The Night Crew

'Maybe you better call Inglewood,' she said. 'I better file a complaint: the guy was trying to rape me.'

Silence.

'Okay, I'll do the call,' A

'Jesus, you're a hardass. You're just like Pam, bustin' my balls all day, now I gotta deal with you. I'm tired of it.'

'Life sucks and then you die,' A

More silence. Then: 'The kid who jumped off the building was tripping on wizards.'

'I don't know that brand,' A

'Acid and speed. Maybe a lick of PCP.'

'Okay. Like rattlers.'

'Rattlers were last year,' he said. 'But yeahlike that. A little heavier on the acid. Anyway, he popped a couple and decided the ledge was a runway and that he could fly.'

'So.'

'So the wizards are little pink extruded dots on strips of wax paper.'

'I've seen them,' A

'When you buy them, the dealer just rips off however many dots you can pay for,' Wyatt explained. 'So the kid had a strip of dots in his jacket pocket. When we rolled your friend over, so did he; what was left of them, anyway, coming out of the water.'

'Huh. That's weird.'

'That'snot weird,' Wyatt said. 'That's just a coincidence: these fuckin' wizards are all over the place. But I get this wild idea, and put the two strips together, and guess what? The two papers matched up. Your friend's strip had been ripped off the jumper's.'

'What?'

'Yeah. Now that'sweird.'

A

Wyatt sighed again, and said, 'Look, you seem like an okay. person. Huh?'

'Yeah, I'm an okay person.' Okaymeant that a cop could trust herpersonexpressed a belief that she was some kind of wacko feminist to be doing what she was doing, and he didn't want to argue about it.

'He's an ex-cop,' Wyatt said. 'He's a decent guy.'

'He's a jerk, he scared my brains out,' A

'He's interested in the case,' Wyatt said.

'Interested? Is that all it takes?'

Wyatt cut her off: 'His name is Jake Harper,' he said. 'The jumper was Jacob Harper, Junior. His son. His only kid.'

'Ah.' What had Harper said? Ghouls making a buck off snuff films.

She let it go. I'm okay, she thought, when Wyatt hung up.

Jason's apartment was a sad clutter of heavily used clothing, cheap film gear, books on directing and movie-making, portfolio tapes, cans of Campbell 's soup: all the hopes a kid might have in Hollywood, California. Bundled up and sent back to Peru, Indiana, it wouldn't mean a thing.

A

'. not worth much, but we'll be taking it out in the next few days. Until then, it's under police seal,' A

'If it ain't too torn up, he's got some deposit money coming back,' the manager said.

'Nice of you to mention it,' A

The manager was a chunky square-faced Iranian with a black beard and an accent that combined Detroit and Esfahan: 'Ain't my building. And the owner's an asshole. Why should he get the kid's cash?'

'Right on, brother,' A

Chapter 7

Along bad day, and still not over.

On the way home, A

A man was washing the windshield on a Volvo station wagon, at a self-serve pump. He was wearing jeans and a loose, wide-sleeved white cotton shirt, such as might be advertised in The New YorkerSea Island cotton, like that.

The instant she saw himhis hair thi

She slid down in her seat, but couldn't tear her eyes from him. He finished with the squeegee, turned and deftly flipped the squeegee stick back toward a water can hung on the side of the gas pump. The sponge end of the stick hit and slipped perfectly through the hole in the water can: exactly as she'd seen him do it fifty times before.

'Oh my God,' she said aloud.

A car behind her honked, and her eyes snapped up to the rearview mirror, then down to the traffic light. Green. She automatically sent the car through the intersection, then pulled over and turned.

The Volvo was still there, but Clark had gone inside. A moment later, he came back out, slipping his wallet into his pocket, climbed in the car, turned on the lights, eased into the cross street, then zipped across Santa Monica and headed the other way.

She thought about following him.

Thought too long, and he was gone.

Clark.

She drove home on autopilot, random thoughts, images and memories scrambling over each other like rats. She stuck the car in the narrow garage, slipped sideways past the front fender into the house and, without turning on the lights, went to the phone.

She had messages waiting on the answering service: she ignored them, and dialed Cheryl Burns in Eugene, Oregon. She mumbled the number to herself as she poked it into the handset, praying that Cheryl would be in her shop. She was: she answered on the first ring. 'Hello, Pacifica Pottery.'

'Cheryl? This is A

'A

'Sort of messy right now,' A

'Not Creek!'

'No. A guy named Jason, he was a college kid we used part-time, you don't know him.' Awkward segue: 'Listen, what do you hear from Clark?'

There was an empty heartbeat there, then an almost masculine chuckle: 'Uh-oh. Are you seeing him again?'

'Not seeing him, but I just saw him,' A

'I know. He called and asked for your phone number, last month sometime. I didn't give it to him.'

'He called! Why didn't you tell me?'

'Because you messed each other up so bad the first two times. I didn't want the responsibility.'

'Cheryl,' A

'No, you can't.' In her mind's eye, A

'Damn it, Cheryl.'

'. But I saved his L.A. address and phone number in case you called and wanted it,' Cheryl said, with a teasing tone. 'I had the feeling you might hook up. Cosmic vibrations, I guess.'

A little jolt, there. Pleasure? 'What's he doing here?'

'He's got an artist-in-residence gig with UCLA. Composition. Two years, he said, so. he'll be around.' Another dead space, then Cheryl again. 'Well? You want his number?'

'I don't know.'

'I better go get it. then you can tell me about the murder.'

Cheryl read Clark 's phone number; A

At CNN, the Harper kid was flying off the ledge, followed by ten seconds of talking head, then a shot of the pig taking out the Rat. They'd picked the Keystone Kops version.