“Who are you?”
“That's for you to figure out.”
Todd said, “But—”
“Here, try to guess this one, you moron: Either brother or sister, I am neither.” He laughed. “Or am I either?” He laughed again. ”Ta-ta.”
Desperate not to lose him, Todd blurted out, “I think this is a crank call.”
There was nothing, and then an irritated “What?”
“You've got to prove it.”
“Oh, Jesus.” A moment passed, and then the caller said, “I fired at you as you dove to the ground. And I missed on purpose, asshole.” The wispy voice laughed, said one last thing, and hung up.
Stunned, Todd was silent, then quickly said, “Hello? Hello?” He shook his head, then pushed the OFF button and folded up the phone. “Crap, he hung up on me.”
Right by Todd's side, Rawlins looked at the scribbles on the napkins and said, “Are you sure it was really him, the guy who killed Forrest?”
Todd nodded as he jotted down the last of the conversation. “It was him, all right.” Not really sure who had snared who, he shrugged and pointed down to his writing. “This is pretty much everything he said, plus …”
“Plus what?”
“The last thing he said was that if I didn't stick just to the facts, he was going to make me suffer, really suffer.”
Rawlins stared at Todd, his brow furrowed with confusion. “What's that mean?”
“Hell if I know,” said Todd, wanting to shrug it off but knowing he didn't dare.
11
Examining the black cotton jacket, Kris stood in front of one of the mirrors at Dayton's, the grand department store that had done its best to keep The Cities more or less in style since before the turn of the century. Wearing tall black boots that she'd bought from a transgender store she'd found on the Net, tight black jeans, and a skimpy white top, Kris was the very picture of youth. And, of course, lust. A hip Lolita, she mused with a grin, that was her goal. Yep. She kind of liked the way the jacket brought everything together. It had a kind of sixties, kind of Beatles cut to it. Very mod. Straight arms. Broad at the shoulders. Cut in at the waist. Then flared, which was good because it made her narrow hips, the weakest of her attributes, look broader and more feminine than they actually were. She could, she supposed, one day have hip augmentation if she wanted, but for now …
Yes, it was only eight, the store would be open another hour and a half, she could keep looking, but this might do just fine. With it on, she looked cute and perky. A little waifish, perhaps, which never hurt ‘cause the guys always liked that about her. But then she could just drop the coat—as she now did—and there she was, in the tall boots, tight jeans, and sexy top. No bra. Her hormone-induced tits poking out as best they could. And her blond hair all perked up.
Yes, she thought. Stuart Hawkins would like it very much. He'd appreciate that she would come to his place all wrapped in a summer jacket that she could drop in an instant and then display everything great about her body. Oh, yes. She'd seen him only that one time, but she knew his taste. And she was it. He didn't like women. Nope. He wanted girls, the younger the better. She'd sensed that as soon as their eyes had met over the canapés, was sure of it as he pursued her throughout that great house and into the tool room, where they'd disappeared into a vortex of desire.
She turned to the side, smoothed a wrinkle with her left palm, and smiled, still unable to believe that she'd actually passed, that Hawkins had been totally convinced. Okay, okay, so her hands weren't so great—they were a little too broad, the fingers a shade too long—but there wasn't a thing to be done there, and, besides, he hadn't picked up on them.
Funny, she thought, now clasping her hands together, she hadn't expected to hear from Travis so soon. And when asked if she could help cater a private dinner party, she'd replied without too much thought.
“Yeah, sure.”
Only then, only after she'd agreed to the work, did she learn the specifics. Her heart flinched when she heard the name. Stuart Hawkins? Of course she knew what this was all about. It had nothing to do with Travis's beautiful food. No, it had everything to do with her. With Kris. And lust.
