The Night Crew

the living room and hit the floor, Anna on the bottom. The impact took her breath away for a second, and she thrashed frantically, trying to get an arm loose, trying to get her feet working, trying to kick, but he was very strong, very professional: he’d done this before.
    The arm around her chest tightened and he pulled her head back and said, close by her ear, ‘‘If you scream, I’ll punch your lights out. If you stop kicking I’ll let you breathe. C’mon . . .’’ They thrashed for another moment, but he’d wrapped a leg around her legs and she felt as though she were fighting an anaconda.
    And he said, ‘‘C’mon, goddammit, I don’t want to hurt you, I just want you to shut up. If you’ll shut up, nod.’’
    Exhausted, sweating, scared, she relaxed, involuntarily, and nodded and he said, ‘‘I swear to God, if you scream, I’m gonna bust you in the mouth.’’
    And he took his hand away from her mouth.
    She drew a breath to scream, reconsidered: ‘‘Let me go,’’ she said, trying to look at him. She started thrashing again, trying to turn, but he held her. All she could see was his chin.
    ‘‘We’re gonna go like this over to the couch, and I’m gonna sit you down. I’ll be right in front of you and if you yell I’ll hit you. I want to be clear about that.’’
    ‘‘All right, all right.’’ Not hurt yet.
    ‘‘Here we go.’’ He rolled, and pried one arm around behind her, caught her fingers in a hold, and she thought, Cop, and said, aloud, ‘‘That hurts.’’
    ‘‘Not much,’’ he said. ‘‘Not yet, but it will if you put a move on me.’’
    ‘‘Are you a cop? You sound like a cop.’’
    ‘‘No.’’ He’d released her legs, got his knees under himself, and slowly pushed up to his feet, pulling Anna along, past a cable reel that Jason was using as a coffee table. Then he pushed her and twirled her at the same time, she found herself staggering uncontrollably backward, until the couch hit her calves and she fell back onto it. He was right there, his face obscured in the gloom, a fist an inch from her chest.
    ‘‘What’s your name?’’ he asked.
    ‘‘Let me out of here.’’
    ‘‘What’s your fuckin’ name?’’
    ‘‘Fuck you.’’ He didn’t seem frightening, somehow. ‘‘Let me out of here.’’
    ‘‘In a minute. Gimme your arms.’’
    ‘‘What?’’
    ‘‘Gimme . . .’’ He grabbed one hand, and she tried to jerk free, but he put a hand on her forehead and said, ‘‘Sit still, goddammit.’’
    ‘‘What do you want?’’
    ‘‘Needle tracks.’’
    What? She stopped fighting, and a penlight clicked on. He turned her arm wrist up, and played the beam down her forearm.
    ‘‘Other arm.’’
    She turned her other arm up, and he looked it over, then shined the light into her eyes, dazzling her.
    ‘‘What’s your name?’’ he asked again.
    ‘‘Fuck you. Who are you? What the hell are you doing here?’’
    ‘‘You oughta watch your mouth,’’ he said. ‘‘And it’s none of your business. You sit right there. If you start to get up . . .’’
    ‘‘Yeah, I know, you’ll beat me up.’’
    He sounded embarrassed: ‘‘Yeah.’’
    He was groping around on the floor, keeping his eyes on her, but not until he moved back to her did she see that he’d picked up her purse. He popped it open and dumped it on the wire-reel table, shined the penlight on it and stirred through it.
    Anna’s purse was small, and there wasn’t much: a billfold, a comb, a lipstick, a roll of Clorets, a handful of change, a couple of ripped-in-half movie tickets. He opened the billfold and looked at her driver’s license. She still couldn’t see his face, and the light, held chest high, made it more difficult.
    ‘‘Anna Batory,’’ he said. He looked up from the license. ‘‘You were with the TV crew.’’
    She wasn’t going to be raped, she decided; probably not beaten up. The guy had a hard force about him, but not the hyped energy that produced an attack. And he knew about her: ‘‘Yeah, I’m with a video crew.’’
    ‘‘You shot the video on Jacob Harper.’’
    ‘‘Who?’’ Now she was confused.
    ‘‘Jacob Harper—the kid who tried to fly off the Shamrock.’’
    ‘‘Oh. Yeah, we were there.’’ What did the jumper have to do with Jason’s apartment?
    ‘‘Where’d Jason O’Brien get his dope?’’
    ‘‘I don’t know . . .’’
    ‘‘C’mon, he worked for you, you’ve got a key to his