Blockbusters: A Mike Holman Novel, Episode 3 | The American Spectator

Editor’s Note: This is the third of nine episodes of Scott McKay’s forthcoming novel Blockbusters, offered in serial form as an exclusive to The American Spectator readers in advance of its publication in October. Blockbusters is the third novel in the Mike Holman series; the first two, King of the Jungle and From Hellmarsh With Love, were also serialized at The American Spectator prior to book publication. 

Mike Holman, the protagonist in the series, is an independent journalist who’s been called The World’s Greatest Newsman. But in Blockbusters, he’s literally going Hollywood — choosing to head up a campaign chiefly funded by Pierce Polk, Mike’s long-time friend and one of the richest men in the world, to reform and save American and Western culture.

Starting with attempting to fix the film and TV business. Toward that end, Mike is in Los Angeles attempting to make inroads in Hollywood.

Hollywood, California – January 13, 2024

“I’m really sorry, Mike,” Eliezar said as we left an entirely unproductive meeting with Bobbi Travers, the just-appointed head of the struggling Rockit Studios. “You’re out here 10 days and I’m putting you together with all my best contacts, and it’s like none of them have worked out for you. I don’t get it.”

“It’s fine, Elie,” I said. “Really, it is. I had a lot of suspicions about how it is out here, and those were largely confirmed. And I’m learning a lot.”

I could tell that made him uncomfortable. I gave him a reassuring smile.

Poor guy. I was something very different from his usual clientele, and I just didn’t think he was up to the job of finding Hollywood people and projects that I’d connect with. But it’s not like he wasn’t trying.

“Well, we have some really good ones coming up, including the big party in the hills in a few days. So I know it’s gonna get better.”

“I believe you, Elie. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

The piece de resistance to Elie’s campaign of introducing me around Hollywood was going to be an invite to Barry Blondheim’s huge soiree at his house up in the hills. Blondheim is an agent — he’s everybody’s agent, apparently — but he’s more than that. What Blondheim really does is decide what gets made in Hollywood and what doesn’t.

There are reasons for that. Not exactly savory ones. But we’ll get to that later.

In any event, to get invited to one of Blondheim’s parties means you’re important enough to merit Blondheim making decisions on your future in Hollywood.

And in that business, Blondheim’s involvement is a signal you matter. No matter how uncomfortable it would — should — make a sane person.

I knew all this, and a lot more, about Blondheim because of Georgia. So let me back up and tell that story first.

She had told me to meet her at this place on Venice Boulevard called The Bayou. It’s a dive bar frequented by lots of people like Georgia — the showbiz wannabes, the never-discovered, the flameouts. She said if I really wanted to know what Hollywood was, and if I wanted to meet some people who’d be aligned with PGFI, she’d hook me up with a few.

But she didn’t. Not right away.

Georgia’s roommate was there that night at The Bayou. Her name was Misty, and she insisted she didn’t drink. Instead she chain-smoked, and I could tell Misty was a recovering addict even before she announced that she was a recovering addict.

Misty had a sister who came out to L.A. first to become a star. But Shawna never made it. Instead, she simply disappeared.

“I tried to find her,” Misty said. “I went to hang out at the same places she hung out in, I got into the same acting class she did, I waited tables at the same club she did… I tried living her exact life trying to get a clue what happened to her.”

“Wait,” I said. “What did the cops say?”

“The cops here don’t investigate missing girls, Mike,” Georgia cut in. “Come on.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Lots of girls come out here and go missing because they want to,” said Misty. “At least that’s what they told me.”

“Did Shawna want to go missing?”

“Shawna wanted to be an actress. And she was good, too. She could have made it. The last thing she wanted was to be missing. She wanted EVERYBODY to know who she was.”

I nodded.

“So what happened to her?” I asked.

“The Boys’ Club, some sort of way.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s a bunch of guys out here,” said Georgia, “and they’re mostly young, low-level players at studios, talent agencies and so on. They’re … procurers.”

“Procurers? What do they procure?”

“People,” said Misty. “People like Shawna.”

“Procure for whom, and for what? And procure how?”

“So you’re a young girl, and you’ve got the looks, and most of all you’re clueless,” said Misty, “and you want to be a star. These guys are everywhere looking for ‘talent’” — she was making scare-quotes with her fingers — “and when they find somebody willing to latch on to them, they’ll bring her to some party somewhere, get her loaded, make her take pills or give her heroin, and then she’s procured.”

“I still don’t get it,” I said. “Where do these girls go?”

“Anywhere,” said Georgia. “Mexico. Saudi. China.”

“There’s a big surplus of flesh out here,” said Misty. “So these guys skim off some of it and they’ll traffic people…”

“You’re talking about sex slaves,” I said. “That’s what you’re saying?”

She nodded.

I looked at Georgia.

“You saw this too?”

“Sure I did,” she said.

“And you never said anything? How did they not get you?”

“I’m a little more of a contrarian. I’ll kick a motherf**ker in the nuts before I’ll let him stick me with a needle.”

I laughed.

“I can believe that. So this is what you meant when you said I should get Holman Media to do an expose on what happens out here.”

She nodded. And then she gave me a look.

“But you don’t think I’ll do it,” I said. “You think I’m gonna overlook this so that I can get in good with the Powers That Be out here and make movies.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” she said, “but I’ll give you a chance to prove me wrong.”

“And what do I get if I do that?”

“I’m not gonna sleep with you, Holman.”

“And I’m not asking you to.”

“You prove you’re for real and I’ll introduce you to all the talented people I know in this business. You’ll have more than enough contacts to get started doing exactly what you say you want to do.”

“I’m gonna step outside for a minute,” I said, “but don’t go anywhere.”

So I did, and I called Colby.

“Yassuh, boss,” he said as he answered the phone. Colby and I do this Gene Wilder-Cleavon Little thing that we both think is funny as hell, though I’m not sure anybody else gets it. They’re mostly horrified.

“Hey,” I said, “I need a favor. I mean, it isn’t really a favor; it could be a massive thing we could do.”

“Speak freakin’ English, Mike.”

“Yeah, yeah. Did you know they’re trafficking girls out here?”

“Well, I assume they are.”

“No, I mean I actually have a story we can tell about it.”

“You have one who’s been trafficked?”

“I have a sister of one who disappeared, and I have people who’ll corroborate it.”

“Do we have bad guys?”

“We don’t have names, but I think we can get some.”

He laughed.

“I have visions of sugarplums, boss.”

“I know. It’s kinda fun. I’m out here talking to the biggest douchebags you can imagine, and then this drops in my lap.”

“Tell you what,” Colby said. “Flip is beating me up about doing something juicy. He wants to go to Gaza or Ukraine, and I’m telling him no freaking way. What if we put him on this?”

“And get Sentinel Security involved, too. They can chase down leads on girls better than the feds can.”

“Plus they’d actually want to do it,” Colby said.

Sentinel Security is one of Pierce’s companies. Think the old Pinkerton detectives, mixed with Blackwater, mixed with the NSA. As private intelligence agencies go, they’re far and away the best in the business. We’ve — by we I mean Holman Media — used them for investigative stuff a lot in recent times and what they’ve uncovered for us has blown open some massive stories.

