Restricted Fantasies by Kevin Kneupper

Author:Kevin Kneupper [Kneupper, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kevin Kneupper
Published: 2018-05-26T22:00:00+00:00

THE ONLY WAY OUT IS DOWN

The Linkletter Mansion.

The most infamous place in Hollywood. You’d never have guessed a tech guy would be A-list, but he is. The parties alone give him that kind of cachet. Everyone in the biz knows the stories. The late nights filled with booze and cocaine. The designer drugs designed by Linkletter himself. The Linkletter Ladies, straight out of the calendars. The secret pool hidden somewhere in a maze of tunnels that start out in the library.

I never thought I’d get an invite. Journalists aren’t welcome, not even the ones on the payroll. Nothing that goes on inside the Mansion ever gets out. There’ve been rumors, and there’ve been a few who tried to shop stories around. But Linkletter’s a trillionaire, the world’s first. He can buy people off, and if he can’t, there’s other ways to persuade them. When that doesn’t work, he gins up enough fake stories about himself that it’s almost impossible to tell what’s real from what his PR team made up.

Maybe that’s why we’re here. The PR flacks have been working overtime for the last few months. They’ve had to. Because Harper Linkletter hasn’t been seen in public for more than a year.

I’m in a limo heading up the long road that winds through the mansion’s surrounding estate. All the way up the hill it’s statues of naked nymphs, well-kept lawns, and fountains. Me and two other journalists are in the back. The only ones he invited, and none of us have any idea why. Why we’re here, or why out of anyone in the world he picked the three of us.

Bad Billy Scranton’s the gossip guy. He looks like a blonde Fat Elvis, right down to the rhinestone jumpsuit. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be style or branding, or maybe some kind of campy joke, but it definitely makes him unique. I read his website sometimes, I admit it. Guilty pleasure. Ninety percent of what’s on there is total crap. I mean, he’ll publish anything, the more salacious the better. But that other ten percent…. He’s outed some of the most famous people in town for some of the most dirty shit you can imagine.

Pouring Bad Billy a scotch from the limo bar is Jed Johnson. Big nerdy glasses, hasn’t shaved in a few days, and couldn’t give a shit about the coffee stain on his shirt collar. He’s an old school journalist covering politics for the Times. Barely even posts on Twitter. He’s all about digging deep into documents and piecing things together until he gets the big story, the kind that might nab him a Pulitzer. A real journalist, not just a guy who drools out a hot take on somebody else’s hot take, every hour on the hour without leaving his chair.

Me, I flew down here from Silicon Valley. I’m on the tech beat for GizmoQuack. It sounds stupid, I know. All the good names are taken, and at this point you’ve got to just make something up.

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