The Night Crew

probably a friend of O’Brien,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘Look, do you want a car to come around? I can call Inglewood.’’
    She thought about it for a moment. ‘‘No, I guess not. I mean, unless you wanted to look for fingerprints. You know, detect something.’’
    Wyatt sighed and said, ‘‘We got thirty sets of fingerprints out of the ShotShop, and we could probably get thirty more.’’
    Anna said, ‘‘Tell me the truth about something. You know, instead of lying.’’
    ‘‘Sure.’’
    ‘‘Do you think Jason might be connected to the jumper we filmed?’’
    Wyatt hesitated before he answered, and Anna read it: ‘‘You do!’’ she said. ‘‘So’d the guy here. Tell me why.’’
    ‘‘Look, Miss—Anna—goddammit, you’re not a police officer, okay? Just clean up the apartment, pack up his stuff and get out of there.’’
    ‘‘Maybe you better call Inglewood,’’ she said. ‘‘I better file a complaint: the guy was trying to rape me.’’
    Silence.
    ‘‘Okay, I’ll do the call,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I know where his prints are, too. They’re all over my purse and billfold. I’ll mention to the Inglewood cops that you might have some idea about who it is.’’
    ‘‘Jesus, you’re a hardass. You’re just like Pam, bustin’ my balls all day, now I gotta deal with you. I’m tired of it.’’
    ‘‘Life sucks and then you die,’’ Anna said.
    More silence. Then: ‘‘The kid who jumped off the building was tripping on wizards.’’
    ‘‘I don’t know that brand,’’ Anna said, breaking in.
    ‘‘Acid and speed. Maybe a lick of PCP.’’
    ‘‘Okay. Like rattlers.’’
    ‘‘Rattlers were last year,’’ he said. ‘‘But yeah—like that. A little heavier on the acid. Anyway, he popped a couple and decided the ledge was a runway and that he could fly.’’
    ‘‘So . . .’’
    ‘‘So the wizards are little pink extruded dots on strips of wax paper.’’
    ‘‘I’ve seen them,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘When you buy them, the dealer just rips off however many dots you can pay for,’’ Wyatt explained. ‘‘So the kid had a strip of dots in his jacket pocket. When we rolled your friend over, so did he; what was left of them, anyway, coming out of the water.’’
    ‘‘Huh. That’s weird.’’ ‘‘
    That’s not weird,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘That’s just a coincidence: these fuckin’ wizards are all over the place. But I get this wild idea, and put the two strips together, and guess what? The two papers matched up. Your friend’s strip had been ripped off the jumper’s.’’
    ‘‘What?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. Now that’s weird.’’
    Anna made a quick connection: ‘‘So how’d the guy here know about it?’’
    Wyatt sighed again, and said, ‘‘Look, you seem like an okay . . . person. Huh?’’
    ‘‘Yeah, I’m an okay person.’’ Okay meant that a cop could trust her— person expressed a belief that she was some kind of wacko feminist to be doing what she was doing, and he didn’t want to argue about it.
    ‘‘He’s an ex-cop,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘He’s a decent guy.’’
    ‘‘He’s a jerk, he scared my brains out,’’ Anna said, angry at Wyatt’s defense. ‘‘What’d he want?’’
    ‘‘He’s interested in the case,’’ Wyatt said.
    ‘‘Interested? Is that all it takes?’’
    Wyatt cut her off: ‘‘His name is Jake Harper,’’ he said. ‘‘The jumper was Jacob Harper, Junior. His son. His only kid.’’
    ‘‘Ah.’’ What had Harper said? Ghouls making a buck off of snuff films?
    She let it go. I’m okay, she thought, when Wyatt hung up.
    • • •
    Jason’s apartment was a sad clutter of heavily used clothing, cheap film gear, books on directing and movie-making, portfolio tapes, cans of Campbell’s soup: all the hopes a kid might have in Hollywood, California. Bundled up and sent back to Peru, Indiana, it wouldn’t mean a thing.
    Anna did a quick survey, separating the potentially salable stuff from the useless, stacked the salable stuff, and then found the apartment rental office and talked to the sleepy manager.
    ‘‘. . . not worth much, but we’ll be taking it out in the next few days. Until then, it’s under police seal,’’ Anna said. ‘‘They still need to process some fingerprints, so if you could keep your eye on the place, we’d all appreciate it.’’
    ‘‘If it ain’t too torn up, he’s got some deposit money coming back,’’ the manager said.
    ‘‘Nice