And Flip Hardison is a guy who worked at Sentinel Security until Holman Media pulled him away. Flip is ex-military, but he used to work at Stars and Stripes, and he cut his teeth for us working as a war correspondent based out of Liberty Point in that fight between Venezuela and Guyana. If there’s a better investigative reporter going right now, I don’t know who it is.

“Get Flip out here, then. I’ll call him right now.”

So I did. And when he answered, I told him to hang on a minute, and I went back inside the bar, crooked my finger at Misty to summon her back outside, then gave her my phone and smiled.

“Tell him what you told me,” I said.

Then I went back to the table. Georgia squinted at me suspiciously.

“She’s talking with Flip Hardison,” I said. “He’s the best investigator in the business. He’s going to come out here tomorrow and get working on this, so if I were you, I’d make a list of people he needs to talk to, and you’d better have some bad guys included on it.”

“You’re seriously doing this.”

“Georgia, you’re a sweet kid,” I said, “but don’t freaking doubt me, all right? I’m not some usual asshole. I’m an asshole of a very different kind.”

“You’re my asshole. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. But you can’t be full of shit here. I’m not that kind of asshole.”

“I swear I’m not. This is real, OK?”

“I believe you. But I’m just as jaded and cynical as you are. I’ve had people lie to me before.”

Just then Misty came back. She was crying as she handed me my phone.

“You guys are the first people who really care about Shawna,” she stammered.

“Look, it’s a good story and it serves some selfish purposes of mine,” I said. “Don’t make me a saint. But if we can find her, and if we can ruin somebody’s day who deserves it for what they did to her, then that’s worth doing.”

She nodded and then she gave me a hug. That scarecrow of a girl just about choked the life out of me.

I’ve been in some really awful places and I’ve dealt with some horribly miserable people. I mean, folks who’ve seen hideous things and experienced the kind of pain and trauma that just nukes their souls. But I’m not sure I’ve ever felt their anguish like I did when Misty wrapped those skinny arms around me and said thank you.

So the next morning Flip knocked on my door at the hotel.

“What the hell?” I said. “What are you doing out here so fast?”

“Got a red-eye out of Hartsfield,” he said. “It got into Burbank right at sunrise. I can’t check in at the Marriott until 3, so you’re stuck with me until then.”

I chuckled at that and then let him into the room.

“And I’ve never had an In-N-Out burger,” he said, “so I’m insisting on that.”

“There’s one in Westwood not far from here. I will buy you an In-N-Out burger.”

Flip gave me that goofy-kid smile he has when he gets what he wants, and then he asked me about the trip so far.

“I mean, have you figured out why there’s nothing worth a shit on TV?” he said. “That’s what you’re trying to fix, right? If not, it doesn’t make sense, you leaving us like you did.”

“So far,” I said, “it seems like the problem is a mix of corruption and douchebaggery. But the people I put you in touch with might actually give us some hope that I’m not just going to waste Pierce’s money.”

“They make more movies in Atlanta than they do in L.A. now, you know,” said Flip.

“I’m not sure Tyler Perry alone doesn’t make more movies in Atlanta than they do out here.”

I called Elie and asked him if he had anything on the schedule that morning, and he said he was lining up a meeting with Steven Spielberg’s number two guy. He said Spielberg was in the early stages of developing a streaming series about the women of the French resistance, and they were having trouble because Netflix and Summit were both insisting on two of the main characters being lesbians and at least one of them had to be black.

“They’re scrambling over there,” he said.

“Look, I appreciate it,” I said, but it turns out my schedule is going to be a little tight today until, say, 2 o’clock or so. So it’s fine if we don’t do that meeting until later in the week.”

“Oh, that’s good to know. Remember, I’ve got you for drinks with Ryan Coogler at the Tower Bar at 3.”

“Got it. Thanks, Elie. I’m around if you need me.”

“I’ll text you.”

I hung up and looked at Flip.

“You want to do some sightseeing?” I said.

“Yeah, so long as it’s in Westwood. I want my damn In-N-Out burger.”

Coogler was a cool guy, and I gleaned a lot about the challenges of getting a film made working with the studios, a lot of which I sort of knew. But the highlight of that short soiree at the Tower Bar was more like a lowlight.

I had to call PJ afterward when I made it back to the hotel.

“I can’t talk long,” I said. “I’m meeting this guy for dinner who I’m told is one of the people I’m looking for. He’s a writer and a director, he’s done some music videos, and…”

“This sounds like you actually will talk long,” she deadpanned.

“Oh, excuse me,” I said, chuckling. “Am I boring you?”

“Only a little, so far,” she said. “Are you having a good time?”

“Well, I’ll put it this way. Just now I’m at the Tower Bar, and I’m coming out of the bathroom and I bumped into Jeremy Piven.”

“Uh huh.”

“Jeremy Piven! You know, Ari Gold? Entourage?”

“I know who he is, Mike.”

“Fine. So I’m like, ‘wow, Jeremy Piven!’ And I swear, he looks at me and he says ‘Get the f**k out.’”

“Did he say it like he does as Ari Gold?”

“No, sorry to say.”

“Then it was just rude. I don’t care that he’s Jeremy Piven.”

“Oh, definitely. I still got a kick out of it.”

“So are you making any progress? As in, are you coming home? Please?”

“Well, Flip Hardison just got out here. We put him on a story about girls who get, ummm, procured and go missing because they’re trafficked.”

“Wow. Really?”

All of a sudden I had PJ’s interest in my activity in L.A. So I told her about Misty and Shawna, and she said it was awesome that we were doing that investigation.

“But you need to be way clear of Hollywood by the time any of that goes public, because they will absolutely get you for it if you blow the lid off that stuff. I mean it, Mike.”

“Yes, honey. I’m aware. I learned my lesson in London, and it was expensive.”

I’d gotten arrested, after all, for doing that Robby Thomason interview that the Stormer government very much did not want me to do, and I’d ignored the advice I’d received to get back home from my honeymoon and then do the interview via Zoom. I thought it would be fine to do it and then come home before anything got posted online, but that plan didn’t survive the tender mercies of the London Metropolitan Police.

PJ said she had to go, because Melissa was coming over and they were making gazpacho.

“That sounds like fun,” I said.

“It’s not a good substitute for you, though. Oh, and we’re getting a dog. Melissa’s neighbor’s brother breeds goldendoodles, and they had a litter last month. The puppies are ready to get adopted, like right now. Since you’re not gonna be here, I get to pick out which one is ours.”

“Goldendoodle puppy will chew everything that can’t escape from it,” I said. “Be ready.”

“You think I can’t handle a puppy?”

“I can’t wait to watch you try. But I do not fancy teeth-marks on my things.”

“You’ll fall in love with Robby,” she said. “Don’t even pretend you won’t.”

“You’ve already named the dog? We haven’t even seen him yet. You don’t even want to look at him first?”

“He’s Robby. Deal with it.”

“For Robby Thomason?”

“For Handsome Rob.”

