“After you’ve picked up the phone to every other hack in the city.”
The waitress finally comes over.
Malcy orders a steak and a Coke and tells the waitress she has the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen. “Is that right?” she responds disinterestedly.
Hallie orders a coffee.
“What’s got your back up?” he asks Hallie, sparking up the cigarette.
She takes a long breath. “I’m just sick of all this shit. I’m living in a dump in Koreatown. I’ve got a car I can’t afford to repair. I’ve got a typewriter with two busted letters, so I have to handwrite in everymandpwhenever I finish something. And the work sucks. A cop on the take tells you about some poor girl turning up a couple of blocks from the Roosevelt. You pay him, I pay you, and then I submit some fairy tale about a ‘Hollywood starlet’ being slain at the hotel Clark Gable and Marilyn used to stay at. I mean, the Roosevelt’s a dive. No one even checks in there anymore. And the closest that girl ever got to being a starlet was one failed audition for a dog food commercial before she went off to work at Radio Shack.” Hallie shrugs. “Journalism is about truth. It hasweight. The pieces I write are nothing. They’re vapor.”
“It won’t be a dive for much longer.”
Hallie frowns. “What?”
“The Roosevelt. Say goodbye to the graffiti and the lawn chairs in the lobby, because Radisson just bought it. They’re gonna spend thirty-five mill doing it up, apparently.”
Hallie just shakes her head. He isn’t listening to her—and even if he was, what possible comfort could she find in sharing any of this with a scam artist like Malcy?
“So, what have you got for me?” she asks wearily.
He starts feeding her the usual sleazy trash: a porn king who might have been spotted with a couple of guys who work in the mayor’s office; a heavy metal band who had an orgy at a house in Silver Lake; a TV evangelist who’s rumored to have a taste for call girls; and then an endless list of female victims. Hallie tunes Malcy out as he begins reeling off the women’s names. She’s depressed by the casual way in which he talks about their deaths, disgusted by how he lingers on their physical appearance even as they lie in the morgue, and crushed by the part she herself is playing in all of this.
She thinks of the girl she saw at the diner earlier.
Where is she now?
What if the next time Hallie meets Malcy he’s talking about a girl matching her description, who’s been found dead in a motel room a couple of blocks from here?
Malcy is still talking.
“Stop,” she says, holding up a hand. “Just ... stop.”
“These are good stories, Hals. You go to theEnquirerwith these—”
“No.”
She shakes her head. This isn’t what she wants to write.These stories aren’t who I want to be. She thinks of the editor at theHerald, telling her that she feels too much and isn’t tough enough to make it as a reporter. She’s never going to prove people like him wrong if all she’s writing is sleazy, forgettable crap that no one notices. She needs something weightier. She needs something major-league.
“Is that it?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have you actually got anything that matters?”
Malcy eyes her with a mixture of anger and caution—as if he’s ready to talk but worried she might weird out on him—and then says, “There’s some Night Stalker stuff kicking around that hasn’t been reported yet.” He’s referring to Richard Ramirez, who was arrested four days ago after a sixteen-month reign of terror. The rumors say he’s going to be charged with thirteen murders, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries. The fact that he’s a devil worshipper and his crimes have been so unspeakably brutal has made him front-page news for months. “One of the cops I know out at Glendale says he hears Ramirez has a big dick, so you coul—”
“I’m not writing a story about the Night Stalker’sdick, Malcy.”
“Then what the fuckareyou writing about?”
The waitress brings across their drinks.
“Thank you, beautiful,” Malcy says, but she’s already walking away and the only response he gets is her back. He takes a long swig of his Coke and then his eyes ping back to Hallie—and now there’s something different in them.
“What?” Hallie says.
“Thereisone whisper I heard this week.”
