Night Film(178)

“I think I’m inside a Cordova film. One of his narratives. And it’s not over.”

“What are you talking—?”

“He set me up. Cordova. Maybe Ashley, too. I don’t know why or how. All I know is that I tried to uncover the circumstances around Ashley’s death and every person I spoke to, everyone who met her, has disappeared. The man had a penchant for working with reality—manipulating his actors, pushing them to the brink. Now he’s done it with me.”

Beckman’s mouth was open, his eyes wide with disbelief. He appeared to have entered some kind of unresponsive fugue state.

“Just tell me about the cigarettes,” I said.

He took a breath. “McGrath, this is really not good.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

“Didn’t I tell you to leave him alo—?”

“The cigarettes!”

He tried to collect himself. “If you’re the first character who appears in the scene after the Murad cigarettes have been smoked, it means you’re marked, McGrath. You’re fated. You’re doomed.”

“But there’s some way out—”

“No.” He arched an eyebrow. “There is a very slim chance if you manage to make a huge and improbable leap of faith you will survive, but it’s like jumping from the top of one skyscraper to the next. It almost always ends with you splat on the sidewalk, either dead or caught forever in a sticky hell, struggling in your cocoon like Leigh at the end of La Douleur.”

I jotted it down. “What about Boris the Burglar’s Son?”

“Cordova’s longtime stuntman. His full name is Boris Dragomirov. He’s a diminutive but brawny Russian. His father was a notorious gangster known back in the motherland simply as The Black Eye. The man managed to successfully escape every gulag they ever locked him in and he taught his only son, Boris, all of his techniques. Cordova used Boris in every film. He did all the dirty work, the cons, the beat-ups, the breaking and entering, the car wrecks, the cliff dives. His largest role was playing the blackmailer in A Crack in the Window, the one who appears on the other side of that confessional screen, scaring the bejesus out of Jinley. He runs as fast as a supercharged Maserati and can escape anything at any time.”

It took only a second for me to know where I’d encountered him.

“I chased him,” I said. “I spoke to him.”

“You spoke to Boris the Burglar’s Son?”

Quickly I explained how he’d broken into my apartment, hightailed it across the West Side Highway out onto the pier, posing as a cruising gay man and then vanishing in the blink of an eye.

“McGrath, how could you miss it? He used the Horny Geezer on you, one of his most legendary cons.”

“What about One-Eyed Pontiac?”

Beckman thoughtfully interlaced his fingers. “There’s always a dark-colored Pontiac, black, blue, or deep maroon, with a single headlight. Whatever object or person it illuminates in its single glaring light will be annihilated.”

I remembered it immediately: Hopper had claimed to see such a car in the parking lot of the Evening View, when they’d been waiting for me to return from The Peak. I hastily made a note of it, Beckman eyeing my scribbles.

“You saw the One-Eyed Pontiac?” he gasped. “Don’t tell me you were in its headli—”

“I wasn’t. Someone else saw it. The Peeping Tom Shot?”

He blinked in flustered exasperation. “It’s Cordova’s trademark shot. Much like Tarantino’s signature trunk shot, the Peeping Tom is a single extended shot of another person who doesn’t know he or she is being closely observed. It’s always framed by a pulled curtain, venetian blinds, the muddy backseat window of a car, or a cracked door.”

I thought it over, but it didn’t seem to shed any light on what I’d encountered over the course of the investigation.

“The Know Not What?” I went on.

Beckman shrugged. “He’s the henchman, the right-hand man, the face-man, the flunky. He appears when his boss will not, passively carrying out his orders with no judgment, thereby releasing a dark, malevolent force upon the world. The phrase comes from the Bible, of course, Luke, chapter twenty-three: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ ”

It took me a moment of racking my brain, and then the answer hit me. It was so obvious I nearly laughed out loud. I scribbled down his name.

“Theo Cordova?” said Beckman, reading over my shoulder. “What do you want with Theo Cordova?”

“He’s been following me.”

“Cordova’s son? But how did you know it was he?”

“He’s missing three fingers on his left hand.”

Beckman looked startled. “That’s right. Theo was always a strange, silent young man. Badgered by his father, lovesick for the same older woman for years.”

I hastily made a note of it. “Steak Tartare?”

Beckman eagerly licked his lips. “In every Cordova film someone, often an extra, can be seen eating finely chopped raw meat. Well. The very next person who appears on-screen in either a medium or close-up shot after this uncooked consumption? He or she will be malignant. He or she has secretly—usually off-screen—become a turncoat, a whore, a defector, a deserter, and can no longer be trusted. It’s Cordova reminding us of our omnipresent inner cannibal, a reminder that we all are, in the end, ravenous beasts who will satisfy our ugliest desires when the timing is right. They say it’s his favorite meal.”