Outburst

by R. D. Zimmerman

  Entering downtown, he turned left, heading north on Hennepin Avenue. Both Minneapolis and St. Paul, he thought, noticing a group of vacant lots where once had stood several buildings, were teetering. Once a region of progressive planning, The Cities had taken a huge tumble in the last ten years—the leadership and the public interest both had waned just as things like the stupid Megamall had selfishly waxed—and they were taking steps toward becoming the Detroit or Los Angeles of the tundra. It drove Todd nuts.

  As he crossed onto the Hennepin Avenue bridge and over the Mississippi, he glanced downstream, saw the Third Avenue bridge and caught a glimpse of the Stone Arch Bridge way down there. Should he do a live broadcast from there again tomorrow, or would that be too repetitive?

  Crossing to the other side, he passed Riverplace and Nye's, that venerable old Polish restaurant and piano bar, and parked. He picked up his cell phone, switched it from ring to vibrate, and slipped it into his front shirt pocket.

  “Go out for dinner, yeah, sure, Todd,” Craig, the late-night news producer, had blessed. “Do that. Get something to eat. But don't go anywhere without your phone in case I gotta get ahold of you. And be back here by nine-thirty, not a split second later. Read me? You're on at the top of the ten o'clock.”

  Cafe Bobino was just a half-block ahead, and as Todd walked toward it, he realized just how exhausted he was. And no wonder. His adrenaline had been stuck on high ever since late this morning when Rawlins and he had discovered the body of Mark Forrest. Hopefully a good meal would restore him.

  What used to be a funeral home, then a cabaret, was now a hip restaurant and wine bar, proving that you could bring things back from the dead, and as Todd walked in several heads turned his way. Gay men, four of them seated at the bar, scanned him up and down in that queeny kind of way, then almost in unison returned to their glasses of cabernet. So what was the once-closeted-and-now-very-out Todd Mills, the television personality, to them? Hero or pariah? Or merely a lightning rod of gossip? He still didn't have a handle on it, how he fit—or if he did at all—into the gay community.

  The host, a short man with short bleached white hair and wearing a white T-shirt and a pale green cotton vest, eagerly rushed up.

  Addressing Todd before he could even get a word out, the host said, “Good evening, Mr. Mills. Right this way, please. The other two in your party are already here.”

  The price of fame or notoriety—or both—was the lack of anonymity, a dear price that Todd had always been more than willing to pay. He followed the host along the side hall of the cafe, glanced through an archway, and saw both Rawlins and Todd's longtime and dear friend, Janice, seated at a corner table, a glass of white wine before each of them. This wasn't good, his being the last to arrive.

  The dining room was small, with muted yellow walls, dim lights, and a bustling kitchen at the rear. As Todd crossed to his table, several more heads turned his way, but he didn't let on that he noticed them noticing him. Keeping focused, he made a direct line to these two, his pals and family of choice—the hunky gay cop and the beautiful dyke lawyer, as he called them. They all spoke, all three of them, at least once a day, checking in with the slightest detail of life—who watched what on TV, who was out of cereal, etc.—and, of course, discussing ad nauseam just what course of medical action Rawlins should take in his battle against HIV and when, even if, he should tell Foster, his partner, or Lieutenant Holbrook, his superior, or anyone else at the police department about his health status.

  Janice, whom Todd had dated way back in college at Northwestern University, was tall and thin with short dark hair and a quick smile. She had pale skin that was very soft, very lovely, and a small mouth that looked for any opportunity to burst into a wide grin. Now dressed in slim blue jeans and a cream-color cotton knit top, she looked the very image of summer informality; by day, however, there was no doubt about it, she was one hell of a defense attorney. Upon seeing Todd, Janice's smile bloomed, and he realized what a change had come over her in the last year. He saw how much more real her happiness was, for not long ago she'd solved the greatest mystery of her life, which in turn had lifted some kind of awful cloud from her and actually had bound the two of them together with true familial ties. Yes, she was noticeably brighter. Much more at peace, no doubt about it.

