The Last Thing I Saw, стр. 24
“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.”
Gomez went on to tell me even more horror stories about HLM management, all of it either entertaining or hair-raising or both. None of it was helpful in any specific way in suggesting what might have become of Eddie Wenske. Though after my evening with Gomez, I did think I had a pretty good idea of what Wenske’s “secret life” was that he didn’t wish to discuss with his mother or sister.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I did eventually take Gomez up on his offer of some excellent weed—he had no beer on ice—and left his apartment well after midnight, three a.m. in the East. I collapsed into bed and slept deeply until my wake-up call went off like a tornado alert at eight in the morning.
I had two more appointments with embittered refugees from HLM set up for late in the day, and I thought I might track down Paul Delaney in the meantime. He still wasn’t answering his phone, and his mailbox continued to be full, both of which I didn’t like the sound of.
Out on the sunny hotel terrace with my coffee and grapefruit, I called Perry Dremel at HLM in New York. He said he was in a staff meeting and unable to chat. I asked if Boo Miller had been located yet. Dremel said no and hung up.
After several tries, I got Marsden Davis and asked for an update on the Bryan Kim murder investigation. Davis was in a hurry, on his way to a drug-gang shootout in Dorchester, and he told me that nothing in the Kim investigation was panning out yet but to stay in touch.
I got Timmy on his cell, but he couldn’t talk either, what with the state budget April first deadline looming and both the Legislature and the governor growing tense and testy.
Back in my room, I did a search on my laptop for Paul Delaney. I guessed he was an older man who still kept a land line, and indeed there he was in the L.A. telephone listings with an address in Santa Monica. I dialed the number again, but there was still no answer, mailbox full.
My rental Toyota came with its own GPS, and I let it lead me in its passive-aggressive way to Santa Monica and a pleasant three-story apartment building with a lot of balconies and flowering plants a couple of blocks from the beach. It took nearly an hour to drive the three and a half miles and then find a place to park legally, so by the time I approached the entrance and buzzed Delaney’s apartment, the morning was half gone. As I feared would happen, no one answered.
There was a little garden next to the entryway, and an old lady in a sun suit with a canary yellow bow in her canary yellow hair was sitting on a bench reading the L.A. Times.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” I said, “I’m looking for Paul Delaney. He’s not home. Do you know him?”
She looked wary. “Maybe.”
“He’s a friend of a man I’m trying to locate on behalf of his mother.” I showed her my New York State investigator’s ID.
“Paul’s mother is living? He never mentioned her to me.”
“No, it’s Paul’s friend’s mother. The man who is missing, Eddie Wenske.”
She perked up. “Oh, Eddie! That nice young man.”
“Yes, I believe he was staying with Paul for a while. Maybe he still is.”
“Oh no, he left. I haven’t seen Eddie for quite some time. I thought he was coming back. Paul did too.”
“Eddie’s family and friends back east have reported him missing. They hired me to find him. That’s why I’m trying to speak with Paul. But he doesn’t answer his phone.”
She screwed up her face. “Well, that’s funny.”
“What?”
“Paul’s not back yet.”
“He went somewhere?”
“Why, yes, he did. I saw him get in the Super Shuttle last week. I’m in 2-C right up there, so I see people come and go. Paul got in a Super Shuttle last Wednesday, and he hadn’t even mentioned that he was going on a trip. That’s why I was puzzled.”
“That’s the shuttle van to LAX?”
“LAX or Burbank. He had a suitcase. One of those with wheels and a long handle. They’re handy, I suppose, if there’s no dog dirt where you’re going.”
“Doesn’t Paul have a job at a newspaper? Might they know where he is?”
“Oh, he was laid off it must have been two months ago. First he got fired by the Times when they were losing money. Then he worked for one of those papers you get free from a filthy box. But they laid him off too. He’s retired now, and I think he was mostly helping Eddie on a book he was writing. They were thick as thieves on that book, was what it seemed like to me.”
I wondered if she had a key to Delaney’s apartment but didn’t ask.
“I know about the book,” I said. “It’s about media—television and newspapers.”
“Yes,” she said, placing her Times in her lap. “Gay media, Eddie told me.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, it’s no skin off my nose, I always say.”
“Paul lives in 2-E. So you two are practically neighbors.”
“He’s two doors down.” She pointed, and I guessed I could probably climb up onto that balcony without breaking my neck. But Delaney would certainly have all kinds of locks and security bars and probably an alarm system.
“Who waters Paul’s plants when he’s away? I see all kinds of pretty things hanging over his railing.”
“Yolanda when she cleans. She cleans for me too, but I look after my plants myself. Since my husband passed, it’s my begonias that get the TLC. They don’t give much TLC back—but then neither did Wallace.” She chuckled and I gave her a smile that said, oh, yeah, men, I know all too well what we’re like, me being one.