'Yeah, yeah,' she said, distracted. He put the plate down and caught her around the waist and said, 'Hey. Listen to me. We'll work out this Clark business laterbut for now, we gotta keep your ass alive.' He squeezed her butt, but she wiggled away.

'Are you still pissed?' Harper asked.

'Oh, I'm not pissed. Wait a minute: yeah, I am pissed, at Creek.'

'Creek is trying to take care of you,' Harper said. He pushed the plate toward her, and she took a piece of jelly toast.

'I was thinkingI was hopingthat I'd never have to deal with the Clark thing,' Anna said to him. 'Maybe it'd just fade away. It sorta was, but. I don't know. Maybe it wasn't.'

'Are you still in love with him?'

'No, I don't think so. But I wasin love with him. And there was never any end-point; I couldn't ever say, "Well, that's over with, now I can do something else." I needed an end-point.'

'We haven't known each other very long, but I never would have seen you this way,' Harper said, his face intently serious. 'I would've thought that when you broke off with somebody, that'd be it: and you'd never think about him again.'

'Oh, no,' she said, as serious as he. 'With a real relationship, I'd think about it forever. I'll think about you forever, no matter what happens.'

'Really?'

'Really,' she said. 'Forever.'

Louis showed up a half hour later, leading a ratty-looking, dark-haired man, unshaven with a heavy shock of black hair that fell down over his oval face. He wore a green army field jacket from the sixties, with a faded name tag that said Ward.

'Jimmy Coughlin,' he said, shaking Anna's hand and peering at Harper. 'You're Jake Harper.'

'Yeah,' Harper said. He reached out and touched the name tag on Coughlin's jacket. 'Who's Ward?'

'Fuck if I know,' Coughlin said cheerfully. He looked around the living room. 'We ready?'

'You know what you're doing?' Anna asked.

'Sure, no problem,' he said. 'I used to pretend I was a news guy and shoot riots and raids and shit.'

'Let me get my jacket,' Anna said.

Coughlin drove, not fast, but expertly, using all three rearview mirrors. There were three tracking cars, he said, one in front and two behind. Louis sat in the back, in his regular chair, monitoring the radios; when Anna looked out the passenger side window, she could almost pretend that this past week hadn't happened.

'Which way?' Coughlin asked.

'Let's sort of loaf up the PCH, and then catch Sunset where it comes down, and go back east,' Anna said. 'Play it by ear.'

Coughlin nodded, took a small hand radio out of his pocket, and relayed the route to the tracking cars.

'You do this much?' Anna asked.

'Not exactly like this, but, you knowlike this,' he said.

'Dopers, mostly?'

'Little of this, little of that,' he said. 'Some dope. Doing a little more vice lately, been backing up some of the gang guys.

'You like it?' Anna asked.

'Sure, it's fun,' he said, and she had to smile: he was a cheerful guy, despite his ratlike exterior. Then: 'I couldn't help noticing that you're carrying a gun.'

'Yup.' She nodded.

'You got a permit?' he asked.

'Are you kidding?'

'Maybe you should give it to methe gun,' he said.

'Maybe not,' Anna said.

'I could take it,' he suggested.

'Cop takes gun from woman stalked by serial killer who brutally murdered movie actress.' She looked over her shoulder at Louis. 'Could we get that on the air?'

'Are you kidding?' Louis said. 'I could sell it everywhere. But it'd sound better if we said, "Cop takes gun from woman stalked by serial killer who brutally murdered movie actress, while gangs run wild with assault rifles in South-Central".'

'That isan improvement,' Anna said.

'It'd do okay,' Louis said. 'But if you could get him to rough you up a little bit, we'd get more than we got for the jumper.'

'How about it?' Anna said, turning back to Coughlin and batting her eyes. 'Do you carry a club or a sap or anything? Could you push me around a little? I mean, I kind of. like it.'

Louis said, 'Cop takes gun from beautiful woman stalked by serial killer who brutally murdered glamorous, drug-abusing "90210" actress, abuses her with baton, while gangs ran wild with assault rifles in South-Centraland she likes it.'

Coughlin hunched over the steering wheel and shook his head sadly. 'Christ, this could be a long night,' he said.

Chapter 23

They took the Pacific Coast Highway north as far as Sunset, Sunset back east. They narrowly missed hitting a Mercedes Benz 500E that came rocketing out of a Beverly Hills side street and crossed Sunrise without slowing. 'Rich junkies,' Coughlin muttered. 'Eat that speed and can't handle it.'

'Fire back in Bel Air,' Louis said. He had his headphones on.

'Any good?' Anna asked, turning to look at him. He'd belted himself into his office chair.

'Doesn't sound like much,' Louis said, as he punched numbers into a scanner. 'But I think I've heard the name. Jimmy James Jones?'

'I don't know,' Anna said. 'It rings a bell.'

'Preacher,' Coughlin said. 'He used to have a TV show.'

Anna nodded. 'That's right, good.' To Louis: 'Anything about women, or people hurt?'

'Nope. Mostly smoke. Jimmy James Jones called in the report himself and he's still in the house.'

Coughlin glanced at her expectantly, but Anna said, 'Keep going.'

'How do you decide?' Coughlin asked, after a while. Sunrise rolled along outside the windows, a shabbier section near Hollywood, a few men and women strolling along the streets, cars playing games along the curbs. 'How do you know what to go to?'

'Magic,' Anna said.

'I'm serious,' he said. He jabbed at the brake. A woman with a shopping cart looked for a moment as though she might lurch into the street.

'So am I,' Anna said. 'I don't know how to decide. You just go on the sound of it.'

'Like what?'

'Like the fire: that could be something. If Jimmy James Jones was just a little more famousnot much more, just a little bitwe'd go over. If there were people hurt, we'd think about it. But the thing is, all the local stations are so sensitive to anything with a celebrity, that they've probably got their trucks rolling right now. So even if it turned out to be good, we might not sell much, because everybody would have it. Louis only mentioned it because we're close enough that we could probably get there first.'

'First isn't always enough,' Coughlin said.

'No,' Anna said, shaking her head. 'Sometimes it's enoughbut not always. When the story is minor, then it's absolutely necessary. Or if the story has one crucial moment, then you've got to be there for that moment. Like we shot this kid a week ago, the kid who fell off the building.'

'Harper's kid.'

'Yeah. We didn't know Jake then. anyway, it's not really much of a story, but the event was spectacular. It's something nobody ever seeswe were just there by accident. There was no way for anybody else to make up for our film. They had to have it. With the Jimmy James Jones fire story, all they need is a shot of some fire trucks and hoses, and a comment from Jones. You can be really late and get all that.'

Coughlin nodded. 'So how do you know whereto go? When nothing's going on?'

'I fish. Get a feeling. Some nights just have a quiet feeling in one place, so you decide to go somewhere else. Like, I think we ought to check up the valley tonight. We haven't been there in a while.'

'Up the Hollywood?'

'Yeah, the Hollywood to Mission Hills, back on the San Diego, maybe jump off at Ventura if anything's going on.'

They were coming up on Mission Hills when Louis blurted, 'Okay, we got a holdup at a Starbucks and a guy's down, where are we? Have we crossed Mission yet?'