  “Hi,” he said, bending over and kissing Janice.

  “Hello, doll,” she countered, proffering him a generous smack of her lips on his cheek.

  Rawlins sat in the corner, and Todd was going to reach out and squeeze his hand or kiss him—with any luck they had decades and decades left, but who knew, certainly not the doctors; and Todd didn't care if anyone saw him kissing another man, because the threat hovering over Rawlins had taught Todd once and for all what was truly important in life—but Rawlins was checking his watch and not moving. Instead, Todd sat down in the seat they always left him in any restaurant, the one that positioned him so his back was to the main part of the room, the one that left his face the least visible to the public.

  “Come on, Rawlins,” begged Todd, the tone of his voice trying to make light of things. “On a scale of one to ten, I'm not that late.”

  “What?” said Rawlins, looking up. “Late? No, not too bad, not tonight.”

  Todd glanced at Janice, who rolled her eyes as she took a sip of her wine. Okay, thought Todd. What's going on? What have I done?

  A gorgeous young waitress appeared at the side of the table, her body trim, her skin a midnight black, her hair as short as could be. Huge gold hoops dangled from her ears.

  “Would you care for anything to drink, sir?” she asked. “A glass of wine perhaps?”

  Todd had it in the genes, the booze thing, and he was always cautious, always fearful that his father's curse would be his, and he said, “You know what, I've got to go back to work, so I'll just have a glass of iced tea.”

  “Of course.”

  As the waitress disappeared, Janice's eyes followed her and she said, “Todd, will you lie to me and tell me I was once that young and beautiful?”

  “You were once that young and beautiful—and you still are. But it's not a lie, it's the harsh truth.”

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Hey, I have a question. Can a dyke be a fag hag?”

  With a grin, Todd said, “The politically correct answer is that a dyke can be anything she damn well wants to be.”

  He picked up the menu and pretended to look at it, meanwhile glancing across the table at Rawlins, who was just sitting there. Smoldering. Todd didn't dare ask how Rawlins felt, which had become a taboo question—I'll let you know if I feel anything but great, Rawlins always snapped—but he looked at him closely, studied his eyes. His color is good, the eyes clear. Yes, he's fine, concluded Todd. Just pissed. So, he wondered as he eyed Rawlins, then Janice, what's going on here?

  “I give,” confessed Todd. “What did I do wrong? Will one of you please tell me?”

  Rawlins perused his menu. “Nothing. Nothing that we're supposed to talk about anyway.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Making light, Janice shrugged. “It means, he's a cop. You're a reporter.”

  At first Todd didn't get it, but then it hit him, and he thought, shit, he should have seen this coming a mile away. “Ohhhh, thank God, we've finally got that straight.”

  Rawlins kept his nose in the menu, uttered not a single word, and shook his head.

  “Listen, I'm not adverse to playing telephone,” began Janice. “So I don't mind saying that about two minutes before you came in, Todd, Rawlins expressed his, well, frustration with you for—”

  “Knock it off, Janice,” snapped Rawlins.

  “No. I want to enjoy dinner, not suffer through it, so the two of you better get this out of the way.”

  “All right, then.” Rawlins slammed down the menu and leaned across the table. “What the hell was that all about?”

  Todd didn't flinch. What could he say?

  “I saw you at
five,” said Rawlins. “And at six too.”

  “Rawlins,” began Todd, his tone more defensive than anything else. “I've got a job to do. Besides, I didn't give out any false information.”

  “Fuck the media. You shouldn't talk about a killer like that. You're supposed to report the news, not make it.”

  “You don't understand. I'm sure that guy's playing with me, I'm sure he's using me, so I—”

  “You should have called me. You should have cleared it with us.”

  “Rawlins, I don't need your fucking permission to say what I want on television,” said Todd, bristling. “We've been through this, goddamn it all. You're a cop.”

  “No shit.”

  “I'm sorry, but it's something WLAK really wanted to do. And I think it was a smart move.”

