The Night Crew (8 page)

Anna put the Fatburger sack and three cups of coffee on the hood of the truck and turned back to them: ‘‘Hey, mama, what? Huh? What?’’

One of the guys straightened up and said, ‘‘Hey, mama, what’cha doing tonight?’’

‘‘I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m working instead of leaning my lazy fat ass on a piece-of-shit junker outside a Fatburger.’’

‘‘Hey . . .’’ The second guy pushed away from the Buick.

Then Creek got out of the driver’s side of the truck and the second guy leaned back against the Buick again, while the first one hitched up his jeans. Creek said, ‘‘Anna, get in the truck.’’

‘‘This guy wanted to talk to me,’’ Anna said.

‘‘Anna!’’ Creek wasn’t taking bullshit. ‘‘Get in the fuckin’ truck.’’

Anna, still fuming, picked up the food and got in the truck and Creek said, ‘‘Sorry, guys.’’ Back in the truck, as they pulled out, Creek said, ‘‘What was that all about, huh? You want to get in a fight outside a Fatburger and spend some more time talking to cops? Huh?’’

‘‘Bad day.’’

‘‘Bad day, my ass,’’ Creek said. ‘‘Take your fuckin’ bad day someplace else.’’

‘‘Jesus, you guys, go easy,’’ Louis said, nervous. Creek and Anna didn’t fight.

‘‘Yeah, yeah, gimme a Fatburger,’’ Creek snarled.

They rode in silence until Anna’s cell phone rang.

‘‘Anna Batory?’’ Male voice. Familiar.
Heavy stress,
she thought.

‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘This is the guy you met in O’Brien’s apartment this afternoon.’’

‘‘Yeah, Harper,’’ Anna said. ‘‘What do you want— where’d you get this number?’’

He ignored the use of his name and the demand for an explanation of the number. ‘‘I need to see you,’’ he said. ‘‘Like
right now.
Actually, I need you to come to where I am.’’

‘‘Why should I?’’

‘‘Because it has something to do with you,’’ Harper said. ‘‘I gotta call the cops pretty soon, but I need you over here first.’’

‘‘What
has to do with me?’’

‘‘Look, you might be in serious trouble. If you want to know about it before the cops come banging on your door, come see me now. Otherwise . . . and hey, you might even make a few bucks.’’

She thought for a second, then said, ‘‘I’m bringing a friend.’’

‘‘It’ll cause them trouble,’’ Harper said.

‘‘I’m not gonna be alone with you. Not after you jumped me, like that, you . . . abuser.’’

Creek looked at her oddly, and Harper, after a second, said, ‘‘Whatever you want to do.’’
Harper was waiting under a streetlight on Cumpston, a couple of blocks south of Burbank Boulevard, a neighborhood of stucco ranch homes. The yard behind him was bordered with an evergreen hedge, long untrimmed, and pierced by a picket gate that had curls of white paint peeling off.

Creek got out with Anna.

‘‘I understand you had a problem with Anna,’’ Creek said, and Anna suddenly realized that she might have a problem with the two men.

Harper had turned toward Creek with a small crouching movement that suggested he’d just set his feet; and he wasn’t backing up.

He was good-looking in a mildly beat-up way, Anna thought, a big man with broad shoulders, big hands, a nose that had been broken a couple of times. He carried a heavy tan, with sun-touched hair, like a beach bum, but he was too old for that: late thirties, she thought. He wore an expensive black sport coat, silk, she thought, over a pair of jeans.

And way down in the lizard part of her brain, something went, ‘‘Hmm . . .’’

Creek was gliding sideways and Harper was pivoting to cover him, and Anna said, ‘‘I swear to God, the first one of you guys who throws a punch, I’ll kick him in the balls.’’

Creek stopped moving and Harper relaxed, spread his hands. He glanced quickly at Anna but spoke to Creek: ‘‘If you had the same problem, you would’ve done the same thing, pal.’’

Creek stared for another moment, then nodded abruptly: ‘‘So what do you want?’’

‘‘I want you to come in here,’’ he said. He tipped his head back toward the house. ‘‘But don’t touch anything.’’

‘‘Whadda we got?’’ Creek asked, interested now.

