“What do you want, Hallie?”
Cutting to the chase suits her fine, so she says, “I wanted to ask you a question about Porter Sloan.” She pauses, listening for any change on the line: a hitch in Sez’s breath, an indication he might have heard something that’s not being reported.
But instead, in the same strained tone, he says, “What about him?”
“Do you know what he’s working on at the moment?”
“Why are you so interested?”
“I’m doing a piece on movie stars for one of the magazines out east,” she lies, “and I’ve been through all the trade papers and can’t see any mention of him or what he’s up to at the moment. He must have a project in the pipeline?”
“So I’m doing your workforyou now?”
“I’m just asking if he’s in production on anything, that’s all.”
Sez sighs. “No. Last time I spoke to his agent, she said he’s on a break.”
“Did his agent say why?”
“Because he wants to?”
“That’s what his agent said?”
“No, that’s whatI’msaying. He’s seventy-four, he’s made the studios a shit-ton of money, he’s won two Oscars and fucked hundreds of women. What else is there left to do? He’s won at life. His agent said he’s got a pile of scripts on his nightstand to read, and he’s—quote, unquote— ‘excited about whatever project might be next for him,’ but nothing is imminent. There. Happy?”
Sez’s pissed-off tone hardly registers with Hallie because she’s still hanging off the back of thenothing is imminentpart. It sounds to her as if Sez—and presumably everyone else at theReporter—is completely in the dark about any potential illness Sloan might have, which means Jordan Sanchez hasn’tbroken the story yet.Ifthere’s a story at all. But if there isn’t, if there’s some innocent explanation for why a doctor was at Sloan’s house dressed head to toe in protective gear, it’s a big coincidence that Sloan is on a break now when he’s pretty much made a film a year since the 1940s.
“I appreciate it, Sez,” she responds, and—after telling him they should meet for coffee—she hangs up before he tries to fix a date.
She grabs the business card Malcy gave her and reads the name of the gardener written on the back.
Heraldo Flores.
She dials the kid’s number.
“Hola?”
It’s a male voice.
“Is that Heraldo?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“My name’s Hallie Pitney,” she says. “I’m a journalist.”
There’s a minor intake of breath and then he’s moving—footsteps on tiled floors, doors softly opening and closing. Hallie guesses he’s gone somewhere quieter; a room in the house where his parents won’t hear him.
“What do you people want now?” he whispers.
Hallie pauses. Heraldo thinks she’s part of something bigger, a newspaper or magazine—or maybe thinks she’s working alongside Jordan Sanchez.
Either way, his question confirms Sanchez has been in touch.
Hallie feels the grip of frustration: she’s definitely playing catch-up. A voice at the back of her head says she should just drop this whole thing and move on.
But then she looks around at her apartment—at the thrift-store furniture, at the yellowing linoleum in the kitchen—and she smells the fried food from downstairs, the mildew inthe curtains, the ingrained cigarette smoke, and her resolve hardens. She needs this story. She needs it because it could make her fifty grand—more if she can get it syndicated on TV,moreif it gets global pickup, which it will because it’s Porter Sloan. But she needs it for another reason too: her career is circling the drain and this is how she crawls her way back out. This is how she shows the world she can break big stories. This is how she can prove to every asshole who ever turned her down that she can write, that she’s rational, clear-headed, and talented—and that she’s tough enough.
She’s not like that girl in the diner. This city isn’t stalking her.
