The Night Crew

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 Anna me, 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 to 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.’’

two

    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 joints—a Denny’s, maybe—eating 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 smile—but 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’s—she 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 back—was even fashionable—but she’d lived on Linnie since the bad old days. Anyone vaulting the fence would find