The Night Crew

Chapter 20

On the way out Sunset toward Burbank, Anna spotted a red-haired woman in a leather biker jacket and skinny jeans, leaning on a window, hands in her jeans pocket, smoking a cigarette: 'Stop, pull over,' Anna said. 'By that woman.'

Harper pulled over: 'What's going on?'

'How do you roll the window?' The window rolled down and Anna yelled, 'Hey, Jenny. It's Anna.'

The woman had been watching the car as it slowed, and now she smiled, flipped her cigarette up the street and said, 'Anna. Where've you been?'

'Working. Come on, get in.' Anna turned around in the front seat, popped the lock on the back door. 'We'll get something to eat or something.'

The woman nodded and said, 'Nice wheels,' as she slipped into the back seat. And Anna said, 'Jenny Norden, Jake Harper. Jake's a lawyer, Jenny's with Lutheran Social Services.'

Harper's eyebrows went up: 'You're pulling my leg.'

Norden grinned at him and said, 'Nope. I'm a born-againer.'

'Anna's friends,' Harper said, as he pulled away from the curb.

'I can't believe you're sleeping with a lawyer,' Norden said, tongue-in-cheek.

'Who says I am?' Anna asked.

'I do,' Norden said. 'You've got that really clear-skin look.'

'What's wrong with lawyers?' Harper asked the rearview mirror.

'Nothing. I am one,' Norden said.

'Yeah? You know the difference between a lawyer and a trampoline?'

'You take off your shoes to jump on a trampoline,' Norden said. 'You know what the lawyer said when he stepped in a cow pie?'

'Oh my God, I'm melting,' Harper said. 'You know the difference between a rooster and a lawyer?'

'A rooster clucks defiance,' Norden said, and Harper said, 'All right, she's a lawyer.'

'I told you that,' said Anna. Then she laughed, and her laugh made Harper laugh, and he asked, 'What?' and Anna said, 'I just got the clucks joke.'

'If you loved me, you wouldn't laugh,' Harper said.

Then Anna turned in her seat again and said, 'Hey, Jenny! Do you know a guy named Dick Harnett, supposed to be in porno?'

'Sureyou're doing a story that'll ruin his life, I hope,' Norden said.

'We don't even know himbut we need to talk to him. I've got a problem.' And she explained it.

Norden listened carefully and then said, 'Anna.' stopped, turned to Harper and said, 'You oughta get her out of here.'

'I've suggested that. She says she's staying; so I'm staying.'

'That's stupid,' Norden said. She leaned forward and pointed through the windshield. 'See the place with the moon in the window? Let's go in there.'

The Gibbous Moon was run by a pair of gentle aging hippies who knew Norden; the place smelled of steamed vegetables, olive oil and coffee. The counterman called Norden by name; they found a booth, ordered coffee.

'Dick Harnett was the producer of legitimate TV shows back in the sixties, but he was a sex freak and he started making some porno when that was hip, back around the Deep Throatdays,' Norden said. 'Then feminism came in and porno wasn't hip anymore and nobody legit would touch him. He was scratching around for a while, but then video came along, and you know, he knew how to do that. And he saw what was going to happen. He was one of the first big time video-porn distributors.'

'So he's rich.'

'No, no, after a while, it got so every college kid in L.A. was making a porno film with his girlfriend. amateur tapes. The bottom's sort of fallen out of the market. I get the impression that most of those guys are on hard times.'

'He's got this Bunny Films.'

'Yeah, pretending he has something to do with Playboy. He's had a dozen companies, probably. He's getting old, nowhe's still a freak, though, that's the word.'

'A sleaze-dog,' Anna said.

Norden blew gently on her coffee, then nodded: 'Yeah. And the thing is, there's always been violence around his films. He sorts of gets off on the idea of sex by force. Maybe. I don't know.'

'Maybe what?' Harper asked. 'You think he might be the guy?'

'He's not young,' Anna said to Harper.

'White hair?' Harper asked.

Norden nodded: 'Big white hair. From way backhis first company was called Silver Fox Films.'

'How do you know all this? From Lutheran Social Services?' Harper asked.

'I work with hookersyoung girls,' Norden said. 'Pull them off the street, try to get them out of the life.'

