The Night Crew

'You take off your shoes to jump on a trampoline,' Norden said. 'You know what the lawyer said when he stepped in a cow pie?'

'Oh my God, I'm melting,' Harper said. 'You know the difference between a rooster and a lawyer?'

'A rooster clucks defiance,' Norden said, and Harper said, 'All right, she's a lawyer.'

'I told you that,' said Anna. Then she laughed, and her laugh made Harper laugh, and he asked, 'What?' and Anna said, 'I just got the clucks joke.'

'If you loved me, you wouldn't laugh,' Harper said.

Then Anna turned in her seat again and said, 'Hey, Jenny! Do you know a guy named Dick Harnett, supposed to be in porno?'

'Sureyou're doing a story that'll ruin his life, I hope,' Norden said.

'We don't even know himbut we need to talk to him. I've got a problem.' And she explained it.

Norden listened carefully and then said, 'Anna.' stopped, turned to Harper and said, 'You oughta get her out of here.'

'I've suggested that. She says she's staying; so I'm staying.'

'That's stupid,' Norden said. She leaned forward and pointed through the windshield. 'See the place with the moon in the window? Let's go in there.'

The Gibbous Moon was run by a pair of gentle aging hippies who knew Norden; the place smelled of steamed vegetables, olive oil and coffee. The counterman called Norden by name; they found a booth, ordered coffee.

'Dick Harnett was the producer of legitimate TV shows back in the sixties, but he was a sex freak and he started making some porno when that was hip, back around the Deep Throatdays,' Norden said. 'Then feminism came in and porno wasn't hip anymore and nobody legit would touch him. He was scratching around for a while, but then video came along, and you know, he knew how to do that. And he saw what was going to happen. He was one of the first big time video-porn distributors.'

'So he's rich.'

'No, no, after a while, it got so every college kid in L.A. was making a porno film with his girlfriend. amateur tapes. The bottom's sort of fallen out of the market. I get the impression that most of those guys are on hard times.'

'He's got this Bunny Films.'

'Yeah, pretending he has something to do with Playboy. He's had a dozen companies, probably. He's getting old, nowhe's still a freak, though, that's the word.'

'A sleaze-dog,' Anna said.

Norden blew gently on her coffee, then nodded: 'Yeah. And the thing is, there's always been violence around his films. He sorts of gets off on the idea of sex by force. Maybe. I don't know.'

'Maybe what?' Harper asked. 'You think he might be the guy?'

'He's not young,' Anna said to Harper.

'White hair?' Harper asked.

Norden nodded: 'Big white hair. From way backhis first company was called Silver Fox Films.'

'How do you know all this? From Lutheran Social Services?' Harper asked.

'I work with hookersyoung girls,' Norden said. 'Pull them off the street, try to get them out of the life.'

'Gets in fistfights in biker bars,' Anna said.

'Hey, who doesn't,' Norden said, raising her eyebrows as she looked at Anna.

'Huh.' Harper scratched his chin. 'And you know Harnett.'

'I know who he isI've talked to him. He used street kids from time to time and I've heard that he's made a couple of videos with really young kids. So he's on my interestlist.'

'You think he might have hired somebody like Jason?' Anna asked.

'From what you said, he's exactly the kind of guy Harnett would usesomebody who wouldn't cost him too much and does good work. Lot of kids from UCLA have worked for him,' Norden said.

Anna said to Harper, 'We've got to find him.'

Harper shook his head: 'First we've got to get a look at him. I mean, if he's the guy. you oughta know him.'

'Never heard the name,' Anna said, shaking her head.

'You did that piece on street kids, you might of bumped into him and not known it,' Norden said.

'That was six months ago,' Anna said. 'This all jumped in the last week.'

Back in the car, Anna called Louis and asked him to get a home address for Harnett. As Anna was talking to Louis, Harper asked Norden, 'How'd you get into this? I mean were you. ever personally involved with.?' He didn't want to ask her if she'd ever been a hooker.

She was amused: 'No. I went to a Lutheran college in Iowa, and then to Guatemala to work with a mission. I came back and went to law school here in CaliforniaBerkeleyand joined Lutheran Social Services as a lawyer. I met some street kids, girls, and decided that I liked the mission work better than the law work. I still do some law.'

'And you've still held onto the religious aspect. even after seeing all the stuff on the street?'

'Oh, absolutely,' Norden said, nodding, her face serious. 'I accept Jesus Christ as my savior, and I believe that he will return soon and judge us and lead those who deserve it to eternal life.'

Harper checked the mirror again, and decided she wasn't joking.

Then Anna hung up the portable and said, 'Louis can't find a home address. There're five Richard Harnetts with unlisted phones in the two counties and they're scattered all over the place.'

'We've still got his office address,' Harper said. 'Let's take a look.' And over his shoulder, he said to Norden, 'Can we drop you somewhere?'

'Heck no. I wouldn't miss this for anything.'

On the way to Burbank, Harper made a quick turn down an alley, accelerated, and Anna said, 'What?' as they whipped past the backs of a row of small stores.

'Just checking,' Harper said, watching his mirror. 'We know he was tracking us.'

They came out of the alley, crossed a street, and went right back into the continuation of the alley. At the end, Harper took a left onto a deserted residential street, then a quick right. 'All right,' he said.

Bunny Films was on the second floor of a shabby fifties concrete-and-brick low-rise office building, with a narrow parking lot wrapped around the building. There was one car in the lot, but it carried an air of abandonment. No lights showed in the building.

'Come back tomorrow,' Harper said.

'Let's not rush off,' Anna said. 'Pull around behind the building. I want to check that door.'

'Felonies are a Bad Thing,' Harper said. 'I'm sure counselor Norden would agree.'

'I just want to look at the door,' Anna said. 'Maybe somebody's around, they'd let us in.'

'Ah, man,' Harper said, but when Anna asked, 'Who climbed over that fence and got shot at, who broke into that house, who.' he said, 'Okay, okay,' and pulled around back and into a parking space with a 'Reserved for Building Tenant' sign. Norden and Anna got out, and Norden said, 'Got shot at?' while Harper waited in the car, engine running.

'We've had a couple of problems,' Anna said. The door was locked: they could see the steel tongue between the door and the frame. 'Not very far in there,' Norden said, stooping to peer at the lock. 'It's sort of tilted up. I bet if you stuck a screwdriver or a tire iron in there, you could pry the door right open.'

'Back in a minute,' Anna said. At the car, she said, 'Hey, Jake, pop the trunk for a minute.'

'Why?'

'I want to look at your golf shoes. Pop the trunk.'

'Damn it, Anna.' But he popped the trunk, and the tool kit was there, in the trunk lid, just as she remembered from the last time she'd been in the trunk, a few seconds before she'd been attacked in the parking lot. She turned the hand screw on the tool-box cover, the cover dropped open. She selected a screwdriver, closed the trunk and walked back to the door.

'What do you think?' she asked Norden.

Norden cast a quick look around. A stream of cars was passing on the street, a half-dozen teenagers were lounging around a picnic table at a Foster's Freeze a hundred feet down the street. Norden said, 'Don't make any big moves and do it quick.'