The Night Crew

by John Sandford

  ‘‘Red-haired guy, skinny, sorta hard-faced like a skater,’’ Harper said, giving them a description from Anna.

  ‘‘Like from Arkansas, or somewhere? This hillbilly accent?’’ asked one of the kids.

  Anna snapped her fingers: ‘‘That’s him: I forgot the accent.’’

  ‘‘Well, his name’s Bob, all right. I don’t know his last name, but he works at Kinko’s, at night.’’

  Bob was already on the job, and recognized Anna as soon as they walked in. He lifted a hand, walked over: ‘‘How’s it going?’’

  ‘‘We need to talk,’’ Anna said. ‘‘About Jason.’’

  ‘‘Jason? I haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks.’’

  ‘‘We do need to talk,’’ she said. She looked around. ‘‘Who’s your supervisor?’’

  They took him out behind the Kinko’s, into an overflow parking lot, where he lit a cigarette and said, ‘‘Jesus, I can’t believe he’s dead. Dead?’’

  ‘‘We’re gonna send his ashes back to Indiana,’’ Anna said.

  Bob—his last name was Catwell—shuddered: ‘‘When I die, I hope they don’t send me back to Fort Smith. Nasty.’’

  ‘‘He was murdered,’’ Harper said. ‘‘The guy who did it took his time. Beat him to death. His skull was in about fifty pieces.’’

  ‘‘Aw, man,’’ he said. Then: ‘‘What do you want? Why are you talking to me?’’

  ‘‘Whoever killed him may be coming after me. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is,’’ Anna said. ‘‘There’s a possibility that whoever did it was somehow involved in dealing drugs to Jason. You know Jason got into it a little heavy—and the last time I saw you, you both were into it.’’

  ‘‘Oh, no,’’ Catwell said. He flicked the cigarette in a bush and took a step back toward the store.

  Harper moved quickly—very quickly—between Catwell and the Kinko’s back door. Anna remembered the ease with which he’d taken her at the apartment. He said, ‘‘We really need to know where you got the crank, or whatever.’’

  ‘‘Fuck you,’’ Catwell said. ‘‘You can get killed talking about shit like that.’’

  ‘‘Talk to us, or talk to the cops,’’ Anna said. ‘‘The cops are crazy to get this guy. He’s killed two people and shot a third one.’’

  ‘‘That sounds like a reason not to talk.’’

  ‘‘If you give us a name, we’ll forget you,’’ Harper said, pressing him. ‘‘If you don’t, we’ll feed you to the cops. They’ll be on you like a hot sweat. And when they get the name, they won’t hide where they got it. You’ll be right down there identifying the guy.’’

  ‘‘I don’t have to tell anybody any fuckin’ thing.’’ He walked around Harper toward the door.

  ‘‘You know better than that,’’ Anna said, talking to his back. ‘‘Sometimes you do have to tell; you know they can squeeze you. If you don’t help us, the cops’ll be here in ten minutes. So help: please.’’

  ‘‘You won’t be able to stay here if you don’t,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Your ass’ll be back in Fort Smith.’’

  ‘‘Please,’’ Anna said.

  Catwell got to the door before he stopped. He faced the door, unmoving, for a full ten seconds, then finally turned, and said to Anna, ‘‘So you used to, like, party down with Jason and Sean.’’

  Anna, confused by the tone of his voice, said, ‘‘What?’’

  Harper asked, ‘‘Sean? MacAllister?’’

  Catwell shifted his gaze to Harper: ‘‘You know him?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I saw him last night,’’ Harper said. To Anna, he said, ‘‘The late Sean MacAllister.’’

  Anna was closing in on Catwell. ‘‘When you said I partied down with them, what’d you mean?’’

  Catwell’s eyes slid away, and he made a ‘‘you know’’ bob of his head: ‘‘You know . . .’’

  ‘‘No, I don’t; but I’ve got a bad feeling about what you think.’’

  ‘‘Well, maybe it’s not true,’’ Catwell said.

  ‘‘That I was sleeping with them?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I guess.’’

  ‘‘Where’d you hear that?’’

  ‘‘Listen, if it’s not true . . .’’

  ‘‘I don’t care about that, ’cause for one thing, they’re both dead.’’

