The Night Crew

Chapter 4

At a little after one o'clock, Anna stirred, then woke all at once, aware first of her pillow, then the room, then the faint whine of a jumbo jet blowing out of LAX. She lay in bed for a few minutes, rolled over, looked at the clock, yawned, sat up and stretched.

Showered, washed her hair.

Anna liked dresses, a little on the hippie side, small flowers and low necklines, when she wasn't working, or working out.

For work, she had a carefully thought-out uniform, designed to make her fit in as many social slots as possible. The uniform consisted of cream-colored silk or white cotton blouses with black slacks, expensive black boots, and one of several linen or light woolen jackets, depending on the season. She had three HermŠs silk scarves, and always carried one or another in a buttoned inside pocket, along with a pair of gold earrings. If she dumped the jacket in the truck and rolled the sleeves on the blouse, she was hanging out. If she wore the coat, she was all business, still casual, but working. If she added the scarf and earrings, she could get by at anything short of a formal affair. Even at a formal affair, she could pass as a caterer.

Any of the looks might be necessary in a night's work, doing reconnaissance before the cameras lit up, especially if the work scene involved cops or security people allergic to publicity.

She also needed a more formal look if she'd be on-camera herself. She didn't like going on-cameraanonymity made everything easierbut sometimes an interviewer was necessary. When there was no choice, she needed the right look.

For the camera guys, appearance didn't matter: there was no way to camouflage the video lights.

Now, out of the shower, she dried her hair, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and laced her running shoes. Stopped in the kitchen for a glass of orange juice, bracing against the wall to loosen her calves as she drank it.

The day was fine, cool, with blue skies and a light breeze from the ocean. The beach was a half-mile away, and she loosened up as she walked over on Venice Boulevard, then took a finger street down to the beach.

A very large black man, who'd once been a second-string-linebacker for the L.A. Raiders, was doing pull-ups on a rack set into the sand. He lifted a hand to Anna, continuing the pull-up with only one hand. Anna waved back and continued on to the water's edge, turned right and started running. Six miles: three miles up, three miles back. She ran along the surf, through the shore birds, a quarter mile behind another runner, feeling the sun.

When she started running, her brain was empty. The further along the beach she got, the more it filled up: Maybe go south tonight, haven't been south for a while. Wonder what happened to that burned kid, at that house fire, the last time we went south? Kid was trying to save a cat, wasn't he? Could be a feature on his recovery? It'd have to be the first item on the run. Louis could get a phone number. On the other hand, it might be a bone to throw to Channel Seventeen.

Six miles, a little over forty-two minutes. When she got back, the linebacker was sitting on the bottom bench of the basketball bleachers, putting braces on his knees.

'Hey, Dick,' Anna said. 'How're the knees?'

'Snap-crackle-pop, just like cornflakes,' he said.

'Rice Krispies,' Anna said.

'Yeah, whatever; ain't been gettin' nothing but worse.'

'Gonna have to decide,' Anna said.

'I know.' He pushed himself up, hobbled around the edge of the court. 'So stiff I couldn't walk down to the water.'

'Take the knife, man,' Anna said. 'Anything's better than this.'

'Scared of the knife. They put me to sleep, I don't think I'll wake up. I'll die in there.'

'Oh, come on, Dick.'

They talked for another five minutes, then Anna headed home. As she left, the sad linebacker said, 'If I could run half as good as you, I'd still be playing.'

The cell phone was chirping when she got home. Louis again, ready to set up for the new night? A little early for that. 'Hello?'

Not Louis.

'This is Sergeant Hardesty with the Santa Monica police.' He sounded a little surprised to be talking with someone. 'Is this Anna Batory?' He pronounced her name 'battery'.

'Ba-Tory,' she said. She spread her business cards around, and often got tips on the cell phone. 'What's happening?'

'Ma'am, I'm sorry, but there's been an accident. One of the persons involved carried a card in his billfold that said you should be contacted in case of trouble.'

She didn't track for a second, and then the smile died on her face: 'Oh my God, Creek,' Anna said. 'Is his name Creek?'

'I don't know, ma'am,' the voice said, shading toward professional sorrow. 'I don't have an identification on the person. Could you go down there?'

The body was on the beach, just at the waterline. If she'd run another five or six miles that morning, she would have tripped over it.

A line of three cop cars, two with light bars and a plain white institutional Chevy, marked the spot; a medical examiner's van sat ten feet above the water, the longest fingers of surf running up between its tires. At the back of the van, a cluster of civil servants gathered around what looked like a pile of seaweed: a body covered with a wet green blanket. Two uniformed cops kept a semicircle of gawkers on the far side of the cop cars.

Out on the ocean, two jet skis chased each other in endless wave-hopping circles, their motors like distant chain saws; beyond them, a badly-handled sloop pushed south toward Marina Del Rey, its jib flogging in the stiffening breeze.

Anna trudged across the sand toward the cop cars with a growing dread. She'd tried to call Creek at home, but there'd been no answer. Creek was always out on the water. She'd thought, any number of times, that he would someday die there.

