The Night Crew (10 page)

ten

Harper pushed and Anna weakened: he was having an effect on her. Creek could stay, she decided.

‘‘But you’ve got to give me space,’’ she told Creek, when Harper had gone. ‘‘You can’t follow me around the house. You can’t fix anything.’’

‘‘Maybe I could do some painting,’’ Creek suggested, peering around the front room.

‘‘No painting,’’ Anna said. ‘‘No fix-up, no clean-up, no hedge-trimming. You sleep, you watch TV. We eat, we go to work.’’

He grumbled about it, but agreed. ‘‘I’m gonna have to repark the truck . . .’’

‘‘You’ve got the truck? I thought Louis dropped you off.’’

He shook his head: ‘‘I put him in a cab—the truck’s down the block.’’ The dead-end streets between the canals were too narrow for the truck to maneuver. When they had to stop momentarily at Anna’s, they’d leave it at the intersection of
Linnie and Dell, usually with Louis to watch it.

‘‘If it’s there when Linkhof gets up, he’ll call the cops and get it towed.’’ Linkhof was the antisocial neighbor.

‘‘Yeah. I can ditch it at Jerry’s. The cook’ll be there, he can see it out the window.’’

Anna nodded. ‘‘All right. I’ll ride down with you.’’

She got a jacket, and when Creek said, ‘‘Gun,’’ selfconsciously put the Smith in her jacket pocket, on the opposite side from her cell phone, which she carried by habit. ‘‘If the cops see us walking back at this time of night, they’ll stop us, and if they frisk us, I’ll be downtown again,’’ Anna said.

‘‘We’ll stop at Jerry’s, get a coffee. The sky’ll be getting light in a half hour, we can walk back then,’’ Creek said. ‘‘Besides,’’ he added, ‘‘we’re white.’’

White.

The way things worked in L.A. Still, the pistol felt like a brick in her pocket as they walked in the dark toward the truck.
The truck represented a lot of heavy lifting. They’d started, five years earlier, with a rusty Dodge van, cast-off video gear and scanners, and a lot of metal shelving from Home Depot, which Louis and Creek had bolted to the floor. The floor on the Dodge leaked, both from rust-outs and the new bolt holes, and Louis sometimes emerged from the back suffering from advanced carbon monoxide poisoning.

After three years of street work, building their reputation and their contacts, walking tapes around to the TV stations, they’d ditched the van and bought the truck from a cable station that had decided to get out of the news business. The truck came with the dish and a compressed-air lift; Louis put in the electronics. The dish alone saved hours every night: if they could see the relay antennas on the mountain—and
they could from almost anywhere in the Los Angeles bowl— they could dump video and voice to everyone.

And the equipment was getting better: Creek’s camera was almost new . . .
Anna felt a little thump every time she saw the truck: a lot of work. Something she was good at.

But she didn’t see the man by the truck until they were almost on top of him, she and Creek talking away, and Creek said, ‘‘Hey.’’

The man turned—heavy shoulders, big hands, and she thought of Harper—but this guy was black. He said, ‘‘Anna?’’

The question slowed Creek: Creek had gone into his longstride, somewhat-sideways combat approach, closing quickly. But now he hesitated, and Anna said, ‘‘Who is that?’’ and the man lifted an arm toward Creek, and Creek said, ‘‘No!’’ and went straight into him.

The shots were loud, the gun spitting short, sharp spikes of fire at Creek, three times, four, five. Creek twisted, still moving in, while Anna clawed at her pocket. Then Creek was on him, reaching, and the man turned to run.

His head snapped back and he screamed, and Anna gave up on the gun and started for Creek. The shooter snapped forward and began to run.
Creek, let him go,
Anna thought . . . the man disappeared down the street as Anna turned to Creek.

And Creek fell down. Slumped, rolled, looked up at her.

‘‘Gun,’’ he groaned. ‘‘Get the gun out.’’

‘‘He’s gone . . .’’

‘‘Get gun, get gun,’’ he said, urgently, and Anna, not wanting to believe, dropped down next to him and said, ‘‘You’re okay?’’

And in the dim light of the street, saw the black blood on
his mouth, on his face and neck, the blood on his shirt.

Lights were coming on down the street and she screamed, ‘‘Police, call the police, ambulance . . . man shot. This is Anna, call nine-one-one,’’ and someone shouted back, ‘‘I’m calling . . .’’

Creek grabbed her by the coat and said something urgent but unintelligible. His hand was wrapped in fabric, and Anna plucked it away. A woman’s nylon stocking, a little darker than nude; maybe suntan. Creek had pulled it off the shooter’s head, snapping his head back. The shooter wasn’t black. He’d been wearing a mask.

That all ran through her head in an instant, and then she tossed the stocking away and shouted down at him, ‘‘Are you okay? Goddamn, Creek . . .’’

