Night Film

by Marisha Pessl

  “I’ve always found ancient Chinese wisdom overrated.” I took out an envelope and handed it to her. It contained three thousand dollars in cash. She shoved it inside her bag, zipping it closed.

  “How’s your German shepherd?” I asked.

  “He died three months ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She brushed her spiky bangs off her forehead, scrutinizing an elderly man who’d just boarded.

  “All good things must come to an end,” she said. “We done here?”

  I nodded. She looped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and was about to get up when I thought of something else and grabbed her wrist.

  “What about a suicide note?” I asked.

  “They didn’t find one.”

  “Who identified Ashley at the morgue?”

  “An attorney. The family hasn’t said a word. I hear they’re out of the country. Traveling.”

  With a look of regret but little surprise, she stood up, moving to the front of the bus. The driver instantly pulled over. Within seconds, she was scurrying down the sidewalk, though she didn’t walk so much as plow, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the ground. As the bus took off again with a belch, veering into the road, Sharon became just a shadowed figure moving past the closed stores and barred windows, swerving quickly around a corner—and she was gone.

  7

  “Who is zis?”

  The woman’s voice—thick, with a Russian accent—came out scratchy over the intercom.

  “Scott McGrath,” I repeated, leaning toward the tiny black camera above the door buzzers. “I’m a friend of Wolfgang’s. He’s expecting me.”

  It was a lie. This morning, after reading through Ashley Cordova’s NYPD file, I’d spent the last three hours trying to track down Wolfgang Beckman: film scholar, professor, rabid Cordovite, and author of six books on cinema, including the popular tome on horror movies American Mask.

  I’d tried his office in Columbia’s Dodge Hall, got his class schedule from the office, only to learn he was teaching just one class this semester, “Horror Topics in American Cinema,” Tuesday nights at seven. I’d called his office and cell but they clicked to voicemail, and given our last encounter more than a year ago—when he’d not only told me he hoped I rotted in hell, but had taken two wild, vodka-induced swings at me—I knew he’d sooner call back the pope. (There were two things Beckman truly loathed in life: sitting in the first three rows of a movie theater and the Catholic Church.) My last resort was to show up here, a run-down building on Riverside Drive and West Eighty-third, where I’d spent many an evening listening to him lecture in his mole burrow of an apartment, joined by his fleet of cats and a crowd of students who drank in his every word like kittens lapping up cream.

  To my surprise, there was a scratch and a loud buzzing, letting me inside.

  When I knocked on the door marked in tarnished numbers, 506, a tiny woman answered. She had cropped black hair that sat on her head like a cap on a pen. She was Beckman’s latest housekeeper. Ever since his beloved wife, Véra, had died years ago from cancer, Beckman, totally unable to take care of himself, hired a multitude of petite Russian women to do it for him.

  They were uniformly short, severe, and middle-aged, with blue eyes, chapped hands, hair dyed the color of artificial candy, and Bolshevik Don’t even sink about it personalities. Two years ago, it was Mila, in stonewashed jeans and rhinestone T-shirts, who spoke relentlessly of a son back in Belarus. (And when she wasn’t talking about Sergio, most of what she said could be summed up with a single word: nyet.)

  This one had a hawk-beak nose, wore pink dishwashing gloves and a long black rubber apron, the kind welders in factories wear for forging steel. She appeared to be wearing it to mop Beckman’s kitchen.

  “He’s expecting you?” She inspected me from head to toe. “He’s at denteest.”

  “He asked me to come in and wait.”

  She squinted, skeptical, but shoved the door aside.

  “You like tea?” she demanded.

  “Thank you.”

  With a final look of disapproval, she disappeared into the kitchen and I stepped down the hall into the living room.

  The place hadn’t changed. It was still dark and morose, smelling of dirty socks, festering humidity, and cat. Faded fleur-de-lis wallpaper, the ceiling sagging like the underside of a sofa—at Beckman’s, one always had the persistent feeling water was about to come seeping up through the wood floors. Never had I been inside an apartment so scrubbed (Beckman’s housekeeper was always armed with mop and bucket, cans of Lysol, Clorox wipes) that still felt so insistently like a bog deep in the Everglades.

