“Did you ever meet her?” Scout took a generous sip of her martini, and her brows shot up.
“Only once, at Easton’s coronation party when he was named president.” Lila raised a silver brow. “Addled out of her mind. Wandered around like a lost little lamb. But maybe I don’t blame her, married to him. I’d probably try to escape, too.”
I lowered my voice. “We’ve heard rumors that Easton had certain… proclivities.”
Lila laughed. “Is that what we’re calling it? Listen. The people who know you best in this world are the ones who work beneath you. Who else has to study all your little quirks to kiss your ass properly? It took less than a year working for him for me to realize he wasn’t the upstanding family man he pretended to be. Like I said, his wife was never around, and at parties and dinners, he was a drinker and a flirt. Never with me, which rocked my ego at first, I’ll admit. But then I realized why: I was a grown-up, and adults weren’t his type.”
She set her martini on the table. “Easton had a group of like-minded men he spent most of his time with. They’d swing by the office, send each other gag gifts, meet for dinners—everyone at ABS who was close to Easton knew about them, because if Easton had a love of his life, it wasn’t his ex-wife or children, it was those men. Sometimes the crew rotated, but Gabriel Knox and Reese Griffin were always there. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how Reese got caught with his pants down. But Easton and Gabriel were just as wild. Back in those days, we accepted it. We worked in Hollywood. And crazy things happened in Hollywood. It was part of the deal.”
“What changed?” Scout was working through her martini at an impressive rate.
Lila sat back and looked us over. A smirk curled her lips. “I’d always had my eye on Easton’s job. I figured if I just bided my time, he would eventually hand it over once he got promoted. But that rat found someone he liked better—another man, go figure. Easton was going to bypass me and recommend this junior executive as his successor.”
Our waiter interrupted, asking for food orders, and Lila snapped, “Just bring us another round.”
I cringed. Waiters in Los Angeles deserved hazard pay.
Brooks’s eyes were locked on Lila, as if she were a fish he wasworried would slip off the hook. “So Easton was going to betray you. What did you do?”
“I figured his brazenness, which I’d been helping to cover for years, could work to my advantage. I thought I’d just get proof of his affairs, maybe some drug use, and I could convince him to name me instead of the twerp. He was a smart man. He wouldn’t want to end things with his old-money wife. I figured some light blackmail could do the trick.”
“Did you follow him?” I asked.
“Please,” Lila scoffed. “There are people for that. I hired a private investigator.”
“What did they find?” Brooks prompted.
“That Easton liked young girls. Around his daughter’s age, even.” Lila didn’t flinch when the waiter returned with our second round of martinis. “I had the detective tail him for two years, waiting for the exact right moment to strike. You have to be patient about these things. When he delivered photos of Easton with high school girls—sixteen, seventeen, from his daughter’s own school—I knew I could bypass the blackmail and go straight to the chairman of the network.”
Brooks took a long sip of his martini. He wore his poker face, but I could sense his queasiness.
“I showed the photos to Bob Overick, who was the chairman at the time,” Lila said. “Within twenty-four hours, Bob called me and Easton into his office, where he proceeded to fire Easton and replace him with me. You should’ve seen Easton’s face. One of the more delicious moments of my career.”
Lila paused for a moment, her expression rapturous. “He was furious. The idiot really thought I would just let him screw me over.” She glanced at me and Scout. “I’m sure you agree that underestimating a woman is the gravest mistake a man can make.”
Scout and I remained stone-faced. Lila wanted our camaraderie, but I couldn’t give it to her. She’d known Easton liked teenagers and waited to use it for her own gain.
“Everyone knew the rumors about Easton,” she said defensively. “For years, they knew, same as Reese. But I was the only one who had the balls to do something about it.”
For a promotion, I wanted to say, but Brooks leaned forward, still on a mission. “Ms. Baumgarten—”
“Lila.”
“Lila. Is there any chance you still have those photos from the investigator?”
She shook her head. “Part of my deal with Bob was to hand them over and never speak of them again. Reputational risk for the network.”
His face fell.
“But,” she added, giving her second martini a sip, “the PI might still have them. From what I understand, sometimes they’ll keep those things, hoping for a future payout.” She smacked her lips. “You know this town—everyone’s an opportunist. Now, who wants canapés?”
History is full of small moments with world-changing consequences. No city is more familiar with this than Los Angeles, a place that blurs reality and fiction, worships heroes, and exalts ambition, the conflagatory potential of one single, humble spark.
As historians, it is our job to tamp down the grandeur, separate fact from rumor, and sift through the rubble of the past for treasure, through the noise for signals, to tease a narrative out of a million different voices all vying to be heard. And yet in some ways, our job is not unlike the work of Tinseltown’s directors. When it comes to humanity’s collective memory, we are the auteurs, the meaning-makers.
Circumstances may have launched Scout Sage out of obscurity and into infamy, but we are the ones who will determine whether she is remembered by humanity as a monster or a hero. Everyone, from the wealthiest moguls to the shiniest stars, would do well to remember that it is the humble writer, the overlooked historian, who has the final say.
—Frances Vogel, “Our Ladies of the Dark: A History,” PhD dissertation presented to the UCLA Department of History
