The Night Crew

gonna send it in to Penthouse.’’
    ‘‘Aw, man, that damn Jason,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Uh, you didn’t tell anybody you’d been sleeping with me?’’
    ‘‘No. Jesus.’’
    ‘‘So give us a name, Bob,’’ said Anna.
    He was weakening. ‘‘Goddammit, if I do, you can’t tell anyone.’’
    ‘‘We’re not interested in you,’’ Harper said. ‘‘We just need a name. The guy who sold to Jason.’’
    ‘‘Tarpatkin,’’ Catwell said softly. ‘‘He works out of the Philadelphia Grill on Westwood. He’s a Russian, he’d be there by now, probably. Later, for sure.’’
    ‘‘Does he sell wizards?’’
    ‘‘What? Wizards?’’
    Harper described them and Catwell shook his head: ‘‘ Tarpatkin’s been around a while. He only sells to people he knows and he only sells coke, heroin and high-priced hash. He doesn’t fuck around with that other shit.’’
    They got a description: Tarpatkin was tall, gaunt, pale, with long frizzy black hair and a goatee. ‘‘He looks like the
    devil,’’ Catwell said. ‘‘And Jesus, please don’t let him find out who you talked to.’’ ‘‘Got time to swing by the hospital again,’’ Anna said, looking at her watch. ‘‘He says the guy’s at the grill all night.’’
    ‘‘All right.’’ Harper had a remote key entry for the car, unlocked her door from twenty feet, then opened it for her, touched her back as she got in. Almost courtly, she thought. Old-fashioned. Not unpleasant. ‘‘Sorry about that sleepingaround thing . . . bunch of kids bullshitting. Nobody pays any attention to it.’’
    ‘‘Somebody did,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Still: I’m a little shocked.’’
    ‘‘So we’ve got to check this BJ’s place. Our guy must be hanging out there, if he heard that story.’’
    ‘‘Yeah, but that doesn’t get going until late.’’
    ‘‘So we look up this Tarpatkin first,’’ Harper said. ‘‘I’m looking forward to that.’’
    In the car, headed back, she asked casually, ‘‘What kind of women do you go out with? Lawyers? Golfers? Countryclubbers?’’
    He thought for a long moment, guided the car through a knot of curb cruisers, and said, finally, ‘‘I don’t go out much any more.’’
    She looked at him curiously. ‘‘You don’t seem shy.’’
    ‘‘I’m not. I’m just . . . tired. I mostly want to work, play golf and mess around at my house. I used to go over and see Jacob a couple of times a week. Maybe we’d go out to eat.’’
    ‘‘You’re gonna miss him.’’
    ‘‘I can’t even believe he’s gone,’’ Harper said, hunching down over the steering wheel, holding on with both hands.
    ‘‘So maybe I’m being nosy.’’
    He grinned. ‘‘Maybe you are.’’
    ‘‘Well. That’s what I do,’’ she said.
    Then she shut up, because sooner or later, she thought, he’d have a little more to say. He wasn’t glib. He wasn’t exactly taciturn, but he didn’t have much of a line of bullshit.
    And after a while he said, ‘‘Going out with women . . . is just a lot of trouble. Most of them you meet, you know nothing’s going to happen—but you’ve got to spend a few hours with them anyway, being nice. I guess I’m too busy for that. When it’s obvious that nothing’s going to happen, I’d like to say, ‘Well, that’s that. I’ll get you a cab and we can all go home.’ ’’
    Anna pretended to be horrified: ‘‘Have you ever done that?’’
    ‘‘Of course not. I’m too polite.’’
    ‘‘I’d think you’d have a lot of women coming around. You look okay, you’ve got a lot of hair, guys like you make some money.’’
    ‘‘You’d be surprised how many women don’t care about money,’’ he said. But then he shrugged and added, ‘‘But, yeah. There were quite a few women around for a while. Now I’m getting a reputation as a nasty old curmudgeon, so it’s not quite as intense as when I was . . . on the market.’’
    ‘‘No girlfriends at all?’’
    ‘‘Not right now—not for a while, really. I’d like to . . .’’
    He stopped. ‘‘What?’’ she pressed. ‘‘Like to what?’’
    ‘‘We don’t know each other well enough,’’ he said, ‘‘for me to tell you what I’d like to do.’’ A parking place appeared a half-block from the hospital’s emergency entrance; Harper dove into it, chortling, fed the meter. But as they started down toward the hospital, a man in a suit in the dimly lit glassed-in entry half-turned toward them, saw