  Rawlins shook his head, then turned and stared blankly across the room. “Playing with a killer is stupid. Whose dumb-ass idea was this?”

  Todd shrugged and replied, “Mine.”

  “Figures.”

  Janice took a brief sip of wine, then pushed back her chair. “Now that you guys are on a roll, I think I'll go powder my nose … or … or go chop wood or whatever it is lesbians do when they want to get away from men.”

  Leaning forward as Janice left, Todd kept his voice low and tried to explain. “I thought about calling you, Rawlins. I wanted to. I really did. But it comes down to the ethics thing again. You know, just what the media is supposed to say—or is obligated to say—to the cops.”

  “And vice versa.” Rawlins shook his head. “Listen, I thought you and I, Todd Mills and Steve Rawlins, had a personal agreement: I don't hold out on you, and you don't hold out on me. As it is right now, you know virtually everything the police do, absolutely everything that's going on in this case. I haven't cut you out of anything, Todd, and—”

  “But—”

  “You fucked up, no two ways about it.”

  Okay, so maybe he had. And in the back of his mind he'd known it when he was doing it, too, just as he'd known it would come to something like this. Right. Taking his spoon and twiddling it between his thumb and forefinger, Todd had known Rawlins would have a shit fit. The trouble was, Todd had been willing to face the consequences, absolutely so.

  “I didn't call you,” said Todd, putting it all out on the table, “because I didn't want you to say no.”

  “Which I would have.”

  “Rawlins, something's rotten in Denmark.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. A cop was killed.” Rawlins looked right at Todd with those big, deep, disarming eyes. “Listen, a couple of things happened this afternoon that you don't know about yet.”

  “Like what?”

  “First, my partner's mom died.”

  “Neal Foster's? Wow, I'm sorry.”

  “Well, it wasn't unexpected. She'd been sick for a long time. What that means, though, is that Foster's gone for the next week or so.” Rawlins shrugged. “Consequently, I spent the better part of the afternoon arguing with Lieutenant Holbrook.”

  Todd had wondered if it would come to this, an official conflict of interests, and he bent forward and rubbed his eyes. “He wanted to pull you from this because of me, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  Holbrook knew all about them, of course. Hell, it was only last month that he and his wife had had Rawlins and Todd over for dinner. So how, wondered Todd, had Rawlins stopped Holbrook from assigning this case to someone else?

  “Presuming the case is still yours, what did you have to do? What kind of price did Holbrook make you pay?” asked Todd.

  Rawlins shrugged. “I have to sleep at my house, you have to sleep at yours.”

  “What?”

  “A separation of sorts. After dinner tonight we're supposed to talk only in a formal setting.”

  “Oh, great.”

  This, he knew, wasn't going to be easy. Or fun. Except when one of them was working through the night on either a story or a case, they'd hardly been apart since they first met.

  “Shit.” Trying to make light of it, with a shrug Todd said, “Well, then we're just going to have to figure out real quick who killed Forrest.”

  “No kidding.” Rawlins took a deep breath. “There's one more thing, which is actually the main reason Holbrook is letting me keep the case. As it turns out, he thinks I might have some connections or insights into this that the other guys wouldn't. Which is to say, you were right—Mark Forrest was gay.”

  “What? You're kidding?”

  “Nope. And that info's for public consumption too—we got it from the park police late this afternoon. Apparently Mark Forrest was out as a gay cop and had been since the first day he was hired.”

  “Do you realize what that means, Rawlins?” said Todd, leaning forward, unable to squash his excitement. “It means that there could in fact be a gay serial killer out there—after all, that guy who was killed last month was also shot in the chest. It also means I was almost certainly set up. I don't know why, but it's pretty damn clear that I was. And we both know that whoever killed Mark Forrest is going to be watching everything I say. Actually, there's no doubt in my mind that I'm going to get some kind of reaction from the killer.”

  “Shit, you're trying to get yourself hurt, aren't you?” Rawlins put his elbow on the table and bowed his forehead into the palm of his left hand. “Todd, don't you see you're being used to get as much media exposure as possible?”

