Night Film(56)

I was about to head after her, when I felt my cell ringing in my pocket. It was Hopper.

“Come to Fifty-eighth and Broadway,” he shouted as a police siren ripped into the receiver. “Now.”

“What?”

“I found someone who saw Ashley a few days before she died.”

I glanced back down the hall. Cynthia was taking off Sam’s coat.

Shit.

“Give me twenty minutes,” I said and hung up.

So Hopper couldn’t stay away after all. The kid was proving to be quite the trump card.





31


Sam stared sullenly back at me. Even though I’d just explained, crouched down on her level with as much drama as I could muster, that her dad had some top-secret business to attend to and needed to run, so she was staying with Mommy—she didn’t say a word.

“Next weekend we’ll be spending four days together,” I said. “Just the two of us, okay?”

Still, the silence. But then, seemingly thinking something quite serious, she reached her right hand way up and patted me on my head. She’d never done that before. Cynthia, her face flushed, shot me a look—Great parenting—but, smiling agreeably for Sam’s sake, she extended the handle of the Toy Story suitcase, handing it off to Sam, who dutifully wheeled it to the door like a tired stewardess learning she had to fly an extra leg to Cincinnati.

“Bye, sweetheart,” I said. “I love you more than—what was it again?”

“The sun plus the moon,” she answered, heading down the hall.

“I’ll make it up to her,” I said to Cynthia.

“Of course.” She swept her hair over her shoulder and smiled, stepping after her. “We’ll put it on your tab.”

I strode to the hall closet, trying to ignore the tsunami of guilt flooding through me.

“Hopper called,” I said to Nora over my shoulder. “We’re meeting him uptown now. He has a lead.” I grabbed my keys, but Nora didn’t move from the living-room doorway. She was staring at me, wide-eyed.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“That was bad.”

“What was bad?”

“That.”

“My ex-wife? Yes, I know. Can you believe that woman used to live to karaoke on a Saturday night? In college, we called her Bangles. You couldn’t pay her to stop singing ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ in public.”

“She’s not what I’m talking about.”

I was helping Nora into her coat. “Then what are you talking about? And tell me quickly, because we need to get going.”

“You think you’re subtle, but you’re not.”

I was jostling her into the hallway, locking the door. “Subtle about what?”

“That you’re crazy mad in love with her.”

“Hey. No one’s crazy or mad or in love with anyone here.”

She put a hand on my shoulder, a look of evident pity.

“You need to move on with your life. She’s happy.” And with that, she took off merrily down the hall, leaving me staring after her.





32


Hopper was waiting for us on the corner by the HSBC bank, smoking a cigarette, the serious, hollowed-out expression on his face suggesting that he’d barely slept in the two days since we’d seen him.

“What are we doing here?” I asked him.

“Remember what Morgan Devold said? He thought Ashley had to play the piano every day?”

“Sure.”

“Yesterday I started thinking, if Ashley came into the city to track someone down, if she wanted to play, where would she go?”

“Jazz clubs. Juilliard. A hotel lobby? It’s hard to say.”

“None of those places would let a stranger off the street just sit down and start playing, uninterrupted. But then I remembered, I got a friend who’s big into the classical music scene. If you’re really good, the showrooms on Piano Row let you come in and play as long as you like. This afternoon I went into a bunch, asked around, and a manager in one of the shops actually recognized her. Ashley came in twice the week before she died.”

“Nice work,” I said.

“Right now he’s waiting to talk to us. But we have to hurry because they’re about to close.” He chucked the cigarette onto the pavement and took off down the sidewalk.

I’d never heard of Piano Row. It was a splinter of Fifty-eighth Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, where delicate piano stores had tucked themselves between hulking sixties apartment buildings like a few sparrows living among hippos. We hurried past a small shop called Beethoven Pianos, posters taped in the windows advertising Vivaldi concerts and voice lessons. Inside, identical shiny baby grands were lined up, lids open, like hefty chorus girls awaiting a cue. Hopper shuffled past the Morton Williams supermarket and crossed the street, passing a fire station, and then pausing in front of a shop with a dirty green awning that read KLAVIERHAUS.

I held the door open for Nora and we entered. Unlike Beethoven Pianos, there were only three pianos on display. The store was empty, without a single customer or employee. It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They’d probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.