  I strolled to the mantel, framed pictures lined up along its edge. They, too, hadn’t changed. There was a color photo of Véra on her wedding day, beaming with joy. Next to her was a signed photograph of Marlowe Hughes, the legendary beauty and Cordova’s second wife, star of Lovechild. Beside this was a picture of Beckman’s son, Marvin, the day he graduated from law school; he looked shockingly normal. Next to him: a still from Cordova’s Thumbscrew, when Emily Jackson eyes her husband’s mysterious briefcase; a photo of Beckman, Indian-style, enthroned like a gleeful Buddha on Columbia’s Low Library steps, surrounded by fifty worshipful students.

  Hanging to the right of the mantel was the framed poster of the wrinkled and creased close-up of the Cordovite’s eye. The poster had been here as long as I’d known Beckman. He’d torn it off a Pigalle Métro station wall after attending a red-band screening for Cordova’s At Night All Birds Are Black, held back in 1987 in the Parisian catacombs, one of the first events of its kind. Scribbled along the bottom by hand was the designated meeting spot: Sovereign Deadly Perfect N 48° 48 21.8594″ E 2° 18 33.3888″ 1111870300.

  A few feet to my right, in the corner, was a wooden desk and Beckman’s old Apple computer. It was humming, which meant it was actually on.

  “Your tea.”

  The housekeeper had materialized behind me. She slid the tray across the coffee table, glaring at me as she shoved aside a black Chinese wooden box and piles of newspapers, then stalked back into the kitchen.

  I waited for her to resume cleaning, then tapped the keyboard. I wasn’t exactly proud of myself, snooping on an innocent man’s computer, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  I clicked onto Firefox, then View History.

  Oral surgery complications—Google search

  Tooth extractions what can go wrong—Google search

  Potential side effects from novocaine—Google search

  The New Republic online

  The New York Post

  Russian Soulmates.ru

  Russian phrasebook

  Ashley Cordova—Google search

  Ashley Cordova, 24, Found Dead—nytimes.com

  The next entry read simply: blackboards.onion.

  I clicked on the link. The site took a moment to load, the home page featuring a fog-drenched forest, which I recognized as the opening shot of Cordova’s Wait for Me Here. The URL was long, yet buried within the string of symbols and punctuation were three key words: sovereign deadly perfect.

  It was the Blackboards, the Deepnet website for Cordova fans. Entry was fiercely guarded, for authorized Cordovites only. The site had a secret URL on Tor, the anonymous Internet—so it never appeared on Google and couldn’t be spotted by standard browsers. Years ago, when we’d first met, I’d tried bribing Beckman for the URL to no avail. He said it was “the last hidden corner,” a black hole where fans could not only hash over all things Cordova, but express their every dark urge and dream without judgment.

  I heard keys jangling, the front door banging open. A mop clattered to the floor. Madame Tolstoy had to be alerting Beckman he had a guest.

  I pulled out my BlackBerry, took a quick photo of the URL, and clicked the browser closed, stepping back to the mantel just as I heard footsteps racing down the wood floors.

  “Cocksucker,” a voice bellowed behind me.

&n
bsp; Beckman appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a tightly belted trench coat, which gave him the appearance of a potato tucked into parcel paper.

  “Get out.”

  “Hold on—”

  “The last time we spoke I made it quite clear you were dead to me. Olga! Call the police and tell them we have a dangerous intruder.”

  “I’d like to patch things up.”

  “One cannot patch a friendship that’s been blown to smithereens.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  He glared at me. “Betrayal isn’t ridiculous. It’s the reason empires fall.” He unbelted his trench coat, threw it over the chair—a dramatic gesture reminiscent of a Spanish matador tossing away his red cape—and strode toward me. Thankfully, he didn’t notice his computer, the corner bright from the lit-up screen.

  As livid as he was, it was impossible for Beckman to be physically intimidating. He was wearing gray dress slacks too short in the leg and round gold eyeglasses, behind which his small, kind eyes blinked like a chipmunk’s. He also had a gung-ho hairline. It couldn’t wait to get started, beginning an overeager two inches above his eyebrows. His right cheek was badly swollen as if stuffed with cotton balls.

