The Night Crew

thought they were being busted. But a cop coming up from the next yard saw her, found the bag. They took five pounds of methedrine off the hill, got a warrant, took a half-pound of cocaine out of a bedroom and found receipts for a couple of rental storage places.’’
    ‘‘Almost big enough to make the papers,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘Almost . . . They took the rental places down this morning and found lots of interesting chemicals. There’s a factory, somewhere—they’re still going through the paper, looking for an address.’’
    ‘‘And they’re all arrested.’’
    ‘‘All but Tony. Turns out Tony didn’t live there—he lives up the hill—so they had to let him go.’’ He looked bleakly pleased with that.
    ‘‘So what’re we going to get out of this? Will they ask about your kid?’’
    ‘‘That’s part of the agenda,’’ Harper said, putting on his grim face. ‘‘As a favor. They owe me, now.’’ Creek didn’t seem to have changed much, although his doctor said he was improving: ‘‘He was awake, asking about you,’’ the doc said. ‘‘He was more worried about you than about himself.’’
    ‘‘So he’s fine,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘No. He’s still got one foot in the woods. He could still have a clot problem, the way his lung was damaged . . . but he’s looking better. And that friend of his is a real morale boost.’’
    Glass was sitting by Creek’s bed, reading a mystery, looking up every few minutes to see if he had wakened.
    ‘‘I should have been here,’’ Anna said. A little finger of envy touched her. Glass had been here, she hadn’t; she had been the one perceived as faithful. Of course, she hadn’t been: she’d been running around Malibu getting shot at, and necking with a guy Creek didn’t like . . .
    ‘‘. . . blood work looks fine,’’ the doctor was saying. ‘‘He
    could be out walking around in a week, and you’d never know he’d been shot.’’
    But Creek’s face still looked like it had been made of old parchment; Anna shivered, and turned away. They were just leaving the hospital when the cell phone rang and Anna lifted it out of her jacket pocket and said, ‘‘Yeah?’’
    ‘‘Let me talk to Harper.’’ A man’s voice, not one that she knew.
    She looked at Harper and said, ‘‘Jake: It’s for you.’’
    Harper took the phone and said, ‘‘Yeah.’’
    He listened for a moment, then handed it back to Anna: ‘‘I don’t know how to hang it up.’’
    ‘‘What’s happening?’’
    ‘‘I gotta drop you off.’’
    She looked at him, catching his eyes: she was beginning to get into him, like she could get into Creek. Harper’s eyes shifted, but just a second too late. ‘‘Something happened,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m coming.’’
    ‘‘Anna . . .’’
    ‘‘Shut up. I bailed your butt out last night when you were falling off the cliff: that counts for something.’’
    ‘‘Something—but this is different.’’
    ‘‘I’m going,’’ she said. Harper drove downtown, hard, jumping lights, busting traffic, ignoring the fingers from angry drivers, getting there. ‘‘Gimme the phone,’’ he said, as they pulled into a noparking zone outside the Parker Center. She handed it to him and he poked in a number, listened for a minute, then said, ‘‘We’re here,’’ and then, ‘‘Okay.’’
    He handed the phone back to Anna and said, ‘‘Wait here. If a cop tries to move you, tell him your boyfriend’s a cop and he’s inside talking to Lieutenant Austen.’’
    She nodded and said, ‘‘Okay,’’ and he hopped out of the car and hurried away. Five minutes later, he was back. He jumped in the car, did a U-turn and they were gone, headed north.
    ‘‘Where’re we going?’’
    ‘‘Malibu,’’ he said.
    ‘‘What for?’’
    ‘‘See a guy.’’
    ‘‘Jake, goddammit . . .’’
    ‘‘Look: I don’t know what’s going to happen.’’
    Ronnie’s house—or Tony and Ronnie’s, or whatever it was—looked abandoned behind its gate. Fluorescent-yellow crime-scene tape was wrapped around the stone posts, with a notice forbidding entry to anyone who wasn’t a cop.
    Harper pulled into the driveway, climbed out, stuck a key in a lock at the side of the gate. As the gate silently rolled back, Harper got into the car and drove up the driveway to the garage, where he parked. He walked around behind the car, pressed a button on his key and the trunk popped open. He took out a small