The Last Thing I Saw, стр. 45
“I was at your motel,” Ricky said, “and this Boston cop dude starts hassling me, and why am I carrying a firearm, and shit like that. So I told him I was carrying because you told me to and how come. The two of us, we put six and six together and came up with the assholes who run HLM and Mr. Skutnik’s house in the mountains where they made that Dark Smooches piece of crap.”
Skutnik had been listening to this gape-jawed, and he said, “Piece of crap? Who the fuck are you to criticize America’s premier gay television network.”
Rover said tightly, “He used to work for us.”
“Oh,” Skutnik said. “Then you know whereof you speak.”
“All you have to do is tune in,” Esteban said. “Anybody knows that.”
I said, “Lieutenant Davis, I want you to meet someone. Eddie Wenske.”
“Holy Moses! No shit?”
“That’s me.”
“So the druggies didn’t get you after all.”
“No, but what passes for gay media in the cheap, sad-ass straight and gay culture we all live in nearly did.”
“I take exception to that,” Skutnik said.
“Noted,” Wenske said. “I’ll quote you in the book.”
There was still sporadic gunfire up on the hillside, though I realized that Martine, Danielle, and Ort were no longer standing among us in the gathering dusk. I looked around and noticed Ort’s truck with the three of them in the cab creep down the hill toward the highway and the way back to town. I guessed they probably had growers to deal with, shipments to get out.
EPILOGUE
Mason Hively, Rover Fye and Ogden Winkleman were ratted out by the employee in the Hey Look New York City office who was in charge of recording staffers’ phone calls. He turned over to prosecutors taped conversations showing that the three men conspired to “eliminate” Wenske, Kim, and Boo Miller to keep HLM’s criminal activities from being exposed in Wenske’s gay media book. Wenske had survived temporarily only because Hively needed him to transform his award-winning book into an award-winning television movie for Hal Skutnik and his mom. Each of the three conspirators went to prison for eighty years. As did the three Mexican killers, who admitted that they had talked their way into Bryan Kim’s apartment claiming that they had a message for Kim from Eddie Wenske. They told prosecutors they had been paid two-hundred-fifty dollars each for the killings.
Skutnik was not implicated in the murders, but as the revelations of his business practices rolled out, Skutnik’s company unraveled. At first, he tried to sell off parts of the conglomerate. But without the support of the Siskiyou marijuana trade, none of HLM’s components was making money and no buyers were forthcoming, so HLM basically disintegrated. Over 400 additional lawsuits were filed against the remains of the company. Skutnik ended up as a commentator on the Fox News Channel as one of its token “liberals.” We heard that he told people that his mother was tremendously proud.
Martine and Danielle copped a plea, helping prosecute Hively and Fye, as well as the Figuero gang, in return for a lighter sentence for themselves. During their six-month jail term, Ort kept the weed business going, including the Figuero territory the sisters had divided up with a Juarez operation from their jail cell.
With the research assistance of Paul Delaney and Jane Ware, Eddie Wenske completed his book critical of the present-day gay U.S. news and entertainment media, and Marva Beers was able to obtain a contract with the University of Saskatoon Press with an advance of five-hundred dollars. The book sold 1,426 copies.
Wenske enjoyed a tearful reunion with his mother and sister, both of whom were grateful for the job I had done. We all had a happy get-together back in Albany, where Timmy met the Wenskes and was gratified to see how much they appreciated me.
After our celebratory dinner, Timmy said to me on the way home, “What a great job you did. You saved Eddie Wenske, you collected your fat fee, and all it cost you was a near-death experience.”
“Hey, I’ve had close calls before.”
“But not quite like this one.”
“Nope. You’re right.”
“What were you thinking at the critical moment? What went through your mind when the drug gang boss told you to kneel on the ground and lean forward?”
“Timothy, what kind of question is that? What are you, Barbara Walters? Is this television?”
“I mean, did your life flash before you? What was the last thing you saw?”
“The funny thing was, it wasn’t my life that flashed before me. It was Ann Marie Stoneseifer’s life that flashed before me.”
“What? Good grief.”
“When I was in high school, Ann Marie Stoneseifer, who was a classmate, was in a car driven by a friend that went out of control. The car almost ended up in Bald Eagle Creek. It turned out that everyone was okay, but Ann Marie told me the next day that at the moment of the crash into some creek-side brush she thought she was going to die, and her life actually did flash before her. I’ve never forgotten that—it made such an impression on me—and ever since then I’ve been convinced that when my time came I would remember that incident and Ann Marie Stoneseifer’s life would flash before me. And up at Hal Skutnik’s lodge, that’s exactly what happened.”
He laughed. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“You’re partly right to be skeptical. I’ve always believed that that’s the way it would happen. But it didn’t.”
“Oh good.”
“As I began to kneel, I saw your face,” I said.
“Did you really? Oh Don.”
This wasn’t exactly true. I had seen nothing. Just trees and sky and the people around me and maybe some blood rushing from the back of my brain and into my eyeballs. But I wished afterwards that I had seen Timmy’s face, and that was plenty true enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Stevenson is the pseudonym of Richard Lipez, author of fourteen books, including the Don Strachey private eye series. He also co-wrote Grand Scam with Peter Stein, and contributed to Crimes of the Scene: A Mystery Novel Guide for the International Traveler. He is a mystery reviewer for The Washington Post and a former editorial writer at The Berkshire Eagle. Lipez’s reporting, reviews and fiction have appeared in Newsday, The Boston Globe, The Progressive, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and many other publications. Four of the Strachey books have been filmed by Here!TV. Red White Black and Blue, the twelfth Strachey book, won the Lambda Literary Award for the best gay mystery of 2011. Lipez grew up in Pennsylvania, went to college there, and served in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia from 1962-64. He is married to sculptor and video artist Joe Wheaton and lives in Becket, Massachusetts.
TRADEMARKS ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Albany Times Union: Hearst Communications Inc.
AMTRAK: National Railroad Passenger Corporation
Arby’s: Arby’s IP Holder Trust Corporation
ART (Harvard): President and Fellows of Harvard College
Beemer: BMW of North America LLC
Beverly Hilton: Hilton Hotels & Resorts
BlackBerry: Research in Motion Limited
Boston Globe: The New York Times Company
Brooks Brothers: Retail Brand Alliance
Calistoga: Calistoga Beverage Company
CBS: CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Cheez Whiz: Kraft Foods, Inc.
Chevy: General Motors
Cialis: Lilly ICOS L.L.C.
CNN: Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. A Time Warner Company
Commonwealth Bank: Commonwealth Bank and Trust Company