The two men glanced at each other. “I heard,” the big guy said. “That ain’t got nothin’ to do with Danielle and Martine and their operation. That was some mules who are methies, or work for a couple of methies anyway. And meth people you can’t trust any further than you can throw ’em.”
Inasmuch as this man could probably throw a methie quite some distance, this was a confusing statement.
I said, “What’s your name?”
“Ort.”
“Ort?”
“That’s right. Ort.”
“Well, Ort, please tell Ms. Desault and Ms. Desault that my friend and I have all the HLM incriminating documents they gave Wenske, and these are going to end up at the federal building in San Francisco if the ladies don’t help us nail somebody for the three murders. Maybe that somebody will be Hal Skutnik, and if he goes down then they can probably resume their pot business that’s run under the guise of a logging business, which I assume is what’s really going on here. Does that make sense?”
Ort thought this over. “You know, we had a good thing going here for a goodly number of years. The logging economy has been for shit. People gotta feed their families, but there’s only so much wildcatting you can do to make ends meet, stealing trees from Forest Service concessions and not get caught. So everybody grows a little weed or helps out somebody else who does. Most of them are good, law-abiding people. Well, not law-abiding, but you know what I mean.”
“Sure.”
“But you have your bad apples who ruin it for everybody else.”
“I know.”
“It’s the meth people who are the worst.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Martine and Danielle try to stay away from that type of person.”
“Good for them.”
“And we all were making good money, getting a fair return. Keeping the flat-on-its-ass lumber company going with the weed profits while old Maurice shot bear and shot the shit with movie stars and politicians.”
Now it was coming clear. “But then the senior Skutnik died.”
“Yeah, old Maurice, a total asshole.”
“And his son Hal started bleeding the logging-slash-pot-growing company’s profits to prop up his inept and mismanaged and partially crooked gay media empire.”
“Hal is crazy as a bedbug and queer to boot.”
“So Danielle and Martine thought they could discredit or maybe even ruin Hal Skutnik’s media business and somehow preserve the weed business that has helped the impoverished loggers of Siskiyou County stay afloat in bad times. And they were doing this through Eddie Wenske and his book exposing corruption in the gay media.”
“I wondered all along,” Ort said, “if they could get rid of Hal and still keep the business doin’ okay otherwise. It sounded to me like that was gonna be work. But the gals are whizzes at the bookkeeping and the deals. Old Maurice knew that, and that’s why he let them pret’ near run the company for twenty years all by their selves.”
I said, “You seem to be highly knowledgeable of company operations under Martine and Danielle. You’re a trusted associate, it appears. Or are you more than that? May I ask if you are in a relationship with Martine or Danielle?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Which one?”
“Both of ’em.”
I thought of Rick Santorum and his slippery slope argument, but I didn’t mention it to Ort.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In Delaney’s motel room, he was busy making notes for the book he was now planning on writing, and I was checking email and phone messages. Word had reached HLM’s New York office of Boo Miller’s death, and I had messages from both Perry Dremel and Luke Pearlman expressing shock and sorrow as well as fear about what might happen next.
Ogden Winkleman was back in New York, Dremel told me, and was ranting about various misdeeds by staffers that he could only have known about from lip-reading the security-camera tapes or—more likely, Dremel believed—hacked phones or hidden listening devices. So it was almost certainly Winkleman who had found out about Bryan Kim and Boo Miller being in touch with Delaney and thereby learning of Wenske’s information gathering on HLM’s corrupt and even violent practices. And it must have been Winkleman who alerted somebody in the Siskiyou drug world that Kim and Miller had to be dealt with, just as Wenske had been.
It hadn’t, however, been the Desaults Winkleman notified. They were in fact eager for Skutnik to be embroiled in scandal or even criminal proceedings. Even if they had been alerted, they would have done nothing—except maybe warn Kim that he was in danger. It had to have been somebody else in Siskiyou County that Winkleman had tipped off, but who? I needed to find out.
Ort Nestlerode, as his full name was soon revealed to be, told us he would inform the salt sisters that Delaney and I were reasonable people who were not bent on interfering with the local pot trade, and he said maybe they would talk to us. He called me an hour after he left the motel and said we were invited to lunch at the Skutnik family house, where the sisters lived. He gave me directions, and I didn’t tell him I had already scouted the place out.
Delaney and I pulled in next to the Hummer and the red pick-up at twelve fifteen, right on time. Ort was waiting and led us around to the deck on the side of the house with its nice view of Mount Shasta and some well-tended flower beds at the side of the wide yard.
Ort’s driver, whose name we had learned was Clovis, was fixing some burgers on a gas grill, and the Desault sisters were seated in some gaily be-cushioned deck chairs with drinks in their hands. They were not twins, as far as I knew, but they looked a lot alike: forty-five-ish, handsome and big-featured, and that included commodious butts in tight shorts and some impressive décolletage not quite spilling out of halter tops. It was not the picture that was ordinarily conjured up by the term financial wizards, but this was California.
The sisters looked up at me with forced smiles, and one of them said, “We’re feeding you lunch, so that means you can’t make trouble.”
“Deal,” I said.