  “That's my point—I don't want to give him exactly what he wants.”

  “Do you know how pissed off that's going to make him?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Todd, what are you trying to do? Turn this into something bigger than it is? Are you going for another Emmy?”

  The anger whooshed through him, but he sat quite still. No, he wouldn't deny it. Not at all.

  “Rawlins, in case you didn't realize it, I'm always going for another Emmy.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, defeated. “I know.”

  At first he didn't know what it was, the quivering against his chest. Todd sat back, touched the shaking thing in the breast pocket of his shirt, and felt a hard plastic case. The phone. That was probably Craig. Probably calling to bug him about something. Or to tell him he needed to get his butt back to the station. Of all the times he didn't want to talk to anyone at Channel 10, this was probably right up there at the pinnacle. Perhaps he shouldn't even answer it.

  “What is it?” asked Rawlins.

  “A call.”

  “Oh, Christ. You and that job of yours.”

  Todd hesitated, glanced at Rawlins, who was glaring at him, and then decided to answer it, if only to show Rawlins who was in charge of what. But how? Todd pulled the phone from his pocket and stared at it, for he still didn't get this, the private-phone-in-a-public-space deal.

  “Excuse me,” said Todd, pushing back his chair.

  As the small phone vibrated with its silent rings, Todd exited the main part of the restaurant and stepped into the side hallway. He moved up against a window, flipped open the phone, and lifted it to his ear.

  “This is Todd Mills.”

  “Whatsamatta with you?”

  He didn't know the voice, nor could he even tell if it was a man or a woman, for if it was a guy he had no resonance to his voice, while if it was a woman she'd been smoking way too long.

  He asked, “Who is this?”

  “I mean, what kind of reporter are you anyway?”

  Suddenly he realized who it might be, and fearing and hoping he was right, Todd's heart tripped, then started pounding. Yes, he realized. The voice indeed was that of a man, the voice perhaps purposely hoarse or faint. But was it him?

  The voice demanded, “That was pathetic. I thought you were supposed to be good. That's why I picked you, asshole.”

  Todd saw their waitress coming down the hall from the bar. The desperation all too apparent on his face, he raised his hand and flagged her. When she came over, Todd reached to her tray and grabbed her pen and a han
dful of cocktail napkins. On one of them he wrote: It's him—the killer! And then Todd frantically pointed to their table and Rawlins. The waitress, understanding only that this was most urgent, hurried off.

  “I'm sorry,” said Todd. “Who is this? Do I know you?”

  “Of course you do, you moron. We met on the bridge over, I guess you could say, troubled waters.”

  “I see,” said Todd, unfolding the napkin and frantically jotting down what was being said. “But how did you get this number?”

  “I called the station and told them I was a cop and that we had an emergency.”

  Todd hesitated, glanced over his shoulder, saw Rawlins rushing over. “But … but how do I know it's really you?”

  “Oh, fuck off. Of course it's me.”

  “I get crank calls all the time.”

  “Yeah, well, if you fuck up all the time, I'm not surprised. I mean, I know you're a homo, but why did you make that stuff up about me? None of it's true, you know. None of it.”

  Rawlins was at Todd's side, and Todd jotted on the napkin: Yes, it's him!

  “Tell me something,” said Todd, his mind working frantically. “Prove it.”

  “You're playing with me, aren't you?”

  “No, I—”

  “Don't make a fool of me. I don't like it when people do that. And don't say that crap about me either.”

  Rawlins ripped the pen from Todd's hand and frantically started writing.

  “Okay … okay …” began Todd, reading Rawlins's words. “So you're the guy who killed Mark Forrest on the bridge?”

  “Yes, asshole.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because … because I like killing cops,” he replied with a laugh.

  “So you've done this before?”

  “Duh.”

  “When?”

  “A while ago.” The voice shifted, got more bossy again. “Listen, I just called because I wanted to warn you: Don't do that again, don't talk about me like that. You don't know me—I'm not an idiot. I know perfectly well what I'm doing.”