I said, “Did Gummer tell you about the third diner?”
“The what?”
“I guess he didn’t. He mentioned it to me in passing. I was to meet Kim at the Westin at seven, but Gummer said Kim told him that someone else was coming to Kim’s apartment at six to accompany him to the dinner meeting. I knew nothing about this. I don’t know who the diner was or what became of him. Was he scared off, or what? It would be useful to know, I think.”
“Or,” Davis said, “did this person know that Kim was going to be killed and stayed away? Or did he arrive early, and was let in, and stabbed Kim himself?”
“Or was this man also killed? Were there any other murders in Boston yesterday?”
Davis was quiet for a moment. “No. None reported. But maybe the body was disposed of, and so far no one has reported anybody missing. That’s always a possibility.”
“This man, whoever he was,” I said, “may have been going to talk to me about Eddie Wenske’s disappearance. Why else would Kim have invited him to the dinner meeting with me? So maybe he’s somehow knowledgeable of, or involved in, the Wenske situation.”
“We don’t know,” Davis said, “what has become of Wenske, or even if he’s dead or alive. Maybe Wenske is alive, and he was going to be your third dinner companion. Or maybe he’s alive and he came back from wherever he was and
he
killed Kim.”
“Yeah, well. Not that, I don’t think.”
“They had their ups and downs, everybody says. Is there any violence in Wenske’s history?”
“No. Everybody says he’s a sweetheart of a guy. You’re way off on that one.”
“Probably. Though your line of work, Strachey, is enough like mine for you to know that even the nicest people sometimes have a dark side. Know what I mean?”
CHAPTER NINE
The Boston city narc I should talk to about Eddie Wenske, Davis told me, was a detective named Lewis Kelsey. He was out of the office for the day, but I made an appointment for Tuesday morning. He was supposedly up to speed on both the Wenske missing-person case and any possible link between Wenske’s disappearance and
Weed Wars
, as well as Wenske’s
Globe
reporting on the pot wholesalers.
Meanwhile, the media-book question was wide open—I knew literally nothing about the project Wenske was deep into when he vanished—so I decided to rectify my ignorance. I took a cab to Logan airport, making some calls on the way, and then rode the Delta Shuttle to LaGuardia. The flight was fast and smooth, and I was in midtown Manhattan by eleven.
Luke Pearlman had a cubby hole of an office on the seventh floor at 30 Rock, no windows, just air freshener and a lot of electronics. Pearlman was small and sprightly, with sunken dark eyes and more hair on the back of his hands than on his head, and he talked a mile a minute.
“Oh, God, I was stunned when I heard about Bryan Kim. I mean, fuck, what is
going on
here? I mean, first Bryan’s boyfriend disappears, and now Bryan is fucking
murdered
? This is just fucking
incredible.
So, tell me, tell me everything you know about any of this. I mean, we’d even do something on it, except of course there’s no New York angle. Or is there? Bryan thought Eddie Wenske’s disappearance might’ve had something to do with the gay-media book Wenske was working on, and I know Bryan was talking to people at Hey Look Media, which everybody in gay New York knows is a viper’s nest of pettiness and spite and miserliness and incompetence and puttin’ on airs. So, what do you think—do you think they’re all connected? Wenske disappearing and Bryan getting stabbed to death? It’s all just—God, I don’t know
what
to make of
any
of it. So, for chrissakes, please fill me
in
.”
I gave Pearlman an honest if abbreviated account of the case as I knew it: my being hired by Susan Wenske to find out what happened to her missing son; my un-kept dinner date with Bryan Kim; Kim’s stabbing death; the mysterious third diner. I speculated about possible links to Wenske’s pot book and also to the gay-media book Wenske was researching when he vanished.
“Oh,” Pearlman said, “I’m sure if Wenske was going to write anything unfavorable about Hey Look Media, Hal Skutnik probably had him killed. The same with Bryan—I know he was involved in digging up dirt on Prince Hal. Just kidding, of course. HLM doesn’t murder people. They don’t have to. They just insult people and treat them like shit and totally fuck them over. I know three filmmakers who are still waiting to be paid for films they delivered, and the films were aired, and then there were accounting delays, so-called. Accounting delays that have gone on for three years. The same with writers and photographers at HLM’s magazines,
Our Rainbow
,
Proud Man,
and
Bugger.