Handsome Rob was the guard at Belmarsh who collaborated with Roman and Pierce’s other guys to bust me out of Belmarsh. He ended up moving down to Liberty Point for obvious reasons, and he was a favorite of PJ’s and Mary’s.

“Ahhh,” I said. “Fair enough.”

“Love you. Come home!”

“Soon. I promise.”

Then she hung up. And I kicked myself for lying. I wasn’t leaving L.A. for a good while, especially not with Flip coming into the picture and poking the anthill of scumbags in this place.

But that night, at some Brazilian place on Pico, Georgia introduced me to somebody who was actually useful to me.

No. That’s nowhere near sufficient. She hit a goddamned grand slam home run, is what she did.

His name was Chris Santiago, and after a couple of minutes talking to him, what came into my head was that all-time great scene from Snatch.

I just gave him a big smile, and then in my best cockney Alan Ford-as-Brick Top voice, I asked him “Do you know what nemesis means?”

And then his smile matched mine.

“A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent,” he said, in a Brick Top which was, I have to say, not quite as good as mine. “Personified in this case by an ‘orrible cunt… me.”

“Exactly!” I told him. “I have a feeling that you’re the nemesis of all these people I’m meeting with out here.”

Chris liked that. “I’m glad you think so,” he said.

He was only 27, just a couple of years older than Georgia. She’d dated a friend of his, only briefly, and he’d put her in a couple of music videos he’d made. I’d seen them; they were awesome.

Of course, you can’t tell all that much from a music video.

But as I listened to Santiago, I could tell a lot more.

He hadn’t gone to film school. He’d majored in economics at Cal State Fullerton, and he’d done some film work on the side, starting with some digital video editing here and there and eventually shooting a couple of commercials for local businesses just to get the experience. From there he’d done some concert video stuff for a couple of clubs in L.A., putting some things on their YouTube channels and getting the bands a little publicity. That led to some music video work and Chris was now making a decent little living with the video production things he had going.

He should have been ready to take the next step and start helming feature films, but as Georgia said, “They won’t touch him.”

“Why not?”

“Two reasons,” he said. “One, I won’t be an assistant director. And two, Sabo.”

Sabo was the conservative street artist who terrorized L.A. with subversive messages that showed up everywhere when he got enough of a bug up his ass about something. Chris had done some video work for him, including a music video that had gone viral about Sabo’s posters giving Marcia Gay Harden hell about her three queer kids and insinuating the statistical certainty that you don’t go three for three on queer kids unless you’re doing something as a parent to make them that way.

“Maybe it wasn’t the best career move,” Santiago said. “But you know what? Screw it. I don’t have any regrets about that.”

I just grinned at him. He grinned back.

“Get a room, you two,” Georgia said, her eyes rolling.

“So pitch me something. What do you want to make?”

“I have five screenplays. Every single one of them is ready to rock right freaking now. I have a crew I can hire, most of a cast for each one, locations picked out, you name it.”

“Chris has run the whole production chain through AI,” said Georgia, “and he’s come up with a bunch of steps that he can leap over.”

“A bunch of steps,” he said.

“Like how many steps?” I asked him.

“Get me fully funded and I’ll put a movie in the theaters in eight months, max.”

“Bullshit. Takes two years to do that.”

“It takes two years for the studios, yeah. Because they’re run by idiots. Everybody’s lazy. They’re not business people and they’re definitely not entrepreneurs. I am.”

“All right then. Which one of your projects would you launch first if somebody funded it for you?”

“Desert Odyssey.”

“And what’s that?”

“’…to the shores of Tripoli.’ You know what that refers to, right?”

“Yeah. It’s from the Marine Corps hymn.”

“Exactly. William Eaton led this rag-tag band of Americans around in what’s now Libya, tearing the place apart and kicking the shit out of the Barbary Pirates because they thought they could kidnap our people on the high seas and hold them as hostages. Nobody’s ever done a biopic on Eaton and it’s a cryin’ shame. He basically founded the U.S. Marine Corps.”

“You’d need somebody damn good to play Eaton. Like Chris Hemsworth, or…”

“Stop. We’re not casting an Australian to play Eaton. It’s an American role, and we’re gonna have an American starring in it.”

“All right.”

“And I don’t give a damn about a big name anyway. You let me get somebody I can work with and I’ll make him a star.”

“Saves on the up-front for sure.”

“And this movie is going to piss off all the right people. I mean all the right people.”

“Ohhh, I get it. Like you’re gonna get a fatwa put on our heads.”

“Have you done any reading about the Barbary pirates and just how savage those SOB’s were?”

“A little, yeah.”

“Well, I want to put that in everybody’s face.”

“Not very woke of you.”

He snorted.

“You have no idea, bro.”

“What’s the budget for this project?”

“I’ll email you a pitch deck. But I can get this done for under $10 million depending on casting costs. Those might inflate the number a good bit, but I can get a decent number of familiar faces relatively cheap.”

“No way.”

“Yes way, dude. I don’t work like these people your guy is putting you in front of. I go lean and mean. Give me a chance and I will destroy their whole way of doing shit.”

I just sat there looking at him for a while.

F**k it, I thought. I love this story. So will Pierce.

His older brother Harrison had been in the Marines, after all.

“OK, fine,” I said. “I’ll get you in touch with Morris Moskowitz, who is Belmarsh Entertainment’s attorney, and he’ll put together a Memorandum of Understanding for Desert Odyssey, and we’ll get the wheels turning. You have a producer you want to work with?”

“Holy shit,” said Santiago. “You’re serious?”

“I’m out here to finance film projects. You have a film project which sounds like it would destroy the competition at the box office, on a subject which is beloved by the American people and with a built in market of several million active-duty and ex-Marines and their families who will chew through wood to buy tickets for this film, and it’s absolutely bulletproof where it comes to critical reviews, because either the critics will love it…”

“They won’t,” said Santiago.

“…or they’ll discredit themselves as anti-American communists for trashing it. Believe me, I know what I’m doing. I am the opposite of everything I see that’s wrong with this town, Santiago, and I am your white f**king knight.”

“I believe you, yo. Let’s light this candle.”

“Hoo-ahh,” I said.

 

Hollywood, California – February 1, 2025

All told, I was in L.A. for just under four weeks. I’ve been in some real-life war zones in my time, and I’ve been in lots of third-world shitholes.

L.A. is neither, but it felt like that.

I guess I should tell the Blondheim story at this point. I’ve been teasing it long enough. But let me give you a little more background first.

Flip had a guy from Sentinel Security’s L.A. office, which is in the Arts District next to downtown, who he managed to pull in to his investigation of what happened to Misty’s sister. His name is Tony Summerall, and he was an ex-Nacy corpsman and an especially-talented online sleuth. Summerall had built a little true crime blog while he was in college after he got out of the Navy, and he ended up cracking a couple of cases the cops couldn’t. That earned him a job offer from Pierce’s guys a few years ago; now he was doing a lot of higher-level things like threat assessments for industrial espionage, identifying computer hackers and so on.

Anyway, Flip and Summerall were buddies and he called Summerall and pitched him on getting involved in the missing persons thing.

