef, the stereotypical gay waiters, the stereotypical pretty and fun waitresses. He loved them all, didn’t want to hurt them. That was the one thing he’d insisted on when they were planning all this—nothing that would injure any of his friends. They were way cool.

But it should be okay. It really should.

So, carrying his backpack, he slipped down the side hall as if he were going to the employees’ John. Instead, he stopped in front of the third door, glanced once toward the kitchen, and ducked in. It was the supply room, with paper towels and sponges and dish soap and chemicals lining one wall, stacks of clean laundry on another, and bags of soiled linens on the floor. Oh, yes, he’d been right, this would do nicely.

Working quickly, Elliot did exactly as he’d been told, unzipping his backpack, reaching in, and pressing the START button on the device. Immediately the red digital numbers came to life and started ticking down the seconds. Very good. He then zipped up the backpack and buried it beneath several bags of linen. Simple. No one was going to find it back here. Nope, not in the next ninety minutes anyway. He checked the scene one last time, smiled to himself—if only everything else went so easily—and opened the door.

Stepping into the hall, he slammed right into Hal, one of the waiters and an old pal.

“I’m sorry, Hal!” exclaimed Elliot. “I’m really sorry. Did you know I’m going blind? I mean, I really am. It’s this stupid cytomegalovirus retinitis—it’s a herpes virus, and it’s eating at my eyes. You know, blurriness, floaters. Actually, I’m losing my peripheral vision and I didn’t even see you.”

“Don’t worry, man,” replied Hal, a tiny guy, who was unable to hide his surprise at Elliot’s candor.

Elliot started squinting and looking around. “I thought this was the guys’ room. But obviously—”

“No, it’s the next door.”

“Oh, cool. I see. Yeah, I see. Right there.” Elliot put on a big grin. “Thanks, man.”

As Hal scurried away, Elliot went into the men’s room. It always freaked people out whenever he talked about AIDS or any of his symptoms, but he didn’t care. He believed in being real up-front about the whole thing, about not hiding what was wrong or how it was affecting him. His appetite, or lack thereof. His loss of weight. His pathetic eyes. And how he’d been on AZT four or five years ago, but hadn’t been real careful about taking the pills—okay, okay, so he skipped a day every now and then—and hence the virus within his body had developed a resistance to the drug. He was as frank as he could be because, after all, he’d contracted a virus and people needed to know about it, understand it. HIV and AIDS were everywhere, lurking unseen more often than not. So if he could make it a little more visible, that would make it a whole lot more real. He was the first to admit that it was a brutal disease, and if he could shove people’s faces in it, well, then, maybe they’d be a little more careful when it came to sex. Besides, there’d been enough shame in his life—he was one of those queers who’d played with dolls when he was a little kid, ever since he was five or so, and he’d hid that part of him for years. But not now. No more hiding anything. Particularly not with AIDS. No way was he going to keep quiet, no way was he going to make a silent exit. No, he thought with a sly grin, he couldn’t wait to tell his story, blurt it out to the entire country. Sure, he was pissed about having AIDS and everything, but he had his own agenda, and he was going out in fucking style. Big fucking style.

Exiting the restroom, Elliot passed down the short hall and back into the kitchen, where Paul was barking orders, pissed about the quality of the salmon, stressed to the max by the five-thousand-dollar plates he had to get out in a half hour. The saut? chef was going full tilt, madly adding some twenty-five-year-old balsamic vinegar to a saut? pan of delicate mushrooms. And the pastry chef, looking more like a spot welder at this point, was torching the last of the cr?me br?l?es.

Taking it all in, Elliot departed, amazed at how quickly life could spoil.

You didn’t have to
be a rocket scientist to figure out that Cindy Wilson’s career at Channel 7 was in a distinct nosedive, and no one knew it better than Cindy herself. In fact, she’d been slipping ever since the Todd Mills fiasco last year. There’d been all that botched business with him and that murder, and instead of taking over for Todd Mills as the lead reporter on WTCN’s CrimeEye segment, the whole concept had been canned. Cindy still couldn’t believe it. She’d been so sure she’d take Todd’s spot and that would prove to be her stepping stone to an Emmy or two, just as it had been Todd’s, but instead management had bagged the whole bit. Too much Todd’s, they’d said. People associated it entirely with him. Better to start something else than try and relaunch it with a new lead reporter.

Bullshit, thought Cindy Wilson, an attractive blond woman, as she sat in her tiny office at the station. When it looked as if Todd Mills was guilty as sin, Roger Locker, the station director, had made the decision to go after Todd hook, line, sinker, rod, and fishing boat. It was news, hot news, and it was far better to cast the first stone than sit there with mud on their faces at having a murderous reporter on their staff. True, Cindy had been in on the decision and had been the reporter covering it—which might be part of why her popularity had plummeted, for at least one editorial in the gay papers had branded her a homophobe—but in any case the whole thing had backfired. Todd came out a big winner in the sympathy department, and rather than try to relaunch the CrimeEye segment without Todd and have to explain just why he was no longer working there, WTCN management decided to jettison the entire thing.

Oh, brother. Didn’t anyone out there understand that it was about ratings and viewership, that by going after Todd she’d just been doing her job? And didn’t anyone out there understand that she was just as good as that squirrelly Todd Mills? Better, even. She didn’t push things like Todd did. She didn’t try to expose the ugly underside of things. No, she gave people a story that made them hopeful, that made them feel good. And recently, as a matter of fact, it seemed that viewers were appreciating her more and more. At least until Todd Mills reappeared last month on WLAK.

The return of Todd Mills, she thought with a slow shake of her head.

That jerk cast such a big shadow. He was cute, he was smart, nice voice, broad shoulders, and so on and so on, but so what? She’d never bring in her personal life as he had, she’d never let her problems air like a soap opera for everyone to see. Yet he had, and look at where it had gotten him. Channel 10 had thrown all sorts of money at him, and his first story for them, the one on the Megamall, hadn’t gotten so much advance publicity or so many viewers because Todd had done such a great job and it was such a hot piece. No, it got all that attention because everyone wanted to witness the reappearance of Todd Mills, the infamous homosexual. So maybe that was what it was all about after all, mused Cindy. Sex. What was she supposed to do, then, go out and sleep with the governor?

It just wasn’t fair. How was an ambitious woman like her supposed to make it? And on top of it all, she thought as her anger rose to a pitch, Todd was getting an exclusive interview with Johnny Clariton!

Cindy Wilson shuffled through some papers atop her desk. Channel 10 had somehow finagled the interview, then assigned the one reporter who was most certain to clash with the congressman. And it was going to be hot, she was sure of it. Lots of people would watch. It’d be a tough interview, but Todd would do it and do it beautifully. She was certain he would, for Cindy had worked in his shadow—literally so because Todd was such a hog he barely shared the spotlight with anyone—and she’d watched him burrow in, bite hold, and not let go until his point was made. Which meant lots more people would admire Todd Mills.