Skutnik is ruthless and mean, and even if he didn’t physically murder anybody I’m sure he’s made at least a hundred people drop dead from heartbreak or disgust.”
I said, “Did you say Bryan told you he thought Wenske’s disappearance had something to do with the media book research? He told Wenske’s mother he had no clue as to what happened to Wenske.”
“Bryan didn’t see any connection to the media project, I don’t think, until quite recently. Then just last week I ran into Boo Miller on the street—he’s in marketing at Hey Look Media—and Boo had been talking to Bryan, and Boo said there was something new Bryan was all of a sudden wondering about or suspicious of about Eddie disappearing, and Boo was even going to sneak up to Boston and talk to Bryan this week sometime while Ogden Winkleman, the asshole who runs the HLM New York office, was in L.A. That is, if Boo could get away with not being at his desk. Winkleman has surveillance cameras in the office, and he does random checks on where people are, and if he goes away he checks the tapes when he gets back. Boo told me that one guy in marketing put a blow-up sex doll in his chair when he took a long lunch break one time, and when the guy got back the doll was gone and there was a note on his chair that said
clean out your desk.
”
“Is this especially Orwellian, or is this just corporate America today?”
“It’s extreme. Boo thinks there’s also somebody in the office who’s in charge of taping people’s phone calls when he thinks somebody’s making a personal call on HLM time.”
“I’d like to talk to Miller. I assume he’s heard about what’s happened to Kim.”
“I haven’t talked to Boo, but I’m sure word has gotten to him. I’m surprised, actually, he hasn’t called.”
“His name is Boo?”
“Real name Buris. B-U-R-I-S.”
“Hey Look Media sounds like a hellish place to have to show up every day. Why do people work there?”
“If you’re gay and male,” Pearlman said, “and you want to work in gay media, your choices are few. It’s either HLM or Brand Gay, and Brand Gay is stultifyingly corporate on the one hand and creatively lighter-than-light on the other hand. Most of their creativity goes into having annoying promos for their upcoming programs jumping around on the screen. While one bad program is on, they’re trying to get people to watch upcoming programs that aren’t worth watching either. There’s also the embarrassing fact that a certain number of creative gay men are a good deal more gay than they are creative, and they don’t last in mainstream jobs where talent is more important than having a silver stud attached to your perineum. The least talented and most resplendently be-studded guys tend to be the ones who land at HLM and try to hang on there.”
“Which category does Boo Miller fit into?”
“Boo’s a good guy, and talented, and HLM is a way station for him. He’s young, no more than thirty. The turnover both in New York and L.A. is phenomenal, and I’m sure he’ll move on soon. I know he hates working for Skutnik and Winkleman, and he was feeding Eddie Wenske all kinds of vile stuff for his media book—leads and stories and maybe even computer files. Not just office gossip and personality stuff either. Some people think there’s a certain amount of financial funny business going on at HLM. I don’t know that Boo would have direct access to any of that, but I’m sure he could have pointed Wenske in the right direction. HLM is not on the scale of Madoff, but some people think it’s run pretty much the same way, and it’s a financial house of cards people hope they aren’t anywhere near when it comes crashing down.”
Pearlman’s cell warbled. He held up a this’ll-just-take-a-sec finger and said, “Luke.” He listened, said, “Ninety seconds, not a millisecond longer,” and hung up.
I said, “Eddie Wenske’s computer is also missing along with its owner.”
Pearlman raised a bushy eyebrow. “Yeah, well.”
“It’s easy to assume there are files on there that somebody did not want made public.”
“I’m sure there are. Or were.”
“Marva Beers thinks it’s probably Wenske’s pot book that got somebody mad at him. So do his mother and sister. Have you read
Weed Wars
?”
“I glanced at it. We had Eddie on at five when the book came out. It made a lot of people around here uncomfortable. Nobody who smokes pot wants to think they’re supporting a savage criminal enterprise.”
“Legalize it and they won’t be. But legalization doesn’t seem to be imminent.”
“Not as long as the drugs of choice in the New York State Legislature are Dewar’s and Rheingold light.”
“I’m not holding my breath.”