'Gets in fistfights in biker bars,' Anna said.

'Hey, who doesn't,' Norden said, raising her eyebrows as she looked at Anna.

'Huh.' Harper scratched his chin. 'And you know Harnett.'

'I know who he isI've talked to him. He used street kids from time to time and I've heard that he's made a couple of videos with really young kids. So he's on my interestlist.'

'You think he might have hired somebody like Jason?' Anna asked.

'From what you said, he's exactly the kind of guy Harnett would usesomebody who wouldn't cost him too much and does good work. Lot of kids from UCLA have worked for him,' Norden said.

Anna said to Harper, 'We've got to find him.'

Harper shook his head: 'First we've got to get a look at him. I mean, if he's the guy. you oughta know him.'

'Never heard the name,' Anna said, shaking her head.

'You did that piece on street kids, you might of bumped into him and not known it,' Norden said.

'That was six months ago,' Anna said. 'This all jumped in the last week.'

Back in the car, Anna called Louis and asked him to get a home address for Harnett. As Anna was talking to Louis, Harper asked Norden, 'How'd you get into this? I mean were you. ever personally involved with.?' He didn't want to ask her if she'd ever been a hooker.

She was amused: 'No. I went to a Lutheran college in Iowa, and then to Guatemala to work with a mission. I came back and went to law school here in CaliforniaBerkeleyand joined Lutheran Social Services as a lawyer. I met some street kids, girls, and decided that I liked the mission work better than the law work. I still do some law.'

'And you've still held onto the religious aspect. even after seeing all the stuff on the street?'

'Oh, absolutely,' Norden said, nodding, her face serious. 'I accept Jesus Christ as my savior, and I believe that he will return soon and judge us and lead those who deserve it to eternal life.'

Harper checked the mirror again, and decided she wasn't joking.

Then Anna hung up the portable and said, 'Louis can't find a home address. There're five Richard Harnetts with unlisted phones in the two counties and they're scattered all over the place.'

'We've still got his office address,' Harper said. 'Let's take a look.' And over his shoulder, he said to Norden, 'Can we drop you somewhere?'

'Heck no. I wouldn't miss this for anything.'

On the way to Burbank, Harper made a quick turn down an alley, accelerated, and Anna said, 'What?' as they whipped past the backs of a row of small stores.

'Just checking,' Harper said, watching his mirror. 'We know he was tracking us.'

They came out of the alley, crossed a street, and went right back into the continuation of the alley. At the end, Harper took a left onto a deserted residential street, then a quick right. 'All right,' he said.

Bunny Films was on the second floor of a shabby fifties concrete-and-brick low-rise office building, with a narrow parking lot wrapped around the building. There was one car in the lot, but it carried an air of abandonment. No lights showed in the building.

'Come back tomorrow,' Harper said.

'Let's not rush off,' Anna said. 'Pull around behind the building. I want to check that door.'

'Felonies are a Bad Thing,' Harper said. 'I'm sure counselor Norden would agree.'

'I just want to look at the door,' Anna said. 'Maybe somebody's around, they'd let us in.'

'Ah, man,' Harper said, but when Anna asked, 'Who climbed over that fence and got shot at, who broke into that house, who.' he said, 'Okay, okay,' and pulled around back and into a parking space with a 'Reserved for Building Tenant' sign. Norden and Anna got out, and Norden said, 'Got shot at?' while Harper waited in the car, engine running.

'We've had a couple of problems,' Anna said. The door was locked: they could see the steel tongue between the door and the frame. 'Not very far in there,' Norden said, stooping to peer at the lock. 'It's sort of tilted up. I bet if you stuck a screwdriver or a tire iron in there, you could pry the door right open.'

'Back in a minute,' Anna said. At the car, she said, 'Hey, Jake, pop the trunk for a minute.'

'Why?'

'I want to look at your golf shoes. Pop the trunk.'

'Damn it, Anna.' But he popped the trunk, and the tool kit was there, in the trunk lid, just as she remembered from the last time she'd been in the trunk, a few seconds before she'd been attacked in the parking lot. She turned the hand screw on the tool-box cover, the cover dropped open. She selected a screwdriver, closed the trunk and walked back to the door.