Summerall loved it.

Before I knew it, they were running through Shawna’s credit card records, geolocating her cell phone, triangulating her contacts and so forth, and Flip was in geek heaven. He was blowing up my texts with all the cool, interesting details they were turning up about her and a couple of other missing girls with similar stories they’d uncovered.

Meanwhile, I was plowing away at meetings with the people Elie was bringing me.

Big-name people. Directors. Production company people. A few actors and writers here and there. And getting shined on by more or less everybody.

But I did have one productive meeting worth noting. With Mel Gibson, of all people. We sat down a day or so after Trumbull got inaugurated, at a sushi joint on the water in Malibu not far from his house.

That meeting wasn’t through Elie.

Gibson’s publicist called me out of the blue and asked if I’d sit down with him. So I did, and that was a great conversation. Gibson was energetic; he had directed a Mark Wahlberg action flick that was premiering that weekend and he had a sequel to Passion Of The Christ all hooked up with Lionsgate. Gibson had just come back from Italy, in fact, where he was scouting locations for it.

But he was hunting financing for projects Hollywood wouldn’t touch.

Chief among those was a streaming series he was working on; he was calling it The Great Siege of Malta — about a battle in 1565 when 700 knights held off 40,000 Turks and kept that island from going to Allah.

“I’m just shocked you don’t have a studio ready to take that one on,” I joked.

“Yet,” he said, looking intently at me. “The government in Malta likes it a lot, but I can’t fund the whole thing on a few tax breaks from them.”

“It’s up our alley, 100 percent,” I told him. “I think we should definitely keep that conversation going.”

Which led to me getting a smile out of Mel Gibson.

Yes, that was the highlight of the trip.

But a couple of minutes later, when we were talking about the excruciating fakery involved in showbiz networking that I’d immersed myself in, I let it slip that I was going to Blondheim’s party.

“He’s got some artsy movie he’s getting producer credit for,” said Gibson. “They Would Be King, I think is the name. It’s … queer struggle, or black struggle, or both, I can’t remember. Unwatchable Oscar-bait, but of course he’s gonna promote it with that party.”

I nodded.

“Wait until you meet Blondheim,” Gibson said. “He’s so phony it’ll turn your stomach.”

“They tell me I can’t do much of anything around here without his blessing,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s true, but it is for-sure harder. The question is what you’re willing to do to get Blondheim on your side. He doesn’t bless anyone without a price, and it’s never just money. Think hard, Mike.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It should.”

The Gibson meeting was what I thought I was going out there for. It was certainly not typical.

A day or so later, for example, I had one kid who was literally no older than 26 years old, a nepot executive vice president at Galactic Studios with a fancy Hollywood name, tell me that I was “stuck in the 1980’s.”

“OK,” I said.

“I don’t mean to insult you,” the kid said. “But you’re saying you want to finance John Wayne and Chuck Norris action movies, and nobody wants that anymore.”

“Then how come Jason Statham’s pictures always make money? He’s probably the closest thing to Chuck Norris going right now. Poor guy is what? 56 years old? Don’t you think it’s time to find the next action star? We want to invest in something that’ll do that.”

He just scowled and shook his head.

“Phasing that out,” he said. “What’s new and hot is the female action hero.”

“Seems like you’re stuck in the 2000’s,” I said. “That hasn’t been new or hot in 20 years.”

It was like talking to a wall. Here I had all these meetings, I was the guy with the money to spend, and I wondered if I’d suddenly developed halitosis or bad body odor. They didn’t want anything to do with me.

It wasn’t a total loss. I talked to a couple of agents who said they had screenplays to send me. And then my email inbox began to fill up with large PDF files.

Scripts.

Melissa called me a couple of days after I met Santiago, and she said she needed me to get back to Jupiter.

“I’m running this thing by myself,” she said, “and I need help. It’s too chaotic with you not being here.”

“But we haven’t done anything yet,” I said.

“Oh yes we have. You haven’t talked to Stan Lynch?”

“Actually, no. Why?”

“Because he’s been recruiting. He’s serious about getting the private equity fund going, and he’s got a whole list of people he wants us to hire. Especially this one guy he says is a must-have, and I think he’s right.”

“Wait — how come he’s telling you this and not me?”

“I don’t know, Mike. Maybe because you’re busy having drinks with Pedro Pascal.”

“Please. Pedro Pascal. When is that guy’s 15 minutes gonna be over?”

“Oh my God, that’s not the point! When you’re done out there, then you can start running this thing. Until then it’s on me. And by the way, why is it that every day FedEx delivers a dozen fat envelopes addressed to you from all these different people?”

I chuckled.

“Those are scripts,” I said. “The word is out that we’re buying, and every starving screenwriter in Hollywood is hawking their stuff. You should see my email.”

“That’s good, though, right?”

“Yeah, actually. Assuming we can read through all of them and find some that are worth making.”

“I don’t have time to read through them, Mike.”

“Neither do I. We should find some people who do, and hire them. Just get three or four people who are either writers or critics or something, and fit what we want to do, and make them read these things and pick some candidates for projects. Then we’ll use Belmarsh Entertainment and buy ‘em.”

“OK,” she said. “I can do that.”

“So who’s this guy Stan wants me to talk to?”

Just then my email pinged, and with the new batch of stuff in my inbox was a resume.

“Trent Gardocki? This is the guy?”

“Yeah. It’s an impressive resume, I think.”

I looked at it. “Damn right it is. So this guy worked arbitrage for Stan when he had his hedge fund, and Stan says we should hire him? That sounds like a pretty good endorsement.”

“He’s impressive to talk to.”

“Then set up a Zoom with him. See if he’s available this afternoon.”

She said she would, and about five minutes later, as I was talking to Elie about whether I wanted to do a Microsoft Teams meeting with Greta Gerwig, my Outlook pinged with a calendar invite for a Zoom with Gardocki 30 minutes later. I hit “accept.”

And half an hour later, Melissa and I were zooming with him.

“So, if I understand this correctly, you’re out of a job?” I asked. “What’s the story there?”

“Well, Valkyrie Capital just merged with RedGuard late last year, and so a bunch of us got let go. I got a fat severance package, and the wife and I decided this is a perfect opportunity to get out of New York. We had a condo in West Palm, so we just moved down here and we put the kids in Catholic school. I’ll figure out the rest as I go.”

“And you did arbitrage at Valkyrie when Stan had it, right?”

“Yeah. Lately, though, I was running the mergers and acquisitions desk.”

“Ahhh. OK.”

Now I knew why Stan wanted Gardocki.

“Imagine my surprise when it turned out it was my company getting swallowed and me getting spit out.”

“Shit happens,” I said. Melissa scowled at me from her Zoom window.

“Anyway, Stan said you’re running this massive initiative which is going to involve building a media empire, or something, and it seems like this could be a fit.”

“I’ll level with you, Trent — I’m doing this because I’m close with Pierce Polk. Not because I actually know a damn thing about what I’m doing. If it’s going to work, it’ll be because I can make myself the stupidest guy in the conference room.”

