Night Film: A Novel

by Marisha Pessl

  Chaqueta del diablo. The devil’s coat.

  “So?” I asked Hashim when she stopped talking and he made no effort to translate.

  He looked irritated. “It happened weeks ago,” he said. “Five o’clock in the morning. She was on the thirtieth floor, starting her morning rounds.”

  Guadalupe was watching him closely. He smiled back thinly.

  “She’d just unlocked a room when she noticed something at the end of the hall. A red form. She couldn’t see what it was. She’d left her glasses at home. It was just a ball of red. She thought it was a suitcase.” He cleared his throat. “Forty-five minutes later, after she finished cleaning the room, she came out again. It was still there, this blurry red thing. Yet, it moved. Guadalupe wheeled her cart down the hallway and as she came nearer she realized it was a young woman. The same one in your picture. The girl was crouched on the floor, her back against the wall. She was wearing that coat.”

  “What else?” asked Hopper.

  “That’s it, I’m afraid.”

  “Did Guadalupe speak to her?” I asked.

  “No. She tried shaking her, but the girl was in a drug-induced stupor. Lupe ran away to alert security. When they returned, the girl was gone. She hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Can she remember the specific date that this happened?” I asked. “It would be helpful.”

  “She can’t remember. It was a few weeks ago.”

  Guadalupe smiled sadly at me, and then, seemingly recalling something new, added something, extending her right arm in front of her. It was a strange gesture, her hand forming a sort of claw—as if grabbing an invisible doorknob in the air. She then pointed at her left eye, nervously shaking her head.

  “What’s she saying now?” I asked.

  “It was all very disturbing for her,” he said. “It’s unusual to come across a vagrant passed out in our halls. Now, if you don’t mind, we should let Lupe return to work.”

  His five-star customer service had deteriorated into about a one-star. Not even Hopper was enough to sway him from ending the interview. In fact, Hashim seemed to deliberately avoid looking at him.

  “Downstairs you said she wouldn’t clean her assigned floor this morning,” I said. “What was that about?”

  “The girl frightened her. We need to return to the lobby. Any further questions you should address directly with the police.” He added a few words to Guadalupe and strode to the door.

  Nora stuffed the coat back inside the bag—as Guadalupe nervously watched—Hopper and I moving behind her, though when Hashim continued on, I covertly darted back into the bedroom.

  I wanted a few private moments with Guadalupe—maybe get her to add something I could translate later. I found her in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror by the pink marble sink. Spotting me in the reflection, her gaze jumped off her own face onto mine. It was such a panicked look, it shocked me. She opened her mouth to say something.

  “Sir,” snapped Hashim behind me. “You need to leave now, or I’m calling security.”

  “I was just thanking Guadalupe for her time.”

  With a last glance back at her—Hashim had scared her, because she was already crouching over the tub, her back to me—I followed him out.

  25

  “The police can be of further help,” said Hashim as he deposited us outside the hotel’s entrance on East Fiftieth Street. “Best of luck.”

  He watched us walk to the corner of Park Avenue by Saint Bartholomew’s Church, then said something to the doorman—doubtlessly orders to alert security if we came back—and vanished inside.

  It was after eleven now, a cold, clear night. Taxis and town cars were roaring down Park, though the wide sidewalks stretching north were quiet and deserted, the grand buildings nothing more than hollow cathedrals standing in the sky. In spite of the traffic, it felt lonely. The church’s entrance was strewn with the dark immobile forms of men in bulky overcoats, asleep on cardboard boxes. They might have been dark whales, caught unaware by a tide that suddenly receded, leaving them stranded on the steps.

  “What do you think?” Nora asked me.

  “Lupe? She was a bit dramatic but had to be telling the truth. Her version of it.”

  “Why would Ashley be on the thirtieth floor, just sleeping there?”

  “Maybe she was staying with someone. Didn’t have a key. Or she was meeting someone.”

  “Did you see the way she stared at the coat? It was like she thought it was going to lunge at her or something.”