‘‘Ahh . . .’’

A man was running up the street toward her. ‘‘Anna?’’

‘‘Yeah, it’s me,’’ she shouted back, half-standing. ‘‘My friend is shot, somebody help.’’

The man arrived, a neighbor named Wilson, stood uncertainly over her in bluebird pajamas. ‘‘Henry’s called the cops,’’ he said.

‘‘Gotta have an ambulance, he’s hurt bad,’’ Anna said, looking up at Wilson, eyes big.

Another neighbor, Logan, was in the street, running toward them, a flashlight in one hand, a gun in the other. ‘‘Somebody hit?’’

‘‘Ambulance on the way,’’ Wilson said.

‘‘Let me take a look,’’ Logan said. He squatted next to Creek, shined the light on his face and neck: ‘‘Three hits,’’ he said. ‘‘No arteries . . .’’ He pulled up Creek’s shirt. There were two small puckered blood entry wounds, one just outside Creek’s left nipple, another two inches above that.

‘‘Bad?’’ Creek mumbled.

‘‘The face isn’t bad, I don’t think, I can’t tell about the
chest. The goddamn slugs can rattle around in there.’’ He pulled the shirt down. ‘‘Nothin’ to do but wait.’’ And to Anna, he said, ‘‘What’re you into, darlin’?’’

Anna shook her head. ‘‘Cops think it’s a fruitcake guy, a nut.’’

‘‘Stalkin’ ya?’’

‘‘Yeah, something like that.’’ She screamed back down the street. ‘‘Where’s the fuckin’ ambulance?’’ And to Creek, ‘‘Hold on, Creek, God . . .’’

More lights were flicking on, and a man shouted back: ‘‘On the way. Two minutes.’’

Creek was flat on his back, his eyes half-hung, looking sleepy. She had him by the shirt, blood on her hands and jacket, Logan at his head, and she yelled at him, ‘‘Creek, c’mon, c’mon, hold on.’’

eleven

Neighbors started leaking down the street, and built a ring around Creek and Anna. Then the cops arrived, two car lengths ahead of the ambulance, and the ambulance attendants dropped an oxygen mask on Creek’s face and lifted him onto a gurney.

Anna, pushed away, stepped up next to the truck, felt the pistol against her leg. The cops were right there, the red rack lights banging off the houses, the neighbors gathering, everybody watching Creek.

If the cops found the gun on her, they’d take it, they’d ask questions: might hold her until they checked the gun against slugs taken from Creek. She didn’t have that time. The truck door was right there, and she stepped up, and inside, toward the back. She opened the hideout box where they kept the Nagra, looked guiltily toward the open door, pulled the gun out and dropped it in the box.

When she stepped back to the door, Creek was going into the ambulance, his eyes staring up at the night sky. Logan stepped over: ‘‘Blood pressure’s not too bad, that’s what they said.’’

‘‘Jesus, Logan.’’ She clutched his arm, let go.

‘‘If he’s not bleeding out, he’ll be okay,’’ he said. Logan was watching his hands: he wanted to pat her somewhere, but wasn’t sure exactly where, how she’d take the intimacy. ‘‘Once he hits the OR, they’ll handle it.’’

The ambulance eased away from the sight, carefully working through side-stepping neighbors, then the driver hit the siren button and the ambulance disappeared down the block and around the corner. A uniformed cop walked over to them, one hand resting casually on his pistol. ‘‘Are you the lady who was with him?’’

Anna nodded: ‘‘Listen, there’s a lot going on here. You’ve got to call Santa Monica, or L.A. County.’’
The cop put her in the back of his car, but left the door open while he and his partner worked the street, taking names and addresses of witnesses. Another cop car arrived, and two more cops began pushing people back toward their homes.

Anna slumped in the back seat, her mind filled with Creek. He was a big man, almost overmuscled, hardened by life . . . but on the ground, looking up at her, he’d seemed almost frail, baby-like, dependent. Helpless.

She turned to look out the back window and felt the cell phone in her pocket. The first two cops were down the block, and after a second’s thought, she found Harper’s card, took out the cell phone and punched in the number. Nobody home. She left a message and hung up, put the phone away.

And she thought of the masked shooter. He was Harper’s size . . . but the voice? The voice hadn’t been right for Harper, as far as she could tell. Of course, the shooter had been wearing the stocking. But she’d heard it before. The voice was familiar somehow: tickled something in the back of her brain.

Another cop car arrived, and after talking with the first
arrivals, the two new cops came over to the car. ‘‘You say the man ran that way . . .’’ They pointed down Dell.

‘‘Yeah, and there’s a stocking . . .’’

She showed them the nylon, and one of the cops asked, ‘‘You don’t wear nylons like this, do you? Just curious . . .’’

‘‘No. I wear nylons sometimes, but not this color.’’