Delaney was peering all around, making mental notes, I figured, in his journalist’s way.
The sisters introduced themselves, Martine in the blue shorts, Danielle in green.
Ort took our drink orders, Calistoga water for both Delaney and me, and Danielle asked us how we liked the view of Mount Shasta. “People come from all over,” she said, “and not just ’cause it’s a beautiful mountain.”
“It’s got powers, some people say,” Martine added. “It’s the middle of an energy vortex.”
“No kidding?”
“In 1987 the Harmonic Convergence was held here, and the town was like the center of the universe for a while.”
“I’ll bet the Chamber of Commerce liked that.”
“Lots of smokers,” Danielle said, and they both laughed.
“That’s all bullshit,” Martine said. “But who cares? Different strokes for different folks.”
Delaney said, “The area seems to represent quite a combination of new and old California.”
Ort was back with our drinks now. He said, “Yeah, there’s assholes up here with mud on their boots and there’s assholes up here with their boots up their asses.”
“Ort, shut up,” Martine said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ort, honey,” Danielle said, “would you freshen my sombrero?”
“Sure, hon.”
“Mine too, honey,” Martine said. “While you’re at it.”
“I understand,” Delaney said, “that some of the finest marijuana in the world is grown in Siskiyou County.”
“You bet your bippy,” Martine said. “We get fan letters from all over.”
“Yeah” Ort said, “the county sheriff, the DEA. The letters come registered mail.”
“Ort, don’t even say that,” Danielle said. “We mind our P’s and Q’s, and the law leaves us alone. We’re a relatively small operation, fourteen million gross. The narcs mostly go after the Mex
icans and the big guys. We’re small garbanzas and also we’re not going around killing anybody. Maybe a wedgie once in a while, but that’s about all. Right, Ort?”
“Yeah.”
“We were making a nice living, actually, for Mr. Skutnik senior and ourselves and maybe forty or fifty other people. Then Hal took over the company and stuck his hand in the till.”
“We told him,” Martine said, “that we were willing to move his dough around and keep Hey Look in business, even with all his phony production deals and ripping off investors and contractors. That was up to Hal if he wanted to do business that way, and if the feds ever came around we’d just say we did it all at gunpoint and Hal’s father raped us and we were gonna cooperate with the U.S. attorney and the hell with Hal.”
Delaney said, “Mr. Skutnik Senior raped you? Both of you?”
“Raped might be too strong a word for it,” Danielle said. “But in that type of situation you say what you have to.”
Martine went on, “But stupid Hal couldn’t just leave it alone, keeping the family business going, selling a high-grade product, donating to United Way, et cetera. He had to over-extend, and he’s got all these banks and investors being so mean as to want their money back, so he starts looting the weed operation. He skimmed off a mil in a period of about a month. That’s when we got totally pissed off, and when we heard about Eddie Wenske trying to ruin Hal, we said what a godsend, and we started helping Eddie out. Feeding him all the HLM dirt. Well, maybe not all.”
“But then you suddenly cut Eddie off. Why was that?”
Ort said, “We heard tell that Hal had found out Eddie bein’ up here and talkin’ to us all.”
“And we figured we needed to cool it at least temporarily,” Martine added.
“And then,” Ort said, “the next thing we find out is, Eddie is dead. So now how the hell were the ladies here gonna help out Wenske if he was six feet under up the canyon somewhere?”
“Where did you hear this?” I asked.
“Not the most reliable source,” Martine said, “but word got back to us from our own people that it was true. We heard it from Rover Fye, Hal’s boyfriend. He said he found out about it from Mason Hively, the guy who filmed Dark Smooches up at Hal’s lodge in the canyon. Did you ever look at Dark Smooches? Probably not.”
“I saw part of one episode,” I said.
Ort asked, “Turn your stomach?”
“Pretty much.”
“Mason’s a meth freak,” Danielle said, “and so is Rover, so you have to take what they say with a grain of salt.”
I wondered if Martine and Danielle knew that people at HLM referred to them as the salt sisters and used contemptuous misogynistic terms to describe them. I didn’t ask, but I didn’t have to.
“One reason we can’t stand Hal and Rover and Mason,” Martine said, “is the way they call us bitches and those cunts and insulting filthy language behind our back. After all we’ve done for the Skutniks, keeping their businesses going and their asses out of jail, and we are treated totally like crap.”
“The thing is,” Danielle said, “we thought Wenske’s book could ruin Hal, maybe even get him sent to the pokey, and we’d cooperate and plead out of anything that dropped on us, and then we’d come back here and keep the business going and make some serious moolah what with Hal out of the picture.”
“Maybe that can still happen,” Martine said, “if you all write that book and fuck Hal to Jesus and back.”
Delaney said, “Maybe we can do that.”
“Just be careful of the methies, Rover and Mason. You don’t want to cross them. They’re in with some of the Mexies who are mean as sin. They like to stick people with big knives. They’ve killed a lot of people, maybe even Eddie. The word is, Eddie was offed by a gang with more Eastern connections—New York and New England—but nobody is really sure. I seriously doubt Rover and Mason would be involved in killing anybody. But they are methies, so who knows?”
