The Last Thing I Saw (13 page)

“It was hard for Hal to take this abuse from Wenske,” Taibi said, “because Hal actually knew who Wenske was and respected him. Hal had read
Notes from the Bush
when he was younger and, like everybody else, thought it was wonderful. I mean, how could anybody not?”

“Eddie never mentioned it,” Boxley said, “but Rover told us afterwards that Hal asked Eddie if he’d be interested in having a film made of the book. They’d get Mason Hively, who worked on
Dark Smooches
, to write and direct it. Eddie was supposed to be impressed with that—that’s all Hal knows—but of course Eddie said not a chance. Actually, Rover told us, Eddie told Hal no thank you, but what Hal heard was, not a chance in hell, go fuck yourself. It was soon after that that Eddie’s interview with Hal came to an abrupt halt.”

“So Skutnik actually has some taste and intelligence? If he appreciated Wenske’s book, good for him.”

“He’d have fucked it up, believe me. Mason Hively is a hack writer and a hack director. Have you seen
Dark Smooches
?”

“Some of it, once, briefly.”

“As a writer, Mason sees himself as a kind of gay Stieg Larsson. But the guy does crystal meth and is unbalanced. He actually wanted to do a film called
The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo.
A total rip-off of Larsson that legal said no to. Which surprised a lot of us, because legal says okay to just about anything Hal wants to do. He believes their job is finding legal justification for him to do whatever the fuck he feels like doing.”

I said, “Back in New York, some HLM people have heard rumors of financial funny business at the company, maybe even including swindling of investors. Do you know anything about this?”

They were quiet for a moment.

“I’ve heard that,” Boxley said.

Taibi said, “Rumors, yes.”

“The company has been sued umpteen times and has always settled, sometimes for large amounts, we’ve heard. That put a drain on capital. Back in early January, there was a panic, in fact. A lot of people were let go and there was a week when nobody at the company got paid at all. Their next paychecks were supposed to be double, but it never happened. If people bring it up, Hal starts screaming, so people don’t bother to ask anymore.”

Taibi said, “The crunch seems to be over for now. Hal must have lured in some more suckers to invest in the company, but he isn’t saying who they are.”

I asked, “Do you have any idea if Eddie Wenske found out much about HLM’s financing?”

“I had the feeling he knew more than he let on to Robert and me,” Taibi said. “I think he might have found a source in the company that was dishing the monetary dirt.”

“What made you think that?”

“Just that he said one time that when he was in law school he wished he’d studied more tax law and business law and not so much constitutional law. They would have come in handy when he got around to researching HLM.”

“Do you have any idea who this well-informed source in the company might be?”

“Don’t know,” Boxley said. “The only people who know where the HLM bodies are buried are Hal, Ogden, Scott Sanders in legal, and of course Martine and Danielle. Scott totally kisses Hal’s ass.”

“Not in the literal sense,” Boxley said, “Scott being straight.”

“And Martine and Danielle worked for Hal’s father in the lumber business up north, and they are loyal family retainers who would never besmirch the Skutnik family name by blabbing about anything questionable that goes on with the books.”

“And Wenske would have interviewed all of these people when he was out here? Or tried to?”

Taibi said, “I doubt any of them would have been willing to talk to Eddie. Not without clearing it with Hal, which was not going to happen.”

“I take it,” I said, “that nobody you know out here has any theories as to what’s become of Wenske?”

Boxley said, “When word got back here that Wenske was missing, there were jokes about how Hal had him killed because Wenske had disrespected him in his own office. But seriously, that’s not Hal’s style. He’ll lie and rob and cheat, but not kill. He doesn’t have to. So, no, Eddie’s disappearance is as much a mystery to us as it is to you and his friends back east.”

“Are you aware,” I asked, “that Boo Miller in the HLM New York office is also missing now? Or was as of a couple of days ago. He was one of Wenske’s sources.”

They stared at me.

I described the events of the past five days, including the murder of Bryan Kim, Wenske’s sometime boyfriend, and the disappearance of Boo Miller, who’d gone to Boston to meet with Kim and me.

Boxley said, “Fuck.”