  “I want to talk to you about Ashley,” I said.

  The name jolted him as if he’d been shocked by a live wire. He muttered something under his breath and moved over to an armchair, sitting with a faint whoopee-cushion wheeze. He removed his shoes, propping his feet—sporting bright yellow argyle socks—on the leather ottoman in front of him.

  “Ash Cordova,” he repeated, rubbing the slackened, novocained side of his face. He turned, barking over his shoulder, “Olga!”

  She appeared in the doorway on the phone, seemingly with the police.

  “For God’s sake, Olga, what’re you—put the phone down. My God. This is my dear friend McGrath. Could you bring him something besides tea? Tea doesn’t make a dent in the man.” He looked at me. “Still drinking heavily in daylight?”

  “Of course.”

  “Glad you’ve retained your personality’s best quality. Bring the premium vodka, would you?”

  Olga disappeared, and I sat down on the couch. Beckman still hadn’t noticed the glowing computer screen, diverted by the three cats that had just materialized from wherever they’d been hiding. There were eight in the apartment, some very exotic Eastern breed with blue eyes, black faces, fur like shag carpeting, and irritating Greta Garbo personalities, deigning to make public appearances only when Beckman was present.

  He bent down to stroke one as it rubbed the ottoman.

  “Which one is that?” I asked, feigning interest because there was a direct ratio between your interest in Beckman’s cats and his good mood.

  “McGrath, you’ve met him on countless occasions. This is One-Eyed Pontiac. Not to be confused with Peeping Tom or Boris the Burglar’s Son.” He arched an eyebrow. “I just got another kitten, you know. Found another trademark. It’s quite embarrassing I missed it.”

  “Nine cats? They can send you to prison for that.”

  He pushed his glasses back on his nose. “I’m calling him Murad, after the cigarettes.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “They’re an obsolete Turkish brand, popular in the 1910s and ’20s. Murad means ‘desire’ in Arabic. The only brand that ever appears in a Cordova film is Murad. There’s not one Marlboro, Camel, or Virginia Slim. It goes further. If the Murad cigarette is focused upon by the camera in any Cordova film, the very next person who appears on-screen has been devastatingly targeted. In other words, the gods will have drawn a great big X across his shoulder blades and taped an invisible sign there that reads FUCKED. His life will henceforth never be the same.”

  Murad. Every one of Beckman’s cats was named after some very specific detail in Cordova’s films, a trademark or silent signature. They ranged from split-second walk-on roles (similar to Hitchcock’s cameos) to tiny props within the mise-en-scène that symbolized looming devastation (much as the appearance of an orange in The Godfather films foreshadowed death). Most weren’t obvious but extremely obscure, like One-Eyed Pontiac and Boris the Burglar’s Son.

  I slid forward to sip my tea, stealing another glance at the computer, still shining. Beckman rolled up his sleeves and, frowning, seemed on the verge of following my gaze.

  “What have you heard about Ashley?” I asked.

  His face darkened. “Tragic.” He took a deep breath, settling back into the armchair. “You remember Véra and I saw her perform years ago. Weill Recital Hall. A stunning experience. The concert was to begin at eight. Everyone was waiting. It was eight, eight-ten, eight-twenty. A bearded man stepped onto the stage and nervously announced, ‘The concert will begin shortly. Please be patient.’ The minutes trickled by. Eight-thirty, forty. Was she going to arrive? People were getting angry. ‘With what we paid for tickets?’ Naturally, I’m looking around to see if her father showed up. A lone figure in the back, army fatigues, gray hair, the all-seeing expression, and his usual round black glasses turning his eyes to dead black coins.”

  Beckman, eyes wide, actually turned to the empty doorway as if he hoped to see Cordova there. He turned back, sighing.

  “He was a no-show. Suddenly, this child in black tights, bright red taffeta dress enters fast through a stage door. We thought she was going to make an announcement. ‘The concert is canceled.’ Instead, she hurries over to the Steinway, sits without taking the slightest interest in us. She sweeps her hands back and forth along the keys like a master chef dusting off a cutting board. Then she begins, without waiting for the audience to stop talking. It was Ravel’s Jeux d’eau.”