‘‘We got a dead dope dealer,’’ Harper said.

Anna stopped: ‘‘Have you called the cops?’’

‘‘No. I will, soon as you’ve gone through.’’

‘‘The cops could put you in jail for not calling in right away,’’ Anna said.

‘‘Yeah, maybe, but I’ve got bigger problems than that. Come on. Maybe you want to bring a camera?’’

He said it in a cheap way, and Anna said, ‘‘Shove it.’’

While Louis waited with the radios, Harper led them up the walk. The door was just ajar, a light on inside, and Harper took a ballpoint pen out of his pocket and pushed the door open with the butt end of it. ‘‘Don’t touch the door, don’t touch anything.’’

‘‘Was the door open when you got here?’’

‘‘Yeah, and the light was on,’’ he said as they stepped across the threshold. ‘‘As soon as I got in, I knew . . .’’

‘‘Aw, jeez,’’ Anna said. The smell hit her, and she flinched away from it. Old blood and human waste, mixed up and curdling.

‘‘Flies,’’ Harper said absently, tilting his head back. Anna looked up, saw hundreds of bluebottle flies clustering around the light. ‘‘Back here.’’

He led the way to a bedroom with mustard-colored walls and
Rolling Stone
covers thumbtacked to the walls. But the main attraction was a man who, at first glance, looked like a grotesque German Expressionist painting, muscles and blood exposed, everything gone black. He’d been handcuffed to the bed, his feet tied with ripped sheets. He was nude except for a pair of briefs, face up, and gagged. He’d been cut to pieces with a knife.

And not quickly, Anna thought. The face looked as though the skin had been peeled off. A halo of blood surrounded the head, as if it had been violently shaken back and forth. So he’d been alive for the peeling . . .

‘‘Christ, what is this, what’re we here for?’’ Creek asked. ‘‘We’ve seen this shit . . .’’

‘‘Yeah, so’ve I,’’ Harper said. He looked at Anna. ‘‘You know him?’’

‘‘Even if I did, I’m not sure I’d recognize him,’’ she said. ‘‘But I don’t think so.’’

‘‘Name is Sean MacAllister,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Been busted
three times on minor drug stuff, once with O’Brien in the car . . .’’

Anna was nodding: ‘‘Jesus, we do know him. Sean, oh my God . . .’’

Harper was going on: ‘‘. . . The bust never got to trial because there was some problem with the stop. O’Brien lived here for a couple of weeks, between apartments.’’

‘‘I don’t know—we never picked up Jason here. Are you sure that’s him?’’ As she said it, she had to turn away.

‘‘Pretty sure,’’ Harper said. ‘‘His billfold was still in his pocket.’’

‘‘So what do you want from us? Why don’t you just call the cops?’’ Creek asked.

‘‘I wanted you to look at this,’’ Harper said. He was standing next to the bed, and he pointed to the man’s bare chest. A knife rip crossed it from armpit to armpit.

‘‘What?’’ Anna asked.

‘‘Read it,’’ Harper said.

‘‘Read it?’’

She and Creek edged closer. She couldn’t see it, but Creek could: he looked at her suddenly and she said again, ‘‘What?’’

‘‘Says ‘Anna,’ ’’ Creek said, almost to himself.

And then she saw it: her name in carved flesh. ‘‘My God.’’ She stood in shock for a moment, then turned to Harper: ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’ He was watching her closely. ‘‘He was a small-time dealer, that’s about all I know.’’

‘‘Your son’s dealer?’’

‘‘I don’t know. I hope not. I tracked him through your pal O’Brien.’’ He looked around the room. ‘‘All I found was a little grass. Nothing else.’’

‘‘No dots,’’ Anna said, and he nodded. She looked at the
grotesquerie again, the muscle mass that had once been human, the
Anna,
and she turned away from the bed, suddenly felt as though a hand had been clapped over her mouth, suffocating her: ‘‘I gotta get out of here.’’

eight

Harper and Creek followed her outside, and Anna held her head over the picket fence and gagged. Nothing came up but a stream of saliva. After a moment, she turned back to the two men: ‘‘Sorry.’’

‘‘So you didn’t know the guy,’’ Harper said, a statement, not a question.

