The Night Crew

lock.
    Even if the posse arrived in the next couple of minutes, she didn’t want to be trapped inside the house with some crack-smoked goof. She bunched herself in the arch, eight feet from the door. The hand with the light disappeared, and then, in the near darkness, she saw another movement. He was reaching far inside, trying to get to the deadbolt. She waited until the hand was at the door, then launched herself across the room, one big step with the whacker already swinging, and
    Whack!
    Hit too high, and caught the window frame and the arm at the same time. And as she swung, she screamed, ‘‘Get out!’’ and raised the whacker again, but the man outside groaned and jerked his arm back through the window, tearing out more glass.
    She heard him step once heavily on the porch, a running step, and then a heavy-duty spotlight caught him from a neighbor’s yard across the canal, and someone yelled, ‘‘There he is.’’
    Anna stepped to the door and flipped on the porch light, and at the same time, someone yelled, ‘‘He’s going west,’’ and someone, from the front of the house, ‘‘There he is, Larry, there he is.’’
    Anna ran through the house to the front door and out, down the short sidewalk to the street—ten yards away, a man in jeans and a black jacket was running away from her, along the edge of the street. He was hurt, she thought: something funny in the jerky way he held his left arm.
    Pak Hee Chung, the Korean businessman from across the street, ran out of the front of his house carrying a shotgun, saw Anna and shouted, ‘‘Get back inside,’’ and then fired the shotgun in the air, a three-foot flame erupting from the gun as the muzzle blast shook the street.
    The man in black, now thirty yards away, spun, crouched. Anna shouted, ‘‘Pak, he’s got a gun,’’ just as the man fired, four quick pok-pok-pok-pok shots, and Pak fumbled the
shotgun and went down on his stomach.
    ‘‘Gun,’’ Anna screamed. ‘‘He’s got a gun.’’
    Hobie ran out of the house behind her and shouted, ‘‘Get out of the way.’’
    Anna ran back a few steps and turned to look at the man in black, now running again, forty yards, and Hobie opened up with a handgun, five fast shots into the night. The man kept going, turned the corner. There was a flash of lights, another searchlight, somebody screamed, ‘‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’’ and again she heard the pok-pok-pok and a louder bang-bang.
    Pak was on his feet again, running down the narrow street, apparently unhurt, and for no apparent reason, fired the shotgun into the air again. Again the lightning flash and the muzzle blast rattling the neighborhood.
    Like her dad’s twelve-gauge, Anna thought in an instant of abstraction. She found herself on her knees, looking up the street.
    Then Hobie was there, next to her in his pajamas, fumbling shells into a revolver. ‘‘Goddamn,’’ he said excitedly, ‘‘I just shot the shit out of Logan’s garage. Don’t tell them it was me, huh? Let them think it was the asshole, Logan’d like that anyway.’’
    ‘‘Yeah . . .’’
    Pak ran back, still carrying the shotgun: ‘‘Everybody okay?’’
    ‘‘What happened to the guy?’’ Anna asked.
    ‘‘I don’t know. Everybody was shooting, nobody got hit. Bet we scared the shit out of him, huh?’’ He looked back up the street and suddenly laughed wildly, a long scary cackle, and Hobie and Anna looked at each other. This was something new . . .
    Then three more men came running around the corner at the end of the street, one of them carrying a rifle; they stopped when they saw Pak, Hobie and Anna.
    ‘‘Who’s that?’’ the rifleman shouted.
    ‘‘Pak and Hobie and Anna,’’ Hobie yelled back.
    ‘‘Everybody okay?’’
    ‘‘Yeah . . .’’
    ‘‘He came back that way—you see him? He’s stuck down Linnie.’’
    ‘‘Didn’t see him this way.’’
    ‘‘Get the guys up here, get the guys up here . . .’’
    ‘‘Better get off the street,’’ Pak said. ‘‘Anna, lock yourself inside. We’ll get a line set up and dig him out of here.’’
    ‘‘Be careful,’’ Anna said. She looked down at her bare legs. ‘‘I better go put some pants on.’’
    Pak said, ‘‘You’re okay with me,’’ and jacked another shell into the shotgun and grinned.
    Hobie was standing behind Pak and he winked at Anna, while Anna blushed and said, ‘‘I’ll be back in a second,’’ and Pak yelled, ‘‘Get those