“We do know,” Danielle said, “that Mason likes to lock people up in his dungeon out at the lodge.”
“But that’s just for sex,” Martine said.
“Mason has a dungeon?”
“It was built when they were gonna film Mason’s big pet project, The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo. But then legal said no to that. They warned Mason that Stieg Larsson’s estate would sue Hey Look’s ass for sure, and Larsson wasn’t just some sorry-ass little New York or L.A. gay filmmaker.”
I said, “Is Mason out there now at the lodge? He didn’t seem to be at HLM’s reception at the Peninsula on Thursday.”
“He’s been there at lot lately,” Martine said. “And I know Rover is due up here shortly. There’s some new project they’re working on supposedly that Hal is all hot to trot with. But if those two are producing it, I think you can guess how really rotten it’s gonna turn out to be.”
I said I could only begin to imagine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I called Timmy and said I was making some progress and it was great to be in Northern California with its spectacular scenery. He knew I was skipping over a number of crucial details, and he proceeded with some hand-wringing over my safety and well-being. This was reassuring and endearing in its way but went on just a little too long. Anyway, he was up to his receding hairline in state budgetary matters—the governor had screamed obscenities at Assemblyman Lipshutz over the phone that very morning—and Timmy soon rang off and went back to his complex duties. I wondered if it might help if the salt sisters were turned loose on the New York State budget.
Delaney was having knee problems—I could sometimes see him wincing when he walked more than half a mile—and I guessed I would need the help of someone younger and in better shape for what I thought I might need to do next.
I called Ricky Esteban. I got him on his cell at the copy center and explained that Delaney and I had picked up where Eddie Wenske left off and we might need assistance coping with some bad people, including Rover Fye and Mason Hively. Esteban said he could take time off from his job but he needed the income. I offered him three times the pittance he was earning at the copy center—Susan Wenske’s mom would approve, I somehow knew—and I told Esteban I’d email him an airline e-ticket to Redding for the next day. He said that was cool. I asked him if he owned a firearm. He said no but he knew how to get one. I advised him to place it in checked baggage and not try to carry it on the plane. He said, yeah, he knew about that.
I told Ort I needed to check out Mason Hively and the Skutnik mountain lodge, if what I now suspected was an actual possibility. I especially wanted to get a look at Hively’s dungeon, where The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo would have been filmed if the HLM lawyers hadn’t put the kibosh on it.
Ort said, “If you go in there, I hope you like to take it up the butt.”
I said, “I do,” and he slapped his enormous knee and laughed.
Hively would not know who I was, and I wanted to keep it that way for the time being. Rover would be turning up soon, and I knew he might recognize me from the HLM reception in L.A.—or maybe not, since he was plainly drug-addled at the nipple clamp boys’ reception. Ort said he could introduce me to Hively as an old high school friend, Don Smith. But I didn’t know if I could convincingly portray a Siskiyou County native, so we settled on a Don Smith who was Ort’s second cousin from Fresno.
We drove out of Mount Shasta in the pick-up, Ort behind the wheel. We took the interstate south a few miles, then cut east on state highway eighty-nine. The road twisted up a canyon, and then we turned off onto a side road, paved but in need of repair, that climbed higher into the mountains. Soon Ort swung the truck onto a long private drive—a conspicuous sign read NO ENTRY—TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED—DOGS AND SECURITY—and as we came around a forested bend into a broad clearing the Skutnik lodge came into view.
The wildflowers along the drive bloomed prettily, and a hill leading up to a mowed lawn was thick with daffodils in bloom. Beyond that was a group of rustic, mostly wo
oden buildings. There was the rambling lodge itself with its broad porch, then a barn-like structure, a separate multi-vehicle garage, a low building that looked as though it might be a swimming pool cabana behind a dense wall of shrubbery, and a sizeable more modern metal outbuilding that could have been a gym or squash court or even a film studio. Three vehicles were parked in front of the garage, a vintage Chevy SUV, a dusty Jeep Cherokee, and a newer gray Lexus. A pale sun shone down on all this, and on the two Mexican-looking men sitting and smoking on a bench in front of the metal building. One of the two was almost Ort’s size, with a boulder of a paunch instead of a long beard, and both were wearing holsters containing objects too bulky to be cell phones.
Ort parked and yelled out, “Where’s Mason?”
Both men gestured vaguely in the direction of the lodge.
We walked up the steps and on in the front door—Ort seemed to have the run of the place—and on through the big dining room and into the kitchen.
“I figured you’d be out here,” Ort said to a man seated at the kitchen table with a plate of powder, a roll of toilet paper and a Diet Coke on the table in front of him.
Hively looked up at us, grinned and said, “Join me, boys?”
“You parachutin’?”
“Looks that way.”
In worn jeans and a faded green polo shirt, Hively was nearly as skinny as the young birches along highway eighty-nine. I guessed his age to be between thirty-five and eighty-five, but hard to gauge with a once-handsome face that apparently had been severely damaged by his habits. Hively’s nose was all but collapsed in on itself and when he smiled a couple of teeth were missing.
The Last Thing I Saw Page 15
