The Night Crew

'Everybody'll be there,' Creek said. He sounded as grumpy as Anna felt.

'I don't think so,' Louis said, not yet catching the crankiness in the front seat. 'There hasn't been much on the air. You sorta had to be following it.'

'So let's go,' Anna said.

The riot was a bust.

A few cop cars still lingered, a few girls strolled along the street, mostly looking at reflections in the store windows. There was the familiar air of trouble immediately past, but no actionlike arriving ten minutes after a thunderstorm, with nothing but puddles to show for the violence.

They headed toward the valley, Anna thinking about cruising Ventura. Louis got some movement on the radio, but it was small stuff, and too far south. By the time they'd arrive, there wouldn't be anything to see, or other crews would already be working it.

'Wish the bitches had been doing something,' Louis said. 'Would've made the night simple.'

'Don't call them that,' Anna snapped.

'Why not?' Louis asked. That's what.'

'Shut the fuck up, Louis,' Anna said.

'Ooo, what's your problem?' He was smiling, trying for a bantering attitude, but he didn't understand.

'Best be quiet, Louis,' Creek said, and Louis shut up. A minute later, Anna, now in a sulk, said, 'Sorry, Louis. You can talk now.'

'Is there a problem I don't know about?' he asked tentatively.

'Yeah, but it's mine,' Anna said.

'Fatburger coming up,' Creek said. Creek knew every Fatburger in L.A. County.

'Stop, I need some caffeine,' Anna said. 'Louis?'

'Diet Coke.'

'Fatburger and a Coke,' Creek said.

Anna got the food, waited, paid, carried it out to the parking lot. Two valley guys, in their late teens or early twenties, both with buzz cuts, three-day-artist-hangout stubble and black jackets, were leaning against the hood of a beat-up Buick, and one of them said, 'Hey, mama.'

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 talking 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 wantwhere'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.'

'Whathas 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 a 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 any thing.'

'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-covered walls and Rolling Stonescovers 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?'