After I’d read several pages, I said, “What’s this? A nude scene? It says
Eddie and Jarvis stare at each other’s genitals lustfully.
”
“There have to be four nude scenes, Mason told me. It’s Hey Look policy. In that scene, I just wrote what I was told to write. In the end, it will hardly matter.”
“But you’re supposed to bring your superior writing skills to the project so that Hal can win an Emmy. Hively is trying to turn
Notes from the Bush
into
Dark Smooches
. How is that going to make Mother Skutnik proud?”
Wenske said, “The nude scenes per se aren’t going to be the problem with the film. The story is about my experience coming out as a middle schooler, and such people do sometimes take their clothes off. Nudity is fine with me. But with the sex stuff—which in the book happens almost entirely in my head except for one kiss—they won’t be able to cast actual fourteen-year-olds and keep themselves out of jail. So Mason wants to cast Cleft Beardsley and Kirk Dirkley, and those guys are at least thirty-one.”
“The stars of
Dark Smooches
?”
“Being spectacularly untalented, they’re available and they’re cheap. And they’re not under-aged.”
“Not hardly.”
Delaney said, “This is total insanity. Eddie, your smart, sweet, brave book—fucked up! It must be agonizing to see this happening.”
“Yeah, the biggest problem,” Wenske said, “is not that Mason and Rover and Hal are insane. It’s that they’re hacks. One reason the pages I show them are unacceptable is that I don’t know screenwriting. But the other reason is, what they want is what most people think of as good writing, but these guys have no clue as to what good writing is. They wouldn’t recognize it if it bit them on the ass. Or, since they consider
Dark Smooches
one of HLM’s proudest achievements, I should probably say on the neck.”
“Then why have you write it at all?” I said. “If Mason believes he can do as well, why doesn’t he just write the script himself? He can go ahead and turn your parents into Blake and Crystal Carrington and you and your East Greenbush junior high school friends into a gay-ish cast of
Oliver
except naked and played by twenty-six-year-olds.”
“Mason would do that, of course. He’s already moved the setting from New York State to Pasadena, and he wants to turn Jarvis Landry, the Simons Rock student I wanted to take to the prom, into a ping pong paddle fetishist. It’s not Mason but Hal who’s insisting that I apply the skills that won
Notes
a lot of literary awards. Except, he doesn’t really know what those skills are. It’s not talent he understands, it’s promoting himself. And of course when it comes to Hal’s mother, it’s respectability.”
“It sounds like an impossible situation you’re in,” I said. “I mean, in addition to being kidnapped and threatened with death.”
Wenske heaved a deep sigh. “God. How did I ever manage to get into this—and drag other people into it too? I mean, you two. And Bryan. God. I can’t believe they did that to Bryan and that other guy from HLM. And my poor mom and my sister. Who think I’m probably dead. How could I have underestimated how savage Hal and his people are? I thought they were just hacks and incompetents and cynical crooks.”
“You’re used to the Massachusetts Legislature,” Delaney said. “Hacks and crooks are what you know.”
“Just one clarification,” I said. “When you disappeared, Eddie, a lot of people in Boston and New York, like Marva Beers, were afraid it was the drug lords who had gotten hold of you and done away with you. That you got them pissed off with your
Globe
drug-gang stories and then
Weed Wars.
”
“Which did turn out to have a major element of truth,” Wenske said. “It was all the Hey Look cash suddenly pouring out of Siskiyou County, the weed-growing capital of North America, that got me thinking about a connection to something I already knew all about.”
“But your mother and sister,” I said, “were afraid of something else. What they called your dark side. Or your secret life.”
“What? Why would they think that? Because of my undercover work for the
Globe
and for
Weed Wars
?”
“Your sister told me that when she stayed with you last year you’d disappear for hours at a time late at night. That’s when you lived your secret life. Something weird or occult or something.”
Wenske slapped his forehead and went through about twenty expressions in fast-forward. “Oh no. Oh fuck.”
“So there were no dark side activities? Grave robbing? Peculation? Sacrificial rituals under the Longfellow Bridge?”
“What’s peculation? I should know.”
“You sure should,” Delaney said. “Having spent so many years around Boston. It’s embezzlement.”
