The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard - Страница 15

“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.

“Luke Pearlman says I can talk to you, that you’re working for Eddie Wenske’s family and trying to find him, right?”

“I am.” I explained that I was to meet Bryan Kim the evening of the day he was killed and discuss Wenske’s disappearance.

“That just sucks about Bryan. I’m still shaking just thinking about it. Do they have any idea who did it, or why?”

“Not yet. It seems to be somebody he knew well enough to let into his apartment. That’s about as far as the investigation has gotten.”

“Oh, fuck. And now Boo. Where the fuck is Boo?”

“You have no idea? Luke Pearlman told me Boo told him he was going to Boston sometime soon to see Bryan. Boo didn’t tell you or any of his other friends he was meeting Bryan?”

“Friday afternoon he just said to me, ‘Gotta run up to Boston tomorrow, back late or on Sunday.’ I thought I might see Boo at a tea dance benefit Sunday afternoon—he’d been selling tickets for it—but he wasn’t there, and nobody knew why he hadn’t shown up. He had a lot of ticket money with him, and people were pulling their hair out trying to do the accounting for the event.”

“But they didn’t think he’d absconded with the funds.”

“With six or eight hundred dollars? No. That won’t buy you a new life in Rio a million miles from Ogden Winkleman. Anyway, Boo is a terribly responsible individual, and everybody was concerned that he was sick or something, with him not getting in touch. And now, with the terrible news about Bryan Kim, God, I am really worried, and I’m sure a lot of other people are too.”

“He didn’t say why he was going to Boston?”

“I can’t really remember. I don’t think so. He just said he had to fly up there or something. Maybe he was seeing Bryan. If Luke says so, he’d know. Luke and Boo are friends from way back, Tisch and NYU. And if Boo was seeing Bryan, what does that mean that nobody knows where Boo is?”

“Does Boo have other friends in Boston?”

“I think so, yeah. Eddie Wenske, of course, but Eddie is…nobody knows what the fuck has happened to Eddie. This is all just creeping me out, and I don’t know what to think.”

“I’ve heard that Boo was helping Wenske research his gay-media book. Were you aware of that?”

Dremel twisted his chair to the left a few degrees and leaned his face against his hand. “I’m turning this way because I don’t think that Ogden reads lips, but I’m not sure. The camera is at the end of the room over the PowerPoint board, but don’t look.”

Hard though it was, I maintained my straight-ahead gaze.

Dremel said, “Yes, I know Boo was feeding Eddie HLM dish. In marketing and publicity we’re largely kept out of the loop, but we know all the less important ugly shit, because we’re up to our necks in it every day. Ogden playing with people’s heads. His meltdowns and fits. The company making deals with filmmakers while the financial plan has no provisions to pay them. Starving the creative budget while the company pays for Hal’s and Ogden’s perks. I’m sure Boo gave Wenske quite an earful, and if Wenske had kept at it there would have been plenty more. I mean, in the last three months, things have gone from bad to worse.”

“Bad to worse, how so?”

“Oh,” Dremel said past the eastern side of his hand, “just more turnover than ever. People running screaming onto Sixth Avenue, or if it’s L.A., people jumping out of windows in Westwood. The company’s finances apparently turned even more teetery than ever just after the first of the year, and yet we’re all supposed to keep the company running like a new Beamer with basically no budget at all. It’s a fucking joke.”

“There were suicides among the L.A. staff?”

“No, not actual jumping out of windows. Just clutching their heads and running screaming down stairwells. Actually, maybe that’s why all those windows in L.A. are sealed shut. It’s not about climate control, it’s about keeping Hey Look Media employees from throwing themselves ten stories onto Wilshire Boulevard.”

“Do you have any idea what happened three months ago that made the company’s financial situation worse?”

“Not a clue. Only Ogden knows, and of course Hal. And I’m sure Martine and Danielle. They’re the purse-strings people in California.”

“I’ve heard that the women in the company are referred to by ugly names behind their backs. That’s those two, Martine and Danielle?”

“The cunts, they’re called. Or the skanks. I don’t use that terminology. I have a mother and two sisters and don’t talk like that. That’s Hal and Ogden and, I’m sorry to say, a number of other people. Martine and Danielle worked for Hal’s father in Northern California. He was some kind of lumber baron, and that’s where the money came from to start the company. Hal inherited sixty million dollars from his grandfather ten years ago, and more when his dad croaked last year, plus he inherited Martine and Danielle after his father passed on. He must have something on them is what everybody thinks. Why else would they come down from Mount Shasta once a month to be ridiculed and abused and forced to fuck over half the creative gay people in L.A. while they pay the bills for Hal’s Gulfstream rentals and his yoga instructor.”

“Those are perks the company pays for?”

“That’s the word in L.A. Plus his and his boyfriend’s personal trainer, personal security, and hair stylist. It’s a hair dresser in Rover’s case—that’s Hal’s spectacularly untalented boyfriend—and hair transplant artist in Hal’s case. The top of Hal’s head is said to look like the inflamed scrotum of a Great Dane with scurvy. The buying power of gay people in the United States is estimated to be over 700 billion dollars, and it’s frightening to think how much of that amount is currently going toward planting bristles on Hal Skutnik’s skull.”