The Night Crew

Chapter 12

Anna made lists.

She slept, exhausted, but her brain made lists, the crazies, the dopers, the men who'd come on to her in the past six months, anyone who might have fixated on her.

She dreamed, twisting in the percale sheets, of the man at the truck, the shooter: a big man, with something familiar to him, a way of holding his shoulders. And the voice: he'd said only one word, her name, but he'd spoken it before, in her hearing. She knew this man.

But who was it? She found herself paying attention to Harper, when he spoke her name. Was the voice the same? She didn't think sobut now she was confusing her memories of the shooting with other moments, with other people calling her name.

She made lists.

A thumpa human soundfrom downstairs. She rose out of her sleep like a diver coming to the surface, breaking through, gasping, looking around, thinking, gun. But she had no gun, the gun was in the truck.

Then another thump, running water. and she recognized the thump as a toilet seat going up, then coming down, the water in the downstairs toilet.

Harper. He'd been sleeping on the couch. He wouldn't go away. She pushed herself up, glanced at the bedroom door. Closed, not locked.

Harper? No. She knew why Harper was here.

When she came down from the bedroom, hair still wet from the shower, Harper was putting at a paper circle on the living room carpet. 'Your floor breaks about an inch toward the back wall, on a fifteen-foot putt,' he said.

'Do tell.' She went on past and picked up the phone in the kitchen.

'He was awake for an hour about noon, but he's sleeping again. He's doing fine and without complications, he could be out this week.' Harper said. He was squatting, looking over a ball at the paper circle.

She put the phone back on the hook: 'How is that possible? This week?'

'They push them out in a hurry,' Harper said. He stood up, and hovered over the ball, then looked at Anna. 'Are you going to say something before I putt?'

'No.'

'I'd hate to have you say something right in the middle of my backswing.'

'No, go ahead.'

He moved the putter head back an inch, and Anna said, 'Watch it.' The stroke came through, and the ball missed the paper circle by two inches. 'That's fuckin' hilarious,' he said.

'Are we gonna talk, or are you gonna spend the afternoon playing with your putter?'

They walked out to Jerry's, into the sun, Anna quiet, head down. Harper carrying the putter, swinging it, balancing it, turning it like a walking stick. The afternoon traffic was already building toward the rush, and they had to wait before crossing Pacific to the restaurant.

'You're not scared enough,' Harper said, as they walked.

'What?'

'Most people, if a madman was stalking them, they couldn't move,' he said.

She thought about it as they crossed the street, and said, 'Maybe I'm burned out on being scared. Going out every night, we see all kinds of stuff, people shot and stabbed and squashed in cars and burned to death. When you see enough of it, you've got to assume it won't happen to you. You must've felt like that when you were a cop.'

'Nope. Never did. I was scared shitless all the time.'

Logan had parked the truck in the restaurant lot after the shooting, and now Anna unlocked the door, knelt on the seat and fished in the hideout box for the.357, got it, turned, and caught Harper appreciating her ass. She hopped out of the truck and dropped the pistol in her jacket pocket.

'I thought you kept the gun at home,' Harper said, grinning. He knew he'd been caught, and he wasn't the least abashed by it; he twirled the putter like a baton.

'I do, but I had it last night when Creek got shot, and I didn't want the cops to take it.'

Jerry's was Anna's regular spot, with comfortable booths and decent coffee, mostly empty in the late afternoon, the waiters bustling around, getting ready for the dinner rush. The owner, Donna TowJerry's ex-wifecame over with coffee and said, 'Heard about Creek. I called the hospital and they said he'd be okay.'

'Looks like it,' Anna said. They talked for a few more minutes, Anna giving her a quick account of the shooting.

'Too goddamn many guns around,' Tow said, as she headed back toward the kitchen.

Anna and Harper slid into a booth, and a waitress brought a pot of coffee and two cups. 'So what are we doing?' Anna asked Harper.

'Having you along won't make it easier,' Harper said.

'It might; I'm probably smarter than you are,' Anna said.

'Thatcould help,' he said. He grinned again: he wouldn't be goaded.

'So what.' The grin faded and he squared himself in the booth and said, 'Names. The whole thing is connected to O'Brien and Jacob: You shoot Jacob's. fall. and the next thing, the guy is coming after you and kills O'Brien and MacAllister, who also happen to be connected by drugs. Somewhere in there, we'll find his track.'