  Olga was now at the coffee table, pouring chilled vodka from a black bottle painted with crude Russian letters. Beckman and I clinked glasses and drank. It was some of the best vodka I’d ever tasted: crisp and light, dancing down your throat.

  “The notes weren’t played,” he went on. “They were poured from a Grecian urn. People went from indignation to shock to dazed worship. None of us could believe a mere child could play in such a way. The dark depths to which she had to descend … alone.”

  “The police are saying suicide,” I said.

  He looked pensive. “It’s possible. There was something about her playing … a knowledge of darkness in the most extreme form.” He frowned. “But it’s quite common, isn’t it? What you tend to find in the personal lives of brilliant men is devastation akin to a nuclear bomb going off. Marriages mangled. Wives left for dead. Children growing up as deformed prisoners of war—all of them walking around with holes where their hearts should be, wondering where they belong, what side they’re fighting for. Extreme wealth, like the kind Cordova married into, only magnifies the size and scope of the fallout. Perhaps that’s how it was for Ash.”

  “Ash?”

  “It’s what they called her in the musical world. Ash DeRouin. The ashes from ruins. She was thirteen. But she played like someone who’d lived six lifetimes. Six births. Six deaths. And all the sadness, love, and yearning grasped at and lost in between.” He frowned, his thick eyebrows twitching together. “That level of skill and feeling, compounded with the fact she was, without doubt, the most beautiful living child I’d ever seen. When we were leaving the concert hall, Véra, wiping away her tears, said she couldn’t be human. She meant that without exaggeration.”

  “Do you know anything about her childhood?” I asked, pouring more vodka. “What she was like? You remember that anonymous phone call.”

  He eyed me skeptically. “You mean, your mystery caller, John?”

  I nodded.

  “You know I never believed in John. You were the victim of a prank. Someone pulled your leg. What would Cordova want with children’s clothes? On the other hand. A girl surrounded by daisies, Shetland ponies, and doting parents named Joanie and Phil could not play music in such a fashion. There is some dark cloud hanging over the family, I give you that. But covering what, how dense—if it’s simpl
y smog, a category-five hurricane, or a black hole out of which no light has ever escaped—I don’t know.”

  “Have you ever heard that Ashley had mental health problems? She was admitted to a clinic upstate in late August called Briarwood.”

  He looked puzzled. “No.”

  “She escaped the grounds with an unidentified male and died in the warehouse ten days later. Have you heard any rumors on the Blackboards?”

  “Good God, McGrath, the Blackboards?” Chuckling, he flung back his vodka, slapping the glass on the table. “I stopped logging on to that site years ago. I’m too old for such histrionics.”

  This phony demurring was everything I expected from Beckman. Questioning him was always a rain dance around a campfire, requiring a delicate touch and three or four bottles of this vodka, which was more potent than opium and doubtless had origins in some Siberian bathtub.

  “Where do you think Cordova is now?” I asked him.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re back in your little motorboat, traveling alone up the Amazon. Is it revenge this time, because you ruined your career over him, or just nagging curiosity?”

  “A little of both. I want the truth.”

  “Ah, the truth.” Beckman’s eyes fell onto the black hexagonal box on the coffee table. He was about to say something, but instead turned around and stared directly at his computer. The screen was still lit, and one of those goddamn cats—One-Eyed Pontiac, whatever the hell its name was—was rubbing against the legs of the desk.

  He sat up in alarm. “Olga!” he bellowed. “Bring a plate of those Spanish sardines, would you? Boris has low blood sugar.” He turned back, his eyes blinking rapidly behind his glasses. “You know, I did hear something recently you might find helpful. Peg Martin.”

  “Peg Martin?”

  “She had a small role in the first twenty minutes of Isolate 3. Plays one of the custodians at the Manhattan law firm. That very gawky girl with her arm in a cast. Frizzy red hair. Flat nose. She disappears down the stairwell and never comes back. She did the Sneak magazine interview in the mid-nineties and talked about Cordova.”