She hadn't been able to get that adorable, boyish face out of her mind. That tall, manly figure. Those broad shoulders. The pinstripe navy-blue suit. His hot, moist mouth. The strong tongue. And as much as she'd hoped he'd forgotten her, that he'd dismissed their encounter as some stupid indiscretion, now she knew the truth: He'd been thinking of her all this time too. So did this mean this was it, the big romance she'd been wanting, searching for? Was he the one? No, of course she didn't want to have anything to do with a judge and slipping in and out the back door after midnight, for an important man like Hawkins could never be open about his relationship with a woman like Kris. Never. Some reporter would go digging and expose the pathetic muck of Kris's life. But if Stuart Hawkins really did love Kris, might he give it all up to pursue quite another dream, that of the two of them blissfully happy?
So should she go? Should she really show up at his place for what could only prove to be a night of want, of unbridled passion?
The very thought made her penis, packed so tightly in her crotch, stir with desire.
Horrified by so brutal a reminder of just who was who and what was what, Kris froze. She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Bit her lower lip. And forced herself to think of cold water and mocking, laughing voices and … and … and it worked. The penis was just an inflatable thing, and, tucked beneath her spandex undies, which of course had been strategically reinforced, it thankfully began to shrink, rapidly so in fact. Glancing down ever so carefully, she saw that she hadn't lost her feminine profile. Excellent. At least, she thought, she didn't have to deal with testicles too. That was the one good thing about not having any, that she didn't have to push them up inside herself.
But what the hell was she thinking? What kind of fantasy was she lost in? Of course she couldn't go. They'd kissed down there in that tool room. They'd embraced. And when things had gotten gloriously overheated, the only way she'd been able to keep him from reaching between her legs and discovering her secret was by going down on him. But no, that wouldn't work again. Just as she dreamed of peeling every bit of clothing from that hunky body, so did he surely envision her naked and in his arms. And she knew that could never come to pass. The last time someone had discovered that, no, she really didn't have a vagina down there had proved nothing less than disastrous. Never would she forget the look on that policeman's face. Nor would she forget how he had struck her, his fist cracking her jaw with such force that she was hurled back. Oh, God. She recalled that night. Recalled scrambling for that gun.
And him bellowing, “I'm going to kill you, you fucking freak!”
But of course that wasn't how things had turned out. No, not at all.
Kris started to cry. Her eyes swelled with sadness, for she knew that her secret dream—that of a man falling in love with her and the two of them tumbling into a wonderful, healthy relationship—was nothing more than a fantasy, a totally impossible one at that.
A voice behind her exclaimed, “My God, that jacket fits you perfectly.”
With the forefinger of her right hand, Kris quickly wiped away her tears, then turned around and said, “Oh … oh, thank you.”
“You've got to buy that,” said the salesclerk, a young woman with straight brown hair and a big smile outlined with bold red lipstick. “You look great in it.”
“Thanks,” said Kris, slipping off the jacket. “But I can't get it, not tonight anyway.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No. No, really, I can't.”
“You've got to.” The clerk giggled. “At least let me put it on hold for you. I can do it for, like, seventy-two hours.”
Kris shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe.”
“Great. I mean, you have nothing to lose. You've got three days to decide if you want it. If you come back before then, it'll be here. If you don't, the
n it'll just go back out on the rack.”
“Well …”
Well, why not, decided Kris. And so she followed the salesclerk to the checkout counter and wrote down her name and number. A few minutes later Kris tucked a claim check in her pocket.
“Thanks,” said Kris, her voice hushed as she turned to go.
“Oh, no prob. I'm sure you're going to come back. It's just too perfect on you.”
And I'm sure I won't, thought Kris. No. She'd buy it only if she was going to go to Stuart Hawkins's, but there was no way that she could do that. Nope. Thank God she'd come to her senses. As she made her way toward the main ground-floor doors, she saw his face again. Not Stuart Hawkins's warm, charming face. But that of the cop and his look of horror just before the gun went off.
Oh, God. He was dead and buried all because of her.
12
The rest of their dinner was kind of a disaster. In fact, Todd stayed barely another five minutes at Café Bobino.
