The Night Crew

out of my booth.’’
    ‘‘We’re not cops, but I used to be, and I still know a lot of deputies,’’ Harper said. ‘‘The thing is, you’re caught right in the middle of a major murder case and the cops are freaking out. You can talk to us, off the record, or talk to them, on the record.’’
    ‘‘You’re talking bullshit, man, I don’t know any murder mysteries.’’ His language veered from formal, almost scholarly, to the street, and then back again; he might have been two people. Tarpatkin shook out the newspaper, as though he were about to resume reading.
    ‘‘One of your clients, Jason O’Brien, got taken off in a really bad way a couple of days ago. Beat to death, carved up with a knife.’’ When Harper said it, Anna was watching Tarpatkin’s eyes: they flickered when Jason’s name was mentioned. ‘‘And maybe you know a guy named Sean MacAllister?’’
    Another flicker: ‘‘He knows them both,’’ Anna said to Harper, not taking her eyes off Tarpatkin.
    Tarpatkin didn’t deny it: this was news he could use. ‘‘Carved up?’’
    ‘‘You know a guy who likes knives?’’ Harper asked.
    Tarpatkin thought for a second, then said, ‘‘I know a couple of them, but they don’t know those two. When did this happen? I haven’t seen anything about it in the paper.’’
    Anna told him, briefly, and then said, ‘‘We’re looking for a guy selling wizards. We understand you don’t, but we’re hoping that you might know who does. Right around here— the university neighborhood.’’
    Tarpatkin looked her over for a moment, then said, ‘‘Honey, I don’t know what kind of mission you’re on, but you really don’t want to mess around with those people. They’re amateurs—they’re crazy and they’ll kill you for a nickel.’’
    ‘‘Somebody might be trying to kill me for free,’’ Anna said. ‘‘We’re trying to get him to stop.’’
    ‘‘Huh.’’ He pulled at his goatee, then said, ‘‘Let me give you fifteen seconds on how the smart part of this business works—and for the tape recorder, if you’re wearing one, you’ll notice that this is all hypothetical.’’
    He pulled a napkin out of a chrome napkin holder and smoothed it on the tabletop. Anna thought he was going to write on it, but then he started folding it as he talked: L.A.diner origami. ‘‘Suppose you got a small-time dealer,’’ Tarpatkin said. ‘‘He’s got maybe seventy-five, a hundred regular customers. He only takes new customers from recommendations, and only after looking them over.
    ‘‘This guy is making, say, ten grand a week after expenses, no taxes. He flies over to the Bahamas a few times a year and makes a deposit, takes a little vacation. In ten years, with some careful investments, he’s got eight or ten million in the bank, and he moves to the Bahamas full time. Or Mexico. Costa Rica. Somewhere . . .
    ‘‘If he’s smooth, he don’t have to worry too much about the cops, because he’s such a small-timer, and when they come around, he cooperates. The cops always want the big guys—Christ, if they busted everybody like this small-timer, they’d have to build twenty new jails. So, they don’t. I mean, hey, he’s a small businessman. A little better than insurance, maybe not so good as selling stocks and bonds.’’
    Anna broke in: ‘‘But these other guys are different.’’
    Tarpatkin shook a finger at her, like a schoolmaster making a point. ‘‘I’m coming to that, honey—they’re very different. They go into the dope business, and they think, ‘If I sell a pound of crank, I make ten thousand dollars. If I sell a ton of crank, I make twenty million dollars. So I’ll sell a ton of crank. This year.’
    ‘‘And since they’ve been to the movies, they know the business is dangerous. So they buy a load of guns and knives and dynamite and chain saws and whatever else they can think of. Then to get their heads right, they get into the product themselves. The next thing you know, you’ve got these drug freaks with guns and dynamite and chain saws, and there’s crank all over the street and everybody’s going crazy looking for them—competitors, cops, DEA. They always find them. Go to jail, don’t get your twenty million. Or wind up in a bush somewhere, with your head cut off.’’
    He shook his head sadly, and asked in his street patois: ‘‘Is this any fuckin’ way to run a fuckin’ business?’’ And then back to the scholar: ‘‘I