“That recognition alone makes you a smart guy,” he said. “None of the most successful people I’ve been around in this business actually think they know everything. They know the vision and the mission and that’s what they focus on.”

I nodded.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “My thought was that I’d go and start my own thing, but whether I can do it from down here in Florida rather than on the Street is an open question. But with what you’re doing, like going out and assembling some pieces to make a multimedia company, that’s a project I’d drop everything to work on.”

“And Stan wants you in,” I said.

“He does,” said Melissa.

“OK,” I said. “Here’s an idea. Let’s make you Executive Vice President of PGFI Equity Fund on an interim basis. We’ll give it three or four months and see how it goes. You might hate it, we might hate you, and if either happens it’s no harm, no foul. But if it does work out, then we’ll do a big thing.”

“Well, that’s quick,” said Trent.

“We need somebody over there with some business acumen. I’m asking Melissa to do my job, and it’s not fair to her. Essentially, you can pitch in where you think you should and get some balls rolling.”

“Sure. Stan gave me your vision document to read and it’s actually awesome. I think I know how to move it. I’ll put something together for you that you can look at.”

“Great. What do we pay you?”

“My severance package is more than you’d be sane to pay me on a trial basis. How about this? Hire me as a consultant for 50 grand for four months and then we’ll see from there.”

“Done,” I said, shutting my eyes and trying to figure out how I could justify such a ridiculous way to staff up an organization.

I could tell Trent was a little put off by the informality of the call, and so I was effusive about my excitement at having him aboard as we ended it. Then Melissa called me right after.

“I’m really glad you did that,” she said. “He’s super impressive.”

“More so than his boss,” I said. “I’ve never hired anybody that way.”

“You kinda hired me that way.”

“Oh, shut up.” She was right, and I really didn’t want to be reminded of that.

I could almost hear her smiling over the phone.

“I gotta go,” I said.

“Me too. PJ is coming up here and we’re going to decorate this office. You should call her tonight.”

And I meant to, but I didn’t.

I had dinner that night with Santiago and Rod Nachman, who was an old guy Chris knew from the music business. Nachman produced music videos, but years ago he’d done movies — mostly B-grade horror and sci-fi films, a number of which were cult classics. Santiago said he was a legend out there.

I’d never heard of him. Then I found out why. Nachman had been a big Republican backer in the 1980s and 90s before California went completely blue, and after it came out that he’d raised a big chunk of cash back in 2008 for Proposition 8, which was the constitutional amendment out there that defined marriage as between a man and a woman only — it passed, only to be declared unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court, something I still can’t explain — he was all but blackballed by everybody in the film business.

It wasn’t that he sucked at his job. According to Santiago, Nachman was a miracle worker when it came to film production. And talking to him I could believe it. Knowledge just poured out of the old man.

And I shortly understood where Santiago got the idea that he could cut film production time by two thirds. Nachman was telling me how, though I didn’t really have a clue whether what he was saying was true.

“Let me tell you,” he said. “You think this industry is broken. You aren’t wrong, but my guess is you’re wrong about why.”

“Bad gatekeepers is what I’m seeing,” I said. “And a lot of woke.”

“There is that, but there’s something else. You ever see The Producers?”

“The Mel Brooks thing? Bialystock and Bloom?”

“Exactly. The reason that resonated, even though it’s supposed to be about Broadway, is that it’s about the movie business as well.”

“That sounds right given how many of these things suck at the box office.”

“They’re laundering money through these projects.”

I laughed.

“I’m serious.”

“You know what? I’m not arguing with you. I just think the whole prospect of that is hilarious.”

“It is until you actually work in the business. We’re having this meeting because Chris tells me you’re fronting for Pierce Polk, who is actually a legitimate businessman. Most of the people like you roaming around here are fronting for … somebody else.”

“What, like Sinaloa?”

He just looked at me.

“It would explain why they don’t care if their stuff draws flies,” I said. “And why the cultural product is so bad.”

“Why drug use is glamorized, you mean?” Nachman said.

“There is that.”

The meeting went on a while, and Nachman really opened my eyes about what I was getting into. At the end, I asked him if he’d be interested in becoming the CEO of Belmarsh Entertainment.

“What are you paying?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Give me a number that works for you.”

“Half a million bucks a year, plus ten percent of the back end. Five year deal. After that, I’m retiring to a beach somewhere.”

“Can I think about it for a day and get back to you?”

He shrugged. “Sure. If not, we can certainly work together some other way.”

I figured I’d be hiring him. I just couldn’t agree to pay somebody that much money on the spot.

And the next day I talked to Stan. Who was ecstatic that I’d brought Gardocki on.

“I think I’m about to hire a CEO for Belmarsh. But he wants 500K a year and ten percent of the back end.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s not a lot?”

“Who is this guy?”

I told him about Nachman.

“Freakin’ call him back and make the deal. Right now.”

“You think so?”

“He’s perfect. He knows that town inside and out and he’s got a need to go out sticking it to all of them. And he’s giving you a discount. Yeah. Get it done.”

So I did. And Nachman said Belmarsh Entertainment was going to set up its operations in…

“Corpus Christi.”

“Texas?” I asked.

“Chris has four different locations on the South Texas coast scouted out for his William Eaton movie. They’re good approximations for the coast in Libya, so we’ll be there anyway.”

“OK, but does Texas have the tax credits they have in Georgia and Louisiana and some of these other states?”

“What they have,” said Nachman, “is no state income tax. And it’s a right-to-work state. We can maybe go see some legislators over there about the tax credit piece.”

“If that’s what you want to do,” I said.

An hour later, Nachman had emailed me a contract, which I emailed to Morris.

Then I went downstairs to the Polo Lounge and met Andre Benjamin for a drink. That’s one really entertaining guy, though it was obvious we weren’t going to work together on anything. It was worth the time just to tell him he was hilarious in Be Cool.

“I wanna say you just like Chili Palmer,” he said, “but that ain’t you.”

“I know,” I groused.

That night, all hell broke loose.

They’d been warning for a whole week that between the drought and the wind conditions that wildfires were a real possibility, and practically on cue, a big one blew up in the hills just north of Pacific Palisades, which was only a few miles west of where I was in Beverly Hills.

And when the fire swept down into that neighborhood, an utter and complete shitshow ensued. The fire hydrants went dry almost immediately, the fire department ran out of equipment, and basically the entire Palisades burned to the ground.

Not to mention a good chunk of Malibu. Including Malibu Canyon.

Where Gibson’s place was.

I had to send him a text telling him how sorry I was to hear about his loss, only to have him text me that he’d moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel one floor up from where I was.

“I’ll be drowning my sorrows in the Polo Lounge,” he texted, “if you need me.”

The smoke was everywhere. I kept thinking of the helicopter scene in Apocalypse Now. It seemed like it was appropriate on a whole bunch of levels.

The whole Los Angeles metro area ground to a halt. I was basically reduced to having phone calls and Zooms, mostly because Elie’s contacts had all left town. I was actually getting more done with Flip and Summerall, who were making lots of unexpected progress on their investigation of the Boys’ Club ring of human traffickers operating just underneath the façade of the movie business.

