Night Film(14)

I checked the photo I’d taken of his computer screen and couldn’t believe my luck. The picture was blurry, but I could still make out the convoluted URL. In all the years I’d known Beckman, it was the most useful piece of information I’d ever extracted from the man.

I closed the photo and made a quick note in my calendar.

Peg Martin. Washington Square Park. Sunday at 6 P.M.





8


The girl in the Four Seasons coat check was eating handfuls of colored jelly beans and reading a thin yellow paperback.

I’d read in the witness report in Ashley’s police file that the coat-check girl’s name was Nora Halliday and she was nineteen.

Every time a party of diners arrived—midwestern tourists, finance dudes, a couple so elderly they moved like they were doing a form of tai chi—she whisked off her black-rimmed eyeglasses, hid the book, and with a cheerful “Good evening!” took their coats. After they moved upstairs to the restaurant, she put her glasses back on, brought out the paperback, and started reading again, hunched over the counter of the stall.

I was watching her from the opposite side of the lobby on a seat by the stairs. I’d decided it was best to wait here, because I was slightly more bombed than I realized, thanks to the jet-fuel vodka back at Beckman’s. At one point, she glanced curiously in my direction. No doubt assuming I was waiting for someone, she smiled and resumed reading her book.

According to the police report, she’d been working here only a few weeks. She was about 57″ and scrawny as a question mark, with pale blond hair in a French twist—curls around her face channeling alfalfa. She wore a brown skirt and brown blouse too big for her—the restaurant’s uniform—visible shoulder pads sitting unevenly on her frame.

At last, I stood up and walked over to her. She closed the book, turning it facedown on the counter, though not before I glimpsed the title.

Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen.

A tragic play featuring what was widely believed to be the most neurotic female protagonist in all of Western literature.

I had my work cut out for me.

“Good evening, sir,” she said brightly, removing her glasses, revealing big blue eyes and delicate features that would have made her an “it girl” about four hundred years ago. But this being the era of fish pouts and spray-on tans, she was pretty, certainly, but old-fashioned—a turn-of-the-century Twiggy. She was wearing harsh pink lipstick, which didn’t look like it’d been applied in good light or within two feet of a mirror.

She did look friendly, however. And easy enough to get talking.

She grabbed one of the silver hangers off the rack and held out her hand for my coat.

“I’m not checking it,” I said. “You must be Nora Halliday?”

“I am.”

“Nice to meet you. Scott McGrath.” I removed my business card from my wallet, handing it to her. “I was hoping we might chat, at your convenience.”

“Chat about what?” She squinted at the card.

“Ashley Cordova. I understand you were the last person to see her alive.”

She glanced back at me. “You’re police?”

“No. I’m an investigative reporter.”

“What are you investigating?”

“I’ve done cover-ups, international drug cartels. I’ve been getting some background on Ashley. I’m interested in your perspective. Did she say anything at all to you?”

Biting her bottom lip, she set my business card down on the stall door and carefully shook multicolored jelly beans into her hand from a bag that contained about four kilos of them. She shoved the pile into her mouth, chewing with her lips clamped closed.

“Everything you tell me can be off the record,” I added.

She covered her mouth with her hand.

“Have you been drinking?” she asked.

“No.”

She seemed to take issue with this, swallowing with a gulp. “Are you dining with us this evening, sir?”

“No.”

“Are you meeting someone at the bar?”

“Probably not.”

“Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

I stared at her. She was definitely not from New York. This one screamed Recent grad of Ohio State with a degree in the dramatic arts. Something told me she’d probably played a Pink Lady in some abysmal production of Grease and when someone asked her who she was, she said I’m an actor in the same breathy voice I’d seen people in AA announce I’m an alcoholic. Girls like her moved here by the truckload, hoping to be discovered and to meet Mr. Big but too often ended up in bars in Murray Hill wearing black dresses from Banana Republic, Band-Aids over the blisters on their heels. They’d get their I’ll Take Manhattan taken off them soon enough. To live in this city for any extended period of time required masochism, moral flexibility, skin like an alligator’s, and mad jack-in-the-box resilience—none of which these faux-confident twenty-very-littles could even begin to wrap their heads around. Within five years she’d be running home to her parents, a boyfriend named Wayne, and a job at her old high school, teaching movement.

“If you continue to loiter I’m going to call my manager. Carl will be happy to address any complaints or requests.”

I took a deep breath. “Miss Halliday,” I said, taking a small step toward her so I could see her pink lipstick had skidded off her upper lip. “A young woman was found dead. You were the last person to see her alive. The Cordova family knows this. A lot of people know this. The NYPD isn’t keeping your name anonymous. People are wondering what you did and what you said to her, which caused her to end up dead hours later. I’m not jumping to conclusions. I just want to hear your side.”