‘‘Not except to nod to. I never met Jason’s friends, except on the job.’’

Harper was looking at her skeptically, and Anna said, ‘‘Look, Jason was a part-timer. He worked maybe once or twice a month, when he came up with something.’’

‘‘Dope stuff?’’

‘‘No. Usually UCLA stuff. The night your son died, that was the last time we saw him. He had the inside track on a college animal rights group that raided the medical labs at UCLA . . .’’

‘‘I saw it on TV, the pig thing,’’ Harper said. ‘‘How’d that connect with my kid?’’

Creek said, ‘‘It didn’t. The raid was college kids, and your son was at a high-school party. The only connection was that they were a few blocks apart about the same time, and we happened to catch them both.’’

Harper rubbed his chin, looking at Creek: ‘‘You’re sure?’’

‘‘Work it out yourself.’’

Harper looked away, into the middle distance, then back, and nodded. ‘‘All right. But my kid’s dead, your friend’s dead, they shared a dealer, and now a dealer’s dead—and Anna’s name is carved on his chest.
Something
’s going on.’’

‘‘Did you see any of those dot things in there—the wizards?’’ Anna asked.

‘‘How’d you know about the wizards?’’ Harper asked sharply.

‘‘Wyatt told me. He told me about you so I wouldn’t report that I was mugged.’’

‘‘Okay.’’ He looked at his shoes. ‘‘Sorry about the thing at the apartment. I didn’t know who it was, I was in there illegally, sort of. Not a good place to be caught messing with an apartment . . .’’

‘‘So how’d you track this guy down?’’ Anna asked, looking at the house.

‘‘Got Wyatt to check Jason on the computer, found the arrest, got MacAllister’s name, checked with the phone company and got an address. No problem.’’

‘‘You keep stepping into shit like this, it’s gonna be a problem,’’ Creek said. ‘‘Leave it to the cops.’’

‘‘I can’t.’’ Harper shook his head: ‘‘I’ve got a slightly different agenda than the cops.’’

‘‘What? Revenge?’’ Anna asked.

‘‘Nah,’’ Harper said. He looked back at the house, as Anna had. ‘‘But I’d like a little justice.’’

‘‘Leave it to the cops,’’ Creek said again.

‘‘You don’t get justice from cops,’’ Harper said. ‘‘You get
procedure. Sometimes you get arrests. Occasionally you get convictions. You never get justice.’’

‘‘So what do we do here?’’ Creek asked.

Anna took out her phone. ‘‘Make a call.’’

They called Wyatt at home, hoping for a charitable referral to the local Burbank cops.

‘‘What?’’ Wyatt grumbled into the mouthpiece. His voice was thickened by sleep.

Anna identified herself and told him about the man on the bed.

‘‘Stay out of the house, don’t touch anything,’’ Wyatt said. He was awake now, and unhappy. ‘‘I’m gonna call L.A.’’

‘‘I think we’re in Burbank,’’ she said.

‘‘All right, I’ll call Burbank. You wait.’’

‘‘We’re in the street right outside the house,’’ Anna said, glancing at Harper. ‘‘It’s a little complicated. I’d better let you talk to your friend Jake.’’

‘‘Jake? What’s he doing there?’’ Wyatt asked, even more unhappy.

‘‘I’ll let him tell you,’’ Anna said, and she handed the phone to Harper.

Louis stuck his head out of the truck: ‘‘We’ve got a fire in Hollywood Hills, the girlfriend of somebody big, the way the fire guys are talking.’’

‘‘Forget it,’’ Anna said, cutting him off. ‘‘We’ve got problems.’’
The first cop car arrived five minutes after Harper got off the phone: not Burbank, but North Hollywood. Burbank was two blocks away. The cops talked to Harper, briefly, a little chilly, and started the murder routine: cops around the house, neighbors on lawns, yellow crime scene tape, medical examiners, L.A. homicide detectives and, eventually, Wyatt. He nodded wordlessly as he passed them, flashed a badge at a
cop outside the door and went in. Five minutes later, he was back out.

‘‘What a mess,’’ he said.

‘‘Yeah,’’ Anna said. ‘‘And we had a prowler at my house this morning. He had a gun . . .’’

‘‘I hope you called someone,’’ Wyatt said.