And Flip had also done a couple of quick podcasts for the Holman site highlighting the absolute inadequacy of the local government’s response to the fire. Including an interview he did with Adam Carolla, who caused a bit of a sensation when he remarked that “angry DEI lesbians control the fire department out here, and this is what you get.”

I was actually working the camera for that interview, because what the hell.

It was chaos, but I’ll admit – it did make me feel alive. And I began to miss the news game.

“Why are you still there?” PJ asked me when I finally called her after two days texting her that I was fine.

“Barry Blondheim,” I said.

Which she didn’t understand, but then I explained it to her.

And a couple of days after that, when that fire finally burned itself out, was Blondheim’s party for this They Would Be King flick he was involved in.

Blondheim had actually called me the afternoon before the party, saying that he was really looking forward to meeting me and that he really wanted to spend some time together.

“I’ve heard a lot about what you’re doing out here,” he said, “and from the sound of it, you could be the future of this town.”

“Well, that’s very generous of you to say,” I said. “And I’m looking forward to meeting you as well.”

I wasn’t.

As I noted, Flip and Summerall had been digging deep, very deep, into the Boys’ Club, and they’d identified a couple of the people who were the key players.

Both of them worked for Blondheim.

“None of this is a particular secret,” Flip told me a couple of days before, when he and Summerall had come up to the room to talk about the investigation. “It’s wide open. The cops won’t mess with it because they’re terrified. Blondheim’s too big to touch. He’s the big bundler for the whole political scene out here and he can literally get away with anything.”

“Not great,” I said.

“Twice this guy has had 17-year-old black kids, like male prostitutes, die of overdoses in his house,” said Summerall. “No charges.”

“The second time, Aidan Spliff was there,” Flip added.

“What, the congressman?”

“Senator now.”

“The guy who said he had evidence Trumbull was working for Putin and never delivered on that?”

Flip nodded.

“Jeez.”

“What I think,” he said, “and it’s up to you if you want to play on this, is we’ll wire you up and get you a little camera and we’ll run you in there to sting this guy at his party.”

“Get him talking about the Boys’ Club?”

“Why not? Unless you want to wimp out.”

“Psh,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

Then, the afternoon of the party, Flip and Summerall were back. Summerall had a case full of electronic gear.

And Georgia was in on the conspiracy as well. They were all listening on the speakerphone when Blondheim called to kiss my ass and tell me I was the future of the film biz.

“Listen to me,” she said after I hung up with Blondheim. “I appreciate what you’re doing, but you need to understand how absolutely dangerous this is.”

“Like what? I’m gonna get shanghaied and end up on a plane to Yemen?”

“Probably not, but you more likely will get roofied and end up somebody’s bitch on a surveillance video. And then Barry Blondheim will own you.”

“Right. Yeah. Whatever.”

But as I looked at her, I realized she was very serious. So were Flip and Summerall.

“Get out of here,” I said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Summerall said.

The next thing I knew, I was in a limo heading to the party wearing my $50,000 Pierce Polk-donated tux, and I was choking down a couple dozen capsules of activated charcoal with a bottle of water and feeling certain I was going to puke all over the place. Summerall was telling me to hold still so he could calibrate the video cameras embedded in my boutonniere and the glasses I was wearing, and I was bitching at him that he ought to try having a bellyful of chalk in him while he was trying to sit still.

And Georgia, who had on a frighteningly sexy metallic black cocktail dress with the hem slit all the way up to her hip, was in my face telling me we had an hour and then we needed to get out of there.

“Once the Rohypnol starts getting into your bloodstream,” she said, “and you will have it in your bloodstream, you’d better be clear of these people.”

“What if I just don’t drink anything?” I said.

She shook her head at me.

“Listen, Mike,” she said. “You will get handed a Vieux Carre’ when you walk in the door. That’s Blondheim’s signature drink; he gives one to all his guests…”

“I gotta admit,” I said, “that’s pretty bad-ass.”

“Oh, yeah. And you’ll get the Pappy Van Winkle rye and the Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac. You’ll be so blown away you won’t even care that you’ve gotten roofied.”

I sighed.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You take it. Sip it slow, let them see you drink, but you’ve got one hour from the first sip to get out. After that, the charcoal’s useless.”

“Again, I could pretend to…”

“If they even think you aren’t drinking it, you will get stuck with a needle.”

“Really?”

“If you dodge the drink, they’ll give you the jab,” said Summerall. “Somebody will bump into you, whatever. You won’t see it coming. Rohypnol straight to the bloodstream. No counter for that unless we get you to a hospital, fast.”

“It’s what I would do,” said Flip.

“And you’ll be unconscious in five minutes or less if they go that route,” said Summerall. “So take that drink and convince them it’s working. Give it 15 minutes, no more than 20, and then you act wasted. Play it up, but don’t do anything that would give them a reason to hold you in place.”

“And then find me no more than an hour from your first sip,” said Georgia, “and I will get you out of there.”

“What if I just bring you with me to meet him?” I said. “Then you can chaperone me…”

“Blondheim isn’t going to let me in the room when he talks to you,” she said. “Get what you can out of him, as quick as you can, then find me and let’s go.”

“I’ll be talking to you in your earpiece,” said Flip. “So I’ll help with the time. And we’ll pull in to get you as soon as you hit the front door, The GPS tracker in your belt buckle is super precise. It’ll tell us when you’re moving to the front.”

“The flumazenil’s all set for an IV when we get you out,” said Summerall.

“That’s my antidote, huh?” I asked him.

“You won’t like it, but it’ll keep you out of Zombieland.”

“This is not what I expected when I flew out here,” I whined.

Georgia just scowled at me, and then the limo pulled up to a glass-and-marble cathedral to decadence, with house music pulsating through the windows of the vehicle and well-dressed scumbags of all flavors meandering toward the front entrance.

“It’s go-time,” she said.

And it was all I could do not to hurl all over my Tuxedo Club monkey suit.

Georgia and I got separated almost immediately after we walked in the door. A very stylish, very plastic-looking six-foot blonde basically tackled me in the foyer of Blondheim’s place.

“Oh my God,” she said, her voice a catastrophe of late millennial vocal fry. “Mike Holman! You’re even more handsome in person than on TV. Hi! I’m Sidneigh. With an e-i-g-h, so it’s a little different!”

“Hey, Sidneigh. I’m…”

“So Barry wanted me to wait up for you, because he thought you guys could have some alone time before the party really gets going. That’s OK, right? Oh, hang on…”

Before I could say anything, I noticed that Georgia was getting led off by a couple of very talkative, busty black girls whom I guess she knew, and then there was The Vehicle.

It came in a fancy, heavy-as-hell crystal glass. This male-model of a waiter had it on a tray, and he walked right up to Sidneigh and me and held it in my face.

“Thanks,” I said. “Boy, this looks good. What is it?”

“It’s a Vieux Carre’,” Sidneigh said. “Barry does this for all his guests. It’s rye whiskey, and cognac, and vermouth and … oh, gosh, I can’t remember everything that’s in it. But the rye is Pappy, and the cognac is Louis Quatorze…”

“You mean Louis Treize,” I said, swirling the rich, reddish booze around in the glass with a multitude of big ice rocks and watching the cherry garnish bob around on top. “It looks so good I feel guilty drinking it.”

