The Last Thing I Saw, стр. 27

“You spent some time with him?”

“I took him around, yeah. We saw Daryl Tangelo, who does Hal’s hair transplants, and we went over to Gaylord Renzi’s, the trainer who does what he can with Hal’s butt. Myrna of Smyrna is Rover’s Jungian astrologer, and she even gave Eddie a good break on a one-time reading. We had a nice lunch with Jervis Melton, Rover’s nutritionist, though we had to make a pit stop at Wendy’s afterwards just like Rover always does. Hal’s yoga instructor, Bruce Stompanato, was on vacation in Tibet when we were going around in December, so I don’t know if Eddie ever got to meet him. But he got a pretty good idea of all the people who can’t stand Hal and Rover, and I think he really appreciated the opportunity.”

“These people all spoke openly of their dislike for Hal and Rover? Isn’t that risky—biting the hand that feeds?”

Esteban shrugged. “They only say this shit behind Hal and Rover’s back. They all kiss Hal’s ass when he’s around, then they laugh their nuts off when he turns the other way. This is L.A., man, whaddaya think?”

“The place seems to conform to a stereotype.”

“Yes and no. Most people here are honest enough and nice. They basically just get up and go to work in the morning. Me and my friends aren’t assholes, I don’t think. But a lot of people who make it in L.A. are like Hal and Rover, and that’s especially true in the industry. I’m staying out of it. I had enough. When Rover shit-canned me, I just said, fuck it, I’m outta this nut house.”

“Can I ask why Rover fired you?”

“Yeah. He wanted me to pick up some package in Venice and bring it on the bus back to Bel Air. I get out there to this place down from the beach and I can see that this is some bad-ass situation Rover is sending me into, smells like piss and broken down. Before I go into this building, I say to a little kid, ‘Hey, what is this place?’ And this little child—he must be about nine years old—this little child says, ‘That place is a meth factory. You want some?’”

“And you turned around and got the hell out of there.”

“I was in no hurry. I just walked on down to the next block, and then I walked down by the beach, and then I got back on the bus and rode back to Bel Air. I told Rover I could have been busted or murdered or I don’t know what all. Do you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘But I needed that meth.’”

“He probably did, too.”

“Not as much as I needed to get the fuck out of Hey Look Media. I told Rover to go fuck himself, and he looked right through me and said bye-bye.”

I said, “I’ve heard that Rover uses meth and it makes him unstable.”

“Did you ever hear of meth calming anybody down? No, you don’t want to be around Rover when he’s using. I don’t think he ever killed anybody or anything, but he ran over somebody with an ATV at Hal’s place up in the mountains and broke the dude’s pelvis. I was even there when it happened. Hal had to pay off the cops and the guy and his girlfriend too.”

“This is at the family home in Mount Shasta?”

“No, the salt mine sisters live in there now. This is at the lodge on up the canyon. It’s where they made Dark Smooches. Ever see that show?”

“Dark Smooches was the first thing I ever saw on Hey Look TV, and it was the last thing I saw.”

“It was Rover’s idea and he was in it and he’s the producer. That means he can charge whatever he wants to the budget. I told him one time I liked some boots I saw, and Rover gives me the credit card and says go help yourself. Then I saw the boots were deducted from my pay check. He’s always all methed up, so you never know what he’s gonna do from one hour to the next. And Mason Hively is even worse.”

“The writer and director of Dark Smooches?”

“Mason’s a meth freak too, and he binges and you just have to protect yourself. Sometimes he’s having a good time. He goes around yelling, Party in your pants! Party in your pants! But then he all of a sudden gets mean, and then—look out.”

“Is he ever violent? I mean, other than when he’s driving an ATV?”

“That’s Rover who uses the ATV. Mason likes to stay indoors unless it’s dark out or cloudy. Is Mason violent? He screams his head off, but I don’t think he’d cut anybody or shit like that. I know he likes to be tied up and slapped around a little himself. The PAs are always complaining about that. It’s not in the job description, they say, but what can they do? Rover and Mason used to do porn shoots at the lodge, but Hal didn’t like it. He said what if the media found out about all that jizz hitting the ceiling beams at the Skutnik family lodge and somebody blabbed to his mama? So then they had to start doing their porn shoots down here, out in the valley like everybody else. Though that meant the PAs up at the lodge started getting hit on instead of the stars. Some of them thought it was okay if it might help their careers. But most of them figured out that even if they stuff toilet paper up their nose so they won’t retch while they’re making Mason’s ass red with a ping pong paddle, really they were just being totally fucked over and they weren’t going to get parts or be made associate producers, and so they took their leave of Hey Look Media, just like I did.”

“Why,” I asked, “was Skutnik afraid the gay media would embarrass him? Doesn’t he own most of the gay media? That’s part of what Eddie Wenske’s book was going to be about.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t own the straight media. I know he knew Eddie was writing an article for The New York Times, and he was scared as shit that Eddie would say all kinds of nasty stuff about himself and Rover. Which he would’ve. That was the point. Tell the truth about HLM.”

“Did Hal say anything to anybody about trying to stop Eddie from publishing his piece?”

“Oh yeah. One of the PAs told me he heard Hal tell the salt mines—that would be Martine and Danielle in accounting—that this article would never see the light of day. He really thought he could stop The New York Times from doing whatever the fuck it wanted to do. That’s how full of shit Hal and Rover are. Can you believe it?”

“Were they planning to sue, or what?”

“Nah, that was all just Hal lighting farts. Eddie is too smart for those dick asses, and I don’t think they would have done anything at all. I mean, what could they?”

I noted the handsome tattoo on Esteban’s well-muscled upper right arm. “Were you a Marine? Or is your tat just decorative?”

“I did one tour in Iraq, and then I got out. I grew up in a neighborhood in East L.A. where you could get shot. I already had enough of that shit.”

“So you know how to protect yourself, it sounds like. And other people, too.”

“You bet your ass I do. But my idea of protection is, don’t go where trouble is.”

“But if somebody you liked had been hurt or killed, you’d want to do what you could to keep that from happening to other good people, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t anybody?”

I already had Esteban’s cell number, and I told him I might give him a call.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Instead of dinner, how would you like to meet Hal Skutnik?” Rob Brandstein said when he called me at six thirty. “There’ll be plenty of Ritz crackers and Cheez Whiz at this event—HLM’s hors d’oeuvres are as classy as its programming—and if we feel like it we can still eat something afterwards. But an evening with HLM is always a bit of an appetite suppressant.”

I leaped at the chance, and I met Brandstein and his friend Floyd Tate at the Peninsula Hotel at seven fifteen. A sign directed us to the Hey Look Media reception in an event room on the mezzanine. Brandstein, a large man with an easy grin and tufts of black hair growing out of his collar, had left HLM two years earlier under the usual acrimonious circumstances and now worked in programming development at CBS. He told me his current job status would be good enough to keep Skutnik from spotting him at the reception and having him thrown out. Tate, trim and shiny in a perfectly tailored Thai silk suit and Keds, had also been fired from HLM but continued to do business with the company in his current capacity as a marketer for the company that owned the building where HLM leased its Wilshire Boulevard offices.