Innuendo (13 page)

“Listen,” began Rawlins, “I don't want to get into anything too personal, but—”

“I'm sorry, but I can't tell you my name.”

“No, of course not. Of course you don't have to.”

“And if you're trying to trace this call, it won't work,” he said matter-of-factly. “I'm not at home.”

“Please, you don't have anything to worry about.”

“I just wanted to tell you about something that might be important.”

“And we appreciate—”

“I was down there,” said the tip caller quickly, “and I saw this guy who was completely bald throw something in the lake. Then he turned around and stuffed something in a garbage can. And… and then he got in his car—a white Saab convertible with a black roof— and took off. That's all.”

“That's wonderful, we really do appreciate it. I—”

“Listen, I gotta go.”

“Wait, don't hang up!”

“You don't understand.”

“Wait!”

Oh, shit, thought Rawlins, hearing the click on the other end. He'd lost him. Shit, shit, shit.

He held the receiver to his ear for a long moment, then slowly put it down, cursing himself for having come on too strongly. He'd been out of the closet for so long that he'd forgotten how frightened, how threatened, people could be by their own sexuality. Or how dangerous it could be for someone. Perhaps the tip caller was married and had kids. Or perhaps he was worried about work. Or maybe he was in the military. But Rawlins was quite sure of one thing: that guy hadn't been down in the woods taking pictures of birds or the moon. For Christ's sake, it had been going on midnight and it was a cloudy night. No, surely the caller had been tricking, surely he'd gone down there for what he couldn't or dared not get elsewhere, sexual contact with another man. Maybe he'd had sex with this bald guy. Maybe not. Regardless, he'd witnessed something he wasn't supposed to have.

Angry at himself for having lost the tipster, Rawlins sat there shaking his head, yet knowing what he had to do next. It might be nothing, but he certainly couldn't ignore it.

Right, time to go fishing.

Todd stared at the
piece of paper and couldn't help but grin. This was none other than Tim Chase's address here in Minneapolis. And none other than Tim Chase himself, one of Hollywood's biggest stars, had invited Todd over for a glass of wine. About nine tonight. Unbelievable.

Unable to wipe the stupid smile off his face, he rolled back his chair and stepped out of his office. Still shocked, he stopped dead, stared down at the paper, read it over again. No, he wasn't delusional. Yes, this might actually happen. And as the thrill of it all started pumping through his body, he cut through the newsroom, out the side door, down the corridor, and proceeded directly toward the conference room, where this morning's meeting was still in progress. Holy shit, he couldn't wait to tell them. Were they going to love this or what? Management would wet their collective pants.

Turning into the room, he saw them all sitting there, a stuffy hodgepodge of decision makers who were deciding what was news and what wasn't. A couple of heads turned his way, including the steely white hair of Bill Summers, the executive producer, who all but glared at him. That guy, thought Todd, didn't know shit about what it was like to go in front of a camera, to have your work judged every time you appeared on TV not in terms of quality but in terms of clothing and the way you smiled. He didn't know a thing about hunting for a story, finding a source, or digging out the truth. All that jerk cared about was what brought in the viewers. All he wanted were good numbers, big numbers.

And damned if Todd was now going to bring in news of his possible interview with Tim Chase.

For one thing, it was still just that, a possibility. After all, tonight was just a preliminary meeting, a chance to talk over a glass of wine. There were to be no cameras, no tape recorders. In other words, it was a test in faint disguise. Only if Todd passed—i.e., only if Tim Chase, Inc., thought Todd would and could deliver the right kind of image that would enhance his fame and fortune—would he get the chance to do the real interview. And if Todd flunked, then that was it, bye-bye. And if the latter came true, if Todd didn't get the interview, he sure as hell didn't want to walk back in here and say, Oops, sorry, I lost Tim Chase.

