Seize the Night

sketch of the crow.
    “Show her this. Ask her if she remembers any case Louis worked on … anything that might explain this.” As we crossed the backyard, Sasha took my hand.
    Bobby said, “Who's spinning music when you're here?”
    “Doogie Sassman's covering for me,” she said.
    “Mr. Harley-Davidson, the man-mountain love machine,” Bobby said, leading us along the brick walk beside the garage. “What program format does he favor head-banging heavy metal?”
    “Waltzes,” Sasha said. “Fox-trots, tangos, rumbas, cha-chas. I've warned him he has to stick with the tune sheet I gave him, cause otherwise, he'd just play dance music. He loves ballroom dancing.”
    Pushing open the gate, Bobby stopped, turned, and stared at Sasha in disbelief. To me, he said, “You knew this?”
    “No.”
    “Ballroom dancing?” Sasha said, “He's won some prizes.”
    “Doogie? He's as big as a Volkswagen Beetle.”
    “The old Volkswagen Beetle or the new one?”
    “The new one,” Bobby said.
    “He's a big guy, but he's very graceful,” Sasha said.
    “He has a tight turning radius,” I told Bobby.
    The thing that happens so easily among us, the thing that makes us so close, was happening again. The groove or rhythm or mood or whatever it is we so routinely fall into with one another we were falling into it again. You can handle anything, including the end of the world as we know it, if at your side are friends with the proper attitude.
    Bobby said, “I thought Doogie hangs out in biker bars, not ballrooms.”
    “For fun, he's a bouncer in a biker bar two evenings a week,” Sasha said, “but I don't think he hangs out there otherwise.”
    “For fun?” Bobby said.
    “He enjoys breaking heads,” Sasha said.
    “Who doesn't,” I said.
    As we followed Bobby into the alleyway, he said, “The dude is a way skilled audio engineer, rides a Harley like he came out of the womb on it, dates awesome women who make any Ms. Universe look like the average resident of an oyster shell, fights drunken psycho bikers for fun, wins prizes for ballroom dancing—this sounds like a bro we want with us when we go back to Wyvern.”
    I said, “Yeah, my big worry has been what we'll do if there's a tango competition.”
    “Exactly.” To Sasha, Bobby said, “You think he'd be up for it?”
    She nodded. “I think Doogie's always up for everything.”
    I expected to find a police cruiser or an unmarked sedan behind the garage, and unamused authority figures waiting for us. The alley was deserted.
    A pale gray swath of sky outlined the hills to the east. The breeze raised a chorus of whispers from the windbreak of eucalyptus trees along the canyon crest, as if warning me to hurry home before the morning found me.
    “And Doogie has all those tattoos,” I said.
    “Yeah,” Bobby said, “he's got more tattoos than a drunken sailor with four mothers and ten wives.”
    To Sasha, I said, “If you're getting into any hostile situation, and it involves a super-huge guy covered with tattoos, you want him on your side.”
    “It's a fundamental rule of survival,” Bobby agreed.
    “It's discussed in every biology textbook,” I said.
    “It's in the Bible,” Bobby said.
    “Leviticus,” I said.
    “It's in Exodus, too,” Bobby said, “and Deuteronomy.”
    Alerted by movement and by a glimpse of eye shine, Bobby snapped the shotgun into firing position, I drew the Glock from my shoulder holster, Sasha pulled her revolver, and we swung toward the perceived threat, forming a manic tableau of paranoia and rugged individualism that would have been perfection if we'd just had one of those pre-Revolutionary War flags that featured a coiled serpent and the words Don't Tread on Me .
    Twenty feet north of us, along the eastern side of the alley, making no sound to compete with the soughing of the wind, coyotes appeared among the trunks of the eucalyptus trees. They came over the canyon crest, through the bunch-grass and wild flax, between bushy clumps of goats beard.
    These prairie wolves, smaller than true wolves, with narrower muzzles and lighter variegated coats, possess much of the beauty and charm of wolfs, of all dogs. Even in their benign moments, however, after they have hunted and fed to contentment, when they are playing or sunning in a meadow, they still look dangerous and predatory to such an extent that they are not likely to inspire a line of cuddly stuffed toys, and if one of them is chosen as the ideal photogenic pet by