'What do you think?' she asked Norden.

Norden cast a quick look around. A stream of cars was passing on the street, a half-dozen teenagers were lounging around a picnic table at a Foster's Freeze a hundred feet down the street. Norden said, 'Don't make any big moves and do it quick.'

Anna struck the end of the screwdriver in the gap between the door and the frame, put her weight against it, and when the tongue pulled out of the lock, Norden jerked the door open.

'Talk about irresponsible,' Norden said, looking at the door. 'I'm surprised the junkies haven't carried off the furniture.'

'Probably scared to,' Harper said. He'd killed the engine, and walked up behind them. 'We're right out in the open, probably nine people calling the cops right now.'

'Door was open,' Norden said.

'Yeah, right. Screwdriver marks all over it, and we've still got the screwdriver.' Harper pulled the door tight against the frame, took the screwdriver from Anna, pried the frame and door apart again, and popped the lock tongue back into place. 'When I was in uniform, we'd rattle doors, but we'd never try to get inside if the doors were locked,' he said.

No Bunny Films was listed on the directory, but they found a Harnett Enterprises on a row of painted steel mailboxes next to the front entrance. The number indicated an office on the second floor. They skipped the small elevator and climbed a dark, smoke-scented stairway, found a light switch for the second floor and followed a narrow hallway to the end. The office had only a number, but no other identification. An empty name-plate holder was screwed to the wall next to the door.

'Well, shit,' Harper said. 'Maybe he moved.'

'Maybe he just doesn't want people to know where he is,' Anna said. 'If this is his office, there's gotta be something inside with his home address.'

Harper looked up and down the hall, shook his head, put his back against the wall opposite the door, his foot next to the doorknob, and pushed. The lock ripped out of the door, and they were in.

'If the cops come, we're busted,' he said, flipping on the lights. 'Let's make it quick. And for Christ's sake, don't touch anything with your fingertips if you can help it.'

Harnett's office was one large room with a desk in the center, filing cabinets around the edge and a small sofa and easy chair combination on a faded Persian carpet in front of the only window. The window looked over the parking lot, and from there over a fence into a residential back yard. Something in the back yard may have interested Harnett, because a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars sat on the windowsill.

A door led off to the right. It was unlocked, and when Anna pulled it open, she found a closet with a raincoat, a box of shuts, a suit in a plastic wrapper, several rolls of Christmas gift-wrapping paper, a shoe-shine kit in a cardboard box, and two empty suitcases.

The main surface of his L-shaped desk was a heap of business paperenvelopes, faxes, trade magazines, clippingsthat flowed across, and in and out of two in and out boxes. The short leg of the L held a Gateway P5-90 tower computer and a Vivitron monitor, with cables to a Hewlett-Packard laser printer. A short butcher-block table held a Panasonic fax machine and a Canon copier. A large-screen TV sat in a wooden cabinet in the corner, and the lights of two different videotape players glowed from beneath it. The desk telephone had five buttons.

'Busy guy,' Anna said. A cup on his desk held a spray of yellow Dixon pencils like a bouquet, and Anna took them out and handed them to Harper and Norden. 'Move stuff with these.'

Anna and Harper used the pencils to probe the paper on the desk, and go through the Rolodex, while Norden explored the file cabinets. At one point, she said, 'Hmm,' looked around, found a box with a half-dozen reams of laser paper still in it, dumped the paper on the floor and carried the box to the file.

'What're you doing?' Harper asked.

'All kinds of correspondence,' Norden said, dumping paper into the box. 'Interesting stuff. I might be able to use it.'

Anna said, 'Look at this.' She'd gone back to the closet as Harper continued working through the desk with the pencils, and pulled out the two suitcases. They were empty, but they both had trip labels on them. 'Home addresses,' she said. 'Even phone numbers.'

As Anna copied the address, Norden opened a file cabinet full of videotapes, and another one stacked with skin magazines and a few old reels of 16mm film. 'Look at all this shit,' Norden said. 'Think of how many women are in this.'

'Let's go,' Anna said. 'We got what we need.'

'Been here too long,' Harper said.

'I'm taking the Rolodex, too,' Norden said. 'What a jerk.' She threw the Rolodex into the box full of correspondence and followed Harper to the door. Anna stopped, then turned around.