Second, Todd was sure of it, certain that Bill Summers hated him. The glare was that strong. The judgmental casting of the eyes that bitter. Did Summers simply dislike gays or had Todd done something specific that had pissed off this particularly powerful person? Whichever it was, nearly every time Todd saw Summers he wondered why the hell he'd been hired in the first place and if it had been against Summers's strong objection. Regardless, Todd didn't want to give him any reason whatsoever to add a black star to Todd's scorecard. Which meant he'd come back to them only when the interview was a sure thing.

Sobered, Todd turned away and started back down the dimly lit hall. So how was he going to do this, all the things that needed to be covered today? He needed to get a VOSOT ready for the five P.M. and a package for the six. But what about the late news,
10@10?
Who knew what they were deciding back in that meeting, whether or not they wanted a piece for then. If they did, there was no way it could be live. No, they could always run a tape of the story, because Todd for sure wasn't going to be around, he was going to be having his wine with Tim Chase. And if there were any problems he'd work it out with Tom Busch, the news director. Sure, Todd could confide in him, tell him what he was nurturing.

There was no doubt about it, the Andrew Lyman story was going to take up the vast majority of the day. Once Bradley arrived they'd have to dig in, Bradley working on the photography, Todd on both the concept and the text. Glancing at his watch, however, Todd realized the photographer wouldn't be in for another hour, perhaps two. Which left Todd a bit of time to prepare for tonight's meeting with Chase.

No, he thought, trying to imagine what a glass of wine with a Hollywood star actually meant, he wouldn't have to come with a host of prepared questions. Nor would he have to be ready to conduct the perfect interview. Todd just had to be sharp. Alert. And on guard. Right, he had to think in opposite terms, for the truth of it was that Todd himself was the person scheduled to be checked out and in essence interviewed tonight.

His pace definitely slower, he returned to the newsroom, which was slowly filling with associate producers and reporters, then circled the elevated assignment desk and went to the rear of the room, where he grabbed a coffee mug. Turning to one of the large stainless-steel urns, he poured himself a cup, glanced at the gathering of newspapers, including
The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal,
and
Los Angeles Times
—all of them there to keep the staff abreast of world developments—then headed back to his office.

As he passed between the cubicles and toward the glass walls of his narrow office, Todd found himself wondering what the real Tim Chase was like, then realized he would obviously soon find out, more or less, anyway. Which was weird. While Todd had met a few famous people in his life, from politicians to newspeople, he'd never met one who was truly larger-than-life, one whose image had captured both the imaginations and hearts of so many millions. So who would be there tonight, just Tim? Tim and his publicist? Tim and his wife? Or would Tim merely make a token appearance and disappear? That, Todd thought, was a very real possibility. Tim might just come in, shake Todd's hand, smile that charming grin, perhaps proffer a wink, and then his publicist and someone like his agent might hammer out how Todd would conduct an interview
if,
they would probably say, hanging out the big carrot, Todd were so lucky to get an interview with superstar Tim Chase. Recalling an interview he'd done with conservative Congressman Johnny Clariton—an interview that of course had ended in total mayhem—Todd remembered all the restrictions and conditions his people had tried to get in place.

Damn, thought Todd. He should have asked Melissa more questions. He should have inquired as to who would be there tonight, what they wanted to know about him, what he might expect. Keeping Todd in the dark, however, was probably exactly what Melissa had wanted.

He suddenly felt the fool. Although he'd always been fascinated by the endless rumors of who was gay and who wasn't in Hollywood, he'd never been much of a star fucker. In other words, he'd never been driven to the point of obsession, to the point of sexual desires and fantasies. Or had he? After all, just why the hell had he pursued an interview with Tim Chase? Exactly what had gotten him this far? It was, of course, that stupid story Marcia had told him about Tim Chase having a same-sex lover. So what did Todd want to do? What was his goal? Out one of the biggest stars? Prove that Tim Chase was no god, but someone just like Todd? Did Todd need that kind of assurance, that kind of validation?

