Night Film

11

“Hello?” I answered. I heard plates clattering on the other end.

“Hey. You found my phone.”

“So I did.” I took a sip of my coffee.

“Cool. Where?”

“Backseat of a taxi. I’m in the West Village. You want to come pick it up?”

Twenty minutes later, my buzzer rang. I pulled aside the living-room curtains, the window affording a clear view of the front stoop. There he was, Hopper: wearing the same coat from last night, the same faded jeans and Converse sneakers. He was smoking a cigarette, his shoulders hunched against the cold.

When I opened the door for him, I realized in the stark light of day, even with the greasy hair, the brown eyes hollowed out from booze, women—who knew what else — he was a good-looking kid. I didn’t know how I’d missed it before. It was as glaring as a silver silo piercing a cornfield horizon. He was about 510, a few inches shorter than me, slight, with a mangy scruff of beard and the raw, beautiful features of some brooding actor from the fifties, the ones who cry when drunk and die young.

“Hey.” He smiled. “I’m here for my phone.”

He clearly had no recollection of the previous night; he was looking at me as if he’d never seen me before.

“Right.” I stepped aside to let him enter, and after sizing me up and apparently deciding I wasn’t going to jump him, he shoved his hands in his coat pockets and came in. I closed the door, heading into the living room, indicating his phone on the coffee table.

“Thanks, man.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, what were you doing at that warehouse?”

He was startled.

“In Chinatown. Your name’s Hopper, right?”

He opened his mouth to speak — but stopped himself, his eyes flitting past me to the door.

“I’m a reporter, looking into Ashley’s death.” I gestured toward the bookcase. “Some of my old cases are there, if you want to take a look.”

With a doubtful glance, he stepped to the bookshelf, pulling out Cocaine Carnivals. “ ‘A page-turning tour de force,’ ” he read, “ ‘about the drug’s billion-dollar business and the millions of mangled lives it sucks into its deadly machinery.’ ” He glanced at me. “Sounds epic.”

He’d said it with sarcasm.

“I try.”

“And now you’re gonna write about Ashley.”

“Depends on what I find. What do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s your connection to her?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Then why’d you break into the warehouse where she died?”

He didn’t answer, only returned the book to the shelf. After browsing a few other titles, he turned back, shoving his hands in his coat pockets.

“What magazine do you work for?” he asked.

“Myself. Anything you tell me can be off the record.”

“Like attorney-client privilege.”

“Absolutely.”

He smirked skeptically at this, but then his face fell as he stared at me. It was a look I knew well. He was dying to talk, but he was trying to decide if he could trust me.

“Got some free time?” he asked quietly, rubbing his nose.