Marisha Pessl - Night Film

Caller:

I drove him.

SM:

You were his chauffeur?

Caller:

You could say that.

SM:

Where?

Caller:

Upstate.

Upstate New York. “John” is breathing oddly — having second thoughts about talking .

SM:

Are you still there?

Caller:

Sorry. I don’t know how I feel about this now.

SM:

Take your time. How did you come to work for him?

Caller:

I don’t like all the questions.

SM:

You’re the one who called me, John. Would it be easier if we met?

Caller:

No.

Thirty-second pause .

Caller:

Most of the time I drove the woman, the Mexican, who works for him into town. But one night he called me and asked if I’d drive him.

SM:

You live close to his estate in Crowthorpe Falls?

Caller:

I don’t want to say.

I scribble some notes .

Caller:

He wanted me to pick him up in the middle of the night.

3 A.M.

He asked me to come up slow to the mansion with my

lights off.

I had the feeling he didn’t want to wake anyone at the house. When I got there, he was waiting for me on the steps.

SM:

Was he alone?

Caller:

Yes. He got into the car. The backseat.

A pause.

SM:

Where did you take him?

Caller:

To an

elementary school.

SM:

An elementary school.

Caller:

Yes.

SM:

Which one?

Caller:

No specifics.

SM:

Okay. I’m listening.

Caller:

He asked me to drive into the parking lot, turn off the engine, and wait. I watched him walk across the lawn into

the children’s playground.

At first he was very still. And then, he moved around the swings. Pushing one so it swung out into the air, empty. Then he went around the seesaw, tipping it so it bobbed up and down. Then he went into the sandbox and sat down.

SM:

He sat down in the sandbox.

Caller:

I couldn’t see what he was doing. But it wasn’t right, you understand?

SM:

What was he doing?

Caller:

At first I was scared he was doing something sexual. But it looked like

digging.

SM:

Digging?

Caller:

That’s what it looked like. When he came back to the car, he was hiding something in his coat.

SM:

What?

Caller:

I couldn’t see. I just drove him home.

SM:

Did he say anything?

Caller:

No. But a few weeks later he called me again, asked the same thing.

SM:

To take him to the elementary school?

Caller:

A different one this time. This time he headed out across the athletic field. He slipped up into the bleachers, searching for something. When he came back, again he had something in his coat. When I drove back to the mansion, I saw what it was when he climbed out.

SM:

What was it?

A long pause.

Caller:

A child’s

gym uniform.

Tiny yellow shirt. Blue shorts. It made me sick. I asked what he wanted with it. He only looked at me hard from behind those glasses. Got out of the car. Next day I heard from the Mexican. My services were no longer needed. But I know for a fact he hired someone else to drive him at night. A young guy. He paid him a lot of money to do it. For years.

SM:

Why?

Caller:

There’s something he does to the children.

SM:

What?

A pause.

SM:

How? He hurts them?

No answer.

SM:

Who else knows about this?

No answer. I’m losing him.

SM:

Anything more you can tell me? John?

No response.

SM:

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

The line goes dead.

There’s something he does to the children.

Even now, I remembered the old man’s terrified voice on the phone.

I don’t remember much about my interview on Nightline —except that I did most of the talking. My purpose for appearing on the program was to discuss prison reform. Much to the delight of Nightline ’s host, I veered way off topic, bringing up Cordova. After we wrapped, oblivious to the shit storm about to ensue, I was filled with satisfaction, the kind a man feels only when he’s finally told it like it is.

Then the calls started coming: first, my agent asking what I’d been smoking, then my attorney saying he’d just heard from the brass at ABC.

“You put a hit out on Stanislas Cordova.”

“What? No —”

“They just faxed me the transcript. I’m reading here, you interrupted Martin Bashir to announce Cordova should be terminated ‘with extreme prejudice.’ ”

“I was being ironic. ”

“There’s no irony in television, Scott.”

Needless to say, I never heard from John again. He vanished.

Cordova’s attorneys contended I’d not only put their client’s life and his family at risk, but I’d actually fabricated the anonymous call — that I’d walked to the pay phone a block from my apartment and phoned myself in order to establish record of a fictitious source.

I laughed at the preposterous allegation — then ate my own words when I realized I couldn’t prove otherwise. Even my attorney was vague on whether or not he believed me. He suggested John was real but had been scared off by my rogue behavior.

I had no choice but to settle the lawsuit, conceding my guilt of not actual malice, but reckless disregard for the truth. I paid the Cordova estate $250,000 in damages, a fair chunk of what I’d saved from my books and stories, building a career on the notion of uncompromising integrity, which was now in shreds. I was fired from Insider, my column nixed at Time. I’d been in preliminary talks at CNN about hosting a weekly investigative news show. Now the idea was laughable.

“McGrath’s like a revered sports hero who’s been caught doping,” declared Wolf Blitzer. “We need to question everything the man’s written and everything he’s said.”

“You should think about teaching or becoming a life coach,” my agent informed me. “In journalism, you’re untouchable at the moment.”

It was a moment that lasted. Disgraced journalist became cemented to my name like ex-con. I was a “symptom of the sloppy state of American reporting.” A mash-up video of me appeared on YouTube in which I repeated thirty-nine times (my voice Auto-Tuned) terminate with extreme prejudice.

I abandoned the investigation. The night I made that decision, packing my notes away, I was embroiled in the slander lawsuit. Cynthia and Sam had moved out, leaving a silence so total it felt as if I’d undergone surgery without my consent. Though I was alive, I was left with the vague suspicion something was permanently off inside me. It was beyond my reach, some vital nerve twisted, some organ accidentally put back upside down. I felt only rage toward Cordova — neatly concealed behind his lawyers — an anger especially gutting because it was really toward myself, for my own arrogance and stupidity.