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, i
n 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.
Looking up for a moment, Todd wondered about it all, how much of this was fact and how much was myth. Todd didn't doubt that Tim Chase's childhood was a mess, for that of course was the case with many, many actors, but Todd couldn't help but look at a number of the purported facts with an air of skepticism. Had his father really been speeding home to be with his boys for the Fourth, or had he simply been returning from an arduous week on the road? And what about the mother, was she a drinker before her husband's death and was that what kept him away? How long did she work in the shoe store, a week? A year? And Tim's grades, why were they so poor? Sure, he easily could have been exhausted from working so much, but he could also simply have been tormented by same-sex feelings. Perhaps he was sleeping around with every boy in the neighborhood.
Homosexuality. Who knew if you were born bent, if you were made, or if it was a cocktail of the two, but Todd could definitely see a queer thread running through even these light biographies. There was the struggle over his parents, one who failed him by dying, the other who overshadowed his life simply by abdicating her parental role. Then there was Tim's overwhelming sense of responsibility, if that was actually true, which Todd tended not to doubt. Yes, and several of the bios told of Tim's poor sense of self-worth, that it had been and always would be his Achilles’ heel. And what about that trip to Los Angeles? Who was that friend? A fuck buddy? Quite easily, Todd thought, Tim Chase could have thrown his cares to the wind for the first time in his life and followed the first big love of his life, some guy, to California.
Or was Todd wrong about that? He definitely saw something familiar there, something that Tim Chase and he both had in common, and realized it could just as easily be alcoholism in the family as well as homosexuality. Todd's own father, who'd emigrated from Poland just after World War II, had never found his place in America—except in vodka. For Todd it had meant that at a very early age he was more responsible than his father. He'd known, just by the glint of moisture in the corner of his father's eyes, when he'd had his first drink of the day. He'd known when not to argue, because, of course, it was futile as well as dangerous, for his father would whip him with his belt at the slightest of provocations. And he'd known when the old man had drunk too much and it wasn't safe to drive with him.
Todd had never known, however, how to earn his father's approval. No matter how hard Todd had tried, no matter how polite, nor how good his grades, he'd never won his father's praise. Todd assumed it was he, the son, who was doing something wrong, and that, naturally, that something was his sexuality. As long as his father was alive, Todd had lived in fear that his father would find out his boy was gay, and Todd had done everything and anything possible, including getting married, to prevent that from happening. In an odd but real way Todd came to believe that if he was good enough his father would stop drinking, but that never happened, of course, because Todd did the one thing good little boys never did, he had sex with other little boys.
Projecting his own needs and fears on Tim Chase, Todd was surprised to feel something he hadn't previously felt for the superstar— sympathy. Earlier, when Tim Chase was more abstract than simply tonight's date, Todd had been obsessed with the Marcia story. But, now, well… Shit, what was he going to say to Marcia when they next talked? Oh, say, Marcia, I almost forgot to tell you—I had a glass of wine with Tim Chase. Oh, he's cute. But, oops, sorry, I forgot to ask him who he slept with.
Reading on, there were several pieces about Tim's deep interest in horses, his recent purchase of a Montana ranch, and how he was often sighted at rodeos sporting cowboy boots and hat. Next came a slew of articles analyzing Chase's films, or more to the point, his acting ability. Many slammed him for his one-note acting, known more for its intensity than its finesse, the fury in his voice that brought attention rather than art onto the screen. Many others sighted his all-American good looks—that dazzling smile, the quick laugh, those charming eyes—as the overriding and perhaps singular reason for his success. That he was gorgeous no one denied. Nor did anyone deny that that was what had launched his career.