‘‘Okay.’’ A flat
okay.
Not skeptical, but not necessarily buying it, either. ‘‘So you say he went that way . . .’’

The new cops put her back in the squad car and started tracing the path of the shooter, walking down Dell with their flashlights. She watched until the phone rang. She snapped it open, and said, ‘‘Yes?’’

Harper: ‘‘Couldn’t wait to hear my voice again, huh?’’ He said it lightly.

‘‘Creek’s been shot.’’ Silence. She tried again. ‘‘Creek’s been . . .’’

‘‘Christ, the guy’s going through a psychotic break, the shooter. How bad is he? Creek?’’

‘‘Pretty bad, I think. He couldn’t talk when they put him in the ambulance.’’

‘‘Where are you?’’

‘‘In a cop car, by my house, on Linnie. We were walking up to the truck.’’

‘‘Fifteen minutes,’’ Harper said, and he was gone.
He was almost a half hour, not fifteen minutes, rolling up in the growing light of dawn. He spotted Anna in the cop car and started toward her, but the cops walled him away. They argued for a while, and she saw him show one of the cops a card: but this cop apparently didn’t need legal advice, and shook his head.

‘‘You’ve got to go back downtown,’’ one of the uniforms said a moment later. ‘‘I understand you’ve already been there tonight.’’

‘‘Yes.’’ She looked past him at Harper, who was arguing with another cop, his hair flopping into his eyes as he talked. ‘‘Why can’t I talk to that man?’’

‘‘We want to get a statement from you before you talk to anyone else. You have a right to see your lawyer if you want, but they’ll tell you about that downtown,’’ the cop said. He looked back at Harper: ‘‘He used to be a cop.’’

‘‘Homicide,’’ Anna said.

‘‘Used to be,’’ the cop said.
So she did it all over again: talked to cops, a different shift, fresher, just up, three of them this time. Dictated a statement, impatient, worried about Creek. Demanded information about Creek: he was alive, they told her, should be okay. The detectives in the unit were beginning to gather around her.

‘‘This guy is . . . this guy is berserk,’’ a detective named Samson told her.

‘‘You remember that case down in Anaheim?’’ asked another cop. ‘‘The guy would stalk these people for weeks, then slash them, then he started killing them? When was that? That was like this.’’

‘‘Guy’s dead, though,’’ Samson said.

‘‘Yeah? When did that happen?’’

‘‘I don’t know—I heard it. He hung himself in prison.’’

‘‘Besides, it’s more like that one over in Downey, the kid with the Taurus wagon,’’ said a third cop. ‘‘Man, I couldn’t believe he’d do them right in the wagon. Told his mother the blood was some kind of fertilizer for a greenhouse . . .’’

‘‘Yeah, I remember. Whatever happened to him? He used both a gun and a knife, didn’t he?’’

‘‘Can I go?’’ Anna asked.

• • •

Harper was waiting in the same spot where he’d waited the night before, in the hall near the exit.

‘‘Creek’s in the OR at L.A. General,’’ he said. ‘‘He’s got three bullets still in him, twenty-twos. If it’d been almost anything else, he’d be dead.’’ They were walking at speed, heading for the door. They hit it with a bang and were into the street, side by side.

‘‘The face isn’t bad, just barely caught some skin, in and out. No nerve damage, nothing,’’ Harper said. ‘‘The problem is with the chest. One tore a hole in his left lung and collapsed it; another one went between two ribs and rattled around behind his heart.’’

‘‘Oh, God.’’ Standing on the street, she started to cry, one hand to her face. Harper draped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her head into his chest: ‘‘Listen, the docs down there are good.’’

‘‘I had the gun in my pocket, I couldn’t get it out.’’

‘‘Well, you can’t . . .’’

‘‘He was right there,’’ she said, pointing at a parking meter, trying to make him see it. ‘‘The guy was right there, he said my name. I had the gun, but I couldn’t get it out . . .’’

She started to cry again and he squeezed her head in tight: he smelled of clean sweat and deodorant, his arms felt like bricks. She let herself go for a moment, leaning into the comfort of the man, then pushed back, wiped tears with the back of her hand. ‘‘Let’s go see him.’’
‘‘You’re his sister,’’ Harper muttered as they pushed through the emergency room door. The place smelled like all emergency rooms, a combination of alcohol and raw turkey.

Anna nodded, and five seconds later, at the desk, she said to a nurse, ‘‘My brother was shot and they brought him here. Can you tell me where he is?’’

Her distress came through: the nurse never questioned her.
‘‘He’s still in surgery,’’ he said, tipping his head down the hall. ‘‘There’s a waiting room . . .’’

‘‘Can anybody tell us how he is?’’

The nurse shook his head: ‘‘He should be all right, if he’s in good shape, and they say he is. That’s the best thing.’’

‘‘How . . . are they operating right now?’’