“Oh, no. You have to drink it,” Sidneigh blurted out, and then I saw her grimace.

I chuckled a little, hoping that she didn’t see that as a tell that I knew what the game was. Apparently she didn’t, or if she did she didn’t show it, because when I then took a sip of that drink she relaxed a good bit.

“Let’s go meet Barry!” said Sidneigh.

“OK,” Flip was saying in my earpiece as I followed Sidneigh toward the study near the back of the house. “I have first sip at 8:17 p.m. You need to start showing symptoms by 8:37. I’ll prompt you, though. Don’t worry.”

What I was worrying about weren’t the symptoms of the roofie I was supposed to drink, but instead the charcoal rattling around in my stomach and threatening to stage a vertical breakout right there in front of Samuel L. Jackson, who I passed in the corridor leading to… wherever it was that I’d be meeting Blondheim.

But that passed, at least momentarily, and Sidneigh was soon introducing me to the man himself.

Blondheim was of slightly below average height. He wasn’t blond. His hair was white, like he was Race Bannon from the Johnny Quest cartoons. And his skin was the color of… fake-bake, is the only way I can describe it. He looked like he might have had a Jewish nose at one point but of course he didn’t anymore. In fact, nothing about his appearance looked like it would have been his appearance organically.

He struck me as the prototype for what a male sex robot is going to look like when the well-heeled middle-aged women of the next generation give up on men and go shopping for a bionic gigolo to go with their cats.

Except this robot spoke. A lot. And the voice did not match the appearance. I guess the plastic surgery budget didn’t include work on his vocal chords. He sounded like Pee Wee Herman.

“Mike Holman!” he said. “I gotta say, it’s an honor. When I heard you were out here and getting into the film biz, I didn’t believe it. Why would the World’s Greatest Newsman up and change his career while he’s at the top?”

“New challenge,” I shrugged.

“I get it! And I admire it! Climb one mountain, and come down and look for another! What a life, am I right?”

“Well, Mr. Blondheim,” I started.

“Barry! Please.”

“OK, Barry, anyway, when I got out here everybody said the same thing. Which is, you can’t make a dent in showbiz unless you’re on good terms with Barry Blondheim. I really appreciate the invite and the chance to meet in person.”

“Ah, not at all. If I can be of any help to you, and let’s face it, of course I can, it’s my pleasure.”

He went on for a while, telling me his life story, and Flip was muttering in my ear that I needed to get something real out of him, and soon.

But he wasn’t giving me an opening.

“I’ll be honest,” I blurted out, when Blondheim finally came up for air. “I need help. I’m out here, and nobody is really interested in what we’re trying to do. These people won’t even take our money to invest in films.”

“They don’t trust you yet, Mike. You’re not with anybody.”

“I have to be with somebody?”

“You can’t get anywhere without allies.”

“Sure. But what’s strange is how difficult it is to make alliances. I don’t get it.”

“Well,” he said, plopping down on the couch in the study very, very close to where I was sitting, “that’s where I come in.”

“Well, all right!” I responded, perhaps a little more enthusiastically than I should have.

His eyes lit up.

“I can do a lot for you,” he said.

“Here we go,” Flip was babbling in my earpiece. “Here we go!”

“I’m not in a position to pay dues the way most of the folks out here usually do,” I said. “I’m getting into this game late.”

“Totally understandable. Make up for lost time, so to speak.”

“Exactly. So how do I break into this thing? As a producer, I guess, which would my role. I can bring all the money anybody needs, but…”

“It’s the relationships,” Blondheim was saying, and I watched his hand fall gently on my knee. “You have to forge relationships if you want to get anywhere in this world, and this business is no different.”

I took a bigger sip from that glass than I would otherwise have wanted to, and it hit me that I’d been drinking my rape-drug drink way, way too fast, but it was all I could do not to barf up Flip’s charcoal. Especially with that hand of Blondheim’s sitting where it was.

“You’re the relationship king here,” I said. “I know that.”

“I’m the king. Sometimes I’m the queen. It just depends on the relationship.”

“Ohhhkay,” I said. “Nice to know.”

And his hand made its way up my thigh.

“Holy shit,” said Flip, who was monitoring the feed from my glasses as I watched that hand creeping toward my balls. “Just be calm.”

“Hey, ummm…” I said.

“What’s that, Mike?”

“Your hand is on my thigh.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“It’s just that I’m not, y’know…”

“Oh, no?”

“It’s not really my thing.”

“You’re at 35 minutes right now,” Flip said. “And we have the video of this f**ker feeling you up, which is plenty if you want to stop there. Your call.”

Blondheim was looking at me in a way that made my stomach want to turn into a booster rocket.

“Don’t get all homophobic on me,” he said.

“Now’s when you need to act like your roofie is kicking in,” Flip was warning me in the earpiece.

“You’re right,” I said to Blondheim, slurring a little. “Here, let me see that hand.”

And I grabbed it, and I put it in a handshake.

Blondheim had a very skinny, bony hand. I could tell he had a personal trainer, and he’d made himself look like one of the actors he was repping around town, but the hand was a dead giveaway that he was naturally a weakling. So I squeezed it.

And his eyes got big for a second, and then he was wincing.

“We might have a little bit of a cultural difference,” I said. “And like I was saying, I don’t know how it goes out here, but where I come from, when one man touches another man in a sexual way, without having permission, it’s a real insult.”

“A sexual way? Come on, Mike,” he whined.

I squeezed that hand of his harder.

“Nah, I might be from flyover territory but I’m not stupid,” I said. “How does this feel?”

He didn’t say anything, but I could see he was off-balance.

“You’re uncomfortable, aren’t you? It’s OK, you can admit it.”

“Yes.”

“And if I said, ‘Don’t turn pussy on me,’ what would your reaction be?”

“I wouldn’t like it.”

“No, and I wouldn’t blame you. But hey, you shared your culture with me, so I figured I’d return the favor.”

And I let his hand go. He went from a whimpering bitch to a big shot again in no time flat and he stood up.

“Let me get you another drink,” he said.

“Nah, that’s OK,” I said. “One is enough. I wouldn’t want to be on camera passed out and getting cornholed by one of your people. That’s how it works out here, right? You show me the film and then you play my Jeffrey Epstein forever after? I get little girls or little boys anytime I want and I’m an insider out here, so long as I do exactly what you say.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, you come on. You were kissing my ass five minutes ago. You think I forgot how I got as far as I did in the news business?”

“This is gold,” said Flip. “F**king grade-A gold. Just get something about the Boys’ Club and then let’s get you the hell out of there.”

“You’ve been misinformed,” said Blondheim. “I don’t work that way.”

“You just leave that to Clark Kale and Raoul De La Cruz, right?”

Those were Blondheim’s guys who ran the Boys’ Club.

And Blondheim turned six different colors.

“I think it’s probably time I left,” I said. “But hey — it’s been real. Nice meeting you, Barry.”

