The Night Crew

She tried the knob: locked. Hit the door with her fist. 'Jake! Jake! Jaaake!' Her voice rising. She'd scream it, if she had to.

The knob turned under her hand, and Jake was there, on the other side, a dazed, crazy look in his eyes. He held what appeared to be a broken chair leg. One hand was covered with blood, and there were spatters of blood on his golf shirt.

'Ah.' she said, involuntarily. She put a hand on his chest and pushed, and he stepped back, and she went into the room.

Maran was on the floor, face up, bleeding from the nose: he was conscious, but just barely. There was no blood at all on his upper body, but his legs looked wrong. He looked like a paraplegic whose legs had withered.

Anna shut the door and said, 'What'd you do?'

'Hit him,' Harper said. He seemed confused, uncertain of where he was.

'Is he gonna die?' She looked toward the phone.

'No, I just.' he drifted away, and she caught his arm and squeezed.

'What? Jake?'

'Broke his legs,' he said. He looked at the chair leg in his hand. 'A lot.'

'So let's get out of here,' Anna said. Maran was trying to roll, but there was no leverage in his hips and legs, and he flailed weakly, futilely. He tried to turn himself with his arms, and he moaned again.

'Call an ambulance,' Harper said.

'We can do that outside,' she said, and she pushed Harper toward the door. Harper dropped the chair leg. Anna said, 'God, wait a minute,' carried the leg to the bathroom and quickly, carefully rubbed it down with a towel, then dropped it in the bathtub and turned the hot water on it.

'Now,' she said.

Harper followed her dumbly through the door, down the stairs, out past the gift shop. She stopped him at a bank of phones, dialled 911, and said, 'There's a man hurt really bad in room three-thirty-three at the Marshall Hotel on Pico. Hurt really bad. Better get an ambulance here fast.'

On the street, she could taste the bile at the back of her throat: 'That the guy?' she asked. She looked up at him, his eyes clearing a bit, and then at the blood splatters on his shirt.

'He sold the stuff to Jacob and his friends. He didn't know Jacob, but he described the whole bunch of them.'

'Jason?'

'He had no idea who Jason was.'

'Maybe he was lying,' Anna said.

'No. Christ, he was bragging about it. I asked him if he'd seen the kid who tried to fly off the Shamrock, and he was laughing about it in the elevator. You know what he told me? He sold to the kids because "That's my market". That's what he said, like he was some kind of toy-company executive.'

'Ah, God.'

'"That's my market", for Christ's sake. That was in his roomthat's when I hit him in the face. He was still smiling when he went down.'

'Jake.'

'I feel like I should have strangled the miserable little motherfucker,' Harper said bitterly, as they got to the car. He looked back up the street.

'I wish I'd killed him.'

'So why'd you want the ambulance?' He looked at her, shook his head: 'Because I'm fucked up.'

Chapter 15

Back on the street, moving quickly, Harper still shaky: 'You drive,' he said, tossing her the keys. 'I'm not functioning too well.'

'All right.' She opened the car, climbed in, adjusted the seat. As she pulled away from the curb, she heard the siren: There was usually a siren somewhere in the L. A. background, but this one was closing in. As they pulled away, she saw the flashing lights a few blocks down Pico, headed toward the hotel.

'Ambulance,' Anna said. She looked at Harper. 'If that makes you any happier.'

'I dunno.' They spent the next five minutes in a ragged silence, Harper staring out the passenger window, away from her. She took the time to think, working over the logic of a connection between Harper's son, a high-school kid from the southeast burbs, and Jason, a street kid from Hollywood and UCLA. Where was the connection? And it would have to be a massive coincidence.

The lightbulb went on.

'I've given you a hard time about this connection between your son and Jason,' she said. Harper turned toward her; he was still off track, almost uninterested. 'I couldn't see how there could be a connection. But I let you do all the thinking about it. I had too much other stuff to worry about.'

'Has to be a connection,' he said. 'The paper was torn, and it matchedI saw the two ends, I put them together.'

'There isa connection,' she said. 'It's been staring us in the face.'

'What?' Now he turned to her.

'When your son jumped, Jason was right there, almost underneath him. I didn't see it, because I was in the hotel, but Jason was close. A few yards away. He was hanging out before your son jumped, he was planning to ride with us all night. But right afterwards, he couldn't wait to get away from us. Like something had happened in that few minutes. Like he got some drugs.'

Harper thought about it, then closed his eyes and said, 'Goddammit.' And then: 'We've got to look at the tape.'

'You've seen it?'

'I saw it a half-dozen times before Ellen called and said it was Jacob. The tape was all over the TV, I didn't know, just some jerk flying off a building.'

'I'm sorry,' Anna said, aware of the hollowness of the sentiment: this was what she did. 'Look, I'm gonna call Louis. I never really looked at the raw tape. I was busy selling while Louis did the editing. I looked at Jason's at the time, but didn't see anything unusual.'

'So where does Louis live?'

She slowed, looked at him carefully: 'You sure you want to look at this stuff?'

'I have to.'

'If there's something on the tape, it means. I mean, there'd be no realconnection. So my problem wouldn't have any connection with yours. Or you.'

He smiled, just faintly, then leaned a little closer and patted her on the leg, just once: 'We'vegot a connection now. Whatever's on the tape. You're not sliding away that easily.'

Louis' apartment was a nerd's nightmareor maybe a dreama jumble of Domino's pizza boxes, empty Fritos bags, a fat blue plastic garbage can marked 'Aluminum only' with a backboard behind it, half-full of Diet Coke cans.

A projection TV sat in the middle of the front room, showing a severed power cord sticking out from beneath it, like a rat's tail. The longest wall was dominated by industrial gray steel racks full of stereo, computer and telephone equipment, all of which seemed hooked together.

Louis met them at the door wearing a ketchup-stained T-shirt, gym shorts and a stunned look. He'd been up all night, he said, working, and had just gotten to sleep when Anna called.

'I got the tape set,' he said. He kicked through some litter in the front room. 'You guys want some Fritos? I got some somewhere. I got coffee going.'

'Coffee,' Anna said. 'Wash the cups.'

'I already did,' he said, unconvincingly. He was back a minute later with the coffee, saw the cut cord on the projection TV and said, 'Oh, shit. I forgot about that. I'll have to put it up on a monitor.'

'What happened to the cord?' Harper asked.

'I needed a plug last night,' Louis said. 'I mean, it was convenient, and it's easy enough to put back on. If you'd rather see it on the big screen.'

'Monitor's fine, probably better,' Anna said. To Harper: 'You're sure you want to watch?'

'I'm sure.'

Louis pulled the drapes to sharpen up the monitor, and started the tape. He caught the last few minutes of the animal rights hassle, the guy knocked over by the pig, then a few random spacing shots inside the truck, then suddenly the bouncing run across the patio of the hotel. Anna caught a glimpse of herself running toward the entrance, and then the lens steadied, swung up and fixed on Jacob. They could see his face, a confused smile, the boy's head bobbing as the camera tried to orient itself.