The Night Crew

'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 A

'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.

Bu

'Come back tomorrow,' Harper said.

'Let's not rush off,' A

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

'I just want to look at the door,' A

'Ah, man,' Harper said, but when A

'We've had a couple of problems,' A

'Back in a minute,' A

'Why?'

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

'Damn it, A

'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.'

A

'Talk about irresponsible,' Norden said, looking at the door. 'I'm surprised the junkies haven't carried off the furniture.'

'Probably scared to,' Harper said. He'd killed the engine, and walked up behind them. 'We're right out in the open, probably nine people calling the cops right now.'

'Door was open,' Norden said.

'Yeah, right. Screwdriver marks all over it, and we've still got the screwdriver.' Harper pulled the door tight against the frame, took the screwdriver from A

No Bu

'Well, shit,' Harper said. 'Maybe he moved.'

'Maybe he just doesn't want people to know where he is,' A

Harper looked up and down the hall, shook his head, put his back against the wall opposite the door, his foot next to the doorknob, and pushed. The lock ripped out of the door, and they were in.

'If the cops come, we're busted,' he said, flipping on the lights. 'Let's make it quick. And for Christ's sake, don't touch anything with your fingertips if you can help it.'

Harnett's office was one large room with a desk in the center, filing cabinets around the edge and a small sofa and easy chair combination on a faded Persian carpet in front of the only window. The window looked over the parking lot, and from there over a fence into a residential back yard. Something in the back yard may have interested Harnett, because a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars sat on the windowsill.

A door led off to the right. It was unlocked, and when A

The main surface of his L-shaped desk was a heap of business paperenvelopes, faxes, trade magazines, clippingsthat flowed across, and in and out of two in and out boxes. The short leg of the L held a Gateway P5-90 tower computer and a Vivitron monitor, with cables to a Hewlett-Packard laser printer. A short butcher-block table held a Panasonic fax machine and a Canon copier. A large-screen TV sat in a wooden cabinet in the corner, and the lights of two different videotape players glowed from beneath it. The desk telephone had five buttons.

'Busy guy,' A

A

'What're you doing?' Harper asked.

'All kinds of correspondence,' Norden said, dumping paper into the box. 'Interesting stuff. I might be able to use it.'

A

As A

'Let's go,' A

'Been here too long,' Harper said.

'I'm taking the Rolodex, too,' Norden said. 'What a jerk.' She threw the Rolodex into the box full of correspondence and followed Harper to the door. A

'C'mon,' Harper said.

'One minute.'

A

'What're you doing?'

'Shhh.'

The tape started with a womana porn consumer's idea of a classy businesswoman, in a suit, with long, shoulder-length hair, and a skirt that ended a quarter-inch below her hipsapproaching the stoop of a New York brownstone. From the look of it, the plot would be thin. A