The Night Crew

'We could drag him out in the alley and beat the shit out of him,' Anna said wryly.

'In that place, we' d get about three steps,' Harper said. 'I have a feeling they sort of look out for each other. In fact. just a minute.' He walked back to the diner door, pulled it open, looked in, then walked back, shaking his head. 'He's gone. He'll be in the Bahamas by dawn.'

As they were getting into Harper's BMW, the phone in Anna's purse rang. She glanced at Harper, then took the phone out and clicked it on: 'Hello?'

A little girl's voice, oddly tinny, with an adult's vocabulary and intonations, said, 'The men you want to see are brothers named Ronnie and Tony and they live.'

'Just a minute, just a minute,' Anna said. And to Harper: 'Gimme a paper.'

She found the pen in her purse and Harper groped in a door bin and finally came up with a road map. 'Write on it,' he said. The tinny little girl's voice recited an address in Malibu, and finished,'. real modern, gray weathered wood, lots of black glass, right on the hill above the highway. You won't have any trouble finding it.'

And sheit, Tarpatkin?was gone.

'Voice-altering phone deal,' Harper said, when Anna described the voice. 'Lot of dealers use them. You get like twenty choices of voice.'

'Why?'

'So in case we were recording it, he wouldn't be on the record.'

'Strange life.'

'Trying to make it to retirement,' Harper said. 'Two years.'

Anna glanced at her watch: 'We've got time to run out to Malibu. Or we could head down to BJ's.'

Harper glanced at her: 'The question about BJ's is this: you'll see some people you know, but so what? How do we pick out the guy?'

'If he talks to me, or comes on to me.'

'Somebody'sgonna come on to you, you go to a party box. That's what it's for.'

Anna thought about it for a minute. Harper was not only right, but he was also on the track of the people who'd fed dope to his son. She'd go with that: 'Malibu,' she said.

Harper nodded. 'We spot the house, but we don't do anything. I want to check with some guys in the sheriff's department, run these names. Ronnie and Tony.'

Harper had a Thomas Brothers Guide stashed in the back seat. Anna turned on the car's reading lights as they dropped onto the PCH and made the right turn up toward Malibu, and began paging through the maps.

'If the address is right, it's just before the turnoff for Corral Canyon,' she said after a moment.

'Should be easy to pick out,' Harper said.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, not much traffic, just cruising. Then Harper said, 'How come you're not going out with anyone?'

'I don't know,' she said. She looked out her window, away from him: nothing to see but the dirt bluff rising away from the highway into the dark. 'I've just had other things.'

'Been a little lonely?'

'I've been busy,' she said. And after a few seconds, 'Yeah, I've been a little lonely. Then.'

'What?'

'Ah, there's this guy. I went out with him years ago; pretty intense. I thought we were gonna get married, but we didn't. I saw him the other day, at a gas station. He's out here on a fellowship, I guessI called a mutual friend. Anyway, it all sorta came back on me.'

'What's he do?'

'He's a composer. Modern stuffthe New York Philharmonic debuted one of his poems, "Sketch of Malaga".'

'One of his poems.'

'Compositions; he calls them poems. He's not really that arty, just knows. how to work the levers on the classical music machine.'

Harper glanced at her: 'Sounds like you might resent that, a little.'

'Oh, no. I guess it's necessary. But I wasn't good at it.'

'So you're a musician.'

'That's what I really am,' she said. Harper had a way of listeningmaybe picked up when he was a copthat seemed to pull the words out of her. He was attentive: reallylistened.

She told him about growing up in Wisconsin, about her mother's death. How she'd been the best pianist in her high school, the best they'd ever had. That she'd been the best at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the year she graduated. That she was one of the best two or three in graduate school.

'Not quite good enough,' she told him, staring out the window at the night. Clark had also been a pianist, not quite at her level, but he'd seen the writing on the wall much sooner than she had. He'd branched into direction and composition, started working the music machine.

'Couldn't you have gone that way?'

'Nah. Performance is one thing, composition is something else. Takes a different kind of mind.'

'Did you ever try it?'

'I was never really interested in it,' she said.

'So what happened?'

'We were living together, and he was the big intellectual and I was doing session gigs. Movie music. I don't know; it pulled us apart. I kept thinking that if you just played well enough, practised hard enough, you'd make it. And that wasn't the game at all. So I went to Burbank, and he went to Yale.'

'Ah, that's really excellent,' Harper said.

'What?' she asked, half-smiling.

'You doresent the mealy little poser.'

'No, I really don't,' she protested. Then, 'You'd like him. He even plays golf.'

'Rock bandsplay golf,' Harper said, not impressed. 'So. are you pining for him?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe.'

'Shit.'

'Yeah, it's sort of a problem. You know, if you're thinking about. it might be sorta awkward having you stay over.'

'I'm gonna stay over,' he said. 'But I won't be rattling your doorknob in the night. Staying over is business.'

'Okay.' Was she just the smallest bit disappointed? Maybe.

'Would you play something on the piano for me?' he asked.

'If you like.' The car seemed hushed; the outside world away from the two of them. 'What music do you listen to?'

'Mostly hard rock or hard classical; some old funky blues and jazz, but only for an hour or so at a time.'

'We like the same things,' she said, 'except I'm not so big on rock, and a little bigger on the jazz. what should I play for you?'

'Maybe something by, I dunno. Sousa, maybe.'

He turned quickly, saw her embarrassed: 'That was a joke, for Christ's sake,' he laughed. 'Loosen up, Batory.'

'So who do you like?'

'You could play me anything by Satie.'

'Satie? Really?'

'Really,' he said. 'I've been listening to him a lot; he's very delicate and funny, sometimes.' He glanced at her, interpreting her silence as skepticism. 'I'm a lawyer, not a fuckin' moron,' he said.

She ducked her head and pointed up the hill. 'Malibu,' she said.

The house was a half-block east of Corral, on a short, hooked turnoff with a circle at the end. There were two other homes on the circle, all three showing lights, and all with steel fences, darkened and turned to resemble wrought iron, facing the street. The driveways were blocked with decorative eight-foot-high electric gates between stone pillars.

'We'll just keep rolling through,' Harper said, looking out through the sweep of his headlights. 'Look for dogs, anything that might be a dog.'

'I can't see anything,' Anna said.

They were back out at Corraclass="underline" Harper stopped, looked both ways, then said, 'We'd be crazy to try to get in the front.'

'Get in?' She looked back at the house, at the fence and the hedge behind it, the security sign next to the stone pillars beside the driveway. 'That place is a fort.'

'Let's go get an ice cream,' he said. 'Isn't there an ice cream place down at the shopping center?'

She got a Dutch chocolate and he took a raspberry and they sat on a bench outside of a Ben amp; Jerry's and ate the ice cream, talking about nothing of importance. When they finished, Harper wiped his hands and face with the tiny napkin from the ice cream parlor, pitched it into a trash container and said, 'You drive.'

'Why?'

'I want to go back there and take one more look. Maybe get out.'

'Jake. this is a really bad idea.'

He nodded. 'I know, but I can't figure out what else to do. I just want to stand on one of those stone pillars, if I can, and take a look. See what's in there.'