The Night Crew

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 sees—we 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 where to 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?’’
    ‘‘Two minutes to Mission,’’ Anna said.
    ‘‘Get off, go east,’’ Louis said. He was punching numbers into the laptop. ‘‘Okay, three blocks east, right side, we should see it, they got one guy down and one of the clerks threw a pot of boiling coffee on the holdup guy, he’s still in the street, he might be blind, he’s still armed, cops on the way . . .’’
    ‘‘Could be good,’’ Anna said to Coughlin, ‘‘but we gotta hurry.’’
    ‘‘I am hurrying,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m doing seventy.’’
    ‘‘I mean hurry ,’’ Anna said. She took the pistol out of her pocket, popped the lock box with the Nagra, took the tape recorder out and put the gun in the box and relocked it. When she turned back, they were hurtling down an off-ramp toward a stoplight and she stretched out over the dashboard, looking to the left, and said, ‘‘Nothing coming, nothing coming, forget the light, go . . .’’
    Coughlin took it sedately through the curve and Anna said, ‘‘Damn it, you gotta drive .’’
    ‘‘Jesus,’’ Coughlin said, but he floored it and the truck took off.
    Three blocks ahead, there were people in the street: ‘‘That’s gotta be it,’’ she said.
    Louis was fumbling with the main camera, and said to Coughlin, ‘‘All right, the camera’s all set. Just pull the trigger.’’
    ‘‘Yeah, yeah.’’
    Louis reached over the seat and put the headset over the top of Coughlin’s head. ‘‘Pull it down over your ears.’’
    ‘‘Right there—pull right up on that curb,’’ Anna shouted. ‘‘Put two wheels up, get up there.’’
    ‘‘Fuckin’ people are nuts,’’ Coughlin said, but he put two wheels on the curb, stood on the brake, and Anna was out the door.
    A man was lying on the street with his hands on his face, moaning, bleeding from the face, a revolver on the sidewalk ten feet away. A tough-looking teenager in a letter jacket was standing over him. Sirens began screaming in. Coughlin was out with the camera, but not moving fast enough. Anna screamed at him on the headset: ‘‘This way, move! Move! Run, for Christ’s sake.’’
    Coughlin broke into a trot, the camera bouncing on his shoulder, and Anna pointed at the man on the street, and the teenager. ‘‘What happened? What happened? Tell the camera what happened.’’
    ‘‘Guy come running out of the store and ran right into that door and cracked his head open,’’ the teenager told Coughlin’s camera. ‘‘He had the gun and people were inside yelling to get out of the way, he shot somebody, so I kicked the gun over there and he tried to get up and I set him down again.’’
    Anna allowed a second’s space as Coughlin panned from the man on the street to the teenager and back, and Anna said, ‘‘What’s your name? Where do you come from? What were you doing here?’’
    As the teenager started talking again, she ran inside the store. Another man was on the floor, and a half-dozen Starbucks counterpeople were gathered around him. She said, ‘‘Coughlin, get in here, right now. Get the scene on the floor. Hurry, goddammit, the cops are almost here.’’
    The cops were there. Coughlin trotted into