The Night Crew

'My name is Anna Batory. I used to work with Jason O'Brien, before he got killed.'

'I heard he was dead, and Sean,' she said. She turned back to the mirror. 'You got anything good on you?' Without waiting for an answer, to Harper, 'Are you a cop?'

'No.' He shook his head: 'We're looking for whoever killed Jason; they're coming after Anna here.'

'Really? You got anything good on you?'

Anna shook her head: 'We're looking for a guy who might have hung out with Jason and MacAllister. Pretty big guy, about like Jake.' She nodded at Jake. 'And a little out of shape. Not real fat, just sort of fleshy. Could be pretty weird.'

'That's everybody I know,' China said. 'Except.'

'What?'

'Most of them are skinny. You sure you don't have anything good on you? You look like you do, like you got money.'

They talked for another two minutes: a woman came in, glanced at Harper, said nothing, just went on to a booth and closed the door. Harper looked at Anna, faintly embarrassed, looked at China, who'd gone back to her mirror, and shook his head. Nothing here.

'All right,' Anna said. She held a card out to China, and when the woman didn't take it, slipped it into a pocket in China's small leather purse. 'If you hear anything, or think of anybody, call me. There might be. something good in it.'

China brightened. 'You got something good?'

'Great lead,' Harper said, as they left the club. 'Now what?'

'Bunny films.'

'Anna, it's ten o'clock at night.'

'So, we bang on a doormaybe there'll be somebody around. What else are we gonna do?'

'I could come up with something.'

Behind them, in the club, a man leaned in the door of the women's restroom and said, 'Aren't you China Lake?'

China turned and said, 'Hey: You got anything good on you?'

The man shrugged, and unconsciously reached up to touch his cheekbone. 'Probably,' he said. 'I got a little of everything.'

'You do?' China brightened, the circles seeming to fade from beneath her eyes. She looked almost young enough to be her age. 'I've been waiting for you.'

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.'