Night Film(5)

“It’s infected,” the man mumbled. “The story. Some are, you know.”

I’d chuckled, assuming such dramatics were a side effect of the Chivas Regal we’d been guzzling all night. Yet he went on.

“It’s a lintwurm.” He squinted at me, his bloodshot eyes searching my face for understanding. “A tapeworm that’s eaten its own tail. No use going after it. Because there’s no end. All it will do is wrap around your heart and squeeze all the blood out.” He held up a tightened fist. “Dit suig jou droog. Some stories you should run from while you still have legs.”

I never did find out if he made it to that village.

Cordova’s daughter found dead. The thought pulled me back to the present, and I opened the old box, grabbed a stack of papers, and started through it.

First: a typed list of all the actors who’d worked with Cordova. Then a list of shooting locations from his first film, Figures Bathed in Light. Pauline Kael’s review of Distortion, “Unraveling Innocence.” A film still of Marlowe Hughes in bed in the closing shot of Lovechild. Typed transcripts of my notes from Crowthorpe Falls. A photo I’d snapped of the fencing surrounding Cordova’s property, The Peak. Wolfgang Beckman’s syllabus for his Cordova class, taught a few years ago at Columbia film school, though he was forced to cancel it after only three classes due to outcry from parents. (“Special Topics in Cordova: Darkly Alive and Totally Petrifying,” he’d impishly called the class.) A DVD of the PBS documentary on Cordova from 2003, Dark’s Warden. And then a transcript from an anonymous phone call.

John. The mysterious caller who proved to be my undoing.

I pulled the three pages out of the pile.

Every time I read through them, transcribed within minutes of hanging up—I tried and failed to find the moment in the conversation where I’d lost my head. What, exactly, had prompted me to disregard twenty years’ experience and jump the shark during a television appearance not twenty-four hours later?





Transcript of Phone Conversation - Anonymous Caller “John”

S. McGrath, May 11, 2006. 11:06 - 11:11 P.M.



SM: Hello.

Caller: Is this Scott McGrath, the reporter?

SM: It is. Who’s this?



No immediate answer. Voice is older, mid-sixties or seventies.



Caller: I hear you’re investigating Cordova.

SM: How’d you hear that?

Caller: Word gets around.

SM: Are you a friend of his?



No answer. He sounds nervous.



Caller: I don’t want this call recorded.

SM: It’s not. What’s your name?

Caller: John.



Not his real name. I am tempted to turn on my phone recorder–a necessary precaution–but plugging in the TP-7 jack makes a clicking noise on the line. I don’t want to scare him off.



SM: What’s your connection to Cordova?

Caller: I drove him.

SM: You were his chauffeur?

Caller: You could say that.

SM: Where?

Caller: Upstate.



Upstate New York. “John” is breathing oddly–having second thoughts about talking.



SM: Are you still there?

Caller: Sorry. I don’t know how I feel about this now.

SM: Take your time. How did you come to work for him?

Caller: I don’t like all the questions.

SM: You’re the one who called me, John. Would it be easier if we met?

Caller: No.



Thirty-second pause.



Caller: Most of the time I drove the woman, the Mexican, who works for him into town. But one night he called me and asked if I’d drive him.

SM: You live close to his estate in Crowthorpe Falls?

Caller: I don’t want to say.



I scribble some notes.



Caller: He wanted me to pick him up in the middle of the night. 3 A.M. He asked me to come up slow to the mansion with my lights off. I had the feeling he didn’t want to wake anyone at the house. When I got there, he was waiting for me on the steps.

SM: Was he alone?

Caller: Yes. He got into the car. The backseat.



A pause.



SM: Where did you take him?

Caller: To an elementary school.

SM: An elementary school.

Caller: Yes.

SM: Which one?

Caller: No specifics.

SM: Okay. I’m listening.

Caller: He asked me to drive into the parking lot, turn off the engine, and wait. I watched him walk across the lawn into the children’s playground. At first he was very still. And then, he moved around the swings. Pushing one so it swung out into the air, empty. Then he went around the seesaw, tipping it so it bobbed up and down. Then he went into the sandbox and sat down.

SM: He sat down in the sandbox.

Caller: I couldn’t see what he was doing. But it wasn’t right, you understand?

SM: What was he doing?

Caller: At first I was scared he was doing something sexual. But it looked like digging.

SM: Digging?

Caller: That’s what it looked like. When he came back to the car, he was hiding something in his coat.

SM: What?

Caller: I couldn’t see. I just drove him home.