'But I didn't know that much about Jason,' Anna said. 'We'd done a few things over at UCLA, Creek and Louis and me, and he was taking film classes, and heard about us. He came up with a storythis was a year or so agoand we shot it and sold it. So he started looking for stuff, and whenever he'd come up with something, he rode along, shot it, and got a cut, ten percent.'

'But you weren't social.'

'No. He'd get me by phone, or if I needed an extra guy, I'd call him up. He was good with a camera and he had a cool head when things were getting rough. He'd keep shooting no matter what.'

'I know.' A sudden deep sadness crossed his face, and Anna reached out and touched his hand on the coffee cup. 'I'm really sorry about your kid. I mean, I really am.'

'Yeah.' He looked out the window, at a woman skating by in the street, Walkman phones on her ears. 'Christ, I hardly knew him. I mean, I'd see him all the timebut I didn't know him. It was like, I could get to know him later. My ex-wife, I think she did a pretty good job with him, now this.' He shook himself and said, 'So do you have any ideas about O'Brien? Where we start?'

'I know one name and faceBoband I've heard about a couple of other people. But if we can find Bob, we might have something.'

Bob, she told Harper, was also in film at UCLA. A few months earlier, Jason had called about a possible story. They'd arranged to meet in Santa Monica, and when they did, Bob was with him. They were both high.

'They either shared the dope or shared the dealer,' she said. 'One way or another.'

'So let's go talk to Bob,' Harper said, pushing the coffee away.

'Hospital first,' Anna said.

Creek was in a third-floor critical care unit, sleeping, an IV dripping into his arm. Pam Glass was curled up on a chair next to the bed, reading a magazine, wearing the same clothes she'd been wearing that morning. When she saw them coming, she smiled, weakly, and stood up. 'He should sleep for another hour or two,' she whispered.

'Have you been home?' Anna asked.

'No, I just went down to the corner for a sandwich. I'm okay.'

'God, Pam.' They both turned and looked at Creek. His hair had been tamed, and was pulled back under his head. His face was pale under the sailor's tan, his cheekbones more prominent than Anna remembered. And he looked, she thought, almost. old.

'An hour or two?' Anna asked.

Pam nodded. 'What are you guys doing?'

'Looking around,' Harper said.

Glass hardened up: 'Look, I know you were a hotshot when you were with the sheriff's department, but I don't think we really need.'

Harper grinned at her and said, 'Shhh.'

'What?'

'Just a minute ago you were really worried about Creek. That's a very nice aspect of your personality.' He looked at Anna and tipped his head toward the door. 'Let's go. We can be back in two hours.'

On the way to UCLA, Harper said, 'I've got a question, but I don't know exactly how to phrase it.'

'Think real hard,' Anna said. 'Pretend the question is a putt.'

'Okay. The thing is, you're an interesting woman. We're just starting to know each other, and I figure we can go one of two wayswe can have a pure business relationship, or we can think about maybe, you know, doing something together. I mean, not for sure, but leave the possibility open, since you don't seem to be involved with anybody. You know what I mean?'

'No. I don't think I understood the last sentence at all; it was too complicated,' Anna said. She understood. She was also enjoying herself.

'I'm saying that I've been tempted to come on to you, just a little bit,' Harper said.

'A little bit tempted, or a little bit come on?'

He changed lanes with a lurch, cutting off a Mercedes that had been coming up from behind. 'A lot tempted to come on a little bit.'

'Okay, I've got that. Go ahead.' She put her feet on the dashboard.

'But if there's no point, I'll forget it,' he said. 'Give up. On the other hand, if there is a point, then I'll continue to be tolerant and charming and liberal and shit, in my own cowboy way.'

'Jesus,' Anna said, pinching the bridge of her nose. 'Cowboy. You were probably born in Reseda.'

'So is there a point, or not?'

'Well,' she said, letting her eyelids droop, 'I wouldn't totallygive up.'

'Totally,' he said, satisfied.

Tracing Bob took time. The administration offices were closed, but they found a course guide in the library. Anna thought Bob and Jason had been taking an editing course together: they found a course description that might be right, located the classrooms on a map. They got into the building as a kid was coming out, then walked through the hallways, looking for someone who might be a teacher. They didn't find any, but after talking to a few students, scored with two pale-faced kids in an editing room.

