Innuendo (41 page)

Holding out a mask, Tim said, “Here, I want you to put this on.”

“What?”

“Please? Just put it on and let me do everything. Let me undress you, let me take you all the way.

It wasn't a Halloween disguise, a black mask with slits cut for the eyes. No, it was a black blindfold with an elastic band.

“Are you sure?” said Todd.

“Absolutely. It'll heighten all your other senses, particularly your sense of touch. Here, let me do it.”

“Well…”

Todd lowered his head slightly and let Tim slip it on, placing the mask over his eyes and the band around the back of his head. In an instant, the soft light disappeared and Todd tumbled into a world of darkness. Blindly reaching out, he groped for Tim's arm.

“Okay, now what?”

“Just let me do it all.”

Vulnerable and helpless, Todd stood there as Tim started kissing his neck as lightly as a manic butterfly. An instant later he sensed one of Chase's meaty hands painfully flutter across his crotch. Blindfolded though he was, Todd saw it all in the darkness of his mind's eye, and he rode that vibrant image, that wild ride of lust, seeing but not seeing, witnessing but not, as Tim Chase, naked and stoked to the max, hovered all over and around him. It was more than Todd could bear, and he naturally reached up, begging to stroke the body and the tool lingering just inches before him.

Firmly pushing his hand away, Chase, his voice deep and dark, said, “You can't do anything—I'm in charge.”

As unbearable as it was, Todd simply stood there as Tim slowly peeled the last of his shirt from his body, dropping it on the floor. And then he let himself be led along, followed deeper into this black charade.

“Where are—”

“Sh. Just do as I say—sit down.”

Blindly complying, Todd let Tim lower him to the floor, where he sat on a long cushion. Tim then pushed him back, forcing him to lie, and started fumbling with Todd's belt. Todd reached down to help, to speed up this painfully slow process.

Batting away Todd's hand, Tim shouted, “I'm in charge!”

In an instant Todd understood just how terrified Chase was of how people would see him. Hence the blindfold—I can see you, you can't see me. Hence the control—I'll say when and where and why.

Oh, God…

He thought about Rawlins, where they were headed. Or weren't. Everything between them had been so perfect until a farm boy and an actor had come into their lives and thrown everything askew. And now this, his conscience pathetically moaned as his body beaded with silky sweat. What was he doing? Why the hell had he agreed to come here?

But then of course Tim rubbed that smooth, gorgeous face on the hair around and above Todd's navel, and Todd was right back there, right back in a whirlpool of lust. And before Todd knew it, Tim was pinning Todd's arms up and behind his head and mounting Todd.

Todd heard it first, the sound of footsteps on the patio. He flinched, struggled to get up, but Tim forced him down.

“I've got you!”

“But—”

“Don't move!”

And then a voice behind both of them loudly ordered, “That's right, don't move! Don't either one of you fucking move an inch!”

But Tim did just that, he rolled off Todd, grabbed a towel, clumsily wrapping it around his waist.

“I mean it, Tim, just stay right there or I'll blow your fucking brains out!”

Todd ripped off the blindfold and sat up. A dark unseen figure stood in the doorway, the gun in his hand perfectly obvious. Todd couldn't see the face, but of course it was him, of course he'd come spying on them.

“This time you're not going to get away with it, Tim. You're not going to pin it on someone like Vic.”

“Don't be ridiculous!”

“You're not going to get away with it because when you fucked Andrew you left your sperm and your hair and your stupid fingerprints all over him and everything else in that rat hole of an apartment. I know how you work, Tim. I know very well.”

“Fuck you!”

“You can't bring boys to your own house because someone might see. So Vic finds them, blindfolds them, and then you screw ’em and walk away.”

Todd's eyes were trained on the figure as it moved into the pool room and as the dim light began to glow on the handsome face of Tim Chase's former lover, Rob Scott. Yes, it was exactly as Todd had surmised after seeing his picture in
The National Times.

“I knew you'd do something like that, Tim, like screw Andrew Lyman,” said Scott, amused by his own brilliance, “so I stole your knife and then I waited… and followed you and did the terrible little deed moments after you left.”