And I made for the door of the study, and then down the interminably long hallway that led to the big den where the party was.

Flip was geeking out in the earpiece, telling me I was the greatest.

But I didn’t feel like the greatest. My stomach was a cement mixer, and my legs and eyelids were beginning to get very, very heavy.

“It’s happening,” I said. “I might not make it to the door. We’ve got a problem, Flip.”

“Wait, what did you say?” I could hear him ask.

I made it into the crowded den. I went to lean against the wall and hit my head. Hard. It hurt. But I managed not to fall. I was sort of half-assed propped up against that wall. I was shocked that I didn’t cause a scene, but then again those people were so engaged in talking about themselves to each other that none of them had time to notice me.

“There you are!” said Sidneigh. “Barry told me I should come and find you.”

“Oh, shit,” said Flip. “Mike, you’ve got to suck it, up, buddy. Don’t let her take you back down that hall.”

But Sidneigh had a hold of my hand.

“Come on,” she said. “The party’s just getting started.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said a voice I recognized.

“I’m sorry?”

“You took him away from me once tonight, bitch. That isn’t happening again. So if you don’t want your skinny ass dragged all over this nice floor, you will back the f**k off.”

And she did.

“Please don’t tell me I have to carry you outta here,” Georgia said.

I mumbled something unintelligible in response.

And I have no memory of anything that came next. At least not until I woke up in the room at the Beverly Hills Hotel with Georgia, Flip and Summerall standing around the bed and an IV in my arm.

And the three of them were, I kid you not, drinking Vieux Carre’s. It was four in the morning, and they were all pretty lit.

“The rye is Wild Turkey and the cognac is Hennessy VS,” said Flip, “but it came out pretty good.”

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Probably less rape drugs in yours.”

Still more than a little under the weather, I checked out of the hotel the next day. Santiago and Nachman had both very vociferously asserted that spending any further time in Los Angeles would be less than wise. But I wanted to head over to the Sentinel Security offices to see the video Flip and Summerall had put together first.

Not just from my cameras from Blondheim’s party. Georgia had actually managed to plant a little sticker camera on the wall of the “VIP room” just inside the door, and the feed from that was, Flip advised me, quite eye-opening. But they also had video statements from a host of people — enough, Flip said, to blow open the Boys’ Club and wipe out Blondheim’s empire.

So I did something a little different to get down to Summerall’s office. I rented a Waymo.

Oh, you don’t know what a Waymo is? It’s a driverless Uber, essentially. They have them in L.A. You book them like you do an Uber, and this robot taxi shows up — like a Johnny Cab in Total Recall, but with less personality.

So I threw my bags in the trunk of this white Jaguar I-Pace that showed up in front of the hotel, and it ran me down to the arts district.

Or it was supposed to.

Because when the Waymo got off the 101 at South Alameda, we made it maybe three blocks before the traffic snarled. There was some sort of a disturbance ahead, and I noticed that the other cars were beginning to pull off and make u-turns.

But the Waymo didn’t move. And before I knew it, the disturbance was on top of us.

It was a bunch — and by a bunch, I mean hundreds — of gang-bangers in flannel shirts, wife-beaters and baggy jeans waving Mexican flags and holding gas cans, and there was smoke rising a couple of blocks away.

Oh, shit, I thought. But before I could think of a plan, there were three of these guys attacking the car with Marucci bats.

“Get out the f**king car, homes!” said one of them.

“You gonna hit me with that bat if I do?” I asked him.

“I’m gonna really touch you up with it if you don’t,” he said.

So reluctantly, I did. And then I cursed myself for not calling Summerall, whose office was six blocks away. Sentinel Security was exactly the people you wanted in this situation, but calling them at the moment was probably not going to work.

And I was standing there, surrounded by a bunch of dudes straight out of the MS-13 catalog as their compadres were taking bats to the vehicle.

“Wait, homes — that’s Mike Holman!” said a voice. “You’re Mike Holman, ain’t you? From TV! And they put you in a f**king jail, ese! You’re a G!”

“Yeah,” I said, turning to look at a guy who could have been Danny Trejo’s character in Heat. “That’s me.”

“Hey, man, it’s Mike F**king Holman!” he said, turning to the gleeful little crowd of rioters that were gathering. I noticed another group busily looting a vape shop half a block away.

“Qué veterano chingón, homes!” said a little guy with a face full of tattoos standing next to my interlocutor. “Respeto total!”

“How’s it hanging, ese?” said the first guy.

“All right, I guess. You guys having a good time out here?”

“We’re just stickin’ it to the man, homes. F**king Trumbull isn’t president for a whole day and he sends those ICE assholes down here to dick with us. We ain’t playing, homes. You know what I’m saying?”

“Sure. Not my business. Look, I uhh, I have a stop I need to make up the street here and then I’ve got a flight out, so … can you do a brother a solid?”

“For you, man? No problem. Hey Chuy, get this man’s bags outta that trunk, comprende?”

“Si, vato,” said Chuy.

The trunk was accessible because they’d beaten the shit out of it with those bats. And when Chuy laid my bags on the street, somebody else tossed a Molotov cocktail into the front seat of the Waymo.

“Mike, man, seriously,” my Number One Fan was telling me. “Don’t take a f**king Waymo. Driverless cars, man, that just puts people out of a job.”

“Yeah, I did think of that. I just wanted to test it out and see what these things were like.”

“Naw, it’s cool. But we’re trashing all the f**king Waymos, homes. Next time, take a taxi.”

“Totally understandable. OK, I need to get down the street a ways, so let me see about these bags.”

I tried not to think about the Holman Media piece we’d done last year about how the drug cartels were laundering money through the cab companies in Southern California. I was hoping these guys weren’t aware of that story.

“You can’t get down this street, bro,” said Doppleganger Danny Trejo. “It’s blocked. But if you want to go to LAX, you’re in luck. My cousin Jaime’s got his ride right there on the corner, and for fifty bucks he’ll take you wherever.”

He pointed to my left, and I could see what I suspected was Jaime’s ride just past the flag-waving, angry crowd.

“The red El Camino?” I asked him.

“Yeah, man. Just tell him Kilmar sent you.”

“Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it.”

“No problem, homes. Hey, can I get a picture?”

“Sure, why not?”

So Kilmar and I took a selfie in front of the burning Waymo. I tried to force a smile, knowing that any second that fire was going to catch onto the battery of that I-Pace, and the further away I could get before then, the better.

As in, LAX. Or better yet, back home in Jupiter.

But Kilmar had Chuy play porter for me, which earned the little guy a $20 tip for carrying my bags to Jaime’s El Camino. And Jaime, who had a very decorative “Chinga Tu Madre ICE” T-shirt on, couldn’t have been nicer. He was even apologetic about the .38 wrapped in a towel I had to move off the back seat.

“Hey,” I said, “can we hit an ATM on the way to the airport? I think I gave Chuy most of the cash I had left.”

“It’s no problem, ese,” Jaime said. “You can Venmo me.”

“Ahh. Perfect solution.”

So I did. And then I waited for nine hours before my delayed flight finally took off and got me the hell out of Hollywood.