The Night Crew

attribute to either me or the Rat. We wrote the statement jointly.’’
    ‘‘Will we meet the Rat?’’ Anna asked. She passed the press release to Louis, who slipped it in a spring clip on the side of the fax.
    ‘‘He’s in the building now,’’ the Bee said, leaning left to peer past Anna out the windshield. ‘‘Turn left here,’’ she said. Creek slowed for the turn.
    ‘‘We’d like to get an action quote when they come out, as they release the animals,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘No problem. We can accommodate that.’’ The Bee looked at her Rolex, then back out the window. They were right in the middle of the UCLA medical complex. ‘‘I’m sorry I’m so . . . snappy . . . but when Jason agreed to tenthirty, we specified exactly ten-thirty. The raid is already under way.’’
    Anna nodded and turned to Louis. ‘‘How’re the radios?’’
    Louis Martinez sat in an office swivel chair that was bolted to the floor of the truck. From the chair, he could reach the scanners and transmitters, the dual editing stations, the fax and phones, any of the screens in the steel racks.
    He fiddled with the gear incessantly, trying to capture a mental picture of after-dark Los Angeles, in terms of accidents, shootings, car chases, fires, riots.
    ‘‘All clear,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ve got that shooting down in Inglewood, but that ain’t much. There’s a chase down south, Long Beach, but it’s heading the other way.’’
    ‘‘Track it,’’ Anna said. Cop chases had produced at least two famous video clips in the past couple of years. If you could get out in front of one, and catch it coming by, it was a sure sale.
    ‘‘I got it,’’ Louis said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned at the Bee with his screwy nerd-charm. ‘‘Why’d you choose Bee?’’ he asked.
    ‘‘I didn’t want a warm and fuzzy animal. That’s not the point of animal rescue,’’ the Bee said. Her response was remote, canned, and Louis’ grin slipped a fraction of an inch.
    ‘‘And that’s why Steve picked Rat,’’ Jason suggested.
    The Bee frowned at the use of Rat’s real name, but nodded. ‘‘Yes. And because we feel a spiritual affinity with our choices.’’
    In the driver’s seat, Creek grunted again, shook his head once, quick. Anna was watching him, taking his temperature: He didn’t like these people and he didn’t like the professional PR points—the press release, the theatrical ski mask. Too much like a setup, and Creek was pure.
    A smile curled one corner of Anna’s mouth. She could read Creek’s mind if she could see his eyes. Creek knew that. He glanced at her, then deliberately pulled his eyes away. And said, quickly: ‘‘There’s a guy on the corner.’’
    Ahead and to the right, a woman in a ski mask was standing on the corner, making a hurry-up windmilling motion with one arm.
    ‘‘That’s Otter,’’ she said. ‘‘And that’s the corner of Circle. They must be out—turn right.’’
    Creek took the corner, past the waving woman. The street tilted uphill, and a hundred yards up, a cluster of women spilled down a driveway to the street, two of them struggling with a blue plastic municipal garbage can. A security guard was running down from the top of the hill, another one trailing behind.
    ‘‘Got them coming out,’’ Anna said, over her shoulder. A quick pulse ran through her: not quite excitement, but some combination of pleasure and apprehension.
    Nobody ever knew for sure what would happen at these things. Nothing much, probably, but any time you had guards with guns. . . . Did the guards have guns? She took a halfsecond to look, but couldn’t tell.
    As she looked, she reached behind her, lifted the lid on the steel box bolted on the back of her seat, pulled the Nagra tape recorder from its foam nest. Jason was looking past her, through the windshield at the action, and she snapped: ‘‘Get ready.’’
    ‘‘Yes, Mom,’’ he said. He fitted a headset over the crown of his head, plugged in the earphone. Creek was driving with one hand, pulling on his own headset.
    ‘‘Everybody hear me?’’ Anna asked, speaking into her face mike. The radios were one-way: Anna talked, everyone else listened.
    Creek said, ‘‘Yeah,’’ and took the truck over the curb, one big bounce and a nose-down, squealing, full stop. Jason had braced himself, and Louis had swiveled to let the chair take the jolt. The Bee toppled over and yelped,