Night Film

13

The Pom Pom was an old-school diner, narrow as a railroad car.

Nora Halliday sat in the back by a wall-sized photo of Manhattan. She was slumped way, way down on the seat, her skinny legs stretched out in front of her. Yet she wasn’t just sitting in the booth. She looked like she’d put down first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit, plus an exorbitant broker’s fee, signed a lease, and moved into the booth.

On one side of her were two giant Duane Reade shopping bags, on the other a brown paper Whole Foods bag and a large gray leather purse, unzipped and sagging open like a gutted reef shark, inside of which you could see all it had ingested that morning: Vogue, a green sweater still attached to knitting needles, a sneaker, a pair of white Apple earphones wrapped around not an iPod but a Discman. It might as well have been a gramophone.

She didn’t notice us walking toward her because her eyes were closed and she was whispering to herself — apparently trying to memorize the block of highlighted text from the play in her hands. On the table in front of her was a plate of half-finished French toast floating like a houseboat on the Mississippi in a pool of syrup.

She glanced up at me, then Hopper. Instantly — probably from the jolt of his good looks — she jerked upright.

“This is Hopper,” I said. “Hope it’s okay he joins.”

Hopper said nothing, only slid into the booth across from her.

She was wearing a strange outfit: stonewashed jeans straight from an eighties movie, a wool sweater so hot-pink it scalded the eyes, black wool fingerless gloves, lipstick a livid shade of red. Unlike last night, her pale blond hair was down, parted in the middle and surprisingly long, hanging all the way to her elbows, stringy on the ends.

“So, you’re an actress?” I asked, sliding in beside Hopper.

She smiled, nodding.

“What have you acted in?” Hopper asked.

This caused her eyes to skid confusedly over to him, then swerve back to me. Even I knew that was one of the rudest questions to ask an actor.

“Nothing. Yet. I’ve only been an actress five weeks. That’s how long I’ve been in the city.”

“Where’d you move from?” I asked.

“Saint Cloud. Near Narcoossee.”

I could only nod, as I didn’t know what Narcoossee was. It sounded like an Indian reservation and casino where you could play craps and watch a Crystal Gayle lookalike sing “Brown Eyes Blue.” But Nora smiled without shame, closing the play, touching the cover like it was a sacred Bible — yet it was David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.

“Sorry I was so rude last night,” she said to me.

“Apology accepted,” I said.

With a tiny frown, she swept her hands officiously over the surface of the table, brushing a few toast crumbs onto the floor. She then turned and opened up the Whole Foods bag, peering inside as if there were something alive in there. She reached in with both hands and gently pulled out a bulky red-and-black bundle, placing it on the table and sliding it toward me.

I recognized it immediately.

It was a woman’s coat. And for a moment, the diner and everything in it dissolved. There was only that article of clothing, so ferociously red, staring me down. It looked like a costume, ornate, faintly Russian — red wool fabric, the cuffs black lamb, black cord embellishing the front.

The woman I’d encountered at the Central Park Reservoir, weeks ago, had been wearing it.

The soaked dark hair, the ambling in and out of lamplight, the coat lighting like a flare, alerting me to—what? Had she simply been toying with me? How the woman had managed to follow me down into the subway as quickly as she had defied logic. The incident had been so odd, when I came home that night I couldn’t sleep, infected by the strangeness of it. I climbed out of bed more than a few times to pull aside the curtains, half expecting her to be there, her slender form like a red incision in the sidewalk, her face turned up to me with hard black eyes. I’d actually questioned my sanity, wondered if this was it: the substandard past few years had finally led to a mental break with reality, and now, floodgates open, there’d be no limit to the fiends I’d encounter. They’d simply crawl out of my head, down into the world.

But the sidewalk had no red tear. The street, the night, remained flawless and still.

I’d actually started to forget the entire episode—until now.

It had been Ashley Cordova.

The realization was startling, and it was quickly followed by the paranoid feeling something was wrong, including this awkward coat-check girl. She had to be involved in some kind of setup. But the girl only smiled innocently back at me. Hopper, on the other hand, must have seen something on my face — complete shock — because he was squinting at me suspiciously.

“What is it?” he asked, nodding at the coat.

“Ashley’s coat,” she said. “She was wearing it when she came into the restaurant.” She picked up her knife and fork and cut into her French toast. “She left it with me. When the police came later, asking about her, I gave them a black coat from the lost and found and said that one was Ashley’s. If they found out I was lying, I was going to say I’d mixed up the tickets. But they never came back.”

