The Night Crew (21 page)

‘‘Excuse me?’’ Anna said.

‘‘. . . Uh, sorry. Anyway, this whole thing is gonna leak, two days, three days, maximum,’’ he said. ‘‘So one of the task force guys came up with a proposition: We’ve got a couple of undercover guys who are pretty good with video cameras, they do a lot of surveillance. So you check one of these guys out, and then you go out on the street with him. He could fill in for your friend, Creek. And we put a net around you.’’

‘‘Huh. Not bad. Let me talk to Jake about it.’’

‘‘There’d be a chance we could spot the guy,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘We’d have an undercover video van covering you and even if nothing happens, we could analyze every face in every crowd, every place you go. If he’s tracking you, we could spot him.’’

‘‘Let me talk to Jake.’’

‘‘Okay, but we want to go tonight—four hours from now.’’
Harper was adamant: ‘‘No! No fuckin’ way. They’re so desperate they’re willing to turn you into a bull’s-eye.’’

‘‘When you were working homicide, did you ever use a civilian as a decoy?’’

‘‘Only once or twice and it didn’t do any good,’’ Harper said. ‘‘And the situations were really limited, we weren’t out roaming around trying to find a psycho.’’

‘‘Did you have a relationship with either of those women? Were they women?’’

‘‘Yeah, they were women, and of course not, I didn’t mess with people in investigations.’’

‘‘So you used them,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Do you think your change in attitude might have something to do with the fact that we’re working on a relationship?’’

She was so silky with the question that Harper glanced at her and said: ‘‘Shut up.’’ And a moment later, ‘‘You’re stupid.’’

Anna laughed, and said, ‘‘I hope Creek’s awake.’’
Creek was awake, eating a bowl of raspberry Jell-O and arguing with Pam Glass, who looked more tired than Creek. When Anna and Harper walked in, Glass said, ‘‘God, am I glad to see you. This nitwit is talking about going home in the morning.’’

Creek was sitting up in bed, still plugged into the saline drip. He tried to look well. ‘‘I’m feeling a hell of a lot better,’’ he said, in an unnaturally chipper voice.

‘‘What do the doctors say?’’ Harper asked.

‘‘If he keeps improving, maybe three days,’’ Glass said. ‘‘That’s the minimum. He’s talking about how his insurance runs out. I offered to help him, but he won’t take help.’’

Creek looked embarrassed and Anna put a hand on her hip and said, ‘‘I bought the insurance, Creek. It ain’t runnin’ out.’’

‘‘So, I thought it might run out.’’

Glass’s eyes narrowed: ‘‘You were lying to me.’’ ‘‘That’s what I thought,’’ Creek mumbled.

Glass dropped in a chair. ‘‘I don’t even know why I hang around this place,’’ she said, wearily.

‘‘Jeez, Pam, take it easy . . .’’ Now Creek was worried.

Glass looked at Anna and said, ‘‘Anything?’’

‘‘Your pal Wyatt wants her to be a target in some stupid decoy operation,’’ Harper said.

‘‘Decoy?’’ Now she was interested. ‘‘How would it work?’’

Anna explained, and Glass nodded: ‘‘Could work.’’

‘‘That’s bullshit,’’ said Creek. He looked at Harper. ‘‘You can’t go along with this.’’

‘‘Of course not. I already told her how stupid it is . . .’’

Anna was looking at Glass. ‘‘You think it could work?’’

The other woman nodded. ‘‘Those guys are good. I’d go for it.’’

Now it was Creek’s turn to be angry: ‘‘Pam, goddammit, you don’t know what you’re doing. This guy’s a psycho.’’

‘‘If we thought he was going to shoot her with a sniper rifle, then I’d be against it,’’ Glass said. ‘‘But he seems to want to get his hands on her. These guys who’ll be with her—they’re tough guys. He won’t take Anna away from them.’’
Anna told Creek and Glass about the abortive trip to the Full Heart Ranch, and her talk with Steve Judge.

‘‘I hadn’t thought of that guy, but now that you bring him up—there’s something about him. I think he needs a closer look,’’ Creek said.

‘‘He’s in Oregon,’’ Anna said.