“The word sounds like something racier,” I said. “I only recently learned what it meant.”
“Well, if it’s racy, maybe I did it. I used to go over to the gay peep show in Somerville late at night and hang around and look at the videos and exchange blow jobs with other guys who wanted some uncomplicated sexual adventuring. All perfectly wholesome in a perfectly unwholesome way. But… Jesus! Of course I didn’t tell my sister.”
“She said you always told her who you were dating.”
“Dating, sure.”
Delaney had been listening to this exchange with fierce concentration. He said, “I don’t know. For me, this falls into the area of TMI. Boy oh boy. I mean, I have nothing against fellatio. A whore did that to me in Mexico many years ago. I’ll never forget it.”
With that, the bolt slid back and the door swung open.
Mason Hively appeared in leather chaps and nothing else. He was skeletal and gray. Blanco came in just behind Hively carrying two ping pong paddles. Blanco shut the door behind the two of them.
Hively chimed, “I’ve been bad again, parachuting into enemy territory without a map. Blanco is going to punish me, and I hope while I’m getting what I deserve I don’t scream too loudly and keep you weary travelers awake all night. Wanna watch, boys? I know you’ll want to get a good look at my dragon tattoo. Guess where it is?”
I didn’t see it happen, but I’m sure Wenske, Delaney, and I all shut our eyes at exactly the same instant.
CHAPTER THIRTY
As soon as Hively and Blanco left just after eleven, Wenske said, “Oh Jesus. We have to get out of here. Watching that was brutal, but it’s only going to get worse. A lot worse.”
“There are some people who are going to notice I’m missing,” I said. “Ort Nestlerode, for one. Do you know him?”
“Isn’t he married to one of the salt sisters?”
“Well, both of them.”
“Ah.”
“They’re with you all the way, as you know.”
“You bet they are. They despise Hal and the rest of them. He says awful things about them behind their backs and, worse, he’s skimming the profits off their lucrative weed business.”
“Ort was going to check in with me and then help find Paul. He’ll figure out where I am.”
“He won’t get in here. Nobody gets past Pablo and Blanco. And those three psychos who dragged you up here—they could still be around. From your description, I think they work for one of the Mexican cartels. They’re mules who double as enforcers. They moonlight for Mason and Rover, too, and they are not to be messed with.”
I said, “There must be other doors leading out of this building. Where are they?”
“Not within fourteen feet of this girder there aren’t.”
“Anyway,” Delaney said, “how do we get these manacles off?”
“I’ve tried,” Wenske said. “I’ve been trying for a month.”
“The locks on these things are crap. I could pick them if I had my kit. What’s over there in your pantry?”
“Just a few grocery items. They bring me a hot dinner every night. Hot meaning Spaghetti-Os or fish sticks. There’s some stale bread here and a couple of cans of SPAM.”
I walked over dragging my chain and looked over the items on a folding table: some packaged and canned food, paper plates, utensils, a bucket of water and some plastic cups. One cup had a toothbrush in it, and I wondered if the three of us were going to share it. I was just grateful Timmy wasn’t there, as he gets grossed out at the thought of using even my toothbrush.
“The SPAM can has a pull tab instead of the kind of key that tinned meats used to have. I can’t do anything with this tab. But this fork might work. I might be able to do something with one tine. The lock has a simple pin and tumbler mechanism.”
The fork was a cheap stainless steel job, and with a little effort I was able to bend back three of the four tines. Then I bent the tip of the fourth tine back an eighth of an inch using the table edge and a metal rod that was part of one of Hively’s torture machines. I sat back down and propped my right ankle up on my left knee.
“Do you need more light?” Wenske said. “I can bring the reading lamp over.”
“No, it’s done by feel. Though the tine might be too thick.”
The manacle appeared to be a farm implement, probably designed for restraining animals—animals that were not going to be adept at picking locks.
“This might actually work,” I said. “Give me another minute.”
It actually took three or four minutes, and then the lock disengaged and the manacle slid open.
Wenske and Delaney were gape-jawed.
“Wow!”
Delaney said, “I’m impressed.”
