Hostage (30 page)

He leaned against a column, burying his face in the crook of his right arm, and just stood there sobbing. This joint was just so beautiful, so perfect, but it wasn’t the real world, was it? Hell, no. He recalled the later images of little Chris, so shrunken with AIDS, so bald, so listless, as she faded from life. And then came the all-too-recent image of Tina, so skinny as she wasted away. Elliot sobbed and gasped for air, then sobbed some more. True, no one was getting off the face of this here earth alive, but it just wasn’t fair that Tina and her baby girl had to die like that. Nor was it fair that he was headed that way, deflating into nothingness, dying like a pathetic balloon. Really, the only question left in his life was when would it happen—would he croak tomorrow, next week, next month? Maybe he should start taking bets, run his own little Lotto, call it something simple like Kick the Bucket. He could see it now, death driving straight toward him, transforming from mirage to reality. Yes, and there was no hiding, no running. Virtually no escaping, no matter what he did. Yup, his end was fast approaching, of that Elliot was quite sure.

Blech, he thought, first mopping his eyes, then blotting his snotty nose. He glanced up, scanned one way up the hall, turned around, scanned the other way. Gentle, soothing music slipped this way and that through the humongous building. But there was something missing in the Megamall: people. The beautiful corridor scattered with clumps of bushes and benches was totally devoid of shoppers. Oh, that was it, realized Elliot, hearing a vacuum cleaner in the distance. The joint wasn’t open yet.

“Hey, you, what are you doing here?” blasted a voice out of nowhere.

Elliot turned to see a brick shithouse of a hunk standing there in a fascistlike uniform of black pants and white shirt, a badge on the shirt pocket, a walkie-talkie strapped to his belt, and a sneer on his big boyish face. Uh-oh, thought Elliot. This could be big trouble. Matthew wasn’t going to like this.

“Me?” said Elliot, struggling to smile at the dairy boy cum high-school wrestler cum security guard. “Nothing.”

“How did you get in here? The mall ain’t open for another hour.”

Okay, okay, okay: Think. Elliot wiped his nose, his eyes. Yes, he looked exactly like what he was: a blubbering sissy. So how was he going to explain himself?

“Haven’t you heard what… what happened at the airport?” began Elliot, puffing out his lower lip.

“Huh?”

“The crash—man, a plane crashed this morning.”

“You’re kidding!” gasped the astonished guard.

“No, it hit the ground and smashed all over the runway. Didn’t you hear the explosion?”

“No! Was everyone… everyone killed?”

Elliot nodded and put his hand to his eyes. “Including Mom.”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry.”

He sniffled. “And now I have to go tell Sis. That’s her Hoovering down there.”

The imposing hulk suddenly turned into a big teddy bear, tromping right up to Elliot and throwing an arm over his shoulders. Elliot fell into the big, hard chest, nuzzled right up to the fellow, and thought: yum. Oh, but if only this butch wonder boy could really make everything right. Granted, the guy’s cologne smelled a bit like bug spray, but…

The guard asked, “Like, what can I do for you?”

His voice faint, Elliot muttered, “Oh, nothing.”

“Here, well, let me at least take you down to your sister.”

“No, no, no!” He pushed against the solid pecs and out of the embrace. “I’ll go myself. This… this isn’t going to be pretty. Mom and Sis were like sisters, you know.”

“It’s okay, man. Let me help you. Maybe your sis is going to, I don’t know, faint or somethin’.”

“No, no, no. You’re too kind. This is a family matter, something I have to do myself.”

“Yeah, sure, you bet.”

“So, I’ll… I’ll just be going.” Elliot suddenly stopped. “Or do I have to wait until the mall opens?”

“Heck, no.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, I’m sorry for you.”

“Yeah.”