One of the uniformed cops sidled along the line of cars, cutting off her line: 'They called me,' she said, pointing toward the group on the waterline. 'They think that's a friend of mine.'

'If you could just wait here.'

She waited by the cars while the cop walked down to the group by the water and said something to a plainclothesman, who looked briefly at Anna and nodded. The cop waved her over, and passed her on his way back to the car. 'Hot,' he said as he passed. And he added, 'Hope it's not your friend.'

Anna jerked her head in a nod, but the kind words did nothing to help the growing sourness in the back of her throat.

At the water, a balding man in jeans and a T-shirt squatted beside the body, probing it. Two more men sat on the bumper of a medical examiner's truck, chatting, one with a set of Walkman headphones around his neck. Two plainclothes cops, one male, one female, were watching the man at the body. As Anna came up, they both turned to her.

The woman cop wore designer jeans with a crisp white blouse, and carried a blue blazer folded over one arm. Her round retro-chic sunglasses might have been stolen from one of the three blind mice. She was dark-haired and dark-complected, a little taller than Anna, with a square chin and square white teeth. She carried an automatic pistol in a shoulder rig.

Her partner was a large man, balding, gray-haired, a little too heavy, with deep crowsfeet at the corners of his eyes. His clothes were straight from JCPenney, and his black wingtips and pant cuffs would be filled with sand.

Like the woman, he'd taken his jacket off, and carried what appeared to be an antique Smith amp; Wesson revolver on his belt. There was an odd body language between them, Anna noticed. When they moved, even a foot or two, the guy tracked her, but the woman was unaware of it.

The man smiled, and the woman wrinkled her nose, as though Anna were a smudge on an antique table.

'I'm Jim Wyatt,' the cop said. This is my partner, Pam Glass.' The woman nodded, cool behind her glasses. Wyatt frowned, then said, 'Do I know you? I've met you.'

'I do TV news, cop stuff,' Anna said. 'You've probably seen me around.'

Wyatt nodded, grinned again, the openness of a good interrogator: 'That's it. You were at that raid on the burglary ring, God, couple of years ago. They thought the guys had killed that woman on Marguerita.'

Anna pointed a finger at him, felt as though she was babbling. She didn't want to look at the body; she'd do anything to delay it. 'You were the guy who kicked the door.'

A good piece of tape: the cops filtering across a yard to the target house while a neighbor's dog went crazy, barking; Wyatt drawing his gun, waiting for others to get in position, but not waiting too long, because of the dog. Then he turned the corner of the house with two guys in body armor and they took down the door.

Creek had gotten the good shots and the cops'd taken three men, a woman, and two hundred pieces of stolen electronic equipment out of the place, everything from home blood pressure kits to cell phones and bread machines. There really hadn't been much danger, but the tape was nice.

Stalling: Don't be Creek, don't be Creek.

'That was me,' Wyatt said, flattered that she remembered, pleased to meet her again. He'd been a hero for several hours. 'Are you still doing the TV stuff?'

Anna nodded: 'Yeah, same stuff, cops, fires, fights, accidents, movie stars.'

'A lot of police officers don't like to be called cops,' Glass said, breaking in.

'I know,' Anna said. She glanced toward the blanketan army blanket, olive drab. The man squatting next to it was doing something to an exposed paper-white ankle. Looked too small to be Creek, and too white. No shoe or sock. The skin wrinkled by the water. The victim's face was still covered by the blanket. To Wyatt, she said, 'I hope to God this isn't my friend.'

'His ID said Jason O'Brien.'

She almost fell down. Jason? She'd never thought of Jason. A sense of relief flooded through her, followed instantly by a sense of shame, that she should be so relieved.

Wyatt said, 'Are you all right?'

She caught herself. 'Aw, jeez. Jason?'

'He had a card that said to call you,' Glass said.

Wyatt, looking down at the blanket, said, 'So you're pretty close?'

'Not close, but he's a friend. He was our backup camera, our second camera when we needed one. He used to call me Mom,' Anna said. 'He's a kidwas a kid.'

'Did you see him yesterday?'

'Yeah. He was shooting with us last night. He split around eleven.'

'You didn't see him after that?' Glass asked.

'No.' Anna explained about the animal rights protest and the jumper, and Glass and Wyatt nodded. They'd seen the stories. 'So what do you think?' Anna asked. 'Drugs?'

Wyatt shook his head. 'Wasn't drugs: why'd you think it was?'

Anna shrugged. 'Jason did a lot of dope, I think. He got weird.'

'All your friends do dope?' Glass asked.

'A couple,' Anna said. She wasn't intimidated: there was no crime in knowing dopers. 'Jason did some crank, a little crack when he could get it. He liked cocaine, but he couldn't afford it most of the time. Some weed.'

'Why'd he leave last night?' Wyatt asked.

Anna shook her head. 'I don't know. He said he was gonna ride all night, but then, after the jumper. I don't know.' She thought about it for a second: now that he was deadif he was dead, she thought, if that was Jason under the blankethis hasty departure seemed even odder. 'He said the jumper made him feel bad and he was gonna take off. We all figured that was bullshitthe rest of the crew and me. Maybe something was going on.'