  “She called it the devil’s coat. Hashim forgot to mention that.”

  “He forgot to mention a lot of things,” interjected Hopper. He’d been squinting back at the entrance to the hotel, but now he stepped over to us, fumbling in his coat pockets. “He made half that shit up.”

  “So you do speak Spanish,” I said.

  “I lived since I was seven in Caracas. Then wandered Argentina and Peru for about a year.” He announced this offhandedly as he tapped out a cigarette, turning his back to the wind to light it.

  “Like Che Guevara in Motorcycle Diaries?” asked Nora.

  “Not really. It was hell. But I’m glad it was good for something. Like knowing when someone’s trying to con me.”

  I was surprised, to say the least. I hadn’t expected the kid to be bilingual. But then I remembered a detail he’d let slip when he was telling me about Six Silver Lakes back in his apartment. I’d been traveling with my mom in South America for this missionary cult shit she was into. I ran the fuck away.

  “I wanted to see if he was on the up and up. And he wasn’t.” Hopper exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I didn’t like that guy.”

  “He certainly liked you.”

  He didn’t respond, seemingly bored by the comment.

  “So, what did she really say?” I asked.

  “It was kinda tough to follow because she was speaking in a Guatemalan dialect. And she was bat-shit crazy.”

  “Why was she bat-shit crazy?” asked Nora.

  “She believed in ghosts, spirits, like, they’re all floating around us like pollen. She went on for like fifteen minutes about how she came from a long line of curanderas.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Some folksy medicine-woman bullshit. I’ve heard of them, actually. They cure bodies and souls. A one-stop shop for all your troubles.”

  “So, what did he lie about?”

  “He was right about the housekeeper seeing Ashley on the thirtieth floor. But the second he got to the part where she was wheeling the cart down the hall, he took all kinds of liberties. She actually called her espíritu rojo, a red spirit. She never thought it was a person sitting there, but some kind of confused soul or something, trapped between life and death. The nearer she got, she felt something, like some change in the gravitational pull of the Earth. When she crouched down in front of Ashley she said she was inconsciente. Unconscious. But not from drugs. She called her una mujer de las sombras. A woman of shadows.” He shrugged. “No clue what that meant. She touched her, and Ashley was like ice, so she shook her by the shoulders and when she opened her eyes, she saw la cara de la muerte staring back at her. The face of death.”

  He fell silent, thinking it over. “She said Ashley was marked,” he added.

  “In what way?”

  “By the devil. Told you the woman was nuts. She said there was a second pupil in her left eye, some shit, and it was …” He tossed his cigarette to the ground. “She called it huella del mal.” He ground the butt out with his heel, and when he glanced up again, he seemed surprised by our expectant faces, waiting for him to translate.

  “It means evil’s footprint,” he said.

  “That’s why she pointed at her left eye,” I said.

  Nora was staring at Hopper, speechless. She rolled the Whole Foods bag containing Ashley’s coat even tighter, as if to make sure whatever aura negativo attached to it remained securely inside.

  “Then what happened?” I
asked. “Stigmata appeared on Guadalupe’s palms?”

  “She was scared, ran to the basement, got her things, and went to church for the rest of the day. She didn’t call security, which was why Hashim was pissed. She didn’t follow housekeeping protocol. Hashim thought Ashley was homeless, and he told Guadalupe he was going to speak to her boss about her handling of the situation. So after all that, I think we got the woman in trouble.”

  It made perfect sense. When I saw Guadalupe staring at herself in the bathroom mirror with that odd look on her face, it had to be because she feared she might lose her job.

  Hopper now looked rather dismissive of the entire episode. He’d taken his phone from his pocket, scrolling through messages.

  “I gotta bounce,” he said. “Catch you guys later.”

  With a slipshod smile, he turned, stepping off the curb.