'C'mon,' Harper said.

'One minute.'

Anna went back, picked up a sheet of paper from the laser printer, went to the cabinet full of videotapes and started dumping piles of them on the floor. Then she chose a tape with one of the more elaborate labels, stuck it into the tape player, used Harnett's remote controls to turn on the TV and the player.

'What're you doing?'

'Shhh.'

The tape started with a womana porn consumer's idea of a classy businesswoman, in a suit, with long, shoulder-length hair, and a skirt that ended a quarter-inch below her hipsapproaching the stoop of a New York brownstone. From the look of it, the plot would be thin. Anna fast-forwarded for ten seconds or so, getting the woman on her knees, giving head to a man with what appeared to be a hair transplant on his chest.

'All right,' she said. 'Just checking.' She ran the tape back to the start, let it run, and said, 'Let's goand leave f the lights on and the door open. And let's leave the door open downstairs.'

'What was that all about?' Harper asked, when they were back in the car.

'Well, we wanted a look at Harnett,' Anna said. 'Now we'll get a look.'

She punched a number into her cell phone and said, 'I want to report a burglary in progress, in Burbank, yes, right now.'

When she finished, she hung up and said, 'Okay, so now the cops'll come. They'll find the break-in, and the tape going, so they'll stay a while.'

'And now we call Harnett,' Harper said.

'Exactly.'

'Better let me,' Harper said. 'If he's the guy, he'll know your voice.'

Harnett answered on the third ring, sounding sleepy. Harper said, 'Mr Harnett, this is James T. Peterson with the cleaning company. Mr Harnett, there's been a big break-in at your office, we called the police, but I think you better get up here.'

Harnett arrived in a year-old Buick, the back end of the car making a T-shirt frowny face at them as it bounced over the curb into the parking lot. Norden said, 'Here we go.'

A cop was standing by a squad car, talking on a radio. When Harnett got out of his car, the cop held a hand up to slow him down.

Anna, Harper and Norden were sitting on a concrete picnic table at the Foster's Freeze down the street, licking chocolate-dipped soft vanilla cones. Harnett caught Anna halfway through a lick and she almost choked: 'I know him, I've seen him,' she said, excited. Harnett's white hair stood up in a mane, as though he'd been running his hands through it; he was a heavy-set man with a rounded chin that once might have been square, wearing rumpled khaki chinos and a nylon windbreaker. 'That club on Sunset, the topless Polynesian one where they had the harp player who was shot by her girlfriend.'

'Yeah, the LoBall,' Norden said. 'It's closed.'

'Yeah, but we were there to look at the shooting. He did an interview with somebody else, and I grabbed him and we did a couple of minutes. He was pretty good. He wouldn't give us his name, that's why it didn't ring a bell. I remember him saying he'd rather not give his name. I thought he might have done TV.'

'White hair,' said Harper.

'Yeah, but he's kind of fat. That guy in the parking lothe was soft, but he wasn't fat, exactly.'

The cop slammed his car door and led Harriett into the building and out of sight.

'How long ago?'

Anna looked at Norden: 'Must've been, what, a year? Since the shooting?'

Norden nodded: 'About that. The guys who ran the place were always in trouble with the cops, and the shooting was the last straw. I think they were open for a couple more months, and then they were out. There's another place there now.'

Anna said: 'Well. When he comes out, I'm gonna let him see me. See how he reacts.'

Harper frowned: 'If he's the guy, he's nuts.'

'But there're cops all over the place. What's he gonna do?'

The phone rang in her pocket, and she fumbled it out. 'And if he's the guy, it'll freak him out. He'll show us something.'

She pushed the button on the phone and a woman's voice squeaked, 'Anna Batory?'

'Yes?'

'I'm dying.'

'What?' She looked at the phone. 'Who is this?'

'China Lake.' The voice seemed distant, weak. 'I'm dying.'

'What.' She was sputtering, and Harper and Norden were looking at her curiously.

Then a man's voice, rougher, familiar: 'She's dying, Anna. And it's your fault.'

Anna closed her eyes and squeezed the phone. 'Nono.'

Harper, alarmed, said, 'What?'

'It's him.'