‘‘I live in Venice. The neighbors chased him off, the cops came over and had a Coke.’’

‘‘Might not be you,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘I mean, on the guy’s chest.’’

She got a quick mental flash of the body, and felt herself tighten up: whoever had done that was far gone. But she wouldn’t fool herself, either: ‘‘C’mon, how many Annas do you know?’’

Wyatt said, ‘‘All right. I don’t want to scare you any more than you are, but—remember the cuts on O’Brien’s face? I thought they looked like gang marks?’’

‘‘Yes?’’

‘‘They were like this, remember?’’ He made a quick slashing triangle design on the palm of his hand with the opposite index finger.

‘‘Triangles,’’ Anna said.

‘‘Or A’s,’’ Wyatt said quietly. ‘‘Upside-down A’s.’’

‘‘Oh, no.’’ She put her hands to her cheeks. ‘‘Can’t be A’s.’’

‘‘Could be,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘We gotta have a serious talk with the L.A. guys.’’

‘‘Are they upset?’’ She looked toward the house. ‘‘About us going inside?’’

Wyatt glanced toward Harper: ‘‘Not as much as you might think.’’

‘‘Wasn’t her fault anyway,’’ Harper said, stepping into the conversation. ‘‘She didn’t know what she was gonna see. I
took her in. I thought she might say something—might know the guy.’’

‘‘Did she?’’

Harper glanced at her, then suddenly grinned, the first time she’d seen him smile.
Nice smile,
she thought. ‘‘No. She went outside and barfed.’’

‘‘Did not,’’ Anna said.

Creek, looking past them, said apprehensively, ‘‘Uh-oh, here we go.’’

An L.A. detective was headed their way, the languid, dangerous stroll affected by cops when they were being cool. He was carrying a rolled pamphlet. He glanced at Anna, nodded at Creek and said to Harper, ‘‘How are you, Jake?’’

A movie line: one that should have been followed by a cigarette flicked into the street. Harper shrugged: ‘‘You heard about my kid.’’

‘‘Yeah. Brutal.’’ The detective looked back at the house, and then said, ‘‘Listen, I know this is a really horseshit time to ask you this, but I got a problem . . . I gotta come see you. About Lucy.’’

‘‘Gonna do it this time?’’

‘‘I gotta. She’s crazier than a shithouse mouse. If I don’t get out of there . . . but I can’t leave the kids.’’

‘‘Call me,’’ Harper said.

‘‘I’m hurtin’ for cash . . .’’ The cop was embarrassed.

‘‘We’ll put it on your Sears card,’’ Harper said. He poked the cop in the ribs, and the cop nodded and said, ‘‘I’ll call you—thanks.’’ He nodded at Anna, glanced at Wyatt and strolled away.

‘‘What was all that about?’’ Anna asked Wyatt.

‘‘Jake’s a lawyer,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘He has about half the cop business in the county.’’

‘‘I thought you said he
was
a cop.’’ ‘‘

Was.
Ten years ago.’’

• • •

The lead detective’s name was Carrol Trippen, a tall, impatient, prematurely white-haired Anglo. He split them up, talked to each of them for a moment, compared their stories and finally sent them downtown to make statements.

‘‘Are we in trouble? Should I get a lawyer?’’ Anna asked, as Trippen started back toward the house.

‘‘Harper pisses me off, calling you guys,’’ Trippen said sourly. ‘‘But it wasn’t your fault, and I know where he’s coming from. I got bigger things to worry about than hassling people who looked at a dead guy.’’

The cops kept Anna, Harper, Creek and Louis apart until the statements were done. Anna was interviewed by a sleepy cop with bad breath and a yellow shirt with a new coffee stain.

When they finished, he peered at her over his coffee cup and said, ‘‘Tell you what: You know this guy. The killer.’’

‘‘If it’s me.’’ She’d been having second thoughts.

‘‘C’mon. Even
you
think it’s you.’’

‘‘So what do I do?’’

‘‘First thing is, with this prowler you had, I’d move out of your house. Stay at a motel for a few days, don’t tell anybody where you are. When you’ve got to work, meet your friends somewhere. You got a cellular, anybody can get in touch if they need to.’’