‘‘That could be some bullshit they pulled,’’ Creek said.

‘‘I don’t think so,’’ she said. Anna looked at Harper, remembering their conversation while they were shooting.

‘‘You said you had a couple ideas. One of them is the other kid . . . but what’s the one you didn’t want to talk about? The coincidence?’’

Harper shrugged. ‘‘Not much, really,’’ he said. Then, ‘‘Could I have a little talk with Creek? Alone?’’

Anna looked from Harper to Creek and said, ‘‘What’s this about?’’

Creek shrugged, looking curiously at Harper, and Harper said, ‘‘If I wanted you to know, I’d just go ahead and ask— so if you don’t mind, go talk to Pam. In the hall.’’

Anna and Glass let Harper ease them through the door, and shut the door behind himself. ‘‘They don’t even know each other,’’ Anna said.
Two minutes later, the door opened. Harper looked out, and said, ‘‘You better come back in.’’

Anna and Glass filed back in, and Creek smiled at Anna, tentatively, the smile flickering like a bad fluorescent bulb.

‘‘What?’’ Anna demanded.

‘‘Jake, uh, brought something up. He didn’t want to talk to you about it unless I thought there was something to talk about.’’

‘‘So?’’

‘‘So—there might be.’’

‘‘So? What is it?’’

Creek looked at Harper, shrugged, looked back at Anna and said, ‘‘Clark.’’
‘‘Nope, nope, no way, no way,’’ Anna said. She waved her arms like a home plate umpire calling a runner safe. ‘‘It wouldn’t, it’s not, Clark wouldn’t . . .’’

‘‘Probably not,’’ Creek said. ‘‘But Clark is strange. You know that yourself: I’ve never met anyone as driven as he was. Every time you two guys got into trouble, it was because he was freaking out with work. Who knows what happened to him since you last saw him—he might’ve cracked.’’

‘‘Not Clark,’’ Anna said stubbornly.

‘‘Yeah? You’ve heard his voice,’’ Creek said. ‘‘Are you sure it wasn’t Clark’s? You say it’s familiar . . .’’

She opened her mouth to say no, it wasn’t Clark’s—but then she thought,
maybe it is
. The voice was a middle baritone, and Clark’s was close to that; and she hadn’t heard Clark’s voice for years. She closed her eyes, listened to Clark talk. The same?

She opened her eyes. ‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s not the same.’’

‘‘Bullshit,’’ said Creek, because Creek could read her mind. ‘‘You don’t know.’’
Anna was furious with Creek for talking about Clark. He didn’t understand what Clark had been going through when the trouble started: the stress, the politics of the music business, and where they could push an ambitious person, especially when that person was young, confused, exhausted.

And then she thought to herself,
Really? Is that really what you think about Clark?
She’d never really gotten over their relationship, even admitted it to herself. Not because she couldn’t, but because of the indefinite way it had ended,
‘‘I love you but . . .’’
Jake came out of the kitchen, carrying a plate of toast and jelly. They were at Anna’s house, Anna changing into her work clothes. ‘‘You don’t go wandering off through the crowd—Creek said you ran all the way up and down through that hotel when Jacob died, I don’t want you getting away from the escorts.’’

‘‘Yeah, yeah,’’ she said, distracted. He put the plate down and caught her around the waist and said, ‘‘Hey. Listen to me. We’ll work out this Clark business later—but for now, we gotta keep your ass alive.’’ He squeezed her butt, but she wiggled away.

‘‘Are you still pissed?’’ Harper asked.

‘‘Oh, I’m not pissed. Wait a minute: yeah, I am pissed, at Creek.’’

‘‘Creek is trying to take care of you,’’ Harper said. He pushed the plate toward her, and she took a piece of jelly toast.

‘‘I was thinking—I was hoping—that I’d never have to deal with the Clark thing,’’ Anna said to him. ‘‘Maybe it’d just fade away. It sorta was, but . . . I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t.’’

‘‘Are you still in love with him?’’

‘‘No, I don’t think so. But I
was
in love with him. And there was never any end-point; I couldn’t ever say, ‘Well, that’s over with, now I can do something else.’ I needed an end-point.’’

