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.
The reception, Brandstein had told me on the phone, was to launch Hey Look TV’s new reality show
The Boys from Nipple Clamp Junction
. The show followed the lives of the employees of a sex toy shop in West Hollywood, chronicling their ups and downs, loves and losses.
“That’s Myron Pfluge over there,” Tate said, as we moved into a sea of chattering men and a few women, most of them buff, buffed, and erect, and all of them nicely gotten up in discreet shades of cotton, linen and leather. “Myron is the show runner for
The Boys
. He’s best known for running three gay film festivals and a publishing house into the ground, and now Hal has given him a chance to show what he can do with a weekly TV series.”
Brandstein added, “Everybody knows exactly what kind of fiasco to expect, including Hal, but as you can see from the festive air here today, nobody gives a fuck.”
“So HLM programming is all just—what? A tax write-off?”
“Oh, no,” Tate said. “Hal truly believes he’s performing a public service. His contempt for gay America is so wide and so deep that he really thinks
The Boys from Nipple Clamp Junction
is what gay audiences want to sit and look at.”
“Some do, of course,” Brandstein said. “Several hundred, according to projections I’ve heard.”
“Hal badmouths his own shows all the time and splits his gut laughing about screwing over the people who produce them. He doesn’t give a damn about talent or audiences, except in one case. People say he’s embarrassed that he hasn’t produced anything that would make his mother proud. His father, old Maurice Skutnik, was a gnarly old SOB, people in Siskiyou County say, who couldn’t have cared less that his only son was a cynical purveyor of schlock to the nation’s undemanding homosexuals. But Sandra is a sweet, semi-clueless old dame, I’ve heard, who hopes someday Hal will win the Irving Thalberg humanitarian award at the Oscars.”
I said, “It sounds as if he has a ways to go.”
We had made our way to the bar and placed our orders for wine and in my case Perrier, no beer being available.
“Hal has been telling people,” Brandstein said, “that he’s got a project in the works that’s going to win him an Emmy before his mother dies. Some script that’s in development. It’s something Mason Hively is going to direct, and that tells you right there what to expect. Have you ever seen
Dark Smooches
?”
“Parts of it.”
“Then you know. Creativity-wise, Hal is delusional. And speaking of the prince of dingy smooches—there he is.”
We approached a knot of four men, three of whom were grinning and nodding at a man with his back to us. The back and top of the man’s head did look like a rice paddy in the dry season, with withered stalks that seemed to have been treated not with cosmetics but with a product manufactured by Sherwin-Williams.
As we moved around to face Skutnik, he caught a glimpse of Brandstein and glowered for just a hundredth of a second—it was just this side of subliminal—and then he beamed and crooned out, “Rob! Rob! And Floyd! Floyd! Doll face! Welcome, welcome!”
The three men who had been grinning and nodding picked up an extrasensory signal that their time with Hal was up, and they moved on.
“Hi, Hal. Congratulations on the series,” Brandstein said. “It looks like another notch in HLM’s glittering belt.”
Skutnik guffawed. “Oh, honey, the show is a total piece of shit, and don’t you believe anybody who says otherwise. I mean, do I give the fag public what it wants, or don’t I? We’ll do a hundred thousand DVDs easily, and we’ve already sold foreign rights to Latvia and Korea. Would I overestimate gay men’s tastes in entertainment? Never, ha ha ha!”
Tate said, “North or South Korea?”
“Oh, ha ha, that was funn-eee! North or South Korea! Rover, Rover! Come over here and listen to Floyd’s joke about our sale of
The Boys
to Korea!”
A large blond man with muscular breasts, an obvious Wendy’s habit, and a certain desperate glint in his eye ambled our way with a drink in one shaky hand. With the other he squeezed Brandstein’s upper arm and planted an air kiss in the space next to his head. Tate was greeted similarly, and returned the air kiss, and then he introduced me to Skutnik and Fye as “our friend Don Strachey.”
Fye grasped my hand briefly and looked straight through me as he was doing so, but Skutnik acted momentarily startled at the mention of my name. “And how do you know these two disgusting faggots, Don?” Skutnik asked me, and looked as if he was actually interested in my reply.
