Outburst by R.D. Zimmerman Page A

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