The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard (книги без регистрации .txt) 📗

“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 Mexicans 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.