Night Film(82)

She smiled in recognition. “You mean Nora?”

“Exactly.”

“Sure, she was here.”

“Well, where the hell is she?”

“Beats me. Got up and left about an hour ago.”

I slid onto one of the counter stools, pulling off my leather jacket, still drooling salt water.

“I’ll have some coffee, three eggs easy, bacon, toast, orange juice.”

The waitress disappeared through the swinging doors. When she returned with my coffee, she sighed heavily, crossing her arms.

“She got a call from some guy. Ran out of here real excited.”

I glanced at her, taking a sip. “A call on her cell?”

“No. Cell service sucks out here. Just one bar. He called the diner, asked for her by name. You’re her dad, I take it, comin’ to pick her up?” She didn’t wait for my response, only nodded knowingly. “Don’t know how you dads put up with it. Girls always going after the bad boys. Then there’s the Internet, which makes it ten times worse with the stalkers and the sex predators.”

My breakfast came quickly, thank Christ.

A few locals wandered in, but there was no sign of Hopper or Nora.

After I ate, I tried calling them—I was surprised to see my cell still worked—but the waitress was right: no service. I used the phone at the cash register, but for both of them it rang and went to voicemail.

When I boarded the 9:45 A.M. Long Island Rail Road train, taking me back to civilization—if you can call Manhattan that—I’d conked out cold before we left the station.





53


When I arrived in the city, it was after noon. There was still no word from Hopper or Nora. I took a cab back to Perry Street. Nora had a spare set of keys, so I wondered if she’d somehow been unable to get in touch and had beaten me home. But the apartment was empty, no messages on my home phone.

I took a shower, considered going back to bed, but felt too strung out, too uneasy—too annoyed.

They’d left the general for dead on the battlefield. Or had something happened? I didn’t have time to worry about it, because my cell buzzed, reminding me that Peg Martin, one of the actors in Isolate 3, would be in the Washington Square Park dog run tonight at 6 P.M. It was the lead Beckman had given me almost a week ago.

I headed into my office, feeding Septimus some birdseed, and pulled Peg Martin’s 1995 Sneak interview out of my box of notes. After Cordova’s 1977 Rolling Stone piece, it was the only time anyone who’d worked with him had spoken candidly about the experience.





She was seventeen when she’d appeared in Cordova’s film, which today would make her thirty-five.

I Googled her name and a few stills from Isolate 3 appeared. She had only three scenes in the film, a grainy version of one of them posted on YouTube. Peg played Vivian Jean, one of the maids who worked all night cleaning the midtown offices of the law firm Milton, Bowers & Reid, ends up disappearing into a back stairwell, and is never seen again. Moments before she vanishes, she says Scientists look for aliens in the universe, but they’re here. Aliens who pass for men. They’ve already invaded. She was talking about her abusive husband, how monstrous the people you loved could be. I’d always found interesting the fact that Martin in the interview used that line to describe Cordova.

According to IMDb, after appearing in HBO’s New Found Glory—a modern remake of It Happened One Night, canceled after one season—Peg Martin appeared in the ABC TV Western Dust Up, costarring Jeff Goldblum. After 1996, she had no more credits. There was no current information about her and no indication of what she’d done with her life, though I did recall Beckman had mentioned she’d been a heroin addict—probably the reason she’d had such a brief film career.

I checked my watch. It was almost five. I needed to get going. But a lone man wandering a public park being friendly, asking too many questions—it would set off all kinds of alarm bells.

I needed a decoy.





54


“Mrs. Quincy called to alert me you’d be here,” announced Dorothy, surveying me skeptically over the rim of her glasses. “But not a half-hour early. Samantha’s in the midst of her Nutcracker audition.”

Dorothy was the gray-haired czarina who ruled the Manhattan Ballet School with an iron fist. I’d encountered her before, and every time she treated me like I was an escapee from a Siberian gulag.

“Okay, but we have a reservation at the Plaza for a father-daughter tea.”

“If you pull her out now, she won’t be in the running for getting a doll from Herr Drosselmeyer. She might not even make it to the party scene.”

“Come on, Dorothy. Sam has to make the party scene. She is the party scene.”

Dorothy sighed, relenting. “Go ahead.”

Winking at her, I turned, striding down the hall to the ballroom where they held the classes, the wood floors creaking under my feet. I’d called Cynthia to ask if I might spend a few quality hours with Sam this evening—to make up for my postponing her visit—and miraculously, she’d agreed to it. I didn’t exactly go into detail as to what we’d be doing during these quality hours, but no matter what happened with Peg Martin, Sam would enjoy the dog run, and afterward I’d treat her to a dinner and a hot-fudge sundae at Serendipity 3.