'Red-haired guy, skinny, sorta hard-faced like a skater,' Harper said, giving them a description from Anna.

'Like from Arkansas, or somewhere? This hillbilly accent?' asked one of the kids.

Anna snapped her fingers: 'That's him: I forgot the accent.'

'Well, his name's Bob, all right. I don't know his last name, but he works at Kinko's, at night.'

Bob was already on the job, and recognized Anna as soon as they walked in. He lifted a hand, walked over: 'How's it going?'

'We need to talk,' Anna said. 'About Jason.'

'Jason? I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks.'

'We doneed to talk,' she said. She looked around. 'Who's your supervisor?'

They took him out behind the Kinko's, into an overflow parking lot, where he lit a cigarette and said, 'Jesus, I can't believe he's dead. Dead?'

'We're gonna send his ashes back to Indiana,' Anna said.

Bobhis last name was Catwellshuddered: 'When I die, I hope they don't send me back to Fort Smith. Nasty.'

'He was murdered,' Harper said. 'The guy who did it took his time. Beat him to death. His skull was in about fifty pieces.'

'Aw, man,' he said. Then: 'What do you want? Why are you talking to me?'

'Whoever killed him may be coming after me. I don't know why, but that's the way it is,' Anna said. 'There's a possibility that whoever did it was somehow involved in dealing drugs to Jason. You know Jason got into it a little heavyand the last time I saw you, you both were into it.'

'Oh, no,' Catwell said. He flicked the cigarette in a bush and took a step back toward the store.

Harper moved quicklyvery quicklybetween Catwell and the Kinko's back door. Anna remembered the ease with which he'd taken her at the apartment. He said, 'We really need to know where you got the crank, or whatever.'

'Fuck you,' Catwell said. 'You can get killed talking about shit like that.'

'Talk to us, or talk to the cops,' Anna said. 'The cops are crazy to get this guy. He's killed two people and shot a third one.'

'That sounds like a reason notto talk.'

'If you give us a name, we'll forget you,' Harper said, pressing him. 'If you don't, we'll feed you to the cops. They'll be on you like a hot sweat. And when they get the name, they won't hide where they got it. You'll be right down there identifying the guy.'

'I don't have to tell anybody any fuckin' thing.' He walked around Harper toward the door.

'You know better than that,' Anna said, talking to his back. 'Sometimes you do have to tell; you know they can squeeze you. If you don't help us, the cops'll be here in ten minutes. So help: please.'

'You won't be able to stay here if you don't,' Harper said. 'Your ass'll be back in Fort Smith.'

'Please,' Anna said.

Catwell got to the door before he stopped. He faced the door, unmoving, for a full ten seconds, then finally turned, and said to Anna, 'So you used to, like, party down with Jason and Sean.'

Anna, confused by the tone of his voice, said, 'What?'

Harper asked, 'Sean? MacAllister?'

Catwell shifted his gaze to Harper: 'You know him?'

'Yeah, I saw him last night,' Harper said. To Anna, he said, 'The late Sean MacAllister.'

Anna was closing in on Catwell. 'When you said I partied down with them, what'd you mean?'

Catwell's eyes slid away, and he made a 'you know' bob of his head: 'You know.'

'No, I don't; but I've a bad feeling about what you think.'

'Well, maybe it's not true,' Catwell said.

'That I was sleeping with them?'

'Yeah, I guess.'

'Where'd you hear that?'

'Listen, if it's not true.'

'I don't care about that, 'cause for one thing, they're both dead.'

'Sean?' Now Catwell was scared. 'They killed Sean, too?'

'Yes.' Anna nodded. 'Same guy, but with a knife. Now where'd you hear I was sleeping with them?'

'Uh, you came to a party one night, off Sunset? To get Jason, but he was really wrecked? So you left without him?'

She remembered: 'At BJ's. Upstairs.'

'Yeah.'

'What's BJ's?' Harper asked.

'Club,' Anna said. To Catwell: 'So what'd they tell you?'

'That, uh, you know.'

'What?'

'Slept with them. At, uh, the same time. like in a pile.'

'Ah, jeez,' Anna said. 'They told everybody that?'

'Sure. I mean, like it wasn't any big secret.'

'I didn't even knowMacAllister,' Anna said.

'He and Jason had an apartment together, over by BJ's, down the hill from there,' Catwell said.

Anna looked at Harper and walked in a circle around the parking lot, ran her hand back through her hair: 'Jeez.'