‘‘We haven’t known each other very long, but I never would have seen you this way,’’ Harper said, his face intently serious. ‘‘I would’ve thought that when you broke off with somebody, that’d be it: and you’d never think about him again.’’

‘‘Oh, no,’’ she said, as serious as he. ‘‘With a real relationship, I’d think about it forever. I’ll think about you forever, no matter what happens.’’

‘‘Really?’’

‘‘Really,’’ she said. ‘‘Forever.’’
Louis showed up a half hour later, leading a ratty-looking, dark-haired man, unshaven with a heavy shock of black hair that fell down over his oval face. He wore a green army field jacket from the sixties, with a faded name tag that said Ward.

‘‘Jimmy Coughlin,’’ he said, shaking Anna’s hand and peering at Harper. ‘‘You’re Jake Harper.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ Harper said. He reached out and touched the name tag on Coughlin’s jacket. ‘‘Who’s Ward?’’

‘‘Fuck if I know,’’ Coughlin said cheerfully. He looked around the living room. ‘‘We ready?’’

‘‘You know what you’re doing?’’ Anna asked.

‘‘Sure, no problem,’’ he said. ‘‘I used to pretend I was a news guy and shoot riots and raids and shit.’’

‘‘Let me get my jacket,’’ Anna said.
Coughlin drove, not fast, but expertly, using all three rearview mirrors. There were three tracking cars, he said, one in front and two behind. Louis sat in back, in his regular chair, monitoring the radios; when Anna looked out the passenger side window, she could almost pretend that this past week hadn’t happened.

‘‘Which way?’’ Coughlin asked.

‘‘Let’s sort of loaf up the PCH, and then catch Sunset where it comes down, and go back east,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Play it by ear.’’

Coughlin nodded, took a small hand radio out of his pocket, and relayed the route to the tracking cars.

‘‘You do this much?’’ Anna asked.

‘‘Not exactly like this, but, you know—like this,’’ he said.

‘‘Dopers, mostly?’’

‘‘Little of this, little of that,’’ he said. ‘‘Some dope. Doing a little more vice lately, been backing up some of the gang guys.’’

‘‘You like it?’’ Anna asked.

‘‘Sure, it’s fun,’’ he said, and she had to smile: he
was
a cheerful guy, despite his ratlike exterior. Then: ‘‘I couldn’t help noticing that you’re carrying a gun.’’

‘‘Yup.’’ She nodded.

‘‘You got a permit?’’ he asked.

‘‘Are you kidding?’’

‘‘Maybe you should give it to me—the gun,’’ he said.

‘‘Maybe not,’’ Anna said.

‘‘I could take it,’’ he suggested.

‘‘Cop takes gun from woman stalked by serial killer who brutally murdered movie actress.’’ She looked over her
shoulder at Louis. ‘‘Could we get that on the air?’’

‘‘Are you kidding?’’ Louis said. ‘‘I could sell it everywhere. But it’d sound better if we said, ‘Cop takes gun from woman stalked by serial killer who brutally murdered movie actress, while gangs run wild with assault rifles in South-Central.’ ’’

‘‘That
is
an improvement,’’ Anna said.

‘‘It’d do okay,’’ Louis said. ‘‘But if you could get him to rough you up a little bit, we’d get more than we got for the jumper.’’

‘‘How about it?’’ Anna said, turning back to Coughlin and batting her eyes. ‘‘Do you carry a club or a sap or anything? Could you push me around a little? I mean, I kind of . . . like it.’’

Louis said, ‘‘ ‘Cop takes gun from beautiful woman stalked by serial killer who brutally murdered glamorous, drug-abusing ‘‘90210’’ actress, abuses her with baton, while gangs run wild with assault rifles in South-Central—and she likes it.’ ’’

Coughlin hunched over the steering wheel and shook his head sadly. ‘‘Christ, this could be a long night,’’ he said.

twenty-three

They took the Pacific Coast Highway north as far as Sunset, Sunset back east. They narrowly missed hitting a Mercedes Benz 500E that came rocketing out of a Beverly Hills side street and crossed Sunrise without slowing. ‘‘Rich junkies,’’ Coughlin muttered. ‘‘Eat that speed and can’t handle it.’’