“I can see why Marva thinks the violent pot overlords did something to Wenske,” Pearlman said. “I’d say HLM is run by guys who are gangsters only in the moral sense. It’s true, yeah, that Skutnik hates criticism—you won’t find an unkind word about him or any of his enterprises in any HLM publication. But at the same time criticism rolls right off him. The company line is, anybody who badmouths HLM is either a jealous nobody or a disgruntled former employee. When people leave, they have to sign a non-disparagement agreement just to get out of their contracts. I don’t think Skutnik has—or needs—a posse of muscle boys who go around breaking guys’ legs. Or perineums.”
“Marva Beers told me she’d heard Skutnik and Winkleman were gangsters—the feyest gangsters in the country, I think she said.”
Pearlman thought about that. “I don’t know. Marva has her own reasons to think the worst of HLM. Skutnik and Winkleman are both the skuzziest types of misogynists. There are only two women I can think of in the entire company, and they are generally referred to as ‘those cunts in accounting.’ I’m sure they’re well paid and indispensible, because financially they must know where the bodies are buried, or at least suspect. But they’re treated as shittily as everybody else and called terrible names behind their backs. It all just gives you the heebie-jeebies.”
I said, “Is Skutnik decent to anybody? He makes Donald Trump sound like Mister Rogers.”
“Apparently he’s nice to Rover. That’s not his dog, it’s his boyfriend. Rover Fye is an actor—I use that term loosely—who’s been with Hal for about twenty years. Which is odd, because Rover’s IMDb page lists his age as thirty-one. One way or another, something doesn’t compute there. Rover produced, co-wrote, and co-starred in HLM TV’s series
Dark Smooches.
Did you see it?”
“Once, for about five minutes.”
“You’re a patient man. Boo was charged with promoting the series—of course with a budget of about twelve dollars. This was typical of the way HLM operates. Produce dreck, underfund marketing and distribution, making it impossible to succeed, and then scream at the poor shmuck who was supposed to make fois gras out of Hostess cupcakes.”
I said, “I think I need to talk to Boo. It sounds as if he must have given Eddie Wenske quite a computer full of hair-raising HLM stories. Can you get hold of him and set something up?”
“Maybe lunch, if you’re lucky,” Pearlman said, and placed a call.
“No answer. Let me try somebody else and find out if Boo is around.”
Another call. “Perry, hi, it’s Lukie-boy. I’m trying to get Boo, and he doesn’t answer. Any idea where he is?” Pearlman frowned. “Oh? Well, fuck. Hey, somebody wants to talk to Boo and maybe he should talk to you.” Pearlman explained who I was and what I was doing. He set up a meeting for two o’clock and rang off.
“That was Perry Dremel, who works with Boo in Hey Look marketing. He says Boo flew to Boston on Saturday, and as far as anybody can tell he hasn’t come back to the city, or at least he hasn’t arrived back at work or called in. Nobody seems to know where he is or what’s become of him.”
CHAPTER TEN
The question now was, was Boo Miller the third diner Bryan Kim was going to bring along Saturday night, and if so, what happened to him, if anything? Luke Pearlman said he would make some more calls, trying to locate anybody who knew of Miller’s whereabouts. Pearlman said he had limited time, inasmuch as he had two segments he was working on for Channel Four’s five o’clock news, but he would do what he could and then make more calls and send some texts after work around seven.
Hey Look Media’s New York headquarters was in an old Chelsea office block, in need of a coat of paint on the outside but bright and new in its fifth-floor glassed-in package, like a bottle of Grey Goose on a shelf at a Goodwill store. The receptionist was a willowy young man who had that schizoid PA look, suspicious and protective on the one hand but anxious not to offend somebody who might be investing in, or sleeping with, the boss.
The apprehensive kid phoned Perry Dremel, who soon came out and led me past twelve or fifteen cubicles occupied by a variety of broad-shouldered well-dressed men in their forties. There was no sign of “the cunts.”
Dremel, svelte, sandy-haired, and meticulously kempt like the others in the office, led me into a conference room with a window overlooking Sixth Avenue and shut the door.
“We’ll say you’re a filmmaker doing the festival circuit, and we’re sketching out a campaign, okay?”
“Cool. Should I look like I’m taking notes? I have a notebook.”
“That’d be fabulous. The room has a camera but no mikes as far as I know.”
“Okay.”
We sat across from each other and I brought out my pad. Dremel had a legal pad and scribbled on it as we conversed.