I said, “I’m visiting from the East, and Rob and Floyd are showing me some L.A. local color. You know, a tour of the movie stars’ homes, the Getty, a reception honoring
The Boys from Nipple Clamp Junction
. I’m having a marvelous time, thanks to Rob and Floyd.”
“Have fun,” Fye said tonelessly, looking over my shoulder for somebody who wasn’t a tourist.
Skutnik said, “Are you in the industry back on the other coast, Don?”
“No, I’m just a happy consumer of entertainment. I’m self-employed.”
“At what?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“A real, live PI! How exciting!”
“Excitement is rare, luckily. Mostly I just go around poking my nose into other people’s business and asking questions.”
“Rover!” Skutnik sang out. “A fag private eye. Maybe there’s a reality show in it? You are queer, aren’t you, Don?”
“Actually, I have a wife and eleven children back east.”
Fye was focused on something dramatic going on in his own head, but Skutnik was all ears. “I’m surprised to hear that. I’ve heard that Albany is gayer than Fort Lauderdale. Are your wife and kiddies here in L.A. with you? I suppose they’re out at Disneyland for the day, and you and Rob and Floyd are enjoying a boys’ night out. Did I hit the nail on the head?” He winked.
I smiled and said, “I’m just pulling your leg, Hal. I’m gay as a coot. No wife, no young ‘uns. Just an Irish Catholic boyfriend, a thirty-year mortgage on a townhouse, and a couple of overpriced gym memberships.”
“Oh, that’s funny! You really had me going. Are you and your perverted mister lawfully wed in the state of New York? I don’t see a ring on your finger, but maybe you’ve got it wrapped around some other fat digit, ha ha!”
“Timothy and I have talked about marrying, and we’ll get around to it sooner or later. We’re devoted to each other, and we want to support the cause. Though there wouldn’t be all that many legal benefits for us, since there’s no federal recognition. I’m already in Timmy’s state-employee health insurance plan, which is lucky for me.”
“Yes,” Skutnik said, looking at me carefully. “I suppose in your line of work, Don, you often get hurt.”
“Once in a while it happens. Not as often as happens to private eyes in the movies, of course. We’re actually more like investigative reporters than tough guys with gats.”
He didn’t pick up on that or at least didn’t register any change in expression. “What are you working on now, Don? Or are you on vacation?”
Looking distracted, Fye excused himself with a little gesture.
“I’d like to say I’m out here for the sunshine and salad bars, Hal. But I’m actually working on a missing person case.”
“Really! What? Did Grandpa wander off, ha ha?”
“No, a writer is missing. His mother hired me to find him. Eddie Wenske. He was on assignment for
The New York Times
when he seemed to disappear in January. He was seen out here early this month. But then the trail goes cold.”
“Oh my God, Eddie Wenske!” Skutnik exclaimed. “That humpy young fag who wrote
Notes from the Bush
! I met him. He came in to see me, in fact. When was that? God, December, I think. Before Christmas.”
“He was out here then, that’s right,” Tate said.
“Yes, he was writing something about gay media, and of course he came up to have a look at our operation. I mean, if you’re writing about beans, you’d want to interview Heinz. Am I right?”
Tate said, “The musical fruit.”
Skutnik guffawed. “The musical fruit! Like Ricky Martin! Oh, Floyd, you are so funn-eee.”
A well-groomed young man with a BlackBerry in his hand came over and looked nervously at Skutnik.
“I’m talking to this man,” Skutnik snapped. “What’s your problem?”
“Two of the boys aren’t here,” the young man said breathlessly. “Nobody knows where they are.”
“The tit-clamp boys? The fucking stars of the fucking show?” Skutnik was reddening and now breathing faster himself.
“They were supposed to be here at six. Charles, Blair, and Rusty are here, but Nando and Glen aren’t, and they’re not answering their cells, and the photographer is here, and the writer from
Proud Man
and the writer from
Bugger.