  ‘‘Sean?’’ Now Catwell was scared. ‘‘They killed Sean, too?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ Anna nodded. ‘‘Same guy, but with a knife. Now where’d you hear I was sleeping with them?’’

  ‘‘Uh, you came to a party one night, off Sunset? To get Jason, but he was really wrecked? So you left without him?’’

  She remembered: ‘‘At BJ’s. Upstairs.’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’

  ‘‘What’s BJ’s?’’ Harper asked.

  ‘‘Club,’’ Anna said. To Catwell: ‘‘So what’d they tell you?’’

  ‘‘That, uh, you know . . .’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Slept with them. At, uh, the same time . . . like in a pile.’’

  ‘‘Ah, jeez,’’ Anna said. ‘‘They told everybody that?’’

  ‘‘Sure. I mean, like it wasn’t any big secret.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t even know MacAllister,’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘He and Jason had an apartment together, over by BJ’s, down the hill from there,’’ Catwell said.

  Anna looked at Harper and walked in a circle around the parking lot, ran her hand back through her hair: ‘‘Jeez.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  She looked at him: ‘‘He’s not trying to kill me. I’m perfectly safe,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Say that again.’’

  ‘‘I’m not in trouble— you’re in trouble,’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘What’re you . . .’’

  ‘‘He’s not gonna kill me. He’s gonna kill you, Jake. Somebody already said it. Pam? I think Pam did—he’s killing the guys he sees around me. Ah, God: he only shot Creek because Creek was with me. If we’d seen it . . .’’

  ‘‘Huh.’’ Harper thought it over. ‘‘Like he’s eliminating the competition.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. So I’ve got no problem.’’

  Now Harper shook his head: ‘‘Don’t think that. If he gets to you . . . I don’t think you’d enjoy the date.’’ And to Catwell: ‘‘Who all was at that party? High-school kids?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know. People coming and going. Street kids, for sure. I don’t think they were in high school no more. But I was loaded, man, I can barely remember . . . but I remember the story about Anna.’’

  ‘‘Good memory,’’ Anna said.

  Catwell said, ‘‘No, man. I mean, it was like a hot story— what you guys done. They said they were gonna send it in to Penthouse.’’

  ‘‘Aw, man, that damn Jason,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Uh, you didn’t tell anybody you’d been sleeping with me?’’

  ‘‘No. Jesus.’’

  ‘‘So give us a name, Bob,’’ said Anna.

  He was weakening. ‘‘Goddammit, if I do, you can’t tell anyone.’’

  ‘‘We’re not interested in you,’’ Harper said. ‘‘We just need a name. The guy who sold to Jason.’’

  ‘‘Tarpatkin,’’ Catwell said softly. ‘‘He works out of the Philadelphia Grill on Westwood. He’s a Russian, he’d be there by now, probably. Later, for sure.’’

  ‘‘Does he sell wizards?’’

  ‘‘What? Wizards?’’

  Harper described them and Catwell shook his head: ‘‘ Tarpatkin’s been around a while. He only sells to people he knows and he only sells coke, heroin and high-priced hash. He doesn’t fuck around with that other shit.’’

  They got a description: Tarpatkin was tall, gaunt, pale, with long frizzy black hair and a goatee. ‘‘He looks like the

  devil,’’ Catwell said. ‘‘And Jesus, please don’t let him find out who you talked to.’’

  ‘‘Got time to swing by the hospital again,’’ Ann
a said, looking at her watch. ‘‘He says the guy’s at the grill all night.’’

  ‘‘All right.’’ Harper had a remote key entry for the car, unlocked her door from twenty feet, then opened it for her, touched her back as she got in. Almost courtly, she thought. Old-fashioned. Not unpleasant. ‘‘Sorry about that sleepingaround thing . . . bunch of kids bullshitting. Nobody pays any attention to it.’’

  ‘‘Somebody did,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Still: I’m a little shocked.’’

  ‘‘So we’ve got to check this BJ’s place. Our guy must be hanging out there, if he heard that story.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, but that doesn’t get going until late.’’

  ‘‘So we look up this Tarpatkin first,’’ Harper said. ‘‘I’m looking forward to that.’’

  In the car, headed back, she asked casually, ‘‘What kind of women do you go out with? Lawyers? Golfers? Countryclubbers?’’

