Night Film by Marisha Pessl
I remembered. Five years ago, I’d dug up the article in my research.
“One of my students this semester has a terrier. She takes him to group obedience school in Washington Square Park, Sunday evenings at six. She told me, toward the end of the hour class, a wiry redhead enters the dog run with an ancient black Labrador and they sit shoulder to shoulder on a bench, watching the others wrestle and romp and play and laugh.” Beckman was sitting on the edge of his chair, playing the part of Peg Martin. “She speaks to … no one. Looks at … no one. Neither does the dog. Well. My student told me that woman is Peg Martin.”
“So?”
“So go down there. Talk to her. She might know something about the family. She was a junkie for fifteen years, so she might not be as steadfast as the others about remaining silent.” He frowned. “I’d also go through that 1977 Rolling Stone article. Cordova’s last interview before he plunged underground. I’ve heard there’s something crucial in there. I’ve looked through it, couldn’t find a thing. Maybe you can.”
“And Cordova? Where is he?”
Beckman drained his glass. “Hiding, probably. I imagine he’s brokenhearted. It’s funny to consider, given the horrors of his work. But I’ve always suspected the dark was there to reveal the light. He saw the mental suffering of people and hoped his films might be a refuge. His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerge charred doves. The fact that people don’t learn these days, that they’re weak, petty, so apathetic about this gift of life as if it were all a mere Pepsi commercial—I don’t blame him for going underground. Have you seen the world lately, McGrath? The cruelty, the lack of connection? If you’re an artist, I’m sure you can’t help but wonder what it’s all for. We’re living longer, we social network alone with our screens, and our depth of feeling gets shallower. Soon it’ll be nothing but a tide pool, then a thimble of water, then a micro drop. They say in the next twenty years we’re going to merge with computer chips to cure aging and become immortal. Who wants an eternity of being a machine? No wonder Cordova hides.” Abruptly he fell silent, looking rather deflated in his chair.
The computer had at last gone dark. I checked my watch. It was after six. I had to get going.
“Thanks for the vodka,” I said. “I also want to formally apologize.”
Beckman said nothing, distracted by some gloomy thought, though after a moment his bright eyes again fell on the black Chinese box on the table. He reached forward, testing the lid with an index finger—but of course it would not open.
“Surprised you didn’t try to crack it open while I was out,” he muttered.
“I do have some scruples.”
He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Humoring him, I reached over and picked up the box—it was in the shape of a hexagon, quite heavy. I shook it, immediately recognizing the infamous dry thuds clunking inside. I didn’t know what they were—no one did, except the unidentified person who’d locked them in there.
Beckman had purchased the locked box from a black-market memorabilia dealer. It was allegedly a prop stolen from Cordova’s film set Wait for Me Here. In the film, it’s a personal possession of the serial killer, Boyd Reinhart. Though the audience never learns what’s locked inside, it’s supposed to hold the object that caused him to kill, something that had mentally broken him as a boy. Yet, according to the collectibles dealer, due to a problem with the provenance documentation, there was a possibility that the box hadn’t come from the film set at all, but had been stolen from the FBI evidence files for Hugh Thistleton, the copycat killer who’d mimicked Boyd Reinhart from his way of murdering down to his flamboyant clothing.
Beckman loved showing the box to people, letting them pass it around. “There it is,” he’d say reverentially. “The box represents the mysterious threshold between reality and make-believe. Is it Reinhart’s? Is it Thistleton’s? Or is it yours? Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you. And if it were opened, would anything be set free? No. For the impenetrable prison with the impossible lock is your own head.”
The last time I was here, when Beckman disappeared into the kitchen for another bottle of vodka, I—quite bombed and egged on by one of his attractive female students—had the brilliant idea of jimmying the lock with a penknife to find out what was inside, once and for all.
The tarnished brass lock didn’t budge.
Beckman had caught me in the act. He’d thrown me out, shouting, “Traitor!” and “Philistine!” His final words to me before slamming the door in my face were: “You couldn’t even see where it opened.”
Olga was carrying in two platters piled with sardines—enough food for the entire otter exhibit at SeaWorld. She set them down on the faded carpet, the cats sniffing them.
“The problem with you, McGrath,” said Beckman, draining the bottle into our glasses, “is that you’ve no respect for murk. For the blackly unexplained. The un-nail-downable. You journalists bulldoze life’s mysteries, ignorant of what you’re so ruthlessly turning up, that you’re mining for something quite powerful that”—he sat back in his chair, his dark eyes meeting mine—“does not want to be found. And it will not.”
He was talking about Cordova.
“Anyway,” he added softly, “a man’s ghoulish shadow is not the man.”
I nodded and held up my glass. “To the murk.”
We clinked and drank. I stood up, bowed deeply at Beckman—he had a soft spot for royal treatment—and stepped past him. He said nothing, slumped helplessly in his chair, trapped in the avalanche of his thoughts.
As I rode down to the lobby, I found myself not only guilty over what I’d done, browsing so brazenly on his computer, but also regretting the direction of the conversation. Thanks to that vodka, I’d been a little too candid. Beckman would have no doubt now that I was back on the trail, after Cordova once again, and I had no idea what he’d do with that information.
