The Night Crew

He sighed, scratched his prickly face: 'All right. You can shoot out back of my place.'

'Really?' Didn't sound like the valley.

And it wasn't. He lived on a dirt road off Mulholland Highway, halfway down a hill a few miles west of Topanga. Anna laughed when she saw the place, a rambling collection of white-stucco blocks with deep green eaves and red-tiled roof, something that a skilled hippie might have put together in the sixties.

'What?' he asked, when she laughed. His eyes crinkled, amused, at the sound of her.

'It's great,' she said. 'How much land?'

'Twenty acres.'

She was amazed: 'How can you afford it?'

'Bought it fifteen years ago,' he said. 'Built a few pieces at a time.'

'You built it?' Amazed again.

'Yup. Took some classes at the vo-tech on block-work; made friends with a guy who had some heavy equipment, helped him build his place.'

He stopped in a gravel patch in front of the garage. As they got out, a car passed on the road at the bottom of the hill, honked twice, and Harper waved. 'Widow-lady neighbor,' he said.

'Hmm,' Anna said. 'Attractive, rich.'

'Blonde, and got the big, you know.'

'Ears.'

'Exactly the word I was groping for.'

'Yeah, grope,' she said.

The house was cool inside, and a little dim after the glare of the sun on the semi-desert; it was bachelor-neat, the neatness of a man who'd lived alone for a long time, and learned to take care of a house; not precise, not tidy, but most things in their own places, less a couple of socks next to the couch, a couple of beer cans on a table next to a couch that faced an oversized television.

'Gotta get some clothes.' He fished a half-dozen golf shirts out of a drier, plugged in an iron. 'There's a gully out back, if you want to take a look,' he said. 'Take some beer cans out. watch out for snakes.'

She'd brought a box of cartridges with her; and with the pistol in her jacket pocket, and a half-dozen empty beer cans in a sack, crunched through the short dry weeds behind the house, fifty yards out to the mouth of the gully. She found a spot where she could prop the cans against the dirt gully-wall, put them down, and backed off about eight paces.

'All right,' she said. She had the gun out, barrel down, and she said, 'One,' and the gun was up, the heel of her right hand cupped in her left, and she fired a single shot.

The gun bucked, and the muzzle blast was like a slap on the side of the head; her ears rang like a distant phone. Damn; forgot her earmuffs. But the slug had bitten into the dirt four inches from the target can. Not too bad.

She looked around, finally walked back to the house and got some Kleenex, ripped off enough to make marble-sized wads, and pushed them into her ears as she walked back out.

The Kleenex helped, and now she started running through the routine she'd been taught in her gun classes: two shots, one-two. Then three, one-two-three. At twenty feet, she'd hit the target can with one shot out of every four or five. That was fine, the cans were just aiming points: hearts. While she missed with the other shots, she was always closeinside a man's chest. She moved closer, and the number of hits went up. Eventually, she was shooting from six feet, hitting the cans almost every time.

She didn't see Harper coming, but she felt him, turned, took one of the Kleenex wads out of her ears and said, 'Bout done.'

'You're not bad,' he said. He was wearing a fresh blue golf shirt and faded jeans.

'Always had guns around,' she said. 'Out in the country. Want to try?'

'Nope. But let me see a quick two-tap.'

She nodded, put the wad of paper back in her ear, and did a quick two, one of the cans spinning away up the gully.

'But it's much easier when you're shooting at a target, nothing's moving, you're not frightened, you've got no handicaps.'

'Yeah, yeah, they told us all thatand they also said, you gotta do what you can.'

'Go ahead and do another double-tap,' he said, moving up behind her. He put his hand flat against her shoulder blade.

'Don't push, I might shoot myself in the foot,' she said. 'And I've only got one round left.'

'So shoot the one round, and don't worryI'm a highly trained veteran of police combat,' he said. 'I know what I'm doing.'

'All right,' she said, doubtfully. 'Say when.'

'Take it slow, make an aimed shot. whenever you're ready.'

'Okay.' She squared herself to the target. 'Ready?'

'Yeah.'

She focused on the cans, then lifted the gun. As she did, she tightened her legs, expecting a push, or a pull. Instead, he slipped both hands around her, catching her with a lifting motion just under her breasts, and at the same time, kissed her on the neck.

Anna felt like she was coming out of her shoesliked itand at the same time, focused on the target and squeezed off the shot.

'Jesus,' Harper groaned, reeling back, hands over his ears. 'I think you blew my eardrums out.'

'That's what you get,' she said, primly. She dumped the spent shells.

'How much longer are you going to do this?'

'I'm done,' she said. 'I could use a beer.'

As they walked back to the house, he said, 'I don't want to seem impolite, you know, but hanging around you for the last couple of days.'

'Yeah?'

'Anna. I'm getting fairly desperate.' His voice was convincing.

'I think we can fix that,' she said. And she looked around, at the hillside, the house, the perfect blue sky. 'And it's such a nice day for it.'

And they did fix it, and more than once; but the second time they made love, as Harper began to lose himself in her. Anna looked up at the ceiling and saw the holes the bullets had punched on the gully-wall, and instead of thinking of the man with her then, she thought of the man last night.

And she thought again, Gonna get you.

Chapter 19

Harper was driving down the narrow canyon road, through the night, occasional snapshots of the L.A. lights ahead of them. He was not happy with the trip: he wanted to spend the evening at his house, but Anna was going hunting, with or without him.

'BJ's: that was the only time Jason and MacAllister were hooked into me, so the guy must've been at the party.'

'No,' Harper said, shaking his head. 'You don't know how many times they told that story.'

'What's the point of telling it if nobody sees the woman? It's no big deal being in a three-way anymore, you can get one for fifty bucks down on the strip.'

'Really?' he pretended to perk up.

She ignored it: '. so I figure what happened is, I show up at the party, ask around for him, he's a little unhappy when I blow him offhe was really a mess, but he thought he could still do it, he needed the moneyand so he starts spreading the story with his pal. Whoever it is saw me, and heard the story. Had to be.'

'Doesn't have to be.'

She sighed: 'Okay. Not technically: but that's all I've got, and I'm going with it.'

The party box was running hard. Anna led the way up the narrow, smoke-filled stairway, the buzz-cut hulk at the door looking past her at Harper. When Harper looked up at him, he stepped out of sight into the party room, and a moment later stepped back out; Anna realized that a warning was now rippling through the roomHarper had been taken for a cop.

The hulk was a redneck, a southern kid with a layer of hard fat in his face and under his Eat More SpamT-shirt. He nodded vaguely at Anna and said to Harper with a thin, sarcastic edge, 'We're checking IDs, officer.'

Harper smiled a cop smile at him and said, 'I'm proud of you.'

'Have you got a warrant?'

Harper opened his mouth, but Anna cut in: 'He's not a cop. Not anymore.'

The hulk was doubtfuclass="underline" 'So what's he want? He don't fit here.'