‘‘What happened?’’ she asked.
‘‘I don’t know . . . I think it was just kids, having a party. They were making noise, we could hear them running in the hallway. The next thing we know people were screaming and the hotel people came.’’
Anna could feel the recorder taking up tape: ‘‘Did you see him go?’’ she asked the gray-haired man.
‘‘I think he was coming in,’’ the man said. ‘‘He turned and it was like he lost his balance and all of a sudden he jumped, like he was trying to make the pool . . .’’
The woman turned to her husband. ‘‘Jim, let’s get out of here.’’
Anna stepped back, looked at the luggage tag on the suitcase: James Madson, Tilly, OK. ‘‘Are you Mr. and Mrs. Madson?’’
The woman turned toward her. ‘‘Yes, yes . . . Are you with the hotel? We’d like to check out.’’
‘‘You’d have to talk with the people downstairs. Are you all right, ma’am? What is your name?’’
‘‘Lucille . . . I’mall right, but the man, the boy, he . . . Jim, I think I’m going to throw up.’’
She started toward the bathroom with her husband behind her, one hand in the middle of her back, patting her, and Anna stepped to the door and looked out.
Hotel security was there in force, along with four or five uniformed cops. She stepped back, said, ‘‘Madson, M-A-DSO-N, Tilly, Oklahoma, T-I-L-L-Y,’’ to the Nagra, then popped the recording tape and slipped it inside the waistband of her pants. She had two spare tapes in a black pouch on the carrying strap: she took out a spare, slipped it into the recorder. Hotel security usually didn’t ask if they could have the tape, they simply took it, destroyed it, and apologized later.
Anna stepped into the hall. Two of the men who’d been in the room were just coming back out. Hotel security and a manager-type. Before either could say anything, Anna said, ‘‘Could somebody help my mother? I think she’s gonna be sick.’’
The manager-type asked, ‘‘What’s wrong?’’
‘‘She saw the man jump, she’s in the bathroom . . .’’
The manager went by, into the Madsons’ room, while the security man ran down the hall toward the elevators. Anna turned the other way and walked back down the hall to the steps.
Into the stairwell, down and around, and around, to the first floor. Pause, listen. Nothing. She stepped into the hallway, saw a sign that said Parking Ramp, and went that way.
Creek was standing fifty feet from the body. No blood, no movement, nothing but a hotel clerk and three cops walking reluctantly toward it. Creek saw her coming and made his open-handed ‘‘Got anything?’’ gesture.
She’d pulled the headset back on. ‘‘Quick quotes from a witness,’’ she said into the mike. ‘‘They said there was some kind of party before he jumped, or fell, or whatever.’’ Anna spotted Jason, headed toward them. ‘‘Creek, look up there, fifth floor, about one, two, three, four, five windows to the right of the jumper’s window . . . See where the curtain comes through?’’
Creek nodded.
‘‘I’m gonna see if I can get the Madsons to come over there.’’
Jason came up and Anna asked, ‘‘How’d you do?’’
‘‘I got his face all the way to the ground,’’ Jason said, with trembling satisfaction. ‘‘He hit twenty feet away.’’
‘‘That’s great,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Look up there, to the left of where he was. I want you to yell, ‘Jim and Lucille Madson, come to the window.’ ’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘ ‘Jim and Lucille’—I don’t have the lungs for it.’’
‘‘You got nice lungs,’’ Jason said; and his eyes seemed to loop. Stoned, or coming down. Too much of this lately; the last time she’d gone to pick him up, he’d been wrecked.
‘‘Just yell the names, huh?’’ she said.
‘‘Yes, Mom.’’
Jason yelled, and after a minute, the Madsons came to the window and peered out.
‘‘Get them?’’ Anna asked.
Creek had the camera on the window. ‘‘Yes.’’
The Madsons went inside and Jason dropped the camera off his shoulder, his face suddenly somber.
‘‘You know what?’’
‘‘What? Look, we gotta get . . .’’
‘‘I think I’m gonna hurl . . .’’
Anna leaned closer to him: ‘‘What the heck are you doing, Jase? Are you stoned?’’
‘‘No, no, no . . . I’m just having a little trouble dealing with this,’’ Jason said. He looked at the body.
‘‘At what?’’ Anna cocked her head, puzzled.
‘‘I’m just . . . my head’s fucked up,’’ he said. Then: ‘‘Anna, I’m sorry, but I gotta go,’’ he said. He pulled off the headset and handed it to her, shamefaced. ‘‘I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen this before. I’ve seen bodies, but this was
. . . He was smiling at me.’’ He turned his knees in, so he was standing on the edges of his tennis shoes, head down, like an embarrassed little boy. ‘‘I gotta go. You gotta couple of bucks I could borrow until we sell this shit? Take it out of my cut?’’
Anna stared at him for a second. Concerned, not angry. ‘‘Jase, how bad is it?’’
‘‘It’s nothing,’’ Jason insisted. ‘‘You’re probably done for tonight, anyway. You gotta couple of bucks?’’
‘‘Yeah, sure,’’ Anna said. She dug in her pants pocket, came up with a short roll of twenties, gave him two.
‘‘Thanks.’’
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 to 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 sec
onds 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 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 . . .’’
‘‘Y
eah, 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 the mouthpiece. ‘‘Did I hear that right? You laughed at us.’’
‘‘So I’m sorry now,’’ the Witch shouted back. ‘‘Name the price.’’
‘‘Network price,’’ Anna said. She sipped at the soup. ‘‘Three thousand for the package. Plus two grand for the cats.’’
‘‘Fuck that,’’ the Witch said. ‘‘Network for the package, okay, but the cats we did, we did with our own crew.’’
‘‘C’mon, c’mon,’’ Anna shouted. ‘‘I’m making a point here.’’
‘‘So’m I . . . Five hundred for the cats.’’
‘‘I’m serious, we don’t need you. Network plus a thousand for the cats.’’
‘‘Deal,’’ the Witch said. ‘‘I want to see the fuckin’ pictures in ten fuckin’ minutes.’’ She slammed down the receiver.
• • •
Anna called the truck, and spoke to Louis. ‘‘Send it to Three.’’
‘‘How much you get?’’
‘‘Four thousand—I got a thousand for the cats.’’
Louis said, ‘‘Examonte, dude,’’ and repeated the price to Creek, whose laughter filled the background. Anna grinned and said, ‘‘We’re dropping thirty-five thousand bucks in the pot—that’s three times the record.’’
Creek shouted at the phone, ‘‘We might as well quit, we’ll never do this again.’’
‘‘How’re the radios, Louis?’’ Anna asked.
‘‘Good. Nothing happening.’’
‘‘Call me.’’
Anna hung up with Creek still laughing about the money. She’d wait until Creek had dropped Louis, and there was no chance of recovering for a quick run. Good stuff sometimes broke just at dawn, although the regular station trucks would be out prowling around fairly soon.