I checked the photo I’d taken of his computer screen and couldn’t believe my luck. The picture was blurry, but I could still make out the convoluted URL. In all the years I’d known Beckman, it was the most useful piece of information I’d ever extracted from the man.
I closed the photo and made a quick note in my calendar.
Peg Martin. Washington Square Park. Sunday at 6 P.M.
8
The girl in the Four Seasons coat check was eating handfuls of colored jelly beans and reading a thin yellow paperback.
I’d read in the witness report in Ashley’s police file that the coat-check girl’s name was Nora Halliday and she was nineteen.
Every time a party of diners arrived—midwestern tourists, finance dudes, a couple so elderly they moved like they were doing a form of tai chi—she whisked off her black-rimmed eyeglasses, hid the book, and with a cheerful “Good evening!” took their coats. After they moved upstairs to the restaurant, she put her glasses back on, brought out the paperback, and started reading again, hunched over the counter of the stall.
I was watching her from the opposite side of the lobby on a seat by the stairs. I’d decided it was best to wait here, because I was slightly more bombed than I realized, thanks to the jet-fuel vodka back at Beckman’s. At one point, she glanced curiously in my direction. No doubt assuming I was waiting for someone, she smiled and resumed reading her book.
According to the police report, she’d been working here only a few weeks. She was about 57″ and scrawny as a question mark, with pale blond hair in a French twist—curls around her face channeling alfalfa. She wore a brown skirt and brown blouse too big for her—the restaurant’s uniform—visible shoulder pads sitting unevenly on her frame.
At last, I stood up and walked over to her. She closed the book, turning it facedown on the counter, though not before I glimpsed the title.
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen.
A tragic play featuring what was
I had my work cut out for me.
“Good evening, sir,” she said brightly, removing her glasses, revealing big blue eyes and delicate features that would have made her an “it girl” about four hundred years ago. But this being the era of fish pouts and spray-on tans, she was pretty, certainly, but old-fashioned—a turn-of-the-century Twiggy. She was wearing harsh pink lipstick, which didn’t look like it’d been applied in good light or within two feet of a mirror.
She did look friendly, however. And easy enough to get talking.
She grabbed one of the silver hangers off the rack and held out her hand for my coat.
“I’m not checking it,” I said. “You must be Nora Halliday?”
“I am.”
“Nice to meet you. Scott McGrath.” I removed my business card from my wallet, handing it to her. “I was hoping we might chat, at your convenience.”
“Chat about what?” She squinted at the card.
“Ashley Cordova. I understand you were the last person to see her alive.”
She glanced back at me. “You’re police?”
“No. I’m an investigative reporter.”
“What are you investigating?”
“I’ve done cover-ups, international drug cartels. I’ve been getting some background on Ashley. I’m interested in your perspective. Did she say anything at all to you?”
Biting her bottom lip, she set my business card down on the stall door and carefully shook multicolored jelly beans into her hand from a bag that contained about four kilos of them. She shoved the pile into her mouth, chewing with her lips clamped closed.
“Everything you tell me can be off the record,” I added.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
“Have you been drinking?” she asked.
“No.”
She seemed to take issue with this, swallowing with a gulp. “Are you dining with us this evening, sir?”
“No.”
“Are you meeting someone at the bar?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I stared at her. She was definitely not from New York. This one screamed Recent grad of Ohio State with a degree in the dramatic arts. Something told me she’d probably played a Pink Lady in some abysmal production of Grease and when someone asked her who she was, she said I’m an actor in the same breathy voice I’d seen people in AA announce I’m an alcoholic. Girls like her moved here by the truckload, hoping to be discovered and to meet Mr. Big but too often ended up in bars in Murray Hill wearing black dresses from Banana Republic, Band-Aids over the blisters on their heels. They’d get their I’ll Take Manhattan taken off them soon enough. To live in this city for any extended period of time required masochism, moral flexibility, skin like an alligator’s, and mad jack-in-the-box resilience—none of which these faux-confident twenty-very-littles could even begin to wrap their heads around. Within five years she’d be running home to her parents, a boyfriend named Wayne, and a job at her old high school, teaching movement.
“If you continue to loiter I’m going to call my manager. Carl will be happy to address any complaints or requests.”
I took a deep breath. “Miss Halliday,” I said, taking a small step toward her so I could see her pink lipstick had skidded off her upper lip. “A young woman was found dead. You were the last person to see her alive. The Cordova family knows this. A lot of people know this. The NYPD isn’t keeping your name anonymous. People are wondering what you did and what you said to her, which caused her to end up dead hours later. I’m not jumping to conclusions. I just want to hear your side.”
She stared back at me, then plucked the phone off the wall behind her, dialing a three-digit number.
“It’s Nora. Could you come down? There’s a man here, and he’s …” She blatantly stared at me. “Mid-fifties.”
It wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for. I exited the lobby swiftly. Outside under the awning I looked back. Little Miss Streep had put her glasses back on and was leaning over the door of the stall, observing me.
A man in a blue suit hastily appeared from upstairs—Carl to the rescue, I assumed—so I turned and headed back to Park Avenue.
