Marisha Pessl - Night Film

He asked this so adamantly, his voice cracked. He fell silent for a moment, faltering, clearing his throat, and, bending over his work again, began to ink the last pink blossom.

“That night after your friend came in I went home, thought about it. I wondered if she was one a’ those kids Larry talked about. One a’ the runaways. ’cause that’s what he called them. They were goin’ somewhere together. Where, I don’t know. Probably Timbuktu.”

Tommy stopped working and stared up at us, a surprisingly tender expression on his face.

“So, who was she?” he asked.

The Japanese kirin is believed to be the most powerful creature that has ever lived, mightier than dragons, the minotaur, the phoenix — and even man. While physically powerful, the kirin's true supremacy lies in its kindness, for it uses its strength only to defend the innocent. The kirin is a guardian and protector, the champion of all that is good. It is so kind that it doesn't hunt, but thrives on the wind and the rain, and when it walks it does so without disturbing the grass under its feet.

In the face of malevolence and deceit, however, the kirin unleashes a devastation that knows no bounds. It lights the sky on fire, creating the reddest of sunsets, and leaping into the air, emits a roar so deafening birds go hoarse, oceans freeze. The ground has been known to shake for a year.

They have the head of a dragon, the body of a deer, the scales of a fish, the legs of a horse, and the tail of a bull. They usually have antlers or a single horn. The kirin is often depicted with fire all over its body.

In repose, the kirin is quiet, allowing itself be seen only by the pure of heart. Those who have had a kirin sighting claim it is a lightning-quick creature, with a dragon's head and horse's body, often covered in the luminescent scales of a fish. By all accounts it is an incredible creature to behold, for in whatever spot on Earth it has just left, observers swear that the clouds are always parting, revealing golden sky and sun.

I handed the printed page back to Nora.

“Why would Ashley go back to Rising Dragon for the photo?” Nora asked. She was sitting on the couch, Septimus fluttering along the armrest.

“Maybe the photo had a clue in it,” I said. “Something to help her track down this Spider.”

“The Spider might have the missing half of the tattoo.”

I leaned forward, scanning the timeline of Ashley’s movements I’d typed on my laptop. “Devold broke Ashley out of Briarwood on September thirtieth. She turned up at Klavierhaus and played a Fazioli piano on October fourth. Rising Dragon Tattoos on the fifth. Two days later, on the seventh, she reappeared at Klavierhaus. According to the manager, Peter Schmid, she looked unkempt and behaved strangely. On the tenth, she mailed Hopper the package, visited the Four Seasons bar, and hours later fell or jumped or was pushed to her death that night. Somewhere within this eleven-day time frame she checked into 83 Henry Street and appeared at Oubliette and the Waldorf Towers.”

And last but not least —she went to the Reservoir.

“It’s almost as if she was visiting important places a final time,” Nora said, “tying up loose ends, taking a last look around, just before she …” She was unable to finish the thought.

“Before she killed herself,” I finished.

She nodded reluctantly.

“Or before someone she was hiding from — or chasing — caught up to her.”

“Someone like the Spider,” Nora said.

There had to be some hidden reason that would give perfect logic to Ashley’s wanderings, a reason that wasn’t a resolve to commit suicide. What had Peg Martin said about the family? They mopped life up with themselves. None of them were encumbered by anything. There were no limits. A desire to die at twenty-four wasn’t in keeping with that or anything we learned about Ashley. And if the Cordovas weren’t afraid of what I might uncover, Theo Cordova wouldn’t have been following me.

I grabbed my phone, buzzing with an incoming email.

To: Scott B. McGrath

From: Stu

FW: Your Client

31 Oct 2011 13:59

McGrath:

This morning I received an interesting request. See below.

Fondly,

Stu

P.S. Are you alive?

---------

To: Stuart Laughton

From: Assistant

Subject: Your Client

Dear Mr. Laughton:

Mrs. Olivia Endicott du Pont would like to speak with your client, the investigative reporter Scott McGrath. Could you forward this email to him so he might get in touch?

Ms. du Pont has a matter of the utmost importance she would like to discuss with him.

Very truly yours,

Louise Burne

Personal Assistant to Mrs. Olivia E. du Pont

(212) 555-9290

I hadn’t heard from my attorney, Stu Laughton, since I was marooned at that charity cocktail party weeks ago. He’d sent me a text alerting me to the news of Ashley’s death, asking me to call him.

I hadn’t. Stu was a British aristocrat and inveterate gossip, and if I gave him the slightest hint that I might be returning to my investigation of Cordova, everyone from here to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, would know.

I dialed his office.

His assistant answered. After putting me on hold, she informed me, “Mr. Laughton is in a meeting,” which meant Stu was sitting at his desk eating an egg-salad sandwich, playing computer solitaire, and would call me back when he was in the mood.

To my surprise, it was just two minutes later.

“You talked,” I said.

“Haven’t said a word,” insisted Stu on the other end.

“You must have mentioned my name in connection with Cordova at one of your power lunches, because nothing else explains this.”

“You’ll find it difficult to fathom, McGrath, but I have other clients and I don’t always discuss you at every hour of every day, though I admit, it’s terribly tricky to pull off, you’re so damn captivating.”

It was always a mental adjustment talking to Stu. As a posh Englishman, he was so well educated, with such an expansive vocabulary, his briefest conversations peppered with irony and wit and deep knowledge of current events — it was like communicating with Jeeves if he ever anchored the BBC.

“How do you explain it, then?” I asked.

“Damned if I know. If, by some miracle of God, Olivia Endicott wants you to ghostwrite her autobiography, take the job. To quote Captain Smith, ‘Grab what you can and fight your way to a lifeboat.’ Everyone associated with the slow printed word is fast becoming the Great Crested Newt of the culture. First it was the poets, the playwrights, then the novelists. Veteran newspapermen are next.”

“Is that supposed to make me nervous?”

“Grab the work when it comes, my man. Your competition is now a fourteen-year-old in pajamas with the username Truth-ninja-12 who believes fact-checking a story is reading his subject’s Twitter feed. Be afraid.”

Assuring Stu I’d call Endicott, I hung up.

“A means to track down Marlowe Hughes just fell into our lap,” I said to Nora, rearing back my desk chair. “The timing can’t be a coincidence. Someone’s been talking. Someone we’ve talked to or bribed.”