'What?'

She looked at him: 'He's not trying to kill me. I'm perfectly safe,' she said.

'Say that again.'

'I'm not in troubleyou'rein trouble,' Anna said.

'What're you.'

'He's not gonna kill me. He's gonna kill you, Jake. Somebody already said it. Pam? I think Pam didhe's killing the guys he sees around me. Ah, God: he only shot Creek because Creek was with me. If we'd seen it.'

'Huh.' Harper thought it over. 'Like he's eliminating the competition.'

'Yeah. So I've got no problem.'

Now Harper shook his head: 'Don't think that. If he gets to you. I don't think you'd enjoy the date.' And to Catwell: 'Who else was at that party? High-school kids?'

'I don't know. People coming and going. Street kids, for sure. I don't think they were in high school no more. But I was loaded, man. I can barely remember. but I remember the story about Anna.'

'Good memory,' Anna said.

Catwell said, 'No, man. I mean, it was like a hotstorywhat you guys done. They said they were gonna send it in to Penthouse.'

'Aw, man, that damn Jason,' Anna said. 'Uh, you didn't tell anybody you'd been sleeping with me?'

'No. Jesus.'

'So give us a name, Bob,' said Anna.

He was weakening. 'Goddammit, if I do, you can't tell anyone.'

'We're not interested in you,' Harper said. 'We just need a name. The guy who sold to Jason.'

'Tarpatkin,' Catwell said softly. 'He works out of the Philadelphia Grill on Westwood. He's a Russian, he'd be there by now, probably. Later, for sure.'

'Does he sell wizards?'

'What? Wizards?'

Harper described them and Catwell shook his head: 'Tarpatkin's been around a while. He only sells to people he knows and he only sells coke, heroin and high-priced hash. He doesn't fuck around with that other shit.'

They got a description: Tarpatkin was tall, gaunt, pale, with long frizzy black hair and a goatee. 'He looks like the devil,' Catwell said. 'And Jesus, please don't let him find out who you talked to.'

'Got time to swing by the hospital again,' Anna said, looking at her watch. 'He says the guy's at the grill all night.'

'All right.' Harper had a remote key entry for the car, unlocked her door from twenty feet, then opened it for her, touched her back as she got in. Almost courtly, she thought. Old-fashioned. Not unpleasant. 'Sorry about that sleeping-around thing. bunch of kids bullshitting. Nobody pays any attention to it.'

'Somebody did,' Anna said. 'Still: I'm a little shocked.'

'So we've got to check this BJ's place. Our guy must be hanging out there, if he heard that story.'

'Yeah, but that doesn't get going until late.'

'So we look up this Tarpatkin first,' Harper said. 'I'm looking forward to that.'

In the car, headed back, she asked casually, 'What kind of women do you go out with? Lawyers? Golfers? Country-clubbers?'

He thought for a long moment, guided the car through a knot of curb cruisers, and said, finally, 'I don't go out much anymore.'

She looked at him curiously. 'You don't seem shy.'

'I'm not. I'm just. tired. I mostly want to work, play golf and mess around at my house. I used to go over to see Jacob a couple of times a week. Maybe we'd go out to eat.'

'You're gonna miss him.'

'I can't even believe he's gone,' Harper said, hunching down over the steering wheel, holding on with both hands.

'So maybe I'm being nosy.'

He grinned. 'Maybe you are.'

'Well. That's what I do,' she said.

Then she shut up, because sooner or later, she thought, he'd have a little more to say. He wasn't glib. He wasn't exactly taciturn, but he didn't have much of a line of bullshit.

And after a while he said, 'Going out with women. is just a lot of trouble. Most of them you meet, you know nothing's going to happenbut you've got to spend a few hours with them anyway, being nice. I guess I'm too busy for that. When it's obvious that nothing's going to happen, I'd like to say, "Well, that's that. I'll get you a cab and we can all go home".'

Anna pretended to be horrified: 'Have you ever done that?'

'Of course not. I'm too polite.'

'I'd think you've got a lot of women coming around. You look okay, you've got a lot of hair, guys like you make some money.'

'You'd be surprised how many women don't care about money,' he said. But then he shrugged and added, 'But, yeah. There were quite a few women around for a while. Now I'm getting a reputation as a nasty old curmudgeon, so it's not quite as intense as when I was. on the market.'

'No girlfriends at all?'