That hadn’t gone well. I was rusty.
I checked my watch. It was after eight o’clock, cold, the night sky streaked with clouds that whitened and dissolved like breaths against glass.
I might be a little off my game, but I wasn’t going home.
Not yet.
9
Fifteen minutes later, I was in a taxi, cruising through Chinatown, past the shabby walk-ups and restaurants, dirty signs advertising BACK FOOT RUB and THE PEOPLE’S PHARMACY, awnings jumbled with English and Chinese. Men in dark jackets hurried past storefronts lit up in lethal colors—cough-syrup crimson, absinthe green, jaundiced yellow, all of it bleeding together in the crooked streets. The neighborhood felt thriving yet empty, as if the area had just been quarantined.
We passed a brick church—TRANSFIGURATION CHURCH, read the sign.
“Right here,” I told the driver.
I paid him and climbed out, gazing up at the building. It was a seven-story derelict mess with peeling white paint, construction scaffolding, every window boarded up. It was the warehouse where Ashley Cordova had been found dead. Flowers and handmade cards were piled around the front entrance.
There were bouquets of roses and carnations, lilies and candles, pictures of the Virgin Mary. Rest in peace, Ashley. God bless you. YOUR MUSIC WILL LIVE ON FOREVER. Now you’re in a better place. It was always surprising to me how ferociously the public mourned a beautiful stranger—especially one from a famous family. Into that empty form they could unload the grief and regret of their own lives, be rid of it, feel lucky and light for a few days, comforted by the thought, At least that wasn’t me.
I gently moved aside some of the flowers to reach the steel door. It was secured with two padlocks, CAUTION and DANGER signs. The POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape remained intact.
Behind me, a maroon sedan with a loud muffler cruised past, the dark silhouette of the driver hunched low. I stepped back, staying hidden in the shadows of the scaffolding as it coasted to the end of Mott, made a left, and the street went silent again.
Yet I had the unmistakable feeling that someone else was present—or had just been here.
I zipped up my jacket, and after surveying the sidewalk—deserted, except for an Asian kid darting into a store called Chinatown Fair—I turned and walked to the end of Mott where it intersected Worth. I rounded the sharp right, passing a red awning reading COSMETIC DENTISTRY, a dented chain-link fence spanning an empty dark lot. When I reached the next building, a mangy walk-up, and the one after that, 197 Worth, I knew I’d gone too far.
I backtracked, noticing that by the dentist’s office there was a hole cut in the wire fence. I made my way over, crouching down. A tiny black rag had been tied there—clearly to mark some kind of entrance. I could make out a narrow dirt path that twisted deep into the lot, leading toward an abandoned building.
That had to be it. The Hanging Gardens, Falcone had called it—a known squatters’ residence and crack den, according to the incident summary in Ashley’s file. Police had concluded Ashley entered 9 Mott from here, a building at 203 Worth, then climbed up a flight of stairs all the way to the roof, entering the adjacent Mott Street building from a skylight. Though the police’s canvass of the area turned up no witnesses and none of her personal belongings, this meant nothing. Detectives were notoriously lazy when they concluded early in a case that the death had been a suicide—often overlooking crucial details that told an entirely different story.
That was the reason why I was here.
I ducked through the opening, the rancid smell of garbage overpowering, unseen animals scurrying away as I made my way along the path. It was probably just New York’s mascot: the cat-sized rat. As my
It was a large warehouse, dim light trickling in from somewhere illuminating walls covered with indecipherable graffiti. The place was putrid and filled with junk, newspapers and cans, Sheetrock and insulation, sweatshirts and boxes, pots and pans. Squatters had clearly been living here—though they appeared to have vacated, probably from the recent police presence. I stepped inside, letting the heavy door screech closed behind me.
Now that Beckman’s deadly vodka had worn off, I realized how unwise this was, coming here without so much as the switchblade I used on my Central Park jogs. I hadn’t even thought to bring a flashlight. I took a deep breath—ignoring the voice in my head reminding me, Didn’t we just establish you were off your game?—and headed to the back in search of some stairs.
They were corroded. I grabbed the railing to see if I could pry the structure off the wall, but the bolts were surprisingly sturdy.
I started up, the metallic echoes of my footsteps jarring. I paused every now and then to look around, make sure I was alone, taking a few snapshots with my BlackBerry. With my every step, the old building seemed to growl and cough, protesting my scaling its rusted spine. This was where Ashley had climbed. If her intention had been to commit suicide—a conclusion I didn’t accept as gospel, no matter what Falcone said—why had she come here, to this derelict place?
I passed the sixth floor and then climbed the final, steepest flight into a claustrophobic attic space, a stained futon slung across the floor. Where the sloping ceiling met the wall, there was a square hatch. I heaved my shoulder against it, the door gave way with a gasp, and I hoisted myself outside.
It was a deserted rooftop, a mangled sofa in the far corner. Landscaping the view was lower Manhattan’s bristled bed of skyscrapers: blunt stumps of low-income housing, fat municipal building boulders, water towers sprouting like buds of black thistle—all of it fighting for a piece of the night sky.