Night Film(94)

She shrugged, puzzled. “I just spoke to a man, but he disappeared through there.” She pointed at a set of steel doors beside a few fish tanks, gray fish drifting inside.

When I’d answered the call, a man who barely spoke English announced he had informations, though he was unable to explain what exactly it was. Finally, a woman came on the line to bark an address: 11 Market Street. The address was near East Broadway, only a block and a half from 83 Henry, so it was certainly feasible Ashley had come in.

At this moment, a slight middle-aged Chinese man emerged, followed by what had to be his entire extended family: his wife, his daughter of about eight, and a grandmother who looked to date back to the days of Mao Zedong.

Hell—maybe it was Mao. She had his long forehead, his tired face and gray workman’s pants, the flip-flops on her bare feet, which resembled two dry chipped bricks that’d fallen off the Great Wall.

The family all smiled eagerly at us and set about getting a stool for the old woman, helping her sit. The wife then handed her a piece of crumpled paper, which I recognized as the missing-person flier.

“We have information,” the little girl announced in perfect English.

“About the girl on the poster?” I clarified.

“Did you meet her?” Nora asked.

“Yes,” said the little girl. “She came here.”

“What was she wearing?” I asked.

The family conferred heatedly in Cantonese.

“A bright orange coat.”

That was close enough.

“And what did she do when she was here?” I asked.

“She talked with my grandmother.” The little girl indicated Mao, who was carefully inspecting the flier as if it were a speech she was about to present in class.

“In English?”

The little girl giggled as if I’d made a joke. “My grandmother doesn’t speak English.”

“She spoke to her in Chinese?”

The girl nodded. Ashley spoke Chinese. That was unexpected.

“What did they talk about?” I asked.

For the next few minutes, there was so much wild Cantonese flying back and forth Nora and I could do nothing but watch. Finally, the entire family hushed quickly because Mao had at last spoken, her parched voice scarcely audible.

“She asked my grandmother where she was born,” explained the girl. “If she missed her home. She bought chewing gum. And then she talked to a taxi driver who comes in here for dinner. He said he’d take her where she wanted to go. My grandmother liked her very much. But your friend was very tired.”

“Tired in what way?” I asked.

The girl conferred with Grandmother Mao. “She was sleepy,” she answered.

“This taxi driver, do you know who he is?”

She nodded. “He comes in here to eat dinner.”

“What time?”

This resulted in more debate, during which the girl’s mother did most of the talking.

“Nine o’clock.”

“Will he come tonight?” asked Nora.

“Sometimes he comes. Sometimes he doesn’t.”

I checked my watch. It was eight.

“Might as well wait,” I said to Nora. “See if he shows.”

I explained this to the girl, who relayed it to her family. I thanked them, and, smiling, the whole family came forward to shake our hands, moving aside so we could shake Mao’s hand, too.

Removing my wallet, I thanked the father and tried to give him a hundred dollars, but he refused to take it. This back-and-forth went on for a good ten minutes, though I noticed his wife’s eyes were glued to the money. I had to get the guy to take it; if I didn’t, judging from the look on his wife’s face, he wouldn’t survive the night.

He finally relented and I turned back to Grandmother Mao with the intention of asking her a few more questions. Yet the old woman had silently moved off the stool, disappearing through the doors and into the back of the store.





66


“Fuck, man,” said the taxi driver, “you scared the shit outta me. I thought you were here to deport me.” He cackled with laughter, revealing a set of blinding white teeth, a few capped in gold. He scratched his red-and-yellow Rasta cap as he studied Ashley’s picture.

“Yah, sure. I did pick her up here.”

“When?” I asked.

“Coupla weeks ago?”

“What color coat was she wearing?” interjected Nora.

He thought it over, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin.

“Greenish brown? But I’m color-blind, man.”

He called himself Zeb. He was black—from Jamaica, I guessed from his slight accent—66, lean yet disheveled and slouched, like a palm tree after a mild hurricane.

During the past hour, as Nora and I waited, we’d managed to stitch together some basic information. He came to Golden Way five nights a week for dinner. He ate outside, leaning against the hood of his cab, playing loud music with the windows unrolled, and then took off, doubtlessly resuming his all-night driving shift, which ended at 7:00 A.M.

“When I got here,” Zeb went on, scratching his head, “she was in da back talkin’ to da old lady. I got my dinner. She followed me outside.”

“And you drove her somewhere?”