'Not right nownot for a while, really. I'd like to.'

He stopped. 'What?' she pressed. 'Like to what?'

'We don't know each other well enough,' he said, 'for me to tell you what I'd like to do.'

A parking place appeared a half-block from the hospital's emergency entrance; Harper dove into it, chortling, fed the meter. But as they started down toward the hospital, a man in a suit in the dimly lit glassed-in entry half-turned toward them, saw them and then suddenly and hurriedly turned back to the hospital doors and disappeared inside.

'Did you see that?' Anna said.

'Yeah.' Harper broke into a trot, Anna running beside him. 'Somebody who doesn't want to talk to us. You know him?'

'Couldn't see his face,' she said.

'White hair,' Harper said. They were moving fast now, hit the doors to the entry, burst into the reception area. No white-haired men. A guard was looking at them, quizzically. Harper hurried toward him, Anna a half-step behind.

'A white-haired guy just came through here,' Harper said. 'Did you see where he went?'

The guard said, 'Yeah, he. hey, who are you guys?'

But he'd started to point, down the hall: the elevators were just around the corner.

'Elevators,' Anna said to Harper. And she said to the guard, 'Call the intensive care unit on the third floor. If a white-haired guy shows up, watch him. he may have a gun.'

Harper was already hurrying toward the elevators, Anna catching up as the guard said, 'Yes, ma'am,' and picked up a phone.

They turned the corner. Three elevators, one with the door open, waiting. Of the other two, one was on eight, coming down. The other was on two, stopping at three.

'Damn it,' Harper said. He looked around and Anna said, 'Stairs'd be faster,' and they went left and up the stairs, around two flights; as they got to the third floor, Anna heard a door shut below them, the hollow tunnel sound of metal on concrete. She stopped, looked down. 'You hear that?'

'Yeah,' Harper grunted, but he went on past, into the corridor on three. Two nurses were talking at a work station, one with a phone in her hand, and looked up at them.

'Did a white-haired man.'

'No. Nobody came here. The guard just called.'

'Is Pam Glass still down in intensive care, the police officer?'

'I think so.'

They went that way, and Anna blurted, 'Maybe he went down. You heard that door close, he couldn't have been too far ahead of us.'

'Yeah.' They turned the corner into the intensive care unit. Glass was standing next to Creek's bed; Creek's eyes were closed. No white-haired man.

'Nobody just came through here?' Anna asked.

Glass shook her head. 'No. What.?'

Harper said, 'Tell them,' and ran back toward the stairs. Anna asked Glass, 'You got your gun?'

'Yes.'

'Keep a hand on it, there's a guy,' and turned and ran after Harper. She caught him on the stairs and Harper glanced back at her, grunted, shook his head and kept circling down. They came out in a sub-basement, looked both ways, finally turned left, a shorter hall and an exit sign.

The exit led to an underground parking ramp: they hurried along the ramp, and Harper said, 'Get the gun out.'

Anna took the gun out of her jacket pocket, feeling a little sillyand a little dangerousand held it by her pants leg as they turned up the ramp toward a pay booth. A Latino was running out an adding machine in the booth, and Harper said, 'Did a man just run by here?'

'Yes, si, he went that way, one minute.' He pointed up the ramp to the street. They ran up the ramp and found. traffic.

Harper looked both ways, down at Anna and said, 'He's gone.'

She shoved the gun back into her jacket and said, 'Yeah.'

Creek had been awake for a few minutes, had maybe recognized Glass, but maybe not: 'He was drifting,' Glass said. 'He thought he was on his boat.'

Anna told Glass about the white-haired man, and finished with, 'It's possible that it was nothing.'

'No.' Harper disagreed. 'That move he madeI saw that two hundred times when I was a cop. Especially working dope. Someone sees you, figures you for the cops and he turns and splits. Runs in the front door, runs out the back. Just like that: and that's what he was doing.'

'I see it all the time,' Glass said.

'That's what it felt like,' Anna admitted. She kept looking at Creek, then glancing away: his figure disturbed her. He looked hollow, tired. Old, with lines in his face that she hadn't noticed before. He'd always been the opposite of those things, a guy who'd go on forever.

Now he lay there, little of him visible other than his hair and oddly pale eyelids, breathing through a plastic mask, his breath so shallow, his life bumping along on the monitors overhead, like a slow day on a stock-market ticker.