The Night Crew

'You shot the video on Jacob Harper.'

'Who?' Now she was confused.

'Jacob Harperthe kid who tried to fly off the Shamrock.'

'Oh. Yeah, we were there.' What did the jumper have to do with Jason's apartment?

'Where'd Jason O'Brien get his dope?'

'I don't know.'

'C'mon, he worked for you, you've got a key to his apartment.'

'He didn't work for me; he was a part-time guy, like once a month. And the cops gave me the key.'

'The cops.' After a moment's silence, he asked, 'Why would they do that?'

'Because nobody wants his body. I'm supposed to take care of funeral arrangements and there's nothing more here that the cops want.'

'Huh.' He stood up, looked around in the gloom and said, 'Damn it.'

'You hurt me,' Anna said. She was getting a feel for him. He hadn't wanted to hurt her. 'You could have broken my arm.'

'Ah, shut up,' he said. 'You're not hurt and we both know it.' Then: 'Your boyfriend's a doper.'

'What?'

'This guy Creek.'

'He's not my boyfriend, he's my partner. He hasn't done any dope for ten years.'

'Bullshit. He's got no job, he lives in a nice apartment at the Marina and he's got a yacht.'

'No job? I'll tell you what, pal, we're out there two hundred and fifty nights a year

'Yeah, some Tinkertoy fuckin' movie wannabees with cameras, for Christ's sake.'

Now she was getting hot. 'Yeah? We grossed better than three hundred and fifty thousand last year. Me'n Creek and Louis took home better than ninety apiece, after expenses. How much'd you make?'

'That much? Ninety?' Surprise.

'Yeah.' She would have sulked, if she thought she could have afforded to. But she had to stay on top of him.

Another moment of silence, then he was moving away from her. Over his shoulder he said, 'Fucking L.A., you goddamn people are a bunch of ghouls, you know that? Making a buck off snuff films.'

She kept her mouth shut: she was about to get out of this, and didn't want to argue. A step or two later, he added, 'Don't scream after me. It'd just piss me off and I'd have to run and I'm probably gonna come back and see you again.'

Anna was on her feet: 'About what?'

'I need to know about O'Brien. I'm not done with him yet, and you're the only connection I've got.'

'Listen, if you think Jason had anything to do with the jumper, you're wrong.'

'No. You're wrong,' he said. He hesitated, then said, 'I came down on you a little hard, when we went to the floor. You oughta take a couple ibuprofen. Hot bath, or something. You could have pulled something.'

'You're so thoughtful.'

'I bit my lip when we hit.'

'Well, that's just too bad.' She couldn't believe the galclass="underline" he seemed to be looking for sympathy. She crossed her arms over her chest.

'Well, it stings like hell,' he said. Then he was out the door, slamming it behind him. As he went through, she got a better look at him in the late afternoon: an impression of sandy-brown hair, very white teeth. Probably blue eyes, she thought. Athletic, but not stripped down to muscle and bone: maybe a few extra pounds, in fact. Big shoulders. And gone.

She went to the door after him, thought about screaming, jerked the door open and stepped outside. and saw the top of his head disappearing down the stairwell. Opened her mouth, shut it again. She was safe enough, unhurt and still alonemaybe she didn'twant to piss him off.

The circuit-breaker box was in the kitchen, the door open. She threw the switch and two lights came up. She went back through the living room, shut the door, and then took out the cell phone, found Wyatt's card in the pile of purse litter and dialed him. A clerk answered the phone, and she asked that Wyatt be called at home and that he call her back; he called back two minutes later.

'What?' he asked without preamble, when Anna picked up the phone.

'I just got to Jason's apartment and there was somebody here. He jumped me.'

'You hurt?' He sounded cautious, nervous. Why?

'No, he just tripped me and held me down and then he pushed me on the couch and then he left. I thought he might be a cop, but he said he wasn't.'

'White guy?' The odd tone still in his voice.

'Yeah. Hey, you know him?'

'Probably another doper.' But he was lying; and he wasn't good at it. 'As long as you're not hurt.'

'The door was locked and he was inside. How'd he do that?'

'He's probably a friend of O'Brien,' Wyatt said. 'Look, do you want a car to come around? I can call Inglewood.'

She thought about it for a moment. 'No, I guess not. I mean, unless you wanted to look for fingerprints. You know, detect something.'

Wyatt sighed and said, 'We got thirty sets of fingerprints out of the ShotShop, and we could probably get thirty more.'

Anna said, 'Tell me the truth about something. You know, instead of lying.'

'Sure.'

'Do you think Jason might be connected to the jumper we filmed?'

Wyatt hesitated before he answered, and Anna read it: 'You do!' she said. 'So'd the guy here. Tell me why.'

'Look MissAnnagoddammit, you're not a police officer, okay? Just clean up the apartment, pack up his stuff and get out of there.'

'Maybe you better call Inglewood,' she said. 'I better file a complaint: the guy was trying to rape me.'

Silence.

'Okay, I'll do the call,' Anna said. 'I know where his prints are, too. They're all over my purse and billfold. I'll mention to the Inglewood cops that you might have some idea about who it is.'

'Jesus, you're a hardass. You're just like Pam, bustin' my balls all day, now I gotta deal with you. I'm tired of it.'

'Life sucks and then you die,' Anna said.

More silence. Then: 'The kid who jumped off the building was tripping on wizards.'

'I don't know that brand,' Anna said, breaking in.

'Acid and speed. Maybe a lick of PCP.'

'Okay. Like rattlers.'

'Rattlers were last year,' he said. 'But yeahlike that. A little heavier on the acid. Anyway, he popped a couple and decided the ledge was a runway and that he could fly.'

'So.'

'So the wizards are little pink extruded dots on strips of wax paper.'

'I've seen them,' Anna said.

'When you buy them, the dealer just rips off however many dots you can pay for,' Wyatt explained. 'So the kid had a strip of dots in his jacket pocket. When we rolled your friend over, so did he; what was left of them, anyway, coming out of the water.'

'Huh. That's weird.'

'That'snot weird,' Wyatt said. 'That's just a coincidence: these fuckin' wizards are all over the place. But I get this wild idea, and put the two strips together, and guess what? The two papers matched up. Your friend's strip had been ripped off the jumper's.'

'What?'

'Yeah. Now that'sweird.'

Anna made a quick connection: 'So how'd the guy here know about it?'

Wyatt sighed again, and said, 'Look, you seem like an okay. person. Huh?'

'Yeah, I'm an okay person.' Okaymeant that a cop could trust herpersonexpressed a belief that she was some kind of wacko feminist to be doing what she was doing, and he didn't want to argue about it.

'He's an ex-cop,' Wyatt said. 'He's a decent guy.'

'He's a jerk, he scared my brains out,' Anna said, angry at Wyatt's defense. 'What'd he want?'

'He's interested in the case,' Wyatt said.

'Interested? Is that all it takes?'

Wyatt cut her off: 'His name is Jake Harper,' he said. 'The jumper was Jacob Harper, Junior. His son. His only kid.'

'Ah.' What had Harper said? Ghouls making a buck off snuff films.

She let it go. I'm okay, she thought, when Wyatt hung up.

Jason's apartment was a sad clutter of heavily used clothing, cheap film gear, books on directing and movie-making, portfolio tapes, cans of Campbell 's soup: all the hopes a kid might have in Hollywood, California. Bundled up and sent back to Peru, Indiana, it wouldn't mean a thing.

Anna did a quick survey, separating the potentially salable stuff from the useless, stacked the salable stuff, and then found the apartment rental office and talked to the sleepy manager.