Marisha Pessl - Night Film

I checked my watch. It was almost five. I needed to get going. But a lone man wandering a public park being friendly, asking too many questions — it would set off all kinds of alarm bells.

I needed a decoy.

“Mrs. Quincy called to alert me you’d be here,” announced Dorothy, surveying me skeptically over the rim of her glasses. “But not a half-hour early. Samantha’s in the midst of her Nutcracker audition.”

Dorothy was the gray-haired czarina who ruled the Manhattan Ballet School with an iron fist. I’d encountered her before, and every time she treated me like I was an escapee from a Siberian gulag.

“Okay, but we have a reservation at the Plaza for a father-daughter tea.”

“If you pull her out now, she won’t be in the running for getting a doll from Herr Drosselmeyer. She might not even make it to the party scene.”

“Come on, Dorothy. Sam has to make the party scene. She is the party scene.”

Dorothy sighed, relenting. “Go ahead.”

Winking at her, I turned, striding down the hall to the ballroom where they held the classes, the wood floors creaking under my feet. I’d called Cynthia to ask if I might spend a few quality hours with Sam this evening — to make up for my postponing her visit — and miraculously, she’d agreed to it. I didn’t exactly go into detail as to what we’d be doing during these quality hours, but no matter what happened with Peg Martin, Sam would enjoy the dog run, and afterward I’d treat her to a dinner and a hot-fudge sundae at Serendipity 3.

I found Sam at the end of the hall in a sunlit studio blaring Tchaikovsky. She was dancing in a flock of five-year-olds. They were all holding their arms over their heads, jumping. Sam looked ready for the Bolshoi: leotard firebird red, white tights, slippers, and white tutu. She was right in front, watching the ballet mistress demonstrate the steps.

I knocked on the glass door.

The children froze. The mistress craned her long neck, surveying me imperiously.

“ Yes , sir? May I help you?”

I stepped inside. “I’m here for Samantha.”

Even though it was getting dark, Washington Square Park was crowded with students and skateboarders, doting couples, a break-dancer with an eighties boom box who’d attracted a crowd. Most of the women stopped mid-conversation to beam, dazed and enchanted, as Sam nimbly plodded past them, tightly holding my hand. Though she’d agreed to put on her black coat and pink Rapunzel backpack, she’d refused to take off her tutu, tights, or ballet slippers.

“She’s a very nice woman,” I said. “We’re going to chat with her and visit her dog for a few minutes. Okay?”

Sam nodded, brushing her gold curls out of her face.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” she asked.

After my cliffside escape from Oubliette, my hands were cut up badly.

“Don’t have to worry. Your dad’s tough. Now give me the four-one-one on Mommy. Is she still working at the gallery?”

Sam thought it over. “Mommy has a problem with Sue,” she answered.

“The manager. They’ve always butted heads. What about your stepdad?”

“Bruce?” she clarified.

Good. He was still a proper noun like me. Thank Christ he wasn’t Dad.

“Yes, Bruce. Has the SEC investigated him yet? Any arrests for insider trading I should know about?”

She squinted at me. “Bruce has a spare tire.”

“Mommy said that?”

Sam nodded, hanging heavily on my arm. “Mommy makes him drink green juice, and Bruce goes to bed hungry. ”

So Old Man Quincy had put on a couple of lbs. and was suffering through one of Cynthia’s infamous juice cleanses. Suddenly I felt fantastic.

“Does Mommy ever mention me ?”

Sam considered this for a minute and then nodded.

“Oh, yeah? What does she say?”

“You need serious help. ” She even mimicked Cynthia’s self-righteous inflection. “And you’re off the rail and you’re acting out a teenage foozy. ”

Gone off the rails. Shacking up with a teenage floozy. I should have stopped asking questions after the spare tire.

I bent down, scooping Sam into my arms because we’d reached the dog run, a fenced-in area along the south perimeter of the park. It was packed with romping dogs and their mute owners, who hovered around the periphery like overbearing stage parents, nervously watching, armed and at the ready with leashes, balls, pooper-scoopers, and treats.

“Okay, toots. We’re looking for a big black dog and a lady with red hair, mid-thirties. When you spot them, keep it on the down low. No pointing. No screaming. Be cool. Ya got it?”

Sam nodded, looking. Then suddenly, she squeaked shrilly and kicked me. She made a face, pointing, but only with her pinkie.

“You see them?”

She nodded again.

Sure enough — in the remotest section of the dog run, there was a gaunt woman with red hair and an old black Lab hunched on the bench beside her.

“Stellar surveillance work, honey. They could use you at Homeland Security.”

I took a moment to glance behind us, making sure there was no one watching. I’d been keeping a vigilant eye out, ever since I’d been back in the city, in case there was further sign of Theo Cordova, but I’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

I unlatched the gate, and we stepped inside.

I watched Sam carry out her orders with precision and poise. The girl would make one hell of a Green Beret. She actually made the whole thing look random. First, on her way around to Peg Martin, she stopped and crouched next to a white teacup Chihuahua decked in more lamé than a Newark hooker. She said hello to that dog for a minute before stepping over to the black Lab. Cynthia had clearly drilled into her that she must ask permission before she touched any strange animal, because I heard her politely ask both Peg Martin and then the dog himself if they minded her petting him.

Both must have said no, because very gently and respectfully Sam began to touch the top of the dog’s old grayed head, his eyes weary and unblinking. She started with just her pinkie, petting the quarter-inch right between the dog’s eyebrows.

I strolled past the other owners standing around the fence and moved toward them.

“It’s all right if she pets him?” I asked, approaching Peg Martin.

“Of course,” she answered, glancing at me.

“He doesn’t bite?”

Her attention was back on the dogs in front of her.

“No.”

It was Peg Martin, all right.

Her hair was thinner, dyed a synthetic shade of red, something between dying autumn leaves and beets. She’d been such a vibrant, kooky presence in Isolate 3 . All these years later, she appeared muted and washed-out, with an exhaustion that seeped from her bones.

“What’s your name?” Sam asked the dog, though he didn’t respond.

“What’s his name?” I asked Peg.

She looked irritated to be addressed again.

“Leopold.”

“ Leopold, ” said Sam. She was petting the top of his head with her hand rigidly flat like a spatula. She might have been carefully spreading icing.

“You look familiar,” I said, glancing at Peg. “You don’t teach Sunday school at Saint Thomas, do you?”

She looked flustered.

“Uh, no. That, uh, definitely wouldn’t be me.”

“My mistake.”

She smiled thinly, returning her attention to the dogs.