“Really? I never seem to meet them.” Then it came to me. It was just a name out of the Los Angeles phone directory, unless you recognized it. I recognized it now, though I would have imagined him different, an Edward G. Robinson, not a George Raft. “Oh, that Allen Sloane,” I said. “Yes, please sit down. Can I get you something? I don’t know what I have. Gin. Bourbon. I may have some rye.”
“Don’t drink during the day,” Sloane said. “I do smoke.”
I watched my guest slip a flat gold cigarette case out of his right-hand jacket pocket, flip it open with the same hand and then, with a speed and grace that made it seem easy, light up a Viceroy — it was the only brand with a filter-tip in those days — with a matching gold lighter that magically appeared in his left. I pushed an ashtray full of yesterday’s butts toward the man, who smiled regally. “I hear you’re doing a script for EZ Shelupsky,” Sloane said.
“How do you know that?”
“In my business, you have to know everything.”
“Because it’s not, you know, known.”
“I’m sure you’ll do well with it. I saw The Sepia Stranger. Liked it a lot. Very good dialogue. Jazzy.”
Script-writers rarely hear compliments, unless they are nominated for an Oscar, something that I often dreamed of but, considering my situation, might never occur. Well, maybe it would with this one — a film that wasn’t made, from a script that wasn’t written, off a treatment that was only in my head, and which itself was so far little more than a pleasant blur waiting to be formed by an émigré German Jew who spouted Latin. In pursuing this I had neglected to ask myself the obvious question: What was a white man doing looking at race films? “You don’t have to lie on my account.”
“I never lie,” Sloane said, quite seriously. “I make a habit of it.”
“In the film business you might have to, from time to time.”
“That’s why I’m not in the film business,” Sloane said.
“Sometimes I wish I could say that. You get like a hop-head. They give you lots of money, you spend it because that’s what you do out here, then you need more and you’re pretty much at their mercy.” For the life of me, I had no idea why I was saying this. I didn’t know Sloane, except by reputation, and would never have said this kind of thing to my own friends. But there was something in Allen Sloane that made me feel he could be relied upon. Maybe the man could have me killed — no maybe: certainly Sloane could have me killed — but he wouldn’t betray a confidence. That was what they said. I believed it. “What can I do for you, Mr. Sloane?”
“Well, let’s say we can do for each other.”
“That would be… nice.”
“Wouldn’t it?”
I took a pack of Luckies out of my pocket, fumbled with the match, lit up on the second try. We smoked for a while, the haze rising as our silence filled the void between us, binding us perhaps, until Sloane ground out his butt decisively in the filthy ashtray.
“I’m fucking EZ Shelupsky’s lady,” he said.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Sloane?”
“Please. Allen.”
“Allen. That’s not something I need to know.”
“It’s all right, Larry. We’re in love.”
“I mean, Mr. Sloane — ”
“Allen.”
“Allen. I mean, it’s not something I’m comfortable with.”
“I understand.” He reached up slowly with his right hand and scratched his right ear, then his left. They were actually quite small, too small for a man that big. “Why not tell me a secret then? Something personal.”
“I’d rather not.”
“But I told you one.”
“Still…”
“You could tell me a little secret.”
“Allen…”
“Or maybe not. You could tell me what I do know. You could tell me you’re a Commie.”
“That’s not true.”
“Don’t ever lie to me, Larry.” Sloane shifted on the sofa so that his head was tilted back, his blue eyes darkening at that angle, as though seeking perspective. “You’re not going to lie to me, are you?”
“No.”
“You’re a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party — is that right or wrong?”
“It’s not… wrong — exactly.”
“Right or wrong, Larry?”
“Mr. Sloane…”
“Allen.”
“Allen, it’s right, but…”
“But not something that’s going to help you with the EZ Shelupsky’s of this town, is that it?”
“In a nutshell.”
“And you’re a homo.”
I felt I was floating down a river, the current taking me where it would. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“You’re asking for a diagram? You’re a colored queer, right or not?”
“I see myself more as a sexually emancipated Negro, but it’s not worth the argument.”
Sloane laughed. His teeth were large, and the bit of unevenness to them gave him a young look, as though unfinished, but only for a moment. His eyes opened wider, searching out mine. “The last thing I’d want is to argue about it, Larry. Pretty much we define ourselves.”
“If this is blackmail, Allen — ”
“I don’t go in for that, Larry. Aside from some troubles I’ve had with certain stupid laws that shouldn’t be on the books, I’m an honest man. I wouldn’t do anything like that. It’s just that I told you a secret, and I want you to know I trust you with it. You should trust me with yours. Also I know you’re close to broke, or maybe already there, and you need this money off Shelupsky. And a fresh chance. We both need something off EZ Shelupsky.”
“I understood she’s a lez.”
“Who?”
“Nora Bright.”
“I heard that, too,” Sloane said.
“She’s not?”
“I’d rather not talk about Mrs. Shelupsky,” Sloane said, as though I had brought her up.
This took a moment to deal with. “Mr. Sloane, Allen… I don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“You don’t?” Sloane said. “Well, maybe you don’t. But as soon as you stop looking like you swallowed something not kosher, Larry, I’ll tell you. In fact, I’ll tell you in my car.”
“In your car?” I had visions of scenes I myself had written, cheap scenes that ended predictably, and not well. But it didn’t make sense. Why would Allen Sloane want to kill me? And if he did, why not right here? And why this business of secrets?
“It’s not like you think, Larry,” Sloane said with a big grin as he stood, towering over me and dominating the sunny, unkempt room like one of those palms in Westlake Park where Wilshire Boulevard slices right through it. They renamed it MacArthur Park after the war, but the palms are still there. “You like the ponies, right?”
“The ponies?”
“Horses.”
“I sometimes, I mean, I used to…”
“Come on, Larry. Get your hat. I’m going to introduce you to a horse.”
IV
There was no question which was Allen Sloane’s car outside on Havenhurst Drive. There were probably no more than a dozen LaSalle convertible coupes in California. Two years before, in 1937, the same car, a V-8, had set a speed and endurance record at the Indianapolis Speedway of 82 miles per hour. This one was the same baby-blue as Sloane’s tie and hat band, the seats a fawn mohair, the eggshell linen top bright as a boiled shirt. “Long drive?” I asked. We passed my own parked black ‘34 Ford with a whoosh, the LaSalle’s engine purring, barely at work. “Where we’re headed?”
“Two months ago I was returning back from Rosarita Beach,” Sloane said, as if in answer. “With friends. You know Rosarita?”