“You bastard!”

“Actually, I thought it was kind of brilliant. Unfortunately the police are about to arrest the wrong guy, so I'm going to have to do it again—I'm going to have to kill your little fuck buddy here. Only this time I'm going to do it a little differently—I'm not only going to kill this guy you're about to screw, I'm going to kill you too. That way there'll be no questions at all, it'll be perfectly clear to the cops. And eventually they'll blame you for that kid's death too. Isn't that great? In the end of ends, the world's going to learn exactly what I learned—that their hero's not only a faggot, but a real son of a bitch. What do you think of that, hey?”

Todd didn't doubt him, not for an instant. He could hear the desperation in his voice, sense the determination in his stance. Oh, shit, why had he ever gotten involved with Tim Chase in the first place?

Taking another step into the pool room, Rob Scott trained his gun on Todd, and said, “You know, I'm going to like doing this. It's always been a fantasy of mine—granted a dark one—to walk in and find my lover screwing someone else. I always pictured myself going ballistic, which is exactly what I'm going to do. Ta-ta, Todd, you're first. It's been nice knowing you, however brief.”

Todd's body flash-flooded with panic. No, this wasn't supposed to happen, no way. This wasn't part of the plan. They'd talked it through, worked out every detail, tried to anticipate how it might come down, and things definitely weren't supposed to go this far. Yet apparently they'd misjudged, horribly so, and rolling on his side, Todd curled into a ball. And the very next second there was indeed a blast of a gun, the sound of which exploded in the room. Todd shouted out, braced himself for the agonizing pain.

Instead, there was nothing.

As his pulse roared and sweat beaded on his forehead, Todd looked over at Tim, who stood paralyzed, the towel tight now around his waist. Todd then looked at the figure of Rob Scott, who stumbled back, grabbed for one of the French doors, and finally fell to the tile floor and lay there quite still.

Seeing two men rush from the patio into the room, Todd shouted, “Shit, Rawlins, I thought you were going to let him really do it!”

While Foster, his gun still drawn, stopped at the body, Rawlins rushed straight to Todd.

“You okay?” demanded Rawlins.

Nodding as he climbed to his feet, Todd replied, “Yeah, but… but that was hard, knowing that you were out there watching the whole time.”

Grabbing Todd's forearm and giving it a good solid squeeze, he said, “Well, I have to tell you it wasn't easy watching. I'll have to say this much, you're not a bad actor.”

Most of it was, of course, an act. A good part of it wasn't. But Todd would tell Rawlins that later, just as he knew Rawlins would understand. And he would, wouldn't he?

Turning around, Todd saw the lifeless body of Tim Chase's former lover, Rob Scott, sprawled on the floor. Foster, who was kneeling and pressing his hand against the man's neck, looked up and shook his head.

“He's gone.”

“Oh, God,” moaned Tim, turning away. “I didn't want it to end like this, I really didn't.”

“Of course not,” said Todd.

Tim covered his eyes with his right hand, and Todd broke away from Rawlins and went to the actor, putting his arms around him.

“I'm sorry.”

“He… he just went crazy,” mumbled Tim through his grief. “At first, you know, we were good. Really good. There was Rob and me, and Maggie and Gwen. I thought we had everything, that we had it all figured out. I don't know, I guess I was gone too much, spent too much time on the sets. I guess I was too involved in myself. Rob got into a fast crowd out there in L.A. He got into coke and then into some really hard stuff. I tried to help him… I did what I could, I really did.”

“I'm sure.”

“But he just spent everything on drugs. I told him he had to stop, that he had to get into a treatment program but… but… finally I had to throw him out. I just had to cut him off.”

Which was when, Tim had told Todd and Rawlins earlier today, Rob Scott had gone to
The National Times
and sold his story. Not only was he desperate for money, he was desperate and determined to get revenge by outing Tim Chase and ruining him completely. And in a very real way, Tim Chase was ruined, for if he was fearful before, he was ultra-paranoid now, terrified of intimacy.