We’re all set to go with your and Rover’s roll-out pitch, but we can’t get started until all the nipple-clamp boys are here, and the hotel says we have to be out of here by eight forty-five or they’ll have to charge us, and Ogden says no way.”
Skutnik threw his drink in the kid’s face. “Who is fucking supposed to be chaperoning those stupid faggots!” he bellowed. A number of party-goers turned our way and gawked briefly, saw who it was doing the screaming, then turned carefully away.
The young man with the dripping face said, “Lonnie was coordinating transportation. But he said they didn’t show up at the store when they were supposed to, and he’s got somebody over there on an open phone, and Nando and Glen still haven’t shown, and Lonnie is totally going out of his mind.”
“Lonnie is
gone
!” Skutnik screeched. “Tell Lonnie to get the fuck out of here. I never want to lay eyes on Lonnie again. I
hate
that stupid fag! Just get him
out
of here!”
“But he…”
“Out! Out! Get him out!”
Now a middle-aged man in a seersucker jacket and a polka dot bow tie came over. “Hal, what the hell is happening?”
“Ogden, they’re not here! The fucking stars of the fucking show! Two of them are missing the fucking roll-out!”
“Well, that is
totally
inexcusable!”
“They are
out
of the show, that’s all there is to it. Those two are
fired
from the show!”
The man who seemed to be Ogden Winkleman, the New York office head who also enjoyed telling people to clean out their desks, said, “It’s a reality show, but you’re right, Hal. We can get actors to play them.”
“Actors? And fucking
pay
them?”
Rover Fye returned now, looking even jumpier than before, as if maybe he had gone off and ingested or smoked something to help get him through the crisis. “I will
kill
those two if I ever lay eyes on their sorry-ass faces ever again! I cannot believe they would do this to you, Hal! Don’t they understand who they are fucking over? It’s just in-fucking-credible!”
“All right, all right,” Winkleman said. “Here is what we are going to do. Jason, tell Lonnie we all want him gone.
Gone.
Got that?”
“Okay,” said the wet-faced man.
“We tell the writers and the photographer,” Winkleman said, “that Nando and Glen quit the sex toy store to go back to Transylvania where they came from or some crap like that, and their replacements are being auditioned. We restage their appearance at the roll-out next week in a studio situation with rear-screen projection or whatever. Have the photographer get some shots of the dais here and the bar and what have you.”
“That should work,” Skutnik said.
Tate said, “Sort of like the faked moon landing in ‘69.”
Skutnik turned toward Tate and said in a frigid voice, “I fired you once, Floyd. I can’t fire you again, but I can
destroy
you in this town! You understand that, don’t you?”
I could see that both Tate and Brandstein kind of wanted to laugh, but they knew that they didn’t dare, and they just stared at Skutnik awkwardly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I wasn’t sure if Skutnik’s slipping in that he knew I was from Albany was clumsy and inadvertent, or if it was intentional and he was sending me a signal: Don’t mess with me if you know what’s good for you. He seemed capable of sinister calculation, both tactical and strategic, but he was also volatile and maybe basically unbalanced. So it was hard to guess what was going on with him. I could see why people thought of him as being a weird combination of clueless, formidable, and highly combustible.
Brandstein had been wrong about the crackers and Cheez Whiz. The hors d’oeuvres at the Peninsula were excellent, and I ate my fill of curried chicken in puff pastry, thanked Brandstein and Tate for the introduction to the Hey Look Media upper strata, and then left them and drove toward Paul Delaney’s apartment in Santa Monica. I had Jane Ware’s key, and I was eager to locate any of the documents, notes and computer files Wenske, Delany, and Ware had gathered on HLM and its shady finances and other dubious practices.
On the way, I phoned Perry Dremel at HLM in New York and got him on his cell. I reached him at a bar in Chelsea, where he and other HLM employees were girding themselves for Ogden Winkleman’s return to New York on Friday.
“I met Winkleman,” I said. “He seems marginally more stable than Hal or Rover. But I guess it’s all relative.”
“You’re in L.A.? You’re actually visiting the Mother Church?”