Taibi said, “Holy shit.”

“None of this may have any connection to Wenske or to HLM. But it might.”

“But that just happened?” Boxley said.

“Over the weekend.”

“So probably they’re not connected. This stuff just took place, but Wenske has been missing for a month.”

“Almost two,” I said.

“No, just one. Today is March twenty-eighth, and I’m sure I saw Eddie out here in late February.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

My nine o’clock appointment, Nate Gomez, had seen Wenske even more recently, around the first of March, he told me. We met in Gomez’s apartment near UCLA because he still worked for Hey Look Media and could not take the chance of being seen in public with me. By nine, I was starting to feel the jet lag but got by on coffee and declined to share the reefer Gomez fired up soon after my arrival in his airy digs with a nice view of the leafy college campus.

“You actually talked to Wenske this month?” I asked.

“We had Thai take-out here in the apartment, and I confirmed a lot of the hideous stories he’d heard by then from pissed-off HLM people. Eddie is a really serious journalist, checking details with multiple sources. I was impressed by how careful he was.”

“And this couldn’t have happened earlier in February or even back in December?”

“I just checked my calendar, and it was definitely March first.”

Gomez was long and lean and had a long lean nose to go with the rest of him and large black eyes. He was stretched out on his couch in gym gear under a blown-up poster of Barbara Stanwyck with her
Double Indemnity
ankle bracelet.

“I got the idea,” Gomez said, “that Eddie planned on being around L.A. for a while longer. I was really surprised when—it must have been a couple of weeks later—that people were saying he had disappeared and his family and friends were really worried about him.”

“Did he mention who he was interviewing next?”

“No, but I know he was staying with a newspaper guy he knew from Boston.”

“Paul Delaney?”

“I think so. Yes, Paul something.”

I had tried phoning Delaney earlier in the evening, but he didn’t answer and his voice mail box was still full.

I said, “I know that even beyond HLM’s crappy programming and obnoxious bosses, Wenske was digging into the company’s murky finances. Did he talk about that with you?”

“No, but he wouldn’t have necessarily. I’m with media relations, and all I know about HLM finances is that I didn’t get paid for a week in January, and I’ve gotten paid every week since then. You hear shit, but you would never, ever ask. If you even hinted to anybody that something funny might be going on finances-wise, Hal would find out about it, and he would sue you for character defamation. Or he might just come into your office and overturn your desk.”

“So Skutnik has been known to turn violent?”

“Just yelling and screaming. He doesn’t carry a gun, as far as I know, just a big set of lungs.”

“I don’t suppose you’re aware of this, Nate, but as far as I know, you’re the last person to have seen Eddie Wenske before he disappeared.”

“Shit. Really?”

“So he was here in your place—when? On the evening of March first?”

“Yeah. For a couple of hours. He probably left around nine.”

“Do you know where he was going when he left here?”

Gomez took a toke on his weed—I was enjoying the scratchy aroma—and said, “I do happen to know.” He had a funny little smile as he said it.

“Yeah?”

“He was going to the Melrose Spa.”

“The somewhat seedy gay bathhouse dating back to the twelfth century?”

“I told him if he needed a little attention in that department, I’d be happy to help him out. Have you met Eddie?”

“No. Just his family.”

“He’s a hottie. It would have been fun for me, and I feel confident enough that it would have been enjoyable for Eddie too. But he said he liked to keep sex compartmentalized and he never mixed it in with his work. He liked to stay focused when he was writing or researching. And if he wasn’t in a relationship and just needed to get his tubes cleared he’d go to a bathhouse or peep show where you can watch the videos and get a blow job and then walk out relieved and minus any mental complications. I took the rejection a little personally at the time, but after I thought about it, it made sense. You know?”

“It fits with what I’ve heard about Wenske.”

“That could have been just a line. Being polite. But I don’t think so.”

“I don’t either. It’s how I think too. About work.”

Gomez laughed. “You’re sure you don’t want a little of this good weed?”

“No, thank you.”

“As you wish, Donald.”

“So Wenske’s last known location before he vanished was the Melrose Baths? That’s unnerving. But I don’t suppose he met somebody there and went home with him. That’s not what he was looking for.”

