“Oh yeah?” she responds, despondent now, because—as she looks toward Hollywood Boulevard again, to the decay and the ugliness out there; as she glances around the diner and realizes she’s just as much of a grifter as every other person in here—reality sets in: she’s going to have to take some of these shitty tips from Malcy and she’s going to have to turn them into pitches to take out to the tabloids, or she won’t have a roof over her head by the end of the month.
Malcy lowers his voice: “Porter Sloan.”
“What about him?”
“A guy I know talked to another guy who talked to a guy who works for a crew doing the gardens of a lot of those film stars up in Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. He does all the big ones—Stallone, Nicholson, Eastwood, Chevy Chase, Molly Ringwald. It’s like a who’s who, right? Well, this crew also does Porter Sloan’s place.”
Sloan is well into his seventies now but is still one of the biggest movie stars in the world: he’s won two Oscars, been nominated five times, his movies have made hundreds of millions of dollars, and he’s married and divorced four beautiful women, while sleeping with many more. His love life—and particularly his sex life—have kept the gossip columns going for decades, and his latest, bitter divorce played outin the tabloids last year in microscopic detail. Hallie doesn’t enjoy writing celebrity pieces, because it feels even trashier than true crime, but with Sloan the math is easy: if what Malcy has is even halfway decent, and she can pitch it to one of the tabloids, the cash she’ll make will probably cover her rent for a month.
“So what have you got on Sloan?” she asks.
Malcy leans even closer, and something in his manner, the sudden stiffness in his posture, stops Hallie. She tries to remember if she’s ever seen him look this serious.
“Think of Porter Sloan’s films,” he says to her.
“What?”
Malcy takes another mouthful of Coke. “It’s box-office gold likeThe Rancher,The Best Man, The Oklahoma Gun, going all the way back to the forties when he first turns up inEyes of the Nightwith Glen Cramer, right? I’m a movie buff. I’ve seen everything Sloan has ever been in. He’s a legend onscreen and he’s a legend in the bedroom too—one hundred percent USDA Prime beef, the last of the real men. I mean, some of the broads he’s banged down the years, holy shit.”
“Where’s this going, Malcy?”
He glances around the diner—and as he does, Hallie feels a fizz of anticipation. Perhaps, for once, Malcy really does have something important. She’s definitely never seen him like this: never as guarded, never as jittery.
“This guy working on the gardening crew at Sloan’s house,” Malcy says softly, his voice so quiet Hallie can barely even hear it, “he reckons he saw something.”
“‘Saw something’?”
“Yeah. At Sloan’s house. He reckons he was around the side chopping a bush or whatever, and he happened to look in through one of the windows and saw Sloan with this guy in—” Malcy gestures to himself, his clothes. “What is it you call those things doctors wear when they do surgeries?”
“Scrubs?”
“Yeah. He saw some guy in scrubs with Sloan.”
“Sloan’s sick?”
Malcy shrugs. “But this doctor, or nurse, or whoever the hell he was, he was like suited and booted, you know? Like, masked up, gloves, full set of those scrubs, no part of him exposed anywhere. He even had these clear glasses on, covering his eyes.”
The air instantly chills.
Malcy nods, seeing she understands. “Can you think of a reason why a doctor would need to be dressed like that?” But the question is redundant, played for the drama of it, because they both can, and they’re both thinking the same thing. It’s been all over the TV for months. In July, it was even on the cover ofLife. Hallie can still picture the red letters, the white background and the stark headline:Now no one is safe ...
And then Malcy, still on edge, his voice still hushed, leans in even closer: “If Porter Sloan is such a ladies’ man,” he says, “how the fuck does he have Aids?”
They walk along Hollywood Boulevard together, stopping across the street from the Chinese Theatre. The night feels charged. There’s a storm coming.
“Even if Porter Sloanhasgot it,” Hallie says, “it doesn’t mean he’s gay, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
Malcy stares at her like what she’s saying doesn’t compute. “Everyone knows that you can only get that shit from fruits.”
“That’s bullshit. You can get it from anyone.”
“Yeah? What are you, some fucking expert?”
“No, I’m just saying that Sloan’s slept with hundreds of women, so it’s ...” She trails off as something else pulls into focus. What about all of the women he’s slept with? If he’s sick, has he told any of them? Do they have it too? Her stomach drops as she thinks about how bad this might get.
“So?” Malcy says.
“What?”