  Even though cars were racing down Park, surging toward us, he jogged right out in front of them, oblivious, or else he didn’t care if he was hit. A taxi braked and honked, but he ignored it, hopping right up onto the median, waiting for the cars to pass on the other side, and then he dashed across the street, Nora and I looking on in silence.

  26

  Nora didn’t want me to drive her home, but I insisted, so she told me to drop her off at Ninth and Fifty-second Street.

  As I drove, neither of us spoke.

  It’d been a long day, to say the least. I hadn’t eaten anything but jelly beans and Bugles. Hopper’s chain-smoking had left me with a dull headache. Everything we’d uncovered about Ashley—the escape from Briarwood, the housekeeper’s apparent sighting—was too fresh to make sense of at this hour. My immediate plan was to go home, pour myself a drink, go to bed, and see how it all looked in the morning.

  I made the left onto Ninth, pulling over in front of a Korean deli.

  “Thanks for the ride,” said Nora, grabbing the strap of her purse and opening the door.

  “Did you miss work tonight?” I asked. “The Four Seasons?”

  “Oh, no. My last day was yesterday. The normal girl came back from maternity leave. Tomorrow I’m starting as a waitress at Mars 2112.”

  “Where’s your apartment?”

  “Down there.” She pointed vaguely over her shoulder. “Guess I’ll see you later.” Smiling, she heaved her bag onto her shoulder, slammed the door, and took off down the sidewalk.

  I stayed where I was. After she’d gone about ten yards, she glanced back—clearly checking to see if I was still there—and continued on.

  See you later.

  I pulled out onto Ninth Avenue, stopping at the red light. Nora was still walking down the block but slowed to glance over her shoulder again. She must have seen me, because she immediately skipped up the front steps of the nearest cruddy building.

  Jesus Christ. Sartre really wasn’t kidding when he said Hell is other people.

  The light turned green. I floored it to get in the right-hand lane but was immediately cut off by an articulated bus. As usual, the driver was driving like he thought he was in a goddamn Smart car, not a block-long centipede on wheels. I braked, waiting for him to pass, turned right onto Fifty-first Street, again onto Tenth and then Fifty-second.

  I pulled over behind a truck and spotted Nora immediately.

  She was sitting back along the ledge of the front steps of the apartment building she’d seemingly disappeared into, checking her cell. After a minute, she stood, peered around the columns to take a furtive look at the spot where I’d just dropped her off. Seeing I was now gone, she skipped down the steps, heading back to the corner.

  I edged into the street. Reaching the deli, she strode past the rows of fresh flowers—saying something to the old guy sitting there—and entered.

  I pulled over again to wait. A minute later, she emerged carrying those two giant Duane Reade shopping bags she’d had back at the Pom Pom Diner as well as—oddly enough—a large, white wire cylindrical birdcage.

  She crossed the street with this luggage, heading south down Ninth.

  I waited for the light to turn green and made a right, watching her jostle down the sidewalk in front of me. I slowed, so as not to pass her—a taxi behind me laying on the horn—and saw her stop at the door of a tiny, narrow storefront. PAY-O-MATIC, read the sign. She pressed a button to enter, waiting, and vanished inside.

  I accelerated, making a fast right onto Fifty-first Street, parking in front of a fire hydrant. I locked the car and headed back to Ninth.

  The glass façade of PAY-O-MATIC was covered in signs: WESTERN UNION, CHECKS CASHED, 24-HOUR FINANCIAL SERVICES. The shop was tiny, with brown carpeting and a couple of folding chairs, boxes piled on the floor. Along the back wall there was a teller window with bulletproof glass.

  I rang the buzzer. After about a minute, the back door opened and a large bald man stuck his head out.

  He was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt and had a face like a piece of pastrami. He pressed a switch on the wall and the entrance clicked open.

  As I stepped inside, he moved into the teller window, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt, which I now saw had branches of red bamboo sewn all over it. As a rule, I didn’t trust men who wore embroidery.

  “I’m looking for a young woman with shopping bags and a birdcage.”

  He made a bogusly confused face. “Who?”

