The Night Crew

and took a chair near the pool, on the other side of a clump of palm.
    Maran came out a few seconds later, looked around, spotted Harper and his briefcase, and went that way. Anna watched him and dug into her memory: Maran was sandyhaired or blond, but the hair was cut so tightly to his head that she couldn’t tell. His face was skeletal, his body wraithlike, his gestures tired, almost languid. He looked like one of the late, hard self-portraits of Vincent Van Gogh, and she thought: AIDS. Maybe. But he moved smoothly enough, he wasn’t shaky, as she’d expect if he were dying.
    She’d never seen him before, she was quite certain of that.
    She took out her cell phone and called Tony’s number, heard it ring thirty feet away. Harper answered, and she said, ‘‘I don’t know him—I’ve never seen him.’’
    ‘‘Okay. Stay where you are. We’ll be right back.’’
    ‘‘Where’re you going?’’ she asked, alarmed.
    But he’d rung off. A moment later, on the other side of the patio, Maran and Harper headed toward the hotel.
    She had only a moment to think about it, but something in the way Harper moved brought her out of her chair. She took just a second to drop a twenty on the table, to keep the waiter off her back, and followed them. They stepped inside an elevator and as the doors closed, Anna stopped, watched the indicator light. The light stopped on three . . .
    She turned the corner, started down toward a gift shop, swerved into a stairwell and started running. Ten seconds later, she stood at the door on the third floor, pushed carefully through, listened . . . and heard a door shut down the hallway.
    But where, exactly? The doors on the hall were identical, the hallway carpet unexpectedly thick, sound-deadening. She walked slowly down the hall, listening: took a small notebook out of her purse, and a pen; if somebody came along, she’d stop and write in it, as though she were making a note.
    But there was nobody in the hall, nothing but silence and the smell of old tobacco smoke.
    And then an impact.
    Not a sound, exactly, more of a feel; then a sound, muffled, anguished, and another impact. Up ahead, somewhere . . . she hurried down the hall now, but as quietly as she could, listening. Where was it coming from . . .
    She passed a door. A possibility. Listened. Another impact, a groan: No. Somewhere ahead, the next room.
    Another impact, an animal sound, a wounded animal. Across the hall now. Another. She pressed her ear to the door: and with the next impact, she could feel it.
    She tried the knob: locked. Hit the door with her fist. ‘‘Jake! Jake! Jaaake!’’ Her voice rising. She’d scream it, if she had to.
    The knob turned under her hand, and Jake was there, on the other side, a dazed, crazy look in his eyes. He held what appeared to be a broken chair leg. One hand was covered with blood, and there were spatters of blood on his golf shirt.
    ‘‘Ah . . .’’ she said, involuntarily. She put a hand on his chest and pushed, and he stepped back, and she went into the room.
    Maran was on the floor, face up, bleeding from the nose: he was conscious, but just barely. There was no blood at all on his upper body, but his legs looked wrong. He looked like a paraplegic whose legs had withered . . .
    Anna shut the door and said, ‘‘What’d you do?’’
    ‘‘Hit him,’’ Harper said. He seemed confused, uncertain of where he was.
    ‘‘Is he gonna die?’’ She looked toward the phone.
    ‘‘No, I just . . .’’ He drifted away, and she caught his arm and squeezed.
    ‘‘What? Jake?’’
    ‘‘Broke his legs,’’ he said. He looked at the chair leg in his hand. ‘‘A lot.’’
    ‘‘So let’s get out of here,’’ Anna said. Maran was trying to roll, but there was no leverage in his hips and legs, and he flailed weakly, futilely. He tried to turn himself with his arms, and he moaned again.
    ‘‘Call an ambulance,’’ Harper said.
    ‘‘We can do that outside,’’ she said, and she pushed Harper toward the door. Harper dropped the chair leg. Anna said, ‘‘God, wait a minute,’’ carried the leg to the bathroom and quickly, carefully rubbed it down with a towel, then dropped it in the bathtub and turned the hot water on it.
    ‘‘Now,’’ she said.
    Harper followed her dumbly through the door, down the stairs, out past the gift shop. She stopped him at a bank of phones, dialed 911, and said, ‘‘There’s a man hurt really bad in room three-thirty-three