Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“Look what you done now,” the woman mumbled furiously, heading after him. “Take your friends and get out of here. We don’t know nothin’.”

When I reached the ground floor, I found the two of them frantically scouring the hallway. The boy stood up, turning to the woman, his fingers working fast in the air. He was speaking in sign language. He was deaf. And I’d traumatized him.

Guilty, I turned, searching the tiled floor, kicking aside fliers and wrappers. I soon found it in a rectangle of light under the stairwell.

It was a tiny wood carving of a snake — three inches long, mouth open, tongue extended, twisted body. It felt oddly heavy.

Suddenly beside me, the landlord snatched it, handing it back to the boy. She then seized his arm, hauled him toward an apartment door. I caught a glimpse of a cluttered room, a TV playing cartoons, as she shoved the boy inside, darted in after him, the door slamming.

Nora and Hopper were racing downstairs, the building growling with the noise. They ran straight down the hall, Nora turning, silently beckoning me to hurry. I exited after her into the cool night, realizing I was gasping for breath, as if I’d just wrenched free of something — something that, without my knowledge, had been suffocating me.

“Did you take the roots over the door?” I asked when I caught up with Nora and Hopper across the street.

“Yep,” she said, opening up her purse to show me.

“Okay, let’s grab a cab—”

“We can’t. A neighbor of Ashley’s is coming down to talk to us.”

I recalled that shard of light I’d seen outside room #13.

“While you chased the landlady, this other woman stuck her head out, upset by all the commotion. Hopper showed her Ashley’s picture, and she recognized her. She’s coming down to talk to us in two seconds.”

“Nice work.”

“Here she comes,” whispered Nora, as a figure emerged from 83 Henry.

The woman was tall, wearing a white zip-up sweatshirt and sneakers. She carried a black duffel bag over her shoulder, and whatever was in there —assault rifles, by the shape of it — appeared to be quite heavy, making her walk stooped over. She hurried across the street toward us.

“Sorry I took so long,” she said breathlessly, skipping up onto the curb in a potent blast of perfume. “Couldn’t find my keys. I’m off to work, so I don’t have much time. What’d you want to ask me?”

Her face was quite pretty, fringed with bleached blond curls, though wearing so much makeup, it was difficult to know where she ended and her illusion began. She looked about thirty, though I noticed she stood deliberately away from the streetlight and kept her hands shoved in the pockets of her hoodie, shoulders hunched, as if not entirely at ease with people getting a close look at her.

“Just a few questions about your neighbor Kay.”

She smiled. “Oh, yeah. How’s she doing? Haven’t seen her.”

“Fine,” I answered, ignoring Nora’s look. “We’re friends of hers and want to know about her stay here. What’d she do with herself?”

“Gee, I wouldn’t know. We barely talked.” Setting the duffel down on the sidewalk — mysterious metallic clangs — the woman removed a ball of Kleenex from her pocket and blew her nose. “ Sorry. I’m just getting over a bad cold. I only saw Kay, like, once.”

“When?” I asked.

“A month ago? I was just getting in from work. About five, six in the morning. I went into the bathroom to take my makeup off. There’s only one per floor. Everyone shares. I was in there, like, forty-five minutes, brushing my teeth, probably even talking to myself, when all of a sudden there was a splash behind me.” She shuddered. “Scared the shit out of me. I screamed. Probably woke up the whole building.”

“Why?” I asked when she didn’t go on, but paused to blow her nose again.

“She was right there,” she said, giggling, a high-pitched, jingle-bell sound. “Kay.”

“Where?”

“In the bathtub. She’d been behind me, taking a bath, the whole time.”

I glanced at Hopper and Nora. They seemed to be thinking what I was — the disturbing nature of the scene she’d just described was entirely lost on the woman.

“I introduced myself,” she went on, sniffing. “She told me her name but leaned her head back against the tub, closing her eyes like she’d had a long day and didn’t feel like talking. I finished putting on my wrinkle creams, said good night. After I heard her leave the bathroom, I went back because I’d left my toothpaste on the sink. She hadn’t drained the tub, so I stuck my hand in to unplug it.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how she was in there without her legs and arms freezing off. It was like ice. ”

“You never saw Kay again?” I asked.

“No. I heard her, though. The walls are like paper. She seemed to keep the same hours as I did.”

“What hours are those?”

“I work nights.” She said it vaguely, gazing past us at the deserted street. “You know what? There was another time. Sorry. My mind’s stuffy from this cold medicine. It was my night off, so it musta been on a Saturday. I was coming back from the supermarket and passed Kay on the stairwell. She was on her way to a club. I don’t remember the name.” She shook her head. “It was feminine. Kinda French? I think she said it was being held in an old jail on Long Island. She wanted to know if I’d ever been, but I hadn’t.”

“An old jail?” I repeated.

She shrugged. “It was a five-second conversation. You know what? Last week I did see two guys outside her door. They stared at me like they wanted me to mind my own business, so I did.”

“What did they look like?”

“Just guys. One was older, the other in his thirties? Later I heard Dot come upstairs and get rid of them. She doesn’t like strangers.”

“Dot?”

“Yeah. You were talking to her.”

“A little boy lives with her?”

“Lucian. He’s her nephew.”

“How long has he been living here?”

“Long as I’ve been at Henry. About a year.” She sniffed and pulled back her sleeve, checking her watch. “Shit. I gotta run.” She grabbed the duffel, heaving it, clanging, over her shoulder. “You’ll tell Kay I said hi?”

“Of course.”

“How can we get in touch if we have more questions?” asked Nora.

After a slight hesitation, the woman unzipped the duffel, handing Nora a black business card. Then she smiled and took off down the sidewalk toward the Manhattan Bridge. Nora handed the business card to me without a word.

IONA, it read. BACHELOR PARTY ENTERTAINMENT.

“A nightclub on Long Island,” I said. “It has a French name. It might be held in an old jail or abandoned building. Ring any bells?”

I was on the phone with Sharon Falcone, standing outside Gitane, a temperamental little French-Moroccan café on Mott Street. After leaving 83 Henry, we’d taken a cab here to grab a bite and debrief. When a Google search of club, Long Island, French, and abandoned jail elicited no breakthrough, I decided to call Sharon on the off chance she knew what the club could be.

“Don’t tell me you’re harassing me because you need help with your social life,” said Falcone on the other end.

I could hear phones wailing, a TV droning NY1 , which meant she was still at her desk at the police station, sitting in her beat-up swivel chair, poring over the details of a case her colleagues had long given up on, glasses perched on the tip of her nose.