“No, he told me he had an off-again-on-again boyfriend back in Boston, but the guy was driving him around the bend with his inability to commit. They were going to give it one more try, Eddie said, but he wasn’t all that optimistic. Anyway, he liked his work and his family and friends, and if he wanted to get off there were plenty of other ways to do that. It sounded as if he was one of those guys who’d go to the baths and be in and out in forty-five minutes.”

I said, “It’s an extreme type of compartmentalization that works well for the people for whom it works well.”

“It’s not for me,” Gomez said. “I like love and affection. Want it, need it, thrive on it.”

“But you’re single at the moment?”

“Yes and no. James is in Afghanistan. It’s his third tour.”

“Oh.”

“He’ll be home July twenty-third if all goes as planned. Though we’ve thought that before.”

“Rough.”

“You’ll never know.”

“No.”

“It’s why I stick it out at HLM. It’s a rotten place to work, but I need stability in my life. James will be out of work when he gets home and goes back into the reserves. He’s a machinist, and the economy being what it is, it might be a while before he finds a job.”

“Right.”

“There’s a soldier James met on Kabul who’s in a similar situation, and they commiserate. Well, more than commiserate. Which is fine. I’m basically monogamous, but I like to tell myself it’s a sacrifice I’m making for my country.”

“War is complex.”

“What’s interesting is, this guy, Steve, is married with three young kids back in San Diego. He says he’s straight and James believes him.”

“Uh oh.”

“I mean, how straight can he be?”

“But James says it’s not serious? Their relationship? Whatever it is.”

“He says it’s just to help get them through the deployment.”

“Understandable. It’s commendable, I guess, that James told you about this, right? He’s being honest and up front.”

“Not really. I’d rather not know, to tell you the truth. It never entered my mind that this type of stuff went on in the army. I
should have
thought of it, of course. I mean, holy shit.”

“But for yourself, you’d prefer don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“I mean, it’s not like
I
don’t screw around a little. I’m young, I’m human, and I’m in L.A., not freakin’ Kabul.”

“What is James like?”

“Sweet.”

“You must miss him a lot.”

“I miss him rolling over on me in the morning, and I miss him hogging the shower, and I miss the smell of machine oil. I was walking by a construction site a couple of weeks ago, and they had some big motorized gizmo of some kind on the sidewalk, and when I smelled it I just about burst into tears. I stopped for a minute and just breathed it in, and then I had to get away as fast as I could.”

“Well, it’s only—what?—four months until he’s back. Though I guess in your situation the weeks don’t fly by.”

“No,” Gomez said, “but in a way it’s good that I’m working in a place where I have to think constantly about my own survival. I don’t mean physical survival. Hal Skutnik is not al Qaeda. But I definitely don’t want to get fired from HLM until James is back and has a job and is settled. Then I’ll start looking around.”

“That sounds sensible.”

“Of course, I just hope HLM lasts that long. There was the financial crisis in January. I have no idea how the company got through that. And there are so many nut jobs working for the company, you just never know from day to day whether or not the whole thing is going to melt down or blow up.”

“Who are the nut jobs?”

“Well, Hal. And Rover, naturally. He’s been arrested twice for driving under the influence of crystal meth. Lucky for him, this was up in Siskiyou County, where the Skutniks are people that law enforcement doesn’t fuck around with. And Mason Hively is the nuttiest of them all. Have you ever seen
Dark Smooches
?”

“People keep asking me that. I can’t say I’ve seen an entire episode.”

“It looks like it was made by a psychopath, and that crazy person is Mason.”

“I would have just said untalented.”

“My view of Mason might be colored by experience, that’s true. He came on to me one time, and when I said no thanks, he mixed crystal meth in the weed stash he knew I kept in my shoulder bag. He’s so stupid, he told somebody in the office—Mason thought it was a good joke everybody should enjoy along with him—and I was tipped off. It was never a good idea for me to carry my weed to HLM anyway, so I got it out of there in a hurry. After that, I was afraid to even get a freakin’ Diet Pepsi out of the office machine.”