“To think that if I’d known, I could have done that myself weeks ago.”
It took another ten minutes of concentrated effort to get Delaney and then Wenske freed. It was close to midnight now, and Wenske said he guessed everybody in the lodge was asleep. He said no one had ever come into the dungeon late at night. He slept on the big padded platform where Hively had gotten his spanking earlier, and presumably that’s where Delaney and I were expected to bed down also.
I said, “Blanco and Pablo are usually on a bench outside the main door. But would they be out there twenty-four hours a day? And if not, are there others who take the night shift?”
Delaney said, “I doubt that OSHA rules apply here.”
“Maybe,” Wenske said, “Mason and Rover think they don’t need guards at night. The door is bolted from the outside, and anyway they think these manacles are escape-proof.”
“Let’s look around. There has to be another way out of here. Once we get out we’ll hot wire the old Cherokee that’s out there—I think I know how—and we’ll be out of here and down on the highway before they even know we’re gone.”
“I could use some fresh air,” Wenske said. “It’s been a while.”
I agreed that he needed airing out, but under the circumstances it felt churlish to bring it up.
We did not risk turning on any more lights, and we made our search of the studio’s interior walls mainly by groping around in the shadows beyond the single lamp in the dungeon set.
“Here’s a door,” Delaney said in a loud whisper. He was in the far rear of the building about thirty feet behind the dungeon.
Wenske and I felt our way back there and found Delaney and his metal door. It even had an
exit
sign over it.
The door had a simple lock inside its knob. I turned the switch to the open position and slowly turned the knob. I could feel the mechanisms yield, but when I pushed on the door it did not open. I pushed harder, and still nothing.
“I think it’s bolted from the outside, like the one in front.”
Wenske said, “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“All that fresh, cool night air out there. I can practically taste it.”
We searched for another exit but finally were not able to find any.
I said, “What about a window high up? Is there any sign of natural light in here in the daytime?”
“No. I don’t think film studios have windows.”
“Or a vent?”
“Maybe. But a vent we could crawl through? I doubt it.”
“We could tunnel out,” I said. “But it would take quite a while to break through this concrete floor. If we were going to be here for a year, that could be a route out.”
“Let’s not even think about that,” Delaney said.
“And,” Wenske said, “we don’t have a jackhammer or a pick ax.”
I said, “Do you really think Rover and Hively are planning to torture Paul and me in order to spur you on in your script-writing? Meth addicts can act pretty crazy, but that is really round the bend.”
“Mason’s a Stieg Larsson total nut job. He’s read all the books and he’s seen the movies. And when he’s high—which is over half the time—he confuses the real world with Larsson’s fictional world. He identifies with Martin Vanger, the psychotic torturer and killer, and he imagines some gay male Lisbeth Salander who has to show up once in a while and punish him and mete out retribution. That’s what
The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo
was going to be about. Mason likes to be hurt, and he likes to have the people who hurt him hurt other people. He’s constantly threatened to spank me or even whip me, and the only reason he hasn’t done it is, Hal has apparently disallowed it. I suppose Hal’s afraid his mother might find out. Being exposed for running a torture chamber would not go over well at the Beverly Hills old folks lodge.”
“Does Hal know that Rover and Mason have had people killed to protect Hey Look Media’s reputation? That could also put a damper on the evening when her fellow inmates sit down with Mother Skutnik for an early bird special.”
“I doubt if Hal knows about the murders. That’s something Rover and Mason probably set in motion when they were flying high. They tend to be sober when Hal’s around.”
Delaney was standing by the big garage door, twenty feet wide and about thirty feet high for trundling sets and large pieces of equipment into and out of the studio. Delaney said, “Here’s the switch for raising and lowering the door.”
“It’s probably been deactivated,” Wenske said.
“Should I push the
up
button?”
Wenske and I looked at each other, and we both said, “Sure.”
Delaney pushed the button, and the big door suddenly began to clank and rattle and roll upward.
Wenske stepped out into the night and cried out, “Oh yes!” His joy came from being outside the dungeon for the first time in weeks and from the sight that welcomed us: Ort, Martine, and Danielle standing in the moonlight next to Ort’s pick-up truck.