“I've got to get back to work,” he said, excusing himself.
“Like I don't? It's probably impossible, but among a hundred other things I've got to see if I can get a trace on that call,” said Rawlins. “Come on, Todd, sit back down. We can eat and be out of here in ten minutes.”
“No, I'll just grab a sandwich from the machine at the station.”
Janice took a sip of wine, then quipped, “Frankly, I prefer risotto to plastic.”
“I'm sorry,” continued Todd, “I've just got to get back and figure out what I'm going to do for the ten o'clock.”
Janice put down her glass. “So what are you going to do?”
“I don't know,” said Todd, shifting in his seat because, after all, he didn't like lying, particularly not to the two most important people in his life. “A phone call like that kind of changes everything we had planned.”
“No shit.” Rawlins shook his head. “I don't like this.”
“Neither do I,” seconded Janice. “There are a lot of nuts out there, most of whom I come across on a daily basis in court. This guy's obviously really dangerous—he's already killed a cop, you know.”
Todd looked at Janice, then Rawlins. The two of them were staring at him, pressing him to reveal how he might handle this. He had an inkling—more than one, actually—but he couldn't tell them, or at least not Rawlins. At first, just after the call, he was frightened, even shaken. Then, however, it started kicking in, that old sense, the one that pushed him to ask question after question and that caused him to hound a victim, to follow a drug dealer, to tail a judge, until he had the complete answer to a complex question. And this time he'd succeeded, at least so far, for he'd brought things more or less into the open. He'd poked at the story of the murder of Mark Forrest, and the killer had bitten back. Yes, the man who'd shot Forrest had peeped out of his hole.
So what would Todd's next move in fact be? He looked directly into Rawlins's dark eyes, which were staring right back at his. But it wasn't Rawlins, his lover, studying him with worry. No, it was Rawlins, the homicide investigator. And this, once again, boiled down to freedom of the media. No, Todd couldn't reveal his thoughts, because, of course, what Todd was thinking of doing would piss off Rawlins every bit as much as it would the killer.
Todd pushed back his chair, rose, then leaned over and kissed Janice on the cheek and said, “I'll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Take care, sweetheart.”
“Rawlins,” began Todd, wanting to at least hug the other man, “I guess I won't see you tonight, so—”
“Just don't do anything stupid.”
“I won't.”
“I wish I could count on that.” Rawlins shook his head as he fiddled with his napkin. “Have I ever told you how often people like you fuck up a case by reporting the wrong things at the wrong time?”
“Repeatedly.” Todd glared at him. “Have I ever told you it's best if you do your job and I do mine?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” mumbled Rawlins, now staring at his glass of wine. “I'll be watching at ten.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
Rawlins shrugged but said nothing.
Well, screw you, thought Todd, forgetting about the hug as he stormed away. He didn't have time for this, not now, not tonight. The police hadn't succeeded in establishing some sort of contact with Mark Forrest's murderer, he had. And that murderer hadn't
contacted Rawlins or anyone else at the Minneapolis police department. No, he'd called Todd directly. So this was his baby, Todd's, and his alone. He had to keep at it too. Not let it go. This was going to make for news. Big news. Hot news. Of that Todd would make sure.
The frustration clearly smoldering on his face, Todd made his way through the tables and chairs, down the side hallway, and past the bleach-haired host, who stood next to his stand, clutching a stack of menus.
“Leaving so soon, Mr. Mills?”
“Unfortunately,” Todd managed to reply.
He pushed out the door and burst into the hot, thick summer air. Where the hell, he thought, looking up and down the street, was his car? Down toward the river a huge swarm of bugs swirled in the orangish glow of a streetlight, and there, beneath all that, stood his dark-green Cherokee.