Hopper slid the coat toward him, unfolded it, holding it up by the shoulders. For all its elaborate stitching, the coat looked worn, even seemed to smell of the city, the dirty wind, the sweat. The inside was lined with black silk, and I noticed, sewn into the back collar, a purple label. LARKIN, it read in black letters. Rita Larkin was Cordova’s longtime costume designer. I was about to mention this detail when I noticed there was actually a long dark hair stuck to the sleeve in an elongated S.

“Why’d you lie to the cops?” Hopper asked Nora.

“I’ll tell you guys. On one condition. I want to be part of the investigation.” She looked at me. “You said last night you were investigating Ashley.”

“It’s nothing that formal,” I said, clearing my throat, managing to look away from the coat and at Nora. “I’m really investigating her father. And Hopper’s just here today. We’re not partners.”

“Yeah, we are,” he countered, shooting me a look. “Absolutely. Welcome to the team. Be our friggin’ mascot. Why’d you lie to the police?”

Nora stared at him, taken aback by his intensity. Then she looked at me, awaiting my response.

I said nothing, because I was adjusting to what it meant, this encounter with Ashley. I took a deep breath, trying to at least pretend I was considering her request. For the record, it’d be over my dead body that I’d ever employ a sidekick — particularly one who’d just crawled out of the Florida boonies.

“This is not the adventure of a lifetime,” I said. “I’m not Starsky. He’s not Hutch.”

“If I’m not involved from beginning to end when we find out who or what made Ashley die before her time”—she articulated all of this decisively, as if she’d rehearsed it sixty times in front of the bathroom mirror—“then I’m not telling you what she was like or what she did, and you can both get lost.” She slid the coat back and began to mash it inside the bag.

Hopper looked at me expectantly.

“There’s no need to be so black-and-white about it,” I said.

She ignored me.

“Okay. You can work with us,” I said.

“You swear?” she asked, smiling.

“I swear.”

She extended her hand, and I shook it — mentally crossing my fingers.

“It was a quiet night,” she went on eagerly. “After ten. There wasn’t anyone in the lobby. She walked right in wearing that, so of course I noticed her. She was beautiful. But really thin, with eyes almost clear. She looked right at me and my first thought was, Oh wow, she’s pretty. Her face was more in focus than everything else in the room. But as she turned and started walking toward me, I felt scared.”

“Why?” I asked.

She bit her lip. “It was like, when you looked into her eyes the human part was detached and there was something else looking out.”

“Like what,” Hopper prompted.

“Don’t know,” she said, gazing down at her plate. “She didn’t seem to blink. Or breathe, even. Not when she pulled off that red coat, not when she handed it to me, not when I gave her the ticket. As I hung it up on the coat rack, I could feel her eyes on me. When I turned back, I thought she’d still be standing there, but she was already disappearing up the stairs.”

I’d witnessed the same startling movement when she’d suddenly appeared in the subway.

“At that point, other people came in. As I was checking their coats I noticed she was coming back down the stairs. Without looking at me she headed outside. I figured she’d gone out to smoke. I didn’t see her come back, so I figured I’d been so busy I missed her, but at the end of the night her red coat was still hanging there. The only one left.”

She took a quick gulp of water.

“Three days went by,” she went on. “Every night when I closed the coat-check booth I put her coat in the lost and found. When I returned the next day, I’d take it out and hang it up. I was sure she’d come back for it. But I dreaded it, too.” She paused, tucking her hair behind her ears. “At the end of my shift on the fourth night it was cold out and I only had this navy windbreaker. So after I closed up, instead of returning her coat to the lost and found, I put it on and I walked out wearing it. I could have taken any of the coats from the lost and found. But I took hers.”

Nora stared down at her hands, her face flushed. “The next day when I arrived at the restaurant, the police were there. They saw me walk in wearing her coat. When they told me what happened, I was so upset, what I’d done. I was afraid they’d think I had something to do with it. So, I took the Yves Saint Laurent coat out of the lost and found and said that one was hers.” She took an agitated breath. “I thought for sure they’d find out I lied, that they’d show it to her family. But …” She shook her head. “No one came back to ask me anything. Not yet, anyway.” She looked at me. “Only you.”

“What else did she have on?” I asked.

“Jeans, black boots, a black T-shirt with an angel on the front.”

The same clothing Ashley was wearing when she died.

“Did she speak to you? Mention if she was meeting someone?”

Nora shook her head. “I said my usual ‘Good evening’ and ‘Will you be joining us for dinner?’ There’s a little script they like you to memorize to be welcoming. But she didn’t answer. Every night since I met her — before I knew she’d passed away — I’ve had nightmares. You know the kind where you wake up fast and sounds are echoing through the room but you have no idea what it was you’d just screamed out loud?”

She was actually awaiting an answer, so I nodded.

