They both looked glum.

“Only gay game in town,” Boxley said. “There’s Brand Gay, yeah, but they’re more New York-based and not all that wonderful either. The place isn’t run by a psycho, just tight-assed corporate types.”

“Brand Gay does seem to have been designed by focus groups composed of somewhat dim people,” I said.

Our drinks arrived and we all availed ourselves.

“We’d have stuck it out at HLM,” Taibi said, “hoping that Hal would become less hands on and some talented people might be brought in, even if only accidentally. But we both got bounced at the same time last year, and now we look back and consider ourselves blessed. No more hissy fits from Hal, no more mind games from Ogden, no more having to deal with Rover’s dumb-ass programming ideas that he comes up with whenever he’s stoned, which is most of the time.”

“May I ask why you were both fired?”

More eye rolling. I held on to the table.

“Hal had surveillance cameras installed in the office,” Boxley said. “Just like Ogden had done in New York. Unfortunately, we both forgot about them. I took a day off without asking anybody when my sister was visiting from New Hampshire and Hal was in New York. Hal looked at the tapes when he got back and saw that I was gone and started screaming that I was stealing from the company and I was lucky he didn’t call the police. He told me to get out of his sight, and he never wanted to lay eyes on me again.”

“My case was similar,” Taibi said, “but a little bit embarrassing. One day I was checking out some porn on my computer, and I made the mistake of actually taking my dick out and…you know. Fuck, there it was on the tape. Not a lot of detail, but clear enough. Hal started screaming that I could be spreading disease in the office, and I should get out of his sight and he never wanted to lay eyes on me again, and I was lucky he didn’t call the police about me jerking off on HLM’s office furniture.”

I said, “This place sounds like its personnel policies were formulated by some satanic combination of Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.”

They laughed lightly. Taibi said, “Maybe they were. A lot of people think Ogden is actually straight and works for Hey Look because he’s been fired everywhere else. He’s always talking about cocks and asses and ‘gittin’ a little,’ as he calls it, but when he goes on like that it sounds like George Romney talking about grits. It feels totally phony. Ogden was brought into the company for his management expertise, supposedly, but that’s a joke. The place is always in chaos. Luckily, Ogden is in New York most of the time, so people out here only have to deal with Hal the psychopath and Rover the dope fiend.”

“I understand that you were two of Eddie Wenske’s sources for his research on gay media.”

“Eddie was great,” Boxley said. “He found all these horrors fascinating, and we could tell he was really going to do a job on HLM. We told him everything we knew, and so did ten or twelve other people who’d been screwed by Hal.”

“Were there any people he might have interviewed who would have said nice things about HLM?”

“If it was in the office, the marketing and promotion people, sure. But then they’d slip Eddie their phone numbers and meet him after work and unload. I know several situations where this was the case.”

“So he actually came to the office?”

“He wanted to get a feel for the place,” Taibi said, “and naturally he had to interview Hal to get his take on things.”

“Any good journalist would.”

My club sandwich arrived and I went at it.

“They were in Hal’s office for an hour and a half one day,” Boxley said, “and I could hear Hal yelling. Eddie told a bunch of us afterwards that Hal apparently wasn’t used to having anybody challenge his ideas or seem to disagree with him. He went ape shit when Eddie suggested that the reason so few people watched HLM was the poor quality of the programming. Hal said most gay people don’t care about the quality of the programming, that gay men just want to look at tight asses and big pecs and that gay women only watched ESPN and they weren’t big spenders anyway.”

“It was hard for Hal to take this abuse from Wenske,” Taibi said, “because Hal actually knew who Wenske was and respected him. Hal had read Notes from the Bush when he was younger and, like everybody else, thought it was wonderful. I mean, how could anybody not?”

“Eddie never mentioned it,” Boxley said, “but Rover told us afterwards that Hal asked Eddie if he’d be interested in having a film made of the book. They’d get Mason Hively, who worked on Dark Smooches, to write and direct it. Eddie was supposed to be impressed with that—that’s all Hal knows—but of course Eddie said not a chance. Actually, Rover told us, Eddie told Hal no thank you, but what Hal heard was, not a chance in hell, go fuck yourself. It was soon after that that Eddie’s interview with Hal came to an abrupt halt.”

“So Skutnik actually has some taste and intelligence? If he appreciated Wenske’s book, good for him.”

“He’d have fucked it up, believe me. Mason Hively is a hack writer and a hack director. Have you seen Dark Smooches?”

“Some of it, once, briefly.”

“As a writer, Mason sees himself as a kind of gay Stieg Larsson. But the guy does crystal meth and is unbalanced. He actually wanted to do a film called The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo. A total rip-off of Larsson that legal said no to. Which surprised a lot of us, because legal says okay to just about anything Hal wants to do. He believes their job is finding legal justification for him to do whatever the fuck he feels like doing.”

I said, “Back in New York, some HLM people have heard rumors of financial funny business at the company, maybe even including swindling of investors. Do you know anything about this?”

They were quiet for a moment.

“I’ve heard that,” Boxley said.

Taibi said, “Rumors, yes.”

“The company has been sued umpteen times and has always settled, sometimes for large amounts, we’ve heard. That put a drain on capital. Back in early January, there was a panic, in fact. A lot of people were let go and there was a week when nobody at the company got paid at all. Their next paychecks were supposed to be double, but it never happened. If people bring it up, Hal starts screaming, so people don’t bother to ask anymore.”

Taibi said, “The crunch seems to be over for now. Hal must have lured in some more suckers to invest in the company, but he isn’t saying who they are.”

I asked, “Do you have any idea if Eddie Wenske found out much about HLM’s financing?”

“I had the feeling he knew more than he let on to Robert and me,” Taibi said. “I think he might have found a source in the company that was dishing the monetary dirt.”

“What made you think that?”

“Just that he said one time that when he was in law school he wished he’d studied more tax law and business law and not so much constitutional law. They would have come in handy when he got around to researching HLM.”

“Do you have any idea who this well-informed source in the company might be?”

“Don’t know,” Boxley said. “The only people who know where the HLM bodies are buried are Hal, Ogden, Scott Sanders in legal, and of course Martine and Danielle. Scott totally kisses Hal’s ass.”

“Not in the literal sense,” Boxley said, “Scott being straight.”

“And Martine and Danielle worked for Hal’s father in the lumber business up north, and they are loyal family retainers who would never besmirch the Skutnik family name by blabbing about anything questionable that goes on with the books.”

“And Wenske would have interviewed all of these people when he was out here? Or tried to?”

Taibi said, “I doubt any of them would have been willing to talk to Eddie. Not without clearing it with Hal, which was not going to happen.”