The nurse glanced up at a clock: ‘‘They have been for almost two hours.’’

‘‘Oh, Jesus.’’ The tears started again and Harper steered her toward the waiting area.
Anna wasn’t good at waiting, and Harper was worse.

While she sat, remembering the attack, and the days before it—all going back to Jacob’s leap, and Jason’s death—he read an aging copy of
Modern Maturity
, the sports section of a three-day-old
USA Today
, and a coverless
Time
.

A man with a bad hand cut came in, and Harper went over to talk about it, until a nurse shooed him away. He walked around and jingled change in his pocket, got coffee for the two of them. Three or four times, he went to the desk, came back with nothing new. He put his feet up, tried to sleep and failed.

An hour after they arrived, Pam Glass walked in, her face haggard. She was wearing one of her power suits, with an Herme`s knotted at the throat, but the rims of her eyes were red with stress and tears.

‘‘Why didn’t anybody call me?’’ she asked Anna. ‘‘How is he?’’

Anna said, ‘‘Where? We didn’t know . . . he’s still in surgery.’’

‘‘He was supposed to call me this morning and he didn’t and I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.’’ She was not quite babbling. ‘‘I didn’t hear from him and I went in and Jim said he’d been shot, I was getting a cup of orange juice
and Jim came over and said Creek was shot . . .’’

‘‘You better sit down,’’ Harper said. He introduced himself and said, ‘‘I saw you a couple of days ago, I was in talking to Jim.’’

‘‘Oh, yeah . . .’’ she said vaguely. She looked back toward the operating suite: ‘‘What have you heard?’’

‘‘Not much: he’s hurting. And he’s been in there a while.’’ ‘‘Oh, my God . . .’’

Anna was watching her; and watching her, knew that Creek had made a connection with the woman. Nothing forced here, no sense that Creek was a fling for her. She liked him, a lot. And Anna liked her, for that.
Anna sat on a too-soft chair with her legs curled beneath her, and stared, running mental movies of her time with Creek. Glass tried to read a
Times;
Harper wandered.

‘‘Look,’’ Harper finally said to Anna. ‘‘We’re not gonna do your pal any good sitting around.’’

‘‘I’m not leaving until I know how he is,’’ Anna said.

‘‘Neither am I,’’ Glass said.

Harper pulled a chair out of the line beside Anna’s, and faced it toward her. ‘‘What have you been doing the last couple of days?’’

The question had a rhetorical sound to it, and Anna shrugged and opened her mouth and Harper cut her off: ‘‘I’ll tell you what. You’ve been shuttling around from one bunch of cops to another. Santa Monica, L.A., Venice, these guys up in Burbank, whoever they were . . .’’

‘‘North Hollywood . . .’’

‘‘Whatever. And you know what? All those cops are hoping that somebody else’ll get this guy, because they ain’t got squat, and they don’t have enough time to chase him with everything else they gotta do.’’

‘‘We’re chasing him,’’ Glass said grimly.

‘‘C’mon,’’ Harper said to her. ‘‘How many hours will you put on it? The only reason L.A. tolerates me running around is because I used to work there, and they’re hoping I might turn something up and call them. They just don’t have the time.’’

‘‘They’ll
make
the time,’’ Anna said grimly. ‘‘The only reason this guy isn’t a big story is that nobody’s paid attention to him. If I want them to pay attention, they will.’’

‘‘Oh, bullshit,’’ Harper said. ‘‘How’re you gonna do that? You can’t . . .’’

‘‘You don’t know anything about television,’’ Anna said, interrupting. ‘‘You look at anybody in this place’’—she waved at the emergency room in general—‘‘and I could do a story on him—or her—and I could sell it. Anybody. You, me, the nurse guy, the guy with the cut. A serial killer? Everybody would take it, if it was done right. And I’ll tell you what—the cops don’t want to chase him, I’ll put them on CNN tomorrow morning.
Then
they’ll chase him.’’

Harper was shaking his head: ‘‘All right. Maybe you could do that, but . . .’’

‘‘You’d just start a cluster-fuck,’’ Glass said, interrupting him. ‘‘They’d bring in the nine patrolmen with the flattest feet and put them in suits and have them go around with notepads, playing investigator, and nothing would get done. I mean, you’d just panic them—us—and piss ’em off.’’

‘‘I’ve dealt with a couple of these guys, the fruitcakes,’’ Harper said intently. ‘‘They’re crazy and screwed up but most of them are . . . sort of smart. Twisted, but not stupid. You sic the cops on him really heavy—you put him on TV— and he’ll love it. And then he’ll kill somebody else just to keep things going. One of your friends, maybe. And he’ll be looking for you, too. He’ll be out there—and if the cops don’t get him, he’ll get you, eventually.’’

‘‘Are you trying to scare me?’’ Anna asked coldly.