The Night Crew

think not. But these are the people who are selling your wizards.’’
    ‘‘So can you put us onto somebody?’’
    Tarpatkin shook his head. ‘‘No, I can’t. I stay away from those people. However, if one of you has a cell phone—or a regular phone, for that matter—I could ask around and call you.’’
    ‘‘So you wanna talk to the cops,’’ Harper said.
    ‘‘No. But I don’t know anything—not what you want. Why would I? I don’t hang with those people. I stay as far away as I can.’’
    ‘‘That’s bull,’’ Harper said. ‘‘You guys have always got your ears to the ground . . .’’
    Tarpatkin shrugged: ‘‘Well, you could drag me out into the street and beat the shit outa me until I tell you what you want . . . except that I don’t know it.’’
    Anna and Harper looked at each other, and then Anna dug in her purse, found a pen and wrote her cell phone number on Tarpatkin’s folded napkin. ‘‘Call me anytime,’’ she said.
    ‘‘I will. You’re a little sweetie.’’
    ‘‘About your hypothetical dealer sending his hypothetical money to the Bahamas,’’ Anna said. ‘‘How long has he been doing this, hypothetically?’’
    ‘‘Could be eight years,’’ Tarpatkin said. He bobbed his head and smiled; one of his canine teeth was solid gold, and it winked at her from beneath his ratty mustache. Outside, Harper said, ‘‘I don’t know what we could do: all we got is threats of siccing the cops on him.’’
    ‘‘We could drag him out in the alley and beat the shit out of him,’’ Anna said wryly.
    ‘‘In that place, we’d get about three steps,’’ Harper said. ‘‘I have a feeling they sort of look out for each other . . . In fact . . . just a minute.’’ He walked back to the diner door, pulled it open, looked in, then walked back, shaking his head. ‘‘He’s gone. He’ll be in the Bahamas by dawn.’’
    As they were getting into Harper’s BMW, the phone in Anna’s purse rang. She glanced at Harper, then took the phone out and clicked it on: ‘‘Hello?’’
    A little girl’s voice, oddly tinny, with an adult’s vocabulary and intonations, said, ‘‘The men you want to see are brothers named Ronnie and Tony and they live . . .’’
    ‘‘Just a minute, just a minute,’’ Anna said. And to Harper: ‘‘Gimme a paper.’’
    She found the pen in her purse and Harper groped in a door bin and finally came up with a road map. ‘‘Write on it,’’ he said. The tinny little girl’s voice recited an address in Malibu, and finished, ‘‘. . . real modern, gray weathered wood, lots of black glass, right on the hill above the highway. You won’t have any trouble finding it.’’
    And she—it, Tarpatkin?—was gone.
    ‘‘Voice-altering phone deal,’’ Harper said, when Anna described the voice. ‘‘Lot of dealers use them. You get like twenty choices of voice.’’
    ‘‘Why?’’
    ‘‘So in case we were recording it, he wouldn’t be on the record.’’
    ‘‘Strange life.’’
    ‘‘Trying to make it to retirement,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Two years.’’
    Anna glanced at her watch: ‘‘We’ve got time to run out to Malibu. Or we could head down to BJ’s.’’
    Harper glanced at her: ‘‘The question about BJ’s is this: you’ll see some people you know, but so what? How do we pick out the guy?’’
    ‘‘If he talks to me, or comes on to me . . .’’
    ‘‘Somebody’s gonna come on to you, you go to a party box. That’s what it’s for.’’
    Anna thought about it for a minute. Harper was not only right, but he was also on the track of the people who’d fed dope to his son. She’d go with that: ‘‘Malibu,’’ she said.
    Harper nodded. ‘‘We spot the house, but we don’t do anything. I want to check with some guys in the sheriff’s department, run these names. Ronnie and Tony . . .’’ Harper had a Thomas Brothers Guide stashed in the back seat. Anna turned on the car’s reading lights as they dropped onto the PCH and made the right turn up toward Malibu, and began paging through the maps.
    ‘‘If the address is right, it’s just before the turnoff for Corral Canyon,’’ she said after a moment.
    ‘‘Should be easy to pick out,’’ Harper said.
    They sat in companionable silence for a while, not much traffic, just cruising. Then Harper asked, ‘‘How come you’re not going out with anyone?’’
    ‘‘I don’t know,’’ she said. She looked out her window, away from