''Hey, what, what?'' Jason kept shooting.
''Close down! Get in the truck. Now.''
As Anna and Creek came up, Louis jammed it into park and climbed over the seat into the back, and Jason came through the side. Creek slipped into the driver's seat and Louis shouted, ''Down Gayley, then left on Wilshire, it's three blocks, it's a place called the Shamrock.''
Creek: ''I know the place. Jesus, it's two minutes from here.''
''Gotta hustle,'' Anna said. ''Gotta hustle, gotta hustle.''
Creek spun the truck in a U-turn, headed back toward the Shell station, paused at the red light just long enough to make sure he wouldn't hit anything, then powered on through.
Louis had an earphone clamped over one ear. ''The guy's still out there. On a ledge. There's hotel people talking to him. He's from a party, high-school kids.''
Creek had the gas pedal on the floor and they just caught the light at Wilshire.
As they swept through the intersection, Anna said to Jason, ''Give yourself some space on your tape. You gotta be ready, but the first tape is good, too.''
''I'm ready,'' Jason said.
''Creek?''
Creek nodded. Creek was always ready.
''Louis, talk to me,'' Anna said.
Louis's eyes were closed, and he was leaning away from them, listening hard.
''There're cars on the way, we got maybe a minute by ourselves. Maybe two minutes.''
Anna said, ''Jason, I want you tight on the guy. Creek will pull back a bit, get the full jump, if he goes. But I wanna see his face…''
''You got it, sugarbun,'' Jason said.
Creek showed his teeth: ''Sugarbun?''
Jason grinned at him: ''Me'n Anna getting intimate.''
''Yeah?'' Creek glanced at Anna, who rolled her eyes.
''Me'n Anna doing the thing,'' Jason said. He was almost talking to himself, looked as though he might giggle. He was wound, his eyes big: he liked the movement, maybe too much. He was talented: might go big in Hollywood someday,
Anna thought, if he didn't blow his brains out through his nose. ''Doin' the thing,'' he muttered.
''Shamrock,'' Anna said and pointed. Ahead, a twentystory green glass-and-steel building showed a bright green neon shamrock at the top. And Jason, who'd crawled between the seats, spotted the jumper: ''There he is! He's toward the bottom, like five or six stories up, you can see him…''
He pointed, and Anna noticed that his hand had a tremor: not the trembling of excitement, but the jerk of a nerve breakdown. She glanced at his stark, underfed face: Christ, she thought, he's back on the crank.
She turned away from the straining face, and looked where he was looking. Five stories, Anna counted. And there he was. The would-be jumper wore dark pants and a white shirt. From a block away, in the lights that bathed the outside of the building, he looked like a fly stuck to a sheet of glass. ''Get us there,
Creek,'' Anna said, breathlessly.
They were doing seventy-five, the wheels screaming, right up to the hotel, then
Creek hammered the brake and cut sidewaysand they went over the curb again and
Jason spilled out, running toward the hotel with his camera.
The man on the ledge had his back to a sheet of plate glass, his arms spread.
The ledge, Anna thought, wasn't more than a foot wide-she could see the tips of his shoes.
''Guys, I'm gonna try to get up there,'' Anna said into her mike as she dropped from the truck. ''You're gonna be on your own for a minute: Jason, I want face .'' She sprinted toward the hotel's front entrance, the Nagra flapping under her arm.
Hotels didn't want to know about media. As far as hotels were concerned, no media was good media. Anna had two options. She could try to sneak in, but that took time. Or she could run. She ran forty miles a week on the beach and if the stairs were placed right, no hotel security man in California could catch her.
She hit the glass doors and went through the lobby like she was on a motorcycle.
Two bellman huddled at the reception desk with a couple of clerks, and one of the bellmen saw her and just had time to turn, to open his mouth and shout,
''Hey,'' when she was past him. The elevators were straight ahead, and a brass plaque with an arrow pointing to the right said ''Stairs.''
She took the stairs. Ran up one flight, two, then a man shouting again, from the bottom, ''Hey…'' Third floor, not even breathing hard. Anna got off at the fourth: there'd be security on the fifth floor, and the desk people might have called them. She ran into the hall on the fourth floor, looked right and left, decided that the right end would be the far end of the hotel. There should be another flight of stairs that way.
She ran down the hall, now aware of her heart pounding in her chest, turned a corner past a niche with Coke, ice and candy machines, to another stairway. She pulled open the door, looked up and down, heard nothing and ran up to five. She took three seconds, two long breaths, pulled off her headset, shoved it with the
Nagra up under her jacket in back, held it with one hand, and sauntered into the hallway.
Halfway down, three older men-security, probably- stood outside an open doorway.
A dozen kids were scattered up and down the hall, a few of them talking, most just looking down at the open door. All the kids were dressed up, the boys in suits and ties, the girls in pink and blue party dresses, all with the stark-white look of fear on their faces.
One of the security men looked toward Anna, and even leaned her way-but as he did, a woman shrieked, and the men in suits turned and ran through the open door.
My God, Anna thought, he jumped.
The girls in pastel dresses were looking at the door, the boys were looking at each other, all were frozen: Anna knew that this was one of the moments she'd remember: they were like sculpture in some modern wise-cracking installation called California Kids.
Then Anna moved, and when she did, a couple of the girls began sobbing, and one of the boys yelled, ''Oh, no. No, Jacob…''
Anna ran lightly down the hall, found another open door a few rooms closer than the one where the security men had been. She looked inside: a man and woman, both gray-haired, horrified, were standing at their window, looking out. Anna stepped inside.
''Did he jump?''
The woman, white-faced, looked at her, her mouth working, nothing coming out, then: ''Oh, my God.''
Anna stepped around an open suitcase, walked across the room, and looked out the window. The jumper was facedown, a black and white silhouette on the yellow stone, six feet from the pool. Ten feet from the body, Jason was moving in withhis camera. From across the pool, Creek also focused on the body.
Anna took out the recorder, hit the record switch, held it by her side: didn't hide it, just held it like a purse.
''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'm all 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