‘‘Fire back in Bel Air,’’ Louis said. He had his headphones on.

‘‘Any good?’’ Anna asked, turning to look at him. He’d belted himself into his office chair.

‘‘Doesn’t sound like much,’’ Louis said, as he punched numbers into a scanner. ‘‘But I think I’ve heard the name. Jimmy James Jones?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Anna said. ‘‘It rings a bell.’’

‘‘Preacher,’’ Coughlin said. ‘‘He used to have a TV show.’’

Anna nodded. ‘‘That’s right, good.’’ To Louis: ‘‘Anything about women, or people hurt?’’

‘‘Nope. Mostly smoke. Jimmy James Jones called in the report himself and he’s still in the house.’’

Coughlin glanced at her expectantly, but Anna said, ‘‘Keep going.’’

• • •

‘‘How do you decide?’’ Coughlin asked, after a while. Sunrise rolled along outside the windows, a shabbier section near Hollywood, a few men and women strolling along the streets, cars playing games along the curbs. ‘‘How do you know what to go to?’’

‘‘Magic,’’ Anna said.

‘‘I’m serious,’’ he said. He jabbed at the brake. A woman with a shopping cart looked for a moment as though she might lurch into the street.

‘‘So am I,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I don’t know how to decide. You just go on the sound of it.’’

‘‘Like what?’’

‘‘Like the fire: that could be something. If Jimmy James Jones was just a little more famous—not much more, just a little bit—we’d go over. If there were people hurt, we’d think about it. But the thing is, all the local stations are so sensitive to anything with a celebrity, that they’ve probably got their trucks rolling right now. So even if it turned out to be good, we might not sell much, because everybody would have it. Louis only mentioned it because we’re close enough that we could probably get there first.’’

‘‘First isn’t always enough,’’ Coughlin said.

‘‘No,’’ Anna said, shaking her head. ‘‘Sometimes it’s enough—but not always. When the story is minor, then it’s absolutely necessary. Or if the story has one crucial moment, then you’ve got to be there for that moment. Like we shot this kid a week ago, the kid who fell off the building . . .’’

‘‘Harper’s kid.’’

‘‘Yeah. We didn’t know Jake then . . . anyway, it’s not really much of a story, but the event was spectacular. It’s something nobody ever sees—we were just there by accident. There was no way for anybody else to make up for our film. They had to have it. With the Jimmy James Jones fire
story, all they need is a shot of some fire trucks and hoses, and a comment from Jones. You can be really late and get all that.’’

Coughlin nodded. ‘‘So how do you know
where
to go? When nothing’s going on?’’

‘‘I fish. Get a feeling. Some nights just have a quiet feeling in one place, so you decide to go somewhere else. Like, I think we ought to check up the valley tonight. We haven’t been there in a while.’’

‘‘Up the Hollywood?’’

‘‘Yeah, the Hollywood to Mission Hills, back on the San Diego, maybe jump off at Ventura if anything’s going on . . .’’
They were coming up on Mission Hills when Louis blurted, ‘‘Okay, we got a holdup at a Starbucks and a guy’s down, where are we? Have we crossed Mission yet?’’

‘‘Two minutes to Mission,’’ Anna said.

‘‘Get off, go east,’’ Louis said. He was punching numbers into the laptop. ‘‘Okay, three blocks east, right side, we should see it, they got one guy down and one of the clerks threw a pot of boiling coffee on the holdup guy, he’s still in the street, he might be blind, he’s still armed, cops on the way . . .’’

‘‘Could be good,’’ Anna said to Coughlin, ‘‘but we gotta hurry.’’

‘‘I am hurrying,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m doing seventy.’’

‘‘I mean
hurry
,’’ Anna said. She took the pistol out of her pocket, popped the lock box with the Nagra, took the tape recorder out and put the gun in the box and relocked it. When she turned back, they were hurtling down an off-ramp toward a stoplight and she stretched out over the dashboard, looking to the left, and said, ‘‘Nothing coming, nothing coming, forget the light, go . . .’’

Coughlin took it sedately through the curve and Anna said, ‘‘Damn it, you gotta
drive
.’’

‘‘Jesus,’’ Coughlin said, but he floored it and the truck took off.