'Why was it bullshit?' Glass asked.

'Cause I've seen him crawl inside a car with a decapitated woman to get a better shot, and the head was laying on the front seat with the eyes still open and a smile on the face,' Anna said. 'How's a jumper gonna bother him? There wasn't even any blood.'

'Huh.' Wyatt nodded, and stared north up the beach, toward the mountains hanging over Malibu, like the hills might have the answer. When it didn't come, he sighed and said, 'Will you take a look? Just to make sure we've got the right guy?'

Anna nodded, swallowed, found she had no saliva in her mouth. She saw dead bodies all the time, but not dead friends.

Wyatt said, 'Frank, lift the corner of the blanket, huh?'

Frank stopped whatever he was doing with the leg and picked up the corner of the blanketWyatt was watching her faceand there was Jason.

No drugs, this one.

He was lying on his stomach, his head slightly downhill toward the water, his face turned toward her. He didn't look like he was asleep: he looked like he'd been changed to wax. The visible eye was cracked open, and his tongue hung out, like the limp end of a too-long suede belt.

His head looked wrong, misshapen, and something had happened to his cheeks. There was no blood, so the outlines weren't clear, but he seemed to have been slashed by a knife or razor. But that hadn't killed him: a bullet had. In his forehead, just above the visible eye, was a clean dark bullet hole.

'Aw, God,' Anna said, turning away. She felt like she ought to spit. 'That's him.'

'All right,' Wyatt said. Frank dropped the blanket.

'When did you find him?'

'He washed up about, mmm, two hours ago. People saw his body in the surf, thought he was drowning. One of the lifeguards went in after him, pulled him out.'

As he spoke, a tear rolled down Anna's cheek, and she frowned, and brushed it away. No tears. She didn't cry. Then another one started.

'He involved with any gangs? Buying dope, causing them trouble?'

'No. I don't think so. But I don't know him well enough to say for sure. Why?'

Wyatt shrugged: 'Those cuts on his face. They looked like they might be gang signs. They look the same on both sides, both cheeks.'

'I don't know,' Anna said.

'Okay. Listen, we're gonna need a complete statement from you,' Wyatt said. 'When you last saw him, where he lives, who he knows, any troubles he might have had. Family. That kind of stuff. The address on his ID isn't any good.'

Anna nodded. 'He moved around a lothe was living down in Inglewood, I think, an apartment. I've never been to his place, but I've got a phone number. We'd usually pick him up at the pier, he worked at the ShotShop photo place.'

Glass looked down at the pier, a mile south. 'Right here?'

'Yeah.' They all turned to look down at the Santa Monica pier, a gray line of buildings thrusting into the water a mile to the south.

'Has he been having trouble with anyone? Buying the crank or something?' Wyatt asked.

'He was pretty cheerful last night: he was riding with us because he heard about the raid, and set up our contacthe only rides with us once or twice a month, when we've got something complicated going on. He just seemed like. Jason. Nothing special.'

'And you don't know about the crank. Who his supplier might have been.'

'No. I don't,' Anna said.

'You don't know much about anything, do you?' Glass said.

'Get off my case,' Anna snapped. 'I got a goddamned friend dead on the beach and I don't need any bullshit from cops.'

Glass took a step toward her, Anna stood her ground, but Wyatt took a half-step himself, between them. 'Pam, take it easy.' And to Anna: 'You too.'

Anna spent another ten minutes with them, picking up their weird body-dance again, and agreed to drive herself back to the station to make a statement. Wyatt walked part of the way back to her car with her.

'Sorry about Pam,' he said. 'She hasn't been doing homicide all that long. She's still kind of street.'

'She like to fight?' Anna asked.

'She's not afraid of it,' Wyatt said, glancing back at the woman, who was peering down at the body.

'Listen, last night,' Anna said, 'Jason might have been high. I don't know, I can't always tell, because he was so hyper. But when we got up to the hotel, for the jumper, he was shaking like a leaf. He was okay when he was shooting, but when we were riding up, he was. shaking. Jerking, almost, like spasms in his arms.'

'All right, we'll tell the doc. You're gonna be around, right?'

'Yeah. Wait.' Anna dug in a pocket, took out a business card, borrowed a pen from Wyatt and said, 'Turn around, let me use your back.' Using his back as a writing surfacehe seemed to like itshe scribbled two phone numbers on her card, and handed it to him. 'The first number is my home phone, it's unlisted with an answering machine. The next one is the cell phone I carry around with me. And on the front is the phone in the truck. I'm always around one or two of them.'

'Thanks. Make the statement.' He looked back at his partner, sighed and started that way.

'Makes your teeth hurt, doesn't it?' Anna said after him.

He stopped and half-turned. 'What does?'

'Wanting to sleep with her so bad.'

Wyatt regarded her gloomily, then broke down in a self-conscious grin. 'I don't think a woman could ever know how bad it gets,' he said. He started walking back, then turned, and in a tone that said, This is important, he added: 'And it's not just that I want to sleep with her, you know. That's only. the start of it.'