  He thought for a long moment, guided the car through a knot of curb cruisers, and said, finally, ‘‘I don’t go out much any more.’’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘‘You don’t seem shy.’’

  ‘‘I’m not. I’m just . . . tired. I mostly want to work, play golf and mess around at my house. I used to go over and see Jacob a couple of times a week. Maybe we’d go out to eat.’’

  ‘‘You’re gonna miss him.’’

  ‘‘I can’t even believe he’s gone,’’ Harper said, hunching down over the steering wheel, holding on with both hands.

  ‘‘So maybe I’m being nosy.’’

  He grinned. ‘‘Maybe you are.’’

  ‘‘Well. That’s what I do,’’ she said.

  Then she shut up, because sooner or later, she thought, he’d have a little more to say. He wasn’t glib. He wasn’t exactly taciturn, but he didn’t have much of a line of bullshit.

  And after a while he said, ‘‘Going out with women . . . is just a lot of trouble. Most of them you meet, you know nothing’s going to happen—but you’ve got to spend a few hours with them anyway, being nice. I guess I’m too busy for that. When it’s obvious that nothing’s going to happen, I’d like to say, ‘Well, that’s that. I’ll get you a cab and we can all go home.’ ’’

  Anna pretended to be horrified: ‘‘Have you ever done that?’’

  ‘‘Of course not. I’m too polite.’’

  ‘‘I’d think you’d have a lot of women coming around. You look okay, you’ve got a lot of hair, guys like you make some money.’’

  ‘‘You’d be surprised how many women don’t care about money,’’ he said. But then he shrugged and added, ‘‘But, yeah. There were quite a few women around for a while. Now I’m getting a reputation as a nasty old curmudgeon, so it’s not quite as intense as when I was . . . on the market.’’

  ‘‘No girlfriends at all?’’

  ‘‘Not right now—not for a while, really. I’d like to . . .’’

  He stopped. ‘‘What?’’ she pressed. ‘‘Like to what?’’

  ‘‘We don’t know each other well enough,’’ he said, ‘‘for me to tell you what I’d like to do.’’

  A parking place appeared a half-block from the hospital’s emergency entrance; Harper dove into it, chortling, fed the meter. But as they started down toward the hospital, a man in a suit in the dimly lit glassed-in entry half-turned toward them, saw them and then suddenly and hurriedly turned back to the hospital doors and disappeared inside.

  ‘‘Did you see that?’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ Harper broke into a trot, Anna running beside him. ‘‘Somebody who doesn’t want to talk to us. You know him?’’

  ‘‘Couldn’t see his face,’’ she said.

  ‘‘White hair,’’ Harper said. They were moving fast now, hit the doors to the entry, burst into the reception area. No white-haired men. A guard was looking at them, quizzically. Harper hurried toward him, Anna a half-step behind.

  ‘‘A white-haired guy just came through here,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Did you see where he went?’’

  The guard said, ‘‘Yeah, he . . . hey, who are you guys?’’

  But he’d started to point, down the hall: the elevators were just around the corner.

  ‘‘Elevators,’’ Anna said to Harper. And she said to the guard, ‘‘Call the intensive care unit on the third floor. If a white-haired guy shows up, watch him . . . he may have a gun.’’

  Harper was already hurrying toward the elevators, Anna catching up as the guard said, ‘‘Yes, ma’am,’’ and picked up a phone.

  They turned the corner. Three elevators, one with the door open, waiting. Of the other two, one was on eight, coming down. The other was on two, stopping at three.

  ‘‘Damn it,’’ Harper said. He looked around and Anna said, ‘‘Stairs’d be faster,’’ and they went left and up the stairs, around two flights; as they got to the third floor, Anna heard a door shut below them, the hollow tunnel sound of metal on concrete. She stopped, looked down. ‘‘You hear that?’’

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ Harper grunted, but he went on past, into the corridor on three. Two nurses were talking at a work station, one with a phone in her hand, and looked up at them.

  ‘‘Did a white-haired man . . .’’

  ‘‘No. Nobody came here. The guard just called . . .’’

  ‘‘Is Pam Glass still down in intensive care, the police officer?’’

  ‘‘I think so . . .’’