His films were many, particularly for someone so young, and they had earned fabulous sums of money, ranking as some of the largest-grossing movies in history. There was the hit he'd done about a hunk baseball player, another box office smash where he'd played opposite Robert Redford. Then he'd costarred with Tom Cruise in a Civil War epic. Next a popular comedy opposite Julia Roberts. That was followed by another sports flick, which had done only so-so. Todd read all the reviews, right up to the spy thriller that Chase had starred in with John Vox, the very guy who'd started Todd's snooping by blabbing to Marcia about the Tim Chase boyfriend.
So did it all seem possible? Could Tim Chase really be gay? In a way, no, at least not the way his propaganda machine had construed his life. But in another way, absolutely so. Todd could see the hints, the subtle shading. And what reason, after all, would John Vox have to lie about his friend Tim Chase?
Coming to the supermarket tabloid story, Todd read it all over again. He'd gotten this copy from Lexis-Nexis, which was reproduced in simple text, so it didn't have all the flair of headlines and photos. It was all there, however, beginning with the ball-buster headline, “Mean Queen Chase Denies 7 Year Gay Romance & Buries Boyfriend in Poverty.” The story went on to tell about how Tim Chase met Rob Scott, a handsome blond, at a bar in L.A. The two had quickly become passionate lovers, the tabloid claimed, with Chase buying a condo and just about everything else for Scott. More important, they were the toast of parties all over Hollywood, wined and dined by the likes of David Geffen, who was gay, and Michael Eisner, who was straight. The affair continued even as Chase married the beautiful actress Gwen Owens, and the two had a child. But then there was a horrible spat, and Chase kicked Rob Scott out of his life, more specifically out of the condo and onto the street without so much as a dime. Furthermore, the writer claimed there was a vast conspiracy of silence, proven by the fact that no actors or Los Angeles journalists, who knew the truth of this story, would comment. Almost immediately Tim Chase, Inc., went on the offensive, claiming that The National Times, which had a huge national circulation, had paid Rob Scott, who was destitute, $100,000 for a story that was completely fictitious. A lawsuit against the tabloid soon followed, which Tim Chase eventually won to the tune of $8.5 million and which his extraordinarily powerful people claimed “clearly vindicated Chase's sexuality.”
His head spinning with innuendo and information, Todd flipped through the last of the articles in the file. Most recently Tim Chase had been on the cover of Newsweek complaining about the lack of privacy suffered by stars. More to the point, they each had harrowing tales of the paparazzi, those nasty little photographers who were hiding everywhere to snap the juiciest of pictures. Todd didn't doubt it in
the least, but was Chase just irritated, finding the photographers a mettlesome intrusion, or was he living in terror that one day they'd catch him with a guy?
Todd gathered the articles, laid them back in the manila file, and sat there. Nine tonight, huh? Unable to imagine what it would be like, he was sure of only one thing: at least the wine would be good.
13
It was almost ten by the time Rawlins was able to get away from his desk. He wasn't totally convinced, of course, that he needed to go, at least today, for more than likely the tip wouldn't pan out. That was what this job was all about, however, going down every little path and checking around every single corner. Ninety percent of his job was monotonous footwork, most of which proved to be worthless, but it was the small details that he discovered here and there that eventually added up. And that's how you built a case, piece by piece by piece. More than once he'd staked out a suspect's house and sat there for hour after hour, day after day, only to discover something of critical importance just as he was about to give up.
So exactly what had the anonymous caller seen last night down at Lake Harriet? A man perhaps discarding some token of love after a fight with his girlfriend? Or a killer hurling a murder weapon into the dark waters?
Heading south on the freeway from downtown, Rawlins took 46th Street over to the lake, then skirted the eastern shore of the round body of water. Passing the huge houses, each one larger than the last and perched on the ridge overlooking it all, he followed the parkway, which eventually led down to the water on his left and, of course, the Rose Gardens on his right. He glanced at the expansive gardens, a large, rectangular space with a broad path down the middle, and knew that all the fragile plants therein would soon be buried beneath a couple of feet of straw and leaves to protect them from the winter freeze that was destined to come this way. No, Minnesota was not kind to roses.
Innuendo Page 10