There'd been no witness, no paparazzi-style photographer who'd spied Vic's comings and goings—there'd only been Rob Scott posing as such and trying his best to manipulate the sequence of events. Yes, it was clear now that Rob Scott had stolen Tim's fishing knife, used it to kill Andrew Lyman, and then returned the bloodied thing to Tim's Land Rover. Watching what Tim would do, how he would handle the situation, Rob had then followed Vic down to Lake Harriet, where he'd seen the bodyguard throw the weapon in the lake. And then…

Holding Tim in his arms, Todd thought how it might very well have worked too. It most certainly would have if the WLAK camera hadn't caught one particular person on the banks of the lake when the sheriff's team had been diving for the knife. Todd had studied the videotape of that day, of course, and had searched the faces of the onlookers, but he hadn't known who was who until he'd seen the photograph of Rob Scott in the back issue of
The National Times.
Realizing it was obviously more than a coincidence that Tim Chase's lover from California would be in Minneapolis, let alone down at Lake Harriet, Todd had called Rawlins. Surmising that Andrew Lyman's murder might very well be the work of a jealous man bent on destroying his former lover—which he'd already tried to do by cooperating with
The National Times
in the original story—Todd, Rawlins, Foster, and even Tim Chase had formulated a plan. Simply, they hoped to draw Rob Scott out by enraging him with the belief that the police were about to arrest Vic and not Tim Chase for the Lyman murder. Scott had come to Chase's mansion once to plant the knife, and they hoped he'd come back again, which he certainly had, meeting with the direst of consequences.

Tim broke away from Todd, wandering outside, where he sat on the low stone wall and buried his face in his hands. Was one of the most adored stars, wondered Todd, destined to be trapped in a bubble of loneliness, one from which he'd never be able to escape? Quite possibly.

Rawlins came up behind Todd and took him by the hand. “I checked on Jordy just a little while ago. He's awake now and he's going to be okay.”

“What happened?”

“I got a statement this afternoon from the witness who tried to stop him from jumping. Evidently, Jordy thought the guy was chasing him.”

“Oh, my God. So it was nothing? No one was after him?”

“Right.” Rawlins looked down, then raised his eyes. “Are we okay, Todd?”

None of this was going to be easy, not by any means, but he had to trust in one simple thing, and he said, “I've always loved you… and I always will.”

“Then can we start over?”

“No, Rawlins, I don't want to start over. I don't want to go back to the beginning. Besides, I don't think we can—we've learned too much. Let's just keep on going from here and eventually we'll get wherever we're supposed to. Deal?”

“You bet.”

From there the night of course proceeded the way these things were wont to do. Foster and Rawlins rolled the Lyman case into this one, and they went about it all according to the book. First came the team from the Bureau of Investigation, who filmed and photographed, dusted and collected. And when they were done several hours later, the Medical Examiner came and removed the body of Rob Scott, all of which was caught on film by the throng of media folk smashed against the iron fence of the Mount Curve mansion leased to movie star Tim Chase.

By virtue of his promise to Tim, Todd gave up the story completely. In spite of that, WLAK management and every other reporter in town tried to get something out of Todd, some kind of inside scoop, some infinitesimal tidbit, but Todd was mum, completely so. In fact, he took the following week off and hid at Rawlins's duplex apartment, watching somewhat amusedly yet ultimately sadly as the truth was blotted out by a variation on the real story—cooked up by Tim Chase's publicity people of course—and spread across the country and around the world. Fearing a psychotic fan, the star's spokesperson claimed, actor Tim Chase proved himself a real-life hero, slipping his wife and son and nanny out of the house, then offering himself as bait for a police trap. The only quasi-mention of Todd was one journal, which stated that Chase had been warned of the danger by a local (and unnamed) television reporter.

Yes, with headlines like “A Real-Life Action Hero, Chase Protects Wife, Son, & Home From Psycho Stalker,” the disinformation was gobbled up by Tim Chase's legions of fans, leaving Todd to wonder who were the real heroes and the real victims in this strange world.