  They went that way, and Anna blurted, ‘‘Maybe he went down. You heard that door close, he couldn’t have been too far ahead of us.’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ They turned the corner into the intensive care unit. Glass was standing next to Creek’s bed; Creek’s eyes were closed. No white-haired man.

  ‘‘Nobody just came through here?’’ Anna asked.

  Glass shook her head. ‘‘No. What . . . ?’’

  Harper said, ‘‘Tell them,’’ and ran back toward the stairs. Anna asked Glass, ‘‘You got your gun?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Keep a hand on it, there’s a guy,’’ and turned and ran after Harper. She caught him on the stairs and Harper glanced back at her, grunted, shook his head and kept circling down. They came out in a sub-basement, looked both ways, finally turned left, a shorter hall and an exit sign.

  The exit led to an underground parking ramp: they hurried along the ramp, and Harper said, ‘‘Get the gun out.’’

  Anna took the gun out of her jacket pocket, feeling a little silly—and a little dangerous—and held it by her pants leg as they turned up the ramp toward a pay booth. A Latino was running out an adding machine in the booth, and Harper said, ‘‘Did a man just run by here?’’

  ‘‘Yes, si , he went that way, one minute.’’ He pointed up the ramp to the street. They ran up the ramp and found . . . traffic.

  Harper looked both ways, down at Anna and said, ‘‘He’s gone.’’

  She shoved the gun back into her jacket and said, ‘‘Yeah.’’

  • • •

  Creek had been awake for a few minutes, had maybe recognized Glass, but maybe not: ‘‘He was drifting,’’ Glass said. ‘‘He thought he was on his boat.’’

  Anna told Glass about the white-haired man, and finished with, ‘‘It’s possible that it was nothing.’’

  ‘‘No.’’ Harper disagreed. ‘‘That move he made—I saw that two hundred times when I was a cop. Especially working dope. Someone sees you, figures you for the cops, and he turns and splits. Runs in the front door, runs out the back. Just like that: and that’s what he was doing.’’

  ‘‘I see it all the time,’’ Glass said.

  ‘‘That’s what it felt like,’’ Anna admitted. She kept looking at Creek, then glancing away: his figure disturbed her. He looked hollow, tired. Old, with lines in his face that she hadn’t noticed before. He’d always been the opposite of those things, a guy who’d go on forever.

  Now he lay there, little of him visible other than his hair and oddly pale eyelids, brea
thing through a plastic mask, his breath so shallow, his life bumping along on the monitors overhead, like a slow day on a stock-market ticker.

  thirteen

  They left Glass and Creek—Glass said she’d try to get Creek moved again, in case the white-haired man was a real threat—and went back into the night, heading for the Philadelphia Grill.

  ‘‘The guy was probably a doper,’’ Harper said, ‘‘ ’cause he moved so fast. Like a guy who’s holding. He didn’t stop to look us over, he didn’t stop to see if we were coming after him—he just took off. And the way he went out, he must’ve already been in the hospital, because he knew about the parking ramp exit and how to get there in a hurry.’’

  ‘‘That worries me; he was scouting the place,’’ Anna said. ‘‘What surprises me is, he was old. Or older.’’

  ‘‘Maybe not—could’ve been blond, could’ve been the light on his hair.’’

  ‘‘No. He was older. Fifties, anyway. The way he moved, I’m thinking . . .’’ She closed her eyes, letting the scene run through her mind. ‘‘He saw us, he turned, he sort of groped for the door, he pulled it open, almost hit himself with it. He was a little creaky. Maybe even a little heavy. He wasn’t a kid, though. He just moved like an older guy.’’

  ‘‘That doesn’t fit the profile of any psycho I ever heard of,’’ Harper said thoughtfully. ‘‘Maybe the guy in Chicago— Gacey. He was sorta porky, and a little older than most of them. I think.’’

  ‘‘He’s not what I expected,’’ Anna said. ‘‘The prowler was fast, and the guy who shot Creek, he was fast. Really fast. He had to be a young guy.’’

  ‘‘So we’ve got two people giving us a hard time?’’ He looked at her with thin amusement. ‘‘And we can’t find either one of them?’’

  The Philadelphia Grill was a baked-meatloaf-andpowderedpotatoes place on Westwood, jammed into the lower corner of a colored-concrete building; it had a wraparound glass window, but the window was blocked with blinds pulled nearly shut.