Night Film(18)

With a doubtful glance, he stepped to the bookshelf, pulling out Cocaine Carnivals. “ ‘A page-turning tour de force,’ ” he read, “ ‘about the drug’s billion-dollar business and the millions of mangled lives it sucks into its deadly machinery.’ ” He glanced at me. “Sounds epic.”

He’d said it with sarcasm.

“I try.”

“And now you’re gonna write about Ashley.”

“Depends on what I find. What do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s your connection to her?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Then why’d you break into the warehouse where she died?”

He didn’t answer, only returned the book to the shelf. After browsing a few other titles, he turned back, shoving his hands in his coat pockets.

“What magazine do you work for?” he asked.

“Myself. Anything you tell me can be off the record.”

“Like attorney-client privilege.”

“Absolutely.”

He smirked skeptically at this, but then his face fell as he stared at me. It was a look I knew well. He was dying to talk, but he was trying to decide if he could trust me.

“Got some free time?” he asked quietly, rubbing his nose.





12


I followed Hopper up the stairs of a dingy Ludlow Street walk-up and into his apartment, #3B. Slinging his gray coat over a beach chair, he disappeared into a back bedroom—there didn’t seem to be anything in there except a mattress on the floor—leaving me by the front door.

The place was tiny, with the woozy, stale air of a flophouse.

The sagging green couch along the far wall was covered with an old blue comforter where someone had recently crashed—maybe literally. In a plate on the coffee table there was an outbreak of cigarette butts; next to that, rolling papers, a packet of Golden Virginia tobacco, an open package of Chips Ahoy!, a mangled copy of Interview, some emaciated starlet on the cover. His green HAS-BEEN T-shirt from last night was flung on the floor along with a white sweatshirt and some other clothes. (As if to expressly avoid this pile, a woman’s pair of black pantyhose clung for dear life to the back of the other beach chair.) A girl had kissed one wall while wearing black lipstick. An acoustic guitar was propped in the corner beside an old hiker’s backpack, the faded red nylon covered with handwriting.

I stepped over to read some of it: If this gets lost return it with all contents to Hopper C. Cole, 90 Todd Street, Mission, South Dakota 57555.

Hopper Cole from South Dakota. He was a hell of a long way from home.

Scribbled above that, beside a woman named Jade’s 310 phone number and a hand-drawn Egyptian eye, were the words: “But now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s heading my way. Sometimes I grow so tired. But I know I’ve got one thing I got to do. Ramble on.”

So he was a Led Zeppelin fan.

Hopper emerged from the bedroom carrying a manila envelope. With a wary glance, he handed it to me.

It was addressed to: HOPPER COLE, 165 LUDLOW STREET, 3B—the address scribbled in all caps in black permanent marker. It had been stamped and mailed from New York, NY, on October 10 of this year. I recognized it as the last day Ashley Cordova had been seen alive by the girl in the Four Seasons coat check. The return address featured no name, reading simply 9 MOTT STREET—the address of the warehouse where Ashley’s body had been found.

Surprised, I looked at Hopper, but he said nothing, only watched me intently, as if it were some sort of test.

I pulled out what was inside. It was a stuffed monkey, old, with matted brown fur, stitching coming out of its eyes, a red felt mouth half gone, its neck limp, probably from some child’s hand clamped around it. The whole thing was encrusted with dried red mud.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You’ve never seen it before?” he asked.

“No. Whose is it?”

“No clue.” He moved away, yanking aside the blue comforter and sitting on the couch.

“Who sent it?”

“She did.”

“Ashley.”

He nodded and then, hunching forward, grabbed the package of rolling papers off the table, pulled one out.

“Why?” I asked.

“Some kinda sick joke.”

“Then you were friends with her.”

“Not exactly,” he said, reaching across the table for his gray coat, fumbling in the pockets for the pack of Marlboros. “Not friends. More like acquaintances. But even that’s a stretch.”

“Where’d you meet her?”

He sat back down, tapping out a cigarette. “Camp.”

“Camp?”

“Yeah.”

“What camp?”

“Six Silver Lakes Wilderness Therapy in Utah.” He glanced at me, brushing his hair out of his eyes as he began to dissect the cigarette, peeling the filter away from the paper. “You’ve heard of this first-class institution.”

“No.”

“Then you’re missing out. If you have kids, I highly recommend it. Especially if you want your kid to grow up to be a great American maniac.”

I didn’t bother to hide my surprise. “You met Ashley there?”

He nodded.