Forgetting about the 9 AM broadcast, Elliot moped along, glanced back once, saw the hulk standing there gabbing on his walkie-talkie. Oh, brother, he thought, that was close enough. Too close. And when he reached a break in the stores that featured a staircase, an escalator, and a bank of elevators all leading upward to more, more, more shopping orgasms, Elliot cut to the right. He walked quickly past the stairs and entered the amusement park, an enormous square area filled with trees, a roller coaster, a log-flume ride, sundry other rides, and way, way over there, so far that it looked small, a towering Ferris wheel. Wow. Elliot took it all in with one long, sweeping gaze, then followed an arching pathway past a popcorn stand, turned left on a path that led through a grove of trees and plants, and then plunked himself down in a hidden corner. Even if Mr. Future Farmer of America—a.k.a. Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jr.—back there wised up to the status of things out at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, he wouldn’t be able to find Elliot squirreled away like this in a corner of the amusement park. Nope. No one would. And Elliot was going to be a good camper. Yep. He was going to sit right here until the Megamall opened its megadoors to the megaconsumers, until they rushed in here and started sucking up their clothes, their jewelry, their knickknacks, their lawn mowers. He’d keep nice and out of sight; then when there were others around he’d get his juice and muffin and slip back down to the tomb of doom.

Elliot scanned from left to right and his eyes hit upon a gorgeous explosion of color: bright yellow mums.

Well, thought Elliot, staring over at a pot of flowers next to a bench, those were pretty, perky things, those mums. So bright. So brilliantly yellow. Those would do. Tina-hon would’ve liked those a lot. Big blooms, lots and lots of festive petals. Hmm. He glanced through some bushes, scanned. No security guards. No what-do-you-call-’ems. No sanitation engineers. Yes, he needed flowers and God was giving him flowers. Beautiful ones for darling Tina. See, everything was going to work out just fine. He had just enough money for juice and a muffin—and here were the flowers he needed. Cool. Elliot got up, pushing himself out of his little hiding place, and went directly to the pretty flowers. Peering over the pot of mums, he thought, yes, this one would do. And so he broke off that flower, careful to keep the stem nice and long. Yes, that one too. Oh, and this flower was so nice and huge and beautiful. Okay. And that one and that one and that one.

Pretty soon the plant was all but bald and Elliot had a nice bouquet. Well, pretty nice, he thought. Tina, actually, deserved better. A huge armful of flowers, that was what she needed. Yes, beautiful Tina, the onetime model, should be buried in flowers. And so he turned his head, scanned from side to side. And sure enough there were two more pots of bright yellow, big, gorgeous mums. Without another thought Elliot darted across the path, plucked all those flowers, spied another pot, then broke off those flowers one by one. Well, this was getting to be a lot, almost enough, and then he eyed one more burst of color. Okay, just one more, and so—

“Hey, you, what the hell are you doing?” shouted a guard.

Elliot glanced across a little pond filled with goldfish and saw another one of those uptight guys—this one old and fat—in tight black polyester pants and white shirt.

“What? Who? Me?” gasped Elliot.

Into his walkie-talkie the guard barked, “Hey, we got trouble over here, a real nut case.”

And when the guard started running around the pond toward him, Elliot screamed out, threw the flowers into the air, and, at as fast a pace as he dared, took off.

He punched off the
VCR and sat there staring at the blank screen, the headphones still clasped over his ears. Todd didn’t know what to do. It couldn’t be anywhere else, and if they were holding Clariton at the Megamall, didn’t Rawlins have to be there too? Hell, where else could he be?

Someone started banging on the door, and the metal mini-blinds banged and rattled.

“Todd!” called someone, twisting the door handle and trying to get in. “Todd, open up!”

It was Frank, the assignment editor. Oh, shit. Todd didn’t care if Dan Rather was out there in person, he didn’t want to do another interview. Not now. Not today. There was too much else in his life that wasn’t making sense.

“Todd, dammit all!”

He ripped off the earphones, rolled his chair over to the door, and twisted open the lock. Frank immediately burst into the room, followed by Craig, the producer. Todd pushed himself back, rolling all the way to the VCR.

“Todd, we’ve got to get this straightened out with Rather’s producer,” began Frank, clearly perturbed. “We can’t just blow it off like this. I mean, you do know what this kind of exposure is going to do for your career, don’t you?”

Sick of hearing that, Todd sat there, a flat expression on his face. Who cared about the frigging networks?