He knew all too well that no relationship was easy, not by any means. Up to this point, he had in fact screwed up—no, ruined—virtually every one he'd been in. Starting with Janice so long ago, then moving to Trish, his ex-wife, and next Michael, Todd had managed not only to make every mistake possible but to hurt every person he'd been involved with. Okay, so with Janice it had been more or less a mutual error, for they'd both been mired in the muck of sexual orientation and flailing about for answers. He'd married Trish, however, out of desperation, not only hoping he loved her but determined to prove something, specifically that he wasn't gay after all. As if using her hadn't been bad enough, Todd then went on to Michael, giving himself sexually to him yet never fully emotionally, which in its own way had killed that relationship as well. And now Rawlins …
“Damn it!” he cursed aloud.
Todd stopped, grabbed onto a parking meter with one hand, put the other to his forehead, and took a deep breath. More than one person had called him selfish. A great many had labeled him self-centered. So what was he supposed to do here? Do a job that he was not only paid handsomely for but that he was great at, a job that came to him as naturally as breathing—and that he craved just as dearly? Or was he supposed to succumb to the wishes of the person he loved more than anyone or anything else?
Wait, it was Rawlins the cop, not Rawlins the lover, who wanted Todd to step back and turn this whole thing over to the police, right?
Notwithstanding that there had been no visible homosexual role models when he was young, Todd just didn't know how you did this, this same-sex relationship thing. Two guys most often meant two careers as well as two healthy egos, which was quite clearly the case with Rawlins and him. In a straight relationship it started unfortunately with sexual definition—who was the man and who was the woman—while in a gay relationship it was often defined in sexual parlance, who was top and who was bottom. And that highlighted the lack of difference between a straight and a gay relationship, because in the end it all came down to dominance. Which in fact was the major struggle between Todd and Rawlins. The career stuff was an especially huge issue, one that they'd never discussed but that played itself out almost daily as the detective who sought justice and the reporter who sought truth struggled to establish who and which was more important.
Somewhat surprisingly, Todd was only just coming to the realization that the world didn't spin according to him. For so long he'd fought his sexuality, did everything he could to deny it, to prove he wasn't a fag and therefore a despicable deviant, an incompetent ninny unworthy of love, a fairy who couldn't do anything but swish about. Ever since he could remember, he battled all this self-hatred by becoming the best goddamn investigative reporter there was, fighting to prove his worth to others as if his life depen
ded on it, which he believed it had, and going at it so obsessively that he now had trouble stepping back. To further complicate things, Todd had learned by example—that of his father, the Polish immigrant, who demanded support and nurturing but never returned it to his partner, his unwavering wife, Todd's mother. Yes, rightly or wrongly, Todd had adopted this most “guy” of characteristics, following in his father's footsteps, always taking more than giving. And never had Todd been so fully and absolutely challenged as he had been not only by Rawlins but, in particular, by Rawlins's health status. Which meant that for the first time in his life Todd found himself in the position of wanting to give more than get.
Todd heard steps behind him and quickly turned, hoping more than anything that it was him, Rawlins. It took but a mere second for Todd to fantasize Rawlins rushing out, the two of them embracing, Todd pulling the shorter but thicker and stronger man into his arms. Instead of the chance to take this all back to square one, however, Todd saw not Rawlins but some other man, a tall skinny guy with a cigarette perched between his lips, hurrying down the sidewalk.
So what should Todd do?
Go back, he told himself. He should just return to the restaurant, apologize. Tell Rawlins how much he loved him, that this was a blip, nothing more. That Todd was just trying to do his job. That he'd do just as Rawlins wanted, whatever that might be. That …
He took a step back toward Bobino's, at the same instant glancing at his watch.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself, stopping just as quickly.
He had a job to do, and all of this was, first and foremost, about work. And if, in light of the mysterious call from the killer, Todd was now going to change what he was going to say on the 10:00 P.M. news, if he was going to come at this thing from a different angle, then he'd better hightail it out to WLAK right this second. Time was of the essence. Absolutely, he thought, turning around and again heading for his vehicle.
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