Well, you idiot, you need to go in for that glass of wine with a lot better reason than that. You need a real, solid angle, a specific idea of where you'd take an interview with Tim Chase, or you're going to be chewed up and spit out. Exactly You sure as hell better get your head screwed on for this one, he told himself as he went into his office and sat down. Make no doubt about it, tonight wasn't going to be some nice little social call. Tim Chase wasn't just some cute guy. He was a multimillion-dollar industry, and Chase and his keepers sure as hell weren't going to let some shit from fly-over land do even the slightest bit of damage to a golden egg that was all about one thing and one thing only: money.

He took a deep breath, cleared his head. Throughout his career, Todd had faith in only one method, preparation. It was, he had come to realize, the lone rule that had saved him over and over again, not simply that he should go into an interview armed with a number of facts, but that he should search for a profound knowledge and understanding of the subject at hand. Like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, he'd gotten out of countless binds right in the middle of an interview by recalling a certain item he'd read somewhere. Better yet, being well prepared let him be flexible and creative, sparking new angles mid-conversation. Simply, Todd was well aware that the more he knew going into a story, the better the end result.

This would be no different.

Lifting his briefcase onto his lap, he found the inch-thick file he'd started months ago. It was all about Tim Chase, every piece of paper therein, and from the top Todd took a copy of his original request for an interview. No doubt about it, he realized as he now reread the letter, he'd been a tad cavalier, for in all actuality he had expected to be declined. Yes, Todd had played the gay card right off the bat. Using the “g” word right there in the first paragraph, he told them he was a gay reporter, said he was interested in how Tim Chase would portray a gay man, and wondered, too, how Tim Chase's fictional family in the film would deal with AIDS. That alone, Todd remembered thinking, probably would scare them away, for there was nothing that sent a publicist—particularly a Hollywood publicist—running faster and farther than those subjects. Oddly, however, that instead seemed to be what had caught their interest, or so Todd was guessing.

Tossing the letter onto his desk, Todd came to the real meat, a stack of articles he'd pulled from the Internet as well as Lexis-Nexis, the news service that had available in its memory just about everything printed. There were, of course, a number of bios, many so saccharine and banal that they were probably done for a legion of teen fans. Not the least bit critical or even questioning, they'd surely been written by a publicist or someone at a public relations firm who had probably never met Tim Chase, nor would even get close to him. In fact, they seemed obviously written to fuel the frenzy, to further the stardom of Tim Chase, to give him allure and magic that he very well might not, in all actuality, possess in real life.

Most of the bios began with Tim Chase's reportedly difficult childhood, which had, they claimed, been the source of his profound inner strength and resolve. His father, a traveling salesman for a lubricants firm in central Ohio, had been on the road constantly, but then was killed on his way home for the Fourth of July when his Oldsmobile was struck by a semi-truck. Tim had been eleven, his kid brother seven, and from there it had all been downhill. His beautiful mother, once the perfect housewife, had fallen apart, washing away her sorrow with gin-and-tonics and handfuls of valium. By the time Tim was thirteen, his mother's alcoholism was so severe that the county took steps to place little Tim and his brother, Greg, in foster care. However, Tim, the man of the house now, would have none of that, and somehow found a wealthy sponsor, once a lush herself, to pay for his mother's treatment and also to pay for summer camp for the little boys. Eight weeks later, with the mom just released and the boys just returned from the woods of northern Michigan, the slow, difficult task of rebuilding a family began. Tim took a job at a car wash, his mom took a job at a shoe store, young Greg concentrated on school. Tim soon took a second job, then a third, all in a desperate attempt to earn enough money to keep the family together. And somehow he did. His beautiful mother stayed dry but depressed, his little brother flourished in his studies and eventually became a doctor, a dermatologist to be precise. Tim, however, paid a price, for his school grades were nothing less than awful. While many thought him dumb, he was simply exhausted from working so many jobs, and barely finished high school. He made a brief stab at a junior college, then did the only spontaneous thing he'd purportedly ever done, he hitchhiked west with a buddy of his. A month later he found himself in Los Angeles without enough money to pay for a meal, let alone a place to stay or a bus ticket home. Desperate, he auditioned for a commercial. And a star was born. Only in Hollywood. Only in America.