“Gee, and I don’t think you want to blow off the FBI either,” said Craig, unable to hide his irritation. “It just wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Frank said, “Besides, we’ve got to stay ahead of Channel Seven. You have heard about their morning broadcast, haven’t you?”

Todd froze. “What?”

“They’re running promos saying they’re going to do a special report from Cindy Wilson’s hospital room at ten this morning. That’s in about a half hour. They’re claiming she’s going to identify one of Clariton’s kidnappers and provide some big break in the case.”

Todd bowed his head into his right hand. Okay, he knew what was up. Cindy was going to give a description of Matthew, not only as of yesterday with his shaved head and shrunken face, but what he looked like in the picture with Curt. The sixty-four-trillion-dollar question was whether she would divulge just how she got this information. She might claim she’d garnered all this via her expert journalistic skills as they’d dragged her away with Clariton. Or she might claim that she’d gotten it from one person in particular, namely Todd Mills, who’d kindly stopped by last night with a nice color snapshot of said kidnapper.

Oh, shit, thought Todd. In the virtuous interest of her career Cindy Wilson had screwed him over when Michael had been murdered, and she might very well do so again. She’d said as much last night. Her big story might not be about Clariton and his abductors. No, depending on how piqued her trashy tabloid skills were and how much she’d already revealed, her story might be about Channel 10’s star reporter withholding critical information from the police and the FBI. He wouldn’t put it past her. In fact if she was half as conniving, half as good, half as smart as Todd thought, Cindy would do just that, implicating Todd for no other reason than to get him yanked in for questioning. That in turn would not only offer Cindy Wilson and WTCN a searingly hot story—something juicy like STAR REPORTER PART OF GAY CONSPIRACY—but put Todd, her competition, out of commission for a few days. Dan Rather’s people would drop Todd in a millisecond.

“Listen,” began Todd, wondering just how the hell he was going to explain this, or even if he could, “I went down to the hospital to see Cindy Wilson last night.”

“Oh, no, this isn’t good,” muttered Frank, shaking his head.

One hand to his forehead, Craig said, “This sounds very mucky. Am I right? Are you mucky with Cindy Wilson? You are, aren’t you? Oh, God, I just sense it.”

“Perhaps.”

“Uh-oh,” moaned the producer. “What is it, Todd? You know something, don’t you?”

“Perhaps.” He checked his watch; in a little over thirty minutes he very well might be tumbling from star to traitor. “I need to be real up front with you—there’s a bunch of stuff I need to explain. Why don’t you bring the FBI guys down to the conference room? I’ll meet you there in a couple of minutes.”

“Okay, two minutes,” said Craig. “No more.”

“Don’t worry. I just want to get some stuff together to show you.”

“Oh, God. I think I have a headache. And I think it’s going to get a whole lot worse.”

“It just might,” Todd replied.

Rising from his chair, he shooed them out and shut the door. Todd then returned to the VCR, took out the tape he’d made months ago at the Megamall, and went over to his standing file cabinet. He pulled out the second drawer, thumbed to an obscure file, and dropped in the tape. Okay, he thought as he slid shut the file drawer, no one was going to find that sucker, at least not for a good long while. Now what? He didn’t have any choice, so how was he going to do this? Right. He touched his sport coat. Yes, his wallet was there in the inside breast pocket. And his keys were in the pocket of his pants. He then grabbed a coffee cup he’d used days ago that still had a bit of sludgy coffee at the bottom, swung open his office door, and headed into the newsroom.

“Just going to get some more coffee,” called Todd over the tops of a couple of cubicles.

Frank, pacing anxiously behind the elevated assignment desk, glared at him. “Just one thing—don’t ruin my career too, okay? That’s all I ask.”

Todd nodded, continued through the cubicles, and crossed to the commissary area. The large, industrial-sized coffee urns were to his left; Todd turned to the small sink on his right, rinsed his coffee mug, grabbed a paper towel, and slowly dried the cup. Glancing back into the newsroom, he saw that neither Frank nor the producer was coming this way. Todd then went to the coffee urn, pulled on the red handle, and half-filled his mug. He took a sip, glanced around. Two associate producers sat in their cubicles to his right, a secretary was typing something, but all of them were much too busy to take notice.