“That’s what I’ve had. And my grandmother Eli on my mom’s side of the family said the Edges are in tune with stuff from fourth and fifth dimensions.”

I sensed it was compulsory to intervene now before we were treated to more wisdom from Grandma Eli.

I smiled. “Well, I’ll look everything over and be in touch.”

“First we need to exchange numbers,” Nora said.

She and Hopper gave each other their info. I was just starting to wonder how I was going to auto-eject myself out of here, when Nora glanced at her watch and let out a squeak, scrambling out of the booth.

“Shoot. I’m late for work.” She grabbed the check, digging through her purse. “Oh, no.” She looked at me, nibbling a fingernail. “I left my wallet at home.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

“Really? Thanks. I’ll definitely pay you back.”

If that was indicative of her acting talent, not even a daytime soap would hire her. She zipped up her purse, heaved it onto her shoulder, and grabbed the Whole Foods bag.

“I can take the coat. So you don’t have so much to carry.”

She glanced at me with a flash of mistrust, but then reconsidered, handing me the bag.

“See ya later,” she called out cheerfully as she jostled away, bags banging her shins. “And thanks for breakfast.”

I climbed out of the booth and, reading the check, saw that the girl had actually consumed two meals: the French toast and coffee, but also scrambled eggs, a side of bacon, half a grapefruit, and cranberry juice. So the string bean Dame Dench had the appetite of a sumo wrestler. It had to be the reason she’d decided to talk, so I’d subsidize breakfast.

“What’d you think?” asked Hopper, sliding out behind me.

I shrugged. “Young and impressionable. Probably made most of it up.”

“Right. That’s why you looked so bored and nearly tripped over yourself to get your hands on that coat.”

I said nothing, only pulled two twenties from my wallet.

“For one thing,” he said, “she’s got no place to live.” He was staring out the window where Nora Halliday and her many bags were still visible, far across the four-lane street. She was using a building’s mirrored reflection to fix her hair into a ponytail. She then picked up the bags and vanished behind a delivery truck.

With a last hard look at me — clearly indicating he didn’t trust me or particularly like me — Hopper put his phone to his ear.

“Keep those eyes open, Starsky,” he said, heading out.

I held back, waiting for him to duck past the window. I doubted I’d see him again—or Hannah Montana, for that matter. When New York took over, both of them would fall by the wayside.

That was the magnificent thing about the city: It was inherently Machiavellian. One rarely had to worry about follow-throughs, follow-ups, follow the leaders, or any kind of consistency in people due to no machinations of one’s own but the sheer force of living here. New York hit its residents daily like a great debilitating deluge and only the strongest—the ones with Spartacus-styled will—had the strength to stay not just afloat but on course. This pertained to work as much as it did to personal lives. Most people ended up, after only a couple of months, far, far away from where they’d intended to go, stuck in some barbed underbrush of a quagmire when they’d meant to head straight to the ocean. Others outright drowned (became drug addicts) or climbed ashore (moved to Connecticut).

Yet the two of them had been helpful.

All those nights ago, it had been Ashley Cordova. I thought I’d decided on my own to look into her death, and yet incredibly she’d come to me first, wedged herself like a splinter into my subconscious. I’d have to review the timing, but I remembered the Reservoir encounter was a little more than a week before her death. When I saw her it must have been just a few days after she’d escaped from the mental-health clinic, Briarwood Hall.

How had she known I’d be there? No one knew I went to the park to jog in the dead of night except Sam. One evening months ago, while tucking her into bed, she’d announced that I was “far away” and I’d answered I wasn’t, because I went up to her neighborhood to run. With every lap, I could look up to her window and see she was snug in her bed, safe and sound. This was a stretch, of course; I could no more see Cynthia and Bruce’s ritzy apartment on Fifth Avenue than the Eiffel Tower, but the thought had pleased her. She’d closed her eyes, smiling, and fell right to sleep.

The only possible explanation, then, was that Ashley had been following me. She would have known about me after her father’s lawsuit. It was conceivable she’d tracked me down in order to tell me something, something about her father — John’s ominous words immediately came to mind, There’s something he does to the children—but had lost her nerve.

But after what Hopper had told me, shyness didn’t seem an underlying part of Ashley’s personality. Quite the opposite.

I had to get back to Perry Street: first, to make arrangements to drive upstate to Briarwood so I could learn about Ashley’s stay there. I also wanted to check out the URL of the Blackboards I’d swiped off of Beckman’s computer.

I grabbed the Whole Foods bag, exiting the diner. The sun was out, splattering brash light over the cars speeding down Eleventh Avenue. It did nothing to lighten the unease I felt over the simple, startling fact that the red coat, that blood red stitch in the night from the Reservoir, had appeared one last time in front of me.

It was in my own hands.