The Night Crew

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 the ends; in which she could get her wa as 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.
    • • •
    Creek and Louis had dropped her at the corner of Dell and Linnie just after dawn. The truck couldn’t conveniently turn around on Linnie, a dead-end street no wider than most city alleys.
    ‘‘Sorry about the Witch,’’ Louis said. The Witch would be calling her. Anna hated to bring work back to her house.
    ‘‘That’s okay,’’ Anna said. ‘‘For this one time, anyway.’’ She waved good-bye with the cell phone, and walked down the narrow street to her house. A neighbor in his pajamas, out to pick up the paper, said, ‘‘Hey, Anna. Anything interesting?’’
    ‘‘Guy jumped off a building,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘Nasty.’’ He smiled, though, as he shook his head, and said, ‘‘I’ll watch for it,’’ and padded back inside.
    Anna had sold thirteen packages of the jumper wrapped with the animal rights raid. At fifteen hundred dollars for local transmission, she’d sold to nine stations, and at three thousand for the networks—Southern California stations out—she’d sold four. Hatton at Channel Three had called back twice, pushing. They wanted it, had to have it. Finally said the Witch would call.
    She did, five minutes after Anna got home. The cell phone buzzed, and Anna went to the kitchen table and picked it up.
    ‘‘Screw us on this, we’ll never use your stuff again.’’ The Witch opened as she usually did, with a direct threat.
    ‘‘We can live with that,’’ Anna said. She looked out the kitchen window, at the dark line of the canal. In a couple of hours, the reflected ball of the morning sun would start crawling down its length, steaming the water, bringing up the rich smell of algae soup. She’d be asleep in bed, this whole conversation no more than a pleasant memory. ‘‘We already told Hatton that. I only agreed to talk to you as a courtesy.’’
    ‘‘Courtesy my large white Lithuanian butt,’’ the Witch snapped. Anna could hear the pause as she hit on a cigarette. ‘‘If we don’t buy, you lose a big source of your income. Gone,’’ she said. Exhaling. ‘‘Outa here. I promise you, we won’t buy again.’’
    ‘‘You take a bigger hit than we do,’’ Anna said. ‘‘You never know when we’re gonna come up with something like this jumper . . .’’
    ‘‘You’re not that good . . .’’
    ‘‘Yeah, we are: we’re the best crew on the street. And your career life at Three is what? Four or five years? And you’ve been there three? You’ll be gone in a year or two, and we’ll sell to your replacement. And we’ll make our point: You don’t steal from us. Even if it’s swimming cats.’’
    ‘‘I apologized for that,’’ the Witch shrilled.
    ‘‘What?’’ Anna shouted. She banged the cell phone three times on the table top, then yelled into