Marisha Pessl - Night Film

At this moment, a slight middle-aged Chinese man emerged, followed by what had to be his entire extended family: his wife, his daughter of about eight, and a grandmother who looked to date back to the days of Mao Zedong.

Hell —maybe it was Mao. She had his long forehead, his tired face and gray workman’s pants, the flip-flops on her bare feet, which resembled two dry chipped bricks that’d fallen off the Great Wall.

The family all smiled eagerly at us and set about getting a stool for the old woman, helping her sit. The wife then handed her a piece of crumpled paper, which I recognized as the missing-person flier.

“We have information,” the little girl announced in perfect English.

“About the girl on the poster?” I clarified.

“Did you meet her?” Nora asked.

“Yes,” said the little girl. “She came here.”

“What was she wearing?” I asked.

The family conferred heatedly in Cantonese.

“A bright orange coat.”

That was close enough.

“And what did she do when she was here?” I asked.

“She talked with my grandmother.” The little girl indicated Mao, who was carefully inspecting the flier as if it were a speech she was about to present in class.

“In English?”

The little girl giggled as if I’d made a joke. “My grandmother doesn’t speak English.”

“She spoke to her in Chinese ?”

The girl nodded. Ashley spoke Chinese. That was unexpected.

“What did they talk about?” I asked.

For the next few minutes, there was so much wild Cantonese flying back and forth Nora and I could do nothing but watch. Finally, the entire family hushed quickly because Mao had at last spoken, her parched voice scarcely audible.

“She asked my grandmother where she was born,” explained the girl. “If she missed her home. She bought chewing gum. And then she talked to a taxi driver who comes in here for dinner. He said he’d take her where she wanted to go. My grandmother liked her very much. But your friend was very tired.”

“Tired in what way?” I asked.

The girl conferred with Grandmother Mao. “She was sleepy,” she answered.

“This taxi driver, do you know who he is?”

She nodded. “He comes in here to eat dinner.”

“What time?”

This resulted in more debate, during which the girl’s mother did most of the talking.

“Nine o’clock.”

“Will he come tonight?” asked Nora.

“Sometimes he comes. Sometimes he doesn’t.”

I checked my watch. It was eight.

“Might as well wait,” I said to Nora. “See if he shows.”

I explained this to the girl, who relayed it to her family. I thanked them, and, smiling, the whole family came forward to shake our hands, moving aside so we could shake Mao’s hand, too.

Removing my wallet, I thanked the father and tried to give him a hundred dollars, but he refused to take it. This back-and-forth went on for a good ten minutes, though I noticed his wife’s eyes were glued to the money. I had to get the guy to take it; if I didn’t, judging from the look on his wife’s face, he wouldn’t survive the night.

He finally relented and I turned back to Grandmother Mao with the intention of asking her a few more questions. Yet the old woman had silently moved off the stool, disappearing through the doors and into the back of the store.

“Fuck, man,” said the taxi driver, “you scared the shit outta me. I thought you were here to deport me.” He cackled with laughter, revealing a set of blinding white teeth, a few capped in gold. He scratched his red-and-yellow Rasta cap as he studied Ashley’s picture.

“Yah, sure. I did pick her up here.”

“When?” I asked.

“Coupla weeks ago?”

“What color coat was she wearing?” interjected Nora.

He thought it over, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin.

“Greenish brown? But I’m color-blind, man.”

He called himself Zeb. He was black — from Jamaica, I guessed from his slight accent—66, lean yet disheveled and slouched, like a palm tree after a mild hurricane.

During the past hour, as Nora and I waited, we’d managed to stitch together some basic information. He came to Golden Way five nights a week for dinner. He ate outside, leaning against the hood of his cab, playing loud music with the windows unrolled, and then took off, doubtlessly resuming his all-night driving shift, which ended at 7:00 A.M.

“When I got here,” Zeb went on, scratching his head, “she was in da back talkin’ to da old lady. I got my dinner. She followed me outside.”

“And you drove her somewhere?”

“Yah.”

“Do you remember where?”

He thought it over. “Some big-ass house on the Upper East.”

“Could you take us there now?”

“Oh, no.” He held up a hand. “Da stops and starts all bleed together when you drive.”

“We’ll pay you,” blurted Nora.

He perked up. “You’ll pay da meter?”

Nora nodded.

“Okay. Sure. We can do that.”

Grinning, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, Zeb cheerfully grabbed a foam container and began to load it with noodles, egg rolls, sesame chicken — if it was chicken; the gray meat looked like the siopao or cat in a steamed bun I’d once eaten by accident in Hong Kong. Astonishing how quickly money jogged a man’s memory.

Nora and I headed outside to wait.

“This is going to be expensive, ” I muttered, squinting farther down Market Street, where a lone man was shuffling toward us. Instantly I recognized the gray wool coat and the cigarette.

“Look who decided to make an appearance.”

Nora, unabashedly worried, grilled him on why he’d stood us up this morning. “We waited for you. I almost called the police.”

“I had things to do,” Hopper said unconvincingly.

He looked like he’d been up all night. I was beginning to realize the key to his behavior could be found in his own description of Morgan Devold: He’s coming back. He has to. He’s dying to talk about her.

Nora eagerly filled him in on the latest. In no time, the three of us were tearing up Park Avenue crammed into the backseat of a taxi with a steering wheel covered in blue shag and a rearview mirror wearing more gold chains than Mr. T. I leaned forward to study Zeb’s picture ID — his full name was Zebulaniah Akpunku — noticing a worn-out paperback, Steppin’ Into the Good Life, on the passenger seat beside him.

“Did you notice anything unusual about the girl?” I asked Zeb through the bulletproof window.

He shrugged. “She was a white girl. They all kinda look alike.” He guffawed happily, quieting only to take a bite of his food.

“Did she talk to you? Anything you can tell us about her?”

“No way, man. I got one rule as a driver.”

“What’s that?”

“Never look in da rearview mirror.”

“Never?” We drifted into the left-hand lane, cutting off a cab.

“It’s not healthy to keep a’ watchin’ what you leavin’ behind.”

Ten minutes later, we were weaving our way up and down every street in the East Sixties between Madison and Lexington. The meter ticked from twenty dollars to thirty, forty.

“Oh, yeah, dis is right,” Zeb would say, leaning forward to scrutinize the quiet rows of townhouses until he’d reach the end of the block. “ Shit. I got it wrong.” He’d sigh in apparent frustration, then cheerfully help himself to more sesame chicken. “No worries, man. It’s da next block.”

But the same thing happened on the next block. And the next.