Three blocks ahead, there were people in the street: ‘‘That’s gotta be it,’’ she said.

Louis was fumbling with the main camera, and said to Coughlin, ‘‘All right, the camera’s all set. Just pull the trigger.’’

‘‘Yeah, yeah.’’

Louis reached over the seat and put the headset over the top of Coughlin’s head. ‘‘Pull it down over your ears.’’

‘‘Right there—pull right up on that curb,’’ Anna shouted. ‘‘Put two wheels up, get up there.’’

‘‘Fuckin’ people are nuts,’’ Coughlin said, but he put two wheels on the curb, stood on the brake, and Anna was out the door.

A man was lying on the street with his hands on his face, moaning, bleeding from the face, a revolver on the sidewalk ten feet away. A tough-looking teenager in a letter jacket was standing over him. Sirens began screaming in. Coughlin was out with the camera, but not moving fast enough. Anna screamed at him on the headset: ‘‘This way, move! Move! Run, for Christ’s sake.’’

Coughlin broke into a trot, the camera bouncing on his shoulder, and Anna pointed at the man on the street, and the teenager. ‘‘What happened? What happened? Tell the camera what happened.’’

‘‘Guy come running out of the store and ran right into that door and cracked his head open,’’ the teenager told Coughlin’s camera. ‘‘He had the gun and people were inside yelling to get out of the way, he shot somebody, so I kicked the gun over there and he tried to get up and I set him down again.’’

Anna allowed a second’s space as Coughlin panned from
the man on the street to the teenager and back, and Anna said, ‘‘What’s your name? Where do you come from? What were you doing here?’’

As the teenager started talking again, she ran inside the store. Another man was on the floor, and a half-dozen Starbucks counterpeople were gathered around him. She said, ‘‘Coughlin, get in here, right now. Get the scene on the floor. Hurry, goddammit, the cops are almost here.’’

The cops
were
there. Coughlin trotted into the store and began walking sideways, working around the group on the floor, and one of the counterwomen stood up and pointed a finger at him and said, ‘‘Get out of here, that’s not allowed, that’s not allowed.’’

Anna shouted at the woman, ‘‘Look at the guy, he’s bleeding, help him,’’ and the woman looked back down, and then grabbed a napkin holder and dropped onto her knees and pulled out a four-inch loaf of napkins and handed it to another woman who was apparently trying to staunch a wound. Coughlin was looking past the camera and Anna shouted, ‘‘Keep running for Christ’s sake . . .’’

Three cops hurried in the door. One spotted the camera and waved it away, and Coughlin took it down again. Anna said, ‘‘Okay, come this way, come toward me, toward the side door.’’ As they went, she asked the crowd of coffeedrinkers, ‘‘Did anyone see this? Any witnesses?’’

Two or three nodded, and she said, ‘‘We’d like to get statements outside, if anyone has time.’’

‘‘Will this be in the newspaper tomorrow?’’ somebody asked.

‘‘Maybe TV,’’ Anna said.

A paramedic truck arrived as they did the interviews, and Coughlin moved away again to catch the wounded man being carried out. The shooter with the burned face was cuffed and put in another ambulance, and then there was nothing
but a crowd of gawkers and the flashing lights on the cop car.

‘‘This way, back to the truck,’’ Anna told Coughlin. ‘‘Hurry.’’

‘‘I’m running my ass off,’’ he snarled.

She shook her head: ‘‘Still not moving fast enough,’’ she said.

Coughlin caught up with her halfway to the truck, pulled the headset off and said, ‘‘What’s the rush?’’

‘‘Cops might give us a hard time, especially if the Starbucks people complain. Might want to look at the tape: we gotta get out of here before they start thinking about it.’’

He nodded, and hurried along with her. Louis took the camera and Coughlin jumped into the driver’s seat. ‘‘Kind of a rush,’’ he said, starting the truck.

‘‘Yeah, but you gotta move,’’ Anna said. ‘‘You were way too slow.’’

‘‘Hey, I’m a beginner,’’ he said. He took the truck out into the street, as Louis popped the tape out of the camera. ‘‘I did all right for a beginner.’’

