And he went, hurrying away across the stone patio, Creek peering after him. In the background, they could hear sirens: fire rescue, too late.

'What was that all about?' Anna asked, watching as Jason went out of the street.

Creek shook his head. 'I don't know.'

'Well.' Anna hoisted the camera, looked through the eyepiece, focused on the group of cops around the body and ran off fifteen seconds of tape. Then she ran it back, forty-five seconds, and replayed.

The jump was there, in and out of focus, but undeniably real, taking her breath away: and at the last second, the man's arms flailing, his face passing through the rectangle of the lens display, then the unyielding stone patio.

'Jeez,' she said. She looked at Creek. 'This is.' She groped for a concept, and found one: 'This is Hollywood.'

Creek muttered, 'Better go. The pigs are about to fly.' She nodded and they headed for the truck, walking fast, but not too fast. The cops were disorganized at the moment, but five minutes from now they wouldn't be. This would not be a good time to be noticed.

Louis had backed the truck into the street, jockeyed it into a no-parking zone.

'Where's Jason?' he asked, as Anna and Creek unloaded the cameras.

'Took off,' Anna shrugged.

'How come? Did he shoot it?'

'Yeah, he got some great stuff,' Anna said. 'I don't know what his problem is: he freaked.'

'Don't sound like the Jason we know and love,' Louis said, puzzled.

An ambulance went by, and Creek turned the truck in another U and they headed through light traffic back west down Wilshire.

'We get it all?' Louis asked.

'We got it all,' Anna said. 'The jump is an A-plus-plus. Probably the best thing we've ever had, exclusive. I'm gonna sell it with the pig as a package.'

'As a poke,' Louis said.

'Yeah. Let's find a spot where we can see the mountain.' Anna pushed a speed-dial button on the cell phone, waited a moment, then said, 'Let me speak to Jack Hatton. Anna Batory. Tell him I'm on Wilshire at the Shamrock Hotel.'

Creek looked at her curiously, and Louis said, 'Hatton? Why're you calling Hatton?'

'Revenge,' Anna said, and grinned at him.

Jack Hatton came on ten seconds later, his voice the perfect pitch of good cheer: 'Anna, how you doing?'

'Don't "how you doing" me,' Anna shouted into the phone. 'Remember the swimming cats? I hope you got lots more cat tape, you jerk, because we got the jumper coming off the ledge, all the way down. Two cameras, in focus, twenty feet, and there was nobody else here. So go watch channel Five, Seven, Nine, Eleven, Thirteen, Seventeen and Nineteen and then tell the Witch why you don't have it, you cheap piece of cheese.'

'Anna.'

'Don't Anname, pal. And I'll tell you something else. We got there quick 'cause we'd just been up to UCLA for the animal raid, which you probably heard about by now, too late, as usual. We got a mile of tape on that, too, we got animals screaming, we got a riot. We got a kid beat up and bleeding. And when you see it on Five, Seven, Nine, Eleven, Thirteen, Seventeen and Nineteen tomorrow, you can explain that, too, dickweed.'

'Anna.' A pleading note now.

'Go away.' And she clicked off.

Beside her, Creek grinned. 'I'm proud a ya,' he said.

From the back, Louis said, 'Such language. we really gonna blow off Three?'

'No,' Anna said. 'But they'll be sweating blood. I'm gonna jack them up for every nickel in their freelance budget.'

'Most excellent,' Louis said, with great satisfaction. 'Get me a place where I can see the mountain and I will crank this puppy out.'

Anna punched the next speed-dial button: 'I'll start selling.'

Chapter 2

All done.

Anna sat in comfort and quiet at her kitchen table, a cup of steaming chicken-noodle soup in front of her, pricking up her nose with its oily saltiness. She yawned, rubbed the back of her neck. Her eyes were scratchy from the long night.

At moments like this, coming down in the pre-dawn cool, Creek and Louis already headed home, she thought of cigarettes; and of younger days, sitting in all-night jointsa Benny's, maybeeating blueberry pie with a cardboard crust, drinking coffee, talking, smoking. Chesterfields. Some old name. Luckies. Gauloises or Players, when you were posing. She didn't do that any more. Now she went home. Sometimes she cried: a little weep didn't make her feel much better, but did help her sleep.

Anna Batory was a small woman, going on five-three, with black hair cut close, skater-style, or fencer-style. And she might have been a fencer, with her thin, rail-hard body. The toughness was camouflaged by her oval face and white California smilebut she ran six miles every afternoon, on the sand along the ocean, and spent three hours a week working with weights at a serious gym.

Anna wasn't pretty, but she wasn't plain. She was handsome, or striking, a woman who'd wear well into old age, if that ever came. She thought her nose should have been shorter and her shoulders just a bit narrower. Her hands were as large as a man'sshe could span a ninth on the Steinway upright in the hall, and fake a tenth. She had pale blue killer eyes. One of her ancestors had ruled Poland and had fought the Russians.

Anna pushed herself away from the table and, carrying her cup of soup, prowled her house, making sure that everything was right. Looking out windows. Touching her stuff. Talking to it: 'Now what happened to you, old pot? Has Creek been messing with you? You're over here by the picture, not way out at the edge.'

Sometimes she thought she was going crazy, but it was a happy kind of craziness.

Anna lived on the Linnie Canal in the heart of Venice, a half-mile from the Pacific, in an old-fashioned white clapboard house with a blue-shingled roof. The house made a sideways 'L'. The right half of the house, including the tiny front porch, was set back from the street. The single-car garage, on the left side, went right out to the street. The small yard created by the L was wrapped in a white picket fence, and inside the fence, Anna grew a jungle.

Venice was coming backwas even fashionablebut she'd lived on Linnie since the bad old days. Anyone vaulting the fence would find himself knee deep in dagger-like Spanish bayonet, combat-ready cactus and the thorniest desert brush. If he made it through, he'd fall facedown, bloody and bruised, in a soft bed of perennials and aromatic herbs.

The interior of Anna's house was as carefully cultivated as the yard.

The walls were of real plaster, would hold a nail, and were layered with a half-century's worth of paint. Hardwood floors glistened where the sun broke through the windows, polished by feet and beach sand. They squeaked when she walked on them, and were cool on the soles of her feet.

The lower floor included a comfortable living room and spare bedroom, both filled with craftsman furniture. A bathroom, a small den that she used as an office and the kitchen took up the rest of the floor. The kitchen was barely functional: Anna had no interest in cooking.

'The fact is,' Creek told her once, 'your main cooking appliance is a toaster.' Creek liked to cook. He considered himself an expert on stews.

On the second floor of Anna's house, under the steep roof, were her bedroom and an oversized bathroom. Creek and four of his larger friends had helped her bring in the tub, hoisting it from outside with an illegal assist from a power company cherry-picker.

The tub was a rectangular monstrosity in which she could float freely, touching neither bottom nor sides nor ends; in which she could get her waas smooth and round as a river pebble.

In the adjoining bedroom, the queen-sized bed was covered with a quilt made by her mother, the material taken from clothes her parents had worn out when they were young. Under the canal-side window, the quilt looked like rags of pure light.