The Night Crew

night, talking to the fishermen, and he came up with exactly zero. We don’t have anything back from the lab yet, so we’re not even sure that’s where he was killed. And the most likely motive involves the worst anonymous ratshit dopers in the whole goddamn country. So I don’t know what more to do. Keep talking to his friends. Like your pal, Creek.’’
    ‘‘Creek’s okay,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘He did time for dope,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘He was dealing big-time, is the word.’’
    ‘‘He was smuggling, not dealing. And he quit cold. He hasn’t had anything stronger than Jack Daniel’s since he got out.’’ She could hear him yawn, and it irritated her: ‘‘Maybe you need a nap,’’ she suggested.
    Wyatt ignored the sarcasm. ‘‘Yeah, I could. And Pam backs you up on Creek, by the way. She went out to talk to him.’’
    ‘‘Pam? Your partner?’’
    ‘‘Yeah.’’ Anna half-smiled, and even on the phone, Wyatt picked up the vibration.
    ‘‘Why? He’s a Romeo or something?’’
    ‘‘Not exactly. He does have an effect on . . . a certain kind of woman.’’
    ‘‘What kind?’’
    ‘‘The anal, blazer-wearing, Herme`s-scarf owning, powersunglasses type, with no kids.’’
    ‘‘Huh. Like you.’’
    Anna almost started, then grinned into the phone: she’d deserved it. Wyatt continued, ‘‘Pam’s got a collection of Herme`s, but no kids.’’
    ‘‘Big surprise,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Good-bye.’’
    ‘‘Hey, wait . . .’’
    He wanted to talk more about Pamela Glass; Anna wasn’t in the mood.
    • • •
    From the Inglewood police station, Anna headed over to Jason’s apartment. The apartment was a neat, four-building complex surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence. She took the car through a narrow access gate, which a sign said would be locked at midnight; the sign had been over-painted with gang graffiti. She glanced at her watch: already three o’clock. She had to move. Creek and Louis would be at her house in two hours, ready to roll.
    She left the car in a guest parking slot, and headed into the complex. A dozen people sat in lawn chairs around a swimming pool, drinking beer, talking in the fading sunlight. Old Paul Simon tinkled from a boom box, ‘‘Still Crazy After All These Years.’’
    Get it over.
    Jason’s apartment was routine California stucco, tan, concrete steps going up to external walkways, rust stains running down from roof-edge gutters. The weather had been dry, but the walkways smelled like rain. Green, red, yellow and blue doors alternated down the walkways, an uninterested attempt at decor. Anna looked at the keys—237—found the door, a red one, looked around, waiting for somebody to object. Nobody did; she was alone on the walk. She had a little trouble with the key, finally got it to go and pushed inside.
    Smelled carpet cleaner. He hadn’t been here long.
    The apartment was nearly dark, the only illumination coming through the open door and a back window. The room she was in, the front room, was littered with empty pizza cartons, comic books, Big Gulp plastic cups. A Playboy and a Penthouse lay in the middle of the carpet. The cops had dumped everything, and left the litter where they dumped it. She left the door open, groped for the light switch, found it, flicked it. Nothing happened. Lights out.
    ‘‘Jeez,’’ she said. Her voice didn’t quite fill the room, and she paused, and thought, What? She stepped back and looked out along the walkway, heard voices, a woman’s, then the deeper rumbling from a man.
    Coming up the stairs. Still worried about being taken for an intruder, she pushed the door shut, stood for a moment in the gloom, waiting for her eyes to adjust. There’d be a circuit breaker somewhere, she thought. Probably in a closet or back in the kitchen.
    The apartment was almost too quiet: like the ghost of Jason had muted all the little normal sounds, the creeping subliminal pitter-patter of cockroaches, warping of wood, flaking of paint. She pushed the feeling away and headed toward the small kitchen nook: Find the light . He got her as she stepped into the kitchen.
    He was off to the right, next to a small dinette table.
    Anna was looking the other way, sensed him a fraction of a second before he was on her, started to turn, started to say something, to cry out . . .
    He threw a large hand over her mouth, wrapped a heavy arm around her chest, tripped her with a sweeping leg, and they lurched back into