She shrugged, then smiled. ‘‘Yeah, I guess. For a guy who doesn’t know the rules. But next time, rules number one and two: drive fast, then run.’’

‘‘Yes, ma’am.’’ He laughed, a little giddy. Then: ‘‘How come nobody else showed up? No competition?’’

Anna shrugged: ‘‘ ’Cause this didn’t amount to anything. The victim wasn’t even killed—though getting the shooter was a little different. I hope you shot the gun on the street.’’

‘‘Yeah, yeah . . .’’

‘‘Anyway, there’s no way this would make the papers, much less TV news, just on what happened. Routine holdup shooting. We might have a couple of good images, so maybe it’ll make it—not because it means anything, but because the images are good.’’

‘‘I hope I got some,’’ Coughlin said nervously, looking over his shoulder at Louis. ‘‘I just kept pulling the trigger.’’

‘‘You did okay,’’ Louis said from the back of the truck. He had the tape up on a monitor. ‘‘It’s not great, but it’s usable.’’

Anna watched as Louis rolled through it, then turned to Coughlin. ‘‘A couple of things: You move too fast from one subject to the next. You show the guy on the ground, the shooter, and the gun, but only for a couple of seconds each time. You have to
dwell
on them for a moment. Remember, we can always cut, but we can’t get more. Same with the wounded guy inside. You gotta stay on him: he’s the interest, and the women working on him. But mostly the wounded guy.’’

‘‘I was thinking I should help,’’ Coughlin said.

‘‘No,’’ Anna said. ‘‘You can’t think that way if you ride with us. You’re
making
the movie, not acting in it. You’re an eye.’’

‘‘That’s cold,’’ Coughlin said.

‘‘That’s the way it is,’’ said Anna.

A couple of minutes later, Coughlin took the radio out of his pocket, pushed the transmit button and asked, ‘‘ Anything?’’

He listened, then said to Anna, ‘‘Nothing.’’

Anna got out her phone and started dialing TV stations.
Two kids, motorheads from a valley technical school, were chasing each other down the Ventura, when one lost it and rolled his rebuilt Charger off the freeway and down an embankment. They started that way, but when Anna got an exact location from Louis, she called it off. ‘‘If we get up there, we’re trapped in traffic,’’ she said. ‘‘Not worth the time.’’

‘‘The kid’s dead,’’ Coughlin said.

‘‘Yeah, but we can’t get in and out, and that’s the main thing,’’ Anna said.
A chase started on the Santa Monica, the highway patrol running after a Porsche 928. Anna pointed them down the San Diego as Louis monitored the chase.

‘‘He’s probably gonna have to make a decision when he gets to the San Diego,’’ she said. ‘‘Either north or south. If he comes this way, we might have a shot. A nine twentyeight means there’s some money. Could be a movie tiein . . .’’

But the Porsche went straight on, dropped onto the PCH and suddenly pulled over and gave it up.

Nothing.
Later on, they headed for a truck fire, broke off before they got there. Arrived too late at a shooting incident, found nobody hurt and cops everywhere. Coughlin checked again, and the trailing cars had not spotted anyone tracking them.

‘‘Waste of time,’’ Anna said, pulling on her lower lip. ‘‘We’re wasting time.’’

‘‘Got to be a little patient,’’ Coughlin said.
Very late, they were rolling south on Sepulveda, looking for any movement at all, when Louis said, ‘‘Body found.’’

‘‘Where?’’

‘‘Mmm . . . it’s over a fence. Must be pretty high, because they can see it but they can’t get to it. No address yet.’’

‘‘Okay.’’ Coughlin was concentrating on the driving, Louis worked the radios, and Anna let her mind drift. All evening, she’d felt herself drifting away from the immediacy of the truck; out of it.

The problem was Clark. Were they done? Certainly. Or probably. But all those years ago, when they were working
their music together, she playing it, Clark composing; when they were going to concerts together, and clubs, toying with rock & roll; when Clark was putting together the ‘‘Jump Rope Concerto,’’ the first work to bring him notice; in the years they were doing that, she had woven a mental web around them, a cocoon to hold them—and when suddenly it began to come apart, she’d never dealt with it. She’d fantasized, instead, of pulling all the strands back together.