‘‘I’ll think about it,’’ Anna said, but she wouldn’t leave her house.

‘‘Do that. And I need you back this afternoon, if you can make it—we got a shrink and a serial killer profiler, they’re gonna want to talk to you.’’

‘‘You’re sure he did both Jason and Sean?’’

‘‘Trippen talked to Wyatt, and they think so. He says there’s a level of violence there. You don’t see it in the
average murder. And this Sean was tied to the Jason guy, and Jason was tight with you.’’

‘‘All right.’’ And she knew him—but who was it?

Harper and Creek were waiting in the lobby when Anna got out. Louis was wandering around with the truck, waiting. When Creek saw Anna step out of the elevator, he dug out his cell phone, pushed a speed dial, got Louis: ‘‘We’re ready.’’

‘‘Are you headed home?’’ Harper asked, as the three of them walked down to the exit.

‘‘I guess,’’ Anna said. She glanced at her watch. ‘‘The night’s shot.’’

‘‘Are you moving out of your house?’’ Harper asked.

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Then I’d like to come by and look around,’’ he said.

‘‘Bad idea,’’ said Creek.

Harper turned to him: ‘‘Look, I used to do this for a living. I want to see where she lives—what the place is like. If the news is bad, I want you to help get her out of there. I’d just as soon she didn’t get carved up until I find the guy who did my kid.’’

‘‘That’s very sentimental,’’ Anna said.

Harper shrugged: ‘‘I’ve got priorities.’’

Creek was nodding: ‘‘And you’ve got a point.’’ To Anna: ‘‘Maybe I should stay over.’’

‘‘Good idea,’’ Harper said.

Anna shook her head, said to Creek: ‘‘You’d drive me nuts.’’ And to Harper, ‘‘When he lays around the house, he lays
around
the house.’’ Nobody smiled at the old vaudeville line.

‘‘This ain’t a comedy routine,’’ Creek grumbled. Then: ‘‘Maybe we could get the cops to send somebody over, protection.’’

‘‘Fat chance,’’ Harper said. ‘‘You know how many serial
killers are running around L.A. right now? Probably a halfdozen.’’

Anna grunted, ‘‘Huh,’’ and glanced at Creek. ‘‘ Halfdozen?’’

‘‘No,’’ Creek said, following her thought, shaking his head. ‘‘We
ain’t
doing no story on that.’’
Anna sent Creek and Louis home in the truck. Louis was shook, having talked with the cops twice in two days, having had statements taken. Louis thrived in anonymity—sought it, treasured it. ‘‘Everything’s gonna be okay, right?’’ He was anxious, twisting a shredded copy of the
L.A. Reader
in his hands.

‘‘Yeah, for us,’’ Anna told him. ‘‘You guys take the truck, go home, get some sleep.’’

‘‘I just don’t want anything to happen to us . . . to you,’’ Louis said, eyes large. ‘‘I mean, if anything happened to you . . . what’d happen to me?’’

‘‘It’ll be okay, Louis,’’ she said, giving him a quick smile and a pat on the back. ‘‘I promise.’’
When she told him she’d ride with Harper, Creek took her aside to whisper furiously: ‘‘What the fuck is this? You don’t even
know
him, he could be, you know,
the guy
.’’

‘‘Nah, we know what he’s doing—his kid,’’ Anna said.

‘‘Oh, horseshit,’’ Creek said in exasperation. He added: ‘‘You started acting perky as soon as we met him outside the house, and now you’re starting again.’’

‘‘Perky?’’ That made her mad. She put her hands on her hips and started, ‘‘What are you . . .’’

‘‘Figure it out,’’ Creek said, and he stalked off to the truck. When he got there he turned and said, ‘‘And what about Clark?’’

Smack.

But he was in the truck and kicking it over before she could think of a proper reply.
Harper drove a black BMW 740IL. The cockpit showed as many ant-sized instrument lights as a jumbo jet. A half-dozen golf putters cluttered the passenger side. Harper popped the passenger door for Anna and tossed the putters in the back.

‘‘Nice car,’’ she said, when he climbed in the driver’s side. Cars were about four-hundredth on her priority list of Important Things in Life.

‘‘Freeway cruiser,’’ he said, indifferently.