  “Nora Halliday. Nineteen. Blond.”

  “It’s just me here.” He had a thick New York accent.

  “Then I must be Timothy Leary tripping on serious acid, because I just saw her walk in.”

  “You mean Jessica?”

  “Exactly.”

  He stared at me, worried. “You a cop?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t want trouble.”

  “Neither do I. Where is she?”

  “The back room.”

  “What’s she doing there?”

  He shrugged. “She gives me forty bucks. I let her crash here.”

  “Forty bucks? That’s it?”

  “Hey,” he said defensively. “I’ve got a family.”

  “Where’s the back room?”

  Without waiting for his answer, I stepped to the only door and opened it.

  It led down a cluttered, dark hallway.

  “I don’t want trouble.” He was right next to me, his heavy cologne nearly knocking me over. “I did it as a favor.”

  “To whom?”

  “Her. She showed up here six weeks ago, crying. I helped her out.”

  I stepped past him into the hall. Muffled rap music throbbed on a floor above, giving the building a thudding heartbeat.

  “Bernstein!” I shouted.

  There was no answer.

  “It’s Woodward. I need to talk to you.”

  At the end of the hall were two closed wooden doors. I moved toward them, around a janitor bucket filled with dirty water, passing a kitchenette, a half-eaten sandwich sitting on top of a folding table.

  “I know you’re in here somewhere,” I called out.

  The first door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open with my foot. It was a bathroom, a crumpled issue of a skin magazine and a ribbon of toilet paper stuck to the floor.

  I moved past it, knocking on the second door. When there was no answer, I tried the handle. It was locked.

  “Nora.”

  “Leave me alone,” she said quietly. It sounded as if she were mere inches away, behind a piece of cardboard.

  “How about opening the door so we can talk?”

  “I’d like you to leave, please.”

  “But I want to offer you a job.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I’m looking for a research assistant. Room and board included. You’d have to share the bedroom every few weekends with my daughter and her stuffed animal collection. But otherwise, it’s yours.” I glanced over my shoulder. The big guy from out front was eavesdropping, his fat frame plugging the hallway.

  “What’s the starting salary?” she
asked from behind the door.

  “What?”

  “Of the job. The salary.”

  “Three hundred a week. Cash.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. But you’ll handle your own money laundering.”

  “What kind of health benefits?”

  “None. Take echinacea.”

  “I won’t sleep with you or anything.”

  She noted this as if announcing a food allergy. I won’t eat shellfish or peanuts.

  “No problem.”

  “Everything okay back here?” The guy from the front was now behind me.

  The door suddenly opened, and Nora was there, still wearing that ice-skating skirt but with her long hair down around her shoulders, her face solemn.

  “Yeah, Martin,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

  “With a cop?”

  “He’s not a cop. He’s an investigative journalist. Freelance.”

  That seemed to really disturb the guy—not that I blamed him. Nora smiled at me, suddenly shy, and turned back inside, leaving the door open.

  It was a large walk-in closet, a bare bulb shining overhead. Spread out in the corner were a sheet and an army blanket. Along the wall were a bag of hotdog buns, a folded pile of T-shirts, a bag of Forti Diet Bird Food, plastic forks and knives, and anthills of tiny salt and pepper packets—probably swiped from a McDonald’s. Beside the birdcage—there didn’t seem to be anything in there—was a blue yearbook that read, HARMONY HIGH SCHOOL, HOME OF THE LONGHORNS. Beside the makeshift bed were two tiny colored photos taped to the wall—close to the spot where she’d put her head. One was of a bearded man, the other a woman.

  It had to be the dead mother and convict father.

  I took a step inside to get a better look and realized the man was actually Christ, the way he appeared in Sunday-school classrooms: milky complexion, starched blue dressing gown, a beard trimmed as painstakingly as a bonsai tree. He was doing what he was always doing: cupping blinding light in his hands like he was trying to warm up after a long day of downhill skiing. The woman taped next to him was Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. They made quite a pair.